Footprints which perhaps another, Sailing o"er life"s solemn main, A forlorn and ship-wrecked brother, Seeing, may take heart again."
At the head of all biographies stands the Great Biography--the Book of Books. And what is the Bible, the most sacred and impressive of all books--the educator of youth, the guide of manhood, and the consoler of age--but a series of biographies of great heroes and patriarchs, prophets, kings and judges, culminating in the greatest biography of all--the Life embodied in the New Testament? How much have the great examples there set forth done for mankind! How many have drawn from them their best strength, their highest wisdom, their best nurture and admonition! Truly does a great and deeply pious writer describe the Bible as a book whose words "live in the ear like a music that never can be forgotten--like the sound of church-bells which the convert hardly knows how he can forego. Its felicities often seem to be almost things rather than mere words. It is part of the national mind, and the anchor of national seriousness. The memory of the dead pa.s.ses into it. The potent traditions of childhood are stereotyped in its verses. The power of all the griefs and trials of man is hidden beneath its words. It is the representative of his best moments; and all that has been about him of soft, and gentle, and pure, and penitent, and good, speaks to him forever out of his English Bible. It is his sacred thing, which doubt has never dimmed and controversy never soiled. In the length and breadth of the land there is not an individual with one spark of religiousness about him whose spiritual biography is not in his Saxon Bible."
History itself is best studied in biography. Indeed, history is biography--collective humanity as influenced and governed by individual men. "What is all history," says Emerson, "but the work of ideas, a record of the incomparable energy which his infinite aspirations infuse into man? In its pages it is always persons we see more than principles. Historical events are interesting to us mainly in connection with the feelings, the sufferings, and interests of those by whom they are accomplished. In history we are surrounded by men long dead, but whose speech and whose deeds survive. We almost catch the sound of their voices; and what they did const.i.tutes the interest of history. We never feel personally interested in ma.s.ses of men; but we feel and sympathize with the individual actors, whose biographies afford the finest and most real touches in all great historical dramas."
As in portraiture, so in biography--there must be light and shade.
The portrait-painter does not pose his sitter so as to bring out his deformities; nor does the biographer give undue prominence to the defects of the character he portrays. Not many men are so outspoken as Cromwell was when he sat to Cooper for his miniature: "Paint me as I am," said he, "wart and all." Yet, if we would have a faithful likeness of faces and characters, they must be painted as they are.
"Biography," said Sir Walter Scott, "the most interesting of every species of composition, loses all its interest with me when the shades and lights of the princ.i.p.al characters are not accurately and faithfully detailed. I can no more sympathize with a mere eulogist than I can with a ranting hero on the stage."
It is to be regretted that in this day the country is flooded with cheap, trashy fiction, the general tendency of which is not only not educational, but is positively destructive. The desire to read this stuff is as demoralizing as the opium habit.
There are works of fiction, cheap and available, too, whose influence is elevating, and some knowledge of which is essential to the young man who is using his spare hours for the purpose of self-education.
There is no room for doubt that the surpa.s.sing interest which fiction, whether in poetry or prose, possesses for most minds arises mainly from the biographic element which it contains. Homer"s "Iliad "owes its marvelous popularity to the genius which its author displayed in the portrayal of heroic character. Yet he does not so much describe his personages in detail as make them develop themselves by their actions. "There are in Homer," said Dr. Johnson, "such characters of heroes and combination of qualities of heroes, that the united powers of mankind ever since have not produced any but what are to be found there."
The genius of Shakespeare, also, was displayed in the powerful delineation of character, and the dramatic evolution of human pa.s.sions. His personages seem to be real--living and breathing before us. So, too, with Cervantes, whose Sancho Panza, though homely and vulgar, is intensely human. The characters in Le Sage"s "Gil Bias," in Goldsmith"s "Vicar of Wakefield," and in Scott"s marvelous muster-roll, seem to us almost as real as persons whom we have actually known; and De Foe"s greatest works are but so many biographies, painted in minute detail, with reality so apparently stamped upon every page that it is difficult to believe his Robinson Crusoe and Colonel Jack to have been fict.i.tious persons instead of real ones.
Then we have a fine American literature, which should be read after the history of the country is mastered, the stories of Cooper are fresh and invigorating, and those of Hawthorne are life studies and prose poems. Holmes, Lowell, Emerson, Bayard Taylor, and scores of other American writers, whose pens have added l.u.s.tre to the country, will well repay the reader.
Good books are among the best of companions; and, by elevating the thoughts and aspirations, they act as preservatives against low a.s.sociations. "A natural turn for reading and intellectual pursuits," says Thomas Hood, "probably preserved me from the moral ship-wreck so apt to befall those who are deprived in early life of their parental pilotage. My books kept me from the ring, the dogpit, the tavern, the saloon. The closet a.s.sociate of Pope and Addison, the mind accustomed to the n.o.ble though silent discourse of Shakespeare and Milton, will hardly seek or put up with low company and slaves."
It has been truly said that the best books are those which most resemble good actions. They are purifying, elevating, and sustaining; they enlarge and liberalize the mind; they preserve it against vulgar worldliness; they tend to produce high-minded cheerfulness and equanimity of character; they fashion, and shape, and humanize the mind. In the Northern universities, the schools in which the ancient cla.s.sics are studied are appropriately styled "The Humanity Cla.s.ses."
Erasmus, the great scholar, was even of opinion that books were the necessaries of life, and clothes the luxuries; and he frequently postponed buying the latter until he had supplied himself with the former. His greatest favorites were the writings of Cicero, which he says he always felt himself the better for reading. "I can never,"
he says, "read the works of Cicero on "Old Age," or "Friendship," or his "Tusculan Disputations," without fervently pressing them to my lips, without being penetrated with veneration for a mind little short of inspired by G.o.d himself."
It is unnecessary to speak of the enormous moral influence which books have exercised upon the general civilization of mankind, from the Bible downward. They contain the treasured knowledge of the human race. They are the record of all labors, achievements, speculations, successes, and failures, in science, philosophy, religion, and morals. They have been the greatest motive-powers in all times. "From the Gospel to the Contrat Social," says De Bonald, "it is books that have made revolutions." Indeed, a great book is often a greater thing than a great battle. Even works of fiction have occasionally exercised immense power on society.
Bear in mind that it is not all we eat that nourishes, but what we digest. The learned man is a glutton as to books, but the educated man knows that, no matter how much is read, benefit is only derived from the thoughts that develop our own thoughts and strengthen our own minds.
CHAPTER IX
THE VALUE OF EXPERIENCE.
"What experience have you had?" This is apt to be the first question put by an employer to the applicant for a place, be he mechanic, clerk, or laborer. If you need a doctor, you would prefer to trust your case to a man of experience, rather than to one fresh from a medical college. Apart from the established reputation, that comes only with time, and natural abilities which count for much, the princ.i.p.al difference between men in every calling is the difference in their experiences.
If this experience is so essential, we must regard as wanting in judgment the young man, who, after a short service, imagines he is as well qualified to conduct the business as his superior in place.
No amount of natural ability, and no effort of energy can compensate for the training that comes from experience. Indeed, it is only after we have studied and tested ourselves, and overestimated our talents to our injury, more than once, that experience gives us a proper estimate of our own strength and weakness.
Contact with others is requisite to enable a man to know himself. It is only by mixing freely in the world that one can form a proper estimate of his own capacity. Without such experience, one is apt to become conceited, puffed up, and arrogant; at all events, he will remain ignorant of himself, though he may heretofore have enjoyed no other company.
Swift once said: "It is an uncontroverted truth, that no man ever made an ill-figure who understood his own talents, nor a good one who mistook them." Many persons, however, are readier to take measure of the capacity of others than of themselves. "Bring him to me," said a certain Dr. Tronchin, of Geneva, speaking of Rousseau-- "bring him to me that I may see whether he has got anything in him!"--the probability being that Rousseau, who knew himself better, was much more likely to take measure of Tronchin than Tronchin was to take measure of him.
A due amount of self-knowledge is, therefore, necessary for those who would _be_ anything or _do_ anything in the world. It is also one of the first essentials to the formation of distinct personal convictions. Frederick Perthes once said to a young friend, "You know only too well what you _can_ do; but till you have learned what you _can not_ do, you will neither accomplish anything of moment nor know inward peace."
Any one who would profit by experience will never be above asking help. He who thinks himself already too wise to learn of others, will never succeed in doing anything either good or great. We have to keep our minds and hearts open, and never be ashamed to learn, with the a.s.sistance of those who are wiser and more experienced than ourselves.
The man made wise by experience endeavors to judge correctly of the things which come under his observation and form the subject of his daily life. What we call common sense is, for the most part, but the result of common experience wisely improved. Nor is great ability necessary to acquire it, so much as patience, accuracy, and watchfulness.
The results of experience are, of course, only to be achieved by living; and living is a question of time. The man of experience learns to rely upon time as his helper. "Time and I against any two," was a maxim of Cardinal Mazarin. Time has been described as a beautifier and as a consoler; but it is also a teacher. It is the food of experience, the soil of wisdom. It may be the friend or the enemy of youth; and time will sit beside the old as a consoler or as a tormentor, according as it has been used or misused, and the past life has been well or ill spent.
"Time," says George Herbert, "is the rider that breaks youth." To the young, how bright the new world looks!--how full of novelty, of enjoyment, of pleasure! But as years pa.s.s, we find the world to be a place of sorrow as well as of joy. As we proceed through life, many dark vistas open upon us--of toil, suffering, difficulty, perhaps misfortune and failure. Happy they who can pa.s.s through and amidst such trials with a firm mind and pure heart, encountering trials with cheerfulness, and standing erect beneath even the heaviest burden!
Thomas A. Edison, the great inventor, in speaking of his success to the writer, said:
"I had when I started out all the patience and perseverance that I have now, but I lacked the experience. Seeing that I had only ten weeks" regular schooling in all my life, I can say with truth that experience has been my school and my only one.
"Many believe that my life has been a success from the start, and I do not try to undeceive them, but as a matter of fact my failures have exceeded my successes as one hundred to one; but even the experience of these failures has been in itself an educator and has enabled me not to repeat them."
The brave man will not be baffled, but tries and tries again until he succeeds. The tree does not fall at the first stroke, but only by repeated strokes and after great labor. We may see the visible success at which a man has arrived, but forget the toil and suffering and peril through which it has been achieved. For the same reason, it is often of advantage for a man to be under the necessity of having to struggle with poverty and conquer it. "He who has battled," says Carlyle, "were it only with poverty and hard toil, will be found stronger and more expert than he who could stay at home from the battle, concealed among the provision wagons, or even rest unwatchfully "abiding by the stuff.""
Scholars have found poverty tolerable compared with the privation of intellectual food. Riches weigh much more heavily upon the mind. "I cannot but choose say to Poverty," said Richter, "Be welcome! So that thou come not too late in life." Poverty, Horace tells us, drove him to poetry and poetry introduced him to Varus and Virgil and Maecenas. "Obstacles," says Michelet, "are great incentives. I lived for whole years upon a Virgil and found myself well off."
Many have to make up their minds to encounter failure again and again before they succeed; but if they have pluck, the failure will only serve to rouse their courage and stimulate them to renewed efforts.
Talma, the greatest of actors, was hissed off the stage when he first appeared on it. Lacordaire, one of the greatest preachers of modern times, only acquired celebrity after repeated failures.
Montalembert said of his first public appearance in the church of St. Roch: He failed completely, and, on coming out, every one said, "Though he may be a man of talent he will never be a preacher."
Again and again he tried, until he succeeded, and only two years after his _debut_, Lacordaire was preaching in Notre Dame to audiences such as few French orators have addressed since the time of Bossuet and Ma.s.silon.
When Mr. Cobden first appeared as a speaker at a public meeting in Manchester, he completely broke down and the chairman apologized for his failure. Sir James Graham and Mr. Disraeli failed and were derided at first, and only succeeded by dint of great labor and application. At one time Sir James Graham had almost given up public speaking in despair. He said to his friend Sir Francis Baring: "I have tried it every way--extempore, from notes, and committing it all to memory--and I can"t do it. I don"t know why it is, but I am afraid I shall never succeed." Yet by dint of perseverance, Graham, like Disraeli, lived to become one of the most effective and impressive of parliamentary speakers.
In every field of effort success has only come after many trials.
Morse with his telegraph and Howe with his sewing machine lived in poverty and met with many disappointments before the world came to appreciate the value of their great inventions.
It can be said with truth that these great men could have avoided much of their trouble if they had had the necessary experience. But particularly in the two cases cited before, the inventions were new to the world and it needed that the world should have the experience of their utility as well as the inventors.
Science also has had its martyrs, who have fought their way to light through difficulty, persecution and suffering. We need not refer to the cases of Bruno, Galileo and others, persecuted because of the supposed heterodoxy of their views. But there have been other unfortunates among men of science, whose genius has been unable to save them from the fury of their enemies. Thus Bailly, the celebrated French astronomer (who had been mayor of Paris) and Lavoisier, the great chemist, were both guillotined in the first French Revolution. When the latter, after being sentenced to death by the Commune, asked for a few days" respite to enable him to ascertain the result of some experiments he had made during his confinement, the tribunal refused his appeal, and ordered him for immediate execution, one of the judges saying that "the Republic has no need of philosophers." In England also, about the same time, Dr.
Priestley, the father of modern chemistry, had his house burned over his head and his library destroyed, amidst the shouts of "No philosophers!" and he fled from his native country to lay his bones in a foreign land.
Courageous men have often turned enforced solitude to account in executing works of great pith and moment. It is in solitude that the pa.s.sion for spiritual perfection best nurses itself. The soul communes with itself in loneliness until its energy often becomes intense. But whether a man profits by solitude or not will mainly depend upon his own temperament, training and character. While, in a large-natured man, solitude will make the pure heart purer, in the small-natured man it will only serve to make the hard heart still harder; for though solitude may be the nurse of great spirits, it is the torment of small ones.
Not only have many of the world"s greatest benefactors, men whose lives history now records the most successful, had not only to contend with poverty, but it was their misfortune to be misunderstood and to be regarded as criminals. Many a great reformer in religion, science, and government has paid for his opinions by imprisonment. Speaking of these great men, a prominent English writer says: Prisons may have held them, but their thoughts were not to be confined by prison walls. They have burst through and defied the power of their persecutors. It was Lovelace, a prisoner, who wrote:
"Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage; Minds innocent and quiet take That for a hermitage."
It was a saying of Milton that, "who best can suffer, best can do."
The work of many of the greatest men, inspired by duty, has been done amidst suffering and trial and difficulty. They have struggled against the tide and reached the sh.o.r.e exhausted, only to grasp the sand and expire. They have done their duty and been content to die.
But death hath no power over such men; their hallowed memories still survive to soothe and purify and bless us. "Life," said Goethe, "to us all is suffering. Who save G.o.d alone shall call us to our reckoning? Let not reproaches fall on the departed. Not what they have failed in, nor what they have suffered, but what they have done, ought to occupy the survivors."
Thus, it is not ease and facility that try men and bring out the good that is in them, so much as trial and difficulty. Adversity is the touchstone of character. As some herbs need to be crushed to give forth their sweetest odor, so some natures need to be tried by suffering to evoke the excellence that is in them. Hence trials often unmask virtues and bring to light hidden graces.
Suffering may be the appointed means by which the higher nature of man is to be disciplined and developed. a.s.suming happiness to be the end of being, sorrow may be the indispensable condition through which it is to be reached. Hence St. Paul"s n.o.ble paradox descriptive of the Christian life--"As chastened, and not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things."
Even pain is not all painful. On one side it is related to suffering, and on the other to happiness. For pain is remedial as well as sorrowful. Suffering is a misfortune as viewed from the one side, and a discipline as viewed from the other. But for suffering, the best part of many men"s natures would sleep a deep sleep. Indeed, it might almost be said that pain and sorrow were the indispensable conditions of some men"s success, and the necessary means to evoke the highest development of their genius. Sh.e.l.ley has said of poets:
"Most wretched men are cradled into poetry by wrong, They learn in suffering what they teach in song."
But the young man meeting with disappointments, as he is sure to do in the beginning of his career, particularly if he be dependent on himself, should take comfort from the thought that others who have risen to success have had to travel the same hard road; and such men have confessed that these trials, these bitter experiences, were the most valuable of their lives.