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Page 78
This truth opens to the conscientious a field of duty not enough
cultivated. The improvement of individual character has been too much
regarded as a matter of personal concern, a duty to ourselves,--to our
immediate relations perhaps, but to no others,--a matter affecting out
individual happiness here, and our individual safety hereafter! This is
taking a very narrow view of a very extended subject. The work of
individual self-formation is a duty, not only to ourselves and our
families, but to our fellow-creatures at large; it is the best and most
certainly beneficial exercise of philanthropy. It is not, it is true,
very flattering to self-love to be told, that instead of mending the
world, (the mania of the present day,) the best service which we can do
that world is to mend ourselves. "If each mends one, all will be
mended," says the old English adage, with the deep wisdom of those
popular sayings,--a wisdom amply corroborated by the unsettled
principles and defective practice of too many of the self-elected
reformers of society.
It is peculiarly desirable, at this particular juncture of time, that
this subject be insisted upon. Man, naturally a social and gregarious
animal, becomes every day more so. The vast undertakings, the mighty
movements of the present day, which can only be carried into operation
by the combined energy of many wills, tend to destroy individuality of
thought and action, and the consciousness of individual responsibility.
The dramatist complains of this fact, as it affects his art, the
representation of surface,--the moralist has greater cause to complain
of it, as affecting the foundation of character. If it be true that we
must not follow a multitude to do evil, it is equally true that we must
not follow a multitude even to do good, if it involve the neglect of our
own peculiar duties. Our first, most peremptory, and most urgent duty,
is, the improvement of our own character; so that public beneficence may
not be neutralized by private selfishness,--public energy by private
remissness,--that the applause of the world may not be bought at the
expense of private and domestic wretchedness. So frequent and so
lamentable are the proofs of human weakness in this respect, that we are
sometimes tempted to believe the opinion of the cold and sneering
skeptic,[112] that the two ruling passions of men are the love of
pleasure and the love of action; and that all their seemingly good deeds
proceed from these principles. It is not so: it is a libel on human
nature: men,--even erring men,--have better motives, and higher aims:
but they mistake the nature of their duties and invert their order; what
should be "first is last, and the last first."
It may be wisely urged, that if men waited for the perfecting of
individual character, before they joined their fellow men in those great
undertakings which are to insure benefit to the race, nothing would ever
be accomplished, and society would languish in a state of passive
inertness. It is far from necessarily following that attention to
private should interfere with attention to public interests; and public
interests are more advanced or retarded than it is possible to believe,
by the personal characters of their agitators. It is difficult to get
the worldly and the selfish to see this, but it is, nevertheless, true;
and there is no wisdom, political or moral, in the phrase, "Measures,
not men." Measures, wise and just in themselves, are received with
distrust and suspicion, because the characters of their originators are
liable to distrust and suspicion. Lord Chesterfield, the great master of
deception, was forced to pay truth the compliment of declaring, that
"the most successful diplomatist would be a man perfectly honest and
upright, who should, at all times, and in all circumstances, say the
truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth." So the rulers of
nations ought to be perfectly honest and upright; not because such men
would be free from error, but because the faith of the governed in their
honour would obviate the consequences of many errors. It is the want of
unselfishness and truth on the part of rulers, and the consequent want
of faith in the ruled, that has reduced the politics of nations to a
complicated science. If we could once get men to act out the gospel
precept, "Do unto others as ye would that they should do unto you,"
nations might burn their codes, and lawyers their statute-books. These
are the hundred cords with which the Lilliputians bound Gulliver, and he
escaped. If they had possessed it, or could have managed it, one cable
would have been worth them all. Much has been said,--much written,--on
the art of governing. Why has the simple truth been overlooked or
suppressed, that the moral character of the rulers of nations is of
first-rate importance? Except the Lord build the city, vain is the
labour of them who build it; except religion and virtue guide the state,
vain are the talents and the acts of legislators. Is it possible that
motives of paltry personal advancement, or of pecuniary gain, can induce
men to assume responsibilities affecting the welfare of millions? The
voice of those millions replies in the affirmative, and their
reproachful glances turn on _you_, mothers of our legislators! It might
have been yours, to stamp on their infant minds the dispassionate and
unselfish devotedness which belongs to your own sex,--the scorn of
meanness; the contempt of self, in comparison with others, peculiar to
woman. How have you fulfilled your lofty mission? Charity itself can
only allow us to suppose that its existence is as unknown as its spirit.
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