The Cap and Gown

by Charles Reynolds Brown

The same rule holds in the mental field. There are men who fall into the way of relying upon what they are pleased to call “genius.” A bad case of “genius” in a young man is almost as fatal to his highest success as smallpox. There are a few men in each generation exceptionally endowed, just as there are a few four-leaf clovers in every field, but the work of the world is done mainly by men of average build.

And even men of undeniable genius attribute their success mainly to persistent effort. Agassiz used to say, “I seem to have formed the habit of observing more closely than many of my associates.” Darwin, whose work was epoch making, made that famous trip for observation on H. M. S. Beagle in 1837. In 1844 he ventured to show a few of his notes to some intimate friends. In 1859, twenty-two years after he had collected the first data for the theory finally announced, he published “The Origin of Species,” and the world of science, of philosophy, of religion, underwent a radical change as a result of his thorough work.

Ask ninety-nine men out of a hundred how they succeeded and the answer will come back—“Hard work.” Inspiration is all very well, but for the mass of us perspiration is a surer pathway to achievement. Wellington, Newton, Lord Clive, Napoleon, Walter Scott, Daniel Webster were all regarded as dull boys—in each case advancement came by persistent effort. The capacity was there, but it was brought out not by magic nor by some sudden burst of inspiration, but by hard work.

Knowledge is power, where the knowledge is not a mere mass of information. The mere accumulation of facts has little worth, for all this lies ready to our hand in the encyclopedia whenever it is needed. The knowledge which brings power lies in the ability to read and to know what it is all about and how it bears on other things we have read; in the ability to think and when one thinks to produce something with the look and taste of his own mind upon it; in the ability to see three things, sharply distinguishing them, and then to see them in their relations, and then to see another group of three and another, organizing the whole nine into some sort of system. The knowledge which is power means insight, grasp, discrimination, productiveness. It is not the sole property of genius, but rather the natural return for a long life of consistent, intellectual effort.

Each man owes it to society to make his utmost effort to furnish it one more such well-equipped member. This purpose includes much more than the desire for that individual success and preeminence which might prompt the effort—it indicates a wish to be capable and serviceable to those larger interests which lag for lack of competent service.

When Booker Washington addresses the students gathered at Tuskegee, it is after this fashion. “You have not come here to receive training in order that you may go back and compete more successfully with your untrained associates, in earning higher wages to feather your own nests quickly and warmly. You have not come here to become intelligent and cultivated that you may go back and proudly establish better homes and higher types of family life than the untutored negroes maintain. You are here that being trained you may feel more heavily and capably responsible for the welfare of your race in the several communities where you are to live and work.” If this is the splendid ideal in the green tree of a black man’s school, what shall we expect in the dry tree of the white man’s school! The high office of all mental drill should be to send men out “more heavily and capably responsible” for the general good, and this high quality of competency comes only by strict attention to the law of returns.

The same method holds in moral values although many people feel that here we enter a region of hocus-pocus, a realm of magic and sleight of hand where two and two may possibly, upon occasion, make five or even fifty. There is an impression in some quarters that a young fellow may sow an abundant crop of wild oats, that he may wallow in the mire of vicious indulgence, that he may for years disregard his spiritual interests with flat indifference, and then by some sudden spasm of moral feeling begin anew, as fine and as sound a man as if he had never been in the far country with the harlots and the swine.

The standard books on ethics give us no hint that such is the fact. The Bible says nothing in support of such a notion. There is not a land the sun shines on where two and two do not make four in morals as well as in mathematics. There are no short cuts to spiritual soundness. The Almighty is a careful bookkeeper and the teaching of reason, experience, and conscience is to the effect that here, as everywhere, we must accept those reactions which come inevitably by this great law of returns.

There was a missionary to the Indians who, in seeking to induce habits of Sabbath observance, told them that if they planted their corn on Sunday it would not grow. In that spirit of human perversity which we all understand and share, they immediately went out and planted an acre of corn on Sunday! They hoed it and tended it always on Sunday. And because they took especial pains with it, when autumn came it yielded more corn than any other acre on the reservation. Then the Indians laughed at the good missionary and would not go to church.

There is a penalty for planting and hoeing corn on Sunday, but it does not show in the corn—it shows in the men. The corn may grow to its full size, but the men will not grow to their full size, nor yield the full return appropriate to the cultivation of human values. The missionary was sound in his main purpose, but faulty in his method, because in the moral world as elsewhere, we find the reign of law and not the operation of magic. The neglect of the higher values for which the Sabbath stands will not at once affect the cornfield, but it will show in the spiritual deficiencies of the men who have no place in the week for the cultivation of reverence, aspiration, and the sense of fellowship with the Unseen.