“Failings” must be studied in the light of the lessons these facts and considerations combine to teach. The moral question involved is one of responsibility for the use each individual may make of the brain-power allotted to him. The neglect to employ gifts and capacities is as grave an error, from an ethical point of view, as their application to a bad purpose. The servant who buried his talent in the earth was held accountable for the failure to use it, and thereby increase its value. The parable sets forth a truth of the highest practical interest. We are responsible for the development, by use, of the faculties vouchsafed to us. If they are allowed to remain in abeyance, or a rudimentary state, we are to blame for the deficiencies and the failings to which this neglect gives rise, and are without excuse. The obligation to act up to the level of known duty cannot be avoided. A “failing” is an act of contempt for the law of development by use. It is disobedience to an understood command. The fact that it is recognized makes a failing an offence. There may be short-coming in the performance of a good resolve. Few, if any, merely human efforts are entirely successful; but the failure which occurs when an endeavor is made in the energy of a resolute and well-aimed purpose is not so much a fault as insufficiency. The rising tide reaches its highest level by successive efforts. Self-improvement is effected in the same fashion. The motive power of persistent good endeavor is accumulative—ever advancing like the great tidal wave of the ocean—though the ground is conquered by short and seemingly only half-successful advances.
Failings, however, as we are now regarding them, are excused faults in the character which the individual makes no serious effort to repair. Some defects, as we have seen, are inherited, and upon them it is the custom to bestow great commiseration and little blame. Now, in truth, these are the least pardonable, because, if they are known to have been transmitted from parent to child, the latter has, generally, the advantage of an example, ever present to memory, by which to correct his personal deficiencies. If the “failing” be a vicious propensity, he can recall its hideousness, and thus stimulate will and conscience to aid him in eradicating the fault. If it be some form of deficiency, as indolence, lack of perseverance, want of principle, or the like, he can study, as in the pages of history, the evil consequences entailed by the defect, and with diligence order his own conduct in better courses. Inherited failings are the least excusable. Even the materialist, who claims them as the fruit of physical peculiarities, must concede that by special culture they can be remedied, the healthy organism being susceptible of increased development in any particular direction when the proper stimuli are intelligently applied with a view to its improvement. The apologist for failings which have been inherited can find no comfort in the philosophy of materialism.
Failings which are peculiar to the individual may be less easy to detect, and the subject of these defects is, in a measure, dependent upon experience and the monitions of those around him for the information needed to correct them. This should keep the wise teachable and apt to profit by the lessons life is ever reading for their instruction. A self-reliant spirit is manly, and therefore commendable; a self-sufficient spirit is unreasonable, and therefore despicable. It is strange how few of us grow really wiser as we grow older. The work of self-improvement is seldom commenced until forced upon the judgment by some awakening experience, and this is rarely vouchsafed until the ductile period of youth has gone by. Early in the adult age of man his habits become rigidly formulated, and failings are then hard to mend. A world of unhappiness and disappointment might be spared the later years of life if the young would be warned to begin the business of training the character before it is firmly set in the mould of circumstances, with all the coarse elements—inherited and contracted—uneliminated, and the errors of inconsistency and imperfect development uncorrected.
It is in the period of youth and adolescence that the mind may be most hopefully cultivated and the moral character intelligently formed. No greater mistake can be made by a young and vigorous mind than to treat the faculty of reason and the instinct of moral judgment as parts of the being which may be left to their own devices. The young man bestows some thought on his muscular system—he trains his eye, cultivates his ear, and takes credit for prudence when he strives to develop the vigor and to foster the healthy growth of his body. Is it wise—nay, is it not rather the worst of folly and shortsightedness—to neglect the ordinary development of those higher powers which man possesses in a more exalted degree than any of the lower animals? Taking care for the body while the mind is neglected is the worst of failings—the most calamitous and the least excusable.
[GONE!]
By E. G. CHARLESWORTH.
Alas! and have I lost thy voice,