I hope to be of some assistance to mankind and will dedicate my future life to unmask every wrong in my power and aid civilization to rise against further persecution. I want to be the drum-major of a peace brigade, who would rather have the good will of his fellow creatures than shoulder straps from any corporate power.
One of the lessons impressed upon me by my life experience is the power of that which we call personal influence, the power of one mind or character over another.
Society is an aggregate of units. The units are related. No one lives or acts alone, independently of another. Personal influence plays its part in the relations we sustain to each other.
Do you ask me to define what I mean by personal influence? It is the sum total of what a man is, and its effect upon another. Some one has said, “Every man is what God made him,” and some are considerably more so. That which we call character is the sum total of all his tendencies, habits, appetite and passions. The terms character and reputation are too often confused. Character is what you really are; reputation is what some one else would have you.
Every man has something of good in him. Probably none of us can say that we are all goodness.
I have noticed that when a man claims to be all goodness, that claim alone does not make his credit any better in business, or at the bank. If a man is good, the world has a way of finding out his qualities. Most men are willing to admit, at least to themselves, that their qualities are somewhat mixed. I do not believe that the good people of the world are all bunched up in one corner and the bad ones in another. Christ's parable of the wheat and the tares explains that to my satisfaction. There is goodness in all men, and sermons even in stones. But goodness and badness is apt to run in streaks. Man, to use the language of another, is a queer combination of cheek and perversity, insolence, pride, impudence, vanity, jealousy, hate, scorn, baseness, insanity, honor, truth, wisdom, virtue and urbanity. He's a queer combination all right. And those mixed elements of his nature, in their effects on other people, we call personal influence. Many a man is not altogether what he has made himself, but what others have made him. But a man's personal influence is within his own control. It is at the gateway of his nature from which his influence goes forth that he needs to post his sentinels.
Mind stands related to mind, somewhat in the relation of cause and effect.
Emerson said, “You send your boy to school to be educated, but the education that he gets is largely from the other boys.” It is a kind of education that he will remember longer and have a greater influence upon his character and career in life than the instructions he gets from the teacher.
The great scholar, Elihu Burritt, has said, “No human being can come into this world without increasing or diminishing the sum total of human happiness.” No one can detach himself from the connection. There is no spot in the universe to which he can retreat from his relations to others.
This makes living and acting among our fellows a serious business. It makes life a stage, ourselves the actors—some of us being remarkably bad actors—and imposes upon us the obligation to act well our part. Therein all honor lies. And in order to do this it behooves us to stock up with the qualities of mind and character, the influence of which will be helpful to those who follow the trail behind us.