Nor is the culture for which I plead derived simply from books. These we need, but we need them simply as helps. We should make them our servants, not our masters. A "bookworm" is sometimes a very inferior kind of a worm. Some men that the schools call highly educated rely so much on books that they are nothing in themselves. They have no mind of their own. They deal altogether in second-hand goods. We need to lay aside our books, and study men and things—commence with God and nature. We must learn to think. To think much. To think accurately. To do our own thinking, not have it done for us. Without this, we shall make but little of our advantages; with it, we rise superior to advantages.
Neither am I contending that we should all strive for the "learned professions." It is just the reverse. We want to elevate and ennoble the unlearned professions. The American people, at least, should learn that the calling does not make the man. We need to dignify all the honest and legitimate vocations by intellectual and moral culture. We not only need to dignify labor by culture, but, by so doing, we need to dignify the mass of our common humanity. Personal worth consists not in what one does, but in what one is. Better be a good barber than a poor doctor, a good shoemaker than a poor lawyer.
I would not be understood as claiming that men and women in all the vocations in life should be cultured in all directions. In this age of short and intense life this is not practicable. It might have done before the flood, when men lived a thousand years, but it is not adapted to the nineteenth century. Remember I am speaking with reference to the masses. Men can not know everything, neither can they do everything, and do it well. All knowledge may be made useful, and I would urge the obtaining of all possible; but it is a mistake to try to do too much, and do nothing. A few things well understood are of more value than a smattering of much. By all means avoid being "Jack-of-all-trades." Decide what you want to do and do it. I would urge the training of mind and heart and hand as a specialty in that which you select as a life work, embellished and perfected by all the general knowledge that a life of intense application will enable you to possess. Difference in occupation demands a difference in special culture, but not in general. This is culture, not of the schools, simply, but of life.
But the difficulties and the means of self-culture need now to be considered. In doing this, the first essential element to success to which your attention is called, is
SELF-RELIANCE.
No man ever amounted to much who did not rely on God and himself. The young man who whines around, waiting for some one to help him, instead of helping himself, ought to be sent back to the nursery, clothed in enlarged baby-gowns, and fed with a spoon. Men of independence are the men that move the world. The living rarely walk well in the shoes of the dead, and he who waits for them ought to go barefooted all his life. God helps those who help themselves. Self-reliance toughens our sinews and develops our manhood. "It is not in the sheltered garden or the hothouse, but on the rugged Alpine cliffs where the storm bursts most violently, that the toughest plants are reared." The man who does not rely on self, soon ceases to have any self. He becomes a zoological parasite, instead of a man. He is a lobster that waits for the sea to come to him, instead of going to it, though its waves may be dashing at his feet. Should the sea accommodate him in time, well enough; otherwise he dies. These men make the subjunctive heroes of the world. They always "might," "could," "would" or "should" do some great thing; but they never get into the imperative mood to do it. They have never learned self-reliance; and, the result is, they never learned anything worth knowing. They can never appreciate this saying of the immortal Burke: "I was not rocked and swaddled and dandled into a legislator. Nitor in adversum is the motto for a man like me."
Those who are afraid to move without the arms of a rich ancestry around them, will never learn to walk erect. They will never have a firm, elastic step, nor make the world feel the weight of their tread. The man who thus shrinks from difficulties and responsibilities, refuses to be a pupil of the best teacher the world affords. They should learn that repeated failure, if wisely used, is but a means to grand success. As Dr. Mathews truly says: "Great statesmen in all countries have owed their sagacity, tact and foresight more to their failures than to their successes. The diplomatist becomes master of his art by being baffled, thwarted, defeated, quite as much as by winning his points. Every time he is checkmated he acquires a profounder knowledge of the political game, and makes his next combination with increased skill and increased chances of success." Ease and luxury may make the butterflies of society, but difficulties make men and women. That was a wise saying of Pythagoras, that, "ability and necessity dwell near each other." It is astonishing how difficulties will yield to one who will not yield to them. They tip their plumed caps to his dominant will, and politely bow themselves out of sight. They not only clear the way for self-reliance, but give him the encouragement of their parting salute.
"Every person," says Gibbon, "has two educations—one which he receives from others, and one, more important, which he gives himself." Archimedes said, "Give me a standing-place and I will move the world." But Goethe more happily says, "Make good thy standing-place and move the world." Circumstances may afford a standing-place, but self-reliance alone can give the leverage power. We must learn that character and worth consists in doing, not in possessing. Not resting, not having, not being simply, but growing and becoming, is the true character of self-culture. This thought is most beautifully expressed by Rogers—
"Our reward
Is in the race we run, not in the prize,