The Chinese and Japanese may look alike in appearance; but they are not one bit alike. Once upon a time they both were the most civilized people in the world. Then Confucius came in and told them that they should learn no more and do exactly what their ancestors did. Both countries believed in this for a long time. Then the United States butted in and told them of their danger; they said that they were going backward instead of forward, and would be conquered by another nation if they did not pick up. The Chinese would not listen to this and said the United States had no right to interfere. But Japan thought there was some truth in this, and so the United States sent over machines, built factories, laid railroad tracks, etc. The result is that Japan is winning the war she is fighting with Russia.
How composition typifies life in general.
English composition is perhaps the best single test of the general healthfulness of school instruction, and it typifies life in general. The pretended appreciation of an author, an affected manner, insincerity in the profession of friendship and religion, anything that admits a deceitful, artificial element is pernicious in composition as well as in life. Whatever is good must be true. In consequence, no matter how extensively persons differ from one another, the first essential to the highest efficiency of each is fidelity to his own nature.
We hear a great deal about self-made men, men who have wrested success from a stubborn world without the help of the schools. They are examples of those who are guided from within rather than from without. But every man, so far as he is a man, is self-made. He has had to use his own observation to see; his own reason and judgment to foresee; his own discrimination to decide; and his own firmness to stand by his decisions. [Footnote: See John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, Chapter III.] His adaptation to his environment has been self-accomplished, and the first condition of its success has been a noble self-respect. Trust in self is a prerequisite to ability to do,—we must believe that we can, before we can,—and obedience to inner promptings is a necessary antecedent to such trust.
It was true wisdom that led Polonius to close his blessing on Laertes with the advice, "This above all: To thine own self be true; and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man." Character itself is deeply involved. As Mill says: "A person whose desires and impulses are his own—are the expression of his own nature, as it has been developed and modified by his own culture—is said to have character. One whose desires and impulses are not his own, has no character, no more than a steam engine has a character." [Footnote: Ibid.]
Necessity of accepting the self as it is.
Accordingly, it behooves every one to accept himself as he is. No doubt every one at times becomes dissatisfied with himself even to the point of despair. Feeling his own weakness, and seeing the many superior qualities of persons about him, he thinks how much more successful he might be if only he were some other person, and envy takes possession of him. But "there is a time in every man's education," says Emerson, "when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that, though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground (himself) which is given to him to till." [Footnote: Emerson, essay on Self-reliance.] And this conviction must not be accompanied with self-reproach. Any one who habitually feels ashamed of himself is shorn of power to do his proper work in the world. The nature and rightfulness of the desired contentment with self and of proper self-confidence are suggested by Emerson in the words: "What pretty oracles nature yields us on this text in the face and behavior of children, babes, and even brutes….Their mind being whole, their eye is as yet unconquered, and when we look in their faces, we are disconcerted. Infancy conforms to nobody; all conform to it; so that one babe commonly makes four or five out of the adults who prattle and play to it. So God has armed youth and puberty and manhood no less with its own piquancy and charm, and made it enviable and gracious and its claims not to be put by, if it will stand by itself….The nonchalance of boys who are sure of a dinner and would disdain, as much as a lord, to do or say aught to conciliate one, is the healthy attitude of human nature." [Footnote: Ibid.]
Is such individuality conducive to social cooperation?
But are such unconquered, unconciliatory minds desirable where social cooperation is a necessity, as in present society? Are not those persons preferable as citizens who readily put by their claims and conform? Not by any means! It might be that wisdom would declare the supposed claim unfounded, and that energy to combat it, rather than willingness to conform to it, is wanted. Though yielding is often a virtue, unintelligent conformity is weakness. Intelligent and vigorous reaction of the individual against all claims for conformity, sufficient to judge them, is a prerequisite even to actual conformity, and it is only a well-developed individuality that is capable of such reaction.
Even military discipline, which represents the extreme in its demand for slavish mass action, greatly values individual independence. Soldiers often become isolated from their superiors in the midst of combat, and are left to act on their own initiative, sometimes deciding the fate of battles by their resourcefulness. It is partly appreciation of the worth of individuality in all walks of life that has spurred the European nations to educate the masses in recent years.