THE LURE OF PERSONALITY
Personal influence is a subtle impalpable sovereign power that man possesses; sometimes it possesses the man, for influence often is an unconscious element in his life which exhales from him like the fragrance from a flower or miasma from a swamp. You cannot investigate it. It is moral force. Some men possess much of it, others less, the residue of mankind none. That is the mystery of influence. You cannot regulate it, calculate it, or tabulate it in standard quantities. Its operation is noiseless as a shadow, dangerous as lightning, profound as eternity, beautiful as the five wise virgins, or devilish as Mephistopheles.
We speak here of personal influence. There is an influence of a baser sort which is powerful in its way--the influence of money. Money is extraneous matter. Wealth magnifies a man in people's eyes, but the man himself may be small without the money inflation. Strip the rich man of his shekels, and you strip him of his significance. He counts no more than an empty egg-shell after the rats have eaten the meat out of it. Frequently the extraordinary man is only an ordinary man placed in extraordinary circumstances.
There is also the influence of position. That is not the genuine article. It is alien honour conferred like the odour of attar of roses clinging to an empty earthen jar. Position gives power. Some people who sit in the chair of authority use their power to the full, but it is the power of position, not of character or individuality. The only advantage of power is to be able to do more good than other people. All the world knows the difference, the ghastly difference, between Cardinal Wolsey in favour and Cardinal Wolsey in disgrace. Catastrophe lies between these extremes of fortune. The man remains the same in both states, but the world moves with the times, and gives no credit to an overrun banking account. He is a fallen star. He drops out of the seventh heaven of popularity into abysmal darkness. Banished the Royal presence, who cares for Cardinal Wolsey? He has no favours to transmit. No man is his friend, for he can befriend no man. Position makes and unmakes a man, like sunshine makes or unmakes a summer day.
Influence of truest and finest brand is personal. It emanates from the man, not from his circumstances. Some men handle their fellow-creatures with dexterity and ease, like an experienced whip controls the horse he sits behind. Quietness and firmness are in the human touch, and the animal bends submissively to every movement of the reins; so some men command their fellow-creatures, and they submit their wills to the master mind that rides them, and how the spell governs they cannot say. Other men are ciphers in society. "Only Mr. So-and-so" consigns a man to the outposts of social extinction, and mixes him up with the unclassified masses of limp, negligible, and insignificant people who welter and gambol with their kennel companions, but they cannot head the pack on hunting days.
Influential men are not common in the community. Only the elect few shine; many are reflectors of borrowed light. Influence is a gift. It is caught, not taught. It is all decided for us when nestlings in the cradle, and perhaps before we nestle. The schoolboy unconsciously wields a mystic power in the playground, and his chums hover round him as king of the revels. Animal magnetism exudes from every pore of his youthful skin. He leads in every escapade, and others fall in without question. He is not taught the trick; it comes natural for him to lead as for the rank and file to follow.
On what principle Nature bestows her favours it is difficult to hazard, more difficult than to discover what principle guides the British Government in distributing her coveted decorations to the British public. Nature is romantic. Exercising her sovereignty she gives her honours as she pleases. No money can buy them. Blue-blooded pedigrees have no preferential tariff. Nature mocks our conventionality, spurns our orders of merit, and winks at our social somebodies. Often she openly prefers a costermonger to a King--stamps aristocratic grace on a gipsy, and refuses it to a Duchess. There are insignificant great men who would be hustled in a crowd if they wore no badge, while to social nobodies Nature attaches a halo of distinction which the crowd delights to honour as subjects offer incense to a King.
Personality is an attribute that carries a man far on the road to success. Personality is an endowment which proclaims a man one of Nature's aristocrats. It is Nature's advertisement of her best, and she is proud of her handiwork. Personality is a fascinating asset; it lends dignity to common clay; it gives a man a standing outside the crowd, which he occupies with ineffable content and full advantage to himself. Some people have "an air" about them, and the atmosphere they move in is intoxicating to those dwelling under the spell of their presence. You cannot crush people who have personality. Over and over again it turns the scales in their favour in the competitions of life. Their virtues may not be of the celestial, their talent may lack glitter, but their personality grips you with its pomp and splendour, and they sit amongst the mighty, imposing themselves on gods and men. The envious man admits their success, and slurringly says: "They are commonplace: there is nothing astonishing in them except their success." He consoles himself with the banal reflection that, other things being equal, he is quite as good as they. But the strange mystery of presence steps in and prevents other things ever being equal.
Some men lack engaging personality, they have no physical charm or force, yet they exert strenuous influence. They possess great mental or moral qualities. There is a Divine spark in the clay that scintillates and collects attention. They are luminous bodies, and emit light. They are men with virtue in them, and virtue flows out of them. The extremely fascinating character of Jesus Christ moves in splendour adown the ages, giving out vital energy. It draws men to-day irresistibly, as it constrained men nearly two thousand years ago to follow Him homeless and penniless through the highways and by-ways of Palestine, without worldly honour or pay to recompense them. There is a strange, silent, penetrating, perplexing, yet mighty influence working round about us; it is the influence of the life of Christ holding us up. I do not mean His life as crudely reflected to us in the modern Church. Jesus Christ has a larger influence outside the Church than in it. Christ would be a stranger in the sanctuary to-day if He visited it as the peasant of Galilee.
Jesus Christ never commissioned His disciples to build up in the world such a colossal organization as the Church has swollen itself into with windy pride. In every country in Europe the Church is the biggest business concern and the wealthiest institution, the most aristocratic society and the most retrogressive force. The national Churches are slavishly worldly and chastely genteel concerns; they would boycott the kingdom of Christ if they thought it were trying to enter the world through their gilded gates.