The Power of Truth: Individual Problems and Possibilities

by William George Jordan

The man who lives beyond his means, who mortgages his future for his present, who is generous before he is just, who is sacrificing everything to keep up with the procession of his superiors, is really losing much of life. He, too, is decorating the scabbard, and letting the sword rust in its sheath.

Life is not a competition with others. In its truest sense it is rivalry with ourselves. We should each day seek to break the record of our yesterday. We should seek each day to live stronger, better, truer lives; each day to master some weakness of yesterday; each day to repair past follies; each day to surpass ourselves. And this is but progress. And individual, conscious progress, progress unending and unlimited, is the one great thing that differentiates man from all the other animals. Then we will care naught for the pretty, useless decorations of society's approval on the scabbard. For us it will be enough to know that the blade of our purpose is kept ever keen and sharp for the defense of right and truth, never to wrong the rights of others, but ever to right the wrongs of ourselves and those around us.

Reputation is what the world thinks a man is; character is what he really is. Anyone can play shuttlecock with a man's reputation; his character is his alone. No one can injure his character but he himself. Character is the sword; reputation is the scabbard. Many men acquire insomnia in standing guard over their reputation, while their character gives them no concern. Often they make new dents in their character in their attempt to cut a deep, deceptive filigree on the scabbard of their reputation. Reputation is the shell a man discards when he leaves life for immortality. His character he takes with him.

The woman who spends thousands in charitable donations, and is hard and uncharitable in her judgments, sentimentally sympathetic with human sin and weakness in the abstract, while she arrogates to herself omniscience in her harsh condemnation of individual lapses, is charitable only on the outside. She is letting her tongue undo the good work of her hand. She is too enthusiastic in decorating the scabbard of publicity to think of the sword of real love of humanity.

He who carries avarice to the point of becoming a miser, hoarding gold that is made useless to him because it does not fulfill its one function, circulation, and regarding the necessities of life as luxuries, is one of Nature's jests, that would be humorous were it not so serious. He is the most difficult animal to classify in the whole natural history of humanity—he has so many of the virtues. He is a striking example of ambition, economy, frugality, persistence, will-power, self-denial, loyalty to purpose and generosity to his heirs. These noble qualities he spoils in the application. His specialty is the scabbard of life. He spends his days in making a solid gold scabbard for the tin sword of a wasted existence.

The shoddy airs and ostentations, extravagance, and prodigality of some who have suddenly become rich, is goldplating the scabbard without improving the blade. The superficial veneer of refinement really accentuates the native vulgarity. The more you polish woodwork, the more you reveal the grain. Some of the sudden legatees of fortune have the wisdom to acquire the reality of refinement through careful training. This is the true method of putting the sword itself in order instead of begemming the scabbard.

The girl who marries merely for money or for a title, is a feminine Esau of the beginning of the century. She is selling her birthright of love for the pottage of an empty name, forfeiting the possibility of a life of love, all that true womanhood should hold most dear, for a mere bag of gold or a crown. She is decorating the scabbard with a crest and heraldic designs, and with ornaments of pure gold set with jewels. She feels that this will be enough for life, and that she does not need love,—real love, that has made this world a paradise, despite all the other people present. She does not realize that there is but one real reason, but one justification for marriage, and that is,—love; all the other motives are not reasons, they are only excuses. The phrase, "marrying a man for his money," as the world bluntly puts it, is incorrect—the woman merely marries the money, and takes the man as an incumbrance or mortgage on the property.

The man who procrastinates, filling his ears with the lovely song of "to-morrow," is following the easiest and most restful method of shortening the possibilities of life. Procrastination is stifling action by delay, it is killing decision by inactivity, it is drifting on the river of time, instead of rowing bravely toward a desired harbor. It is watching the sands in the hour-glass run down before beginning any new work, then reversing the glass and repeating the observation. The folly of man in thus delaying is apparent, when any second his life may stop, and the sands of that single hour may run their course,—and he will not be there to see.

Delay is the narcotic that paralyzes energy. When Alexander was asked how he conquered the world, he said: "By not delaying." Let us not put off till to-morrow the duty of to-day; that which our mind tells us should be done to-day, our mind and body should execute. To-day is the sword we should hold and use; to-morrow is but the scabbard from which each new to-day is withdrawn.

The man who wears an oppressive, pompous air of dignity, because he has accomplished some little work of importance, because he is vested with a brief mantle of authority, loses sight of the true perspective of life. He is destitute of humor; he takes himself seriously. It is a thousand-dollar scabbard on a two-dollar sword.