A Man's Value to Society: Studies in Self Culture and CharacterHillis, Newell Dwight
Philosophy
A Man's Value to Society: Studies in Self Culture and Character
Hillis, Newell Dwight
Character; Self-culture
To all persons interested in the betterment of society comes the
reflection that getting on with men is life's abiding aim and end.
Schools can teach no other knowledge comparable to this. It is
important to train the child in music, to drill him in public speech,
to teach him how to handle the horse and dog, how to swim and ride,
the use of tools and engines, the nature and production of wealth; but
it is of far greater importance that youth should be given a knowledge
of men, and become a skillful student of human nature; to learn how to
read the face as an open book. If the jurist studies men and their
motives to find out the truth; if the physician studies men for
reasons of diagnosis; if the merchant studies thinking of his profit,
and the politician thinking of preferment, the citizen must understand
his fellows in the interest of securing their happiness and highest
welfare. Incidentally, it is important that a man should be well
groomed and well kept; should be educated and refined, just as it is
proper that the pipes of an organ should be decorated on the outside.
Nevertheless, the test of an organ is the melody and harmony within.
And the test of manhood is not outer polish, but inner skill in
carrying his faculties. Man is only a rudimentary man when in those
stages he blunders in all his meetings with his fellows, and cannot
buy nor sell, vote nor converse, without harming, marring, depressing,
discouraging his fellow men. In our age many books have been written
similar to Lyman Abbott's volume called "The Study of Human Nature,"
and the time has fully come when each child should be made ready for
life's battle beforehand, and taught how to armor himself against the
tournament. When the schools have trained the child to the use of
tools, given the tongue skill in speaking and the mind skill in
thinking, it remains to teach him the study of men, the peculiarities
of each of the five temperaments; the nature and number of the animal
impulses; the use of the social and industrial impulses; the control
of the acquisitive and the spiritual powers. For man's carriage of
himself in the presence of fire and forest is the least of his duties.
That which will tax him and distress, and perhaps destroy him, will be
the carriage of his faculties midst all the clash and conflict, the
din and battle of market and street. And midst all the strife, this is
to be his ideal--to bear himself toward his enemies and toward his
friends, after the pattern of Him who "makes His sun to shine upon the
evil and the good, His rain to fall upon the just and the unjust."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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