Christopher Columbus and the New World of His Discovery — Volume 8Young, Filson
History
Christopher Columbus and the New World of His Discovery — Volume 8
Young, Filson
America -- Discovery and exploration; Columbus, Christopher, 1451-1506
support of a ready belief in divine selection. This very time of waiting
and endurance of disappointments also helped to cultivate in his
character two separate qualities--an endurance or ability to withstand
infinite hardship and disappointment; and also a greedy pride that
promised itself great rewards for whatever should be endured.
In all active matters Columbus was what we call a lucky man. It was luck
that brought him to Guanahani; and throughout his life this element of
good luck continually helped him. He was lucky, that is to say, in his
relation with inanimate things; but in his relations with men he was
almost as consistently unlucky. First of all he was probably a bad judge
of men. His humble origin and his lack of education naturally made him
distrustful. He trusted people whom he should have regarded with
suspicion, and he was suspicious of those whom he ought to have known he
could trust. If people pleased him, he elevated them with absurd
rapidity to stations far beyond their power to fill, and then wondered
that they sometimes turned upon him; if they committed crimes against
him, he either sought to regain their favour by forgiving them, or else
dogged them with a nagging, sulky resentment, and expected every one else
to punish them also. He could manage men if he were in the midst of
them; there was something winning as well as commanding about his actual
presence, and those who were devoted to him would have served him to the
death. But when he was not on the spot all his machineries and affairs
went to pieces; he had no true organising ability; no sooner did he take
his hand off any affair for which he was responsible than it immediately
came to confusion. All these defects are to be attributed to his lack of
education and knowledge of the world. Mental discipline is absolutely
necessary for a man who would discipline others; and knowledge of the
world is essential for one who would successfully deal with men, and
distinguish those whom he can from those whom he cannot trust. Defects
of this nature, which sometimes seem like flaws in the man's character,
may be set down to this one disability--that he was not educated and was
not by habit a man of the world.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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