Prime Ministers and Some Others: A Book of ReminiscencesRussell, George William Erskine
History
Prime Ministers and Some Others: A Book of Reminiscences
Russell, George William Erskine
Great Britain -- Biography
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is perfectly right when he says that hatred
"steels the mind and sets the resolution." If he had stopped there,
I should not have questioned his theory. Again and again one has seen
indolent, flabby, and irresolute natures stimulated to activity and
"steeled" into hardness by the deep, though perhaps unuttered, desire
to repay an insult or avenge an injury. It is in his superlative
that Sir Arthur goes astray. When he affirms that hatred "steels
the mind and sets the resolution as no other emotion can do," his
psychology is curiously at fault. There is another emotion quite as
powerful as hatred to "steel the mind and set the resolution"--and
the name of this other emotion is love. It required some resolution
and a "steeled" mind for Father Damien to give himself in early
manhood to the service of a leper-struck island, living amid, and
dying of, the foul disease which he set out to tend. It was love
that steeled John Coleridge Patteson to encounter death at the
hands of "savage men whom he loved, and for whose sake he gave
up home and country and friends dearer than his life." There was
"steel" in the resolve which drew Henry Martyn from the highest
honours of Cambridge to preach and die in the fever-stricken solitude
of Tokat; and "steel" in an earlier and even more memorable decision
when Francis Xavier consecrated rank, learning, eloquence, wit,
fascinating manners, and a mirthful heart, to the task of evangelizing
India.
But it is not only in the missionary field, or in any other form
of ecclesiastical activity, that the steeling effect of love on
the human will is manifested. John Howard devoted the comforts
and advantages which pertain to a position in the opulent Middle
Class to the purely philanthropic work of Prison Reform; and Lord
Shaftesbury used the richer boons of rank and eloquence and political
opportunity for the deliverance of tortured lunatics, and climbing
boys and factory slaves. If ever I knew a man whose resolution
was "steeled," it was this honoured friend of my early manhood,
and the steeling power was simply love. A humbler illustration
of the same spirit may be supplied by the instance of one whom
worldly people ridiculed and who "for fifty years seized every
chance of doing kindness to a man who had tormented him at school";
and this though a boy's nature is "wax to receive, and marble to
retain." The name of E. C. Hawtrey is little remembered now even
by Eton men, but this tribute to the power of love ought not to
be withheld.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account