The Stuff of Manhood: Some Needed Notes in American CharacterSpeer, Robert E. (Robert Elliott)
Philosophy
The Stuff of Manhood: Some Needed Notes in American Character
Speer, Robert E. (Robert Elliott)
Character; Christian life; Conduct of life; Moral education
“There is no agreement among American employers as to where the
organization of the human side of industry really belongs. And
there are absolutely no standards for it. What we need to do is
to extend scientific methods to the human phases of industrial
organization, and thus give ‘welfare work’ a definite place
and definite standards. The engineer as the ‘consulting mind’
of industry must be the leader in this work. It is he who
determines the site of the plant and its construction. Inside
the plant again, the engineer has much to do with efficiency
methods. No efficiency methods that are unrelated to the men in
the plant can prosper permanently.”
But there is another sort of resource and national treasure greater by
far than these, which most of the nations are passing by. I mean the
latent and undeveloped capacities for ministry and achievement which
lie dormant inside human life. Every life is a reservoir of unawakened
possibilities. There is no one of us that is more than a fraction of
the man he should be. There is not one who is not falling short by
a wide margin of the ideals that he ought to attain, not one who is
making the contribution to the nation or building the share in the
Kingdom of God that God and mankind alike have a right to expect of
him. Not long before his death, an article contributed by Prof. William
James, of Harvard, appeared in the _American Magazine_, entitled “The
Powers of Man,” in which Professor James argued that mankind is living
on a very small fraction of its vitality, and that there are buried
underground strata of possibilities and of power which are never tapped
except in times of great emergency. For a little time then a man draws
on these reserves, and then seals the strata over again and falls back
on the surface levels once more. For illustration he spoke of the
familiar phenomenon of the second wind. Every boy can remember such
experiences. There came a time in the game when he was “all in.” He had
done his best and drawn on his last available power. Suddenly it was as
though something broke. A partition wall fell in. Unsuspected reserves
were released. The second wind came and reservoirs of power that had
been withheld came unexpectedly into play and he did better than he
had done before, what he had never been able to do before. That is an
absolute truth of experience all through life. In our great crises, any
one of many forces may unlock these energies and let them loose. And
the present needed appeal of the world is to men and women that they
should not be content to draw upon these reservoirs in crises alone.
The tragic crises come because these powers are not drawn forth and
used. The great wealth of the nations and of the world that needs now
to be unsealed is just this wealth of moral capacity lying latent and
dormant within.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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