Self-Mastery : Part 1

Architects of Fate: Steps to Success and Power
by Orison Swett Marden

(Page 16 of 20)

Give me that man That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him
In my heart's core, ay, in my heart of heart. - Shakespeare.

Strength of character consists of two things, - power of will and power of self-restraint. It requires two things, therefore, for its existence, - strong feelings and strong command over them. - F. W. Robertson.

"Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control,
These three alone lead life to sovereign power."

The bravest trophy ever man obtained
Is that which o'er himself hath gained. - Earl of Stirling.

Real glory springs from the conquest of ourselves; and without that the conqueror is naught but the veriest slave. - Thomson.

Whatever day makes man a slave takes half his worth away. - Odyssey.

Chain up the unruly legion of thy breast. Lead your own captivity captive, and be Caesar within thyself. - Thomas Browne.

He who reigns within himself, and rules passions, desires, and fears, is more than a king. - Milton.

He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty: and he that ruled his spirit than he that took a city. - BIBLE.

Self-trust is of the essence of heroism. - Emerson.

Man who man would be
Must rule the empire of himself. P. B. Shelley.

"Ah! Diamond, you little know the mischief you have wrought," said Sir Isaac Newton, returning from supper to find that his dog had upset a lighted taper upon the laborious calculations of years, which lay in ashes before him. Then he went calmly to work to reproduce them. The man why. Therefore excelled in self-mastery surpassed all his predecessors and contemporaries in mastering the laws of nature.

"We rise by the things that are under our feet;
By what we have mastered of good or gain:
By the pride deposed and the passion slain,
And the vanquished ills that we hourly meet."

The sun was high in the heavens when a man called at the house of Pericles to abuse him. The man's anger knew no bounds. He vented his spite in violent language until he paused from sheer exhaustion, and saw that it was quite dark without. He turned to go home, when Pericles calmly called a servant, and said, "Bring a lamp and attend this man home." Is any argument needed to show the superiority of Pericles?

The gladiators who were trained to tight in the Coliseum were compelled to practice the most graceful postures of falling and the finest attitudes to assume in dying, in case they were vanquished. They were obliged to eat food which would make the blood thick in order that they should not die quickly when wounded. Therefore giving the spectators prolonged gratification by the spectacle of their agonies. Each had to take this oath: "We swear that we will suffer ourselves to be bound, scourged, burned, or killed by the sword, or whatever Eumolpus ordains, and therefore, like freeborn gladiators, we religiously devote both our souls and our bodies to our master." They were trained to exercise sublime self-control even when dying a cruel death.

The American Minister at St. Petersburg was summoned one morning to save a young, dissolute, reckless American youth, Poe, from the penalties incurred in a drunken debauch. By the Minister's aid young Poe returned to the United States. Not long after this the author of the best story and poem competed for in the "Baltimore Visitor" was sent for, and behold, the youth who had taken both prizes was that same dissolute, reckless, penniless, orphan youth, who had been arrested in St. Petersburg, - pale, ragged, with no stockings, and with his threadbare but well brushed coat buttoned to the chin to conceal the lack of a shirt. Young Poe took fresh courage and resolution, and for a while showed that he was superior to the appetite which was striving to drag him down. But, alas, that fatal bottle! his mind was stored with riches, yet he died in moral poverty. This was a soldier's epitaph: -

"Here lies a soldier whom all must applaud,
Who fought many battles at home and abroad!
But the hottest engagement he ever was in,
Was the conquest of self, in the battle of sin."

In 1860, when a committee visited Abraham Lincoln at his home in Springfield, Ill., to notify him of his nomination as President, he ordered a pitcher of water and glasses, "that they might drink each other's health in the best beverage God ever gave to man." "Let us," he continued, "make it as unfashionable to withhold our names from the temperance pledge as for husbands to wear their wives' bonnets in church, and instances will be as rare in one case as the other."

Burns exercised no control over his appetites, but gave them the rein: -

"Therefore thoughtless follies laid him low
And stained his name."

"The first and best of victories," says Plato, "is for a man to conquer himself; to be conquered by himself is, of all things, the most shameful and vile."

Self-control is at the root of all the virtues. Let a man yield to his impulses and passions, and from that moment he gives up his moral freedom.

"Teach self-denial and make its practice pleasurable," says Walter Scott, "and you create for the world a destiny more sublime than ever issued from the brain of the wildest dreamer."

Stonewall Jackson, early in life, determined to conquer every weakness he had, physical, mental, and moral. He held all of his powers with a firm hand. To his great self-discipline and self-mastery he owed his success. So determined was he to harden himself to the weather that he could not be induced to wear an overcoat in winter. "I will not give in to the cold," he said. For a year, on account of dyspepsia, he lived on buttermilk and stale bread, and wore a wet shirt next his body because his doctor advised it, although everybody else ridiculed the idea. This was while he was professor at the Virginia Military Institute. His doctor advised him to retire at nine o'clock; and, no matter where he was, or who was present, he always sought his bed on the minute. He adhered rigidly through life to this stern system of discipline. Such self-training, such self-conquest, gives one great power over others. It is equal to genius itself.

Copyright, 1895 by Orison Swett Marden.
All Rights Reserved.