Self-Mastery : Part 2

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

(Page 17 of 20)

It is a good plan to form the habit of ranking our various qualities, marking our strongest point one hundred and all the others in proportion, in order to make the lowest mark more apparent, and enabling us to try to raise or strengthen it. A man's industry, for example, may be his strongest point, one hundred, his physical courage may be fifty; his moral courage, seventy-five; his temper, twenty-five; with but ten for self-control, - which, if he has strong appetites and passions, will be likely to be the rock on which he will split. He should strive in every way to raise it from one of the weakest qualities to one of the strongest. It would take but two or three minutes a day to rank ourselves in such a table by noting the exercise of each faculty for the day. If you have worked hard and faithfully, mark industry one hundred. If you have lost your temper, and, in consequence, lost your self-control, and made a fool of yourself, indicate it by a low mark.

This will be an incentive to try to raise it the next day. If you have been irritable, indicate it by a corresponding mark, and redeem yourself on the morrow. If you have been cowardly where you should have been brave, hesitating where you should have shown decision, false where you should have been true, foolish where you should have been wise, tardy where you should have been prompt; if you have prevaricated where you should have told the exact truth; if you have taken the advantage where you should have been fair, have been unjust where you should have been just, impatient where you should have been patient, cross where you should have been cheerful, so indicate by your marks. You will find this a great aid to character building.

It is a subtle and profound remark of Hegel's that the riddle which the Sphinx, the Egyptian symbol of the mysteriousness of Nature, propounds to Oedipus is only another way of expressing the command of the Delphic oracle, "Know thyself." And when the answer is given the Sphinx casts herself down from her rock. When man knows himself, the mysteriousness of Nature and her terrors vanish.

The command by the ancient oracle at Delphos is of eternal significance. Add to it its natural complement - Help thyself - and the path to success is open to those who obey.

Guard your weak point. Moral contagion borrows fully half its strength from the weakness of its victims. Have you a hot, passionate temper? If so, a moment's outbreak, like a rat-hole in a dam, may flood all the work of years. One angry word sometimes raises a storm that time itself cannot allay. A single angry word has lost many a friend.

A Quaker was asked by a merchant whom he had conquered by his patience how he had been able to bear the other's abuse, and replied: "Friend, I will tell thee. I was naturally as hot and violent as You art. I observed that men in a passion always speak loud, and I thought if I could control my voice I should repress my passion. I have therefore made it a rule never to let my voice rise above a certain key, and by a careful observance of this rule, I have, by the blessing of God, entirely mastered my natural tongue." Mr. Christmas of the Bank of England explains that the secret of his self-control under very trying circumstances was due to a rule learned from the great Pitt, never to lose his temper during banking hours from nine to three.

When Socrates found in himself any disposition to anger, he would check it by speaking low, in opposition to the motions of his displeasure. If you are conscious of being in a passion, keep your mouth shut, lest you increase it. Many a person has dropped dead in a rage. Fits of anger bring fits of disease. "Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad." "Keep cool," says Webster, "anger is not argument." "Be calm in arguing," says George Herbert, "for fierceness makes error a fault, and truth discourtesy."

To be angry with a weak man is to prove that you are not strong yourself. "Anger," says Pythagoras, "begins with folly and ends with repentance." You must measure the strength of a man by the power of the feelings he subdues, not by the power of those which subdue him.

De Leon, a distinguished Spanish poet, after lying years in dungeons of the Inquisition, dreary, and alone, without light, for translating part of the Scriptures into his native tongue, was released and restored to his professorship. A great crowd thronged to hear his first lecture, out of curiosity to learn what he might say about his imprisonment. But the great man merely resumed the lecture which had been so cruelly broken off five years before, just where he left it, with the words "Heri discebamus" (Yesterday we were teaching). What a lesson in this remarkable example of self-control for those who allow their tongues to jabber whatever happens to be uppermost in their minds!

Did you ever see a man receive a flagrant insult, and only grow a little pale, bite his quivering lip, and then reply quietly? Did you ever see a man in anguish stand as if carved out of solid rock, mastering himself? Have you not seen one bearing a hopeless daily trial remain silent and never tell the world what cankered his home peace? That is strength. "He who, with strong passions, remains chaste; he who, keenly sensitive, with manly power of indignation in him, can be provoked, and yet restrain himself and forgive, - these are strong men, the spiritual heroes."

"You will be remembered only as the man who broke my nose," said young Michael Angelo to the man Torrigiano, who struck him in anger. What sublime self-control for a quick-tempered man!

"You ask whether it would not be manly to resent a great injury," said Eardley Wilmot: "I answer that it would be manly to resent it, but it would be Godlike to forgive it."

That man has conquered his tongue who can allow the ribald jest or scurrilous word to die unspoken on his lips, and maintain an indignant silence amid reproaches and accusations and sneers and scoffs. "He is a fool who cannot be angry," says English, "but he is a wise man who will not."

Peter the Great made a law in 1722 that a nobleman who should beat his slave should be regarded as insane, and a guardian appointed to look after his property and person. This great monarch once struck his gardener, who took to his bed and died. Peter, hearing of this, exclaimed with tears in his eyes, "Alas! I have civilized my own subjects; I have conquered other nations; yet have I not been able to civilize or conquer myself." The same monarch, when drunk, rushed upon Admiral Le Fort with a sword. Le Fort, with great self-possession, bared his breast to receive the stroke. This sobered Peter, and afterwards he asked the pardon of Le Fort. Peter said, "I am trying to reform my country, and I am not yet able to reform myself." Self-conquest is man's last and greatest victory.

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