Every political party based upon real principles (rather than upon a desire for spoils), is organized as the result of the radiation of those principles held in the self-reliant hearts of a few men. Every school of thought, in philosophy, theology, medicine, law, ethics, or political economy, is based upon the radiation of ideas from self-reliant men.
Yet there is a marked difference between this quality and that of self-conceit. When Carlyle said of the grammarian who criticised his grammar, "Why, mon, I'd have ye ken that I mak' language for such men as ye to mak' their grammar books from," he stated a fact. He was self-reliant, but not conceited. So with Ruskin, when, in response to my question as to what literature I should read to cultivate a pure style of English, after commenting on the worth of several masters, concluded somewhat as follows: "And there are those who say you should read what I have written, and I agree with them, for I believe I have written more carefully than most men." That was critical self-judgment, not self-conceit. Still we are all more or less familiar with the conceit of ignorance, the assumption of men and women who do not know the mere alphabet of the subjects they profess to be experts on. Recently, on our sleeping car, when a few people got together to sing, one of the passengers, with a self-conceit that was as ludicrous as it was ignorant, spoke of the baritone voice of one of the women and discoursed learnedly upon the bass of the man who was singing tenor.
We have a writer in California who knows so well that he knows, that some of us think he knows "by the grace of God," without study or effort. His whole radiancy is one of cocksure self-conceit.
Who has not felt the radiancy of the miserliness of some men and women! Those who would "squeeze the eagle on a penny until the poor bird screams."
In his Tom Brown at Rugby, Hughes shows that Arnold always radiated his full appreciation of all the good in all the boys under his care. Maud Ballington Booth is a wonderful illustration of training to perceive the good radiancies in men and women in whom most others can see and feel only evil.
Is not this a quality of soul to be highly desired? How beautiful, how helpful, how comforting to others long used to feeling that only the evil of them is radiated to others, to feel the sympathy of a large-hearted, pure, beautiful soul which has responded to the weak radiancies of the good that struggles for life within.
For, just as I have shown elsewhere that we must be alert to receive the radiancies of animate and inanimate nature, so must we be receptive to that which our fellow beings radiate. We should train ourselves in receptiveness to that which is good. All prejudice, narrowness, conceit, over self-confidence, cocksureness, tend to ward off the good radiancies of others. There are odors so subtle that the olfactory nerves of most people are incapable of recognizing them. There are notes so refined that ordinary ears cannot hear them, and we are all familiar with the fact that there are infinite depths of space that the largest telescopes fail to penetrate. The expert violinist cherishes his sense of touch that he may not vitiate his playing, and the engraver, the watchmaker, and the workers in a score and one other trades cultivate and preserve high sensitiveness of touch in order that they may become more expert. The piano tuner's ear recognizes variations in the vibrations of the strings he is tuning that most of us fail to appreciate, and the ear of a Theodore Thomas, Carl Muck, Charles Halle, or any other masterly conductor, recognizes fine shades of expression, harmony, and tastefulness in the playing of an orchestra that but few can appreciate. Browning in Rabbi Ben Ezra speaks of things that God takes note of in measuring the man's account that men ignore:
All instincts immature,
All purposes unsure;
Thoughts hardly to be packed
Into a narrow act.
All I could never be,
All men ignored in me,
This I was worth to God.
We may not be able to discern these "instincts immature," these "facts that break through language and escape," but we can assuredly discipline our minds and souls to see, hear, feel, and touch many beautiful things in our fellows which we too often ignore.
Reader, what are you radiating? I cannot answer that question. Your friends and your enemies may tell in part. You alone can tell all. Sit down some day, many days, and study yourself. Weigh yourself. See how much good you are doing, how much evil. Write out a balance sheet. It will help you in your efforts to know what you most need to seek to radiate in future, and what to avoid radiating.
You surely do not want to radiate evil.
You surely want to radiate only good.
Is it not better consciously to radiate that which you wish than unconsciously (or thoughtlessly) to radiate that which you do not wish?
As, consciously or unconsciously, we radiate that which is within us, whether good or evil, should we not aim consciously to radiate the best of which we are capable, and thus evidence that we are striving to overcome all the evil that may be within us?
CHAPTER V
RADIANCIES OF INDIVIDUALITY
I want to radiate individuality. I want to be myself and none other. If I see in others things to emulate, things that will more fully make me what I want and ought to be, then emulation becomes a joyful duty—the something in another becomes part of myself through my desire, my emulation, my longing to attain. Hence in the right seeking to be myself I seek also to be like all the good in others which appeals to me. Herein is no destruction of my individuality. It is a perfecting of it. I take what is my own, no matter where or how I find it.
It is so well known as to be trite that men and women are mere sheep. We follow our leaders. We are anything but individual. In religion, in medicine, in law, in speech, in dress, in amusements, in architecture, in literature, in food, in everything, custom and fashion dominate us.
I would radiate a healthy resistance to the dictates of fashion. Why should fashion ride rough-shod over the wisdom of men and women? The hoop-skirt, the stove-pipe collar and hat, the camel's hump of fifteen or twenty years ago that the ladies wore as an extra adornment, the chignon, and a thousand and one other foolish things that once domineeringly dared us to defy them have disappeared. Why should we ever have yielded to them? What is fashion, anyhow? She is a fickle damsel, generally proud of her money, whose good looks are often the result of powder and paint and chalk and rouge instead of good health, vigor, and love. She is a mere flirt, carried away for a few hours with anything as a whim to pass away the time; without heart, feeling, sensibility, brain, or knowledge. Her fads are more likely to be wrong than right, and when right are generally the result of a lapse into sensibility by relinquishing any pretense at thought into the hands of some one who can think for her. Fashion, a heartless, conscienceless, soulless jade whose friendship and favor are a curse, whose flatteries are hollow, insincere, and corrupting, and whose only use for any one or anything lasts merely so long as her own selfish pleasures are attained or desire for novelty satisfied.
Why let fashion dictate what we shall wear? Radiate your distrust of its judgment. Radiate your refusal to submit