Chapter XV.
Building Character
The universal self-delusion is this: when a man has a good thought, he fancies he has become what he thinks for the moment. Good thoughts are very good; but, unaccompanied by the difficult processes of character, they are often no better than soap-bubbles.—Mozoomdar.
HOW strange that a young woman will spend many hours a day, for years, practising on a piano or training her voice, that a young man will give years of hard, dry study to the mastering of a profession or occupation, that an artist will spend half a lifetime in learning how to paint a picture, that an author will devote years to the production of one book, and yet be unwilling to spend any considerable time in building a character that will insure absolute peace of mind, contentment, and happiness under all circumstances! How pitiable it is to see a man sacrifice the best years of his life to scraping together a few thousand or a few million dollars! Working early and late, he has never thought it worth while to devote even a few minutes each day to building up a wholesome, symmetrical, contented character, to acquiring something which would protect him and insure his serenity and self-poise no matter what losses and misfortunes might overtake him.
Most of us seem to think that that which is worth more than all else should come without effort, without special training or drill. In the case of a few individuals of fortunate heredity and advantageous environment this may occur, but most of us need some active and intelligent direction or effort. As Herbert Spencer said: “By no political alchemy can we get golden conduct out of leaden instincts. But instincts can be changed; fresh grafts can be introduced upon the stock; the whole tree can be trained in a new direction, and so golden conduct be made to flow from a golden character.”
How easy it is to train the tender shoot in any direction, to make it assume any shape we wish, when it first comes up through the soil! And how much this training means to the symmetry and beauty of the future tree. How easy for the mother, if she but know how to train the young mind, to turn it from all its little enemies, all the fear thoughts, and worry thoughts, the despondent thoughts, the sick thoughts, the failure thoughts, as well as from the more vicious and recognizedly immoral thoughts!
In the past, much of the effort to build up character has been dwelling on faults. Parents have reminded their children, a hundred times a day, of some defect, until the poor children have had that failing constantly in mind with the fixed idea that it was branded into their natures, and that it was not of much use to try to be different. This way of trying to build up character is a good deal like trying to attain success by thinking all the time of failure. Continual thinking about defects in character, one’s sins and faults, will impress them and make them harder to eradicate. We gradually become negative to good qualities by dwelling upon destructive characteristics. By reading continually of diseases, medical students often experience symptoms of those diseases, and sometimes the maladies themselves. Similarly, by dwelling on desirable qualities we may acquire success or happiness. It is by “fresh grafts” and suggestions of the virtues that the soundest character growth is secured.
A little care in choosing a child’s vocabulary, in teaching it that words are real things, and that they imprint on the mind the images they call up, will make all the difference between happiness and misery, success and failure. How easy it is to help the child select those words which convey pictures of life and joy, light and peace, comfort and happiness; to banish those discordant, jarring words which contaminate the mind by the images they stamp there, and which ultimately ruin the character and destroy the life.
Plays are now introduced into kindergarten schools which tend to develop and awaken the desired qualities which are perhaps lacking in the children. “Justice plays,” for example, or “courage plays” exercise certain functions and character qualities and are known to influence the pupils wonderfully. The constant repetition of “good manners plays” arouses, for instance, a spirit of gallantry and a sense of etiquette in a boy until he unconsciously takes off his hat in the presence of a lady without thinking of it.
The ideal home is a perpetual training school where children are always practising courage plays, courtesy plays, helpfulness plays, charity plays, plays of honesty and truthfulness; and what is at first simulated becomes natural, producing" sweetness, beauty, and strength of character. Qualities apparently deficient can be awakened and developed in a marvellous degree in the young. So it is now believed that it is possible to develop strong character even in the average child under continuous, proper, scientific training. These repeated thought acts develop corresponding brain cells until they respond at the slightest suggestion from an affinity—the same as the brain spontaneously responds with the correct result when we think of adding or subtracting figures. At first the suggestion had to be made and the thought repeated many times, but after a while the repetition became automatic in the brain, and we performed abstruse mathematical problems while scarcely thinking of the processes; so we train the mind to the character qualities which we desire.
It is simply a question of holding the thought persistently toward the thing we desire until the new brain structure develops by exercise, becomes dominant, then the character is set and will act automatically, and the law “to him that hath, more shall be given,” and the reverse, comes into play.
It has been found that manual training, learning to use the hands ingeniously, has its influence upon the brain, and develops deficient faculties to a remarkable degree. A boy who is naturally lazy and indolent, whose faculties for doing things seem to be wholly deficient, can be so trained in a short time that he will love to work. As soon as he gets a sufficiently strong motive and begins to exercise the undeveloped brain cells controlling the faculties, they immediately respond. Merely arousing a boy’s ambition develops in him a great many deficient qualities by putting them into healthy exercise.
Change of environment will often wondrously develop a backward boy whose parents were completely discouraged with him under the home conditions. As soon as the boy got into a store, or into a school, or was thrown upon his own resources, his whole character was changed.
Various means which parents may employ in forming the characters of their children are formulated by Dr. A. T. Schofield, and may be summarized as follows: Forming habits of moral value; controlling environment so that suggestions of good—physical, mental, and moral—and not of evil are ever unconsciously sowing themselves in its brain; by example and story filling the child with inspiring ideals, so as to give direction to its will and energy of growth to its character; feeding the child’s mind with proper ideas; exercising the growing moral powers with circumstances, so that overcoming and courage may be learned, and hardships endured, yet not too great to prove discouraging; balancing the various tendencies one against the other so as to prevent undue leaning in any one direction; strengthening the will to carry out its own designs and act with energy and decision; educating the moral sense and keeping it sensitive to evil; increasing the sense of responsibility to oneself, to others, and to God.
In attempting to apply such processes to oneself, what must be avoided is morbid introspection, or brooding over faults and means to get rid of them. Use then the method of cultivating the opposites, keeping the mind full of bright, hopeful, loving, uplifting thoughts, and expressing them all in deeds.