To produce an ideal man capable of bringing to bear the greatest amount of personal power is the great aim of race development. This man will be proportionate, symmetrical, balanced. Wholeness will be characteristic of him. The ultimate aim is not to produce the greatest artist, lawyer, merchant, or statesman, but the greatest man,—symmetrically developed, strong because of the harmony of all his faculties.
It is much better to have mental balance than brilliancy. It is better to have comparatively small ability well-balanced, than to be a one-sided genius.
All our faculties are so tied together, so interrelated that whatever affects one affects all the others. The improvement, therefore, of any one quality of the mind, like the improvement of the judgment, strengthens all the other good qualities, whereas the weakening of one tends to weaken all the others and to lower the standard of the whole. A boy does not realize that if he forms the habit of not sawing the wood straight or of not driving the nail true, or of leaving the sled or the toy half finished, this defect will not only drag itself all through his career, but will also demoralize all of his other faculties, weaken his judgment, affect his industry and his ambition, and lower his general standard of life, because of this law of interrelationship of faculties.
The boy brought up on the farm has a great advantage over the city-bred youth, in that he has been compelled to develop common sense by exercising his own ingenuity in a thousand ways to extricate himself from dilemmas in the woods or on the farm because there was no possibility of getting help. He has been forced to make the sled or the toy which he could not afford to buy, and has learned to use tools with skill in making and repairing things about the farm or the house. All these things have tended to develop his horse sense.
All-around, level-headed men are scarce. They are always at a premium. We find many splendid men, who are wonderfully competent in many faculties, but who are always doing strange, unbusiness-like things. Their poor judgment is always tripping them up, so that their character is like the course of a crooked river which often runs back on itself in its course through an uneven country.
The reputation of being erratic or a little bit off in your judgment, of doing foolish things, so that people can not rely upon you, is fatal to advancement.
If you are onesided, unbalanced, no matter how able you may be in some special line, sound business men will not care to have anything to do with you, for they know you might do very foolish things and make serious mistakes under pressure and in an emergency, just the time when a cool head is needed.
The country is full of broken, disappointed lives, lives that are all tattered and torn, in which victories have been swallowed up in defeat, effective strokes marred by unfortunate slips, lives in which there is no well-put-together work, but a great ambition coupled with a total lack of system and ability to save the result of great efforts.
There are plenty of these careers that are as checkered as a crazy quilt, just because of a lack of mental balance and good sense to insure continuity.
Employees are often surprised at the advancement to a responsible position of one of their number who is less brilliant than many others. The employer, however, is not looking for brilliancy; but for good sense, soundness of judgment, level-headedness.
The employer in his search for a levelheaded, practical man, a man who can do things, and not merely dream about them, often passes by the college graduate, the fine scholar, the genius.
He knows that the stability of his business, the bulwark of his establishment, depends upon employees with good judgment, good horse sense.
Common sense in practical life has the “right of way.” It ranks far ahead of brilliancy of education.
The man who worries, who fusses and fumes and who goes to pieces over trifles' exposes his weakness, his lack of self-control. It is an indication that he has not discovered himself, has not come to himself, does not know his God-given power, that he has not claimed his birthright of harmony, of power,—that he has not discovered that he was designed to be prosperous and happy, to dominate. It shows that he has conquered only a little corner of himself.
We take it for granted that the man who can not control himself can not control others, that he is not suitable for leadership.
The well-balanced person must have a profound respect for himself, for if he does not, he will do things that are absolutely inconsistent with poise of character. The man who does not think well of himself will express in his manner uncertainty, doubt, anxiety, more or less mental confusion.
Confidence, a sense of assurance under all circumstances, are among the chief considerations with great business men. We have heard bankers and the men at the head of great concerns ask about an applicant for an important position, “Is he a man you can tie to? Has he reserve? Has he courage, stamina, staying qualities? Can you depend on him in an emergency? Has he the grit that never yields? Has he good, sound principles?”
Most young men do not realize how much their success depends upon their general reputation. It will make all the difference in the world to you, my young friend, what people think of you, how they estimate your ability, what your reputation is for honesty and “square dealing,” and a good, sound judgment.
Your level-headedness and honesty locate you in actual life. Every employer is looking for men to fill important positions. Capital is timid, and is afraid to risk money or merchandise with a man who is merely brilliant. But men who have credit and are in a position to help you to capital, are always looking for hard business sense. If you lack that, no matter how smart you may be, how cunning or shrewd in securing business, or how good an advertiser you may be; no matter how good a man you may be or how well you may stand in your community or your church, the capitalist will distrust you.
One reason why the majority of people have such poor judgment, especially employees, is because they do not depend upon it. Unused faculties never develop any more than do unused muscles. The habit of using good judgment in everything, no matter how trifling, will multiply efficiency a thousandfold.
You can get along without a college education, if you must—without a great many things, if necessary,—but you can not get on in the world without good judgment.
Multitudes of students are turned out of colleges every year with a large amount of theoretical knowledge, but they have not had a particle of training along the line of good judgment.
We often hear people say that they can not understand why Mr. ————— has had such a mediocre career, or has been a failure, when he had such a brilliant mind. But, it does not matter how brilliant a man may be, if he lacks sound judgment, he is all the time queering his own advancement.
It is the rarest thing in the world for a man with good judgment to fail, even if he is not brilliant, for though he may make occasional mistakes, he will get on his feet again. But the man who makes brilliant strokes now and then, and is all the time slipping up because of poor judgment, will not get on nearly as rapidly as the one much less brilliant, but with sound judgment.
No matter how brilliant, men with poor judgment are always slipping back and by their foolishness losing a large part of what they gained by their brilliancy or their good qualities.
If you want to get the reputation of being a level-headed man, you must act like one. Most people are constantly doing things—especially little things—which do not meet with their approval, which they do not consider the best things to be done, under the circumstances, but they do them. In acting thus they lessen the probability of doing the level-headed thing the next time.
When we feel strongly impressed to do a certain thing, or to do something in a certain way, and we do not do it, or else do it in some other way than that in which we are impressed to do it, we are lessening the probabilities of our doing the wisest thing in the future.
In other words, if we form a habit of always doing the thing we ought to do, doing it in the way we honestly