SELF-HELP — NATIONAL AND INDIVIDUAL

The worth of a State, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it. — J. S. Mill

We put too much faith in systems, and look too little to men. — B. Disraeli

"Heaven helps those who help themselves" is a well-tried maxim, embodying in a small compass the results of vast human experience. The spirit of self-help is the root of all genuine growth in the individual; and, exhibited in the lives of many, it constitutes the true source of national vigor and strength. Help from without is often enfeebling in its effects, but help from within invariably invigorates. Whatever is done for men or classes, to a certain extent takes away the stimulus and necessity of doing for themselves; and where men are subjected to over-guidance and over-government, the inevitable tendency is to render them comparatively helpless.

Even the best institutions can give a man no active help. Perhaps the most they can do is to leave him free to develop himself and improve his individual condition. But in all times men have been prone to believe that their happiness and well-being were to be secured by means of institutions rather than by their own conduct. Hence the value of legislation as an agent in human advancement has usually been much over-estimated. To constitute the millionth part of a legislature, by voting for one or two men once in three or five years, however conscientiously this duty may be performed, can exercise but little active influence upon any man's life and character. Moreover, it is every day becoming more clearly understood that the function of government is negative and restrictive, rather than positive and active; being resolvable principally into protection — protection of life, liberty, and property. Laws wisely administered will secure men in the enjoyment of the fruits of their labor, whether of mind or body, at a comparatively small personal sacrifice; but no laws, however stringent, can make the idle industrious, the thriftless provident, or the drunken sober. Such reforms can only be effected by means of individual action, economy, and self-denial; by better habits, rather than by greater rights.

The government of a nation itself is usually found to be but the reflex of the individuals composing it. The government that is ahead of the people will inevitably be dragged down to their level, as the government that is behind them will, in the long run, be dragged up. In the order of nature, the collective character of a nation will as surely find its befitting results in its law and government as water finds its own level. The noble people will be nobly ruled, and the ignorant and corrupt ignobly. Indeed all experience serves to prove that the worth and strength of a State depend far less upon the form of its institutions than upon the character of its men. For the nation is only an aggregate of individual conditions, and civilization itself is but a question of the personal improvement of the men, women, and children of whom society is composed.

National progress is the sum of individual industry, energy, and uprightness, as national decay is of individual idleness, selfishness, and vice. What we are accustomed to decry as great social evils, will, for the most part, be found to be but the outgrowth of man's own perverted life; and though we may endeavor to cut them down and extirpate them by means of law, they will only spring up again with fresh luxuriance in some other form, unless the conditions of personal life and character are radically improved. If this view be correct, then it follows that the highest patriotism and philanthropy consist not so much in altering laws and modifying institutions as in helping and stimulating men to elevate and improve themselves by their own free and independent individual action.

It may be of comparatively little consequence how a man is governed from without, whilst every thing depends upon how he governs himself from within. The greatest slave is not he who is ruled by a despot, great though that evil be, but he who is the thrall of his own moral ignorance, selfishness, and vice. Nations who are thus enslaved at heart cannot be freed by any mere changes of masters or of institutions; and so long as the fatal delusion prevails that liberty solely depends upon and consists in government, so long will such changes, no matter at what cost they may be effected, have as little practical and lasting result as the shifting of the figures in a phantasmagoria.

The solid foundations of liberty must rest upon individual character; which is also the only sure guarantee for social security and national progress. John Stuart Mill truly observes that "even despotism does not produce its worst effects so long as individuality exists under it; and whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it be called."

Old fallacies as to human progress are constantly turning up. Some call for Cesars, others for nationalities, and others for acts of parliament. We are to wait for Cesars, and when they are found, "happy the people who recognize and follow them." This doctrine shortly means every thing for the people, nothing by them — a doctrine which, if taken as a guide, must, by destroying the free conscience of a community, speedily prepare the way for any form of despotism. Cesarism is human idolatry in its worst form — a worship of mere power, as degrading in its effects as the worship of mere wealth would be. A far healthier doctrine to inculcate among the nations would be that of self-help; and so soon as it is thoroughly understood and carried into action, Cesarism will be no more. The two principles are directly antagonistic; and what Victor Hugo said of the pen and the sword alike applies to them, "Ceci tuera cela." [This will kill that.]

The power of nationalities and acts of parliament is also a prevalent superstition. What William Dargan, one of Ireland's truest patriots, said at the closing of the first Dublin industrial exhibition may well be quoted now. "To tell the truth," he said, "I never heard the word independence mentioned that my own country and my own fellow-townsmen did not occur to my mind. I have heard a great deal about the independence that we were to get from this, that, and the other place, and of the great expectations we were to have from persons from other countries coming amongst us. Whilst I value as much as any man the great advantages that must result to us from that intercourse, I have always been deeply impressed with the feeling that our industrial independence is dependent upon ourselves. I believe that, with simple industry and careful exactness in the utilization of our energies, we never had a fairer chance nor a brighter prospect than the present. We have made a step, but perseverance is the great agent of success; and, if we but go on zealously, I believe in my conscience that in a short period we shall arrive at a position of equal comfort, of equal happiness, and of equal independence with that of any other people."

All nations have been made what they are by the thinking and the working of many generations of men. Patient and persevering laborers in all ranks and conditions of life; cultivators of the soil and explorers of the mine; inventors and discoverers, manufacturers, mechanics, and artisans; poets, philosophers, and politicians — all have contributed toward the grand result, one generation building upon another's labors, and carrying them forward to still higher stages. This constant succession of noble workers — the artisans of civilization — has served to create order out of chaos in industry, science, and art; and the living race has thus, in the course of nature, become the inheritor of the rich estate provided by the skill and industry of our forefathers, which is placed in our hands to cultivate, and to hand down, not only unimpaired, but improved, to our successors.

The spirit of self-help, as exhibited in the energetic action of individuals, has in all times been a marked feature in the English character, and furnishes the true measure of our power as a nation. Rising above the heads of the mass, there were always to be found a series of individuals distinguished beyond others who commanded the public homage. But our progress has also been owing to multitudes of smaller and less-known men. Though only the general's names may be remembered in the history of any great campaign, it has been in a great measure through the individual valor and heroism of the privates that victories have been won. And life, too, is "a soldiers' battle," men in the ranks having in all times been amongst the greatest of workers. Many are the lives of men unwritten, which have, nevertheless, as powerfully influenced civilization and progress as the more fortunate great, whose names are recorded in biography. Even the humblest person, who sets before his fellows an example of industry, sobriety, and upright honesty of purpose in life, has a present as well as a future influence upon the well-being of his country; for his life and character pass unconsciously into the lives of others, and propagate good example for all time to come.

Daily experience shows that it is energetic individualism which produces the most powerful effects upon the life and action of others, and really constitutes the best practical education. Schools, academies, and colleges give but the merest beginnings of culture in comparison with it. Far more influential is the life-education daily given in our homes, in the streets, behind counters, in workshops, at the loom and the plow, in counting-houses and manufactories, and in the busy haunts of men. This is that finishing instruction, as members of society, which Schiller designated "the education of the human race," consisting in action, conduct, self-culture, self-control — all that tends to discipline a man truly, and fit him for the proper performance of the duties and business of life — a kind of education not to be learned from books, or acquired by any amount of mere literary training. With his usual weight of words, Bacon observes that "studies teach not their own use; but that is a wisdom without them, and above them, won by observation;" a remark that holds true of actual life, as well as of the cultivation of the intellect itself. For all experience serves to illustrate and enforce the lesson that a man perfects himself by work more than by reading — that it is life rather than literature, action rather than study, and character rather than biography which tend perpetually to renovate mankind.

Biographies of great, but especially of good, men are nevertheless most instructive and useful, as helps, guides, and incentives to others. The valuable examples which they furnish of the power of self-help, of patient purpose, resolute working, and steadfast integrity, issuing in the formation of truly noble and manly character, exhibit, in language not to be misunderstood, what it is in the power of each to accomplish for himself; and eloquently illustrate the efficacy of self-respect and self-reliance in enabling men of even the humblest rank to work out for themselves an honorable competency and a solid reputation.

Great men of science, literature, and art — apostles of great thoughts and lords of the great heart — have belonged to no exclusive class nor rank in life. They have come alike from colleges, workshops, and farm-houses — from the huts of poor men and the mansions of the rich. Some of God's greatest apostles have come from "the ranks." The poorest have sometimes taken the highest places; nor have difficulties apparently the most insuperable proved obstacles in their way. Those very difficulties, in many instances, would even seem to have been their best helpers, by evoking their powers of labor and endurance, and stimulating into life faculties which might otherwise have lain dormant. The instances of obstacles thus surmounted, and of triumphs thus achieved, are indeed so numerous as almost to justify the proverb that "with will one can do any thing." Take, for instance, the remarkable fact that from the barber's-shop came Jeremy Taylor, the most poetical of divines; Sir Richard Arkwright, the inventor of the spinning-jenny and founder of the cotton-manufacture; Lord Tenterden, one of the most distinguished of lord chief-justices; and Turner, the greatest among landscape painters.

No one knows to a certainty what Shakspeare was; but it is unquestionable that he sprang from an humble rank. His father was a butcher and grazier; and Shakspeare himself is supposed to have been in early life a wool-comber; whilst others aver that he was an usher in a school, and afterward a scrivener's clerk. He truly seems to have been "not one, but all mankind's epitome." For such is the accuracy of his sea phrases that a naval writer alleges that he must have been a sailor; whilst a clergyman infers, from internal evidence in his writings, that he was probably a parson's clerk; and a distinguished judge of horseflesh insists that he must have been a horsedealer. Shakspeare was certainly an actor, and in the course of his life "played many parts," gathering his wonderful stores of knowledge from a wide field of experience and observation. In any event, he must have been a close student and a hard worker; and, to this day, his writings continue to exercise a powerful influence on the formation of English character.

The common class of day-laborers has given us Brindley, the engineer; Cook, the navigator; and Burns, the poet. Masons and brick-layers can boast of Ben Jonson, who worked at the building of Lincoln's Inn, with a trowel in his hand and a book in his pocket; Edwards and Telford, the engineers; Hugh Miller, the geologist; and Allan Cunningham, the writer and sculptor; whilst among distinguished carpenters we find the names of Inigo Jones, the architect; Harrison, the chronometer-maker; John Hunter, the physiologist; Romney and Opie, the painters; Professor Lee, the Orientalist; and John Gibson, the sculptor.

From the weaver class have sprung Simson, the mathematician; Bacon, the sculptor; the two Milners; Adam Walker; John Foster; Wilson, the ornithologist; Dr. Livingstone, the missionary traveler; and Tannahill, the poet. Shoe-makers have given us Sir Cloudesley Shovel, the great admiral; Sturgeon, the electrician; Samuel Drew, the essayist; Gifford, the editor of the Quarterly Review; Bloomfield, the poet; and William Carey, the missionary; whilst Morrison, another laborious missionary, was a maker of shoe-lasts. Within the last few years, a profound naturalist has been discovered in the person of a shoe-maker at Banff, named Thomas Edwards, who, while maintaining himself by his trade, has devoted his leisure to the study of natural science in all its branches, his researches in connection with the smaller Crustacea having been rewarded by the discovery of a new species, to which the name of Praniza Edwardsii has been given by naturalists.

Nor have tailors been undistinguished. John Stow, the historian, worked at the trade during some part of his life. Jackson, the painter, made clothes until he reached manhood. The brave Sir John Hawkswood, who so greatly distinguished himself at Poictiers, and was knighted by Edward III. For his valor, was in early life apprenticed to a London tailor. Admiral Hobson, who broke the boom at Vigo, in 1702, belonged to the same calling. He was working as a tailor's apprentice near Bonchurch, in the Isle of Wight, when the news flew through the village that a squadron of men-of-war was sailing off the island. He sprang from the shop-board, and ran down with his comrades to the beach, to gaze upon the glorious sight. The boy was suddenly inflamed with the ambition to be a sailor; and, springing into a boat, he rowed off to the squadron, gained the admiral's ship, and was accepted as a volunteer. Years after, he returned to his native village full of honors, and dined off bacon and eggs in the cottage where he had worked as an apprentice. But the greatest tailor of all is unquestionably Andrew Johnson, ex-President of the United States — a man of extraordinary force of character and vigor of intellect. In his great speech at Washington, when describing himself as having begun his political career as an alderman and run through all the branches of the legislature, a voice in the crowd cried, "From a tailor up." It was characteristic of Johnson to take the intended sarcasm in good part, and even to turn it to account. "Some gentleman says I have been a tailor. That does not disconcert me in the least; for when I was a tailor I had the reputation of being a good one, and making close fits; I was always punctual with my customers, and always did good work."