The Art of Manliness - Manvotionals - Brett McKay [62]
“I have ever held it as a maxim never to do that through another which it was possible for me to execute myself.” —Montesquieu
The Farmer and the Larks
AN AESOP’S Fable
Some larks had a nest in a field of grain. One evening the old larks coming home found the young ones in great terror. “We must leave our nest at once,” they cried. Then they related how they had heard the farmer say that he must get his neighbors to come the next day and help him reap his field. “Oh,” cried the old birds, “if that is all, we may rest quietly in our nest.’’
The next evening the young birds were found again in a state of terror. The farmer, it seems, was very angry because his neighbors had not come, and had said that he should get his relatives to come the next day to help him. The old birds took the news easily, and said there was nothing to fear yet.
The next evening the young birds were quite cheerful. “Have you heard nothing today?” asked the old ones. “Nothing important,” answered the young. “It is only that the farmer was angry because his relatives also failed him, and he said to his sons, ‘Since neither our relatives nor our neighbors will help us, we must take hold tomorrow and do it ourselves.’”
The old birds were excited this time. They said, “We must leave our nest tonight. When a man decides to do a thing for himself, and to do it at once, you may be pretty sure that it will be done.”
“For the man who makes everything that leads to happiness, or near to it, to depend upon himself, and not upon other men … has adopted the very best plan for living happily. This is the man of moderation; this is the man of manly character and of wisdom.” —Plato
The Frontiersman
FROM SOULS-SPUR, 1914
By Richard Wightman
The suns of summer seared his skin;
The cold his blood congealed;
The forest giants blocked his way
The stubborn acres’ yield
He wrenched from them by dint of arm,
And grim old Solitude
Broke bread with him and shared his cot
Within the cabin rude.
The gray rocks gnarled his massive hands;
The north wind shook his frame;
The wolf of hunger bit him oft;
The world forgot his name;
But mid the lurch and crash of trees,
Within the clearing’s span
Where now the bursting wheat-heads dip,
The fates turned out—a man!
“There is something captivating in spirit and intrepidity, to which we often yield, as to a resistless power; nor can he reasonably expect the confidence of others, who too apparently distrusts himself.” —Samuel Johnson
Don’t Be a Sheep; Be a Man
FROM EDITORIALS FROM THE HEARST Newspapers, 1906
By Arthur Brisbane
We inflict a piece of advice upon our readers. It is intended especially for the young, who have still to get their growth, whose characters and possibilities are forming.
Get away from the crowd when you can. Keep yourself to yourself, if only for a few hours daily.
Full individual growth, special development, rounded mental operations—all these demand room, separation from others, solitude, self-examination and the self-reliance which solitude gives.
The finest tree stands off by itself in the open plain. Its branches spread wide. It is a complete tree, better than the cramped tree in the crowded forest.
The animal to be admired is not that which runs in herds, the gentle browsing deer or foolish sheep thinking only as a fraction of the flock, incapable of personal independent direction. It’s the lonely prowling lion or the big black leopard with the whole world for his private field that is worth looking at.
The man who grows up in a herd, deer-like, thinking with the herd, acting with the herd, rarely amounts to anything.
Do you want to succeed? Grow in solitude, work, develop in solitude, with books and thoughts and nature for friends. Then, if you want the crowd to see how fine you are, come back to it and boss it if it will let you.
Here is what Goethe says: “Es bildet ein Talent sich in der Stille, doch ein Charakter in dem Strome der Welt.” (Talent is developed in solitude, character in the rush of the world.)
Don’t be a sheep or a deer.