Character Part 12

"This man is freed from servile bands, Of hope to rise, or fear to fall: Lord of himself, though not of land; And having nothing, yet hath all."--WOTTON.

"His nay was nay without recall; His yea was yea, and powerful all; He gave his yea with careful heed, His thoughts and words were well agreed; His word, his bond and seal."

INSCRIPTION ON BARON STEIN'S TOMB.

DUTY is a thing that is due, and must be paid by every man who would avoid present discredit and eventual moral insolvency. It is an obligation--a debt--which can only be discharged by voluntary effort and resolute action in the affairs of life.

Duty embraces man's whole existence. It begins in the home, where there is the duty which children owe to their parents on the one hand, and the duty which parents owe to their children on the other. There are, in like manner, the respective duties of husbands and wives, of masters and servants; while outside the home there are the duties which men and women owe to each other as friends and neighbours, as employers and employed, as governors and governed.

"Render, therefore," says St. Paul, "to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honour to whom honour. Owe no man anything, but to love one another; for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law,"

Thus duty rounds the whole of life, from our entrance into it until our exit from it--duty to superiors, duty to inferiors, and duty to equals--duty to man, and duty to G.o.d. Wherever there is power to use or to direct, there is duty. For we are but as stewards, appointed to employ the means entrusted to us for our own and for others' good.

The abiding sense of duty is the very crown of character. It is the upholding law of man in his highest att.i.tudes. Without it, the individual totters and falls before the first puff of adversity or temptation; whereas, inspired by it, the weakest becomes strong and full of courage. "Duty," says Mrs. Jameson, "is the cement which binds the whole moral edifice together; without which, all power, goodness, intellect, truth, happiness, love itself, can have no permanence; but all the fabric of existence crumbles away from under us, and leaves us at last sitting in the midst of a ruin, astonished at our own desolation."

Duty is based upon a sense of justice--justice inspired by love, which is the most perfect form of goodness. Duty is not a sentiment, but a principle pervading the life: and it exhibits itself in conduct and in acts, which are mainly determined by man's conscience and freewill.

The voice of conscience speaks in duty done; and without its regulating and controlling influence, the brightest and greatest intellect may be merely as a light that leads astray. Conscience sets a man upon his feet, while his will holds him upright. Conscience is the moral governor of the heart--the governor of right action, of right thought, of right faith, of right life--and only through its dominating influence can the n.o.ble and upright character be fully developed.

The conscience, however, may speak never so loudly, but without energetic will it may speak in vain. The will is free to choose between the right course and the wrong one, but the choice is nothing unless followed by immediate and decisive action. If the sense of duty be strong, and the course of action clear, the courageous will, upheld by the conscience, enables a man to proceed on his course bravely, and to accomplish his purposes in the face of all opposition and difficulty.

And should failure be the issue, there will remain at least this satisfaction, that it has been in the cause of duty.

"Be and continue poor, young man," said Heinzelmann, "while others around you grow rich by fraud and disloyalty; be without place or power while others beg their way upwards; bear the pain of disappointed hopes, while others gain the accomplishment of theirs by flattery; forego the gracious pressure of the hand, for which others cringe and crawl. Wrap yourself in your own virtue, and seek a friend and your daily bread. If you have in your own cause grown gray with unbleached honour, bless G.o.d and die!"

Men inspired by high principles are often required to sacrifice all that they esteem and love rather than fail in their duty. The old English idea of this sublime devotion to duty was expressed by the loyalist poet to his sweetheart, on taking up arms for his sovereign:--

"I could love thee, dear, so much, Loved I not honour more." [161]

And Sertorius has said: "The man who has any dignity of character, should conquer with honour, and not use any base means even to save his life." So St. Paul, inspired by duty and faith, declared himself as not only "ready to be bound, but to die at Jerusalem."

When the Marquis of Pescara was entreated by the princes of Italy to desert the Spanish cause, to which he was in honour bound, his n.o.ble wife, Vittoria Colonna, reminded him of his duty. She wrote to him: "Remember your honour, which raises you above fortune and above kings; by that alone, and not by the splendour of t.i.tles, is glory acquired--that glory which it will be your happiness and pride to transmit unspotted to your posterity." Such was the dignified view which she took of her husband's honour; and when he fell at Pavia, though young and beautiful, and besought by many admirers, she betook herself to solitude, that she might lament over her husband's loss and celebrate his exploits. [162]

To live really, is to act energetically. Life is a battle to be fought valiantly. Inspired by high and honourable resolve, a man must stand to his post, and die there, if need be. Like the old Danish hero, his determination should be, "to dare n.o.bly, to will strongly, and never to falter in the path of duty." The power of will, be it great or small, which G.o.d has given us, is a Divine gift; and we ought neither to let it perish for want of using on the one hand, nor profane it by employing it for ign.o.ble purposes on the other. Robertson, of Brighton, has truly said, that man's real greatness consists not in seeking his own pleasure, or fame, or advancement--"not that every one shall save his own life, not that every man shall seek his own glory--but that every man shall do his own duty."

What most stands in the way of the performance of duty, is irresolution, weakness of purpose, and indecision. On the one side are conscience and the knowledge of good and evil; on the other are indolence, selfishness, love of pleasure, or pa.s.sion. The weak and ill-disciplined will may remain suspended for a time between these influences; but at length the balance inclines one way or the other, according as the will is called into action or otherwise. If it be allowed to remain pa.s.sive, the lower influence of selfishness or pa.s.sion will prevail; and thus manhood suffers abdication, individuality is renounced, character is degraded, and the man permits himself to become the mere pa.s.sive slave of his senses.

Thus, the power of exercising the will promptly, in obedience to the dictates of conscience, and thereby resisting the impulses of the lower nature, is of essential importance in moral discipline, and absolutely necessary for the development of character in its best forms. To acquire the habit of well-doing, to resist evil propensities, to fight against sensual desires, to overcome inborn selfishness, may require a long and persevering discipline; but when once the practice of duty is learnt, it becomes consolidated in habit, and thence-forward is comparatively easy.

The valiant good man is he who, by the resolute exercise of his freewill, has so disciplined himself as to have acquired the habit of virtue; as the bad man is he who, by allowing his freewill to remain inactive, and giving the bridle to his desires and pa.s.sions, has acquired the habit of vice, by which he becomes, at last, bound as by chains of iron.

A man can only achieve strength of purpose by the action of his own freewill. If he is to stand erect, it must be by his own efforts; for he cannot be kept propped up by the help of others. He is master of himself and of his actions. He can avoid falsehood, and be truthful; he can shun sensualism, and be continent; he can turn aside from doing a cruel thing, and be benevolent and forgiving. All these lie within the sphere of individual efforts, and come within the range of self-discipline. And it depends upon men themselves whether in these respects they will be free, pure, and good on the one hand; or enslaved, impure, and miserable on the other.

Among the wise sayings of Epictetus we find the following: "We do not choose our own parts in life, and have nothing to do with those parts: our simple duty is confined to playing them well. The slave may be as free as the consul; and freedom is the chief of blessings; it dwarfs all others; beside it all others are insignificant; with it all others are needless; without it no others are possible.... You must teach men that happiness is not where, in their blindness and misery, they seek it. It is not in strength, for Myro and Ofellius were not happy; not in wealth, for Croesus was not happy; not in power, for the Consuls were not happy; not in all these together, for Nero and Sardanapulus and Agamemnon sighed and wept and tore their hair, and were the slaves of circ.u.mstances and the dupes of semblances. It lies in yourselves; in true freedom, in the absence or conquest of every ign.o.ble fear; in perfect self-government; and in a power of contentment and peace, and the even flow of life amid poverty, exile, disease, and the very valley of the shadow of death." [163]

The sense of duty is a sustaining power even to a courageous man.

It holds him upright, and makes him strong. It was a n.o.ble saying of Pompey, when his friends tried to dissuade him from embarking for Rome in a storm, telling him that he did so at the great peril of his life: "It is necessary for me to go," he said; "it is not necessary for me to live." What it was right that he should do, he would do, in the face of danger and in defiance of storms.

As might be expected of the great Was.h.i.+ngton, the chief motive power in his life was the spirit of duty. It was the regal and commanding element in his character which gave it unity, compactness, and vigour. When he clearly saw his duty before him, he did it at all hazards, and with inflexible integrity. He did not do it for effect; nor did he think of glory, or of fame and its rewards; but of the right thing to be done, and the best way of doing it.

Yet Was.h.i.+ngton had a most modest opinion of himself; and when offered the chief command of the American patriot army, he hesitated to accept it until it was pressed upon him. When acknowledging in Congress the honour which had been done him in selecting him to so important a trust, on the execution of which the future of his country in a great measure depended, Was.h.i.+ngton said: "I beg it may be remembered, lest some unlucky event should happen unfavourable to my reputation, that I this day declare, with the utmost sincerity, I do not think myself equal to the command I am honoured with."

And in his letter to his wife, communicating to her his appointment as Commander-in-Chief, he said: "I have used every endeavour in my power to avoid it, not only from my unwillingness to part with you and the family, but from a consciousness of its being a trust too great for my capacity; and that I should enjoy more real happiness in one month with you at home, than I have the most distant prospect of finding abroad, if my stay were to be seven times seven years. But, as it has been a kind of destiny that has thrown me upon this service, I shall hope that my undertaking it is designed for some good purpose. It was utterly out of my power to refuse the appointment, without exposing my character to such censures as would have reflected dishonour upon myself, and given pain to my friends. This, I am sure, could not, and ought not, to be pleasing to you, and must have lessened me considerably in my own esteem." [164]

Was.h.i.+ngton pursued his upright course through life, first as Commander-in-Chief, and afterwards as President, never faltering in the path of duty. He had no regard for popularity, but held to his purpose, through good and through evil report, often at the risk of his power and influence. Thus, on one occasion, when the ratification of a treaty, arranged by Mr. Jay with Great Britain, was in question, Was.h.i.+ngton was urged to reject it. But his honour, and the honour of his country, was committed, and he refused to do so. A great outcry was raised against the treaty, and for a time Was.h.i.+ngton was so unpopular that he is said to have been actually stoned by the mob. But he, nevertheless, held it to be his duty to ratify the treaty; and it was carried out, in despite of pet.i.tions and remonstrances from all quarters. "While I feel," he said, in answer to the remonstrants, "the most lively grat.i.tude for the many instances of approbation from my country, I can no otherwise deserve it than by obeying the dictates of my conscience." Wellington's watchword, like Was.h.i.+ngton's, was duty; and no man could be more loyal to it than he was. [165] "There is little or nothing," he once said, "in this life worth living for; but we can all of us go straight forward and do our duty." None recognised more cheerfully than he did the duty of obedience and willing service; for unless men can serve faithfully, they will not rule others wisely. There is no motto that becomes the wise man better than ICH DIEN, "I serve;" and "They also serve who only stand and wait."

When the mortification of an officer, because of his being appointed to a command inferior to what he considered to be his merits, was communicated to the Duke, he said: "In the course of my military career, I have gone from the command of a brigade to that of my regiment, and from the command of an army to that of a brigade or a division, as I was ordered, and without any feeling of mortification."

Whilst commanding the allied army in Portugal, the conduct of the native population did not seem to Wellington to be either becoming or dutiful.

"We have enthusiasm in plenty," he said, "and plenty of cries of 'VIVA!'

We have illuminations, patriotic songs, and FETES everywhere. But what we want is, that each in his own station should do his duty faithfully, and pay implicit obedience to legal authority."

This abiding ideal of duty seemed to be the governing principle of Wellington's character. It was always uppermost in his mind, and directed all the public actions of his life. Nor did it fail to communicate itself to those under him, who served him in the like spirit. When he rode into one of his infantry squares at Waterloo, as its diminished numbers closed up to receive a charge of French cavalry, he said to the men, "Stand steady, lads; think of what they will say of us in England;" to which the men replied, "Never fear, sir--we know our duty."

Duty was also the dominant idea in Nelson's mind. The spirit in which he served his country was expressed in the famous watchword, "England expects every man to do his duty," signalled by him to the fleet before going into action at Trafalgar, as well as in the last words that pa.s.sed his lips,--"I have done my duty; I praise G.o.d for it!"

And Nelson's companion and friend--the brave, sensible, homely-minded Collingwood--he who, as his s.h.i.+p bore down into the great sea-fight, said to his flag-captain, "Just about this time our wives are going to church in England,"--Collingwood too was, like his commander, an ardent devotee of duty. "Do your duty to the best of your ability," was the maxim which he urged upon many young men starting on the voyage of life.

To a mids.h.i.+pman he once gave the following manly and sensible advice:- "You may depend upon it, that it is more in your own power than in anybody else's to promote both your comfort and advancement. A strict and unwearied attention to your duty, and a complacent and respectful behaviour, not only to your superiors but to everybody, will ensure you their regard, and the reward will surely come; but if it should not, I am convinced you have too much good sense to let disappointment sour you. Guard carefully against letting discontent appear in you. It will be sorrow to your friends, a triumph to your compet.i.tors, and cannot be productive of any good. Conduct yourself so as to deserve the best that can come to you, and the consciousness of your own proper behaviour will keep you in spirits if it should not come. Let it be your ambition to be foremost in all duty. Do not be a nice observer of turns, but ever present yourself ready for everything, and, unless your officers are very inattentive men, they will not allow others to impose more duty on you than they should."

This devotion to duty is said to be peculiar to the English nation; and it has certainly more or less characterised our greatest public men.

Probably no commander of any other nation ever went into action with such a signal flying as Nelson at Trafalgar--not "Glory," or "Victory,"

or "Honour," or "Country"--but simply "Duty!" How few are the nations willing to rally to such a battle-cry!

Shortly after the wreck of the BIRKENHEAD off the coast of Africa, in which the officers and men went down firing a FEU-DE-JOIE after seeing the women and children safely embarked in the boats,--Robertson of Brighton, referring to the circ.u.mstance in one of his letters, said: "Yes! Goodness, Duty, Sacrifice,--these are the qualities that England honours. She gapes and wonders every now and then, like an awkward peasant, at some other things--railway kings, electro-biology, and other trumperies; but nothing stirs her grand old heart down to its central deeps universally and long, except the Right. She puts on her shawl very badly, and she is awkward enough in a concert-room, scarce knowing a Swedish nightingale from a jackdaw; but--blessings large and long upon her!--she knows how to teach her sons to sink like men amidst sharks and billows, without parade, without display, as if Duty were the most natural thing in the world; and she never mistakes long an actor for a hero, or a hero for an actor." [166]

It is a grand thing, after all, this pervading spirit of Duty in a nation; and so long as it survives, no one need despair of its future.

But when it has departed, or become deadened, and been supplanted by thirst for pleasure, or selfish aggrandis.e.m.e.nt, or "glory"--then woe to that nation, for its dissolution is near at hand!

If there be one point on which intelligent observers are agreed more than another as to the cause of the late deplorable collapse of France as a nation, it was the utter absence of this feeling of duty, as well as of truthfulness, from the mind, not only of the men, but of the leaders of the French people. The unprejudiced testimony of Baron Stoffel, French military attache at Berlin, before the war, is conclusive on this point. In his private report to the Emperor, found at the Tuileries, which was written in August, 1869, about a year before the outbreak of the war, Baron Stoffel pointed out that the highly-educated and disciplined German people were pervaded by an ardent sense of duty, and did not think it beneath them to reverence sincerely what was n.o.ble and lofty; whereas, in all respects, France presented a melancholy contrast. There the people, having sneered at everything, had lost the faculty of respecting anything, and virtue, family life, patriotism, honour, and religion, were represented to a frivolous generation as only fitting subjects for ridicule. [167] Alas! how terribly has France been punished for her sins against truth and duty!

Yet the time was, when France possessed many great men inspired by duty; but they were all men of a comparatively remote past. The race of Bayard, Duguesclin, Coligny, Duquesne, Turenne, Colbert, and Sully, seems to have died out and left no lineage. There has been an occasional great Frenchman of modern times who has raised the cry of Duty; but his voice has been as that of one crying in the wilderness. De Tocqueville was one of such; but, like all men of his stamp, he was proscribed, imprisoned, and driven from public life. Writing on one occasion to his friend Kergorlay, he said: "Like you, I become more and more alive to the happiness which consists in the fulfilment of Duty. I believe there is no other so deep and so real. There is only one great object in the world which deserves our efforts, and that is the good of mankind." [168]

Although France has been the unquiet spirit among the nations of Europe since the reign of Louis XIV., there have from time to time been honest and faithful men who have lifted up their voices against the turbulent warlike tendencies of the people, and not only preached, but endeavoured to carry into practice, a gospel of peace. Of these, the Abbe de St.-Pierre was one of the most courageous. He had even the boldness to denounce the wars of Louis XIV., and to deny that monarch's right to the epithet of 'Great,' for which he was punished by expulsion from the Academy. The Abbe was as enthusiastic an agitator for a system of international peace as any member of the modern Society of Friends. As Joseph Sturge went to St. Petersburg to convert the Emperor of Russia to his views, so the Abbe went to Utrecht to convert the Conference sitting there, to his project for a Diet; to secure perpetual peace. Of course he was regarded as an enthusiast, Cardinal Dubois characterising his scheme as "the dream of an honest man." Yet the Abbe had found his dream in the Gospel; and in what better way could he exemplify the spirit of the Master he served than by endeavouring to abate the horrors and abominations of war? The Conference was an a.s.semblage of men representing Christian States: and the Abbe merely called upon them to put in practice the doctrines they professed to believe. It was of no use: the potentates and their representatives turned to him a deaf ear.

The Abbe de St.-Pierre lived several hundred years too soon. But he determined that his idea should not be lost, and in 1713 he published his 'Project of Perpetual Peace.' He there proposed the formation of a European Diet, or Senate, to be composed of representatives of all nations, before which princes should be bound, before resorting to arms, to state their grievances and require redress. Writing about eighty years after the publication of this project, Volney asked: "What is a people?--an individual of the society at large. What a war?--a duel between two individual people. In what manner ought a society to act when two of its members fight?--Interfere, and reconcile or repress them. In the days of the Abbe de St.-Pierre, this was treated as a dream; but, happily for the human race, it begins to be realised." Alas for the prediction of Volney! The twenty-five years that followed the date at which this pa.s.sage was written, were distinguished by more devastating and furious wars on the part of France than had ever been known in the world before.

The Abbe was not, however, a mere dreamer. He was an active practical philanthropist and antic.i.p.ated many social improvements which have since become generally adopted. He was the original founder of industrial schools for poor children, where they not only received a good education, but learned some useful trade, by which they might earn an honest living when they grew up to manhood. He advocated the revision and simplification of the whole code of laws--an idea afterwards carried out by the First Napoleon. He wrote against duelling, against luxury, against gambling, against monasticism, quoting the remark of Segrais, that "the mania for a monastic life is the smallpox of the mind." He spent his whole income in acts of charity--not in almsgiving, but in helping poor children, and poor men and women, to help themselves. His object always was to benefit permanently those whom he a.s.sisted. He continued his love of truth and his freedom of speech to the last. At the age of eighty he said: "If life is a lottery for happiness, my lot has been one of the best." When on his deathbed, Voltaire asked him how he felt, to which he answered, "As about to make a journey into the country." And in this peaceful frame of mind he died. But so outspoken had St.-Pierre been against corruption in high places, that Maupertius, his Successor at the Academy, was not permitted to p.r.o.nounce his ELOGE; nor was it until thirty-two years after his death that this honour was done to his memory by D'Alembert. The true and emphatic epitaph of the good, truth-loving, truth-speaking Abbe was this--"HE LOVED MUCH!"

Duty is closely allied to truthfulness of character; and the dutiful man is, above all things, truthful in his words as in his actions. He says and he does the right thing, in the right way, and at the right time.

There is probably no saying of Lord Chesterfield that commends itself more strongly to the approval of manly-minded men, than that it is truth that makes the success of the gentleman. Clarendon, speaking of one of the n.o.blest and purest gentlemen of his age, says of Falkland, that he "was so severe an adorer of truth that he could as easily have given himself leave to steal as to dissemble."

It was one of the finest things that Mrs. Hutchinson could say of her husband, that he was a thoroughly truthful and reliable man: "He never professed the thing he intended not, nor promised what he believed out of his power, nor failed in the performance of anything that was in his power to fulfil."

Wellington was a severe admirer of truth. An ill.u.s.tration may be given.

When afflicted by deafness he consulted a celebrated aurist, who, after trying all remedies in vain, determined, as a last resource, to inject into the ear a strong solution of caustic. It caused the most intense pain, but the patient bore it with his usual equanimity. The family physician accidentally calling one day, found the Duke with flushed cheeks and bloodshot eyes, and when he rose he staggered about like a drunken man. The doctor asked to be permitted to look at his ear, and then he found that a furious inflammation was going on, which, if not immediately checked, must shortly reach the brain and kill him. Vigorous remedies were at once applied, and the inflammation was checked. But the hearing of that ear was completely destroyed. When the aurist heard of the danger his patient had run, through the violence of the remedy he had employed, he hastened to Apsley House to express his grief and mortification; but the Duke merely said: "Do not say a word more about it--you did all for the best." The aurist said it would be his ruin when it became known that he had been the cause of so much suffering and danger to his Grace. "But n.o.body need know anything about it: keep your own counsel, and, depend upon it, I won't say a word to any one." "Then your Grace will allow me to attend you as usual, which will show the public that you have not withdrawn your confidence from me?" "No,"

replied the Duke, kindly but firmly; "I can't do that, for that would be a lie." He would not act a falsehood any more than he would speak one.

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