Cultivate Observation And Judgment-Part II

Hogarth, though a very dull boy at his lessons, took pleasure in making drawings of the letters of the alphabet, and his school exercises were more remarkable for the ornaments with which he embellished them, than for the matter of the exercises themselves. In the latter respect he was beaten by all the blockheads of the school, but in his adornments he stood alone.

His father put him apprentice to a silversmith, where he learnt to draw, and also to engrave spoons and forks with crests and ciphers. From silver-chasing he went on to teach himself engraving on copper, principally griffins and monsters of heraldry, in the course of which practice he became ambitious to delineate the varieties of human character. The singular excellence which he reached in this art was mainly the result of careful observation and study.

He had the gift, which he sedulously cultivated, of committing to memory the precise features of any remarkable face, and afterward reproducing them on paper; but if any singularly fantastic form or odd face came in his way, he would make a sketch of it on the spot upon his thumbnail, and carry it home to expand at his leisure. Everything fantastical and original had a powerful attraction for him, and he wandered into many out-of-the-way places for the purpose of meeting with character.

By this careful storing of his mind, he was afterward enabled to crowd an immense amount of thought and treasure observation into his works. Hence it is that Hogarth’s pictures are so truthful a memorial of the character, the manners, and even the very thoughts of the times in which he live. True painting, he himself observed, can only be learnt in one school, and that is kept by Nature.

But he was not a highly cultivated man, except in his own walk. His school education had been of the slenderest kind, scarcely even perfecting him in the art of spelling; his self-culture did the rest. For a long time he was in very straitened circumstances, but nevertheless worked on with a cheerful heart. Poor though he was, he contrived to live within his small means, and he boasted with becoming pride, that he was “a punctual paymaster.” Read more

Popularity: 72% [?]

Cultivate Observation And Judgment-Part I

“Look before you leap,” old Commodore Vanderbilt used to say. “I like active men, but I have no use for the fellow who is so much in earnest that he goes off half-cocked.” We all know the danger of a gun that goes off half-cocked, but it is not so apt to bring disaster as is the man who goes off without due preparation.It is fortunate for us that we cannot see into the future, but the Father who has kept from us the gift of prophecy has blessed us with a foresight and judgment that enable us to see pretty accurately what must be the inevitable consequence of certain acts.

The power to observe carefully and judge accurately is a rare gift, but it is one that can be cultivated. The ancients had a motto “Know thyself,” and the great poet Pope tells us that “the proper study of mankind is man.” A knowledge of human nature is invaluable in every life-calling that brings us into contact with our fellows, and this can be gained only by careful observation.

Stephen Girard attributed much of his success to his “ability to read men at a glance.” And so carefully did the great merchant prince, Alexander T, Stewart, study this, that it is said he rarely made a mistake in the character of a man he took into his employ.

Cultivate observation. Oliver Wendell Holmes maintained that all the difference in men, no matter their callings, lay in the difference of their ability to observe and draw proper conclusions from their observations. Professor Huxley says that “observation is the basis of all our scientific knowledge.” And Andrew Carnegie attributes his great success to his cultivation of this faculty.

Every young man, ambitious to win–and what young man worthy the name is not?–should have a standard of excellence for himself, and then he should carefully study and observe the methods of the men who he admires or with whom he is brought into contact. It is the ability to do this that constitutes the difference between the man drudge and the man anxious to assume greater responsibilities by mastering his necessary duties.

In a lecture to young men on this subject, Henry Ward Beecher said:

“The young should begin life with a standard of excellence before them, to which they should readily conform themselves. There should be a fixed determination to make the best of one’s self, in whatever circumstances we may be placed. Let the young man determine that whatever he undertakes he will do well; that he will make himself master of the business upon which he enters, and always prepare himself for advancement by becoming worthy of it. Read more

Popularity: 79% [?]

We Must Help Ourselves

To the young man of the right kind, the inheritance of a fortune, or the possession of influential friends, may be great advantages, but more frequently they are hindrances. To win you must fight for yourself, and the effort will give you strength.

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.

The privileges of a superior education, like the inheritance of a fortune, depends upon the man. It should encourage those who have only themselves and God to look to for support, to remember that self-education is the best education, and that some of the greatest men have had few or no school advantages.

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 plough, 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.

No matter how humble your calling in life may be, take heart from the fact that many of the world’s greatest men have had no superior advantages. Lincoln studied law lying on his face before a log-fire; General Garfield drove a mule on a canal tow-path in his boyhood, and George Peabody, owing to the poverty of his family, was an errand boy in a grocery store at the age of eleven.

Great men of science, literature, and art–apostles of great thoughts and lords of the great heart–have belonged to no exclusive class or 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 anything.”

If we took to England, the mother country, a land where the advantages are not nearly so great as in this and the difficulties greater, we shall find noble spirits rising to usefulness and eminence in the face of difficulties equally great. Read more

Popularity: 40% [?]

Education As Distinguished From Learning

Although not the same kind, there is as much difference between education and learning, as there is between character and reputation.

Learning may be regarded as mental capital, in the way of accumulated facts. Education is the drawing out and development of the best that is in the heart, the head, and the hand.

The civilized world has a score of very learned men, to the one who may be said to be thoroughly educated. The learned man may be familiar with many languages, and sciences, and have all the facts of history and literature at his fingers’ tip, and yet be as helpless as an infant and as impractical as a fool. An educated man, a man with his powers developed by training, may know no language but his mother tongue, may be ignorant as to literature and art, and yet be well–yes, even superbly educated.

The learned man’s mind may be likened to a store house, or magazine, in which there are a thousand wonderful things, some of which he can make of use in the battle of life. He resembles the miser who fills his offers with gold and keeps it out of circulation. Beyond the selfish joy of possession, his wealth is worthless, and its acquisition has unfitted him for the struggle. The educated man, to continue the illustration, may not be rich, but he knows how to use every cent he owns, and he places it where, under his energy, it will grow into dollars.

Far be it from us to underestimate the value of learning. Many of the world’s greatest men have been learned, but without exception such men have also been educated. They have been trained to make their knowledge available for the benefit of themselves and their fellow men.

The athlete who develops his muscles to their greatest capacity of strength and flexibility, and this can only be done by observing strictly the laws of health, is physically an educated man. Every mechanic whose hands and brain have been trained to the expertness required by the master workman, is well-educated in his particular calling. The man who is an expert accountant, or a trained civil engineer, may know nothing of the higher mathematical principles, but he is better educated than the scholar who has only a theoretical knowledge of all the mathematics that have ever been published.

The educated man is the man who can do something, and the quality of his work marks the degree of his education. One might be learned in law in a phenomenal way, and yet, unless he was educated, trained to the practice, he would be beaten in the preparation of a case by a lawyer’s clerk. Read more

Popularity: 72% [?]