WHAT IS SELF-HELP?

Otago Witness, Issue 2934, 8 June 1910, Page 99

WHAT IS SELF-HELP?

By John o' London I remember my friend Arnold Bennett remarking in these that when a man Las'passed his fortieth year he notices sooner or later, to his awe, that five out of six men in the street are younger than himself. It is a startling discovery, but a greater wonder remains. What are "the long, long thoughts" of the boys of today? How do the facts and conditions which have come ir-to being since we were young direct and colour their outlook on life? After what manner do they aspire, exult, puroose? The prophet had it that tire old men dream dreams and the youngmen see visions, and Lord Bacon perhaps wrote wisely when he sanctioned the interpretation" of a certain rabbi, that young men see farther because a vision is a clearer revelation than a dream. Life, which is short enough to confound our search Tor understandinjg, is yet longenough to set a gulf between those who dream at 40 and those who see visions at 20. I have not yet reached the meridian of life, yet I have but to Put my hat upon my head And walk out in the Strand to see some young man, broad of shoulder and clear of eye —"in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god!"—who must have been a babe in arms when I came to London. What can I say to this fellow ? A wave the more of energy has gone to his makingj and already the scheme of things lias been loid to him in a new way, with new verifications, new glories and incitements. The terms of the equation are altered: Born into life, man grows » Prom forth his parents' stem, And blends their blocd, as these Of theirs are blent in them; So each new man strikes root in a far foretime. I have been led into these ordinary reflections my turning over the pages of a book which was written without any of the misgivings of which I have hinted. Assuredly it is well that age should somelimes overcome this sense of estrangement and. commit 'tself to a broad formula in the art of living. Such a counsellor was Dr Samuel Smiles, and such a formula, was h/is 'immensely successful book, "Self-Help."« .The first edition of this book was published by Mr Murray in November, 1859, and two more editions were issaied in the same month. • The first reprint was issued in April, 1860, and the latest, which bears this veer's date, may be taken as marking the jubilee of a book whose popularity and influence can hardly be overstated. The survival of "SelfHelp" is not more remarkable than the continuity of its appeal. In the 50 years which have elapsed since its appearance it has been reprinted nearly 60 times, and the table of reprints shows that the demand for it has been sleepless. This fills me wdth a certain wonder. In a mannerit contradicts my fine-spun doubts, and reproves my shyness to the young man in the Strand.-' For here is the formula of my own boyhood in being. . Here is the art of life as we were taught it in the seventies. And yet, do what I will, I find myself unable to read " Self-Help " again without wondering whether its formula could have been offered to-day to younig England, whether its assumptions and ideals would seem so right in a scientific age, and whether its note of individualism would seem. attuned to the new and multitudinous voices of social combination. Conduct and Perseverance.— It is obvious that in every age there will bo virtue in self-help. The words are a gospel, but the manner and aim of preaching it are the fluid part of the subject. The full title of Dr Smiks's book is "Self-Help : With Illustrations of Conduct and Perseverance," and the literary scheme of the book is simplicity itself. The author accumulates examples of success which he deems to have been won by energy and perseverance agains l : unusual obstacles. Two characteristics s'eem to me to emerge very quickly from his pages. One is rather musty Victorian emphasis on class distinctions, and the other is a lack of that scientific outlook and method which Ave should now expect from a writer dealing with human effort and faculty in relation to well-being or success. Dr fimiles seems to have classified human material from the Post Office Directory. If a man began as the eon of a shoemaker and ended as an artist or a member of Parliament, the citation of this fact satisfied him ; it was a, notable example of perseverance. To-day a physiologist of success would look much deeper. He would enter the shoemaker's shop and make a series of inquiries based on the belief that the first and most useful act of self-help that a man can perform is to choose his ancestry with care. He would also be prepared to find that while the word "shoemaker" was an accurate description of the tradesman, it did not, as ordinarily used, suggest the man. He would be sure to take tea with the shoemaker's wife, and estimate the force and quality of her motherhood. Many matters of hygiene, housing, and gensral environment would engage his attention, and when he at last reported on the case under inquiry he would weigh inherited and acquired qualities together, and would present a report much more complex than Dr Smiles's, and possibly less inspiring, but probably more useful, because more scientific. It will ba best, however, to turn at once to the pages of "Self-Help," and to examine some of their "illustrations of conduct and perseverance" in a candid spirit. The first illustration of self-help is the most surprising of all: it is Shakespeare. Here. I think, we feel the fifty years of this book's existence. What writer of to-day, desiring to inspire youth, would bring forward Shakespeare to sup-

(port the proposition that "the poorest have sometimes taken the highest places; nor have difficulties apparently the most insuperable proved obstacles in their way"? Dr Smiles was content to observe, with the loosest reference to the facts, that "it is unquestionable that Shakespeare sprang from a humble rank. His father was a butcher and grazier." Would "Hamlet" have been a less astonishing work of genius if Shakespeare"s father had been an Archbishop ? The little we know of Shakespeare's paternal ancestry, suggests that it was old, sound, und not undistinguished, and we know that his mother, Mary Arden, came of an old and influential Warwickshire family. "Butcher and grazier" is a trade, not a human description, and even so it does not too accurately describe a man who was an all-round business man, who dealtin many commodities, who prospered anc. bought property, and became a towncouncillor snd chamberlain of his borough. In a word, Shakespeare came of a grand stock, and it is most'improbable that he lacked a. good general education. As a. man of business he practised ordinary self-help, on top of many advantages. As a poet and dramatist he baffles, and will ever baffle, explanation. Labourers.— On the same page we read: "Th." common class of day labourers has giver us Brindley the engineer, Cook the navn gator, and Burns the poet." This isr a typical statement, but its force depends upon the acceptance of the Avords "day labourer" in a social sense that is not necessarily helpful. Cook, indeed, was the son of an agricultural labourer of whom very little seems to be known. Brindley's father was a Derbyshire cottier, or small farmer, and cannot be described as a day labourer. Moreover, we know that the engineer had a wise and watchful mother. In a great many cases Dr Smiles describes the. father by his occupation, but does not take into view the often decisive influence of the mother's breeding and • qualities. Burns's father was not a " day labourer" in any sense that a student of heredity would accept. He leased seven, acres of land and married a farmer's daughter. He came of an old family which lial produced men of distinction, and the superiority of his mind was such that he induced some of his neighbours to join with him in setting up a school at Alloway, to which lie sent his son. The poet, therefore, did not lack education, and to this was added the deep and subtle education of race. Burns 'was impregnated with race, and his genius consisted largely in bis ability to reproduce and glorify racial characteristics. Passion, not self-h-dp, explains his genius, and the lack of self-help his ruin. Then we are told that "masons and bricklayerscan boast of Ben Jonson, a* the\ building of Lincoln's Inn with » trowel in his hand and a book in hill pocket." This story rests on the sole authority of Fuller, and it has neverbeen seriously accepted. But suppose it be true: this man with a trowel in his hand had been well educated at Westminster, School, ar.d the very historian who tells us that Jonson helped to lay the bricks of Lincoln's Inn informs" us that he had been for a time a member of St. John's College, Cam- ' bridge. Jonson's only connection with bricklaying ivas through his stepfather ( his own father was descended from a Carlisle gentleman who had taken service under Henry VIII. Thus the apparition of the word "bricklaying", has no important bearing on Jonson's ■ original chances in life. From the Ranks.- — Then we have a list of great men are- introduced as rising from the ranks* of caipentry, weaving, and shoe-making. Here, again, I think an illusion is created. Class distinctions are so deeply felt in England that we forget that in the hurly-burly of life a mixture of classes does take" place, and that to spring the mere word "carpenter" or "shoemaker" on. the mind is unscientific. Dr Smiles saysr "Amonc distinguished carpenters we find the name of lingo Jones," The occurri ence of such a sentence in a book on selfhelp, conceived and planned like Dr* Smiles's work, is quite misleading. Inigo Jones was th> son of a very well-known London cloth worker who fell into straitened circumstances, and the boy's brief apprenticeship to a joiner _in St. Paul's Churchyard is a mere nothing. Ha had the talent for drawing, and is believed to have early found patronage and employment from the Earls of Pembroke and Arundel. John Hunter, the great physiologist, is set down as another carpenter, but he came of an old Ayrshire family, and had w'se and careful parents. His "carpentary" only amounted to helping his brother-in-law, a" cabinetmaker, during a short period, after which he joined his brother William, who was al» readv established as a London doctor. A rise in life from carpentrv to distinction in art is not at all remarkable in itself, and Romney. 6m of "Honest John Rumney, builder and carpenter, "merely began his art career in his father's workshop, where 'he carved fiddles —an artistic employ. —Original Talents.— Again and again in Dr Smiles's pas;es - an apparently long climb up the ladder of rank and ' fame will be found on examination to be less wonderful than it is made to appear in the pages of "SelfHelp." This is especially the case in those careers in which an original talent is necessary. Without the natural gift no amount of self-help will make a man a fine artist or musician. Yet again and

solved that his son shold rise, and, in fine, that he should be a preacher. Alike from his father, his excellent mother, and from schoolmasters of special reputation, Defoe received every advantage of counsel and training. Yet all that he received, and all that he added by self-help, did not account for "Robinson Crusoe." The truth is that he lacked many of the "self-help'' virtues, and that all through his life his faults of character brought him to grief. To say 01 Milton that he "the eon of a London scrivener,' - and of Pope and Southey that they were "the sons of linen draper?," and of Keats that he was "a druggist," is to contribute nothing to a theory of self-help. Southey t had not to throw off drapery; he was a bookman born, and was educated at Balliol. Pone's father was no ordinary linen draper, but a merchant of substance, and the whole ,-tory of Pope's life is one of self-expression rather than self-help. The "scriven;r of London" dedicated himself to his son's education, and Milton received the best training at, home and abroad that the age could provide. Keats chose his parents well, and his druggist days were soon over: compared with poetry " all other pursuits were to his mind mean and tame." In a word, he was a man less energising than possessed. —T. P.'s Weekly.