Self-Control: Its Kingship and Majesty

William George Jordan

Description

This can be thought of as one of the best precursors to today's self-help books. Books that arouse men to greater hope and spur them on to larger achievement, to self-conquest and the conquest of their particular little world are always welcome. Such a one is this volume of sixteen essays by William George Jordan, under the title Self-Control: Its Kingship and Majesty. These essays are full of such great profound wisdom and truth, presenting a high ideal of life, and abounding in wise and beautiful thoughts, showing what a person may make out of their life!
This is a timeless classic for those who seek self-improvement, success, happiness, creativity, self-reliance & discipline, and the wisdom and knowledge of how to go about it...

Sujets

• Santé et bien-être
• Bien-être émotionnel
• Bien-être émotionnel
• Développement personnel
• Bien-être
• Bien-être
• Bien-être
• Bien-être
• Happiness
• Self-help
• Personal Growth
• développement personnel

Informations

• Publié par: Rare Treasure Editions
• Date de parution: 05 novembre 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 9
• EAN13: 9781774643075
• Langue: English

Extrait

Self-Control: Its Kingship and Majesty
by William George Jordan

First published in 1905
This edition published by Rare Treasures
Victoria, BC Canada with branch offices in the Czech Republic and Germany
[e-mail]
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, except in the case of excerpts by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.
Self-Control: Its Kingship and Majesty

by
William George Jordan

I The Kingship of Self-Control
an has two creators,—hisGod and himself. His firstcreator furnishes him theraw material of his life andthe laws in conformity with which hecan make that life what he will. Hissecond creator,—himself,—has marvellouspowers he rarely realizes. It iswhat a man makes of himself thatcounts.
When a man fails in life he usuallysays, “I am as God made me.” Whenhe succeeds he proudly proclaims himselfa “self-made man.” Man is placedinto this world not as a finality,—butas a possibility. Man’s greatestenemy is,—himself. Man in his weaknessis the creature of circumstances;man in his strength is the creator ofcircumstances. Whether he be victimor victor depends largely on himself.
Man is never truly great merely forwhat he is , but ever for what he maybecome. Until man be truly filled withthe knowledge of the majesty of hispossibility, until there come to him theglow of realization of his privilege tolive the life committed to him, as anindividual life for which he is individuallyresponsible, he is merely gropingthrough the years.
To see his life as he might make it,man must go up alone into the mountainsof spiritual thought as Christwent alone into the Garden, leavingthe world to get strength to live in theworld. He must there breathe thefresh, pure air of recognition of hisdivine importance as an individual,and with mind purified and tinglingwith new strength he must approachthe problems of his daily living.
Man needs less of the “I am afeeble worm of the dust” idea in histheology, and more of the conception“I am a great human soul with marvellouspossibilities” as a vital elementin his daily working religion. Withthis broadening, stimulating view oflife, he sees how he may attain his kingshipthrough self-control. And theself-control that is seen in the mostspectacular instances in history, and inthe simplest phases of daily life, is preciselythe same in kind and in quality,differing only in degree. This controlman can attain, if he only will; it isbut a matter of paying the price.
The power of self-control is one ofthe great qualities that differentiatesman from the lower animals. He isthe only animal capable of a moralstruggle or a moral conquest.
Every step in the progress of theworld has been a new “control.” Ithas been escaping from the tyranny ofa fact, to the understanding andmastery of that fact. For ages manlooked in terror at the lightning flash;to-day he has begun to understand itas electricity, a force he has masteredand made his slave. The million phasesof electrical invention are but manifestationsof our control over a greatforce. But the greatest of all “control”is self-control.
At each moment of man’s life he iseither a King or a slave. As he surrendersto a wrong appetite, to anyhuman weakness; as he falls prostratein hopeless subjection to any condition,to any environment, to any failure, heis a slave. As he day by day crushesout human weakness, masters opposingelements within him, and day byday re-creates a new self from the sinand folly of his past,—then he is aKing. He is a King ruling with wisdomover himself. Alexander conqueredthe whole world except,—Alexander.Emperor of the earth, hewas the servile slave of his ownpassions.
We look with envy upon the possessionsof others and wish they were ourown. Sometimes we feel this in avague, dreamy way with no thought ofreal attainment, as when we wish wehad Queen Victoria’s crown, orEmperor William’s self-satisfaction.Sometimes, however, we grow bitter,storm at the wrong distribution of thegood things of life, and then relapseinto a hopeless fatalistic acceptance ofour condition.
We envy the success of others, whenwe should emulate the process bywhich that success came. We see thesplendid physical development of Sandow,yet we forget that as a babe andchild he was so weak there was littlehope that his life might be spared.
We may sometimes envy the powerand spiritual strength of a Paul, withoutrealizing the weak Saul of Tarsusfrom which he was transformedthrough his self-control.
We shut our eyes to the thousandsof instances of the world’s successes,—mental,moral, physical, financial orspiritual,—wherein the great final successcame from a beginning far weakerand poorer than our own.
Any man may attain self-control ifhe only will. He must not expect togain it save by long continued paymentof price, in small progressiveexpenditures of energy. Nature is athorough believer in the installmentplan in her relations with the individual.No man is so poor that he cannot begin to pay for what he wants,and every small, individual paymentthat he makes, Nature stores and accumulatesfor him as a reserve fund inhis hour of need.
The patience man expends in bearingthe little trials of his daily lifeNature stores for him as a wondrousreserve in a crisis of life. With Nature,the mental, the physical or themoral energy he expends daily in right-doingis all stored for him and transmutedinto strength. Nature neveraccepts a cash payment in full for anything,—thiswould be an injustice tothe poor and to the weak.
It is only the progressive installmentplan Nature recognizes. No mancan make a habit in a moment or breakit in a moment. It is a matter ofdevelopment, of growth. But at anymoment man may begin to make orbegin to break any habit. This view ofthe growth of character should be amighty stimulus to the man who sincerelydesires and determines to livenearer to the limit of his possibilities.
Self-control may be developed inprecisely the same manner as we toneup a weak muscle,—by little exercisesday by day. Let us each day do, asmere exercises of discipline in moralgymnastics, a few acts that are disagreeableto us, the doing of which willhelp us in instant action in our hour ofneed. The exercises may be verysimple—dropping for a time an intenselyinteresting book at the mostthrilling page of the story; jumpingout of bed at the first moment of waking;walking home when one is perfectlyable to do so, but when thetemptation is to take a car; talking tosome disagreeable person and trying tomake the conversation pleasant. Thesedaily exercises in moral discipline willhave a wondrous tonic effect on man’swhole moral nature.
The individual can attain self-controlin great things only through self-controlin little things. He must studyhimself to discover what is the weakpoint in his armor, what is the elementwithin him that ever keeps him fromhis fullest success. This is the characteristicupon which he should begin hisexercise in self-control. Is it selfishness,vanity, cowardice, morbidness,temper, laziness, worry, mind-wandering,lack of purpose?—whatever formhuman weakness assumes in the masqueradeof life he must discover. Hemust then live each day as if his wholeexistence were telescoped down to thesingle day before him. With no uselessregret for the past, no uselessworry for the future, he should livethat day as if it were his only day,—theonly day left for him to assert allthat is best in him, the only day leftfor him to conquer all that is worst inhim. He should master the weak elementwithin him at each slight manifestationfrom moment to moment.Each moment then must be a victoryfor it or for him. Will he be King, orwill he be slave?—the answer rests withhim.
II The Crimes of the Tongue
he second most deadly instrumentof destruction isthe dynamite gun,—the firstis the human tongue. Thegun merely kills bodies; the tonguekills reputations and, ofttimes, ruinscharacters. Each gun works alone;each loaded tongue has a hundredaccomplices. The havoc of the gun isvisible at once. The full evil of thetongue lives through all the years; eventhe eye of Omniscience might growtired in tracing it to its finality.
The crimes of the tongue are wordsof unkindness, of anger, of malice, ofenvy, of bitterness, of harsh criticism,gossip, lying and scandal. Theft andmurder are awful crimes, yet in anysingle year the aggregate sorrow, painand suffering they cause in a nation ismicroscopic when compared with thesorrows that come from the crimes ofthe tongue. Place in one of the scale-pansof Justice the evils resulting fromthe acts of criminals, and in the otherthe grief and tears and sufferingresulting from the crimes of respectability,and you will start back inamazement as you see the scale youthought the heavier shoot high inair.
At the hands of thief or murdererfew of us suffer, even indirectly. Butfrom the careless tongue of friend, thecruel tongue of enemy, who is free?No human being can live a life so true,so fair, so pure as to be beyond thereach of malice, or immune from thepoisonous emanations of envy. Theinsidious attacks against one’s reputation,the loathsome innuendoes, slurs,half-lies, by which jealous mediocrityseeks to ruin its superiors, are like thoseinsect parasites that kill the heart andlife of a mighty oak. So cowardly isthe method, so stealthy the shooting ofthe poisoned thorns, so insignificant theseparate acts in their seeming, that oneis not on guard against them. It iseasier to dodge an elephant than amicrobe.
In London they have recentlyformed an Anti-Scandal League. Themembers promise to combat in everyway in their power “the prevalent customof talking scandal, the terrible andunending consequences of which arenot generally estimated.”
Scandal is one of the crimes of thetongue, but it is only one. Every individualwho breathes a word