Newell Dwight Hillis - The Investment of Influence

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The Investment of Influence

A Study of Social Sympathy and Service

Newell Dwight Hillis

Author of "A Man's Value to Society," "Foretokens of Immortality," Etc.

NEW YORK CHICAGO TORONTO

Fleming H. Revell Company

LONDON AND EDINBURGH

MCMXII

Copyright 1897

By Fleming H. Revell Company.

New York: 158 Fifth Avenue Chicago: 125 North Wabash Ave. Toronto: 25
Richmond Street, W. London: 21 Paternoster Square Edinburgh: 100
Princes Street

DEDICATION

Many years have now passed since we first met. During all this time
you have been an unfailing guide and helper. Your friendship has
doubled life's joys and halved its sorrows. You have strengthened me
where I was weak and weakened me where I was too strong. You have
borne my burdens and lent me strength to bear my own.

Because I have learned from you in example, what I here teach in
precept, I dedicate this book

TO YOU

--whether toiling in field or forum,
in home or market place,

TO YOU--MY FRIEND

FOREWORD.

The glory of our fathers was their emphasis of the principle of
self-care and self-culture. Finding that he who first made the most of
himself was best fitted to make something of others, the teachers of
yesterday unceasingly plied men with motives of personal
responsibility. Influenced by the former generation, our age has
organized the principle of individualism into its home, its school, its
market-place and forum. By reason of the increase in gold, books,
travel and personal luxuries, some now feel that selfness is beginning
to degenerate into selfishness. The time, therefore, seems to have
fully come when the principle of self-care should receive its
complement through the principle of care for others. These chapters
assert the debt of wealth to poverty, the debt of wisdom to ignorance,
the debt of strength to weakness. If "A Man's Value to Society"
affirms the duty of self-culture and character, these studies emphasize
the law of social sympathy and social service.

Newell Dwight Hillis.

CONTENTS.

CHAP.

I Influence, and the Atmosphere Man Carries

II Life's Great Hearts, and the Helpfulness
of the Higher Manhood

III The Investment of Talent and Its Return

IV Vicarious Lives as Instruments of Social Progress

V Genius, and the Debt of Strength

VI The Time Element in Individual Character
and Social Growth

VII The Supremacy of Heart Over Brain

VIII Renown Through Self-Renunciation

IX The Gentleness of True Gianthood

X The Thunder of Silent Fidelity: a Study
of the Influence of Little Things

XI Influence, and the Strategic Element in Opportunity

XII Influence, and the Principle of Reaction
in Life and Character

XIII The Love that Perfects Life

XIV Hope's Harvest, and the Far-off Interest of Tears

INFLUENCE, AND THE ATMOSPHERE MAN CARRIES.

"I do not believe the world is dying for new ideas. A teacher has a
high place amongst us, but someone is wanted here and abroad far more
than a teacher. It is power we need, power that shall help us to solve
our practical problems, power that shall help us to realize a high,
individual, spiritual life, power that shall make us daring enough to
act out all we have seen in vision, all we have learnt in principle
from Jesus Christ."--_Charles A. Berry_.

"And Saul sent messengers to take David: and when they saw the company
of prophets prophesying, and Samuel standing as appointed over them,
the Spirit of God was upon the messengers of Saul, and they also
prophesied. And when it was told Saul, he sent other messengers and
they prophesied likewise. And Saul sent messengers again the third
time, and they prophesied also. Then went Saul to Ramah, and he said,
Where are Samuel and David? And one said, Behold they be at Naioth.
And Saul went thither, and the Spirit of God came on him also and he
prophesied. Wherefore man said: Is Saul also among the
prophets?"--_I. Samuel, xix, 20-21_.

CHAPTER I.

INFLUENCE, AND THE ATMOSPHERE MAN CARRIES.

Nature's forces carry their atmosphere. The sun gushes forth light
unquenchable; coals throw off heat; violets are larger in influence
than bulb; pomegranates and spices crowd the house with sweet odors.
Man also has his atmosphere. He is a force-bearer and a
force-producer. He journeys forward, exhaling influences. Scientists
speak of the magnetic circle. Artists express the same idea by the
halo of light emanating from the divine head. Business men understand
this principle, those skilled in promoting great enterprises bring the
men to be impressed into a room and create an atmosphere around them.
In measuring Kossuth's influence over the multitudes that thronged and
pressed upon him the historian said: "We must first reckon with the
orator's physical bulk and then carry the measuring-line about his
atmosphere."

Thinking of the evil emanating from a bad man, Bunyan made Apollyon's
nostrils emit flames. Edward Everett insists that Daniel Webster's
eyes during his greatest speech literally emitted sparks. Had we tests
fine enough we would doubtless find each man's personality the center
of outreaching influences. He himself may be utterly unconscious of
this exhalation of moral forces, as he is of the contagion of disease
from his body. But if light is in him he shines; if darkness rules he
shades, if his heart glows with love he warms; if frozen with
selfishness he chills; if corrupt he poisons; if pure-hearted he
cleanses. We watch with wonder the apparent flight of the sun through
space, glowing upon dead planets, shortening winter and bringing
summer, with birds, leaves and fruits. But that is not half so
wonderful as the passage of a human heart, glowing and sparkling with
ten thousand effects, as it moves through life. The soul, like the
sun, has its atmosphere, and is over against its fellows, for light,
warmth and transformation.

All great writers have had their incident of the atmosphere their hero
carried. Centuries ago King Saul sent his officers to arrest a seer
who had publicly indicted the tyrant for outbreaking sins. When the
soldier entered the prophet's presence he was so profoundly affected by
the majesty of his character that he forgot the commission and his
lord's command, asking rather to become the good man's protector.
Likewise with the second group of soldiers--coming to arrest, they
remained to befriend. Then the King's anger was exceedingly hot
against him who had become a conscience for the throne. Rushing forth
from his palace, like an angry lion from his lair, the King sought the
place where this man of God was teaching the people. But, lo! when the
King entered the brave man's presence his courage, fidelity and
integrity overcame Saul and conquered him unto confession of his
wickedness. Just here we may remember that stout-hearted Pilate, with
a legion of mailed soldiers to protect him, trembled and quaked before
his silent prisoner. And King Agrippa on his throne was afraid, when
Paul lifting his chains, fronted him with words of righteousness and
judgment. Carlyle says that in 1848, during the riot in Paris, the mob
swept down a street blazing with cannon, killed the soldiers, spiked
the guns, only to be stopped a few blocks beyond by an old,
white-haired man who uncovered and signaled for silence. Then the
leader of the mob said: "Citizens, it is De la Eure. Sixty years of
pure life is about to address you!" A true man's presence transformed
a mob that cannon could not conquer.

Montaigne's illustration of atmosphere was Julius Caesar. When the
great Roman was still a youth, he was captured by pirates and chained
to the oars as a galley-slave; but Caesar told stories, sang songs,
declaimed with endless good humor. Chains bound Caesar to the oars,
and his words bound the pirates to himself. That night he supped with
the captain. The second day his knowledge of currents, coasts and the
route of treasure-ships made him first mate; then he won the sailors
over, put the captain in irons, and ruled the ship like a king; soon
after, he sailed the ship as a prize into a Roman port. If this
incident is credible, a youth who in four days can talk the chains off
his wrists, talk himself into the captaincy, talk a pirate ship into
his own hands as booty, is not to be accounted for by his eloquent
words. His speech was but a tithe of his power, and wrought its spell
only when personality had first created a sympathetic atmosphere. Only
a fraction of a great man's character can manifest itself in speech;
for the character is inexpressibly finer and larger than his words.
The narrative of Washington's exploits is the smallest part of his
work. Sheer weight of personality alone can account for him. Happy
the man of moral energy all compact, whose mere presence, like that of
Samuel, the seer, restrains others, softens and transforms them. This
is a thing to be written on a man's tomb: "_His presence made bad men
good._"

This mysterious bundle of forces called man, moving through society,
exhaling blessings or blightings, gets its meaning from the capacity of
others to receive its influences. Man is not so wonderful in his power
to mold other lives, as in his readiness to be molded. Steel to hold,
he is wax to take. The Daguerrean plate and the Aeolian harp do but
meagerly interpret his receptivity. Therefore, some philosophers think
character is but the sum total of those many-shaped influences called
climate, food, friends, books, industries. As a lump of clay is lifted
to the wheel by the potter's hand, and under gentle pressure takes on
the lines of a beautiful cup or vase, so man sets forth a mere mass of
mind; soon, under the gentle touch of love, hope, ambition, he stands
forth in the aspect of a Cromwell, a Milton or a Lincoln.

Standing at the center of the universe, a thousand forces come rushing
in to report themselves to the sensitive soul-center. There is a nerve
in man that runs out to every room and realm in the universe. Only a
tithe of the world's truth and beauty finds access to the lion or lark;
they look out as one in castle tower whose only window is a slit in the
rock. But man dwells in a glass dome; to him the world lies open on
every side. Every fact and force outside has a desk inside man where
it makes up its reports. The ear reports all sounds and songs; the eye
all sights and scenes; the reason all arguments, judgment each "ought"
and "ought not," the religious faculty reports messages coming from a
foreign clime.

Man's mechanism stands at the center of the universe with
telegraph-lines extending in every direction. It is a marvelous
pilgrimage he is making through life while myriad influences stream in
upon him. It is no small thing to carry such a mind for three-score
years under the glory of the heavens, through the glory of the earth,
midst the majesty of the summer and the sanctity of the winter, while
all things animate and inanimate rush in through open windows. For one
thus sensitively constituted every moment trembles with possibilities;
every hour is big with destiny. The neglected blow cannot afterward be
struck on the cold iron; once the stamp is given to the soft metal it
cannot be effaced. Well did Ruskin say; "Take your vase of Venice
glass out of the furnace and strew chaff over it in its transparent
heat, and recover that to its clearness and rubied glory when the north
wind has blown upon it; but do not think to strew chaff over the child
fresh from God's presence and to bring the heavenly colors back to
him--at least in this world." We are accountable to God for our
influence; this it is "that gives us pause."

Gentle as is the atmosphere about us, it presses with a weight of
fourteen pounds to the square inch. No infant's hand feels its weight;
no leaf of aspen or wing of bird detects this heavy pressure, for the
fluid air presses equally in all directions. Just so gentle, yet
powerful, is the moral atmosphere of a good man as it presses upon and
shapes his kind. He who hath made man in his own image hath endowed
him with this forceful presence. Ten-talent men, eminent in knowledge
and refinement, eminent in art and wealth, do, indeed, illustrate this.
Proof also comes from obscurity, as pearls from homely oyster shells.
Working among the poor of London, an English author searched out the
life-career of an apple woman. Her history makes the story of kings
and queens contemptible. Events had appointed her to poverty, hunger,
cold and two rooms in a tenement. But there were three orphan boys
sleeping in an ash-box whose lot was harder. She dedicated her heart
and life to the little waifs. During two and forty years she mothered
and reared some twenty orphans--gave them home and bed and food; taught
them all she knew; helped some to obtain a scant knowledge of the
trades; helped others off to Canada and America. The author says she
had misshapen features, but that an exquisite smile was on the dead
face. It must have been so. She "had a beautiful soul," as Emerson
said of Longfellow. Poverty disfigured the apple woman's garret, and
want made it wretched, nevertheless, God's most beautiful angels
hovered over it. Her life was a blossom event in London's history.
Social reform has felt her influence. Like a broken vase the perfume
of her being will sweeten literature and society a thousand years after
we are gone.

The Greek poet says men knew when the goddess came to Thebes because of
the blessings she left in her track. Her footprints were not in the
sea, soon obliterated, nor in the snow, quickly melting, but in fields
and forests. This unseen friend, passing by the tree blackened by a
thunderbolt, stayed her step; lo! the woodbine sprang up and covered
the tree's nakedness. She lingered by the stagnant pool--the pool
became a flowing spring. She rested upon a fallen log--from decay and
death came moss, the snowdrop and the anemone. At the crossing of the
brook were her footprints; not in mud downward, but in violets that
sprang up in her pathway. O beautiful prophecy! literally fulfilled
2,000 years afterward in the life of the London apple woman, whose
atmosphere sweetened bitter hearts and made evil into good.

Wealth and eminent position witness not less powerfully the
transforming influence of exalted characters. "My lords," said
Salisbury, "the reforms of this century have been chiefly due to the
presence here of one man--Lord Shaftesbury. The genius of his life was
expressed when last he addressed you. He said: 'When I feel age
creeping upon me I am deeply grieved, for I cannot bear to go away and
leave the world with so much misery in it.'" So long as Shaftesbury
lived, England beheld a standing rebuke of all wrong and injustice.
How many iniquities shriveled up in his presence! This man,
representing the noblest ancestry, wealth and culture, wrought
numberless reforms. He became a voice for the poor and weak. He gave
his life to reform acts and corn laws; he emancipated the enslaved boys
and girls toiling in mines and factories; he exposed and made
impossible the horrors of that inferno in which chimney-sweeps live; he
founded twoscore industrial, ragged and trade schools; he established
shelters for the homeless poor; when Parliament closed its sessions at
midnight Lord Shaftesbury went forth to search out poor prodigals
sleeping under Waterloo or Blackfriars bridge, and often in a single
night brought a score to his shelter. When the funeral cortege passed
through Pall Mall and Trafalgar square on its way to Westminster Abbey,
the streets for a mile and a half were packed with innumerable
thousands. The costermongers lifted a large banner on which were
inscribed these words: "I was sick and in prison and ye visited me."
The boys from the ragged schools lifted these words; "I was hungry and
naked and ye fed me." All England felt the force of that colossal
character. To-day at that central point in Piccadilly where the
highways meet and thronging multitudes go surging by, the English
people have erected the statue of Shaftesbury--the fitting motto
therefor; "The reforms of this century have been chiefly due to the
presence and influence of Shaftesbury." If our generation is indeed
held back from injustice and anarchy and bloodshed, it will be because
Shaftesbury the peer, and Samuel, the seer, are duplicated in the lives
of our great men, who stand forth to plead the cause of the poor and
weak.

But man's atmosphere is equally potent to blight and to shrivel. Not
time, but man, is the great destroyer. History is full of the ruins of
cities and empires. "Innumerable Paradises have come and gone; Adams
and Eves many," happy one day, have been "miserable exiles" the next;
and always because some satanic ambition or passion or person entering
has cast baneful shadow o'er the scene. Men talk of the scythe of time
and the tooth of time. But, said the art historian: "Time is
scytheless and toothless; it is we who gnaw like the worm; we who smite
like the scythe. Fancy what treasures would be ours to-day if the
delicate statues and temples of the Greeks, if the broad roads and
massy walls of the Romans, if the noble architecture, castles and towns
of the Middle Ages had not been ground to dust by blind rage of man.
It is man that is the consumer; he is moth and mildew and flame." All
the galleries and temples and libraries and cities have been destroyed
by his baneful presence. Thrice armies have made an arsenal of the
Acropolis; ground the precious marbles to powder, and mixed their dust
with his ashes. It was man's ax and hammer that dashed down the carved
work of cathedrals and turned the treasure cities into battle-fields,
and opened galleries to the mold of sea winds. Disobedience to law has
made cities a heap and walled cities ruins. Man is the pestilence that
walketh in darkness. Man is the destruction that wasteth at noonday.

When Mephistopheles appears in human form his presence falls upon homes
like the black pall of the consuming plague, that robes cities for
death. The classic writer tells of an Indian princess sent as a
present to Alexander the Great. She was lovely as the dawn; yet what
especially distinguished her was a certain rich perfume in her breath;
richer than a garden of Persian roses. A sage physician discovered her
terrible secret. This lovely woman had been reared upon poisons from
infancy until she herself was the deadliest poison known. When a
handful of sweet flowers was given to her, her bosom scorched and
shriveled the petals; when the rich perfume of her breath went among a
swarm of insects, a score fell dead about her. A pet humming-bird
entering her atmosphere, shuddered, hung for a moment in the air, then
dropped in its final agony. Her love was poison; her embrace death.
This tale has held a place in literature because it stands for men of
evil all compact, whose presence has consumed integrities and exhaled
iniquities. Happily the forces that bless are always more numerous and
more potent than those that blight. Cast a bushel of chaff and one
grain of wheat into the soil and nature will destroy all the chaff but
cause the one grain of wheat to usher in rich harvests.

As a force-producer, man's primary influence is voluntary in nature.
This is the capacity of purposely bringing all the soul's powers to
bear upon society. It is the foundation of all instruction. The
parent influences the child this way or that. The artist-master plies
his pupil. The brave general or discoverer inspires and stimulates his
men by multiform motives. The charioteer holds the reins, guides his
steeds, restrains or lifts the scourge. Similarly man holds the reins
of influence over man, and is himself in turn guided. So friend shapes
and molds friend. This is what gives its meaning to conversation,
oratory, journalism, reforms. Each man stands at the center of a great
network of voluntary influence for good. Through words, bearing and
gesture, he sends out his energies. Oftentimes a single speech has
effected great reforms. Oft one man's act has deflected the stream of
the centuries. Full oft a single word has been like a switch that
turns a train from the route running toward the frozen North, to a
track leading into the tropic South.

Not seldom has a youth been turned from the way of integrity by the
influence of a single friend. Endowed as man is, the weight of his
being effects the most astonishing results. Witness Stratton's
conversation with the drunken bookbinder whom we know as John B. Gough,
the apostle of temperance. Witness Moffat's words that changed David
Livingstone, the weaver, into David Livingstone, the savior of Africa.
Witness Garibaldi's words fashioning the Italian mob into the
conquering army. Witness Garrison and Beecher and Phillips and John
Bright. Rivers, winds, forces of fire and steam are impotent compared
to those energies of mind and heart, that make men equal to
transforming whole communities and even nations. Who can estimate the
soul's conscious power? Who can measure the light and heat of last
summer? Who can gather up the rays of the stars? Who can bring
together the odors of last year's orchards? There are no mathematics
for computing the influence of man's voluntary thought, affection and
aspiration upon his fellows.

Man has also an unpurposed influence. Power goes forth without his
distinct volition. Like all centers of energy, the soul does its best
work automatically. The sun does not think of lifting the mist from
the ocean, yet the vapor moves skyward. Often man is ignorant of what
he accomplishes upon his fellows, but the results are the same. He is
surcharged with energy. Accomplishing much by plan, he does more
through unconscious weight of personality. In wonder-words we are told
the apostle purposely wrought deeds of mercy upon the poor. Yet
through his shadow falling on the weak and sick as he passed by, he
unconsciously wrought health and hope in men. In like manner it is
said that while Jesus Christ was seeking to comfort the comfortless,
involuntarily virtue went out of him to strengthen one who did but
touch the hem of his garment. Character works with or without consent.
The selfish man fills his office with a malign atmosphere; his very
presence chills like a cold, clammy day. Suspicious people fill all
the circle in which they live with envy and jealousy. Moody men
distribute gloom and depression; hopelessness drains off high spirits
as cold iron draws the heat from the hand. Domineering men provoke
rebellion and breed endless irritations.

Great hearts there are also among men; they carry a volume of manhood;
their presence is sunshine, their coming changes our climate; they oil
the bearings of life; their shadow always falls behind them; they make
right living easy. Blessed are the happiness-makers!--they represent
the best forces in civilization. They are to the heart and home what
the honeysuckle is to the door over which it clings. These embodied
gospels interpret Christianity. Jenny Lind explains a sheet of printed
music--and a royal Christian heart explains, and is more than a creed.
Little wonder, when Christianity is incarnated in a mother, that the
youth worships her as though she were an angel. Someone has likened a
church full of people to a box of unlighted candles; latent light is
there; if they were only kindled and set burning they would be lights
indeed. What God asks for is luminous Christians and living gospels.

Another form of influence continues after death, and may be called
unconscious immortality or conserved social energy. Personality is
organized into instruments, tools, books, institutions. Over these
forms of activity death and years have no power for destroying. The
swift steamboat and the flying train tell us that Watt and Stephenson
are still toiling for men. Every foreign cablegram reminds us that
Cyrus Field has just returned home. The merchant who organizes a great
business sends down to the generations his personality, prudence,
wisdom and executive skill. The names of inventors may now be on
moldering tombstones, but their busy fingers are still weaving warm
textures for the world's poor. The gardener of Hampton court, who, in
old age, wished to do yet one more helpful deed, and planted with elms
and oaks the roadway leading to the historic house, still lives in
those columnar trees, and all the long summer through distributes
comfort and refreshment. Every man who opens up a roadway into the
wilderness; every engineer throwing a bridge over icy rivers for weary
travelers; every builder rearing abodes of peace, happiness and
refinement for his generation; every smith forging honest plates that
hold great ships in time of storm, every patriot that redeems his land
with blood; every martyr forgotten and dying in his dungeon that
freedom might never perish; every teacher and discoverer who has gone
into lands of fever and miasma to carry liberty, intelligence and
religion to the ignorant, still walks among men, working for society
and is unconsciously immortal.

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