Man may
overcome both heredity and circumstances by exercising the inherent creative
power of the soul. If he is to become great, the soul must act, and must rule
the mind and the body.
Man’s
knowledge is limited, and he falls into error through ignorance; to avoid this
he must connect his soul with Universal Spirit. Universal Spirit is the
intelligent substance from which all things come; it is in and through all
things. All things are known to this universal mind, and man can so unite
himself with it as to enter into all knowledge.
To do
this man must cast out of himself everything that separates him from God. He
must will to live the divine life, and he must rise above all moral
temptations; he must forsake every course of action that is not in accord with
his highest ideals.
He must
reach the right viewpoint, recognizing that God is all, in all, and that there
is nothing wrong. He must see that nature, society, government, and industry
are perfect in their present stage, and advancing toward completion; and that
all men and women everywhere are good and perfect. He must know that all is
right with the world, and unite with God for the completion of the perfect
work. It is only as man sees God as the Great Advancing Presence in all, and
good in all that he can rise to real greatness.
He must
consecrate himself to the service of the highest that is within himself,
obeying the voice of the soul. There is an Inner Light in every man that
continuously impels him toward the highest, and he must be guided by this light
if he would become great.
He must
recognize the fact that he is one with the Father, and consciously affirm this
unity for himself and for all others. He must know himself to be a god among
gods, and act accordingly. He must have absolute faith in his own perceptions
of truth, and begin at home to act upon these perceptions. As he sees the true
and right course in small things, he must take that course. He must cease to
act unthinkingly, and begin to think; and he must be sincere in his thought.
He must
form a mental conception of himself at the highest, and hold this conception
until it is his habitual thought-form of himself. This thought-form he must
keep continuously in view. He must outwardly realize and express that
thought-form in his actions. He must do everything that he does in a great way.
In dealing with his family, his neighbors, acquaintances, and friends, he must
make every act an expression of his ideal. The man who reaches the right
viewpoint and makes full consecration, and who fully idealizes himself as
great, and who makes every act, however trivial, an expression of the ideal,
has already attained to greatness. Everything he does will be done in a great
way. He will make himself known, and will be recognized as a personality of
power. He will receive knowledge by inspiration, and will know all that he
needs to know. He will receive all the material wealth he forms in his
thoughts, and will not lack for any good thing. He will be given ability to
deal with any combination of circumstances that may arise, and his growth and
progress will be continuous and rapid.
Great
works will seek him out, and all men will delight to do him honor. Because of
its peculiar value to the student of the Science of Being Great, I close this
book by giving a portion of Emerson’s essay on the “Oversoul.” This great essay
is fundamental, showing the foundation principles of monism and the science of
greatness. I recommend the student to study it most carefully in connection
with this book.
What is
the universal sense of want and ignorance, but the fine innuendo by which the
great soul makes its enormous claim? Why do men feel that the natural history
of man has never been written, but always he is leaving behind what you have
said of him, and it becomes old, and books of metaphysics worthless? The
philosophy of six thousand years has not searched the chambers and magazines of
the soul. In its experiments there has always remained, in the last analysis, a
residuum it could not resolve. Man is a stream whose source is hidden.
Always
our being is descending into us from we know not whence. The most exact
calculator has no prescience that somewhat incalculable may not balk the very
next moment. I am constrained every moment to acknowledge a higher origin for events
than the will I call mine.
As with
events, so it is with thoughts. When I watch that flowing river, which, out of
regions I see not, pours for a season its streams into me, -I see that I am a
pensioner, -not a cause, but a surprised spectator of this ethereal water; that
I desire and look up, and put myself in the attitude for reception, but from
some alien energy the visions come.
The
Supreme Critic on all the errors of the past and present, and the only prophet
of that which must be, is that great nature in which we rest, as the earth lies
in the soft arms of the atmosphere; that Unity, that Oversoul, with which every
man’s particular being is contained and made one with all other; that common
heart, of which all sincere conversation is the worship, to which all right
action is submission; that overpowering reality which confutes our tricks and
talents, and constrains everyone to pass for what he is, and to speak from his
character and not from his tongue; and which evermore tends and aims to pass into
our thought and hand, and become wisdom, and virtue, and power, and beauty. We
live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles.
Meantime
within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to
which every part and particle is equally related, the eternal One. And this
deep power in which we exist, and whose beatitude is all-accessible to us, is
not only self- sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing, and
the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, are
one. We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the
tree; but the whole, of which these are the shining parts, is the soul.
It is
only by the vision of that Wisdom, that the horoscope of the ages can be read,
and it is only by falling back on our better thoughts, by yielding to the
spirit of prophecy which is innate in every man, that we know what it saith.
Every man s words, who speaks from that life, must sound vain to those who do
not dwell in the same thought on their own part. I dare not speak for it. My
words do not carry its august sense; they fall short and cold. Only itself can
inspire whom it will, and behold! Their speech shall he lyrical and sweet, and
universal as the rising of the wind.
Yet I
desire, even by profane words, if sacred I may not use, to indicate the heaven
of this deity, and to report what hints I have collected of the transcendent
simplicity and energy of the Highest Law.
If we
consider what happens in conversation, in reveries, in remorse, in times of
passion, in surprises, in the instruction of dreams wherein often we see
ourselves in masquerade, -the droll disguises only magnifying and enhancing a
real element, and forcing it on our distinct notice, -we shall catch many hints
that will broaden and lighten into knowledge of the secret of nature. All goes
to show that the soul in man is not an organ, but animates and exercises all
the organs; is not a function, like the power of memory, of calculation, of
comparison, -but uses these as hands and feet; is not a faculty, but a light;
is not the intellect or the will, but the master of the intellect and the will;
- is the vast background of our being, in which they lie,-an immensity not
possessed and that cannot be possessed.
From
within or from behind, a light shines through us upon things, and makes us
aware that we are nothing, but the light is all. A man is the facade of a
temple wherein all wisdom and all good abide. What we commonly call man, the
eating, drinking, planting, counting man, does not, as we know him, represent
himself, but misrepresents himself. Him we do not respect, but the soul, whose
organ he is, would he let it appear through his action, would make our knees
bend. When it breathes through his intellect, it is genius; when it flows
through his affection it is love.
After its
own law and not by arithmetic is the rate of its progress to be computed. The
soul’s advances are not made by gradation, such as can be represented by motion
in a straight line; but rather by ascension of state, such as can be
represented by metamorphosis,-from the egg to the worm, from the worm to the
fly.
The
growths of genius are of a certain total character, that does not advance the
elect individual first over John, then Adam, then Richard, and give to each the
pain of discovered inferiority, but by every throe of growth the man expands
there where he works, passing, at each pulsation, classes, populations of men.
With each divine impulse the mind rends the thin rinds of the visible and
finite, and comes out into eternity, and inspires and expires its air.
This is
the law of moral and of mental gain. The simple rise, as by specific levity,
not into a particular virtue, but into the region of all the virtues. They are
in the spirit that contains them all. The soul is superior to all the
particulars of merit. The soul requires purity, but purity is not it; requires
justice, but justice is not that; requires beneficence, but is somewhat better;
so that there is a kind of descent and accommodation felt when we leave
speaking of moral nature, to urge a virtue which it en joins.
For, to
the soul in her pure action, all the virtues are natural, and not painfully
acquired. Speak to his heart and the man becomes suddenly virtuous. Within the
same sentiment is the germ of intellectual growth, which obeys the same law.
Those who are capable of humility, of justice, of love, of aspiration, are
already on a platform that commands the sciences and arts, speech and poetry,
action and grace. For whoso dwells in this mortal beatitude, does already
anticipate those special powers which men prize so highly; just as love does
justice to all the gifts of the object beloved.
The lover
has no talent, no skill, which passes for quite nothing with his enamored maiden,
however little she may possess of related faculty. And the heart that abandons
itself to the Supreme Mind finds itself related to all its works and will
travel a royal road to particular knowledge and powers. For, in ascending to
this primary and aboriginal sentiment, we have come from our remote station on
the circumference instantaneously to the center of the world, where, as in the
closet of God, we see causes, and anticipate the universe, which is but a slow
effect.