INDIVIDUAL CHARACTER.

BY

WM. A. OBENCHAIN.

"The great hope of society is individual character."-Channing.

HE world acknowledges two

lords: character and genius, or, to give

the word a broader meaning, character and intellect.

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Character may be and should be a common possession; genius is occasional and rare. Character must be acquired; genius is innate. Character is a plain, everyday fact; genius a mystery, like the wind, whose sound we hear, but can not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth. Character is the foundation of the social structure; genius is non-essential and dependent. To obscure character, when its excellencies are pointed out, we give a tardy and discriminating admiration; genuis we worship. Splendidly self-assertive, it triumphs over our ignorance, stupidity and base envy, and compels our homage. The development of character is too seldom insisted upon; the development of intellect is made the end of existence.

Never was life so full of opportunities for self-culture as it is to-day. Such a thing as undeveloped talent cannot be in this age when science, art and literature, in myriad forms,

are sounding a reveille to every dormant faculty of the soul. Yet it has remained for this busy and cultured generation to ask the question, "Is life worth living?" and to answer it with a scornful negative. Weariness of soul, weariness of flesh, suicide, madness,-these are too often the bitter endings of lives that apparently were filled with all good. Life is not the glorious thing it should be. There is disappointment where there should be content; failure instead of success; anxiety instead of peace; despair instead of faith. Why is it? Alas! we have forgotten, if indeed we ever knew, that the divine secret of peace is in being, not in doing! The parable of the talents is the scriptural lesson most heeded by this restless age, while the command "Be ye perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect " is set aside as impracticable.

I have gathered here a few thoughts from the wisdom of the ages. I have looked into my own life and into the lives of others, and I declare to you, speaking with no human authority, that perfection of character is the true end of life, and the only attainment that can satisfy the soul.

Some one has remarked, that we are not able to say what a thing is so forcibly as by saying what it is not. So, in defining the word character, I say first of all that character is not nature; and a confusion of the two terms will lead to mischievous error. Thus, "Character," says Voltaire, "is what nature has engraven in us; can we then efface it ?"

"Should anyone

anyone tell you that a mountain had changed its place, you are at liberty to doubt it," says Mahomet; “but if anyone tells you that a man has changed his character, do not

believe it."

These expressions indicate the most dangerous form of that Eastern fatalism which, in a drapery of theological phrase, is a cherished part of many religious creeds, and, in the shape of ready aphorism, is found on the lips of every nation.

"Che sara sara," (Whatever will be, will be), is the Italian version.

"What fates impose, that men must needs abide," says Shakespeare.

"What must be, shall be," says Seneca.

And Marcus Antoninus declares with all the lofty calm of a philosopher: "Whatever may happen to thee, it was prepared for thee from all eternity; and the implication of causes was from eternity spinning the thread of thy being and of that which is incident to it."

I know not how others may be affected by such utterances, but to me they are like chains hung about my very soul.

It is not my purpose to enter into a discussion of predestination or of free-will. I can not measure exactly the extent to which hereditary influences determine a person's character, nor the scope of that "divinity that shapes our ends." I have only a few earnest words, to counteract, if possible, the paralyzing effect of such devil's maxims as I have quoted above.

It is of small consequence that a man believes in fatalism in material matters, but in the moral world and in the management of his own nature it is essential that he realize his power and freedom. "A strict belief in fate is the worst of slavery." "All things are in fate, yet all things are not decreed by fate." One's nature is indeed inborn. By the operations of heredity, or fate, if you like, the infant just breathing its first breath or uttering its first cry, has a certain nature; but what its character is to be depends upon a thousand things—parental training, finite circumstances, and, above all, its own will. For character is the product which man's infinite will, gov erned by some circumstances, and triumphing over others, evolves from his crude nature. Fate gives him a nature, but free-will creates his character, and a will that labors toward perfection can not but be both free and infinite, since it is

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