Character

As I get older I have increasingly been preoccupied with a personal concern for the importance of going out of this life with a refined character. This has been a concern for as long as I can remember (even my doctoral dissertation, twenty-seven years ago, was on character education), but it seems to be an imperative now. Maybe it is because of what I have been reading: Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo; Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Essays; the biography of Neal A. Maxwell; the Psalms and Proverbs and the life of Paul in the Bible; reflection on the teachings and character of Jesus and some of the prophets of the Book of Mormon; the noble or ideal man of Confucian thought. Or, maybe what I have been reading has been influenced by what I have been thinking—and if so, that is good.

Thomas d Kempis (The Imitation of Christ) recognized the struggle of such a focus: “Who hath a harder battle to fight than he who striveth for self-mastery? And this should be our endeavor, even to master self, and thus daily to grow stronger than self and go on unto perfection.” Socrates concurred: “We cannot live better than in seeking to become better.” The outcome of a life-time of striving should be an acceptable human being: “Goodness is richer than greatness. It consists not in the outward things we do, but in the inward thing we are.” (Edwin Hubble Chapin)

Though I have to strive daily for this ideal (yet I find joy in the striving) it is apparent that there are some noble souls that seem to come to this earth already well-furnished. I have known a man, Gerald Herbert Lindsey, who seemed to be such a soul. C. S. Lewis has said that there are a few of this caliber of men around and as we accrete some of their qualities we will find them for there is likely to be a mutual attraction.

In the scriptural book of Abraham, the Lord Jehovah shows Abraham: “many of the noble and great ones…who were good; and he said unto me: Abraham, thou art one of them; thou wast chosen before thou wast born.” This man, and others, came, as the poet Wordsworth said, “…trailing clouds of glory” to this earth to mingle with the rest of us.—to serve us and to give us the example of the higher life.

The American 19th Century philosopher-poet Ralph Waldo Emerson was such a man in our history. I have been especially intrigued by two of Emerson’s essays, The Over-Soul and Character in which he acknowledged by name some men who had this ineffable quality: “I have read [he said] that those who listened to Lord Chatham felt that there was something finer in the man than anything which he said. The Gracchi, Agis, Cleomenes, and others of Plutarch’s heroes, do not in the record of facts equal their own fame. Sir Philip Sidney, the Earl of Essex, Sir Walter Raleigh, are men of great figure, and of few deeds. We cannot find the smallest part of the personal weight of [George] Washington in the narrative of his exploits. The authority of the name of Schiller is too great for his books…but somewhat resided in these men which begot an expectation that outran all their performance. The largest part of their power was latent. This is that which we call Character…a reserved force…a Genius, by whose impulses the man is guided…a stellar and undiminishable greatness. [He] inspires respect, and the wish to deal with him, both for the quiet spirit of honor which attends him, and for the intellectual pastime which the spectacle of so much ability affords. The will of the pure runs down from them into other natures, as water runs down from a higher into a lower vessel. With what quality is in him, he infuses all nature that he can reach. He animates all he can.

Of these ‘noble and great ones’ “Plato said it was impossible not to believe in the children of the gods, ‘though they should speak without probable or necessary arguments.” (Emerson) In other words, those who have achieved or will achieve this status don’t declare their ‘chosen’ status but rather simply live and radiate it.

“The history of those gods [men with a God-like character] and saints which the world has written, and then worshiped, are documents of character.” (Emerson)