of all the forces that drive human beings, the greatest is personal influence.
by personal influence i mean that force that goes out from you, simply by virtue of what you are. it has nothing to do with what you do or say or try, except as these things express what you are.
every person sends out what we might call dynamic rays or invisible electric-like impulses which are of such nature as to affect other persons. these rays from me can make other individuals gay or sad, good or bad, and so forth.
this is the only power that pulls souls, the only wind that bends them, the only fire 62 that warms them, the only stream that bears them along.
emerson said that “what you are preaches so loudly that i cannot hear what you say”; which is a striking way of stating that one’s unconscious influence far outreaches in effect one’s conscious effort.
it would be well if we would keep this in mind; it would save us a lot of futile busying.
for instance, reformers bent on saving the world should not be so hot and impatient seeing that there is no real saving that ever has been or ever will be done that is not the result of the influence radiating from good people.
laws are dead and wooden, but when a man incarnates a law it begins to work on other men. the “word” is of no force until it is “made flesh.”
63
it is the personal influence of a teacher that affects all the real educating of the pupil. the wise man understood this who said that the best university was “a log with mark hopkins on one end and me on the other.”
i sometimes doubt if any real good has ever been done by didactic teaching or preaching. all the moral maxims in the world are poor beside one strong, sweet, normal life. and a good woman is worth, as a guide, the most select list of “virtues and their opposite vices.”
to create such a character in fiction as “john halifax” or “jean valjean” or “little nellie” or the man in the “third floor back,” is to exert a lasting and potent uplift agency, better than a thousand sermons.
it is fascinating to many minds, the idea of “doing good” and “working for the 64 lord,” and devoting one’s time wholly to inducing people to become better; but it is not practical. the only way to improve mankind is to be something that inspires them; your argument and exhortation are of small avail. just as the only way to dispel darkness is to shine, and the only way to electrify iron is to be a magnet.
goodness is a contagion; we must “catch” it, we must have it and “give” it.
when you say in your creed that you believe in god, your declaration is of no help to you or to others unless what you mean is this: that you believe in the inherent potency of goodness, that it will live down, outwear, and destroy evil; that justice, cleanliness, honesty, and kindness will win in the long run against fraud, dirt, lying, and cruelty; and that persons who are upright and altruistic get more joy out of every 65 minute of their lives than idle, sporty, and self-coddling folk; and that there is altogether a vast tidal or subterranean movement in the human race toward health, strength, and beauty.
therefore why worry over what you will say or do, since it makes no matter? simply be right, and then say whatever comes to your mind, and do whatever comes to your hand, and you cannot fail to do the most possible toward helping along.
