A Mr' Frd,$ Page .
J ' I
THE pull of gravitation upon us is mostly felt in the desire
to find some routine that will almost run itself, to organize
I business that will operate itself automatically and for an
indefinite period, to strike a single comfortable rut and to keep it.
This is the downpull which men ought to resist, especially in these
changeful times when the future is offering itself to foresight, and
will be the servant of those who are able to detach themselves
from the familiar and adventure with the new.
In the horse age we used to see this tendency represented in
animals who were accustomed to a certain daily round. The doctor
went to certain houses, and his horse became accustomed to stop
there, and would always turn in whether reined in or not. The
milkman went his round, and his horse behaved as if displeased if
any change was made in the daily program.
Men fall into the same half -alive habit. Seldom does the cobbler
take up with the new-fangled way of
soleing shoes, and seldom doe the ar
tisan willingly take up with new meth
ods in his trade. Habit conduces to a
certain inertia, and any disturbance of it
atTccts the mind like a trouble. It will
be recalled that when a study was made
of shop methods, so that the workman
might be taught to produce with less use
less motion and fatigue, it was most op
posed by the workmen themselves.
Though they suspected that it was simply
a game to get more out of them, what
most irked them was that it interfered
with the well-worn grooves in which they
moved.
There are business men who are go
ing down with their businesses because
they like the old way so well they can
not bring themselves to give it up. One
sees them all about men who do not
know that yesterday is past, and who
woke up this morning with their last
year's ideas.
It could almost be written down as
prescription that when a man begins to
think that he has at last found his method,
he had better begin a most searching ex
amination of himself to see whether some
part of his brain has not gone to sleep.
There is a subtle danger in a man think
ing that he is "fixed" for life. It indi
cates that the next jolt of the wheel of
progress is going to fling him off.
The only business that has a promise
of security is the business whose man
ager has hardihood enough to change it,
even though he may love it ever so much,
when his common sense tells him that a
change is coming. It is a hard thing to do, but the hard things are
usually the right things to do, and a man is better for following
his vision instead of his "likes."
And what makes it hard? It will not be hard for the man
who comes to do it for the first time why is it hard for the other?
Because he has softened down into the old methods; he has al
lowed them to mold him, instead of himself molding them; he has
become a creature of his method, instead of its controller.
The past has a strong hold on us through its detail. We can
not break with the past, but we can scrape off the clinging seaweed
of its details. We can break down the whimpering laziness of
mind which resents the intrusion of new methods. We can ac
knowledge each day as a new day and not a mere repetition of
yesterday.
Life is not a "battle" except with our own tendency to sag
under the downpull of the habit of "getting settled." If to petrify
is success, all one has to do is to humor the lazy side of the mind;
but if to grow is success, then one must wake up anew every morn
ing and keep awake all day. Great businesses become but the
ghost of a name because some one thought they could be managed
just as they were always managed, and though the management
may have been most excellent in its day. its excellence consisted in
its alertness to its day, and not in slavish following of its yesterdays.
rHE periods between
changes become shorter
and shorter. Formerly several
generations could pass between
changes, but now several new
periods appear in a single
generation. The world is
accelerating its pace toward
some new position. This
requires of men constant
readjustment and is hard on
those who resent being shaken
out of their ruts. There is a
natural tendency to sag down,
to organize our business so
nicely that it will run itself.
Nothing runs itself and
nothing can be successfully
run the same way for long.
Success in the first degree
requires foresight of coming
changes. Success in the
second degree requires a
willingness to adjust oneself
to changed methods as soon
as the signal appears. The
comfortable ruts all drain at
last into the ditch by the side
of the road.
It is not likely there shall ever be many really new things to do, but
it is certain that most of the old works shall be performed in a
new way. Fundamentally, agriculture will always mean producing
foodstuffs and cloth-stuffs from the field; transportation will always
mean conveying materials by wheel across the surface of the earth
or by bottoms across the surface of the waters; manufacture will
always mean armies of men working raw materials into articles
of use.
Everything we now point to boastfully as evidences of our
progress consists simply in doing some old work in a new way.
Most of that progress consists in getting light from filaments in
stead of tallow, getting wheel-movements from fire instead of ox
muscle. Most of the history of material progress can be written
as a story of the successive ways by which wheels have been made
go round. There is nothing new except in the way it is done.
Society is always in danger from two
classes, those who fear change, and those
who crave it. The first class tends to
ward decay, the second toward destruc
tion. Change is not to be sor.ght tor itself
alone, but in following to best advantage
the obvious beckoning of the times.
There is always something outside our
selves that gives the signal ; a mo
tion of advance that comes over the
earth like the coming of spring, and
those that are alive respond to it ; those
who prefer to continue their hibernation
in the old methods, fall out of step with
the advance. They remain comfortable
enough, no doubt, but they no longer
count.
It pays a man always to have ideas in
advance of what he is doing; that is the
only valuable capital.
Changes are coming in every field, and
the cause of the jagged interval between
two periods is men's hesitancy to give
up the old and plunge into the new. The
old leaves fall to make room for the
new. The old methods are suddenly
found to be inadequate because new com
binations are arriving, fhe sleepy side
of our minds complain that we are be
ing shaken out of our old life; the vividly
alive side of our minds would show us,
if we would permit it, that we are only
being shaken into our new life.
It is not given to every generation to
pass through a period of change. Life
ran placidly for our forefathers for long
stretches at a time, and in the older
countries a certain method of life be
came so fixed that it left century-long
traces on city and countryside. But in these latter days the intervals
of change become shorter and shorter. The pace is quickening.
Period follows period out of all reckoning with the old calendars.
We have seen an almost complete revolution in the past fifteen
years, and now we are on the eve of another; and as soon as that
will have come, another will be visible on the horizon. The world
is moving with breathlessly eager haste to some new position, and
we cannot stop it. We can only stop ourselves from following
along.
Life is not a location, but a journey. Even the man who most
feels himself "settled" is not settled, he is probably sagging back.
Everything is in flux, and was meant to be. Life flows, and is
not in the same stretch of country for very long. Even the solar
universe, we are told, is flying along like a flock of shining birds
always occupying a new position in space. We may live at the
same number of the street, but it is never the same man whe
lives there.
These facts may be resented or welcomed : the man who ac
knowledges them in a practical way in the form his service takes
will always find himself in service: the others will be retired
Finding U hard to give up an incrusted method is a sign of a
hardening of the mind which, like the hardening of the arteries,
is not to be neglected.
mm
ill