Читать книгу PEACE, POWER & PLENTY - Orison Swett Marden - Страница 4

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Our destiny changes with our thought; we shall become what we wish to become, do what we wish to do, when our habitual thought corresponds with our desire.

“The ‘divinity that shapes our ends’ is in ourselves; it is our very self.”

LONG before Henry Irving’s death, his physician cautioned him against playing his famous part in “The Bells,” on account of the tremendous strain upon his heart. Ellen Terry, his leading woman for many years, says in her biography of him:

Every time he heard the sound of bells, the throbbing of his heart must have nearly killed him. He used always to turn quite white—there was no trick about it. It was imagination acting physically on the body.

His death as Matthias—the death of a strong, robust man—was different from all his other stage deaths. He did really almost die—he imagined death with such horrible intensity. His eyes would disappear upward, his face grow gray, his limbs cold.

No wonder, then, that the first time that the Wolverhampton doctor’s warning was disregarded, and Henry played “The Bells” at Bradford, his heart could, not stand the strain. Within twenty-four hours of his last death as “Matthias’' he was dead.

As Becket on the following night—the night of his death—his physicians said that he was undoubtedly dying throughout the entire performance. So buoyed up and stimulated was he by his great zeal for his work and the bracing influence of his audience that he actually held death at bay.

It is a common experience for actors who are ill to be cured for a time and to be entirely forgetful of their aches and pains under the stimulus of ambition and the brain-quickening influence of their audiences.

Edward H. Sothern says that he feels a great increase of brain activity when he is on the stage, and this is accompanied by a corresponding physical exhilaration. “The very air I breathe,” says Mr. Sothern, “seems more stimulating. Fatigue leaves me at the stage door; and I have often given performances without any suffering when I should otherwise have been under a doctor’s care.” Noted orators, great preachers, and famous singers have had similar experiences.

That “imperious must” which compels the actor to do his level best, whether he feels like it or not, is a force which no ordinary pain or physical disability can silence or overcome. Somehow, even when we feel that it is impossible for us to make the necessary effort, when the crisis comes, when the emergency is upon us, when we feel the prodding of this imperative, imperious necessity, there is a latent power within us which comes to our rescue, which answers the call, and we do the impossible.

It is an unusual thing for singers or actors and actresses to be obliged to give up their parts even for a night, but when they are off duty, or on their vacations, they are much more likely to be ill or indisposed. There is a common saying among actors and singers that they cannot afford to be sick.

“We don’t get sick,” said an actor, “because we can’t afford that luxury. It is a case of ‘must' with us; and although there have been times when, had I been at home, or a private man, I could have taken to my bed with as good a right to be sick as any one ever had, I have not done so, and have worn off the attack through sheer necessity. It is no fiction that will-power is the best of tonics, and theatrical people understand that they must keep a good stock of it always on hand.”

I know of an actor who suffered such tortures with inflammatory rheumatism that even with the aid of a cane he could not walk two blocks, from his hotel to the theatre; yet when his cue was called, he not only walked upon the stage with the utmost ease and grace, but was also entirely oblivious of the pain which a few moments before had made him wretched. A stronger motive drove out the lesser, made him utterly unconscious of his trouble, and the pain for the time was gone. It was not merely covered up by some other thought, passion, or emotion, but it was temporarily annihilated; and as soon as the play was over, and his part finished, he was crippled again.

General Grant was suffering greatly from rheumatism at Appomattox, but when a flag of truce informed him that Lee was ready to surrender, his great joy not only made him forget his rheumatism but also drove it completely away—at least for some time.

The shock occasioned by the great San Francisco earthquake cured a paralytic who had been crippled for fifteen years. There were a great many other wonderful cures reported which were almost instantaneous. Men and women who had been practically invalids for a long time, and who were scarcely able to wait upon themselves, when the crisis came and they were confronted by this terrible situation, worked like Trojans, carrying their children and household goods long distances to places of safety.

We do not know what we can bear until we are put to the test. Many a delicate mother, who thought that she could not survive the death of her children, has lived to bury her husband and the last one of a large family, and in addition to all this has seen her home and last dollar swept away; yet she has had the courage to bear it all and to go on as before. When the need comes, there is a power deep within us that answers the call.

Timid girls who have always shuddered at the mere thought of death have in some fatal accident entered into the shadow of the valley without a tremor or murmur. We can face any kind of inevitable danger with wonderful fortitude. Frail, delicate women will go on an operating-table with marvellous courage, even when they know that the operation is likely to be fatal. But the same women might go all to pieces over the terror of some impending danger, because of the very uncertainty of what might be in store for them. Uncertainty gives fear a chance to get in its deadly work on the imagination and make cowards of us.

A person who shrinks from the prick of a pin, and who, under ordinary circumstances, can not endure without an anesthetic the extraction of a tooth or the cutting of flesh, even in a trivial operation, can, when mangled in an accident, far from civilization, stand the amputation of a limb without as much fear and terror as he might suffer at home from the lancing of a felon.

I have seen a dozen strong men go to their deaths in a fire without showing the slightest sign of fear. There is something within every one of us that braces us up in a catastrophe and makes us equal to any emergency. This something is the God in us. These brave firemen did not shrink even when they saw every means of escape cut off. The last rope thrown to them had consumed away; the last ladder had crumbled to ashes, and they were still in a burning tower one hundred feet above a blazing roof. Yet they showed no sign of fear or cowardice when the tower sank into the seething caldron of flame.

When in Deadwood, in the Black Hills of South Dakota, I was told that in the early days there, before telephone, railroad, or telegraph communication had been established, the people were obliged to send a hundred miles for a physician. For this reason the services of a doctor were beyond the reach of persons of moderate means. The result was that people learned to depend upon themselves to such an extent that it was only on extremely rare occasions, usually in a case of severe accident or some great emergency, that a physician was sent for. Some of the largest families of children in the place had been reared without a physician ever coming into the house. When I asked some of these people if they were ever sick they replied, “No, we are never sick, simply because we are obliged to keep well. We cannot afford to have a physician, and even if we could it would take so long to get him here that the sick one might be dead before he arrived.”

One of the most unfortunate things that has come to us through what we call “higher civilization” is the killing of faith in our power of disease resistance. In our large cities people make great preparations for sickness. They expect it, anticipate it, and consequently have it. It is only a block or two to a physician; a drug-store is on every other corner, and the temptation to send for the physician or to get drugs at the slightest symptom of illness tends to make them more and more dependent on outside helps and less able to control their physical discords.

During the frontier days there were little villages and hamlets which physicians rarely entered, and here the people were strong and healthy and independent. They developed great powers of disease resistance.

There is no doubt that the doctor habit in many families has a great deal to do with the developing of unfortunate physical conditions in the child. Many mothers are always calling the doctor whenever there is the least sign of disturbance in the children. The result is that the child grows up with this disease picture, doctor picture, medicine picture, in its mind, and it influences its whole life.

The time will come when a child and any kind of medicine will be considered a very incongruous combination. Were children properly reared in the love thought, in the truth thought, in the harmony thought, were they trained to right thinking, a doctor or medicine would be rarely needed.

Within the last ten years tens of thousands of families have never tasted medicine or required the services of a physician. It is becoming more and more certain that the time will come when the belief in the necessity of employing some one to patch us up, to mend the Almighty’s work, will be a thing of the past. The Creator never put man’s health, happiness, and welfare at the mercy of the mere accident of happening to live near physicians.

He never left the grandest of His creations to the mercy of any chance, cruel fate, or destiny; never intended that the life, health, and well-being of one of His children should hang upon the contingency of being near a remedy for his ills; never placed him where his own life, health, and happiness would depend upon the chance of happening to be where a certain plant might grow, or a certain mineral exist which could cure him.

Is it not more rational to believe that He would put the remedies for man’s ills within himself—in his own mind, where they are always available—than that He would store them in herbs and minerals in remote parts of the earth where practically but a small portion of the human race would ever discover them, countless millions dying in total ignorance of their existence?

There is a latent power, a force of indestructible life, an immortal principle of health, in every individual, which if developed would heal all our wounds and furnish a balm for the hurts of the world.

How rare a thing it is for people to be ill upon any great occasion in which they are to be active participants! How unusual for a woman, even though in very delicate health, to be sick upon a particular day on which she has been invited to a royal reception or to visit the White House at Washington!

Chronic invalids have been practically cured by having great responsibilities thrust upon them. By the death of some relative or the loss of property, or through some emergency, they have been forced out of their seclusion into the public gaze; forced away from the very opportunity of thinking of themselves, dwelling upon their troubles, their symptoms, and lo! the symptoms have disappeared.

Thousands of women are living to-day in comparative health who would have been dead years ago had they not been forced by necessity out of their diseased thoughts and compelled to think of others, to work for them, to provide and plan for those dependent upon them.

Multitudes of men and women would be sick in bed if they could afford it; but the hungry mouths to feed, the children to clothe, these and all the other obligations of life so press upon them that they cannot stop working; they must keep going whether they feel like it or not.

What does the world not owe to that imperious “must”—that strenuous effort which we make when driven to desperation, when all outside help has been cut off and we are forced to call upon all that is within us to extricate ourselves from an unfortunate situation?

Many of the greatest things in the world have been accomplished under the stress of this impelling “must”—merciless in its lashings and proddings to accomplishment.

Necessity has been a priceless spur which has helped men to perform miracles against incredible odds. Every person who amounts to anything feels within himself a power which is ever pushing him on and urging him to perpetual improvement. Whether he feels like it or not, this inward monitor holds him to his task.

It is this little insistent “must” that dogs our steps; that drives and bestirs us; that makes us willing to suffer privations and endure hardships, inconveniences, and discomforts; to work slavishly, in fact, when inclination tempts us to take life easy.