Shall we build our own characters voluntarily, or wait to be compelled to do so at the point of a bayonet?
"Building" may not be the right word. Is the character of a man the sum total that he shows in life? Is it part of man's character to prefer an omelet to a chop? Character is a differentiating thing. It is the character of the human species to think; we say that in differentiating the human from the animal. In seeking a man's character we seek that which marks him off from other men, not that in which he resembles them. So a man's character is shown in those tendencies and powers in which he differs from all other living beings. It is, therefore, in this way of viewing the matter, only the men of genius who exhibit much character. In all that part of them which is not the genius-part, they resemble some other man. The further down their natures you look, the more do they resemble other men; the special keynote of character is only sounded during the hours of composition, or during which they are manifesting whatever be the manner of their genius. At other times they are as other men; at some of those other times they are also as the animals; to sum up all these modes of life that a man of genius may exhibit, those which he has in common with all other men, all animals, and even a few of the higher plants, into one mass with those which are absolutely peculiar to himself as a man of genius, is to deprive the word character of all important meaning in the study of man as a soul.
Attaching to it this restricted meaning, it may be clear on reflection that to speak of the building of character requires some care and thought. Unveiling may be a much truer word. There are moments of supreme trial when the limits of any man are temporarily shattered, and he exhibits powers of mind, ranges of feeling, flexibilities and activities of consciousness, of whose capacity he was never before suspected. These surely existed as latent capability; the shattering of limits of mind and personality induced by the tension of the situation, a shattering which we speak of as "forgetting oneself," permitted their manifestation.
Therefore what we ought to mean by "character-building" is a gradual whittling away of our own limits; doing slowly, because once and for all, what is done quickly and therefore often impermanently, by some evoking situation. It is the removal of the veil that shrouds the white statue. The man of genius can unveil his statue for a few moments in part; but the winds of his own lower nature constantly blow it back across the marble. The veil is not the lower nature, but the intrusion of it where it does not belong.
Let us look at the situation from above instead of below, from the character that is veiled instead of that which veils it. Let us look at the brain as the field of conflict, and remember H. P. Blavatsky's teaching about the cells of the body in her articles on "'Psychic and Noetic Action." The brain-cells are a keyboard, which will respond to any touch, from the coarsest impact of the force of sensual desire to the most rarified breath of the divine airs. Madame Blavatsky says this of all the cells of the body, but for simplicity we will try and understand it more limitedly. While the high lights of the soul are upon the brain an exalted strain of consciousness sets in, spiritual thought and thought-pictures and feeling. Wisdom begins, insight into nature, comprehension of the divine, and the ability to express these in fitting action, speech, music, form or color. The special state of the genius exists. But a single wave from the lower nature will displace this divine player from the keyboard; the cells, moving to a coarser touch, can no longer respond to the finer. Hate, lust, greed, anger, personal sentimentality, hunger, jealousy, vanity, ambition, or that memory of former occasions of any of these which is the equivalent of their reproduction — one of these will at once throw the cells into a commotion in which the tenderer touch of the divine player is totally lost. The veil has come over the statue: the man is once more only an ordinary man; the chief of those things which marked him from other men has departed. The lower nature is, so to speak, like a drunken servant, who comes into his master's room and finds the harp yet throbbing to the delicate touch of the musician and proceeds himself to make coarse jangling upon the strings.
To see the truth of this view of our own natures must afford much encouragement. To think of our work as one of character-building is to suppose ourselves weighted with a harder task than really exists for us. But the task is an unveiling, and the way to do it is to think constantly of the waiting soul, full of all divine lights and powers. That thought will help to expel any passion that may be blowing across the chords of life; it is an ascent to a plane where those winds cannot come and from whence the brain may be safeguarded against their breath; it is the "overcoming of the lower nature" an appeal to the "Warrior" spoken of in "Light on the Path." Pursued as a habit, it leads on to victory after victory, and soon brings about visitations for short but lengthening periods of that deep "peace that passeth all understanding" into which the divine dove of wisdom can at last descend on the soul.
I think the religions have made the path seem harder than it is, the reward too deferred and indefinite, the heaven too inevitably transmortem. Every man has a Genius, the genius has succeeded in letting the Genius speak; so has the natural leader of men; so have all great reformers, altruists, philanthropists and teachers, if the names are warrantably used. It is easy to remove here and there a hindrance bit by bit; to stop a fit of irritation or anger; not to do a selfish thing; to make love dissolve separateness. There is never a vacuum. Never for a moment can any lower motion be stayed, however imperfectly, but what a higher, to that extent, comes on. The last peace and wisdom are that much nearer. This view, that in each human being" is a hidden Genius who has to wait for his instrument, who, achieving the instrument, has to wait till the gross red fingers of the unruly servant are tired for a few rare moments — is the reconciliation between the Darwinian teaching, which only deals with the evolution of the instrument and does not even properly deal with that of the servant — and the all-present traditions of a Golden Age. The Golden Age was the Age when the souls were free, ere yet they had renounced freedom and joy and glory and their Palace of the Burning Sun to become Lights of the Tabernacles of the "men" of earth.
Two factors help the unveiling of the soul. Nature, as Karma, begins. She visits penalty upon sin, upon selfishness, upon misuse of physical appetite. Then follows the higher, and ultimately the sole, factor. This is the intense joy that comes to the personal man when his soul is able to flood the brain and heart with its light. There is no joy like that of serving life; a few of the ways of serving it are to help humanity; to manifest the harmonies of life in poetry, color, form, or sound; to depict its ways in real drama; to study, draw down, and combine its forces. This joy is the great incentive of the higher man, and is itself a manifestation in him of the same life.
The souls of men are not alike, any more than blades of grass, or stars; though perhaps up to a point the path of unveiling is alike. But when all the unveiling is done, and a vaster Golden Age is come again, when harmony is come forth from its suspension in the passing dissonance, then it will be seen that work is joy. For the only work, then, will be one to which we do not now gave that name, the divinest prerogative of life. The lines of individual "work" diverge through time, whilst becoming grander. In the end to every soul will be its own part, eternally individual, yet all uniting from over all the field of the universe into one illimitable choral.
"Verily, the night is far spent, and the blackness that cometh before the dawn is well-nigh ended."