Character
char•ac•ter n. moral or ethical strength.
- 57. The Mansions of Philosophy. In 1929, Will Durant wrote The Mansions of Philosophy, a story of human life and destiny, or, as the sub-title promises, an attempt at a consistent philosophy of life. It has been a chisel on my life. One of the most revealing chapters concerns itself with character. Character, in Durant's view, is a sum of inherent dispositions and desires; it is a mosaic of instincts colored and rearranged by environment, occupation, and experience. Below he formulates the extremes: the negative and the positive character.
- 58. Here is his negative character: ...If he meets a man he observes him unobserved, looking at everything but the eyes, and measuring the other’s power and intentions. If danger comes, he trembles with surprise and fear; he does not feel active anger, but is consumed with a fretful resentment; his violence is the mask of one who knows that he will submit. He shrinks from responsibility and trial. He believes that the world would entrust him with leadership if it had intelligence. If he succeeds in anything, he credits himself; if he fails, he is "not guilty"; it is the environment [i.e., other people] that is at fault, or the government, or the arrangement of the stars. He is a pessimist about the world, and an optimist about himself. Rest and inaction, being his essence, causes him to shun the sharper realities and tasks of life, and shrinks into a world of reverie, in which he wins many victories. These being his impulses, he is weak above all because his impulses are not coordinated by some purpose that dominates and unifies his life. He is restless though always seeking rest; he passes discontent from project to project and from place to place; he is a ship that never makes a port, while all its cargo rots. He is incapable of regularity or industry; and though he seems at times nervously busy, he finds himself unable to persist in a definite purpose. He is intense in intention and lax in application; he is given to bursts of passion that simulate strength, but they end in quick exhaustion and accepted chaos. He has a thousand wishes, but no will.
- 59. Here is the positive character: ...If he looks at you it is face to face; but he does not look at you; he is absorbed in his enterprise, intent on his goal. His motto is 'to have and to hold'. It is his pugnacity that gives power to his purposes; in him desires are not timid aspirations, they are unavoidable impulsions; for their sake he will accept responsibilities, dangers, and wearing toil. He has more courage than virtue, and less conscience than pride. He has powerful ambitions; he despises limits, and suspects humility. If he meets a man stronger than himself, his impulse is not to bow down before him, but to honor him with emulation and rivalry. When he is defeated, it is after a struggle to exhaustion. He is curious; all processes lure him, and his mind plays actively about. He believes in action rather than thought, and like Caesar he thinks nothing finished if anything remains undone. He is domineering, and likes to think that men are bricks to his trowel, to build with them what he likes; and they find a secret zest in being led by him, he is so certain, so confident, and so cheerful. He has a hundred lives of action for one life of thought. What he has above all is will. A unity of aim, an order and perspective and hierarchy of purposes, molded in his character by some persisting and dominating design. He dies never doubting that life was a boon, and only sorry that he must leave the game to younger players.
- 60. The burden of power. The strong are subject to the depredations of the weak, but they cannot effectively retaliate in kind. It could be worse.
- 61. The situation often helps make the man. During peacetime, Winston Churchill was a pain in the ass [considered by most an anachronism], but when the free world was facing defeat at Armageddon, he was the man who held forth against the cataclysmic onslaught of fascism. He saved the world! And with peace restored, he was once again relegated to the broom closet, a relic.
