Category Archives: generally

Dr. Crane on growing old but still growing

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(Just because you have lived through a lot doesn’t mean you are old. Don’t say, “Why, in my day…,” because today is your day, too. Doctor Frank Crane never caught—–)

THE OLD-AGE DISEASE

Boston, said the funny man, is not a locality; Boston is a state of mind. To those who have experienced Boston this is a truth that needs not be proved.

With equal accuracy it may be said that Old Age is not a number of years, it is a state of mind.

It has been observed that a woman is as old as she looks, and a man is as old as he feels; as a matter of fact, both are as old as they think.

There is no need of anybody growing old. For age is entirely a disease of the soul, a condition of ill health, which with reasonable caution may be avoided. It is no more necessary than measles, which the world once thought every one ought to have; now we know better.

The human being begins existence as a vigorous animal, whose body naturally weakens with time and finally perishes. The body runs its course, “ripes and ripes, and rots and rots,” like an apple, or any other organized growth of matter. Hence of course there is a decrepitude of one’s frame.

But this is not at all true of the mind. All things in nature, from mushrooms to oaks, from insects to elephants, and even mountains and suns and systems, have their periods of growth, maturity, and decay. The mind, however, has no such law. It is the “one exception” as Mark Hopkins called it.

And the mind is the real man. And the mind can be as young at ninety as it is at twenty-one.

In asking ourselves what is it that makes youthfulness, we discover the answer to be that it consists in three things.

Work, Growth, and Faith. So long as life functions in these three ways it is young. When any or more of these elements fall off, we are old.

By work is meant an active participation in the interests of human kind. Notice how the boy cannot be idle, he wants to be at something, he burns to play the game.

Idleness or aloofness is the essence of growing old. The business man who “retires” and devotes himself to doing nothing is committing suicide.

John Bigelow recently died at the age of ninety-five, and up to the last retained his interest in affairs.

It is work that keeps men young, more than play. No man should give up selling dry-goods if that is his life business, unless he has found some other business equally congenial and interesting.

I know a woman of eighty, mother of eleven grown children, who is as young as any of them, for she declines to be shelved.

The way to stay young is to keep in that game.

Secondly, growth. That is to say, mind-growth. Let the mind be always learning, alert for new truth, eager for new accomplishments.

It is when one’s intellect closes, ceases to learn, and becomes an onlooker that old age sets in. How many old people impress you as beyond teachableness? They have settled everything, religion, politics, philosophy.

You can’t teach an old dog new tricks, but because he will not learn new tricks is exactly why the dog is old.

It is when one takes up the study of Greek at seventy or at eighty begins to investigate psychology, that his mind breathes Spring air.

As long as a mind is teachable, open and inquiring, it is young.

There ought to be special schools for people of sixty and over. Who goes to school keeps young.

Lastly, faith, not intellectual assent to any statement (which operation is no more to do with faith than sole-leather), but a general belief in man and things; confidence; settled, abiding courage and cheer.

Faith in one’s self, in one’s destiny, in mankind, in the universe and in Him who manages it, this is youth’s peculiar liquor.

Doubt is the very juice of senility. Cynicism, pessimism, and despair are the dust that blows from a dried-up soul.

And faith is not something over which you have no control, it is a cultivable thing, it is a habit.

So long as one keeps at work, continues to learn, and has faith he is young.

Whoever does not work, does not learn, and has no faith is old even at thirty. Old age is a state of mind.

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(John Bigelow was an author and diplomat, one of the founders of the Republican Party, was described by the New York Times on his 94th birthday as “a marvel of good health and strength for a man nearly a century old. He still takes the liveliest interest in affairs, both in America and abroad, and no one is much better posted than he on existing conditions the world over.” He died three weeks later, December 19, 1911. Actually he was 94, not 95.)

 

Dr. Crane on: The impossible

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(There are people who do not believe good or great things are unattainable, even in the face of great opposing power or circumstance. Where would we be as a society or a nation or an economy if there only such people? Dr. Crane has the same questions. And some answers. Although his list of accomplished impossibilities is a century old, our lifetime’s experiences validate what he wrote.)

IT CAN’T BE DONE

If you’re looking about for something to do, something big, something that will bring you fame and money, find something that can’t be done, and do it.

Whoever is at work that can be done is not indispensable. If he quits, seven others are in line to take his job.

But the man who can do what can’t be done is not to be dispensed with. The business cannot get along without him.

Advertise for applicants for a job in your store…a job any industrious person can hold, and next morning the street will be black with the crowd of seekers.

Advertise for a man who will tell you in a day how to increase your net profits or decrease your expenses ten percent, and all you will need at your door is a policeman to handle the cranks.

Particularly in the higher realm of endeavor, in the domain of thought and of morals, it is the impossible that is essential, dominant, needed.

Conscience always points to what is beyond our capacity.

Reason invariably demonstrates that what should be done is the impractical.

The world progresses only as mankind does what can’t be done.

The eight-hour day, says Mr. Forbes, was socialistic, anarchistic, and absurd when first advocated. Nothing could be more impossible. Still, it lay on the conscience of the humane employer as well as upon the desire of the worker; and it was realized, and without any tremendous upheaval of the industries concerned.

It was once said that seven-day work could not be done away with in the steel industry. The nature of the business demanded continuous labor. Give steel workers a Sabbath rest? It can’t be done. Yet it was done…

Against every demand of humanity it has been objected, “It can’t be done.”

You can’t treat prisoners like human beings, they said, and for centuries the vile birds of horror and cruelty befouled every penitentiary. Today militant reformers are doing the impossible, and the cursed ramparts of humanity are crumbling.

Men could not spread religion without quarrelings, torture, force. But is being done.

Plagues could not be prevented, the ignorant common people could not be educated, little children could not be spared from stunting labor, sweatshops could not be abolished, corporal punishment and trial by torture could not be brought to pass, slavery, dueling, and gladiatorial games could not be abated. At some time or another practical men held all these things impossible.

And now they sagely tell us that war cannot be evaded; nations must have war; to expect to abolish war is ideal, fanatical, theoretical, impossible.

Very well. If it’s impossible, let’s do it.

Dr. Crane on hate and science

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(A combination of two issues that seem to be part of today’s national dialogue—plus a recent comment from the Texas Lieutenant Governor suggesting old people should be prepared to die so the economy could be reopened—attracted us to this reflection by Dr. Frank Crane, who wrote these thoughts during World War I and just before Adolf Hitler emerged to lift Aryan perfection as a prelude to a greater war and a holocaust. Keep in mind, however, when this was written. Some attitudes that seem prescient in that time might not be fair today. On the other hand, his basic point at the end remains valid.)

HALF SCIENCE

There is a kind of bastard science which is very dangerous.

It gets a glimpse of the great law of “The Survival of the Fittest.” It explains many things. And the apprentice mind in its enthusiasm imagines it explains everything.

It does not. The Survival of the Fittest, the Struggle for Existence, and the whole law that the physically weak are exterminated and the physically strong survive, all this is true only up to a certain point.

It is true of tigers and tomcats; it is not true of human beings.

When Man first appeared in the history of evolution, he brought another element into the arena, the Moral element.

Not to reckon with this Moral power is not to be a scientist, but a half-scientist.

The German mind is half-scientific. That is what ails it. It conceives that the final triumph will rest with “the big blond beast.” With the men of muscle and ferocity, with those who thrust aside all motives of pity and gentleness and concentrate on material force.

The saying that “God is on the side of the strongest battalions,” is a sample of this half-reasoning.

God is on the side of truth, honor, humaneness, and love; and in the end these gentle powers shall overcome. That is what Jesus meant when He said that “the meek shall inherit the earth.” And that is what the half-baked mind sneers at, neither indeed can believe.

But just the same, Civilization means the superiority of the Moral forces and the eventual subjugation of all Brute force.

…Civilization is not a working out of materialistic laws; it is the mastery and direction of those laws by a spiritual, non-material something called Man.

Dr. Crane goes outdoors

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(We have come to appreciate going for a walk. In these days of social distancing with brief dashes to the grocery store to restock the pantry and the refrigerator, the thirty or forty or sixty minutes we spend taking brisk or semi-brisk walks in various parts of our neighborhood provide a welcome break from seeing the same walls, sitting in the same chairs, and occupying ourselves indoors. Dr. Crane nails it with the first line of this essay. We’re not so sure about the third line, however.)

OUTDOORS

A good dose of Outdoors would cure almost anything.

Quit wearing a hat and let your hair Outdoors for that bald spot.

Go barefoot and your feet will slip back ten years…

Go Outdoors and get rid of Nerves. They live in the house.

Other rats and mice that infest houses are Dyspepsia, Constipation, Liver Complaint, Peplessness, and Insomnia.

Not only Bodily Ailments, but all other kinds of plagues and nuisances are house creatures.

Creeds were all made in stuffy rooms. Religion, faith, hope, love, and courage inhabit the woods and meadows, sail the seas, and seek wind and sun.

Jesus taught Outdoors. Ecclesiastical Council are held behind closed doors. The decline of religion is traceable from the Sermon on the Mount to the Sermon in the asphyxiating Meeting- House.

Education ought to be Outdoors. My favorite dream is The University of Outdoors, where pupils go shoeless and hatless and learn under the starts.

This University would teach the child how to be as healthy as a panther. And healthy bodies would obviate most neurasthenic intellectual vagaries.

Where but the Outdoors can you learn Botany, Geology, Astronomy, and the like? Real Science lives Outdoors, as much as Leap-frog.

Play Outdoors.

Even Kissing is better Outdoors…When you chase a girl a half a mile to kiss her you realize what real Kissing is.

Eating is better Outdoors. A horse is healthier than a man because a horse has to walk after every bite of grass he gets…

Children thrive Outdoors and pine in the house.

Outdoors is cheap and plenty.

God made outdoors; man made Indoors.

And God lives Outdoors; in man-made edifices are—Idols.

Dr. Crane on quitting

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Nineteenth century poet John Greenleaf Whittier wrote a poem on perseverance that was in one of our textbooks in high school, I think. It’s called “Don’t Quit.”   Part of it goes:

When things go wrong as they sometimes will,
When the road you’re trudging seems all up hill,
When the funds are low and the debts are high
And you want to smile, but you have to sigh,
When care is pressing you down a bit,
Rest if you must, but don’t you quit.
So stick to the fight when you’re hardest hit—
It’s when things seem worst that you must not quit.

—He finished the poem with these two lines:

So stick to the fight when you’re hardest hit—
It’s when things seem worst that you must not quit.

Dr. Frank Crane looked at quitting a little bit differently a century ago.   We pass along his thoughts to join those of Whittier in these times when many who are fatigued by the meanness of so much rhetoric want to withdraw, to quit the noise of our argumentative society. This entry also is something of a prelude for our entry Wednesday.

THE QUITTER

History is full of quitters. They furnish some of the most spectacular characters upon the world stage.

It’s an illustrious roll-call: Elijah, Jonah, Pilate, Romola*, Charles V., Hamlet—and how about you?

Some of these quit only temporarily and took hold again. With the others the quitting was fatal.

Running away and giving up were never a noble business.

The side-stepper does not cut an edifying figure.

At one time men imagined the ills of the world might be cured by deserting the world. They retired into caves and walled retreats. They gave mankind up as a hopeless lot and devoted themselves to getting themselves plucked as brands from the burning.

In Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress” Christian is pictured fleeing his city and family, his fingers in his ears, bound for Heaven.

The world has got over this unwisdom. The church now sends missionaries into the world. Social reformers go and live in the slums. These systems indicate a healthier idea.

The question whether the world’s progress swill be furthered best by our activity or by our desertion needs not be discussed. Humanity will doubtless continue to advance whether you and I assist or not. Destiny has its own long plans; and if one man will not play the part it assigns him, another will be found who will do quite as well.

The only question is, not what will happen to the universe, but what will happen to me if I refuse to work. As Mordecai said to Esther when she hesitated to intercede with the king for her people, so it might be said to you or me: “If thou altogether holdest thy peace at this time, doubtless deliverance shall arise from another place, but thou and thy father’s house shall be destroyed.”

The point is that one’s fullest enjoyment of life is only found infighting courageously in that small corner of the battlefield where he has been stationed. No man ever found worthy content by running away.

To quit implies moral weakness.

Sensitiveness is not to be coddled, but to be overcome.

Go on, forget your wounds, never mind the bruises upon your soul, despise the danger, drop regret, brush aside premonitions, do your work, and you will get a quality of joy the deserter cannot know.

They say the sharks will shy off from a man if he keeps splashing about lively. The fear-birds will not settle upon a soul in vigorous movement.

The noblest drop of consolation that can cheer one’s last hour is to say, whether he has won or lost, “I have fought the good fight.”

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*Romola, the least-recognized of these six names, is the character in a three-volume novel by English Victorian-era novelist George Eliot (who was really a woman, Mary Ann Evans) that tells of a manipulative 15th century stranger in Florence, Italy and Romola, the daughter of a blind scholar. There are other characters in a plot that is too tiring to relate, as it is too tiring to discuss why Mary Ann wrote under the name of George. Look her up on the internet on your own. If you want to wade into the novel, it’s available thanks to Project Gutenberg at https://www.gutenberg.org/files/24020/24020-h/24020-h.htm

If you begin reading it, remember Dr. Crane: “To quit implies moral weakness.”

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Dr. Crane and true grit

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“Grit” is a word we don’t hear much these days. Years ago, Grit was an enjoyable weekly newspaper to read at the grandparents’ home in rural Kansas. Grit is still around but is a magazine now and is often found at rural-oriented supply stores.

Sometimes we equate “grit” with courage.

But grit is something else. University of Pennsylvania psychologist Angela Duckworth learned as a seventh-grade teacher that IQ wasn’t the only thing that separated struggling students from successful ones. She found that “grit,” which she described as “passion and sustained persistence applied to long-term achievement with no particular concern for rewards or recognition” was a quality that indicated success. She wrote a best-seller about her research, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance. The subject also is addressed by Caren Baruch-Feldman and Thomas R. Hoerr in The Grit Guide for Teens.

It is also addressed in direct terms by Dr. Crane.

IT TAKES GRIT

It takes Grit to do anything worth doing.

All real progress is upstream.

All the real crowns—soul-crowns and achievement crowns, not gold crowns—are rewards for fighting.

It takes Grit—

To be Patient,

To keep your Temper,

To improve your Mind,

To Exercise, and keep your Body fit,

To diet, that is, to eat for Health and not for Sport,

To save Money,

To push your business,

To tell the truth,

To keep your mind clean, your Mouth clean, and your Soul clean,

To say No,

To do what you don’t want to do, which means Discipline,

To pay your Debts,

To be Loyal—to yoru ideals, to your Wife, to your Husband, to your Friend, to your Country,

To say “I don’t know,”

To do your own thinking,

To resist the mob,

To be honest, simple, and straight,

And not to worry.

But these things are easy:

To be irritable,

To give way to impulse, to say “I can’t help it,” and to make no effort to control yourself.

To be mentally lazy, read nothing gbut trash, and have no habits of study,

To loaf, and to exercise only when you feel like it,

To eat what you please,

To wait for something to turn up,

To lie, to be disloyal, and to be unclean,

To agree with those you feel to be wrong, just to avoid trouble,

To side-step,

To go in debt, and to say, “Charge it!”

To join something and use partisanship for loyalty,

To go with the crowd,

To acquire a bad habit, and to nurse it along,

To follow your impulses and not your intelligence,

To fill your body with disease, your mind with error, and your soul with evil,

To slump, to pity yourself, to make excuses for yourself, to magnify your ego and ruin your character,

And to commit suicide.

It’s easy going down.

It takes Grit to go up, to get on, and even to keep decent.

Dr. Crane: Yesterday

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(Dr. Frank Crane, a Methodist minister and newspaper columnist who died in 1928, compiled his weekly columns into a ten-volume series of small books a century ago. We have found his thoughts still valuable in today’s world and have decided to start each week with one of them.)

As we leave one year and begin another one, we are reminded of Al Stewart’s 1978 hit song that includes:

Well I’m not the kind to live in the past
The years run too short and the days too fast
The things you lean on are the things that don’t last
Well it’s just now and then my line gets cast into these
Time passages
There’s something back here that you left behind
Oh time passages
Buy me a ticket on the last train home tonight.

Dr. Crane wrote in his column about the importance of living for today and working for our tomorrows:

YESTERDAY

I am Yesterday. I am gone from you forever.

I am the last of a long procession of days, streaming behind you, away from you, pouring into mist and obscurity, and at least into the ocean of oblivion.

Each of us have our burden, of triumph, of defeat, of laughter, of bitterness; we bear our load from you into forgetfulness; yet as we go we each leave something in your subconsciousness.

We fill your soul’s cellar.

I depart from you, yet am I ever with you.

Once I was called Tomorrow and was virgin pure; then I became your spouse and was named Today; now I am Yesterday and carry upon me the eternal stain of your embrace.

I am one of the leaves of a growing book. There are many pages before me. Someday you shall turn us all over and read us and know what you are.

I am pale, for I have no hope. Only memories.

I am rich, for I have wisdom.

I bore you a child and left him with you. His name is Experience.

You do not like to look at me. I am not pretty. I am majestic, fateful, serious.

You do not love my voice. It does not speak to your desires; it is cool and even and full of prudence.

I am Yesterday; yet I am the same as Today and Forever for I AM YOU; and you cannot escape from yourself.

Sometimes I talk with my companions about you. Some of us carry the scars of your cruelty. Some the wretchedness of your crime. Some the beauty of your goodness. We do not love you. We do not hate you. We judge you.

We have no compassion; only Today has that.

We have no encouragement for you; only Tomorrow has that.

We stand at the front door of the past, welcoming the single file of days that pass through, watching Tomorrows becoming Todays and then enter among us.

Little by little we suck out your life, as vampires. As you grow older we absorb your thought. You turn to us more and more, less and less toward Tomorrow.

Our snows cumber your back and whiten your head. Our icy waters put out your passions. Our exhalations dim your hopes. Our many tombstones crowd into your landscape. Our dead loves, burnt-out enthusiasms, shattered dream-houses, dissolved illusions, move to you, surround you.

Tomorrows come unnoticed. Todays slip by unheeded. More and more you become a creature of Yesterdays.

Ours are banquet halls full of wine-soaked tablecloths, broken vessels, wilted roses.

Ours are empty churches where aspirations were, where only ghosts are.

Ours are ghastly Pompeiian streets, rich galleons a hundred fathoms deep, genealogical lists of sonorous names, mummies in museums, fragmentary pillars of battered temples, inscriptions on bricks of Nineveh, huge stone gates standing amidst the tropical landscape of Yucatan, Etruscan wine jars now dry and empty forever.

From us comes that miasma of inertia that holds humanity in thrall; from us comes the strength of war-makers, monarchs, and all the privileged.

We reach up long, sinewy, gray arms of custom and tradition, to choke Today and impede Tomorrow.

We are the world’s Yesterdays. If you knew enough to put your feet upon us you might rise rapidly. But when you let us ride on your backs we strangle and smother you.

I am Yesterday. Learn to look me in the face, to use me, and not to be afraid of me.

I am not your friend. I am your judge — and your fear.

Tomorrow is your friend.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Dr. Crane: Today I will…

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Dr. Frank Crane, former Presbyterian minister turned widely-printed newspaper columnist in the 19-teens and twenties, wrote this piece in 1921.

Later this week our state lawmakers return to the capitol for almost five months of high-pressure work writing laws for themselves and more than six-million Missourians—and those who visit our state. We, as the lawmakers, learned early in our Capitol reporting career that legislative sessions quickly become all-consuming events that impose psychological blinders that narrow the view of life as the calendar days are crossed off. This column from almost a century ago by former Presbyterian minister-turned newspaper columnist Dr. Frank Crane extolls the value of spending a few minutes before leaving for the Capitol each morning to set some one-day personal goals. Maybe each of our lawmakers and others who will shape the laws and policies of our future should keep this column close by and read it out loud each day before going to do the public’s work.

JUST FOR TODAY

Here are ten resolutions to make when you awake in the morning.

They are Just for One Day. Think of them not as a life task but as a day’s work.

These things will give you pleasure. Yet they require will power. You don’t need resolutions to do what is easy.

  1. Just for Today, I will try to live through this day only, and not tackle my whole life-problem at once. I can do some things for twelve hours that would appall me if I felt I had to keep them up for a lifetime.
  2. Just for Today, I will be Happy. This assumes that what Abraham Lincoln said is true, that “most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.” Happiness is from Within; it is not a matter of Externals.
  3. Just for Today, I will adjust myself to what is, and not try to adjust everything to my own desires. I will take my family, my business, and my luck as they come, and fit myself to them.
  4. Just for Today, I will take care of my Body. I will exercise it, care for it, and nourish it, and not abuse it nor neglect it; so that it will be a perfect machine for my will.
  5. Just for Today, I will try to strengthen my mind, I will study. I will learn something useful, I will not be a mental loafer all day. I will read something that requires effort, thought and concentration.
  6. Just for Today, I will exercise my Soul. In three ways, to wit:

(a) I will do somebody a good turn and not get found out. If anybody knows of it, it will not count.

(b) I will do at least two things I don’t want to do, as William James suggests just for exercise.

(c) I will not show any one that my feelings are hurt. They may be hurt, but Today I will not show it.

  1. Just for To-day, I will be agreeable. I will look as well as I can, dress as becomingly as possible,  talk low,  act courteously, be liberal with flattery, criticize not one bit  nor find fault with anything, and not try to regulate nor improve anybody.
  2. Just for Today, I will have a Programme. I will write down just what I expect to do every hour. I may not follow it exactly, but I’ll have it. It will save me from the two pests Hurry and Indecision.
  3. Just for Today, I will have a quiet half hour, all by myself, and relax. During this half hour, some time, I will think of God, so as to get a little more perspective to my life.
  4. Just for Today, I will be unafraid. Especially I will not be afraid to be happy, to enjoy what is beautiful, to love and to believe that those I love love me.

Dr. Crane: The new year

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(A 1919 advertisement for Dr. Frank Crane’s books said, “Nine years ago Dr. Frank Crane was scarcely known outside of a small circle. To-day he has a million friends. And these million friends are happier men and women to-day because of this friendship. They occupy a higher, finer place in life because of it.” Dr. Crane stepped away from his Methodist pulpit to become one of the most-published inspirational columnists of his time. We are starting our weeks be recalling his writings).

NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS

The New Year is here. It is inventory time. Let us look over the stock of habits, ideas, and relationships we have accumulated the last twelve months and clean up.

The New Year’s resolution is a good thing. Why drift along, the slave and plaything of our unmanaged desires and of our accidental circumstances? Why not be our own master and live one year like an intelligent human being?

Examine your habits. Lop off the bad ones. Free yourself from any ways you have fallen into that make you lazy, unhealthy, miserable, and disagreeable to other people.

Determine this year to be master of self; that you will control your thoughts, regulate your passions, and guide your own deeds; that you will not let events lead you by the nose.

Resolve to be happy. Remember Lincoln’s saying that “folks are usually about as happy as they make up their minds to be.”

This year you shall not neglect your friends. They are too valuable, as life assets, to lose.

You will adopt some system and stick to it, knowing that nine-tenths of our irritation comes from lack of system.

Lay out a course of study. No one is too old to learn. Resolve to give some time each day to reading some helpful book. Cut out the trash.

Resolve to keep an account of all the money you get and of all you spend. You may have tried this many times and failed. Never mind; you are still alive and have the chance to try it again.

Save. Put a certain fraction by of all you make. There’s no friend like money in the bank.

Son’t spend any money till you get it. Don’t go into debt. Beware of buying all those things you “must have,” for you mustn’t have anything until you can pay for it.

No alcohol this year. Let your body rest 365 days from this poison and see how you feel. Don’t get into a moral fever over this. Don’t “try” not to drink. Just don’t drink.

Resolve to take that daily exercise.

Eliminate worry. This year make up your mind to fret over nothing. Adjust yourself to facts instead of getting into a stew over them. If a matter can be helped, help it; if it cannot be helped, forget it.

This year resolve to keep discord out of the house. Nobody can quarrel with you if you do not quarrel with him. Say to yourself that you will not once…speak crossly to your children; that you will not say one unkind word to your husband or wife, and that you will keep agreeable…

This may be the last year you will have. Make it a good one.

You know how you ought to live. At least, you think you do. And if you do as well as your own judgment tells you, it will be an advance.

This is old-fashioned advice. But happiness is old-fashioned, and life. There is no new-fangled way to be content.

And learn this of wise Marcus Aurelius:

“To change your mind and follow him who sets you right is to be none the less free that you were before.”

Also: “The happiness and unhappiness of the rational, social animal depends not on what he feels but on what he does; just as his virtue and vice consist not in feeling but in doing.”

Dr. Frank Crane

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We’re going to start something today and see how it goes.

In prowling through old newspapers seeking out tidbits of Missouri Capitol history I have frequently run across columns called “Four Minute Essays” by Dr. Frank Crane, a long-time Methodist minister who died in 1928. He was a believer in positive thinking long before native Missourian Dale Carnegie started writing about How to Win Friends and Influence People.

One hundred years ago he compiled many of his columns into ten small volumes. Although there will be instances where some of the syntax is antiquated, his thoughts seem worthy of being put back into circulation in our times.   We’re going to try to offer one of his essays each Monday with our regular entries later in the week. Here’s the first one.

PRINCIPLES

Principles are the deep laws underlying life.

Just as gravitation runs through every particle of matter from sun to sand grain, just as electricity pervades all things, and chemical affinity works always and everywhere, so there are certain laws that eternally operate in events and in men’s minds.

That honesty is the best policy, that courage is power, that practice brings efficiency, and that truth eventually prevails over error, are just as evergreen and exceptionless as the forces in dead stones and planets.

The first business of one who would succeed is to find out these principles, his second business is to believe in them, and his final business is to entrust his whole career in them.

A fool believes in a principle when he sees it works for his good. A man of sense believes in principle when he cannot see. The very essence of faith-power is that it works in the dark.

The real man believes most of all in honesty when it is plain that to lie would profit him; believes most of all in cleanliness when the allurements of uncleanliness make their strongest appeal; believes most of all in the power of good to overcome evil when men most clamor for the false remedy of cruel retaliation.

The man of principle steers his course by the north star; in storm and fog he goes straight on; he is an ocean-goer. The man of shrewdness and expediency is a coaster and explores the deeps at his peril.

One gets the good out of a principle only when he is convinced that it is invariable. Behind it is the eternal will of the university, which cannot be fooled, tricked, or dodged.

Rooted in principles life grows stronger and more majestic every day; the years harden it; failures fructify it; the windy blasts toughen it; Junes fill it with flowers and Octobers load it with fruit.

Take stock of yourself. Are there some big things you utterly believe in, and by them govern your days? Out of those things shall grow your happiness and your usefulness at the last.

Do you think everything has exceptions? Are you straight or crooked as occasion dictates? Do you say, “It all depends?” Are you an opportunist? Do you simply act as your judgment decides in each case? Do you think the end justifies the means; that is, that your little mind is clearer than the omniscient mind?

So you do that which is EXPEDIENT or do you do which is RIGHT?

If you have no principles you are but the chaff which the wind driveth away.