When a Man Comes to Himself

I

It is a very wholesome and regenerating change which a man undergoes when he“comes to himself.” It is not only after periods of recklessness orinfatuation, when he has played the spendthrift or the fool, that a man comesto himself. He comes to himself after experiences of which he alone may beaware: when he has left off being wholly preoccupied with his own powers andinterests and with every petty plan that centers in himself; when he hascleared his eyes to see the world as it is, and his own true place and functionin it.

It is a process of disillusionment. The scales have fallen away. He seeshimself soberly, and knows under what conditions his powers must act, as wellas what his powers are. He has got rid of earlier prepossessions about theworld of men and affairs, both those which were too favorable and those whichwere too unfavorable—both those of the nursery and those of a youngman’s reading. He has learned his own paces, or, at any rate, is in afair way to learn them; has found his footing and the true nature of the“going” he must look for in the world; over what sorts of roads hemust expect to make his running, and at what expenditure of effort; whither hisgoal lies, and what cheer he may expect by the way. It is a process ofdisillusionment, but it disheartens no soundly made man. It brings him into alight which guides instead of deceiving him; a light which does not make theway look cold to any man whose eyes are fit for use in the open, but whichshines wholesomely, rather upon the obvious path, like the honest rays of thefrank sun, and makes traveling both safe and cheerful.

II

There is no fixed time in a man’s life at which he comes to himself, andsome men never come to themselves at all. It is a change reserved for thethoroughly sane and healthy, and for those who can detach themselves from tasksand drudgery long and often enough to get, at any rate once and again, a viewof the proportions of life and of the stage and plot of its action. We speakoften with amusement, sometimes with distaste and uneasiness, of men who“have no sense of humor,” who take themselves too seriously, whoare intense, self-absorbed, over-confident in matters of opinion, or else goplumed with conceit, proud of we cannot tell what, enjoying, appreciating,thinking of nothing so much as themselves. These are men who have not sufferedthat wholesome change. They have not come to themselves. If they be seriousmen, and real forces in the world, we may conclude that they have been too muchand too long absorbed; that their tasks and responsibilities long ago roseabout them like a flood, and have kept them swimming with sturdy stroke theyears through, their eyes level with the troubled surface—no horizon insight, no passing fleets, no comrades but those who struggled in the flood likethem

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