Character Building and the Art of Personality and Moral Culture

With our archives now 3,500+ articles deep, we've decided to republish a classic slice each Friday to assist our newer readers find some of the best, evergreen gems from the past. This article was originally published in June 2013.

Character. Like honor, information technology's a word we take for granted and probably take an analogousness for, just likely struggle to define and articulate. Information technology's a word almost men desire to have ascribed to them, and yet the standards for its attainment remain rather vague in our mod historic period.

It's certainly not a discussion that'due south used as much as it once was. Cultural historian Warren Susman researched the rise and autumn of the concept of character, tracing its prevalence in literature and the self-comeback manuals and guides popular in unlike eras. What he constitute is that the use of the term "character" began in the 17^th century and peaked in the xix^th – a century, Susman writes, that embodied "a civilisation of character." During the 1800s, "character was a fundamental discussion in the vocabulary of Englishmen and Americans," and men were spoken of as having strong or weak character, good or bad grapheme, a great deal of character or no character at all. Young people were admonished to cultivate real grapheme, high character, and noble character and told that character was the most priceless thing they could ever achieve. Starting at the beginning of the 20^th century, all the same, Susman constitute that the ideal of character began to be replaced past that of personality.

Merely graphic symbol and personality are two very different things.

Every bit society shifted from producing to consuming, ideas of what constituted the self began to transform. The rise of psychology, the introduction of mass-produced consumer goods, and the expansion of leisure fourth dimension offered people new means of forming their identity and presenting it to the world. In identify of defining themselves through the tillage of virtue, people began to express themselves through hobbies, dress, and fabric possessions. Susman observed this shift through the irresolute content of self-improvement manuals, which went from emphasizing moral imperatives and work to personal fulfillment: " The vision of self-sacrifice began to yield to that of self-realization."

While advice manuals of the 19th century (and some of the early 20^th as well) emphasized what a man really was and did, the new advice manuals full-bodied on what others idea he was and did. In a civilisation of character, expert acquit was idea to spring from a noble center and mind; with this shift, perception trumped inner intent. Readers were taught how to exist charming, command their voice, and brand a good impression. A neat case of this is Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People from 1936. It focused on how to get people to like you and how to get others to perceive y'all well versus trying to ameliorate your actual inner moral compass.

Susman argues that the transformation from a culture of character to a culture of personality was ultimately about a shift from "achievement to operation." Susman illuminates this divergence by noting that while the words near associated with character in the nineteenth century were "citizenship, duty, democracy, work, building, golden deeds, outdoor life, conquest, accolade, reputation, morals, manners, integrity, and above all, manhood," the words most associated with personality in the twentieth were "fascinating, stunning, bonny, magnetic, glowing, masterful, creative, dominant, and forceful."

There'southward null wrong with the cultivation of personality, and we've offered enough of advice on it hither on the site. Information technology can aid you navigate the globe, grade relationships, and go successful. Simply personality is absolutely no substitute for graphic symbol, which should be the foundation of every homo'south life.

Thus today we will exist exploring the true nature of this largely forgotten platonic. We'll be doing so by tapping into the writings of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when character was nevertheless king.

What Is Graphic symbol?

The etymology of character is quite telling. The word comes from the Greek kharakter for "engraved mark," "symbol or imprint on the soul," and "instrument for marker," and can be traced further back to the words for "to engrave," "pointed stake," and "to scrape and scratch."

Anciently, a graphic symbol was the stamp or marking impressed into wax and clay, and as Henry Clay Trumbull explains in 1894'southward Character-Shaping and Character-Showing, it served equally:

some other name for the signature, or monogram, or personal superscription, or trade-mark, of the potter, the painter, the sculptor, the writer, or any other creative person or artisan, or inventor, as indicative of the personality of the maker, or of the distinctive individuality of the article marked. Information technology is the visible token by which a thing is distinguished from every other thing with which it might otherwise be confounded.

In the 17^th century, the word came to be associated with "the sum of qualities that defines a person." These qualities included a man'southward intellect, thoughts, ideas, motives, intentions, temperament, judgment, behavior, imagination, perception, emotions, loves, and hates. All of these components, William Straton Bruce writes in 1908'southward The Formation of Christian Character, "go to the shaping and coloring of a man's character. They have all some role in producing that final type of self, that ultimate habit of volition, into which the man'southward whole activities at last shape themselves."

The residual of these components within the soul of each man, and the way one or another predominates over others, is what makes a character unique and sets autonomously one individual from some other.

Information technology should not be thought, withal, that grapheme is synonymous merely with personal tastes, temperaments, and preferences. Things like how you dress, your favorite music, or whether you are introverted or extroverted have picayune to zilch to do with character. Rather, character is defined in how your habits, motives, thoughts, and and so on chronicle to morality, particularly equally it concerns integrity. Character was divers as "your moral self," the "crown of a moral life," and referred to equally a "moral structure," something yous built through virtuous behavior. Bruce writes:

Character is nature and nurture. It is nature cultured and disciplined, so that natural tendencies are brought under the sway of the moral motive. His natural individuality marks off a man from his fellows by clear and specific differences. Merely this individuality may be not-moral. To produce character information technology must be brought under subject area, and organized into the structure of a true moral beingness . . .

Above all, [character] includes a choice, asettledhabit orbentofwill, so that it can be seen in its upshot in conduct. Graphic symbol takes up the raw cloth of nature and temperament, and it weaves these into the strong, well-knit texture of a fully moralized manhood.

The 3 Qualities of Truthful Graphic symbol

To meliorate understand the nature of character, we now turn to James Davison Hunter who laid out the iii qualities of true character in his modern volume, The Expiry of Character:

Moral Discipline

We cannot differ every bit to the demand in our national graphic symbol of those qualities of cocky-control, of quick and unquestioning obedience to duty, of blithesome contempt of hardship, and of zest in difficult and arduous undertakings which, rightly or wrongly, we consider soldierly, which we attribute in such rich measure to our forefathers, and which the moral exigencies of our national task to-day equally peremptorily demand. To put these primary and elemental needs as sharply as possible, let u.s.a. call them subject area and austerity. Our American grapheme needs more of both. –Robert Elliott Speer, The Stuff of Manhood, Some Needed Notes on American Character, 1917

The one quality virtually associated with graphic symbol in the nineteenth century was self-mastery — the dominion of an private over his impulses and desires, so that he was in command of them, and not the other style around. A man of self-mastery embodies the kingship of cocky-command and can directly his will and make his own choices, rather than being a slave to his base impulses.

Moral subject is also a quality that non only allows a human being to behave hardship stoically, but even to actively seek out a rougher, more austere life, 1 that eschews the kind of indulgence that deprives graphic symbol of needed preparation and leads to softness.

Moral Zipper

The pursuit of character does not take as its sole terminate the tillage of self. Susman notes that it is in fact "a group of traits believed to accept social significance and moral quality," and he constitute that the most popular quote related to character during the nineteenth century was Ralph Waldo Emerson's definition of it every bit: "Moral society through the medium of private nature." This is to say that the choices each single person makes influences the world effectually him, and that the being of a virtuous club is predicated on the virtue of each of its individual members. Moral zipper means being committed to a set of college ideals and to interim, and if need be, sacrificing, for the greater good of one'southward community. Speer beautifully explains the significant of this essential quality of character:

The moral elements of individual graphic symbol are inevitably social . . . When a man 'has trained himself,' to use the words of Lord Morley in dealing with Voltaire's religion, 'to look upon every wrong in thought, every duty omitted from act, each infringement of the inner spiritual law which humanity is constantly perfecting for its own guidance and advantage . . . as an ungrateful infection, weakening and corrupting the futurity of his brothers," he views each struggle within his ain soul against evil and each firm aspiration later on purity not as a mere incident in his own spiritual biography but as a fight for social proficient and for the perfecting of the nation and of humanity. And the struggle for social skillful and the perfecting of human life is fundamentally a struggle for the triumph of ideals in personal wills. God can take agree of men only in human being. He revealed Himself and wrought redemption less by a social process than by a personal incarnation. And the merely fashion of which nosotros know to uplift the life of the nation and to fit information technology for its mission and its ministry is to reform our own and other men'south characters, and ourselves to be what style of man among men we would have the nation exist amidst nations.

Moral Autonomy

Character cannot develop in an environs in which ethical decisions are forced upon the individual. Grapheme is a production of judgment, discretion, and choice — born from a man's free bureau. A determination that is coerced cannot exist a moral decision, and thus cannot be a conclusion of character.

Davison summarizes the definition of character thusly: "Character, in a classic sense, manifests itself as the autonomy to brand upstanding decisions always on behalf of the common good and the discipline to abide by that principle."

How Does Character Develop?

Character gains through its expression, and loses through its repression. Love grows through its expression. Sympathy grows through its expression. Knowledge grows through its expression. The creative sense grows through its expression. The religious sentiment grows through its expression. The capacity for instruction, for assistants, for command, grows through its expression. The more than a human does in any line of wise endeavor, the more he tin practise in that line, and the more than of a man he is in that line. And the refraining from the gratuitous expression of love, or of sympathy, or of knowledge, or of the creative sense, or of the religious sentiment, or of the power of pedagogy, of assistants, or of control, both limits and lessens that which is thus repressed.

To possess and to showroom an beauteous personal character is a duty incumbent on every one. In social club to possess such a character, its exhibit past its expression is a necessity. He who does non endeavor to limited those traits and qualities which are the exhibit of an admirable personal character, cannot promise to retain such a character, fifty-fifty if it were his by nature; and he who does try to express them, can hope to gain the character which they stand for, even though he lacked it earlier. –Henry Dirt Trumbull, Character-Shaping and Character-Showing, 1894

There are many things that engrave our character upon the dirt of our lives, and shape our grapheme for better and for worse into a unique set of scratches and grooves. Our character begins to be shaped from the very time we are born and is influenced by where nosotros grow up, how we are raised, the examples our parents provide, religious and academic education, and so on. Our character can be dramatically contradistinct by a life-irresolute tragedy — the contraction of a disease, a severe accident, the death of a parent, child, or spouse. Such events may turn a man bitter or cynical, or may crusade him to detect energies of soul and feelings of promise and compassion hitherto unimagined. A human's character tin can also be greatly formed past a call to accept upon himself a mantle of leadership during a crisis or emergency — an issue that tests and exercises his physical and mental abilities.

1 of the greatest influences on our character is those with whom we surround ourselves, as Speer explains:

The important elements of character-making — or character-shaping — which nosotros are most probable to overlook or undervalue are the infrequent impressions made upon us by casual acquaintances in our earlier life, and the quieter influences exerted over us by those with whom we are closely associated in afterward years — when our characters are normally supposed to be fully and finally established. If we could trace back to their kickoff exhibit some of the characteristics which now mark united states most distinctively, we should perhaps discover that we owe their development, non to the steady training in their management received by us at dwelling or in schoolhouse, but to the sudden disclosure of their bewitchery in the life of some one whom we were with but for a cursory season; or, once more, we should see that the temptations which endeavour united states of america nearly severely, and the evil thoughts and imaginings which have given us greatest trouble in life, are the outgrowth of germs planted in our minds past persons of whom we have no distinct recollections apart from the harm they thus did usa.

Nor is it in childhood only that our characters are shaped and directed past our assembly. The all-time characters are always open to comeback, and always in danger of deteriorating. Many a hubby seems actually made over by his wife; and many a wife seems admittedly some other person through her married man's influence, after a few years of married life. It is perhaps a friend of our maturer years whose purity and nobleness, whose gentleness and grace, whose spirit of fairness and clemency, or whose well-defined views on every betoken of ethics where he has a conviction, impress united states of america with the correctness and dazzler of his ideal, gradually influence the states to his ways of thinking, and inspire us to strive toward his standards of judgment and feeling.

Or again, our moral tone is lowered and our tastes are vitiated by intimate companionship, in social life or in business, with one of grosser nature, or of perverted and debased tendencies. Characteristics which had been long repressed in our nature come up into new prominence, and those which had before distinguished us drop out of sight. So long as we live, our characters are in the formative country; and whether nosotros be counted strong or weak, our characteristics are continually being re-shaped and re-directed by those whom we newly come to know and admire, or with whom we are newly brought into intimate association. A fresh ideal held earlier us, a purer, nobler, lovelier character coming distinctly into our range of observation and study, is something to give thanks God for; for it may exist an inspiration to us, and a help toward the better and higher development of our characters than nosotros have earlier realized.

Every bit we can see, many factors, some beyond our control, play a role in molding our character. Only the single greatest influence on our character is that which we have ultimate ability over: how we respond to circumstances. Writers of the nineteen^th century agreed that the true practice and test of a homo'due south character was whether he would agree to his moral principles no matter how sorely tempted or how painful the repercussions. In 1888's Creed and Grapheme, Henry Scott Holland writes:

At all costs, character must prove itself to be gratis and above its circumstances. If a man is the creature of circumstances we call him a man without grapheme; changing with all the irresolute hours, he has no self-identity, and grapheme is that with which we identify a homo. Grapheme is vital and vigorous and so far only every bit it insists on making itself gratuitous room for action amid the thronging events, and it dies downwardly equally shortly as it fails to hold itself aristocratic and separate from circumstances. Graphic symbol is the reaction from circumstances. It is the inner move which encounters and withstands the shock of alter and outward things. And it must, therefore, effect from a life that directs itself.

Many men feel like grapheme is something that tin can but be congenital during dramatic tests and crises. Only information technology is truly in "the constant, habitual, hurried, routine acts of common life that that swarm of little judgments is made such as course the character." Nosotros would do well to remember that we are " being fabricated every minute, and we cannot help it — you and I, as we walk and talk, swallow and beverage, marry and are given in marriage, piece of work and play, become out and come up in."

As we are faced with varying circumstances each twenty-four hours and judge and decide how to human activity, our actions go our habits, and our habits become our character, as Speer explains:

By means of the will man passes from an intellectual land into deed and deed. And these activities of the mind are not but isolated movements; they get links in a series of actions and acquire permanence. The agent throws himself into these acts; and in the exercise of knowing and willing he becomes characterized past his own deeds. The more often he does the deed, the more than easy and pleasurable does it become. And this blending of pleasure and will creates that trend or bias towards doing it that we denominate Habit. Therefore it is that we have spoken of graphic symbol as a habit of will.

Why Develop Character?

Men of character are the conscience of the society to which they belong. –Ralph Waldo Emerson

Deciding to become a man of grapheme means choosing to alive a more than disciplined and less selfish life. So why undertake such a hard path?

Both classical and biblical cultures believed that the character of each individual was tied to the health of the society equally a whole. The founding fathers argued that the denizens's commitment to living a life of character was the key in the success or failure of the republican experiment. "The steady character of our countrymen," Thomas Jefferson said, "is a stone to which we may safely moor. It is the manners and spirit of a people which preserve a commonwealth in vigor.A degeneracy in these is a herpes which soon eats to the heart of its laws and constitution."

In a similar vein, James Madison wrote: "Is there virtue among united states? If in that location be not, we are in a wretched state of affairs. No theoretical checks — no class of Government can render u.s.a. secure. To suppose that any grade of Government volition secure liberty or happiness without whatever form of virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea."

The founders rightly saw that without a people of character there could be no trust and justice, and thus no true community or stability. No true pursuit of happiness.

What benefits the whole, benefits the individual every bit well. Equally Speer puts information technology, "only hardness tin brand a great soul" and the cultivation of character gives us the inner exercise that makes our souls abound:

It is just where we have gone that we know the style; it is just the experience in life that we have passed through that gives us our true noesis of life, because the finish of life is its relationships, and wealth of life depends on the breadth of true knowledge and the riches of true relationship. Smoothness of life is simply deadening because information technology keeps us out of what is real life . . .

[The] indulgent life [is worthless] because information technology cannot connect men and women with the real springs of force and of power. No stiff man was e'er made against no resistance. Nosotros develop no concrete ability past putting forth no concrete effort. All the strength of life we have we get past pushing against opposition. We learn power as nosotros draw it out of deep experience and attempt.

A life of indulgence and ease, Speer concludes, "leaves men and women weak, with no strength either themselves to bear or to achieve for others."

Without seeking the ability and strength that comes from building one'southward grapheme, we will complaining that when we need the power of self-mastery, we do not have it:

And in our own lives the easy education does not go easily all the mode. There comes a time when, having always indulged ourselves, nosotros can't intermission the habit; when, never having taken our lives in our hands and reined them to the great ministries of mankind, we find that we cannot. We find that we obey our caprices; follow whatever impulse; cannot stick to any task; exercise not know a principle when we see it; have no fe or steel anywhere in our character; are the riffraff of the world that the worthy men and women take to conduct along as they go.

Character offers a form of freedom that seems foreign in our modern historic period, but at least for me personally, still securely resonates:

There is no liberty outside of character. Liberty, as Montesquieu says, is not freedom to practise merely as nosotros please. Liberty is the ability to do as we ought. And the liberty that we need is not the liberty of caprice and whim and listening to our impulses. It is the freedom that enables our eyes clearly to see what right is, and and so empowers us to do information technology.

Speer likewise reminds u.s. that just as the companions we choose tin mold our grapheme, and then can we mold others:

We are ourselves the shapers and directors of the characters and the characteristics of some whom we meet or reach. This thought ought to give us a sense of added responsibility and of added anxiety. What we are may settle the question of what a multitude of others shall exist and shall do. Our lives and characters are entering into and condign a part of the lives and characters of those whom nosotros never knew until recently, and their lives and characters are entering into and condign a function of ours. The composition of their and our characters is even so in progress.

Is our grapheme influencing others for skillful and helping them build their own power and forcefulness? Are we doing our office to be a man of character and infuse our culture and nation with vitality? What grooves and lines are you engraving upon your character each and every day? Character is our legacy — what volition yours be?

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