Rensselaer Republican, Volume 15, Number 50, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 August 1883 — THE SECRET OF TRUE DIGNITY. [ARTICLE]

THE SECRET OF TRUE DIGNITY.

The common note of all men, says the London Spectator, who are remarkable for true dignity is, however, a conscious self-respect; and this is getting less and less common as the contemplative temper merges into the competitive temper of modern times. Mr. Arnold has, with more than his usual skill, described the dignity of the East, in its contrast with the restlessness of the West, in the lines in which he paints the scorn felt by the East for the Roman conquests: The East bowed low below the blast, In patient', deep disdain; She let the Legions thunder past, And plunged in thought again. You have been the whole secret of true dignity in that verse.. It is patient; it is inward, and it really prefers the inward to the outward scenery. Dignity cannot be impatient; it cannot be external; yet, even if a mind is both patient and inward, it will have no true dignity so long as its whole feeling for the inward secresy it contemplates is that <?f displeasure and disapprobation. A dignified man must feel a certain amount of interest and pleasure in expressing himself adequately in speech and conduct. He must keenly value the moral symmetry of his own thoughts, and also the symmetry of his thoughts with this action, and therefore it is that in the externality and hurry and irrita bility of our day, dignity is starved.