The Majesty of Calmness: Individual problems and possibilities

Calmness is the rarest quality in human life. It is the poise of a great nature, in harmony with itself and its ideals. It is the moral atmosphere of a life self-centred, self-reliant, and self-controlled. Calmness is singleness of purpose, absolute confidence, and conscious power, --ready to be focused in an instant to meet any crisis.

The Sphinx is not a true type of calmness, --petrifaction is not calmness; it is death, the silencing of all the energies; while no one lives his life more fully, more intensely and more consciously than the man who is calm.

The Fatalist is not calm. He is the coward slave of his environment, hopelessly surrendering to his present condition, recklessly indifferent to his future. He accepts his life as a rudderless ship, drifting on the ocean of time. He has no compass, no chart, no known port to which he is sailing. His self-confessed inferiority to all nature is shown in his existence of constant surrender. It is not, -- calmness.

William George Jordan (March 6, 1864 - April 20, 1928) was an American editor, lecturer and essayist. Jordan was born in New York City on March 6, 1864. He graduated from the City College of New York and began his literary career as editor of Book Chat in 1884. He joined Current Literature in 1888 and became its managing editor. In 1891 he left Current Literature and moved to Chicago where he started a lecture program on his system of Mental Training. He returned to Current Literature in January 1894 as its managing editor and then resigned again in August 1896. In 1897 he was hired as the managing editor for The Ladies Home Journal, after which he edited The Saturday Evening Post (1888-89). From 1899 to 1905 he was the editor and vice-president of Continental Publishing Company. He was the editor of the publication Search-Light between 1905 and 1906. On July 26 of 1891, the Chicago Inter-Ocean published an interview with Mr. Jordan where he discussed his thoughts about education and "Mental Training". After the article was published he received so many requests for information that he scheduled a trip back in October to lecture on the subject. The Inter-Ocean in a September 24 article reported that: During the past few weeks the calls from Chicago have been so numerous, enthusiastic and positive for lecture courses and private society classes that he has concluded to resign his position in New York and come to Chicago. He remained in Chicago for two years and then returned to Current Literature in 1894. In 1894 he published a short 20-page pamphlet entitled Mental Training, a Remedy for Education (this was republished again in 1907), that summarized his lectures. The opening paragraph starts as follows: There are two great things that education should do for the individual-It should train his senses, and teach him to think. Education, as we know it to-day, does not truly do either; it gives the individual only a vast accumulation of facts, unclassified, undigested, and seen in no true relations. Like seeds kept in a box, they may be retained, but they do not grow.