I am deeply convinced that our peace of mind and the joy we get out of living depends
not on where we are, or what we have, or who we are, but solely upon our mental
attitude. Outward conditions have very little to do with it. For example, let's take the case
of old John Brown, who was hanged for seizing the United States arsenal at Harpers
Ferry and trying to incite the slaves to rebellion. He rode away to the gallows, sitting on
his coffin. The jailer who rode beside him was nervous and worried. But old John Brown
was calm and cool. Looking up at the Blue Ridge mountains of Virginia, he exclaimed:
"What a beautiful country! I never had an opportunity to really see it before."
Or take the case of Robert Falcon Scott and his companions- the first Englishman ever
to reach the South Pole. Their return trip was probably the cruelest journey ever
undertaken by man. Their food was gone-and so was their fuel. They could no longer
march because a howling blizzard roared down over the rim of the earth for eleven days
and nights-a wind so fierce and sharp that it cut ridges in the polar ice. Scott and his
companions knew they were going to die; and they had brought a quantity of opium
along for just such an emergency. A big dose of opium, and they could all lie down to
pleasant dreams, never to wake again. But they ignored the drug, and died "singing
ringing songs of cheer". We know they did because of a farewell letter found with their
frozen bodies by a searching party, eight months later.
Yes, if we cherish creative thoughts of courage and calmness, we can enjoy the scenery
while sitting on our coffin, riding to the gallows; or we can fill our tents with "ringing
songs of cheer", while starving and freezing to death.
Milton in his blindness discovered that same truth three hundred years ago:
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a heaven of Hell, a hell of Heaven.
Napoleon and Helen Keller are perfect illustrations of Milton's statement: Napoleon had
everything men usually crave-glory, power, riches-yet he said at St. Helena: "I have
never known six happy days in my life"; while Helen Keller- blind, deaf, dumb-declared:
"I have found life so beautiful."
If half a century of living has taught me anything at all, it has taught me that "Nothing
can bring you peace but yourself."
I am merely trying to repeat what Emerson said so well in the closing words of his essay
on "Self-Reliance" : "A political victory, a rise in rents, the recovery of your sick, or the
return of your absent friend, or some other quite external event, raises your spirits, and
you think good days are preparing for you. Do not believe it. It can never be so. Nothing
can bring you peace but yourself."
Epictetus, the great Stoic philosopher, warned that we ought to be more concerned
about removing wrong thoughts from the mind than about removing "tumours and
abscesses from the body."
Epictetus said that nineteen centuries ago, but modern medicine would back him up. Dr.
G. Canby Robinson declared that four out of five patients admitted to Johns Hopkins
Hospital were suffering from conditions brought on in part by emotional strains and
stresses. This was often true even in cases of organic disturbances. "Eventually," he
declared, "these trace back to maladjustments to life and its problems."