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With our archives now 3,500+ articles deep, we\u2019ve decided to republish a classic piece each Friday to help our newer readers discover some of the best, evergreen gems from the past. This article was originally published in June 2013.<\/em><\/p>\n Character<\/i>. Like honor<\/a>, it\u2019s a word we take for granted and probably have an affinity for, but likely struggle to define and articulate. It\u2019s a word most men desire to have ascribed to them, and yet the standards for its attainment remain rather vague in our modern age.<\/p>\n It\u2019s certainly not a word that\u2019s used as much as it once was. Cultural historian Warren Susman researched the rise and fall of the concept of character<\/a>, tracing its prevalence in literature and the self-improvement manuals and guides popular in different eras. What he found is that the use of the term \u201ccharacter\u201d began in the 17th<\/sup> century and peaked in the 19th<\/sup> \u2013 a century, Susman writes, that embodied \u201ca culture of character.\u201d During the 1800s, \u201ccharacter was a key word in the vocabulary of Englishmen and Americans,\u201d and men were spoken of as having strong or weak character, good or bad character, a great deal of character or no character at all. Young people were admonished to cultivate real character, high character, and noble character and told that character was the most priceless thing they could ever attain. Starting at the beginning of the 20th<\/sup> century, however, Susman found that the ideal of character began to be replaced by that of personality<\/em>.<\/strong><\/p>\n But character and personality are two very different things.<\/p>\n As 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 time offered people new ways of forming their identity and presenting it to the world. In place of defining themselves through the cultivation of virtue, people began to express themselves through hobbies, dress, and material possessions. Susman observed this shift through the changing content of self-improvement manuals, which went from emphasizing moral imperatives and work to personal fulfillment: \u201c<\/strong>The vision of self-sacrifice began to yield to that of self-realization.\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n While advice manuals of the 19th century (and some of the early 20th<\/sup> as well) emphasized what a man really was<\/i> and did<\/i>, the new advice manuals concentrated on what others thought<\/i> he was and did. In a culture of character, good conduct was thought to spring from a noble heart and mind; with this shift, perception trumped inner intent. Readers were taught how to be charming, control their voice, and make a good impression. A great example of this is Dale Carnegie\u2019s How to Win Friends and Influence People<\/a><\/i> from 1936. It focused on how to get people to like you and how to get others to perceive you well versus trying to improve your actual inner moral compass.<\/p>\n Susman argues that the transformation from a culture of character to a culture of personality was ultimately about a shift from \u201cachievement to performance.\u201d <\/strong>Susman illuminates this difference by noting that while the words most associated with character in the nineteenth century were \u201ccitizenship, duty, democracy, work, building, golden deeds, outdoor life, conquest, honor, reputation, morals, manners, integrity, and above all, manhood,\u201d the words most associated with personality in the twentieth were \u201cfascinating, stunning, attractive, magnetic, glowing, masterful, creative, dominant, and forceful.\u201d<\/p>\n There\u2019s nothing wrong with the cultivation of personality, and we\u2019ve offered plenty of advice on it here on the site. It can help you navigate the world, form relationships, and become successful. But personality is absolutely no substitute for character, which should be the foundation of every man\u2019s life.<\/p>\n Thus today we will be exploring the true nature of this largely forgotten ideal. We\u2019ll be doing so by tapping into the writings of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when character was still king.<\/p>\n The etymology of character is quite telling. The word comes from the Greek kharakter<\/i> for “engraved mark,” “symbol or imprint on the soul,” and “instrument for marking,” and can be traced further back to the words for “to engrave,” “pointed stake,” and “to scrape and scratch.\u201d<\/p>\n Anciently, a character was the stamp or marking impressed into wax and clay, and as Henry Clay Trumbull explains in 1894\u2019s Character-Shaping and Character-Showing<\/a><\/i>, it served as:<\/p>\n another name for the signature, or monogram, or personal superscription, or trade-mark, of the potter, the painter, the sculptor, the writer, or any other artist or artisan, or inventor, as indicative of the personality of the maker, or of the distinctive individuality of the article marked. It is the visible token by which a thing is distinguished from every other thing with which it might otherwise be confounded.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n In the 17th<\/sup> century, the word came to be associated with \u201cthe sum of qualities that defines a person.\u201d These qualities included a man\u2019s intellect, thoughts, ideas, motives, intentions, temperament, judgment, behavior, imagination, perception, emotions, loves, and hates. All of these components, William Straton Bruce writes in 1908\u2019s The Formation of Christian Character<\/a><\/i>, \u201cgo to the shaping and coloring of a man’s character. They have all some part in producing that final type of self, that ultimate habit of will<\/b>, into which the man’s whole activities at last shape themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n The balance 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 apart one individual from another.<\/p>\n It should not be thought, however, that character 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 little to nothing to do with character. Rather, character is defined in how your habits, motives, thoughts, and so on relate to morality, particularly as it concerns integrity<\/i><\/a>. Character was defined as \u201cyour moral self<\/b>,\u201d the \u201ccrown of a moral life<\/b>,\u201d and referred to as a \u201cmoral structure<\/b>,\u201d something you built through virtuous behavior. Bruce writes:<\/p>\n 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. But this individuality may be non-moral. To produce character it must be brought under discipline, and organized into the structure of a true moral being . . .<\/p>\n Above all, [character] includes a choice, a settled<\/i> habit<\/i> or bent<\/i> of<\/i> will,<\/i> so that it can be seen in its outcome in conduct. Character takes up the raw material of nature and temperament, and it weaves these into the strong, well-knit texture of a fully moralized manhood<\/b>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n To better understand the nature of character, we now turn to James Davison Hunter who laid out the three qualities of true character in his modern book, The Death of Character<\/a><\/i>:<\/p>\n We cannot differ as to the need in our national character of those qualities of self-control, of quick and unquestioning obedience to duty, of joyful 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 as peremptorily demand. To put these primary and elemental needs as sharply as possible, let us call them discipline and austerity. Our American character needs more of both. \u2013Robert Elliott Speer, The Stuff of Manhood, Some Needed Notes on American Character<\/i>, 1917<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The one quality most associated with character in the nineteenth century was self-mastery \u2014 the dominion of an individual over his impulses and desires, so that he was in control of them, and not the other way around. A man of self-mastery embodies the kingship of self-control<\/a> and can direct his will and make his own choices, rather than being a slave to his base impulses.<\/p>\n Moral discipline is also a quality that not only allows a man to bear hardship stoically, but even to actively seek out a rougher, more austere life<\/a>, one that eschews the kind of indulgence that deprives character of needed training and leads to softness.<\/p>\n The pursuit of character does not have as its sole end the cultivation of self. Susman notes that it is in fact \u201ca group of traits believed to have social<\/i> significance and moral quality,\u201d and he found that the most popular quote related to character during the nineteenth century was Ralph Waldo Emerson\u2019s definition of it as: \u201cMoral order through the medium of individual nature<\/b>.\u201d This is to say that the choices each single person makes influences the world around him, and that the existence of a virtuous society is predicated on the virtue of each of its individual members. Moral attachment means being committed to a set of higher ideals and to acting, and if need be, sacrificing, for the greater good of one\u2019s community. Speer beautifully explains the meaning of this essential quality of character:<\/p>\n The moral elements of individual character are inevitably social <\/b>. . . When a man \u2018has trained himself,\u2019 to use the words of Lord Morley in dealing with Voltaire’s religion, \u2018to 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 future of his brothers,” he views each struggle within his own soul against evil and each firm aspiration after purity not as a mere incident in his own spiritual biography but as a fight for social good and for the perfecting of the nation and of humanity. And the struggle for social good and the perfecting of human life is fundamentally a struggle for the triumph of ideals in personal wills<\/strong>. God can take hold of men only in man. He revealed Himself and wrought redemption less by a social process than by a personal incarnation. And the only way of which we know to uplift the life of the nation and to fit it for its mission and its ministry is to reform our own and other men’s characters, and ourselves to be what manner of man among men we would have the nation be among nations.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nWhat Is Character?<\/span><\/h3>\n
The 3 Qualities of True Character<\/span><\/h3>\n
Moral Discipline<\/h3>\n
Moral Attachment<\/h3>\n
Moral Autonomy<\/h3>\n
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