فصل 20

Part Six - How to Keep from Worrying About Criticism

Chapter 20 - Remember That No One Ever Kicks a Dead Dog

An event occurred in 1929 that created a national sensation in educational circles. Learned men from all over America rushed to Chicago to witness the affair. A few years earlier, a young man by the name of Robert Hutchins had worked his way through Yale, acting as a waiter, a lumberjack, a tutor, and a clothes-line salesman. Now, only eight years later, he was being inaugurated as president of the fourth richest university in America, the University of Chicago. His age? Thirty. Incredible! The older educators shook their heads. Criticism came roaring down upon the “boy wonder” like a rockslide. He was this and he was that, too young, inexperienced, his educational ideas were cockeyed. Even the newspapers joined in the attack.

The day he was inaugurated, a friend said to the father of Robert Maynard Hutchins: “I was shocked this morning to read that newspaper editorial denouncing your son.”

“Yes,” the elder Hutchins replied, “it was severe, but remember that no one ever kicks a dead dog.”

Yes, and the more important a dog is, the more satisfaction people get in kicking him. The Prince of Wales who later became Edward VIII (now Duke of Windsor) had that forcibly brought home to him. He was attending Dartmouth College in Devonshire at the time-a college that corresponds to the Naval Academy at Annapolis. The Prince was about fourteen. One day one of the naval officers found him crying, and asked him what was wrong. He refused to tell at first, but finally admitted the truth: he was being kicked by the naval cadets. The commodore of the college summoned the boys and explained to them that the Prince had not complained, but he wanted to find out why the Prince had been singled out for this rough treatment.

After much hemming and hawing and toe scraping, the cadets finally confessed that when they themselves became commanders and captains in the King’s Navy, they wanted to be able to say that they had kicked the King!

So when you are kicked and criticized, remember that it is often done because it gives the kicker a feeling of importance. It often means that you are accomplishing something and are worthy of attention. Many people get a sense of savage satisfaction out of denouncing those who are better educated than they are or more successful. For example, while I was writing this chapter, I received a letter from a woman denouncing General William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army. I had given a laudatory broadcast about General Booth; so this woman wrote me, saying that General Booth had stolen eight million dollars of the money he had collected to help poor people. The charge, of course, was absurd. But this woman wasn’t looking for truth. She was seeking the mean-spirited gratification that she got from tearing down someone far above her. I threw her bitter letter into the wastebasket, and thanked Almighty God that I wasn’t married to her. Her letter didn’t tell me anything at all about General Booth, but it did tell me a lot about her. Schopenhauer had said it years ago: “Vulgar people take huge delight in the faults and follies of great men.”

One hardly thinks of the president of Yale as a vulgar man; yet a former president of Yale, Timothy Dwight, apparently took huge delight in denouncing a man who was running for President of the United States. The president of Yale warned that if this man were elected President, “we may see our wives and daughters the victims of legal prostitution, soberly dishonored, speciously polluted; the outcasts of delicacy and virtue, the loathing of God and man.”

Sounds almost like a denunciation of Hitler, doesn’t it? But it wasn’t. It was a denunciation of Thomas Jefferson. Which Thomas Jefferson? Surely not the immortal Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, the patron saint of democracy? Yea, verily, that was the man.

What American do you suppose was denounced as a “hypocrite”, “an impostor”, and as “little better than a murderer?”

A newspaper cartoon depicted him on a guillotine, the big knife read to cut off his head. Crowds jeered at him and hissed him as he rode through the street. Who was he? George Washington.

But that occurred a long time ago. Maybe human nature has improved since then. Let’s see. Let’s take the case of Admiral Peary-the explorer who startled and thrilled the world by reaching the North Pole with dog sleds on April 6, 1909-a goal that brave men for centuries had suffered and died to attain. Peary himself almost died from cold and starvation; and eight of his toes were frozen so hard they had to be cut off. He was so overwhelmed with disasters that he feared he would go insane. His superior naval officers in Washington were burned up because Peary was getting so much publicity and acclaim. So they accused him of collecting money for scientific expeditions and then “lying around and loafing in the Arctic.” And they probably believed it, because it is almost impossible not to believe what you want to believe. Their determination to humiliate and block Peary was so violent that only a direct order from President McKinley enabled Peary to continue his career in the Arctic.

Would Peary have been denounced if he had had a desk job in the Navy Department in Washington. No. He wouldn’t have been important enough then to have aroused jealousy.

General Grant had an even worse experience than Admiral Peary. In 1862, General Grant won the first great decisive victory that the North had enjoyed-a victory that was achieved in one afternoon, a victory that made Grant a national idol overnight, a victory that had tremendous repercussions even in far-off Europe, a victory that set church bells ringing and bonfires blazing from Maine to the banks of the Mississippi. Yet within six weeks after achieving that great victory, Grant, hero of the North, was arrested and his army was taken from him. He wept with humiliation and despair.

Why was General U.S. Grant arrested at the flood tide of his victory? Largely because he had aroused the jealousy and envy of his arrogant superiors.

If we are tempted to be worried about unjust criticism here is Rule 1: Remember that unjust criticism is often a disguised compliment. Remember that no one ever kicks a dead dog.