Meditations for Layfolks - Mistakes

It is one of the signs of man's superiority over the animals that he can make mistakes, and, moreover, profit by them. An animal is guided by that queer faculty which we do not understand, but label "instinct" under the pleasureable, though inaccurate, impression that when we have given anything a name we have at once explained it. But all that we really mean by the phrase is that they live, build their homes, choose their food, cross ocean or forest-land or huge tracts of territory, guided solely by means of this compass-like faculty which for ever directs them. Hence it is that they very seldom go wrong. They know just when and how to act, and when and how to cease from acting. Birds may teach their young to fly or to swim, and beasts may learn from their elders hints for hunting; but it is something very unlike (because apparently without any stupidity), the schooling through which every child of man has to pass. The animals are practically always right, because they have practically no choice. Instinct, to serve its purpose, must be sure. Man, on the other hand, has been endowed with reason. He has, therefore, the fatal faculty of freedom, in the sense that he may argue, deduce, be over-persuaded, may prove only from experience (his own, or accepted authoritatively from others), what is useful to him or healthy, what is most or least conducive to his comfort. Unlike the beast, therefore, he can and has to make mistakes, though his reason also can profit by their making.

Mistakes are, therefore, the means by which man eventually achieves success; and it is the very same qualities of reason which are the causes of his mistakes, that are also the causes of his progress. It is the very fact of being able to argue, deduce, etc., that gives him the power to learn from error. Our books on Self-Help, of which the English-speaking world has always a plentiful store, and the custom ary stories-with-a-moral with which grown-up people regale the thirsty imaginations of children repeat such old fables as Robert Bruce's appreciative study of the spider to make us realize that failure should not be a signal for giving in, but merely a provocation for going on. This is surely perfectly evident. It is only by mistakes that we shall probably learn anything at all by making mistakes, noticing why we made mistakes, and thereby profiting out of our mistakes. We must study our failures to see where and why we failed. But there is something more that I can add and that is this: our own natural mistakes are the best for us, just because they are our own. When we listen to foolish advice, are over-borne by it against our judgement, and follow it and fail, we shall probably not get the same benefit that we should have done had we followed our own inclinations and failed. In other words, the mistake we made was not ours, but another's, and it is exceedingly difficult to learn from anybody else's mistakes. It is not seldom that we profit from another's success, but seldom from another's failure.

Hence there is a great deal to be said for those who are determined to follow out their own line of life at their own risk; at least it is probable that nothing you may say will affect them. You may turn from them with irritation, remarking that only when they have come to grief will they understand and thank you; but that is an open confession that it is precisely their own mistake which alone can profit them. Of course they will fail, but it will be a failure entirely in accordance with their own character, and from it, therefore, they may well hope to "make good." To the advice of others I should always listen with great patience, but I should not act merely on what is told to me. I must weigh it carefully, consider the particular authority with which they speak and the better opportunities they have had of judging, the consensus of opinion, etc.; but, finally, I must make up my own mind. If I choose at all, I shall in all probability choose well; but even if I come to grief, that should teach me more good than harm. In war and peace, in art and science, and even in the spiritual life, it is probable that I gain more from defeat than from victory. It is my faculty of being able to make mistakes which enables me to make profit by them. "They say best men are moulded out of faults"; "some rise by vice and some by virtues fall," is Shakespeare's comment upon life. It is the teaching, too, of the Gospel, where Magdalen achieves far higher praise than Martha. For to fail and gain profit out of failure is the peculiar glory of man in an imperfect world, unless he be preserved, as was the Queen of Saints, from the consequences of the Fall.

- text taken from Meditations for Layfolk by Father Bede Jarrett, O.P.