A famous artist once painted a portrait on a unique plan. He secured
a copy of every photograph of the subject from his babyhood. When the
painting was finished, there appeared in it the pictures of seven
people of different ages, skilfully grouped and variously employed, but
all portraits of the same person, each representing a stage of growth.
We shall not attempt the work of the artist, but will endeavor to
furnish the brush and colors, leaving you to fill in the sketches, now
and at future times, at your leisure.
A tale is told of a man who awoke one night thinking of his past and
groaning in evident mental distress. To the solicitous inquiry of his
guardian angel, he replied: “I am thinking about the people I used
to be.” The angel, smiling, said: “I am thinking seriously about the
people you are going to be”—thinking of
“The soul that has learned to break its chains,
The heart grown tenderer through its pains,
The mind made richer for its thought,
The character remorse has wrought
To far undreamed capacities;
The will that sits a king at ease.
Nay, marvel not, for I plainly see
And joy in the people you’re going to be.”
The gradual realization of higher and higher types is the general law
of evolution in the organic world; it is also the process of the
ideal spiritual development of the individual man. The potency of
an infinitely varied and beautiful world was in the primeval mist.
The potency of each higher type of being lies in the simpler form
preceding. Ideally the potency of a soul of strength and beauty, of
continuous development, is in the child and youth. The self of to-day
is the material of possibility which should grow into the higher self
of to-morrow.
Growth is not merely gain in knowledge and intellectual power. The
science of education must include a vision of the entire human
soul with its need of sympathy and direction, its vague dreams of
possibility, its ideals half-realized. We must view the scale of
feelings from the lowest animal instinct to the most refined ethical
emotions, the order of their worth from the meanest vindictiveness to
the highest altruism under God and duty, and note the struggle for the
survival of the fittest of the impulses and motives under the guidance
of reason and with the responsibility of freedom.
* * * * *
We see men, yet in the vigor of life, men of learning, of position,
of opportunity, complacent in their attainments, fixed in ideas and
methods adapted to a previous generation or a different environment,
psychically prematurely old, their powers half-developed, their life
work half-done. The men who reach the complete development of their
powers constantly renew their youth, and march with modern events.
We see young graduates, men of power, who, through degenerate
tendencies, lack of faith, lack of insight or lack of courage, remain
stationary and satisfied in the grade to which their diplomas duly
testify. They have as much life and growth and are as ornamental as a
painted canvas tree in a garden. A lazy indifferent man once said he
would as soon be dead as alive. When asked why he did not kill himself,
he could only explain that he would as soon be alive as dead.
In the established church is sometimes observed by its devotees a
special season of solitude and silence for religious meditation; it
is called a “retreat.” There is a German tale of an aged grandfather
who, every Christmas season, spent a day alone in meditation upon the
year and the years gone by, making a reckoning with himself, with his
failures and his blessings, and casting a most conscientious account.
On that day the noisy children were hushed by the servants—“The
master is keeping his retreat”—and they went about in silent wonder
and imagined he was making himself Christmas gifts in his quiet room
upstairs. When he reappeared in the evening, after his day of solitude,
he seemed by his quiet, gentle manners and thought-lit face to have
received heaven-sent gifts.
I shall never forget the passage of Vergil which in my school days
gave rise in me to a new sense of beauty in literature; nor shall I
forget the unique and rich experience of the revelation. Every one has
at times a new birth, a disclosure of hitherto unknown capacities and
powers.
The soul must keep its retreats, not necessarily on church-anniversary
days, but at epochs, at periods of dissatisfaction with the past, at
stages of new insight—must have a reckoning with itself and readjust
itself to life. When one reviews the panorama of his own history,
and finds it inartistic, a profitless daub, empty of the ideal or
heroic, he is keeping a retreat. When a new estimate of values and
possibilities appears, he has experienced a conversion, has taken a new
step in the evolution of his ideal life. The revolt of the soul may be
as necessary to its health and growth as the upheaval of a nation is
essential to its development. It is a battle for new principles, for
advance, for freedom.
Tolstoï relates a most striking reminiscence of his own life,
substantially thus: It was in 1872 that the Tolstoï of to-day saw the
light. Then a new insight revealed his former life as empty. It was
on a beautiful spring morning with bright sun, singing birds, and
humming insects. He had halted to rest his horse by a wayside cross.
Some peasants passing stopped there to offer their devotions. He was
touched to the depths by their simple faith, and when he took up his
journey he knew that the Kingdom of God is within us. He says: “It was
then, twenty-three years ago, that the Tolstoï of to-day sprang into
existence.”
President Garfield, when at the head of Hiram College, once addressed
his students, in a way that made a lasting impression, on the subject
of “Margins.” Personal distinction, success, depend, not on the average
bulk of knowledge, power, and skill, but on that margin that extends a
little beyond the reach of one’s fellows, a margin gained by some extra
devotion, by sacrifice and work, by ideals a little more advanced or
more clearly seen.
Some recent and notable inductions of physiological psychology along
the line of evolution reaffirm that without pain there can be no
happiness, that without struggle there can be no positive character,
that at times punishment may be most salutary and that a deadhead in
society degenerates as does a parasite in the animal kingdom. Since
these views are in line with the teachings of instinct and reason,
from old Plato down, we may believe that evolution as applied to the
spiritual nature of man is, indeed, becoming a hopeful doctrine. We
have had somewhat too much of Herbert Spencer’s pleasure theory, and
pursuit of inclination, and the discipline of natural consequences, and
lines of least resistance. The moral drama must be enacted on a field
of conflict.
The principle of personal evolution is “ideals and action.” Mr.
Gladstone’s wonderful character and great career are a pointed
illustration of this fact. Even his fixed standards of conduct were a
contribution to his growth and greatness. He always asked concerning
a policy of state: Is it just? No unworthy motive was ever known
to determine his public or his private acts. While working ever
according to permanent standards of right, his was essentially a
life of change and growth. Mr. Gladstone had a mind always seeking
truth, and, moreover, had a rare capacity for receiving new ideas.
In his history one can discover many distinct stages of development.
He himself acknowledges three great “transmigrations of spirit” in
his parliamentary career. He broke away from his early political
traditions and, in consequence, more than once was obliged to seek new
constituents who “marched with the movement of his mind.” He was ever
“struggling toward the light,” and was ever a fighter. His political
opponents said of him that his foot was always in the stirrup. His mind
rested not by inactivity, but by “stretching itself out in another
direction.” He threw himself into new and important movements for
humanity with tremendous zeal and force.
Lord Macaulay pithily expresses a law of human progress: “The point
which yesterday was invisible is our goal to-day, and will be our
starting post to-morrow.” Maurice Maeterlinck says: “If at the moment
you think or say something that is too beautiful to be true in you—if
you have but endeavored to think or to say it to-day, on the morrow it
will be true. We must try to be more beautiful than ourselves; we shall
never distance our soul.”
In the problem of growth do not neglect Emerson’s principle of
compensation. As men injure or help others, so they injure or help
themselves. Punishment is the inseparable attendant of crime. Requital
is swift, sure, and exact. Vice makes spiritual blindness. The real
drama of life is within. Some one has said that punishment for misdeeds
is not something which happens to a man, but something which happens in
a man. Balzac describes a magic skin, endowed with power to measure the
term of life of its possessor, which shrank with his every expressed
wish. Personal worth grows or shrinks with the daily life and thought.
Every one can will his own growth in strength and symmetry or can
become dwarfed and degenerate. Wrong takes away from the sum of worth;
virtue makes increase from the source of all good. Emerson says that
even a man’s defects may be turned to good. For instance, if he has
a disposition that fails to invite companionship, he gains habits of
self-help, and thus, “like the wounded oyster, he mends his shell with
pearl.”
* * * * *
If you would see the fulness of God’s revelation in men, look into the
minds of those whose biographies are worth writing—men who in affairs
of the world have shown clear thought and accurate judgment, and in
spiritual things have had visions that may strengthen and confirm your
feeble faith. Study the record of their words spoken at the fireside
in the presence of intimate and congenial friends, when they showed
glimpses of the real self. Learn in biography the history of great
souls and see in them the ideal which is the ideal of the race, and,
hence, your ideal. With the going out of this century some great
lives have ended—lives that embodied high types of rugged, honest
satire, political power, poetic thought, pure statesmanship, ethical
standards, religious faith, scientific devotion. Their histories
have been written, and enough is in them to stir the semiconscious
indolent nature of any young man to cultivate a high personal ideal.
When I left college my first investment was in a few additional good
books. I advise students to buy a few of the best biographies recently
published, and read them with a reverent mind.
When you see a man of marked power, you may be sure, always sure, that
he has used means of growth which average people ignore, means without
which his strength would never have appeared. He has been a student,
perhaps of Plato, of Shakespeare, of the Bible, of science or of human
nature. He has gone deeply into the character or writings of master
minds in some field of knowledge or activity. If he has a truly great
nature he is able to find in many a passage of Hebrew writings a power
that welled up from the great hearts of the prophets of old—or a wisdom
that gradually evolved with civilization through experiment, disaster,
struggle, and contrition, and was corrected and formulated with rare
understanding by the few great minds of history. Such writings are a
very wellspring of knowledge and understanding for a young man of this
or any age.
Have you read the earlier as well as the later writings of Rudyard
Kipling? What a growth of power! The evolution of his ideal ever
promises and realizes greater things. When recently it seemed that the
riper fruits of his progress would be denied us, the keenest solicitude
was everywhere manifest. It was a spontaneous tribute to the principle
of ideal spiritual evolution in the individual. We now know Kipling’s
secret. In his weakness and his sorrow he has already turned to a new
and more ambitious undertaking and has gathered to himself all material
that may enable him to pluck out from his subject the heart of its
mystery, and reveal it to the world of thought and culture. It is with
the magic of industry that he evolves the ideal of his life.
The following story is told of Kipling—that it is not authentic does
not rob it of its use: Father and son were on a voyage. The father,
suffering from seasickness, had retired to his cabin, when an officer
appeared and cried: “Your son has climbed out on the foreyard, and if
he lets go he’ll be drowned; we cannot save him.” “Oh, is that all?”
replied Mr. Kipling; “he won’t let go.”
* * * * *
Be men of to-day; the past is useful to make us wise in the present.
The poet Tennyson had a wonderful influence in his generation. His
influence is due not alone to his rich thought and poetic skill; he had
the broad liberal view that could adapt itself to the changing world of
science, philosophy, and religion, and he thus opened up the avenues
of approach to all classes of thinkers. He was a man with an evolving
ideal, a free, sane, healthy mind.
Poetry is not a thing of the past; it has not yet become familiar
with its new themes. Kipling can sing the “Song of Steam” and write
the romance of the “Day’s Work”—can find poetry in a locomotive, a
bridge, a ship or an engine. Kipling is right when he makes McAndrew,
the hard-headed engineer of an ocean liner, see in the vast motor
mechanism an “orchestra sublime,” “singing like the morning stars,” and
proclaiming: “Not unto us the praise, or man.” “From coupler-flange
to spindle-guide I see Thy Hand, O God”—and this vision is always the
ultimate ground of poetry. On a palace steamer between New York and the
New England coast I once heard an uncultured workman exclaim: “When I
watch this mighty engine, with its majestic, powerful movement, I feel
that there is a God.” At first thought the sentiment was humorously
illogical, but his instinct was right. The works of nature and the
works of man alike suggest a divine origin—God working in nature and
working through man.
If this is a divine world, then there is no claim of the commonplace,
no form of daily labor, no need of the unfortunate, no problem of
society or government that is not a theme of dignity and worthy of
attention and helpful effort. The form of truth is an empty, useless
abstraction, unless it is given a content, unless it adjusts wrongs,
removes evils, improves material conditions, and strengthens growth
among all classes of people to-day. The man who beautifies his lawn,
plants trees, lays good walks or cleans the streets is made more
conscious of the divine within him—is a better man. Spinoza regarded
his skill in making lenses to be as essential a part of his life as his
philosophical interest.
Every advance in civilization changes the perspective, and new views
and truths appear. Within a few years we have seen in America almost
an entire change of attitude regarding many essential political and
social questions. Throughout the world, Christianity, by clearer
interpretation of its spirit, is gaining new influence in practical
fields. New problems have not the enchantment of distance; history and
poetry have not thrown a halo about them; but they have the interest
of present, practical, living issues. Every great man has attained his
self-realization as a creative factor in the work of his own age. Take
a hand in making current history.
* * * * *
Successful men have shown at the close of their student life only
the hope of what they finally became. But they were men who knew how
to cherish every helpful impulse, to learn from every experience,
to profit by each fresh insight, to concentrate their powers upon
single tasks, and at each fulfilment look forward to still greater
undertakings. Such minds wear the beauty of promise,
“that which sets
The budding rose above the rose full blown.”
The realization of ideal promise is not merely intellectual power
and practical attainment. A man may have these, and yet lack a rich
mind. Sympathy, pure ideals, morality, religious sentiment belong to
a complete nature. Without them one is not a fit leader or a choice
companion. A wholly irreligious man is not conscious of his soul. As
the years advance, with the progressive man there is more heart, more
simplicity and truth, more moral and spiritual interest.
In the “Memoir of Lord Tennyson” by his son, a chapter on the “In
Memoriam” throws brilliant side lights on the essential character of
the great poet. One would almost take the truths there expressed as
his creed, and the inner life there revealed as the consummation of
a personal ideal. We note his “splendid faith in the growing purpose
of the sum of life, and in the noble destiny of the individual man;”
his belief that “it is the great purpose which consecrates life;”
his feeling that “only under the inspiration of ideals, and with his
‘sword bathed in heaven,’ can a man combat the cynical indifference,
the intellectual selfishness, the sloth of will, the utilitarian
materialism of a transition age;” his faith that “the truth must be
larger, purer, nobler than any mere human expression of it;” his
affirmation that, if you “take away belief in the self-conscious
personality of God, you take away the backbone of the world.” He
believed in prayer. In his own words: “Prayer is like opening a sluice
between the great ocean and our little channels when the great sea
gathers itself together and flows in at full tide.”
Ideals do not belong to a mystical realm, to a remote age or to an
indefinite future. They are not the exclusive possession of sage,
saint, or poet. They belong to this day, here, to us. They belong
to the professional man, as a man, as much as to the man of liberal
culture.
To see the idyllic in what is familiar, to realize the heroic in
ourselves, to make the lessons of greatness our own, to work with the
spirit of our time are the means of growth. Every thought and every
act, flowing from the conscious will, fashion the soul.
“I held it truth, with him who sings
To one clear harp in divers tones,
That men may rise on stepping-stones
Of their dead selves to higher things.”