At the risk of imitating the severe logical discourses which
proceed at least as far as fifthly, let us enumerate some essential
conditions that by the agreement of thoughtful men are requisite for
a satisfactory life: (1) a sound body; (2) courage; (3) intellectual
ideals; (4) moral ideals; (5) reverence. While these elements are
selected for their intrinsic value, without reference to the history
of ethical thought, the discovery that they show more than a fancied
similarity to the ancient and the early Christian ideals strengthens
our belief in their value, and suggests that essential human standards
are not for one people or one age, but for all peoples and all time,
and that they are spontaneously recognized even in an age like ours,
when men readily turn toward utilitarian ends.
If we go back to the dawn of philosophic thought and listen to the
early revelators of the nature of man and his relation to the world and
society—converse with Plato in the groves of Academus, or walk with
Aristotle in the shady avenues of the Lyceum—we find them proclaiming
the great truths which have been confirmed by the experience of ages,
and urging upon men Moderation, Courage, Wisdom, Justice, and the
Good, or God, as aim. If we cross over from the ancient world to the
Christian Empire, where old ethical thought was already taking on
deeper meaning, broader application, and richer life, we find in the
Cardinal Virtues of St. Ambrose and St. Augustine a new and vitalized
form of the Greek Virtues: Temperance, Christian Fortitude, Christian
Wisdom, Christian Justice, God as aim. If we come down to modern times,
and catch the spirit of ideals that still dwell among the people, we
find that human nature is everywhere the same, and that the experience
of human life in all ages discovers through the organization of society
the same divine principles—laws to be reverenced and obeyed, to be
followed as practical guides to success.
* * * * *
Modern psychology has rendered a service of far-reaching practical
benefit in showing more definitely the intimate connection between the
brain and mental action. In this connection of body and soul the two
are correlated; the brain is organic to the functions of the soul.
The health of the brain is largely dependent upon general physical
conditions, and the old apothegm, “_Mens sana in corpore sano_,” is
interpreted with a new meaning not fully known in the days of Juvenal.
Maxims of health, sifted by the experience of ages, transmitted from
generation to generation, and confirmed by the proofs of modern
science, are wisdom of inestimable value for our instruction. He who
wastes energy of the body wastes vigor and duration of mental power.
Rev. William R. Alger used to say: “Keep yourself at highest working
capacity by preserving the vigor of the body.” The various ways of
wasting physical energy are susceptible of classification, and it is
well worth the while to make a thoughtful analysis of the subject. We
admire the firm step, erect bearing, clear eye, and bright brain that
belong to healthful habits and noble manhood. Many a man by carefully
conserving the vital forces will outlive and outdo others who, with
stronger bodies, waste their energy.
Physical sins react upon the mind and debase character. They are signs
of a character already weak, and the interaction between mind and body
doubly hastens the relaxing of just restraint. The ancient virtue of
moderation, or temperance, meant more than temperate habit; it meant
the submission of animal unreason to reason—the “observance of due
measure in all conduct.”
In accord with the maxims of health are the Greek Virtue of Moderation,
the Cardinal Virtue of Temperance, the Hebrew Purity. Regard for these
maxims is an important condition of success.
* * * * *
Courage appears in the Greek Category as heart for energetic action,
and in the Cardinal Virtues as firmness for the right and against the
wrong. Courage is the _sine qua non_ of success. The student must have
courage to overcome his inertia. A venerable professor of my college
days used to say: “Every young man is naturally as lazy as he can be,
and the greatest problem of education is to gain an energetic will.”
Courage is required to undertake an enterprise demanding long years
of toil. A volume recently published contains the early experience of
celebrated authors now living, and nearly every one owes his success to
a persevering determination, in spite of poverty, rebuffs, criticism,
and repeated failures. Their genius lies in their courage. We need the
courage of our convictions to stand by the right. The great reformers
have shared this kind of confidence of soul. Nearly all of Carlyle’s
types of the world’s great heroes possessed it to an almost sublime
degree, and, most of all, the hero of the Reformation. Waiving all
religious controversies that centre about the doctrines of Martin
Luther, he is a figure for the world to admire. Some of his memorable
words are known as household words, but, like strains of familiar grand
music, are ever grateful—they lose nothing by repeating. When warned
that Duke George of Leipzig was his enemy he said: “Had I business, I
would ride into Leipzig though it rained Duke Georges for nine days
running.” When summoned to the Diet at Worms, he answered the friends
who would dissuade him: “Were there as many devils in Worms as there
are roof tiles, I would on.” When urged in the presence of that august
council to recant, he replied: “Here I stand; I can do no other; God
help me.” And the courage of his religious faith rose to its climax
when he boldly faced the supernatural and hurled his inkstand at the
head of the Devil himself. The student needs the courage of faith in
his own powers and possibilities. Many a one fails because he has not
confidence in himself. In rare moments of meditation one sometimes
discovers capacities and possibilities of attainment that become a life
inspiration.
We are proud of our Teutonic ancestry; of the bold enterprise that led
the Teutons across Europe in conquest, or impelled them to embark in
their galleys and push forth with adventurous spirit, and fearlessly
ride the tempestuous waves, as their oars kept time to the music of
their songs of victory. Their courageous and progressive spirit, tamed
and refined, reappeared in the religious convictions of the Puritans,
in the settlement of America, in the westward march of civilization in
our own country, in the confidence of the pioneers that early crossed
the plains and pitched their tents by these mighty mountains, in the
energy that has made all that the world holds as greatest and best in
material civilization, invention, government, science, literature,
and moral and religious principle. The young man who has in his veins
the blood of this people, and inherits the blessings that his race
has wrought out, is a recreant to his trust if he does not stand
courageously for all that is best in his own development, and all that
is best in the progress of his age. Thor, the Norse god, possessed a
belt of strength by which his might was doubled, and a precious hammer
which when thrown returned to the hand of its own accord. When he
wielded the hammer, as the Northern legends relate, he grasped it until
the knuckles grew white. This hammer is an heirloom of the Northern
races, handed down from the Halls of Walhalla. And herein lies the
secret of success: grasp the hammer until the knuckles grow white.
* * * * *
Plato held Wisdom to be the supreme means by which to attain the great
purpose of human existence. The Cardinal Virtue of Christian Wisdom
is to gain knowledge of God. Plato conceived growth in wisdom to be
a gradual realization, in the consciousness of man, of the eternal
ideas. Man came from heaven and in his progress in knowledge he was
but climbing the upward path to regain his lost estate. The exercise
of wisdom marked him off from the lower order of beings, and he was
fulfilling the distinctively human function only when living a rational
life.
If nature is a congeries of metaphors arranged in a system of relations
and constituting a sublime allegory, and we, being the offspring of
God, may interpret this allegory and thereby come to a consciousness of
verities, if there is a spiritual sense that may feel the presence of
great truths and of a personal God—then man pursues his supreme calling
when through the laws of physical nature, when through the beauty of
its forms, when through knowledge of self, when through the world’s
history and literature and philosophy he aims at a further acquaintance
with truth. If knowledge and the power that comes through knowledge
enhance our material civilization and make more favorable conditions
for the body and more leisure for the mind and more refinement for the
spirit, if to create material things brings us more in accord with the
creative spirit of the universe, then we have the highest incentives to
gain knowledge toward so-called practical ends.
The universities are not always the first discoverers of wisdom,
but they are the storehouses of the wisdom of the ages, and the
distributing points. They are not a substitute for nature and real
life, but they help to interpret both. They are not a substitute for
practical experience, but they bestow the instruments with which to do
better the work of practical experience. They do not create power, but
they develop power.
A few geniuses have in strong degree the intellectual impulse and
follow it until they become original and creative, and contribute to
the world’s insight. But the average youth needs all that the formal
training of the schools can give him. When the student is once aroused
by the sense of his privileges and duties, he will select no easy goal
to attain. He will not be satisfied until he has learned the secrets
of nature’s processes, has examined his own nature, has made use of
the recorded experience of the ages—thereby taking a giant stride in
knowledge that he could not have taken alone—has given himself the
power to help in the work of his own time.
* * * * *
Justice was regarded by Plato as the ground of social uprightness;
Christian justice recognized the brotherhood of man, with all
that follows in moral conduct; “moral ideals” for us has the same
significance. This is not the place for the discussion of ethical
theories, but it is of the highest importance for the young man, after
wandering more or less vaguely over the field of ethical doctrines, to
turn to the nature of his own being and find there written the supreme
fact of moral obligation, with its implications of freedom of will, a
personal God, and immortality of the soul.
Every man knows that even in his ordinary approvable acts he does not
work to the end of pleasure, but that he has impulses that reach out
in fellowship and compassion toward others, impulses that reach out
toward the Truth and Beauty and Supreme Goodness of the world. Every
man knows that he possesses a power to choose amongst and regulate his
impulses; that such aims are to be employed as will conduce to the
perfection of his being and of all human being; that his reward lies
in this perfection, in a noble and approvable character, which is not
to be completed in this life, but is to attain its full realization in
a future life. And hence is revealed to him the rational necessity of
that life, without which the present struggle and growth would lack
meaning.
If there is moral order in the universe, then man will be successful as
he conforms to that order. If he goes against the great silent forces
moving in the direction of Right, his life can but result in failure.
Men who show a disregard for moral law are held to possess a dangerous
malady slowly decaying the tissues of the soul. They are treated with
suspicion in business relations and condemned in the minds of others
and by their own judgment. Sound to the core must a man be who would
make the most of life and receive the approval which the world bestows
upon character.
A true man is bold; he feels that for him all the forces of right will
contend. He has courage for his work, because he knows he is on the
right path and is moving toward ever higher attainments and a supreme
result.
The subject is old as man, the thoughts are trite; why not utter
your maxim and proceed, or rather say nothing? While there are lives
empty of purpose and hearts that bleed in contrition and tragedies
that fill prisons and madhouses, there is much to say and more to do.
Have we no further use for wisdom? Have we ceased to erect perennial
monuments to the memory of saints and reformers? If the subject is
old, the generations of men are new, and the race has not attained its
perfection. The best men and the best thoughts reveal us to ourselves,
are the source of our aspiration; and we of the present, not half-way
toward the goal, have need of our Socrates, Augustine, Luther, and
supremely of the divine Christ. We still have need of our Pilgrim’s
Progress.
* * * * *
The aim of Plato’s philosophy was the Supreme Good, or God. The
Cardinal Virtues were framed in the light of religious faith. Reverence
is the sentiment whose object is God. Says the Sage of Chelsea: “All
that we do springs out of Mystery, Spirit, invisible Force.” Some,
well-versed in Spencer’s works, have failed to note this passage: “One
truth must grow ever clearer—the truth that there is an Inscrutable
Existence everywhere manifested, to which the man of science can
neither find nor conceive either beginning or end. Amid the mysteries
which become the more mysterious the more they are thought about there
will remain the one absolute certainty, that he is ever in the presence
of an Infinite and Eternal Energy, from which all things proceed.” Add
to this the Faith which is the “substance of things hoped for, the
evidence of things not seen,” and you have the origin of all religions,
of all temples of worship. It is the conception of the philosopher and
the insight of the poet; it is held most strongly by the most profound.
Few great men, though they may reject formal creeds, are without the
feeling of Reverence. Carlyle’s “Everlasting Yea” is the vision of
a true seer, and it reveals, in the spontaneous language of earnest
thought, the breadth and depth of a possible Christian experience. He
speaks through the hero of the “Sartor Resartus.” By disappointment
and dim faith the universe had become to him a vast merciless machine;
he was filled with an indefinable fear. But over his soul came the
spirit of Indignation and Defiance, and he shook off fear of all
that is evil, and all that may happen of evil. In his words: “The
Everlasting No had said: ‘Behold, thou art fatherless, outcast; and the
Universe is mine (the Devil’s)’; to which my whole Me now made answer:
‘I am not thine, but Free, and forever hate thee!’” This is but the
first step, and only by the “Annihilation of Self” does he awake to
a “new Heaven and a new Earth.” Now nature is seen to be the “Living
Garment of God.” The Universe is no longer “dead and demoniacal,”
but “godlike and his Father’s.” He looks upon his fellow man with
an “infinite Love, an infinite Pity,” and enters the porch of the
“Sanctuary of Sorrow.” Happiness is no longer the aim; happiness cannot
be satisfied. “There is in man a _Higher_ than Love of Happiness; he
can do without Happiness, and instead thereof find Blessedness!” “Love
not pleasure; love God. This is the EVERLASTING YEA.” The Temple of
Sorrow (the Christian Temple) is partly in ruins, but in a crypt the
sacred lamp still burns for him, and for all. Applied Christianity
is action. He says: “Do the Duty which lies nearest thee: thy second
Duty will already have become clearer.” Thy opportunity is in whatever
thy condition now and here offers thee. “Whatsoever thy hand findeth
to do, do it with thy whole might.” Christianity “flows through all
our hearts and modulates and divinely leads them.” Of immortality he
says: “Know of a truth that only the Time-shadows have perished, or are
perishable; that the real Being of whatever was, and whatever is, and
whatever will be, _is_ even now and forever.... Believe it thou must;
understand it thou canst not.”
If we may draw a lesson from this, Carlyle’s greatest work, it is that
the completeness of life requires vivifying, hope-giving, sin-subduing,
courage-inspiring faith and reverence. To the hero of Carlyle’s prose
poem success did not come, until the “Fire-Baptism” of his soul. He
confesses: “I directly thereupon began to be a man.”
* * * * *
Are these ideals of value for practical success? Yes, for all the
success worth striving for and worth having. Does not craft succeed
better than honesty? Sometimes, and for a time, but honesty appears to
be even the best policy, and it is the essential stamp of real manhood
and womanhood. The genuine heroes of all history are the morally great.
Are not such standards too high—impractical ideals for the pulpit and
platform, which no one is expected to carry into real life? No one
attains even his own ideals, much less the absolute standards; but they
are the steady aim of a fully successful life.
If a young man is true to himself, the bounties of nature, the good
will of others, the coöperation of the forces of right, and the
approval of God are his. The world waits to see what he will do with
his powers and opportunities. Much is expected of him, and rightly. The
state which has helped educate him expects much; the home which has
made sacrifices for him expects much. Will he have the courage to stand
by his ideals? To progress must be part of his religion. When the oak
has ceased to put forth its leaves and extend its branches, it has gone
into hopeless decay. There is no lasting happiness but in action and
ever new and higher realizations.
Longfellow represents early manhood turning regretfully from the memory
visions of childhood and youth to the earnest work of life.
“Visions of childhood! Stay, O stay!
Ye were so sweet and wild!
And distant voices seem to say,
It cannot be! They pass away!
Other themes demand thy lay;
Thou art no more a child!
“The land of Song within thee lies,
Watered by living springs;
The lids of Fancy’s sleepless eyes
Are gates unto that Paradise,
Holy thoughts, like stars, arise,
Its clouds are angel’s wings.
* * * * *
“Look, then, into thine heart, and write!
Yes, into Life’s deep stream!
All forms of sorrow and delight,
All solemn Voices of the Night,
That can soothe thee, or affright,—
Be these henceforth thy theme.”