Not long ago I met an old acquaintance, and by way of greeting asked
how affairs were with him. “All right,” he replied; “business is
looking up; the city is improving; the State is in a better condition;
we have a good Legislature, a good Governor; it is a beautiful day,
a beautiful world; everything is all right.” And I went on my way,
meditating on interest and optimism. His interest in life was not due
to any recent stroke of good fortune, but was habitual.
The optimist is your best philosopher. He adapts himself to the world
and uses it. He selects the best that life offers, and, when the sky is
gloomy, he lives in hope of bright days. He has faith in the ultimate
beneficent outcome of the plan of the Creator. As there is light for
the eye, sound for the ear, form for the touch, aromas for the smell,
food for the taste, so there is an object in the outer world, adapted
to every human instinct and impulse. The impulse for life and action,
the desire for property, the impulse for friendship, the impulses
of wonder, æsthetic admiration, and religious worship—each has its
objective counterpart. Man is adjusted to his environment, and his
environment includes the whole round world of utility and sentiment.
Human life is perpetual activity, a searching for objects that will
meet material needs and conduce to spiritual development. The feeling
of interest arises when the mind finds the object of its search or
feels that it is on the right track.
Interest is the condition of the mind that makes a thing of value to
us. It is the cry of _Eureka_ when a fitting discovery is made. It is
the magnetic relation between impulse and the end at which it aims,
between man and the outer world, between man and himself. It makes life
worth living, and is the secret of activity and progress. Inasmuch as
interest shows the kind of objects that appeal to the mind, it is a
revelation of character.
* * * * *
The objects, which a man may cherish are limitless. He may rejoice in
his strength, his personal adornment, his lands and money, his books
and works of art. He may find an eager interest in his own image as
pictured in the minds of his relatives, friends, or fellow citizens.
He may take pride in family or in personal glory and honor. Men pose
before the world; they act often with reference to the appreciation
they will receive. It is told that the poet Keats could not live
without applause. Carlyle says men write history, not with supreme
regard for facts, but for the writing. Nero conceived that he was a
musician, poet, and actor, surpassing in merit the geniuses of his age.
Man’s attitude toward wisdom and religion, the quality of his thoughts
and feelings, his aspirations, constitute his spiritual interest. The
sentiments of his soul are his; for them he is responsible, and in them
he finds satisfaction or humiliation.
As one forgets self and self-interest, more and more he makes the whole
world his possession. Nature, the welfare of others, man in history
and literature, the Maker of all, may become objects of regard. A
French nobleman who in the vicissitudes of revolution lost his estates
and titles, but received a small pension from the government, became a
philosopher and had the world at his command. For slight pay, willing
service for his daily needs was his; private gardens, public parks, the
broad landscape, the sky were his to enjoy, and he was free from care
and fear. Some interests are universal, not the heritage and possession
of one, but, like sun and air, free. They fall “as the gentle rain
from heaven upon the place beneath,” and bless him that receives. Rich
in experience is he who can see in the drifted gleaming snows on our
mountain peaks more than the summer’s irrigation, in the green plains
of May more than the growing crops of wheat and alfalfa, in the orchard
bloom more than the promise of fruit, in public education and charity
more than political and social prudence, in religious devotion more
than conventionality. For him blessings come on the morning breeze,
gleam from the midnight sky, appear in the quality of mercy, and spring
from communion with the Soul of Nature.
* * * * *
Prometheus is said to have given to men a portion of all the qualities
possessed by the other animals—the lion, the monkey, the wolf—hence
the many traits that are manifest in his complex nature. There is a
slight suggestion of evolution in this—that man is but the highest
stage of animal development, and that his refined emotions are but the
instincts of the lower orders modified by complex groupings. We grant
the process, but not necessarily the inference. An apple is none the
less an apple because it is the product of an unbroken development from
a germ and simple shoot. The spirit of self-sacrifice need be none
the less valid because it is a late phase of some simple instinct.
We believe the world was fashioned according to an intelligent plan,
a plan gradually realized, and that its meaning is found, not in the
lower, but in the higher stages of development. We explain the purpose
of creation, not by the first struggle of a protozoan for food, but by
the last aspiration of man for heaven.
“From harmony, from heavenly harmony,
This universal frame began:
From harmony to harmony
Through all the compass of the notes it ran,
The diapason closing full in Man.”
The latest science hesitates to question the validity of our higher
emotional life. It is becoming antiquated to say that, because we are
descended from animals, our sense of duty, our feelings of faith and
reverence have no more significance than the animal instincts from
which they may have developed. There they are in all their refinement,
need, and suggestiveness, and, as such, are a proper ground of belief.
A late philosophical evolutionist says it is useless to theorize about
our impulse to pray, its use or futility—we pray because we cannot
help praying. Evolution is undergoing the test of the last stage of
a scientific process—in this instance that of fitness to explain the
facts of man’s nature. It may not escape the test by denying the facts.
Pardon the seeming digression, but the reasonableness of our faith is
the ground of interest. Interest vanishes with the genuineness of our
supposed treasure. We do not like to handle counterfeit coin; we do not
value antiquities and sacred relics of modern manufacture, or mementos
that no longer represent cherished memories. Much that stimulates the
higher life would perish did we doubt the truth of our nature; the
glory of the world would depart were the soul lost out of it.
* * * * *
Some interests have sacred claims above others; there is a hierarchy
amongst our impulses. Analyze the fact as we may, duty still remains.
Moral laws and their practical application are progressively revealed
by the relations of men in society. We may believe the laws are there
in the nature of things, but that our discovery of them is gradual, as
is the discovery of the unchanging laws of physics. The moral problem
is the old one of the struggle between light and darkness, between good
and evil, between duty and pleasure—the problem of responsibility,
character, and destiny. In its modern form it is the problem of
utility, that is, of life and happiness. But utilitarianism includes,
and ever must include, the happiness that comes from the exercise of
the higher spiritual functions, from the sense of duty performed, and
from belief in divine approbation.
Interests chosen and pursued reveal the character. Men do not gather
grapes of thorns nor figs of thistles. “A good tree can not bring forth
evil fruit; neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.” The
outward act is but the visible expression of the inner life.
There is something more than a pleasing myth in the Greek conception
of choosing the lot of life. Every responsible act of free will is
gradually fixing our destiny. The conduct of life is not a series of
skirmishes with fate; it is fate itself, and a thing largely of our own
creation. We are constructing the future out of the present. For the
goal that we may finally reach we are even now running the race, the
direction is already chosen, and, if we find ourselves on the wrong
road, time is already lost.
Times change, science brings in new conceptions, superstitions vanish,
beliefs are modified, new conditions and duties arise. But as the
scenes shift and new actors come on the stage, the themes are still
human history, comedy, and tragedy. The argument of the play is still
the triumph of heroism and the reward of virtue. The spectators
still smile at innocent pleasures, weep with misfortune, and applaud
sentiment and worth, and the orchestra still plays the triumph or
the dirge as the curtain falls on the final scene. The ideals of the
saints, the courage of heroes, the sufferings of martyrs still teach
their lesson. Reverence for God, justice, benevolence, the ethical
worth of the individual are still dominant ideas.
If our ideals are less severe, they are more practical; if our heroism
is less phenomenal, it takes on new forms or is reserved for imperative
need; if we shrink from martyrdom, it may be because martyrdom is
sometimes folly; if we worship with less zeal, we are more conscious
of the rational grounds of worship. Our justice and benevolence have
become more useful and practical, and reach all men. The problems
of physical comfort and material progress, of practical charity, of
political justice, of social purity, of the rights of all classes
of men, of education, of peace and good will, of the true grounds
of religious faith are at the front, and claim our interest and
devotion. Romance is not dead. The modern hero has his opportunity, an
opportunity open as never before to all kinds and conditions of men.
Every educated young man has an unlimited field, a free lance, and a
cause worthy of his valor. Let him go forth, as an ideal knight of old,
pure in heart and life, with consecrated sword, to aid misfortune, to
defend the people, and fight bravely for truth and right.
* * * * *
I have seen young men going about, dallying with this or that pleasure,
physically lazy, mentally indolent, morally indifferent, burdened with
_ennui_, aimless, making no struggle. Will power must be awakened, life
given to the mechanism, or it will go to rust and decay. While there
is hope there is life. When interest is gone, the mind and spirit are
dead, and the body is dying. What a hopeless lump of clay is he who,
standing in this infinitely glorious world of ours and having eyes sees
not, having ears hears not, and having a heart understands not.
What shall men do who have not come to a consciousness of their better
impulses, to whom the number and worth of human possibilities are
unknown, who have hidden, silent chords, awaiting the touch that will
set them vibrating? Plainly by studying the highest types of men,
the completeness of whose inner life is revealed in their deeds and
thoughts. By contact with a better than himself one comes to know his
better self. Under the influence of great companionship, whether in
life or literature, new conceptions may appear in the vacant soul.
A popular work of fiction lately published shows incidentally how great
conceptions may grow in a foreign and incongenial soil. It treats of
the times of Nero and the early struggles of the Christians in Rome.
Amidst that folly, profligacy, debauchery, strife, and cruelty, the
Christian purity, humility, brotherly love, and faith in God are made
to stand forth in world-wide contrast. Through a series of dramatic
events, possessing for him a powerful interest, a Roman patrician
comes to receive the Christian ideas, and, under the nurture of
interest, they gradually wax strong and become the dominant impulses
of his being. A fellow patrician, maintaining a persistent attitude
of indifference to the new truths, lives and dies, to the last a
degenerate Roman and a Stoic.
A remote interest whose attainment is doubtful may come to wholly
possess the mind. A young man, misunderstood and underestimated by
friends, suffering years of unrequited effort, persevering in silent
determination, standing for the right, making friends with all classes,
seizing strongly the given opportunity, defying popularity, and thereby
winning it, may gradually rise to prominence through long years of
focusing of effort.
Man’s free will makes him responsible for his interests. Aristotle’s
dictum comes down to us in an unbroken line of royal descent: Learn to
find interest in right things. Repugnance to the sternest demands of
duty may be converted into liking, and, in the process, character is
made. If you have a need for mathematics, science, history, poetry, or
philanthropy, cultivate it, and interest will come as a benediction
upon the effort. I sometimes think the gods love those who in youth
are compelled to walk in hard paths. Rudyard Kipling has a trace of
imperialism which is not the least valuable feature of his unique
writings. In a late story he describes the transformation of a son of
wealth who is already far on the road to folly—one of those nervous,
high-strung lads who in the face of hardship hides behind his mother,
and is a particular nuisance to all sensitive people. Crossing the
ocean in a palatial steamer, he chances to roll off into the Atlantic
and is conveniently hauled aboard a fishing schooner, out for a three
months’ trip. He has literally tumbled into a new life, where he is
duly whipped into a proper frame of mind and made to earn his passage
and a small wage, by sharing the hardships of the fishermen. In time
he is returned to his parents, together with a bonus of newly acquired
common sense and love for useful work. Hardship did for him what all
his father’s wealth could not buy.
It is in the time of need that men seek ultimate reality. A scientific
writer, after speaking of our interest in the friendship and
appreciation of men, refers to our need of friendship and appreciation
in our time of stern trial, when we stand alone in the performance of
duty. Then we have an intuitive consciousness of a Being supremely just
and appreciative, who recognizes worth at its exact value, and will
duly reward. We feel that in Him we live and move and have our being.
The finite conditions of life drive us to the thought of an infinite
One, who possesses in their fullness the ideals imperfectly realized
in us. When the world swings from under our feet we need a hold on
heaven. In these modern days we need the spirit of the hero who places
honor above life, the spirit that places character above material
advantage. Without it we are like Falstaff, going about asking “What is
honor?” and complaining because it “hath no skill in surgery.” Balzac,
describing one of his human types, paints a striking picture. A miser
is on his death bed. As the supreme moment approaches, and a golden
crucifix is held before his face, he fixes his glazing eyes upon it
with a look of miserly greed, and, with a final effort of his palsied
hand, attempts to grasp it. He takes with him to the other world in his
soul the gold, not the Christ crucified.
* * * * *
There are people who demand a series of ever varied, thrilling, fully
satisfying emotional experiences. For them “the higher life consists
in a sort of enthusiastic fickleness. The genius must wander like
a humming-bird in the garden of divine emotions.” When they do not
save themselves by devotion to scholarly work or by refuge in the
church, they frequently end in pessimism, madness, or suicide. They
exalt the _Ego_, do not lose self in the pursuit of proper objects of
utility. Nordau has done the world one service in branding them as
degenerates, living in abnormal excitement, instead of employing the
calm, strong, balanced use of their powers. Their fate is fittingly
suggested by a choice sentence from a well-known writer, describing
Byron’s “Don Juan”: “It is a mountain stream, plunging down dreadful
chasms, singing through grand forests, and losing itself in a lifeless
gray alkali desert.” Goethe’s Faust sets forth—be it noted, under the
guidance of the devil—to find complete enjoyment, and tries the whole
round of experience. Everything palls upon him, until he at last finds
permanent satisfaction in earnest practical labor for the welfare of
his fellow-men. In the words of Faust:
“He only earns his freedom and existence
Who daily conquers them anew.”
Labor! It is the secret of happiness. We are born bundles of
self-activity, in infancy ever developing our powers by ceaseless
movement, with eager curiosity ever reaching out toward knowledge of
external things, ever laboring and constructing in imitation of the
great, working world. Unless our energies are wasted by folly and our
hearts are chilled by custom, it is the natural condition, even as
children, older and wiser, but still as children, ever to extend with
enthusiasm the boundary of knowledge, and in reality to join in the
labor which was the play-work of our childhood. And when our effort
overcomes, creates, develops power, aids humanity, we are conscious of
the joy of true living. In our work self must be put in the background.
“He that loseth his life shall find it.” The great Goethe, once weighed
down with a mighty sorrow, forgot his grief in the study of a new and
difficult science.
It is a mistake to suppose that interest and happiness may not attach
to duty. Duty is not a dead, barren plant that no more will put forth
green leaves and blossom. Philanthropists do not need our sympathy. A
man of learning, culture, and ability, capable of enjoying keenly the
amenities of civilization, and of winning worldly success, goes on a
mission to the interior of Darkest Africa. Amid hardships and dangers,
he offers his life to help an alien race in its suffering, ignorance,
and savagery. He makes this devotion his supreme interest, and who
shall say that his satisfaction will not be as great as that of the
most favored son of wealth amid the luxuries of civilization? “He that
goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come
again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him.”
One great purpose of education is to increase and strengthen our
interests. It shows the many fields of labor and gives us power to
work therein; it reveals the laws and beauties of the natural world;
it introduces us to many lands and peoples, and acquaints us with the
problems and means of progress; it opens to us the treasury of man’s
best thoughts; it gives us philosophical and poetic insight.
* * * * *
Sydney Smith, indulging one of his quaint conceits, says: “If you
choose to represent the various parts in life by holes upon a table,
of different shapes—some circular, some triangular, some square, some
oblong—and the persons acting these parts by bits of wood of similar
shapes, we shall generally find that the triangular person has got into
the square hole, the oblong into the triangular, and a square person
has squeezed himself into the round hole.” This fancy has some truth,
but more of nonsense. “Men at some time are masters of their fates.”
Create your place in life and fill it, or adapt yourself to the best
place you can find. The choice of occupation is important, but filling
well the profession chosen is more important. Turn your knowledge and
power to the performance of to-day’s duty.
Lowell in his “Vision of Sir Launfal” imparts one of the sweetest
lessons man may learn. Sir Launfal is to set forth on the morrow in
search of the Holy Grail, the cup used by our Saviour at the last
supper, and in his sleep there comes to him a true vision. As in
his dream he rides forth with pride of heart, at his castle gate a
leper begs alms, and in scorn he tosses him a piece of gold. Years
of fruitless search pass, and as he returns old, broken, poor, and
homeless, he again meets the leper at the castle gate, and in Christ’s
name he offers a cup of water. And lo! the leper stands forth as the
Son of God, and proclaims the Holy Grail is found in the wooden cup
shared with communion of heart. The morn came and Sir Launfal hung up
his idle armor. He had found the object of his quest in the humble duty
at hand.
A poet of our day quaintly but not irreverently writes of the future
life, “When the Master of all Good Workmen shall set us to work anew.”
There we shall work for the joy of it; there we shall know things in
their reality; there we shall enjoy the perfect appreciation of the
Master, and know the blessedness of labor performed in His service.
Thus the lesson is good for this world as well as the next.
“And only the Master shall praise us, and only the Master shall blame;
And no one shall work for money, and no one shall work for fame;
But each for the joy of the working, and each, in his separate star,
Shall draw the Thing as he sees It for the God of Things as They Are.”