formal discussion of the art of right living and the science of a
skillful carriage of one's faculties. Government, war and eloquence
have indeed received full scientific statement, and those arts called
music and sculpture have obtained abundant literary treatment. But,
for some reason, no philosopher has ever attempted a formal treatise
teaching the youth how to carry his faculties so as to avoid injuring
his fellows and secure for them peace, happiness and success.
Nevertheless, the art of handling marble is nothing compared to the
art of handling men. Skill in evoking melody from the harp is less
than nothing compared to skill in allaying discords in the soul and
calling out its noblest impulses, its most energetic forces.
Nor is there any science or any productive industry whatsoever that is
at all comparable to the science of just, smooth and kindly living.
For the business of life is not the use and control of winds and
rivers; it is not the acquisition of skill in calling out the secret
energies contained in the soil or concealed in the sky. The business
of life is the mastery of the art of living smoothly and justly with
one's fellows and the acquisition of skill in calling out the best
qualities of those about us. Indeed, the home and the market do but
furnish practice-ground for developing expertness in carrying one's
faculties. Sir Arthur Helps first coined the expression, "the art of
right living," and society can never be sufficiently grateful to this
distinguished scholar for reminding us that when every other art has
been secured, every other science achieved, there still remains for
mastery the finest of all the fine arts, the science of a right
carriage of one's faculties midst all the duties and relations of home
and school, of store and street.
Searching out for some reason why scientists have discussed
friendship, reform, or patriotism, but have passed by the science of
right living, we shall find the adequate explanation in the fact that
this is the largest subject that can possibly be handled. It concerns
the right carriage of the whole man, the handling of the body, and the
maintenance of perfect health; the control of the temperament, with
its special talent or weakness; the use of reason, its development
and culture; the control of judgment, with the correction of its
aberrations; it involves such a mastery of the emotions as men have
over winds and rivers; it concerns conscience and conversation,
friendship and commerce, and all the elements affectional and social,
civic and moral.
For man stands, as it were, in the center of many concentric circles.
About himself, as a center, sweeps the home circle; his immediate
neighborhood relations describe a wider circle; his business career
describes one larger still; then come his relations to the community
in general, while beyond the horizon is a circle of influence that
includes the world at large. When the tiny spider standing at the
center of its wide-stretching and intricate web, woven for
destruction, chances to touch any thread of the web, immediately that
thread vibrates to the uttermost extremity. And man stands at the
center of a vast web of wide-reaching influence, woven not for
blighting, but for blessing, and every one of these out-running lines,
whether related to friends near by or to citizens afar off, thrills
and vibrates with secret influences; and there is no creature in God's
universe so taxed as man, having a thousand dangers to avoid, and
fulfilling ten thousand duties. He who would adequately discuss the
science of right living must propose a method that will enable man to
carry his faculties midst all the conditions of poverty or riches, of
sickness or health, of the friendship of men or their enmity.
Discerning the largeness of this theme, many question whether right
living can be reduced to a science, and, if so, whether it ever can be
acquired as an art. We know that there is a science of government, a
science of wealth, a science of war, and mastery in each department
seems possible. Moreover, long practice has lent men skill in the
arts. Even Paganini was born under the necessity of obtaining
excellence in his art through practice. Titian also was a tireless
student in color, and Macaulay himself toiled hard over his alphabet.
Printers tell us that practice expels stiffness from the fingers and
makes type-setting an automatic process. Daniel Webster was counted
the greatest orator of his time; but there never lived a man who
drilled himself in solitude more scrupulously, and his excellence, he
says, was the fruit of long study.
Henry Clay had a great reputation as a speaker; but when the youth had
through years practiced extemporaneous speech in the cornfields of
Kentucky, he went on to train himself in language, in thought, in
posture, in gesture, until his hand could wield the scepter, or beckon
in sweet persuasion, until his eye could look upon his enemies and
pierce them, or beam upon his friends and call down upon them all the
fruits of peace and success. Nor has there been one great artist, one
great poet, one great inventor, one great merchant, nor one great man
in any department of life whose supremacy does not, when examined,
stand forth as the fruit of long study and careful training. Men are
born with hands, but without skill for using them. Men are born with
feet and faculties, but only by practice do their steps run swiftly
along those beautiful pathways called literature or law or
statesmanship. Man's success in mastering other sciences encourages
within us the belief that it is possible for men to master the science
of getting on smoothly and justly with their fellow men. In importance
this knowledge exceeds every other knowledge whatsoever. To know what
armor to put on against to-morrow's conflicts; how to attain the ends
of commerce and ambition by using men as instruments; how to be used
by men, and how to use men, not by injuring them, not by cheating
them, not by marring or neglecting them; but how through men to
advance both one's self and one's fellows--this is life's task. For
skill in getting on with men is the test of perfect manhood.
No other knowledge is comparable to this. It is something to know how
to sail a vast ship; it is important to understand the workings of a
Corliss engine; man does well to aspire to the mastery of iron and
wood, and the use of cotton and wool; most praiseworthy the ambition
to master arguments and ideas; but it is a thousand times more
important to understand men. To be able to analyze the underlying
motives; to attain skill in rebuking the worst impulses in men, and
skill in calling forth their best qualities; to distinguish between
selfishness and sincerity; to allay strife and promote peace; to
maintain equanimity midst all the swirl of passion; to meet those who
storm with perfect calm; to meet scowling men with firm gentleness; to
meet the harshness of pride with a modest bearing; to be
self-sufficing midst all the upheaval and selfishness of life--this is
to be a follower of Christ, and He is the only gentleman our world has
ever seen. Oh, for some university for teaching the art of right
living! Oh, for some college teaching the science of attaining the
personal ends of life without marring one's ideals! For life has only
one fine art--the art of getting along smoothly with ourselves and our
fellows.
Let us confess that man easily masters every other art and science.
His discoveries as to stars and stones and shrubs provoke ever fresh
surprise. His inventions, who can number? He easily masters winds and
rivers. He takes the sting out of the thunderbolt and makes it
harmless. Afterward with electric lamps he illumines towns. With
invisible sunbeams he paints instantaneous pictures of faces, palaces,
mountains, and landscapes. With the dark X-rays he photographs the
bone incased in flesh, the coins contained in the purse. With his
magnet the scientist throws a rope around the cathode rays and drags
them whithersoever he will. In the field the inventor uses an electric
hoe to kill the germs of the thistle and deadly nightshade. Strange
that he cannot invent an instrument for killing the germs of hatred
and envy in his own heart! The gardener easily masters the art of
cultivating roses and violets, but breaks down in trying to produce in
himself those beauteous growths called love, truth, justice--flowers,
these, that are rooted in heaven, but blossom here on earth.
An expert driver will hold the reins over six fiery steeds, or even
eight, but he descends from his coach to find that his own passions
are steeds of the sun that run away with him, bringing wreckage and
ruin. Man has skill for turning poisons into medicines. He changes
deadly acids into balms, but he has no skill for taking envy's poisons
out of the tongue, or sheathing the keen sword of hatred. As to
physical nature, man seems rapidly approaching the time when all the
forces of land and sea and sky will yield themselves as willing and
obedient servants to do his will. But, having made himself monarch in
every other realm, man breaks down utterly in attempting the task of
living peaceably with his friends and neighbors. Sublime in his
integrity and strength, he is most pitiable in the way he wrecks his
own happiness, and ruins the happiness of others. Pestilence in the
city, tornado in the country, the fire in the forest--these are but
feeble types of man as a destroyer. One science is as yet unmastered
by man--the science of right living and the art of getting along
smoothly with himself and his fellows.
To-day the new science explains the difficulty of right living, by the
largeness of man's endowment. There are few failures in the animal or
vegetable world. Instinct guides the beast, while the shrub attains
its end by automatic processes. No vine was ever troubled to decide
whether it should produce grapes or thorns. No fig tree ever had to
go to school to learn how to avoid bearing thistles. The humming bird,
flying from shrub to shrub, hears the inner voice called instinct.
These instincts serve as guide books. The animal creation that moves
through the air or water or the forests experiences but little
difficulty in finding out the appointed pathway. But the problem of
rose, lark or lion is very simple and easy, compared with the problem
of man. If the oak must needs bear acorns, man is like a vine that can
at will bring forth any one of a hundred fruits. He is like an animal
that can at its option walk or fly, swim or run. The pathway opened
before the brute world is narrow and its task therefore is very
simple, while the vast number of pathways possible to man often
embarrasses his judgment and sometimes works bewilderment.
After thousands of years man is still ignorant whether it is best for
him to eat flesh or confine himself only to fruit; whether the juice
of the grape is helpful or harmful; whether the finest culture comes
from confining one's study to a single language, as did Socrates and
Shakespeare, or through learning many languages, as did Cicero and
Milton; whether a monarchy or democracy is better suited for securing
the people's happiness and prosperity; whether the love of God in
front is a motive sufficient to pull a man heavenward, or whether fear
and fire kindled in the rear will not lend greater swiftness to his
footsteps. It is wonderful how many problems yet remain to be solved.
Nor could it be otherwise. As things increase in size and complexity
the difficulty of handling them increases. It is easy to manage a
spinning-wheel, but difficult to handle a Jacquard loom having
hundreds of delicate parts. It is easy to use a boy's whistle, but
hard to master the pipe organ with keys rising bank upon bank. Out of
an alphabet numbering six and twenty letters all the sciences and arts
can be fashioned; but the alphabet of man's faculties numbers four and
forty letters. Who shall measure the divine literatures possible to
all these combinations of thought, feeling and aspiration?
The scientist tells us that all of the instruments and excellences
distributed among the animals are united in man.
Man has the beaver's instinct for building, the bee's skill for
hiving, the lion's stroke is less than man's trip-hammer, the deer's
swift flight is slowness to man's electric speed, the eagle itself
cannot outrun his flying speech. It is as if all the excellences of
the whole animal creation were swept together and compacted in man's
tiny body, with the addition of new gifts and faculties; but this
concentration of all the gifts distributed to the animal world in man
means that the dangers and difficulties that are distributed over all
the rest of the animal creation will also be concentrated upon his
single person. The increase of his treasure carries with it the
increase of danger and difficulty. The vastness of his endowment opens
up the possibilities of innumerable blunderings and stumblings and
wanderings from the way. By so much, therefore, as he is above the
bird and the beast, by that much does the task of carrying aright his
faculties increase in magnitude.
Moreover, smooth living with men is difficult because of the continual
conflict with evil. Integrity can never be good friends with iniquity,
nor liberty with tyranny, nor purity and sweetness with filth and
foulness. There is no skill by which John can ever live in peace with
Herod. Paul, the author of the ode to love, was always at war with
Nero, and at last had his head shorn off. William Tell could not get
along smoothly with Gesler, the tyrant who robbed the Swiss of their
rights. When doves learn to live peaceably with hawks, and lambs learn
how to get along with wolves, good men and true will learn how to
live in peace with vice and crime. Wickedness means warfare, not
peace.
Deviltry cannot be overcome by diplomacy. Not embassies, but
regiments, overcome intrenched oppression. Men of integrity and
refinement can have but one attitude toward corruption, drunkenness,
parasitism, gilded iniquity--the attitude of uncompromising hostility.
Languorous, emasculated manhood may silently endure great wrongs for
the sake of peace and quiet; but robust manhood never. One of the
dangers of our age and nation is a tendency to conciliate wrong and
smooth over wickedness through a spurious sense of charity. Genius
gilds vice, and wit and brilliancy transform evil into an angel of
light. Only expel dullness and make evil artistic, and it is condoned;
but vice attired in the garb of a queen is as truly vice as when
clothed in rags and living in squalor. To become accustomed to evil,
to garnish sin, to dim and deaden sensibility to what is right and
beautiful, is to extirpate manhood and become a mere lump of flesh. No
man has a right to be good friends with iniquity. In a wicked world
the only people who are justified in peaceable living are the people
in graveyards. In an age and land like ours only men of mush and
moonshine can be friends with everybody.
In view of the crime, poverty and ignorance of our age, for a man to
live so that his friends can truthfully write on his tombstone, "He
never had an enemy," is for him to be eternally disgraced. Such a man
should never be guilty of showing his face in heaven, for he will find
that the angels, at least, are his enemies. Looking toward integrity,
Christ came to bring peace. Looking toward iniquity, Christ came to
bring the sword. Not until every wrong has been turned to right, not
until every storm has been stilled into peace, not until the
fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man have been incarnated in
institutions, will conflict cease and smooth living toward all men
become an actuality.
Ambition and the clashing of interests also mitigate against smooth
living. Perhaps no age has offered more powerful stimulants to
ambition. The field is open to all, and the rewards are great.
Therefore Emerson's phrase, "infinite aspiration and infinitesimal
performance." Contentment is the exception, aspiration is universal.
Indeed, the national temptation is ambition. An American merchant
lives more in a year than an Oriental in eighty years; more in an hour
than an Indian merchant in twenty-four. So powerful are the
provocatives to thinking and planning that cerebral excitement is
well-nigh continuous. Moving forward, the youth finds every pathway
open and is told that every honor and position are possible
achievements; the result is that the individual finds himself
competing with all the rest of the nation. How fierce the strife! What
intense rivalries! What battles between opponents! What conflicts in
business!
In politics, coveting national honors, men spend months in laying out
a campaign. A vast human mechanism is organized with ramifications
extending through the nation. As in the olden times in the court of
King Arthur, knights entered the tournament and some Lancelot clothed
in steel armor rode forth to meet some Ivanhoe in mortal combat; so it
is to-day when one plumed knight meets another in the political
arena--one conquers, and one is killed, in that he suffers a broken
heart.
In commerce the strife is not less fierce. Men literally stand over
against each other like gunboats, carrying deadly missiles. If
to-morrow conflict and strife should spring up in each garden--if the
rose should strike its thorn into the honeysuckle; if the violet from
its lowly sphere should fling mire upon the lily's whiteness; if the
wheat should lift up its stalk to beat down the barley; if the robin
should become jealous of the lark's sweet voice, and the oriole
organize a campaign for exterminating the thrush, we should have a
conflict in nature that would answer to the strife and warfare in
society. The universality of the conflicts in society is indicated by
the fact that England's national symbol is not a dove, but a lion;
America's is an eagle, and other nations' are the leopard and the
bear. In national wars, where men by years of toil have planted
vineyards, reared orchards, builded houses and cities, they proceed to
burn up the homes, destroy the granaries, cut down the vineyards and
orchards; and these periodic public quarrels do but typify the equally
destructive private feuds and troubles. Darwin thought that men have
descended from animals, and some men have so literally descended. Some
seem to have come through the wolf; some have the fox's cunning; some
have the lion's cruelty, and some are as combative as bull-dogs. Now,
it is not easy to maintain one's dignity when a little cur nips your
heels behind, and a mastiff threatens you before. And some men seem to
unite both elements; they run behind you and nip, they go before to
bark and threaten. Under such circumstances it is not easy to live
smoothly and charitably. It is easy to tame lions, but to tame men is
not easy. It is easy to breast the current of rivers, but to stand
against the full force of public opinion is hard. But midst all life's
conflicts and clashings this task is upon us. We are to maintain
peace, love our enemies, and ultimately master the art of right living
with our fellows.
To all persons interested in the betterment of society comes the
reflection that getting on with men is life's abiding aim and end.
Schools can teach no other knowledge comparable to this. It is
important to train the child in music, to drill him in public speech,
to teach him how to handle the horse and dog, how to swim and ride,
the use of tools and engines, the nature and production of wealth; but
it is of far greater importance that youth should be given a knowledge
of men, and become a skillful student of human nature; to learn how to
read the face as an open book. If the jurist studies men and their
motives to find out the truth; if the physician studies men for
reasons of diagnosis; if the merchant studies thinking of his profit,
and the politician thinking of preferment, the citizen must understand
his fellows in the interest of securing their happiness and highest
welfare. Incidentally, it is important that a man should be well
groomed and well kept; should be educated and refined, just as it is
proper that the pipes of an organ should be decorated on the outside.
Nevertheless, the test of an organ is the melody and harmony within.
And the test of manhood is not outer polish, but inner skill in
carrying his faculties. Man is only a rudimentary man when in those
stages he blunders in all his meetings with his fellows, and cannot
buy nor sell, vote nor converse, without harming, marring, depressing,
discouraging his fellow men. In our age many books have been written
similar to Lyman Abbott's volume called "The Study of Human Nature,"
and the time has fully come when each child should be made ready for
life's battle beforehand, and taught how to armor himself against the
tournament. When the schools have trained the child to the use of
tools, given the tongue skill in speaking and the mind skill in
thinking, it remains to teach him the study of men, the peculiarities
of each of the five temperaments; the nature and number of the animal
impulses; the use of the social and industrial impulses; the control
of the acquisitive and the spiritual powers. For man's carriage of
himself in the presence of fire and forest is the least of his duties.
That which will tax him and distress, and perhaps destroy him, will be
the carriage of his faculties midst all the clash and conflict, the
din and battle of market and street. And midst all the strife, this is
to be his ideal--to bear himself toward his enemies and toward his
friends, after the pattern of Him who "makes His sun to shine upon the
evil and the good, His rain to fall upon the just and the unjust."
The measure of manhood is the degree of skill attained in the art of
carrying one's self so as to pour forth upon men all the inspirations
of love and hope, and to evoke good even from the meanest and
wickedest of mankind. Passing through life, the soul is to be a
happiness producer and a joy distributer. Without conscious thought
the violets pour forth perfume; without volition the magnet pulls the
iron filings; with no purpose the candle pushes its beams of light
into the darkness; and such is to be the weight of goodness in each
man, that its mere presence will be felt. For the soul carries power
to bless or blight; it can lift up its faculties for smiting, as an
enemy lifts the hammer above the fragile vase or delicate marble;
through speech man can fill all the sky with storms, or he can sweep
all clouds from the horizon. The soul can take the sting out of man's
anger, or it can stir up anger; it can allay strife or whet the keen
edge of hatred. The thermometer is not so sensitive to heat, the
barometer to weight, the photographer's plate to light, as is the soul
to the ten thousand influences of its fellow men.
For majesty and beauty of subtle influence, nothing is comparable to
the soul. Not the sun hanging upon the horizon has such power for
flower and fruitage as has a full-orbed Christian heart, rich in all
good influences, throbbing with kindness and sympathy, radiant as an
angel. Great is man's skill in handling engines of force; marvelous
man's control of winds and rivers; wondrous the mastery of engines and
ideas. But man himself is greater than the tools he invents, and man
stands forth clothed with power to control and influence his fellows,
in that he can sweeten their bitterness, allay their conflicts, bear
their burdens, surround them with the atmosphere of hope and sympathy.
Just in proportion as men have capacity, talent and genius, are they
to be guardians, teachers, and nurses for men, bearing themselves
tenderly and sympathetically toward ignorance, poverty and weakness.
All the majesty of the summer, all the glory of the storms, all the
beauty of galleries, is as nothing compared to the majesty and beauty
of a full-orbed and symmetrical manhood. Should there be in every
village and city a conspiracy of a few persons toward this refinement
and culture, this beauty and sweet Christian living, the presence of
these Christ-formed persons would transform the community. One such
harvestful nature carries power to civilize an entire city. We no more
need to demonstrate the worth of the sane, sound, Christ-like
character than we need to prove the value of the all-glorious summer,
when it fills the earth with fragrance, the air with blossoms, and all
the boughs with luscious fruit. Each Christian youth is to be a
man-maker and man-mender. He is to help and not hurt men. This is to
walk in love. This is to overcome evil with good. This is to be not a
printed but a living gospel. This is to be a master of the art of
right living and a teacher of the science of character building.