THE LOVE OF EXCELLENCE.
Why is this glorious creature to be found One only in ten thousand?
what one is, Why may not millions be? what bars are thrown By
Nature in the way of such a hope?
WORDSWORTH.
He teaches to good purpose who inspires the love of excellence, and who
sends his pupils forth from the school's narrow walls with such desire
for self-improvement that the whole world becomes to them a
God-appointed university. And why shall not every youth hope to enter
the narrow circle of those for whom to live, is to think, who behold
"the bright countenance of truth in the quiet and still air of
delightful studies." An enlightened mind is like a fair and pleasant
friend who comes to cheer us in every hour of loneliness and gloom; it
is like noble birth which admits to all best company; it is like wealth
which surrounds us with whatever is rarest and most precious; it is like
virtue which lives in an atmosphere of light and serenity, and is itself
enough for itself. Whatever our labors, our cares, our disappointments,
a free and open mind, by holding us in communion with the highest and
the fairest, will fill the soul with strength and joy. The artist, day
by day, year in and year out, hangs over his work, and finds enough
delight in the beauty he creates; and shall not the friend of the soul
be glad in striving ceaselessly to make his knowledge and his love less
unlike the knowledge and the love of God? Seldom is opportunity of
victory offered to great captains, the orator rarely finds fit theme and
audience, hardly shall the hero meet with occasions worthy of the
sacrifice of life; but he who labors to shape his mind to the heavenly
forms of truth and beauty beholds them ever present and appealing. Life
without thought and love is worthless; and to the best men and women
belong only those who cultivate with earnestness and perseverance their
spiritual faculties, who strive daily to know more, to love more, to be
more beautiful. They are the chosen ones, and all others, even though
they sit on thrones, are but the crowd.
Without a free and open mind there is no high and glad human life. You
may as well point to the savage drowsing in his tent, or to cattle
knee-deep in clover, and bid me think them high, as to ask me to admire
where I can behold neither intelligence nor love. All that we possess is
qualified by what we are. Gold makes not the miser rich, nor its lack a
true man poor; and he who has gained insight into the fair truth that he
is a part of all he sees and loves, is richer than kings, and lives like
a god in his universe. Possibilities for us are measured by the kind of
work in which we put our hearts. If a man's thoughts are wholly busy
with carpentering do not expect him to become anything else than a
carpenter; but if his aim is to build up his own being, to make his mind
luminous, his heart tender and pure, his will steadfast, who but God
shall fix a limit beyond which he may not hope to go. Education, indeed,
cannot confer organic power; but it alone gives us the faculty to
perceive how infinitely wonderful and fair are man's endowments, how
boundless his inheritance, how full of deathless hope is that to which
he may aspire. Religion, philosophy, poetry, science,--all bring us into
the presence of an ideal of ceaseless growth toward an all-perfect
Infinite, dimly discerned and unapproachable, but which fascinates the
soul and haunts the imagination with its deep mystery, until what we
long for becomes more real than all that we possess, and yearning is our
highest happiness. Ah! who would throw a veil over the vision on which
young eyes rest when young hearts feel that ideal things alone are real?
Who would rob them of this divine principle of progress which makes
growth the best of life?
"Many are our joys
In youth; but oh, what happiness to live
When every hour brings palpable access
Of knowledge, when all knowledge is delight!"
In all ages, we know those made wise by experience, which teaches us to
expect little, whether of ourselves or others, have made the thoughts
and hopes of youth a jest, even as men have made religion a jest, having
nothing to offer us in compensation for its loss, but witticisms and
despair. This is the fatal fault of life, that when we have obtained
what is good,--as wealth, position, wife, and friends,--we lose all hope
of the best, and with our mockery discourage those who have ideal aims;
who, remembering how the soul felt in life's dawn, retain a sense of
God's presence in the world, to whom with growing faculties they aspire,
feeling that whatsoever point they reach, they still have something to
pursue. This is the principle of the diviner mind in all high and heroic
natures; this is the spring-head of deeds that make laws, of "thoughts
that enrich the blood of the world;" this is the power which gives to
resolve the force of destiny, and clothes the soul with the heavenliest
strength and beauty when it stands single and alone, of men abandoned
and almost of God.
There is little danger that too many shall ever hearken to the
invitation from the fair worlds to which all souls belong, and where
alone they can be luminous and free. For centuries, now, what
innumerable voices have pleaded with men to make themselves worthy of
heaven; while they have moved on heedless of the heaven that lies about
us here, placing their hopes and aims in material and perishable
elements, athirst neither for truth, nor beauty, nor aught that is
divinely good! They sleep, they wake, they eat, they drink; they tread
the beaten path with ceaseless iteration, and so they die. If one come
appealing for culture of intellect, not because they who know, are
stronger than the ignorant and make them their servants, but because an
open, free, and flexible mind is good and fair, better than birth,
position, and wealth, they turn away as though he trifled with their
common-sense. Life, they say, is not for knowledge, but knowledge for
life; and they neither truly know, nor live. And if here and there some
nobler soul stand forth, he degrades himself to an aspirant to fame,
forgetting truth and love.
Enough there are on earth who reap and sow,
Enough who give their lives to common gain,
Enough who toil with spade and axe and plane,
Enough who sail the seas where rude winds blow;
Enough who make their life unmeaning show,
Enough who plead in courts, who physic pain;
Enough who follow in the lover's train,
And taste of wedded hearts the bliss and woe.
A few at least may love the poet's song,
May walk with him, their visionary guide,
Far from the crowd, nor do the world a wrong;
Or on his wings through deep blue skies may glide
And float, by light transfused, like clouds along
Above the earth and over oceans wide.
With unresting, wearing thought and labor we are striving to make earth
more habitable. We drag forth from its inner parts whatever treasures
are hidden there; with steam's mighty force we mold brute matter into
every fair and serviceable form; we build great cities, we spread the
fabric of our trade; the engine's iron heart goes throbbing through
tunneled mountains and over storm-swept seas to bear us and our wealth
to all regions of the globe; we talk to one another from city to city,
and from continent to continent along ocean's oozy depths the lightning
flashes our words, spreading beneath our eyes each morning the whole
world's gossip,--but in the midst of this miraculous transformation, we
ourselves remain small, hard, and narrow, without great thoughts or
great loves or immortal hopes. We are a crowd where the highest and the
best lose individuality, and are swept along as though democracy were a
tyranny of the average man under which superiority of whatever kind is
criminal. Our population increases, our cities grow, our roads are
lengthened, our machinery is made more perfect, the number of our
schools is multiplied, our newspapers are read in ever-widening circles,
the spirit of humanity and of freedom breathes through our life; but the
individual remains common-place and uninteresting. He lacks
intelligence, has no perception of what is excellent, no faith in
ideals, no reverence for genius, no belief in any highest sort of man
who has not shown his worth in winning wealth, position, or notoriety.
We have a thousand poets and no poetry, a thousand orators and no
eloquence, a thousand philosophers and no philosophy. Every city points
to its successful men who have millions, but are themselves poor and
unintelligent; to its writers who, having sold their talent to
newspapers and magazines, sink to the level of those they address,
dealing only with what is of momentary interest, or if the question be
deep, they move on the surface, lest the many-eyed crowd lose sight of
them. The preacher gets an audience and pay on condition that he stoop
to the gossip which centres around new theories, startling events, and
mechanical schemes for the improvement of the country. If to get money
be the end of writing and preaching, then must we seek to please the
multitude who are willing to pay those who entertain and amuse them.
Will not our friends, even, conceive a mean opinion of our ability, if
we fail to gain public recognition?
So we make ourselves "motleys to the view, and sell cheap what is most
dear." We must, perforce, show the endowment which can be brought to
perfection only if it be permitted to grow in secrecy and solitude. The
worst foe of excellence is the desire to appear; for when once we have
made men talk of us, we seem to be doing nothing if they are silent, and
thus the love of notoriety becomes the bane of true work and right
living. To be one of a crowd is not to be at all; and if we are resolved
to put our thoughts and acts to the test of reason, and to live for what
is permanently true and great, we must consent, like the best of all
ages, to be lonely in the world. All life, except the life of thought
and love, is dull and superficial. The young love for a while, and are
happy; a few think; and for the rest existence is but the treadmill of
monotonous sensation. There are but few, who, through work and
knowledge, through faith and hope and love, seek to escape from the
narrowness and misery of life to the summits of thought where the soul
breathes a purer air, and whence is seen the fairer world the multitude
forebodes. There are but few whose life is
"Effort and expectation and desire,
And something evermore about to be;"
but few who understand how much the destiny of Man hangs upon single
persons; but few who feel that what they love and teach, millions must
know and love.
"A people is but the attempt of many
To rise to the completer life of one;
And those who live as models for the mass
Are singly of more value than them all."
Only the noblest souls awaken within us divine aspirations. They are the
music, the poetry, which warms and illumines whole generations; they are
the few who, born with rich endowments, by ceaseless labor develop their
powers until they become capable of work which, were it not for them,
could not be done at all. History is the biography of aristocrats, of
the chosen ones with whom all improvement originates, who found States,
establish civilizations, create literatures, and teach wisdom. They work
not for themselves; for in spite of human selfishness and the personal
aims of the ambitious, the poet, the scholar, and the statesman bless
the world. They lead us through happy isles; they clothe our thoughts
and hopes with beauty and with strength; they dissipate the general
gloom; they widen the sphere of life; they bring the multitude beneath
the sway of law.
Now, here in America, once for all, whatever the thoughtless may
imagine, we have lost faith in the worth of artificial distinctions.
Indeed plausible arguments may be found to prove that the kind of man
democracy tends to form, has no reverence for distinctions of whatever
kind, and is without ideals, and that as he is envious of men made by
money, so he looks with the contempt of unenlightened common-sense upon
those whom character and intellect raise above him. This is not truth.
The higher you lift the mass, the more will they acknowledge and
appreciate worth, the clearer will they see that what makes man human,
beautiful, and beneficent is conduct and intelligence; and so increasing
enlightenment will turn thought and admiration from position and wealth,
from the pomp and show of life to what makes a man's self, his
character, his mind, his manners even,--for the source of manners lies
within us. In a society like ours, the chosen ones, the best, the models
of life, and the leaders of thought will be distinguished from the crowd
not by accident or circumstance, but by inner strength and beauty, by
finer knowledge, by purer love, by a deeper faith in God, by a more
steadfast trust that it must, and shall be, well with a world which God
makes and rules, and which to the fairest mind is fairest, and to the
holiest soul most sacred.
Here and now, if ever anywhere at any time, there is need of men, there
is appeal to what is godlike in man, calling upon us to rise above our
prosperities, our politics, our mechanical aims and implements, and to
turn the courage, energy, and practical sense which have wrought with
miraculous power in developing the material resources of America, to the
cultivation of our spiritual faculties. We alone of the great modern
nations are without classical writers of our own, without a national
literature. The thought and love of this people, its philosophy, poetry,
and art lies yet in the bud; and our tens of thousands of books, even
the better sort, must perish to enrich the soil that nourishes a life of
heavenly promise. Hitherto we have been sad imitators of the English,
but not the best the English have done will satisfy America. Their
language indeed will remain ours, and their men of genius, above all
their poets, will enrich our minds with great thoughts nobly expressed.
But a literature is a national growth; it is the expression of a
people's life and character, the more or less perfect utterance of what
it loves, aims at, believes in, hopes for; it has the qualities and the
defects of the national spirit; it bears the marks of the thousand
influences that help to make that spirit what it is,--and English
literature cannot be American literature, for the simple reason that
Americans are not Englishmen, any more than they are Germans or
Frenchmen. We must be ourselves in our thinking and writing, as in our
living, or be insignificant, for it is a man's life that gives meaning
to his thought; and to write as a disciple is to write in an inferior
way, since the mind at its best is illumined by truth itself and not
taught by the words of another. It is not to be believed that this
great, intelligent, yearning American world will content itself with the
trick and mannerism of foreign accent and style, or that those who build
on any other than the broad foundation of our own national life shall be
accepted as teachers and guides. There is, of course, no method known to
man by which a great author may be formed; no science which teaches how
a literature may be created. The men who have written what the world
will not permit to die have written generally without any clear
knowledge of the worth of their work, just as great discoverers and
inventors seem to stumble on what they seek; nevertheless one may hope
by right endeavor to make himself capable of uttering true thoughts so
that they shall become intelligible and attractive to others; he may
educate himself to know and love the best that has been spoken and
written by men of genius, and so become a power to lift the aims and
enlarge the views of his fellow-men. If many strive in this way to
unfold their gifts and to cultivate their faculties, their influence
will finally pervade the life and thought of thousands, and it may be of
the whole people.
I do not at all forget Aristotle's saying that "life is practice and not
theory;" that men are born to do and suffer, and not to dream and weave
systems; that conduct and not culture is the basis of character and the
source of strength; that a knowledge of Nature is of vastly more
importance to our material comfort and progress than philosophy, poetry,
and art. This is not to be called in question; but in this country and
age it seems hardly necessary that it be emphasized, for what is the
whole world insisting upon but the necessity of scientific instruction,
the importance of practical education, the cultivation of the
money-getting faculty and habit, and the futility of philosophy, poetry,
and art? Who is there that denies the worth of what is useful? Where is
there one who does not approve and encourage whatever brings increase of
wealth? Are we not all ready to applaud projects which give promise of
providing more abundant food, better clothing, and more healthful
surrounding for the poor? Does not our national genius seem to lie
altogether in the line of what is practically useful? Is it not our
boast and our great achievement that we have in a single century made
the wilderness of a vast continent habitable, have so ploughed and
drained and planted and built that it can now easily maintain hundreds
of millions in gluttonous plenty? Is not our whole social and political
organization of a kind which fits us to deal with questions and affairs
that concern our temporal and material welfare? What innumerable
individuals among us are congressmen, legislators, supervisors, bank and
school directors, presidents of boards and companies, committee-men,
councilmen, heads of lodges and societies, lawyers, professors,
teachers, editors, colonels, generals, judges, party-leaders, so that
the sovereign people seems to have life and being only in its titled
representatives! What does this universal reign of title and office mean
but the practical education which responsibility gives? If from the
midst of this paradise of utility, materialism, and business, a voice is
raised to plead for culture, for intelligence, for beauty, for
philosophy, poetry, and art, why need any one take alarm? While human
nature remains what it is, can there be danger that the many will be
drawn away from what appeals to the senses, to what the soul loves and
yearns for? If the Almighty God does not win the multitude to the love
of righteousness and wisdom, how shall the words of man prevail?
It is a mistake to oppose use to beauty, the serviceable to the
excellent, since they belong together. Beauty is the blossom that makes
the fruit-tree fair and fragrant. Life means more than meat and drink,
house and clothing. To live is also to admire, to love, to lose one's
self in the contemplation of the splendor with which Nature is clothed.
Human life is the marriage of souls with things of light. Its basis,
aim, and end is love, and love makes its object beautiful. Man may not
even consent to eat, except with decency and grace; he must have light
and flowers and the rippling music of kindly speech, that as far as
possible he may forget that his act is merely animal and useful. He will
lose sight of the fact that clothing is intended for protection and
comfort, rather than not dress to make himself beautiful. To speak
merely to be understood, and not to speak also with ease and elegance,
is not to be a gentleman. How easily words find the way to the heart
when uttered in melodious cadence by the lips of the fair and young.
Home is the centre and seat of whatever is most useful to us; and yet to
think of home is to think of spring-time and flowers, of the songs of
birds and flowing waters, of the voices of children, of floating clouds
and sunsets that linger as though heaven were loath to bid adieu to
earth. The warmth, the color, and the light of their boyish days still
glow in the hearts and imagination of noble men, and redeem the busy
trafficking world of their daily life from utter vulgarity. What hues
has not God painted on the air, the water, the fruit, and the grain that
are the very substance and nutriment of our bodies? Beauty is nobly
useful. It illumines the mind, raises the imagination, and warms the
heart. It is not an added quality, but grows from the inner nature of
things; it is the thought of God working outward. Only from drunken eyes
can you with paint and tinsel hide inward deformity. The beauty of hills
and waves, of flowers and clouds, of children at play, of reapers at
work, of heroes in battle, of poets inspired, of saints rapt in
adoration,--rises from central depths of being, and is concealed from
frivolous minds. Even in the presence of death, the hallowing spirit of
beauty is felt. The full-ripe fruit that gently falls in the quiet air
of long summer days, the yellow sheaves glinting in the rays of
autumn's sun, the leaf which the kiss of the hoar frost has made
blood-red and loosened from the parent stem,--are images of death but
they suggest only calm and pleasant thoughts. The Bedouin, who, sitting
amid the ruins of Ephesus, thinks but of his goats and pigs, heedless of
Diana's temple, Alexander's glory, and the words of Saint Paul, is the
type of those who place the useful above the excellent and the fair; and
as men who in their boards of trade buy and sell cattle and corn, dream
not of green fields and of grain turning to gold in the sun of June, so
we all, in the business and worry of life, lose sight of beauty which
makes the heart glad and keeps it young.
The mind of man is the earthly home of beauty, and if any real thing
were fair as the tender thought of imaginative youth, heaven were not
far. All we love is but our thought of what only thought makes known and
makes beautiful, and for what we know love's thought may be the essence
of all things.
Fairer than waters where soft moonlight lies,
Than flowers that slumber on the breast of Spring,
Than leafy trees in June when glad birds sing,
Than a cool summer dawn, than sunset skies;
Than love, gleaming through Beauty's deep blue eyes,
Than laughing child, than orchards blossoming;
Than girls whose voices make the woodland ring,
Than ruby lips that utter sweet replies,--
Fairer than these, than all that may be seen,
Is the poetic mind, which sheds the light
Of heaven on earthly things, as Night's young Queen
Forth-looking from some jagged mountain height
Clothes the whole earth with her soft silvery sheen
And makes the beauty whereof eyes have sight.
Nature is neither sad nor joyful. We but see in her the reflection of
our own minds. Gay scenes depress the melancholy, and gloomy prospects
have not the power to rob the happy of their contentment. The spring may
fill us with fresh and fragrant thoughts, or may but remind us of all
the hopes and joys we have lost; and autumn will speak to one of decay
and death, to another of sleep and rest, after toil, to prepare for a
new and brighter awakening. All the glory of dawn and sunset is but
etheric waves thrilling the vapory air and impinging on the optic nerve;
but behind it all is the magician who sees and knows, who thinks and
loves. "It is the mind that makes the body rich." Thoughts take shape
and coloring from souls through which they pass; and a free and open
mind looks upon the world in the mood in which a fair woman beholds
herself in a mirror. The world is his as much as the face is hers. If we
could live in the fairest spot of earth, and in the company of those who
are dear, the source of our happiness would still be our own thought and
love; and if they are great and noble, we cannot be miserable however
meanly surrounded. What is reality but a state of soul, finite in man,
infinite in God? Theory underlies fact, and to the divine mind all
things are godlike and beautiful. The chemical elements are as sweet and
pure in the buried corpse as in the blooming body of youth; and it is
defective intellect, the warp of ignorance and sin, which hides from
human eyes the perfect beauty of the world.
"Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God;
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes."
What we all need is not so much greater knowledge, as a luminous and
symmetrical mind which, whatsoever way it turn, shall reflect the things
that are, not in isolation and abstraction, but in the living unity and
harmony wherein they have their being.
The worth of religion is infinite, the value of conduct is paramount;
but he who lacks intellectual culture, whatever else he may be, is
narrow, awkward, unintelligent. The mirror of his soul is dim, the
motions of his spirit are sluggish, and the divine image which is
himself is blurred.
But let no one imagine that this life of the soul in the mind is easy;
for it is only less difficult than the life of the soul in God. To
learn many things; to master this or that science; to have skill in law
or medicine; to acquaint one's self with the facts of history, with the
opinions of philosophers or the teachings of theologians,--is
comparatively not a difficult task; and there are hundreds who are
learned, who are skillful, who are able, who have acuteness and depth and
information, for one who has an open, free, and flexible mind,--which is
alive and active in many directions, touching the world of God and
Nature at many points, and beholding truth and beauty from many sides;
which is serious, sober, and reasonable, but also fresh, gentle, and
sympathetic; which enters with equal ease into the philosopher's
thought, the poet's vision, and the ecstasy of the saint; which excludes
no truth, is indifferent to no beauty, refuses homage to no goodness.
The ideal of culture indeed, like that of religion, like that of art,
lies beyond our reach, since the truth and beauty which lure us on, and
flee the farther the longer we pursue, are nothing less than the eternal
and infinite God.
And culture, if it is not to end in mere frivolity and gloss, must be
pursued, like religion and art, with earnestness and reverence. If the
spirit in which we work is not deep and holy, we may become accomplished
but we shall not gain wisdom, power, and love. The beginner seeks to
convert his belief into knowledge; but the trained thinker knows that
knowledge ends in belief, since beyond our little islets of intellectual
vision, lies the boundless, fathomless expanse of unknown worlds where
faith and hope alone can be our guides. Once individual man was
insignificant; but now the earth itself is become so,--a mere dot in
infinite space, where, for a moment, men wriggle like animalcules in a
drop of water. And if at times a flash of light suddenly gleam athwart
the mind, and it seem as though we were about to get a glimpse into the
inner heart of being, the brightness quickly dies, and only the surfaces
of things remain visible. Oh, the unimaginable length of ages when on
the earth there was no living thing! then life's ugly, slimy beginnings;
then the conscious soul's fitful dream stretching forth to endless time
and space; then the final sleep in abysmal night with its one star of
hope twinkling before the all-hidden throne of God, in the shadow of
whose too great light faith kneels and waits!
Why shall he whose mind is free, symmetrical, and open, be tempted to
vain glory, to frivolous boasting? Shall not life be more solemn and
sacred to him than to another? Shall he indulge scorn for any being whom
God has made, for any thought which has strengthened and consoled the
human heart? Shall he not perceive, more clearly than others, that the
unseen Power by whom all things are, is akin to thought and love, and
that they alone bring help to man who make him feel that faith and hope
mean good, and are fountains of larger and more enduring life? The
highest mind, like the purest heart, is a witness of the soul and of
God.