Produced by Al Haines
MEANS AND ENDS
OF EDUCATION
BY
J. L. SPALDING
Bishop of Peoria
WHO BRINGETH MANY THINGS,
FOR EACH ONE SOMETHING BRINGS
CHICAGO
A. C. McCLURG AND COMPANY
1895
COPYRIGHT
BY A. C. MCCLURG L Co.
A.D. 1895
By Bishop Spalding
EDUCATION AND THE HIGHER LIFE. 12mo. $1.00.
THINGS OF THE MIND. 12mo. $1.00.
MEANS AND ENDS OF EDUCATION. 12mo. $1.00.
A. C. McCLURG AND CO.
CHICAGO.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER
I. TRUTH AND LOVE
II. TRUTH AND LOVE
III. THE MAKING OF ONE'S SELF
IV. WOMAN AND EDUCATION
V. THE SCOPE OF PUBLIC-SCHOOL EDUCATION
VI. THE RELIGIOUS ELEMENT IN EDUCATION
VII. THE HIGHER EDUCATION
MEANS AND ENDS OF EDUCATION.
CHAPTER I.
TRUTH AND LOVE.
None of us yet know, for none of us have yet been taught in early
youth, what fairy palaces we may build of beautiful thought--proof
against all adversity;--bright fancies, satisfied memories, noble
histories, faithful sayings, treasure-houses of precious and restful
thoughts; which care cannot disturb, nor pain make gloomy, nor poverty
take away from us--houses built without hands for our souls to live
in.--RUSKIN.
Stirred up with high hopes of living to be brave men and worthy
patriots, dear to God and famous to all ages.--MILTON.
A great man's house is filled chiefly with menials and creatures of
ceremony; and great libraries contain, for the most part, books as dry
and lifeless as the dust that gathers on them: but from amidst these
dead leaves an immortal mind here and there looks forth with light and
love.
From the point of view of the bank president, Emerson tells us, books
are merely so much rubbish. But in his eyes the flowers also, the
flowing water, the fresh air, the floating clouds, children's voices,
the thrill of love, the fancy's play, the mountains, and the stars are
worthless.
Not one in a hundred who buy Shakspere, or Milton, or a work of any
other great mind, feels a genuine longing to get at the secret of its
power and truth; but to those alone who feel this longing is the secret
revealed. We must love the man of genius, if we would have him speak
to us. We learn to know ourselves, not by studying the behavior of
matter, but through experience of life and intimate acquaintance with
literature. Our spiritual as well as our physical being springs from
that of our ancestors. Freedom, however, gives the soul the power not
only to develop what it inherits, but to grow into conscious communion
with the thought and love, the hope and faith of the noble dead, and,
in thus enlarging itself, to become the inspiration and source of
richer and wider life for those who follow. As parents are consoled by
the thought of surviving in their descendants, great minds are upheld
and strengthened in their ceaseless labors by the hope of entering as
an added impulse to better things, from generation to generation, into
the lives of thousands. The greatest misfortune which can befall
genius is to be sold to the advocacy of what is not truth and love and
goodness and beauty. The proper translation of _timeo hominem unius
libri_ is not, "I fear a man of one book," but "I dread a man of one
book:" for he is sure to be narrow, one-sided, and unreasonable. The
right phrase enters at once into our spiritual world, and its power
becomes as real as that of material objects. The truth to which it
gives body is borne in upon us as a star or a mountain is borne in upon
us. Kings and rich men live in history when genius happens to throw
the light of abiding worlds upon their ephemeral estate. Carthage is
the typical city of merchants and traders. Why is it remembered?
Because Hannibal was a warrior and Virgil a poet.
The strong man is he who knows how and is able to become and be
himself; the magnanimous man is he who, being strong, knows how and is
able to issue forth from himself, as from a fortress, to guide,
protect, encourage, and save others. Life's current flows pure and
unimpeded within him, and on its wave his thought and love are borne to
bless his fellowmen. If he who gives a cup of water in the right
spirit does God's work, so does he who sows or reaps, or builds or
sweeps, or utters helpful truth or plays with children or cheers the
lonely, or does any other fair or useful thing. Take not seriously one
who treats with derision men or books that have been deemed worthy of
attention by the best minds. He is false or foolish. As we cherish a
human being for the courage and love he inspires, so books are dear to
us for the noble thoughts and generous moods they call into being. To
drink the spirit of a great author is worth more than a knowledge of
his teaching.
He who desires to grow wise should bring his reason to bear habitually
upon what he sees and hears not less than upon what he reads; for thus
he soon comes to understand that whatever he thinks or feels, says or
does, whatever happens within the sphere of his conscious life, may be
made the means of self-improvement. "He is not born for glory," says
Vauvenargues, "who knows not the worth of time." The educational value
of books lies in their power to set the intellectual atmosphere in
vibration, thereby rousing the mind to self-activity; and those which
have not this power lack vitality.
If in a whole volume we find one passage in which truth is expressed in
a noble and striking manner, we have not read in vain. To read with
profit, we should read as a serious student reads, with the mind all
alive and held to the subject; for reading is thinking, and it is
valuable in proportion to the stimulus it gives to the exercise of
faculty. The conversation of high and ingenuous minds is doubtless as
instructive as it is delightful, but it is seldom in our power to call
around us those with whom we should wish to hold discourse; and hence
we go back to the emancipated spirits, who having transcended the
bounds of time and space, are wherever they are desired and are always
ready to entertain whoever seeks their company. Genius neither can nor
will discover its secret. Why his thought has such a mould and such a
tinge he no more knows than why the flowers have such a tint and such a
perfume; and if he knew he would not care to tell. Nothing is wholly
manifest. In the most trivial object, as in the simplest word, there
lies a world of meaning which does not reveal itself to a passing
glance. If therefore thou wouldst come to right understanding,
consider all things with an awakened and interested curiosity.
When the mind at last finds itself rightly at home in its world, it is
as delighted as children making escape from restraining walls, as full
of spirit as colts newly turned upon the greensward.
In the realm of truth each one is king, and what he knows is as much
his own as though he were its first discoverer. However firmly thou
holdest to thy opinions, if truth appears on the opposite side, throw
down thy arms at once. A book has the power almost of a human being to
inspire admiration or disgust, love or hatred. To be useful is a noble
thing, to be necessary is not desirable. The youth has not enough
ambition unless he has too much. It is difficult to give lessons in
the art of pleasing without teaching that of lying. The discouraged
are already vanquished. In judging the deed let not the character of
the doer influence thy opinion, for good is good, evil evil, by
whomsoever done. When the author is rightly inspired his words need
not interpretation. They are as natural and as beautiful as the faces
of children or as new-blown flowers, and their meaning is plain. The
spirit and love of dogmatism is characteristic of the imperfectly
educated. As there is a communion of saints, there is a communion of
noble minds, living and dead. To speak of love which is not felt, of
piety which is not a living sentiment within us, is to weaken both in
ourselves and in those who hear us the power of faith and affection.
The best that has been known and experienced by minds and hearts lies
asleep in books, ready to awaken for whoever holds the magician's wand.
Books which at their first appearance create a breeze of excitement,
are forgotten when the wind falls.
A human soul rightly uttering itself, in whatever age or country,
ceases to belong to any age or country, and becomes part of the
universal life of man. A sprightly wit may serve only to lead us
astray, and to enmesh us more hopelessly in error. Deeper knowledge is
the remedy for the foolishness of sciolism: like cures like. In the
books in which men worth knowing have put some of the vital quality
which makes them worth knowing, there is perennial inspiration. They
are the form and substance of an immortal spirit which, in creating
them, became itself. "I have not made my book," says Montaigne, "more
than my book has made me."
Were one to ask an acquaintance who knows men to point out the
individuals whom he should make his friends, his request would probably
receive an unsatisfactory reply: for how, except by trial, is it
possible to say who will suit whom? Those whose friendship would be
valuable might, for whatever cause, be disagreeable to him, as the
greatest and noblest may be unpleasant companions. Many a one whom we
admire as he stands forth in history, whose words and deeds thrill and
uplift us, we should detest had we known him in life; and others to
whom we might have been drawn would have cared nothing for us. Between
men and books there is doubtless a wide difference, though a good book
contains the best of the life of some true man. But when we are asked
to point out the books one should learn to love, we are confronted with
much the same difficulty as had we been asked to name the persons whom
he should make his friends. A book can have worth for us only when we
have learned to love it; and since a real book, like a real man, has
its proper character, it is not easy to determine whom it will please
or displease. Once it has taken a safe place in literature, it will,
of course, be praised by everybody; but this, like the praise of men,
is often meaningless. All who read know something about the great
books, but their knowledge, unless it leads them to intimate
acquaintance with some one or several of these books, has little worth.
Books are, indeed, a world which each one must discover for himself.
Another may tell us about them, but the truth and beauty there is in
them for each one, each one must find. The value of a book, like that
of a man, lies not in its freedom from fault, but in its qualities, in
the good it contains. Words which inspire the love of spiritual beauty
and noble action cannot be false: the consent of the wise places them
in the canon. The imperishable goods are truth, freedom, love, and
beauty. Valuable alone is that which enriches and ennobles life.
There are natures for whom the lack of knowledge is as painful as the
lack of food. They are ahungered and athirst for it, and their
suffering impels them to ceaseless meditation and study, as the only
means of relief.
The self-educator's first and simplest aim should be to learn to know
and do well whatever he knows and does; and to this end let him often
observe and consider how rare are they who know anything thoroughly or
do well any of the hundred things which are part of daily life: who
talk well, or write well, or behave well. Herbert Spencer affirms that
it is better to learn the meanings of things than the meanings of
words; but he loses sight of the fact that the meanings of things
become plain only when things are clothed in words, which, in truth,
are things, being nothing else than the very form and body of nature as
it reveals itself within the mind of man. The world is chiefly a
mental fact. From mind it receives the forms of time and space, the
principle of causality, color, warmth, and beauty. Were there no mind,
there would be no world. The end of man is the pursuit of perfection,
through communion with God, his fellows, and nature, by means of
knowledge and conduct, of faith, hope, admiration, and love. It is
easy to praise work overmuch. Like money, it is a means, not an end,
and it is good or evil as it is made to help or harm the worker, for
man is an end, not a means. The work which millions are still forced
to do is a curse,--the trail of the serpent is over it all, and no
people has the right to call itself civilized, while work which
dehumanizes is not merely permitted, but encouraged.
Let us not teach the young to believe they are born into a world of
delights and pleasures, but let us strive to enable them to realize
that, upon this earth, only the wise and good and strong can make
themselves really at home; that for the wicked and the weak its very
delights and pleasures turn to sorrow and suffering. We pity the
hard-driven beast of burden. How then is it possible to look with
complacency on a world in which multitudes of human beings are
condemned to the work of the ox and the ass? For the healthy man,
wealth and happiness would seem to be identical, if his desires are
confined to the things of which money is the equivalent. But this is a
delusion, for the plenary possession of these things has never
satisfied a human being. Man needs virtue, knowledge, love, and to
take the obvious view, he needs the power to enjoy the things money
buys; and of this money deprives him.
When we consider the many unworthy means men take to gain wealth and
office, we are forced to believe that to reach their ends they are
ready to profess to hold opinions and beliefs about which they care
nothing or which they really do not accept at all. By this following
of time-servers and place-hunters every noble cause is weakened and the
purest faith is corrupted.
To labor for those we love, to sit in the hours of rest, with wife and
children about us, smiling in the blaze of the fire we have lighted,
sheltered by the roof we have built, secure in the sense of protection
our presence inspires, is to feel that life is good. But is it not a
higher thing to turn away, in disrespect of all this peace and comfort,
and to strive alone, by thought and deed, to find the way which leads
to God and to be a pioneer therein for those who wander helpless and
astray? The more we dwell with truth and love, the more conscious we
become that they are the best, and are everlasting; and thus our
immortality is revealed to us. Visibly we float on the boundless
stream and disappear; but inasmuch as we are truth-loving and
love-cherishing, we dwell in an abiding city, and may behold our bodies
carried forth by the flood, as a man sees his house swept away, while
he himself remains. Our thoughtlessness and indifference, our
indolence and frivolousness, blind us to the infinite worth and
significance of life; and they who call themselves religious often take
it as lightly as worldlings and unbelievers.
In the Universe there is nothing which exists separate and apart from
other things. The satellites hold to the planets, the planets to the
suns, the suns to one another, all in obedience to the same laws which
bind the body to earth, and cause the water to flow and the vapor to
rise. For the senses there is separateness, but for the mind there is
union and unity. Communion is the law of souls as of bodies. Both are
immersed in a boundless world, from which if they could be drawn forth
they would cease to be. The principle of this infinite harmony is
love, is God.
The right human bond is that which unites soul with soul; and only they
are truly akin who consciously live in the same world, who think,
believe, and love alike, who hope for the same things, aspire to the
same ends.
Our mental view never reaches the ultimate nature of being, and hence
our knowledge, whether of material or of spiritual things, is
incomplete. Faith is the effort to supply the defect which inheres in
all our knowing. Knowledge springs from faith, faith from knowledge,
as rivers from clouds, clouds from rivers. The more we know, the more
we believe; and our growing consciousness does not make us content to
rest in a mechanical view of nature, but it brings home to us with
increasing power the awfulness of the infinite mystery, which we more
and more clearly perceive to be a spiritual rather than a material
fact. If at present there is a certain failure of will and consequent
discouragement in the pursuit of moral and intellectual perfection,
this is a result of our passing bewilderment in the presence of the
revelations of science and of the mighty forces it places in the hands
of man, and not of any new knowledge which tends to inspire misgivings
concerning the being of God and our kinship with Him:---
From nature up to law, from law to love:
This is the ascendant path in which we move,
Impelled by God in ways that lighten still,
Till all things meet in one eternal thrill.
As the Universe revealed by the Copernican astronomy and the other
natural sciences is infinitely more sublime and marvellous than such a
world as the Israelites, the Greeks, or the Romans imagined, so they
who see rightly in the luminous ether of modern intelligence understand
better than the ancients that human life is not an ephemeral and
superficial, but an immortal and central power, enrooted in God, and
drawing its substance and sustenance from Him.
The appeal to shame is a poor argument. The fact that men of great
intellectual power and learning have held an opinion to be true does
not make it so. New knowledge may have shown it to be false, or the
general advance of the race may have changed the point of view. The
presumption of the larger wisdom of the Ancients we cannot accept: for
we, not they, are the true ancients. The purest and the holiest prayer
men speak is this: "Thy will be done." They who utter it from the
inmost soul, find peace, even as a fretful child sinks to rest upon the
mother's bosom. In learning to love the will of God they come at last
not merely to believe, but to feel that His will guides the Universe,
and that all will be well. When an utterance comes forth from the
depths of our spiritual being, men cannot but hearken. It is as though
we should bring to exiles tidings of a long-lost home and country.
To what a weight he stoops who addresses himself with fixed resolve to
the life of thought! The burden indeed is heavy, but the pathway lies
through pleasant fields where great souls move to and fro in freedom
and at peace. And as he grows accustomed to his labor, the world
widens, the heavens break open, the dead live again, and with them he
rises into the high regions where the petty cares and passions of
mortals do not reach.
He who would educate himself must make use of his own powers. He must
observe, think, examine, read, argue, ponder; he must learn when to
hold judgment in suspense, and when to give the wings of the soul free
sweep through the high and serene realms of truth and beauty. The
farther we dwell from the crowd, with its current opinion, the better
and truer shall we and our thoughts become. They who write for
multitudinous readers rise with difficulty above the dignity of
mountebanks.
There is a radical defect in the character of whoever works in the
spirit of a trifler, however blameless his conduct. The power to
inspire faith in the seriousness and goodness of life is a sufficient
test of the worth of a scheme of education.
No one should fill an office which he is unable to hold without
hindrance to the play of mind and heart that makes him a man. The
dignities we possess at the cost of knowledge and virtue are like
jewels for the sake of which one goes hungry and naked; mere glittering
baubles for which we barter the soul's prosperity.
Experience is personal, and it is largely incommunicable; but
genius--and in this lies its power and charm--renders it communicable.
What the poet or the painter has felt and seen, he makes all men feel
and see. The difference between man and man, between the child and the
youth, the youth and the adult, is chiefly a difference in feeling, in
the manner in which they are impressed; and it is our nature to be
drawn in admiration or reverence to those who by their words or deeds
give us deeper impressions of the worth of life, and thus open for us
new sources of feeling.
Fair thoughts rise in the heart and mind of genius, like the fragrant
breath which the dewy flowers exhale in the face of the rising sun, and
they utter themselves as simply as matin songs warbled by
sweet-throated birds.
Faith in the infinite nature and worth of truth, goodness, and love, is
the dawn which shall merge into the fulness of day, when, in other
worlds, God looks upon the soul, reborn from out this seemingness.
Our position, our reputation, our wealth, our comforts, are but a
vesture like the body itself. They shall fall away, and we shall
remain with God. There is no liberty but obedience to the impulse of
the higher nature which urges us to think nobly, to act rightly, and to
love constantly. The dominion of appetite is slavery; the dominion of
reason and conscience is freedom.
Renan somewhere says he could wish for nothing better than that a
little volume of selections from his writings might commend itself to
young women, whose fair faces should bend over it, and find there a
reflection of their own pure souls. But where there is no God, the
soul is not mirrored, and we never really love an author who weakens
faith and hope.
With whatever success we advance towards the wide and serene life of
the pure reason, let us still cling to faith, hope, and love, the
primal powers which keep watch at our birth, and which bend over our
cradles, and which alone lift us into the world of enduring peace and
hold us within the sheltering arms of God. In the enlightened mind,
faith is a higher virtue than it can be for the ignorant, and to
sustain it there is need of a nobler life.
He whom neither learning nor power nor wealth can corrupt must have
virtue; for learning breeds conceit, and power begets pride, and wealth
debases both the mind and heart.
The intellect does not recognize that conscience may forbid its
exercise, since knowledge cannot be evil. If earth were a hell and
life a curse and the Universe but a cinder, it would still be good to
know the fact. The saddest truth is better than the merriest lie.
To know a thing is to be conscious of its relation to the mind. We
know it, not in itself, but in and through this relation. Our
knowledge of God, who is the absolute, is not absolute knowledge, but a
knowledge of Him in so far as He is related to the mind of man. Since,
however, mind is reason and not unreason, there is harmony between it
and things, between it and God; and hence to be conscious of its
relation to God and the universe is to be conscious of a real relation,
in which both the thinker and his thought are in truth what they seem
to be. The ultimate reality is inferred, not directly perceived. It
reveals itself to the purest faith and love, and may be hidden from one
who knows all the sciences.
As man's relations to his fellows make him a social and political
being, so his relations to the unseen power behind and within the
visible world, of whose presence he is always, however dimly,
conscious, and to whom he refers whatever touches the senses, as well
as the principle of life itself, make him a religious being.
In identifying what seem to be our particular interests with the
interests of all, we make escape from narrowness and isolation into the
general life of humanity; and when we come to understand that not only
mankind but all nature is a Unity in the Consciousness of the Infinite
and Eternal, bound together by thought and love, we enter into the
glorious liberty of the Sons of God, and feel that nor height nor depth
nor things past nor things to come shall separate us from the divine
charity. We are akin to all that may become part of our life; and
whatever we know or love or admire is spiritualized and made human. To
understand the things of the spirit we must have spiritual experience.
The intuitions of time and space, as well as the principle of
causality, are given in the constitution of the mind. So is the idea
of being, of perfection, of beauty, of eternity, of infinity, of duty.
To think implies being, to perceive things as existing in time and
space implies consciousness of eternity and infinity. To know the
imperfect is possible only in the light of the perfect. Subject is
itself object, the first known and best understood, and the laws of
mind are laws of being. If the constitution of mind makes the
revelation of the material world possible only under the forms of time
and space, intelligible only as sequence of cause and effect, the
reason is to be found in the nature of things. If the constitution of
mind postulates one who knows and shapes, in a world in which whatever
is, is intelligible, in which there is order, proportion, and purpose,
it is because such an One is given in the nature of things, and He is
God. However living our faith, it is faith and not knowledge; and
should it become knowledge, it would cease to be faith.
There are three kinds of authors,--those who impart knowledge, those
who give delight, and those who strengthen and inspire.
A noble thought rightly expressed sweeps the higher nerve centres as
the touch of a perfect performer the strings of an instrument; but if
the instrument is poor and irresponsive, the appeal is made in vain.
Life has the power to propagate itself, and if the words thou utterest
are living, they will strike root somewhere and bud and blossom and
bear fruit; but if there is no life in them, be content to have them
fall and lie amid the dust of the dead. God and the universe are what
they are, and the best even genius can do is to throw over them a
revealing light. He who feels that he is always in the presence of God
will strive as religiously to think only what is true as he will strive
to do only what is right. A phrase which leaps forth aglow with life
from the heart and brain of genius, not only lives forever, but retains
forever the power to awaken, when brought into contact with a brain and
heart, the thrill with which it first came into being.
Only a few know and love the poet, but they are young and fair, and the
music of high thoughts and pure love is rhythmic with the current of
their blood; and if among them there be found some who are old, they
are choice spirits who have risen from out the lapses of time into
regions where what is true and beautiful is so forever. This little
band of chosen ones accompanies him adown the centuries, and listens to
the melody which wells in his heart and breaks into songs that shall
give delight as long as the air of spring is pleasant and the flowers
fragrant and the carollings of birds delightful; and while the poet
strolls on the outskirts of time, thus loved and thus attended, the
stormy and glittering favorites of the crowd drop from sight and are
forgotten, or remembered but as the echo of a name.
A line from Homer, which sounds like a response from our own heart, is
clothed with the mystery of diviner power, because it makes us feel
that we were alive thousands of years ago amid the Grecian isles, thus
revealing to us the unreality of time and space, and the everlasting
nature of truth and beauty.
As it is right to admire and love whatever is good wherever it is
found, it needs must be the part of wisdom to seek to know and
appreciate all that is true and high in the works of genius, though
there, like precious stones and metals in the mine, it be mingled with
baser matter. It is but narrowness or intellectual pharisaism to turn
from a great author because in his life and works there may be things
of which we cannot approve. Shall we abandon God because His world is
full of evil, or Christ because there is corruption in the church? St.
Paul appeals to pagan literature, St. Augustine is the disciple of
Plato, St. Thomas Aquinas of Aristotle, and the culture and
civilization of Christendom are largely due to influences which are not
Christian. Whatever is good is from God. There is no surer mark of
the lack of culture than the use of ill-natured and abusive epithets.
To feel the need of injurious words to express one's opinion, merely
shows that one is angry, and anger is vulgar.
Whatever is inspired by vanity is in bad taste. This is why a showy
style is a false style, why fine writing is poor writing. The author
yields to the spirit of vainglory, whereas he should be wholly bent
upon uttering his thought as he knows it. It is as though he should
call our attention to a costly garb when what we want to see is a man.
As a plain face is better than a mask, though fine, so one's own style,
though inferior, is better than any which is borrowed.
True books survive without help or let of critics, by virtue of their
vital quality, which attracts kindred spirits with irresistible power.
When their worth becomes known, the critics set up a howl of praise,
and many buy; but only a few make them their serious study, and learn
to know and love them. Truth is the mind's food; and, like that of the
body, it is nourishment only when it has been digested and assimilated.
It is, after all, but a little while since man began to think. As yet
he is learning the alphabet. Take heart then, and apply thy mind. As
we grow older the years seem to run to months, the months to weeks, the
weeks to days, the days to hours, the hours to moments, until time,
like an exhalation, appears to dissolve in the inane, and become the
nothing it was and is and will be for eternity.
If thought were given us, like house and clothing, merely for our
personal comfort, wisdom would lead us to think with and like all the
world. They who are eager for the good opinion of others seem to have
but weak faith in their own worth.
The art of pleasing would better deserve our study were there more who
are worth pleasing, or were it less difficult to please without loss of
sincerity and without stooping to the service of vulgar interests. Not
how much or how many things thou knowest is of import. An industrious
reader, of retentive memory, will easily know more things than a great
philosopher compared with whom he is but a child.
Know thyself was the sum of what Socrates taught, and each of the seven
wise men rested his fame upon an apothegm. To expect the multitude to
appreciate the best in life or literature, is to expect them to be what
they have never been and will probably never be. Would you have an ox
admire the sunrise or the pearly dew, when all he feels the need of is
grass? Appeal to the many if you will, but if your appeal is for the
highest, only the few will hearken.
Consider not what great men or books are worth in themselves, but what
they are worth to thee; for thou art able to judge of their value only
in so far as thou understandest and lovest them.
If thou canst not bear trouble, sorrow, and disappointment without loss
of composure, thou art poorly equipped for life's struggle. If thou
mayst not lead the life thou wouldst wish, thou canst at least make the
life thou leadest the means to improve thyself. If we were so
constituted that thought, feeling, and imagination might have free and
healthful play in ever-during darkness and isolation, life would still
be good. Could I live surrounded by those I love, I should feel less
keenly the discontent which the consciousness of my higher needs
creates; and besides, it is not easy to rest in the comforts and
luxuries which make and keep us inferior, except in the company of
those we love. If our ordinary power of sight were as great as that we
gain with the help of the microscope, the world would become for us a
place of horrors; and if we could clearly see ourselves as we are, life
would be less endurable. God blurs our vision as a mother hides from
her child its wound.
Pleasures which quickly end in revulsion of feeling are but momentary
escapes from pain; and they alone are fortunate who are able to
persevere in pursuits which give them pure delight. "All good," says
Kant, "which is not based on the highest moral principle is but empty
appearance and splendid misery."
Sensations of color, taste, sound, smell, touch, heat and cold,
perceptions of magnitude, and temporal and spatial relations, is the
sum of what we know; and yet we are conscious that reason means
infinitely more than this, that its proper object is the eternal world
of truth, goodness, and beauty. Think for thyself with a single view
to truth; for so only will thy thought be of worth and service to
others. We feel ourselves only in action, and hence the need of doing
lest we lose ourselves and be swallowed in nothingness. And for the
old and feeble even worry, I suppose, is a comfort, for it helps to
keep this self-consciousness alive. It is impossible to say whence a
thought comes, and it is often difficult to determine the occasion by
which it has been suggested.
Fortunate are the children all of whose knowledge comes from man and
nature in their purity, whose memory holds no words which are not the
symbols of what they themselves have seen and felt, in whose minds no
will-o'-the-wisp from chimera worlds flits to and fro. It is only by
keeping men in ignorance and vice that it is possible to keep them from
the contagion of great thoughts. They who have little are thought to
have no right to anything. Thus the plagiarized sayings of Napoleon
and other nurslings of fame pass for their own; who their real authors
were, seeming to be a matter of indifference.
If I am not pleased with myself, but should wish to be other than I am,
why should I think highly of the influences which have made me what I
am? Should I publish what I believe to be true and well expressed, and
competent judges should declare it to be worthless in form and
substance, the verdict would be interesting to me, and I should set to
work to discover why and how I had so far failed in discernment. "A
thoroughly cultivated man," says Fontenelle, "is informed by all the
thinkers of the past, as though he had lived and continued to grow in
knowledge during all the centuries." The author is rewarded when his
readers are made better.
The most persuasive of men are the praisers of patent medicines. Their
eloquence is more richly rewarded than that of all the orators, who
also are paid, for the most part, in inverse ratio to the amount of
truth they utter. Fame, as fame, is the merest vanity. No wise man
wishes to be talked and written about, living or dead, to be a theme
chiefly for fools.
Literature is writing in which genuine thought and feeling are rightly
expressed. They who content themselves with what others have uttered,
learn nothing. The blind need a guide, but they who are able to see
should look for themselves. There is, indeed, in the words of genius a
glow which never dies; but it only dazzles and misleads, if it fails to
stimulate and strengthen our own powers of vision. True speech is not
idle; it is utterance of life, the mate of action, and the begetter of
noble deeds. Strive for knowledge and strength, but do not appear to
have them.
"A book," says La Bruyere, "which exalts the mind and inspires high and
manly thoughts, is good, and the work of a master." A phrase suffices
to tell the man is ignorant or the book worthless. As the body is
nourished by dead things, vegetable and animal, so the mind feeds on
the thoughts of those who have ceased to live, which, it would seem,
are never rightly understood until the thinkers have passed away.
To be unwilling to be proved wrong is to fail in love of truth; to
resent an objection is to lack culture. One may believe what cannot be
demonstrated, but to grow angry because there is no proof is absurd.
To do deeds and to utter thoughts which long after we have departed
shall remain to cheer, to illumine, to strengthen and console, is to be
like God; and the desire of noble minds is not of praise, but of
abiding power for good.
He who is certain of himself needs not the good opinion of men, not of
those even who are competent to judge. Only the vain and foolish or
the designing and dishonest will wish to receive credit for more
ability and virtue than they have. An exaggerated reputation may
nourish conceit or win favor; but the wise and the good put away
conceit, and desire not favors which are granted from mistaken notions.
"I hate false words," says Landor, "and seek with care, difficulty, and
moroseness those that fit the thing."
Dwell not with complacency upon aught thou hast or hast achieved, but
address thyself each day, like a simple-hearted child, to the task God
sets thee; and remember when the last hour comes thou canst carry
nothing to Him but faith in His mercy and goodness.