TRUTH AND LOVE.
Truth, which only doth judge itself, teacheth that the inquiry of
truth, which is the love-making or wooing of it; the knowledge of
truth, which is the presence of it; and the belief of truth, which is
the enjoying of it, is the sovereign good of human nature.--BACON.
As those who have little think their little much, so those who have few
ideas believe with obstinacy that they are the sum of all truth. If
the world could but be made to see what they see there would be no
ills. They have not even a suspicion of the unutterable complexity of
the warp and woof of nature and of life; and when their opinions are
combated they imagine they thereby acquire new importance, and they
defend them with such zeal that they make proselytes and found sects in
religion, politics, and literature. The source of the greater part of
error is the absoluteness the mind attributes to its knowledge and, as
part of this, the persuasion that at each stage of our mental life, we
are capable of seeing things as they are. The aim of the philosopher,
as of the Christian, is to escape from the ephemeral self by renouncing
what is petty, partial, apparent, and transitory, that the true self
may unfold in the world of the permanent, of things which have an
aptitude for perpetuity; but the philosopher's efforts are intellectual
and moral, while the Christian's source of strength is the love which
is enrooted in divine faith.
"The brief precept," says St. Augustine, "is given there once for
all,--Love, and do what thou wilt. If thou art silent, be silent for
love; if thou speakest, speak for love; if thou correctest, correct for
love; if thou sparest, spare for love. The root of love is within, and
from it only good can come." Life springs from love, and love is its
being, aim, and end. Each soul is born of souls yearning that he be
born, and he lives only so far as he leaves himself and becomes through
love part of the life of God and the race of man.
Primordial matter, with which the physicists start, is twin brother of
nothing. In every conceivable hypothesis, we assume either that
nothing is the cause of something, or that from the beginning there was
something or some one who is all the universe may become. If truth and
love and goodness are of the essence of the highest life evolved in
nature, they are of the essence of that by which nature exists and
energizes. If reason is valid at all, it avails as an immovable
foundation for faith in God and in man's kinship with him. The larger
the world we live in, the greater the opportunities for self-education.
He who knows friends and foes, who is commended and found fault with,
who tastes the delights of home and breathes the air of strange lands,
who is followed and opposed, who triumphs and suffers defeat, who
contends with many and is left alone, who dwells with his own thoughts
and in the company of the great minds of all time,--necessarily gains
wisdom and power, and learns to feel himself a man.
Science springs from man's yearning for truth; art, from his yearning
for beauty; religion, from his yearning for love: and as truth, beauty,
and love are a harmony, so are science, art, and religion; and if
conflicts arise, they are the results of ignorance and passion. The
charm of faith, hope, and love, of knowledge, beauty, and religion,
lies in their power to open life's prison, thus permitting the soul to
escape to commune with the Infinite and Eternal, with the boundless
mysterious world of being which forever draws us on and forever eludes
our grasp. The higher the man, the more urgent this need of
self-escape.
We look upon lifelong imprisonment of the body as among the greatest of
evils, but that the mind should be suffered to languish in the dungeon
of ignorance, error, and prejudice, seems comparatively a slight thing.
Thy whole business, as a rational being, is to know and follow
truth,--with gratitude and joy if possible, but, in any case, with
courage and resignation. Mind maketh man; and the most money and place
can do, is to make millionnaires and titularies.
The Alpine guides, who lead travellers through the sublimest scenery in
the world, are as insensible to its grandeur as the stocks they grasp;
and we nearly all are as indifferent as these drudges to Nature's
divine spectacle, with its starlit heavens, its risings and settings of
sun and moon, its storms and calms, its changes of season, its clouds
and snows and breath of many-tinted flowers, its children's faces, and
plumage and songs of birds.
As we judge of many things by samples, a glance may suffice to show the
worthlessness of a book, but the value of one that is genuine is not
quickly perceived, for it reveals itself the more the oftener it is
read and pondered. There is not a more certain, a purer, or a more
delightful source of contentment and independence than a taste for the
best literature. In the midst of occupations and cares of whatever
kind it enables us to look forward to the hour when the noblest minds
and most generous hearts shall welcome us to their company to be
entertained with great thoughts rightly uttered and with information
concerning whatever is of interest to man.
In every home the best works of the great poets, historians,
philosophers, orators, and story-writers should lie within reach of the
young, who should be permitted, not urged, to read them. We may know a
man by the company he keeps; we may know him better still by the books
he loves: and if he loves none, he is not worth knowing.
Matthew Arnold praises culture for "its inexhaustible indulgence, its
consideration of circumstances, its severe judgment of actions joined
to its merciful judgment of persons."
When we have learned to love work, to love honest work, work well done,
excellently well done, we have within ourselves the most fruitful
principle of education.
Who shall speak ill of bodily health and vigor? Herbert Spencer
affirms that it is man's first duty to be a good animal. But since we
cannot all be athletes or be well even, let us not refuse to find
consolation in the fact that much of what is greatest, whether in the
world of thought or action, has been wrought by mighty souls in feeble
and suffering bodies; and since men gladly risk health and life to
acquire gold, shall we not be willing, if need be, to be "sicklied o'er
with the pale cast of thought," if so we may attain to truth and love?
Great things are accomplished only by concentration. What we ourselves
think, love, and do, until it becomes a habit, is the form and
substance of our life.
To live in the company of those who have or seek culture is to breathe
the vital air of mental health and vigor.
The scientific investigator gives his whole attention to the facts
before him; but the discipline of close observation, however favorable
it may be to accuracy, weakens capacity for wide and profound views.
On the other hand, the speculative thinker is apt to grow heedless or
oblivious of facts. Hence a minute observer is seldom a great
philosopher, a great philosopher rarely a careful observer.
"Employment," says Ruskin, "is the half, and the primal half of
education, for it forms the habits of body and mind, and these are the
constitution of man." Tell me at and in what thou workest, and I will
tell thee what thou art. The secret of education lies in the words of
Christ,--He that hath eyes to see, let him see; he that hath ears to
hear, let him hear. The soul must flow through the channels of the
senses until it meets the universe and clothes it with the beauty and
meaning which reveal God.
When I think of all the truth which still remains for me to learn, of
all the good I yet may do, of all the friends I still may serve, of all
the beauty I may see, life seems as fresh and fair, as full of promise,
as is to loving souls the dawn of their bridal day. Animals, children,
savages, the thoughtless and frivolous, live in the present alone; they
consequently lead a narrow, ephemeral, and superficial existence. They
strike no deep roots into the past, they forebode no divine future,
they enter not behind the veil where the soul finds ever-during truth
and power.
"The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers."
Whatever sets the mind in motion may lead us to secret worlds, though
it be a falling apple, as with Newton, or the swing of the pendulum, as
with Galileo, or a boy's kite, as with Franklin, or throwing pebbles
into the water, as with Turner. Watt sat musing by the fire, and
noticed the rise and fall of the lid of the boiling kettle, and the
steam engine, like a vision from unknown spheres, rose before his
imagination. A child, carelessly playing with the glasses that lay on
the table of a spectacle-maker, gave the clew to the invention of the
telescope. The pestle, flying from the hand of Schwarz, told him he
had found the explosive which has transformed the world. Drifting
plants, of a strange species, whispered to Columbus of a continent that
lay across the Atlantic. Patient observation and work are the
mightiest conquerors.
Among the maxims, called triads, which have come down to us from the
Celtic bards, we find this: "The three primary requisites of
genius,--an eye that can see nature; a heart that can feel nature; and
boldness that dares follow nature." He who has no philosophy and no
religion, no theory of life and the world, has nothing which he finds
it greatly important to say or do. He lacks the impulse of genius, the
educator's energy and enthusiasm. Having no ideal, he has no end to
which he may point and lead. To do well it is necessary to believe in
the worth of what we do. The power which upholds and leads us on is
faith,--faith in God, in ourselves, in life, in education.
Forever to be blessed and cherished is the love-inspired mother or the
teacher whose generous heart and luminous mind first leads us to
believe in the priceless worth of wisdom and virtue, thus kindling
within the soul a quenchless fire which warms and irradiates our whole
being.
To be God's workman, to strive, to endure, to labor, even to the end,
for truth and righteousness, this is life.
"My desire," says Dante, "and my will rolled onward, like a wheel in
even motion, swayed by the love which moves the sun and all the stars."
If there are any who shrink from wrong more than from disgrace they
best deserve to be called religious.
Strive not to be original or profound, but to think justly and to
express clearly what thou seest; and so it may happen that thy view
shall pierce deeper than thou knowest.
The words and deeds which are most certain to escape oblivion are those
which nourish the higher life of the soul. Self-love, the love of
one's real self, of one's soul, is the indispensable virtue. It is
this we seek when we strive to know and love truth and justice; it is
this we seek, when we love God and our fellow-men. In turning from
ourselves to find them, we still seek ourselves; in abandoning life we
seek richer and fuller life.
Truth separate from love is but half truth. Think of that which unites
thee with thy fellows rather than of what divides thee from them.
Religion is the bond of love, and not a subject for a debating club.
If thou wouldst refute thy adversaries, commit the task to thy life
more than to thy words. Read the history of controversy and ask
thyself whether there is in it the spirit of Christ, the meek and lowly
One? Its champions belong to the schools of the sophists rather than
to the worshippers of God in spirit and in truth. And what has been
the issue of all their disputes but hatreds and sects, persecutions and
wars? If it is my duty to be polite and helpful to my neighbor, it is
plainly also my duty to treat his opinions and beliefs with
consideration and fairness.
There is a place in South America where the whole population have the
goitre, and if a stranger who is free from the deformity chances to
pass among them, they jeer and cry, "There goes one who has no goitre."
What could be more delightfully human? We think it a holy thing to put
down duelling, the battle of one with one; but we are full of
enthusiasm over battles of a hundred thousand with a hundred thousand.
Thus the Southern slave-owners were sworn advocates of the rights of
man and of popular liberty.
The explanation of many provoking things is to be found in Dr.
Johnson's words,--"Ignorance, simple ignorance;" but of many more
probably in these other words,--Greed, simple greed.
"In science," says Bulwer, "read by preference the newest books; in
literature, the oldest." This is wiser than Emerson's saying: "Never
read a book which is not a year old."
The facility with which it is now possible to get at whatever is known
on any subject has a tendency to create the opinion that reading up in
this or that direction is education, whereas such reading as is
generally done, is unfavorable to discipline of mind. Shall our
Chautauquas and summer schools help to foster this superstition?
What passion can be more innocent than the passion for knowledge? And
what passion gives better promise of blessings to one's self and to
one's fellow-men? Why desire to have force and numbers on thy side?
Is it not enough that thou hast truth and justice?
The loss of the good opinion of one's friends is to be regretted, but
the loss of self-respect is the only true beggary.
Zeal for a party or a sect is more certain of earthly reward than zeal
for truth and religion.
As it is unfortunate for the young to have abundance of money, fine
clothes, and social success, so popularity is hurtful to the prosperity
of the best gifts. It draws the mind away from the silence and
strength of eternal truth and love into a world of clamor and noise.
Patience is the student's great virtue; it is the mark of the best
quality of mind. It takes an eternity to unfold a universe; man is the
sum of the achievements of innumerable ages, and whatever endures is
slow in acquiring the virtues which make for permanence.
The will to know, manifesting itself in persistent impulse, in
never-satisfied yearning, is the power which urges to mental effort and
enables us to attain culture.
"If a thing is good," says Landor, "it may be repeated. The repetition
shows no want of invention; it shows only what is uppermost in the
mind, and by what the writer is most agitated and inflamed." What hast
thou learned to admire, to long for, to love, genuinely to hope for and
believe? The answer tells thy worth and that of the education thou
hast received.
When we have said a thousand things in praise of education, we must, at
last, come back to the fundamental fact that nearly everything depends
on the kind of people of whom we are descended, and on the kind of
family in which our young years have passed. Nearly everything, but
not everything; and it is this little which makes liberty possible,
which inspires hope and courage, which, like the indefinable something
that gives the work of genius its worth and stamp, makes us children of
God and masters of ourselves. "Wisdom is the principal thing," says
Solomon; "therefore get wisdom, and with all thy getting, get
understanding."
He who makes himself the best man is the most successful one, while he
who gains most money or notoriety may fail utterly as man.
With the advance of civilization our wants increase; and yet it is the
business of religion and culture to raise us above the things money
buys, and consequently to diminish our wants. They who are nearest to
God have fewest wants; and they who know and follow truth need not
place or title or wealth.
To every one the tempter comes, with a thousand pretexts drawn both
from the intellect and the emotional nature, promising to lull
conscience to sleep that he may lead the lower life in peace; but he
who hearkens becomes a victim as helpless and as wretched as the
victims of alcohol and opium.
In deliberate persevering action for high ends, all the subconscious
forces within us, the many currents, which, like hidden water-veins, go
to make our being, are taken up and turned in a deep-flowing stream
into the ocean of our life. In such course of conduct the baser self
is swallowed, and we learn to feel that we are part of the divine
energy which moves the universe to finer issues. As life is only by
moments and in narrow space, a little thing may disturb us and a little
thing may take away the cause of our trouble. We are petty beings in a
world of petty concerns. A little food, a little sleep, a little joy
is enough to make us happy. A word can fill us with dismay, a breath
can blow out the flickering flame of our self-consciousness. I often
ride among graves, and think how easy it is for the fretful children of
men to grow quiet. There they lie, having become weary of their toys
and plays, on the breast of the great mother from whom they sprang,
about whose face they frolicked and fought and cried for a day, and
then fell back into her all-receiving arms, as raindrops fall into the
water and mingle with it and are lost. No sight is so pathetic as that
of a vast throng seeking to enjoy themselves. The hopelessness of the
task is visible on all their thousand faces, athwart which, while they
talk or listen or look, the shadow of care flits as if thrown from dark
wings wheeling in circuits above them. The sorrow and toil and worry
they have thought to put away, still lie close to them, like a burden
which, having been set down, waits to be taken up again. God surely
sees with love and pity His all-enduring and all-hoping children; it is
His voice we hear in the words of Christ, "Misereor super turbam." I
cannot but wish to be myself, and therefore to be happy; but when I
think of God as essential to my happiness, I feel it is enough for me
to know and love Him; for to imagine I might be of service to Him would
be the fondest conceit. But He makes it possible for me to help my
fellows, and in doing this, I fulfil the will of Him who is the father
of all. The divine reveals itself in the human; and that religion
alone is true which, striking its roots deep into humanity, exerts all
its power to make men more godlike by making them more human.
They who in good faith inflicted the tortures of the Inquisition were
led not by the light of reason, or that which springs from the
contemplation of the life of Christ, but by the notion that the rack
and fagot are instruments of mercy, if employed to save men from
eternal torments; and tyrants, who are always cruel, gave encouragement
and aid to the victims of fanaticism. Why should the sorrow or the sin
or the loss of any human being give me pleasure? Is it not always the
same story? In the fall of one we all are degraded, since, whoever
fails, it is our common nature which suffers hurt.
Whether or not we have come forth from a merely animal condition, let
us thank God we are human, and bend all our energies to remove the race
farther and farther from the life over which thought and love and
conscience have no dominion.
In the presence of the mighty machine, whose wheels and arms are
everywhere, whose power is drawn from the exhaustless oceans and the
boundless heavens, the importance of the individual dwindles and seems
threatened with extinction. At such a time it is good to know that a
right human soul is greater than a universe of machinery.
We feel that we are higher than all the suns and planets, because we
know and love, and they do not; but when, in the light of this
superiority, we turn to the thought of our own littleness, being
scarcely more than nothing, such trouble rises in the soul that we
throw ourselves upon God to escape doubt of the reality of life. If we
believe that man is what he eats, his education is simply a question of
alimentation; but if we hold that he is what he knows, and loves, and
yearns, and strives for, his education is a problem of soul-nutrition.
The child is made educable by its faith in the father and mother, which
is nothing else than faith in their truth and love; and the
educableness of the man is in proportion to his faith in the sovereign
and infinite nature of truth and love, which is faith in God.
It is in youth that we are most susceptible of education, because it is
the privilege of youth to be free from tyrannic cares, and to be
sensitive to the charm of noble and disinterested passions. If we show
the young soul the way to higher worlds, he will not ask us to strew it
with flowers, or pave it with gold, but he will be content to walk with
bruised feet along mountain wastes, if at the summit is illumination
and joy and peace.
As in religion many are called but few chosen, as in the race for
wealth and place many start but few win the prize, so in the pursuit of
intellectual and moral excellence, of the few who begin, the most soon
weary, while of the remnant, many grow infirm in purpose or in body
before the goal is reached.
Time and space, which hold all things, separate all things; but
religion and culture bind them into unity through faith in God and
through knowledge, thus forming a communion of holy souls and noble
minds, for whom discord and division disappear in the harmony of the
divine order in which temporal and spatial conditions of separateness
yield to the eternal presence of truth and love. New ideas seem at
first to remain upon the surface of the soul, and generations sometimes
pass before they enter into its substance and become motives of
conduct; and, in the same way, sentiments may influence conduct, when
the notions from which they sprang have long been rejected. The old
truth must renew itself as the race renews itself; it must be
re-interpreted and re-applied to the life of each individual and of
each generation, if its liberating and regenerating power is to have
free scope. Reason and conscience are God's most precious gifts; and
what does He ask but that we make use of them?
Right thinking, like right doing, is the result of innumerable efforts,
innumerable failures, the final outcome of which is a habit of right
thought and conduct.
Whoever believes in truth, freedom, and love, and follows after them
with his whole heart, walks in God's highway, which leads to peace and
blessedness.
A thing may be obscure from defect of light or defect of sight; and in
the same way an author may be found dull either because he is so, or
because his readers are dull. The noblest book even is but dead matter
until a mind akin to its creator's awakens it to life again.
The appeal to the imagination has infinitely more charm than the appeal
to the senses.
"But when evening falls," says Machiavelli, "I go home and enter my
study. On the threshold I lay aside my country garments, soiled with
mire, and array myself in courtly garb. Thus attired, I make my
entrance into the ancient courts of the men of old, where they receive
me with love, and where I feed upon that food which only is my own, and
for which I was born. For four hours' space I feel no annoyance,
forget all care; poverty cannot frighten nor death appall me." A man
of genius works for all, for he compels all to think. An enlightened
mind and a generous heart make the world good and fair.
Where there is perfect confidence, conversation does not drag; while
for those who love it is enough that they be together: if they are
silent, it is well; if they speak, mere nothings suffice.
The world of knowledge, all that men know, is, in truth, little and
simple enough. It seems vast and intricate because we are imperfectly
educated.
The soul, like the body, has its atmosphere, out of which it cannot
live.
When opinions take the place of convictions, ideas that of beliefs,
great characters become rare.
The pith of virtue lies not in thinking, but in doing. A real man
strives to assert himself; for whether he seeks wealth, or power, or
fame, or truth, or virtue, or the good of his fellows, he knows that he
can succeed only through self-assertion, through the prevalence of his
own thought and life.
They who abdicate the rights God gives the individual, seek in vain to
preserve by constitutional enactments a semblance of liberty.
If it is human to hate whom we have injured, it is not less so to
despise whom we have deceived; and yet those who are easily deceived
are the most innocent or the most high-minded and generous. It seems
hardly a human and must therefore be a divine thing, to live and deal
with men without in any way giving them trouble and annoyance. Truth
loves not contention, and when men fight for it, it vanishes in the
noise and smoke of the combat.
The controversies of the schools, whether of philosophy, theology,
literature, or natural science, have been among the saddest exhibitions
of ineptitude. Is it conceivable that a thinker, or a believer, or a
scholar, or an investigator should wrangle in the spirit of a pothouse
politician? The more certain we are of ourselves and of the truth of
what we hold, the easier it is for us to be patient and tolerant.
Wicked is whoever finds pleasure in another's pain. We can know more
than we can love. Hence communion with the world is wider through the
mind than through the heart, though less intimate and less satisfying.
It is, however, longer active, for we continue to be delighted by new
truth when we have ceased to care to make new friends. Learn to bear
the faults of men as thou sufferest the changes of weather,--with
equanimity; for impatience and anger will no more improve thy neighbors
than they will prevent its being hot or cold. What men think or say of
thee is unimportant--give heed to what thou thyself thinkest and sayst.
If thou art ignored or reviled, remember such has been the fate of the
best, while the world's favorites are often men of blood or lust or
mere time-servers. He who does genuine work is conscious of the worth
of what he does, and is not troubled with misgivings or discouraged by
lack of recognition. If God looked away from His universe it would
cease to be; and He sees him. The more we detach ourselves from crude
realism, from the naive views of uneducated minds, the easier it
becomes for us to lead an intellectual and religious life, for such
detachment enables us to realize that the material world has meaning
and beauty only when it has passed through the alembic of the spirit
and become purified, fit object for the contemplation of God and of
souls. They are true students who are drawn to seek knowledge by
mental curiosity, by affinity with the intelligible, like that which
binds and holds lover to lover, making their love all-sufficient and
above all price. All that is of value in thy opinions is the truth
they contain--to hold them dearer than truth is to be irrational and
perverse. Thy faith is what thou believest, not what thou knowest.
The crowd loves to hear those who treat the tenets of their opponents
with scorn, who overwhelm their adversaries with abuse, who make a
mockery of what their foes hold sacred; but to vulgarity of this kind a
cultivated mind cannot stoop. To do so is a mark of ignorance and
inferiority; is to confuse judgment, to cloud intellect, and to
strengthen prejudice. If there are any who are so absurd or so
perverse as to be unworthy of fair and rational treatment, to refute
them is loss of time, to occupy one's self with them is to keep bad
company. With the contentious, who are always dominated by narrow and
petty views and motives, enter not into dispute, but look beyond to the
wide domain of reason and to the patience and charity of Christ. When
minds are alive and active, opposing currents of thought necessarily
arise. Contradiction is the salt which keeps truth from corruption.
As we let the light fall at different angles upon a precious stone, and
change our position from point to point to study a work of art, so it
is well to give more than one expression to the same truth, that the
intellectual rays falling upon it from several directions, and breaking
into new tints and shades, its full meaning and worth may finally be
brought clearly into view. If those with whom thou art thrown appear
to thee to be hard and narrow, call to mind that they have the same
troubles and sorrows as thyself, essentially too the same thoughts and
yearnings; and as, in spite of all thy faults, thou still lovest
thyself, so love them too, even though they be too warped and
prejudiced to appreciate thy worth.
The wise man never utters words of scorn,
For he best knows such words are devil-born.
Our opponents are as necessary to us as our friends, and when those who
have nobly combated us die, they seem to take with them part of our
mental vigor; they leave us with a deeper sense of the illusiveness of
life. Freedom is found only where honest criticism of men and measures
is recognized as a common right.
As one man's meat is another's poison, so in the world of intelligible
things what refreshes and invigorates one, may weary and depress
another. What delights the child makes no impression upon the man.
Men and women, the ignorant and the learned, philosophers and poets,
mothers and maidens, doers and dreamers, find their entertainment
largely in different worlds. Napoleon despised the idealogue; the
idealogue sees in him but a conscienceless force.
Outcries against wrong have little efficacy. They alone improve men
who inspire them with new confidence, new courage, who help them to
renew and purify the inner sources of life. Harsh zeal provokes
excess, because it provokes contradiction. Whoever stirs the soul to
new depths, whoever awakens the mind to new thoughts and aspirations,
is a benefactor. The common man sees the fruits of his toil; the seed
which divine men sow, ripens for others. The counsels worldlings give
to genius can only mislead. Not only the truth which Christ taught,
but the truth which nearly all sublime thinkers have taught, has seemed
to the generation to which it was announced but a beggarly lie. The
powerful have sneered with Pilate, while the mob have done the teachers
to death.
Make truth thy garb, thy house, wherein thou movest and dwellest, and
art comfortable and at home.
If thou knowest what thou knowest and believest what thou believest,
thou canst not be disturbed by contradiction, but shalt feel that thy
opposers are appointed by God to confirm thee in truth.
As the merchant keeps journal and ledger, so should he whose wealth is
truth, take account in writing of the thoughts he gains from
observation, reflection, reading, and intercourse with men. We become
perfectly conscious of our impressions only in giving expression to
them; hence ability to express what we feel and know is one of the
chief and most important aims and ends of education.
What thou mayst not learn without employing spies, or listening to the
stories of the malignant or the gossip of the vulgar, be content not to
know.
Our miseries spring from idleness and sin; and idleness is sin and the
mother of sin. "To confide in one's self and become something of
worth," says Michelangelo, "is the best and safest course."
Life-weariness, when it is not the result of long suffering, comes of
lack of love, for to love any human being in a true and noble way makes
life good. Whatever mistakes thou mayst have made in the choice of a
profession and in other things, it is still possible for thee to will
and do good, to know truth, and to love beauty, and this is the best
life can give. Think of living, and thou shalt find no time to repine.
The character of the believer determines the character of his faith,
whatever the formulas by which it is expressed. What we are is the
chief constituent of the world in which we now live, and this must be
true also of the world in which we believe and for which we hope. For
the sensualist a spiritual heaven has neither significance nor
attractiveness. The highest truth the noblest see has no meaning for
the multitude, or but a distorted meaning. What is divinest in the
teaching of Christ, only one in thousands, now after the lapse of
centuries, rightly understands and appreciates. It is not so much the
things we believe, know, and do, as the things on which we lay the
chief stress of hope and desire, that shape our course and decide our
destiny.
They alone receive the higher gifts, who, to obtain them, renounce the
lower pleasures and rewards of life. Those races are noblest, those
individuals are noblest, who care most for the past and the future,
whose thoughts and hopes are least confined to the world of sense which
from moment to moment ceaselessly urges its claims to attention.
Desire fanned by imagination, when it turns to sensual things, makes
men brutish; but when its object is intellectual and moral, it lifts
them to worlds of pure and enduring delight.
When we would form an estimate of a man, we consider not what he knows,
believes, and does, but what kind of being his knowledge, faith, and
works have made of him. He who makes us learn more than he teaches has
genius. Whoever has freed himself from envy and bitterness may begin
to try to see things as they are.
Each one is the outcome of millions of causes, which, so far as he can
see, are accidental. How ridiculous then to complain that if this or
that only had not happened, all would be well. It is ignorance or
prejudice to make a man's conduct an argument against the worth of his
writings. Byron was a bad man, but a great poet; Bacon was venal, but
a marvellous thinker.
Books, to be interesting to the many, must abound in narrative, must
run on like chattering girls, and make little demand upon attention.
The appeal to thought is like a beggar's appeal for alms,--heeded by
one only in hundreds who pass; for, to the multitude, mental effort is
as disagreeable as parting with their money.
A newspaper is old the day after its publication, and there are many
books which issue from the press withered and senile, but the best,
like the gods, are forever young and delightful.
"Whatever bit of a wise man's work," says Ruskin, "is honestly and
benevolently done, that bit is his book or his piece of art. It is
mixed always with evil fragments,--ill-done, redundant, affected work;
but if you read rightly, you will easily discover the true bits, and
_those_ are the book." Again: "No book is worth anything which is not
worth much; nor is it serviceable until it has been read and re-read,
and loved, and loved again; and marked so that you may refer to the
passages you want in it."
Unity, steadfastness, and power of will mark the great workers. A
dominant impulse urges them forward, and with firm tread they move on
till death bids them stay. As the will succumbs to idleness and sin,
it can be developed and maintained in health and vigor only by right
action.
If thou makest thy intellectual and moral improvement thy chief
business, thou shalt not lack for employment, and with thy progress thy
joy and freedom shall increase.
Progress is betterment of life. The accumulation of discoveries, the
multiplication of inventions, the improvement of the means of comfort,
the extension of instruction, and the perfecting of methods, are
valuable in the degree in which they contribute to this end. The
characteristic of progress is increase of spiritual force. In material
progress even, the intellectual and moral element is the value-giving
factor. Progress begets belief in progress. As we grow in worth and
wisdom, our faith in knowledge and conduct is developed and confirmed,
and with more willing hearts we make ourselves the servants of
righteousness and love; for in the degree in which religion and culture
prevail within us, co-operation for life tends to supersede the
struggle for life, which if not the dominant law, is, at least, the
general course of things when left to Nature's sway.
Catchwords, such as progress, culture, enlightenment, and liberty, are
for the multitude rarely more than psittacisms, mere parrot sounds. So
long as we genuinely believe in an ideal and strive to incarnate it,
the spirit of hope kindles the flame of enthusiasm within the breast.
Its attainment, however, if the ideal is sensual or material, leads to
disappointment and weariness. Behold yonder worshipper at the shrine
of money and pleasure, whose life is but a yawn between his woman and
his wine. But if the ideal is spiritual, failure in the pursuit cannot
dishearten us, and success but opens to view diviner worlds towards
which we turn our thought and love with self-renewing freshness of mind.
If thou seekest for beauty, it is everywhere; if for hideousness, it
too is everywhere.
To believe in one's self, to have genuine faith in the impressions,
thoughts, hopes, loves, and aspirations which are in one's own soul,
and to strive ceaselessly to come to clear knowledge of this inner
world which each one bears within himself, is the secret of culture.
To bend one's will day by day to the weaving this light of the mind and
warmth of the heart into the substance of life, into conduct, is the
secret of character. At whatever point of time or space we find
ourselves, we can begin or continue the task of self-improvement; for
the only essential thing is the activity of the soul, seeking to become
conscious of itself, through and in God and His universe.
The little bird upbuilds its nest
Of little things by ceaseless quest:
And he who labors without rest
By little steps will reach life's crest.
The true reader is brought into contact with a personality which
reveals itself or permits its secret to be divined. In spirit and
imagination he lives the life of the author. In his book he finds the
experience and wisdom of years compressed into a few pages which he
reads in an hour. The vital sublimation of what made a man is thus
given him in its essence to exalt or to degrade, to inspire or to
deaden his soul. In looking through the eyes of another, he learns to
see himself, to understand his affinities and his tendencies, his
strength and his weakness. Eat this volume and go speak to the
children of Israel, said the spirit to the prophet Ezekiel. The
meaning is--mentally devour, digest, and assimilate the book into the
fibre and structure of thy very being, and then shalt thou be able to
utter words of truth and wisdom to God's chosen ones. The world's
spiritual wealth, so far as it has existence other than in the minds of
individuals, is stored in literature, in books,--the great
treasure-house of the soul's life, of what the best and greatest have
thought, known, believed, felt, suffered, desired, toiled, and died
for; and whoever fails to make himself a home in this realm of truth,
light, and freedom, is shut out from what is highest and most divine in
human experience, and sinks into the grave without having lived.
To those who have uttered themselves in public speech, there comes at
times a feeling akin to self-reproach. They have taken upon themselves
the office of teacher, and yet what have they taught that is worth
knowing and loving? They have lost the privacy in which so much of the
charm and freedom of life consists; they have been praised or blamed
without discernment; and a great part of what they have said and
written seems to themselves little more than a skeleton from which the
living vesture has fallen. Ask them not to encourage any one to become
an author. The more they have deafened the world with their voices,
the more will they, like Carlyle, praise the Eternal Silence. They
have in fact been taught, by hard experience, that the worth of life
lies not in saying or writing anything whatever, but in pure faith, in
humble obedience, in brave and steadfast striving. The woman who
sweeps a room, the mother who nurses her child, the laborer who sows
and reaps, believing and feeling that they are working with God, are
leading nobler lives and doing diviner things than the declaimers and
theorizers, and the religion which upholds them and lightens their
burdens is better than all the philosophies.