discourse. Add genial dispositions, graceful elocution, and to these
accomplishments diffidence as the flower of the rest. There can be no
eloquence where these are wanting. Any amount of sense, of logic,
matter, leaves the discourse incomplete, interest flags, and
disappointment ensues. None has command of himself till he can wield his
powers sportfully, life sparkling from all his gifts and taking captive
alike speaker and hearer, as they were docile children of his genius and
surprised converts for the moment. "And I," says Socrates, "through my
youth often change my mind, but looking to you and apprehending that you
speak the things that are divine, I think so too." If one cannot inspire
faith in what he says, no arts avail. Earnestness, sincerity, are
orators whose persuasions are irresistible; they hold all gifts in
fusion, magnetize, divinize, harmonize all. Good conversation is
lyrical: a pentecost of tongues, touching the chords of melody in all
minds, it prompts to the best each had to give, to better than any knew
they had, what none claims as his own, as if he were the organ of some
invisible player behind the scenes. What abandonments, reserves, which
no premeditation, no cunning could have checked or called forth. What
chasms are spanned with a trope, what pits forded, summits climbed,
prospects commanded, perspectives gained,--the tour of the spheres made
at a glance, a sitting; the circle coming safely out of the adventure.
All men talk, few converse; of gossip we have enough, of argument more
than enough, rhetoric, debate--omit these, speak from the heart to the
heart underlying all differences, and we have conversation. For
disputing there is the crowd; for ruminating, the woods; the clubs for
wit and the superficial fellowship.
Companionableness comes by nature. For though culture may mellow and
refine, it cannot give the flush of nobility to the current wherein ride
our credentials for the posts of persuasion and of power. We meet
magically, and pass with sounding manners; else encounter repulses,
strokes of fate; temperament telling against temperament, precipitating
us into vortices from which the nimblest finds no escape. We pity the
person who shows himself unequal to the occasion; the scholar, for
example, whose intellect is so exacting, so precise, that he cannot meet
his company otherwise than critically; cannot descend to meet, through
the senses or the sentiments, that common level where intercourse is
possible with most. We pity him the more, who, from caprice or confusion
can meet through these only. Still more, the case of him who can meet
neither as sentimentalist nor idealist, or, rather, not at all in a
human way. Intellect interblends with sentiment in the companionable
mind, wit with humor. We detain the flowing tide at the cost of lapsing
out of perception into memory, into the limbo of fools. Excellent people
wonder why they cannot meet and converse. They cannot. No. Their wits
have ebbed away, and left them helpless. Why, but because of hostile
temperaments, states of animation? The personal magnetism finds no
conductor. One is individual, the other is individual no less.
Individuals repel. Persons meet. And only as one's personality is
sufficiently overpowering to dissolve the other's individualism, can the
parties flow together and become one. But individuals have no power of
the sort. They are two, not one, perhaps many. Prisoned within
themselves by reason of their egotism, like animals, they stand aloof,
are separate even when they touch; are solitary in any company, having
none in themselves. But the freed personal mind meets all, is
apprehended by all, by the least cultivated, the most gifted; magnetizes
all; is the spell-binder, the liberator of every one. We speak of
sympathies, antipathies, fascinations, fates, for this reason.
[Illustration: Small decoration of a leaf]
IV.
FRIENDSHIP.
"So great a happiness do I esteem it to be loved, that I
really fancy every blessing both from gods and men ready to
descend spontaneously upon him who is loved."--XENOPHON.
[Illustration: Decorative banner of two swans among flowers]
FRIENDSHIP.
I.--PERSONS.
It was a charming fancy of the Pythagoreans to exchange names when they
met that so they might partake of the virtues each admired in the other.
And knowing the power of names they used only such as were musical and
pleasing. The compliment thus bestowed upon the sentiment of friendship
is most deserved, and suggestive of the magic of its influence at every
age, throughout every period of our existence; our life, properly
speaking, opening with the birth of fancy and the affections, and
maintaining its freshness only as we are under their sway. A friendship
formed in childhood, in youth,--by happy accident at any stage of rising
manhood,--becomes the genius that rules the rest of life. What
aspirations it awakens! what prospects! To what advantages, adventures,
sacrifices, successes, does it not lead its votaries! What if these
early unions are sometimes less tempered with discretion than those
formed later, if they maintain their freshness and open out sure
prospects of an endless future? He surely has no future who is without
friends to share it with him, and is wasting an existence meant to give
him that assurance. With this sentiment there comes every felicity into
the breasts of those who partake of it. How large the dividend of
delight! how diffusive! We are the richer for every outlay. We dip our
pitchers in these fountains to come away overspilling with satisfaction.
And had we a thousand friends, every spring within us would gush forth
at the touch of these wands of tenderness, and the days pass as
uncounted moments in their company.
"O friend, the bosom said,
Through thee alone the sky is arched,
Through thee the rose is red;
All things through thee take nobler form,
And look beyond the earth,
And is the millround of our fate
A sunpath in thy worth:
Me, too, thy nobleness has taught
To master my despair;
The fountains of my hidden life,
Are through thy friendship fair."
How handsome our friends are! Say they were not moulded at the celestial
potteries, we paint them fair behind the plain exterior they wear to
indifferent eyes, and as they appear in our gallery of enamels. For who
has not seen the plainest features light with a beauty the eyes had not
conceived at the rise of a tender sentiment? a lively thought, the
recollection of a noble deed, effacing every trace of ancestral
meanness; the friend we love all there without blemish or spot, the
image we clasp to our breast and cannot forget.
Spectral and cold, indeed, were life surveyed from the senses alone, not
from the soul, wanting the enthusiasm that persons inspire, the faith
which exalts us above ourselves, giving us friends to love, and a God to
adore. We enter heaven through the gates of friendship. 'Tis by some
supreme fellowship that we complete ourselves, and are united to our
kind.
I esteem friendship the fairest as the eldest of religious faiths, being
the worship of the unseen through the seen, and excusing many
superstitions coloring the need of a personal object of worship. The
love and service rendered to persons symbolizes love and service due the
Supreme Person; and he must be pronounced deficient in piety who fails
of winning the noblest of victories,--a friend. A need of the heart, the
best of our life is embosomed in others, much of it taken upon trust in
some one or more whom we call by tender names, and whose words accost us
with persuasions irresistible. How affectionately one name is pronounced
throughout a revering Christendom, because it symbolizes man's
friend,--that fairest word in the human vocabulary.
"Fair flowery name, in none like thee
And thy nectareal fragrancy,
Hourly there meets
A universal synod of all sweets,
By whom it is defined thus:
That no perfume
May yet presume
To pass for odoriferous,
But such alone whose sacred pedigree
Can prove itself some kin, sweet name, to thee."
We crave objects abreast and above us. And are bereft of ourselves
without such. Friends are the leaders of the bosom, being more ourselves
than we are, and we complement our affections in theirs. The passionless
laws that sway our unseen Personality are not made lovely to us till
thus clothed in human attributes and brought near to our hearts, person
embracing person. Not some _It_ in our friends, but the sentiment that
transfigures the _It_ into _Him_, into _Her_,--this alone makes them
ours personally and beloved. Theists in our faith, we pay our vows to
the Friend in our friend, thus becoming personally One with the Three,
and alone no longer.
Nor elsewise man shall fellow meet,
In public place, in converse sweet,
In holy aisles, at market gate,
In learning's halls, or courts of state,
Nor persons properly shall find,
Save in the commonwealth of Mind;
Fair forms herein their souls intrude,
Peopling what else were solitude.
Persons are love's world. Our Paradise is too fair to be planted out of
our breasts. We chase the fleeing beauty all our lives long;
"Nor is there near so brisk a fire
In fruition, as desire;
The niggard sense, too poor for bliss,
Pays us but dully with what is."
On, onwards, ever onwards are we led. Our Edens abreast of us journeying
with ever-opening prospects in the distance.
THE CHASE.
O'er earth and seas,
In sunshine, shade,
Blest Beauty crossed,
Nor stopt nor stayed,
Nor temples took,
Nor idols hewed,
Apart she dwelt
In solitude.
In solitude, Heart said:
"Where find the maid?
My bride's a fugitive,
From sight doth live,
And hearts are hunters of the game,
Pursuers of the same
Through every passing form,
The Beauty that all eyes do seek,
All eyes do but deform;
The love our faithless lips would speak
Dies on the listless air,
Nature befriends us not,
Nor hearthside doth prepare
In all her ample plot;
Life's but illusion,
Cunning confusion;
Flings shadows pale about our path,
She shadow is, and nothing hath;
Eyes are divorced from seeing,
Hearts cloven clean from being;
My bride I cannot find,
My love I cannot bind;
The thousand fair ones of our sphere,
Fond, false ones all, nor mine, nor dear;
The Paradise
I would surprise,
From all my following flies,
And I'm a thousand infidelities;
There's none for me
In all I see;
Surely the Fair One bides not here,
Where dwells she, where, in any sphere?"
"In any sphere?"
Love whispered: "Where, where, if not here?
Here in thy breast the maiden find,
Ideas sole imparadise the mind;
Here heart's hymeneals begin,
Here's ours and only ours housed here within:
Through parting gates of human kind
Enter thou blest the Unseen Mind."
II.--WOMAN.
"Virtue sure
Were blind as fortune, should she choose the poor
Rough cottage man to live in, and despise
To dwell in woman's stately edifice;
Woman's approved the fairer sex, and we
Mean men repent our pedigree.
Why choose the father's name, when we may take
The mother's a more honor'd blood to make,
Woman's of later, though of nobler birth,
For she of man was made, man made of earth,
The son of dust, and though her sin did breed
His fall, again she raised him in her seed;
Who had he not her blest creation seen,
An Anchorite in Paradise had been."
Pythagoras said that only good things were to be predicted of women,
since they were the mothers of ornaments, of conversation and of
confidence, and that he who invented names, perceiving that women were
adapted to piety and friendship, gave to each of their ages the name of
some Deity--to a maiden, Core, or Proserpine, to a bride Nymphe, to a
mother, Mater, to a grandmother, according to the Dorian dialect, Maia.
And in accordance with the like persuasion the oracles were always
unfolded into light by women. Tacitus tells us that the Northern nations
also held women in high esteem, "believing ladies had something divine
about them." And this faith has descended to men of the Saxon name, the
best regarding her as endowed with magical properties, the type of the
highest culture the advanced nations have attained. Endowed with
magnetic gifts; by necessity of sex, a realist and diviner, she lives
nearest the cardinal facts of existence, instinct with the mysteries of
love and fate; a romance ever attaching itself to her name and destiny.
Entering the school of sensibility with life, she seizes personal
qualities by a subtlety of logic overleaping all deductions of the
slower reason; her divinations touching the quick of things as if
herself were personally part of the chemistry of life itself. We cannot
conceive her as distinct, distant, unrelated, she seems so personal,
concrete, so near; yet can never come quite up to her discernments, nor
gainsay their delicacy and truthfulness. Then constancy, fidelity,
fortitude, kindness, gratitude, grace, courtesy, discretion, taste,
conversation, the adornments of life, were bare names without the
splendor of illustration of which the history of the sex affords so many
brilliant examples. It seems as if in moulding his world the Creator
reserved his choicest work till the last, and consummated his art in her
endowments. Shall our sex confess to some slight in not having been
mingled more freely of her essence, that so we too might have had access
to the crypts into which she is privileged by birthright to enter? Hers
is the way of persuasion, of service, forbearance:
"If thou dost anything confer that's sweet,
In me a grateful relish it shall meet,
But if thy bounties thou dost take away,
The least repining word I will not say."
As there was only solitude till she brought company, conversation,
civility, so stooping still to conquer, she is fast gaining ascendancy
over passions and prejudices that have held her subservient and their
victim. Can we doubt the better rule will be furthered indefinitely by a
partnership in power thus intimate and acknowledged by States? What
ideal republics have fabled, ours is to be. Nor need we fear the boldest
experiments which the moral sense of the best women conceive and
advocate. Certainly liberty is in danger of running into license while
woman is excluded from exercising political as well as social restraint
upon its excesses. Nor is the state planted securely till she possess
equal privileges with man of forming its laws and taking a becoming part
in their administration. No jury of men, however honorable or wise, are
equal to pronounce upon questions relating to woman; questions involving
considerations that concern the whole structure, not only of society,
but of humanity itself. The public morals are insecure till the family
is chastely planted, the state guarded by the continency of its male
members.
A man defines his standing at the court of chastity by his views of
women. He cannot be any man's friend nor his own if not hers. Either
nature dealt coldly by him in his descent, else he is the victim of
vices which his passions have inflamed till they have their own way with
him.
"They meet but with unwholesome springs,
And summers which infectious are;
They hear but when the mermaid sings,
And only see the falling star
Who ever dare
Affirm no woman chaste and fair."
The very name of woman becomes soiled if we seek to be related to her by
the coarse ties of appetite, instead of the tender threads of affection,
the charm of ideas. There are pleasures for keeping as enjoying,--for
using delicately, the zest lasting long, the more affluent when tasted
with moderation and seldom.
"Who can to love more rich gift make
Than to love's self, for love's own sake?
Love, that imports in every sense delight,
Is fancied in the soul, not appetite:
Why love among the virtues is scarce known
Is that love is them all contract in one."
III.--FAMILY.
"How fruitful may the smallest circle grow
When we the secret of its culture know."
Here is room enough, however humble and unfurnished, for the most
expansive friendships, the purest delights, the noblest labors; for
where women are, there open forth all possibilities of culture.
Here high o'er head of spiteful fate,
Jove cradles safe the ideal state.
"A married life is most beautiful. For what other thing can be such an
ornament to a family as the association of husband and wife? For it must
not be said that sumptuous edifices, walls covered with pictures, and
piazzas adorned with stones,--so admired by those who are ignorant of
the Good; nor yet painted windows, myrtle walks; nor anything else which
is the subject of astonishment to the stupid,--are the ornaments of a
family. But the beauty of a household consists in the conjunction of man
and wife who are united to each other by destiny, are consociated to the
gods who preside over nuptials, births, and houses; and who accord,
indeed, with each other, and have all things in common as far as to
their bodies, or rather their souls themselves;--who exercise a becoming
authority over their house and servants, are properly solicitous about
the education of their children and pay an attention to the necessaries
of life, which is neither expensive nor negligent, but moderate and
appropriate. For what can be better and more excellent, as the most
admirable Homer says,
'Than when at home the husband and the wife
Unanimously live.'"
THE GOBLET.
I drank delights from every cup,
Arts, institutions, I drank up;
Athirst, I quaffed life's flowing bowls,
And sipped the flavors of all souls.
A sparkling cup remained for me,
The brimming fount of Family;
This I am still drinking,
Since, to my thinking,
Good wine beads here,
Flagons of cheer,
Nor laps the soul
In Lethe's bowl.
Wine of immortal power
Into my chalice now doth pour;
Prevailing wine,
Juice of the Nine,
Flavored of sods,
Vintage of gods;
Joyance benign
This wondrous wine
Ever at call;--
Wine maddening none,
Wine saddening none,
Wine gladdening all,
Makes love's cup ruddier glow,
Genius and grace its overflow.
I drained the drops of every cup,
Times, institutions I drank up:
Still Beauty pours the enlivening wine,
Fills high her glass to me and mine;
Her cup of sparkling youth,
Of love first found, and loyal truth:
I know, again I know,
Her fill of life and overflow.
When I find my friends are not of the same age as when I first knew
them, I may conclude myself, not them, to be decaying and losing flavor.
Still youth and innocency are the sole solvents of all doubts and
infidelities; the faiths of women and children in friendship, ever fresh
demonstrations of life's sufficiency and imperishableness. Families
never die, since they trace their pedigree to Adam the First, who is of
immortal ancestry. First suckled at our mother's breast our faiths
survive all subsequent modifications; embrace the friendships we form,
and color the whole of life. Our intellectual creed may change;
temperament, calling, social position, fortune, sect, may phrase
differently the delightful lay she sang to us--its tone still lingers in
the memory of our affections, holding the heart loyal, and if trusted to
the end takes us triumphantly through life. "Ever the feminine leadeth
us on." Every prospect the mother gains is soon commanded by her
children: our comforts and satisfactions life-long having the voice and
countenance of woman.
IV.--CHILDREN.
"Heaven lies about us in our infancy."
Our notion of the perfect society embraces the family as its centre and
ornament. Nor is there a paradise planted till the children appear in
the foreground to animate and complete the picture. Without these, the
world were a solitude, houses desolate, hearts homeless; there were
neither perspectives, nor prospects; ourselves were not ourselves, nor
were there a future for us:
In their good gifts we hopeful see
The fairer selves we fain would be.
Socrates comprised all objects of his search in
"Whate'er of good or ill can man befall
In his own house,"
rightly conceiving this to be the seminary of the virtues and foundation
of states. There it stands, the ornament of the landscape, and for the
human hospitalities: we cannot render it too attractive. Let it be the
home of beauty, the haunt of affection, of ideas. Let its chambers open
eastward admitting the sunshine for our own and children's sake. Do they
not covet the clear sky, delighting in the blue they left so lately, nay
cannot wholly leave in coming into nature, whereof they are ever asking
news? These gay enthusiasts must run eagerly, and never have enough of
it. How soon the clouds clear away from their faces! How sufficient they
are to the day, and the joy it brings them! Their poise and plenitude
rebuke us.
"Happy those early days when I
Shined in my angel infancy;
Before I taught my soul to wound
My conscience with a sinful sound,
Or taught my soul to fancy aught
But a white celestial thought,
Or had the black art to dispense
A several sin to every sense,
But felt through all this fleshly dress
Bright shoots of everlastingness."
Charming pictures these bright boys, confiding girls, as full of promise
to themselves as we were at their age; are still, if faithful to the
beautiful vision. Why else should the flame pale as we come up into
life, we pleasing ourselves nor others more, perhaps despair of
maintaining the virtues we espoused so eagerly in our youth? Must we
"When we've enjoyed our ends then lose them,
And all our appetites be but as dreams
To laugh at in our ages?"
If this fresh score of years did not deceive us, shall a life of
threescore, with its deeper glances into the mystery, lead us to doubt
the longevity of a sentiment of whose imperishableness that life itself
is the best evidence we need ask? Are we to be left orphans when taken
from nature's arms, robbed of all that made life desirable before?
Nature cared for us; Persons failed us, and all unawares we lapsed out
of our paradise, its gates barred against us.
"I cannot reach it; and my striving eye
Dazzles at it, as at eternity.
Were now that chronicle alive,
Those white designs which children drive,
And the thoughts of each harmless hour,
With their content too in my power,
Quickly would I make my path even,
And by mere playing go to heaven.
Dear harmless age, the short, swift span
Where weeping virtue parts with man;
Where love without lust dwells, and bends
What way we please, without self-ends:
An age of mysteries! which he
Must live twice that would God's face see;
Where angels guard, and with it play,
Angels, which foul men drive away."
'Tis sad to consider how long time is consumed in wiping away the stains
which had been insinuated into the breast during these earlier years and
up to coming manhood,--to what we call the maturity of our powers. Life
is too much for most. So much of age, so little youth; living for the
most part in the moment, and dating existence by the memory of its
burdens. Men think they once were not, and fear the like fate may
overtake them, as if time were older than their minds. 'Tis because we
always were that we cannot trace our beginnings to the atheism of
no-being and resolve ourselves into nothing. Children save us. Rather
are we saved by remaining children, as Christ said.
Have we forgotten how things looked to us when we were young; how the
dull world the old people lived in seemed to us? 'Twas not ours, nor
their dry theism; and our fresh hearts whispered reverently:
"Is not your paradise an Inferno? Please never name it. While in Heaven
I speak not of it: I hum that song to myself. Will you spoil my paradise
too? Come with me, come, and I will show you Elysium; I know all about
it; I am not deceived. I feel it to be solid, safe. It makes good its
pledges always. I have a home of all delights--am admitted when I
please, while you seem vagabonds and woebegones, bereft of friends, the
Friend of friends. Am I to quit my present satisfactions for your
promised joys. Unkind! this taking me from my paradise, unless you
conduct me to a happier."
V.
CULTURE.
"O for the coming of that glorious time,
When, prizing knowledge as their noblest wealth
And best protection, liberal states shall own
An obligation on their part to teach
Them, who are born to serve her and obey;
Binding themselves by statute to secure
For all the children whom their soil maintains
The rudiments of letters; and to inform
The mind with moral and religious truth
Both understood and practised--so that none
However destitute, be left to drop
By timely culture unsustained, or run
Into a wild disorder; or be forced
To drudge through life without the aid
Of intellectual implements and tools;
A savage horde among the civilized,
A servile band among the lordly free."
WORDSWORTH.
[Illustration: Decorative banner of thistle blooms and leaves]
CULTURE.
I.--MODERN TEACHING.
Saxon Alfred decreed that every man who had so much as two hides of
land, should bring up his children to learning till they were fifteen
years of age at least, that they might be religious and live happily;
else, he said, they were but beasts and sots, dangerous to themselves
and the state. And the state's true glory lies in its calling forth into
fullest exercise and giving scope and right direction to the gifts of
its children; seeking out especially and fostering the best born as they
rise, and training these for educators of the coming generations. The
Parent of parents, the guardian of all gifts born into it, society
should neglect none, sequester none from places and honors to which they
are entitled by birthright of genius or acquirement. Every child, the
gifted by divine right, is sent to cherish and redeem the race; whom to
neglect or divert from its aim were base oversight and abuse of the race
itself. Far too noble, too precious be any to be used for ends merely
secondary, secular, and thus spoiled for their own and God's intents.
Yet simple as this duty seems, society with all its aims and appliances,
has not as yet attained the refinement of culture needful to the
receiving of a child into its bosom, and of educating it to the full
demands of its endowments. With the child comes the seed of states; the
family being the nursery of the citizen, the measure of a people's
civilization. As the homes, so the state; as the parents, so the
children. Nor has society fathered its functions till all children,
befriended from the first, are fashioned into the image each is capable
of attaining. Other goods are but aids to this end; all are necessary
for educating the human being, since the child is the summary of all
gifts, and the most precious of all trusts committed to the state for
trial and training.
Yet still the decease of gifts follows fast on their birth, and parents
are oftener called beside the bier of these children of the sun than to
their nuptials or coronation. They hold their jubilees in weeds rather;
and the untimeliness of genius is the tragedy of life as of letters.
Amidst the sickliness and wane of things, neither poet nor saint
survives his laurel for more than a day. Far from treating the human
being with anything like the subtlety and skill displayed by the ancient
masters, we wait for the first hint of an institution for training youth
into the fulness of their powers, by the genial touch of sensibility,
the magnetism of thought. Left instead to the superficial culture of the
sects, the traditions of the elders, the guidance of worldlings, they
slide soon into vague conjectures, run adrift on the sea of doubt, the
shoals of expediency, bereft of faith in themselves as in things unseen
and ideal.
"See gifted youths rush out to feed on whims;
Fashion craves their hours, low hopes their aim,
To win not noble women for their brides,
But titled slaves, heirs to some teasing caste,
For beauty without culture seems mere show;
As if great nature laid not on her tints
With more contrivance than the brush of art;
Or schools where grammars hide the place of sense,
And shallow stammering drowns the native voice."
Not letters but life chiefly educate if we are educatable. But
experience follows oftenest too late for most and too distant from the
work to help us directly without an interpreter to assist in making
timely use of it. Fortunate will it be, if by instinct and mother wit we
take life at first hand, converting it forthwith into thought and habit.
Character comes of temperament far more than of acquirement. And the
most that culture performs is the drawing forth, fashioning and
polishing the natural gifts. But we cannot create what is not inborn. A
fine brain is a spiritual endowment, as from the head of Jove sprang
Minerva. Centuries of culture pass into pure power; piety and genius are
parents of piety and genius. But less discriminating than were the
ancient carvers in wood and ivory, who, when they had an order for a
head of Hermes, or any ordinary god even, searched carefully for
substances adapted to receive the proper form, states attempt to fashion
saints and rulers out of any materials that chance brings to hand.
Omitting mind, or overriding it in our haste to come at immediate and
superficial results, we ignore ideas and principles altogether. Aiming
at little we attain little. For while our country opens the freest scope
for the exercise of the higher gifts of genius and character, we cherish
these but feebly in our public or private training. The highest prizes
held forth to youth are not only beneath the aims of a noble ambition,
but the stimulus for their attainment is wanting. Even in New England,
culture is external, provincial; neglectful of the better parts of body
and mind; behind the old countries, that of the ancient states. We cram
the memory with the lore of foreign tongues, the understanding with a
medley of learning, leaving fancy, imagination, the moral sentiment,
mainly to shift for themselves--the forming of the manners, motives,
aims and aspirations. Then what substitutes have we, for the falconry,
archery, the hunting, fishing, of earlier and what we deem barbarous
times? Yet these were sports, heroic and wholesome, giving a national
coloring and strength of character: the wrestling too, throwing the
quoit, and other manly games, horsemanship, boating, swimming, were a
natural gymnastic for body and mind. War also had its advantages. So the
plays and games were schools of genius and valor: the people were
refined by contact with the refinements of the best citizens, the
guardians of public taste and honor providing hereby a polite and manly
culture suited to the needs of the state. Education extended into the
age of ripe maturity. Nor was the disciple committed to himself till he
became the master. And through life he was prompted by incentives of
virtue and fame. The state was venerable, ennobled as it was by the
genius and services of great men; great men earning honorably their
renown by teaching.
'Tis noble minds who noble men create,
And they who have great manners form mankind.
Happy the man who wins the confidence of the rising youth of his time.
He becomes priest and professor elect without degrees of synods or
universities. He shapes the future of the next generation as of the
succeeding. A noble artist he cherishes visions of excellence not easily
impersonated or spoken. His life and teachings are studies for high
ideals.
II.--SOCRATIC DIALECTIC.
The highest end of instruction is to discipline and liberalize mind and
character by familiarizing the thoughts with those of the learned and
wise. Character is inspired by admiration of character, intellect by
participating in intellect. The masters form masters. And had I the
choice of my class, I would put Plato's works at once into its hands.
And, for a beginning,--say the Alcibiades of the earlier Dialogues. I
know of no discipline under the care of a thoughtful instructor so
fitting for educating the reason, quickening the moral sense, refining
the sensibilities, fashioning the manners, ennobling the character, as
exercises in the Socratic dialectic: opening the whole armory of gifts,
it sharpens and polishes these for the victories of life. The youth who
masters Plato wins fairly his degree alike in humanity and divinity. He
has the key to the mysteries, ancient and modern.[C]
[Footnote C: "It might be thought serious trifling," says
the accomplished Bishop Berkeley, "to tell my readers that
the greatest of men had ever a high esteem of Plato, whose
writings are the touchstone of a hasty and shallow mind,
whose philosophy has been the admiration of ages; which
supplied patriots, magistrates and lawgivers to the most
flourishing states, as well as fathers of the church and
doctors of the schools. Albeit, in these days, the depths of
that old learning are rarely fathomed. And yet it were happy
for these lands if our young nobility and gentry, instead of
modern maxims would imbibe the notions of the great men of
antiquity. But in these loose times many an empty head is
shook at Aristotle and Plato, as well as the Holy
Scriptures. Certainly, where a people are well educated, the
art of piloting a state is best learned from the writings of
Plato."]
Take the following as an example of the pure dialectic method as of
metaphysic;
"In what way, asks Socrates, may we attain to know the soul
itself with the greatest clearness? for when we know this,
it seems we shall know ourselves. Now, in the name of the
gods, whether are we not ignorant of the right meanings of
that Delphic inscription just now mentioned, 'Know
thyself?'"
_Alcibiades._ What meaning? what have you in your thoughts,
Socrates, when you ask the question?
_Socrates._ I will tell you what I suspect this inscription
means, and what particular thing it advises us to do. For a
just resemblance of it is, I think, not to be found wherever
one pleases, but in only one thing, the sight.
_Alcibiades._ How do you mean?
_Socrates._ Consider it jointly with me. Were a man to
address himself to the outward human eye, as it were some
other man; and were he to give it this counsel, "See
yourself," what particular thing should we suppose that he
advises the eye to do? Should we not suppose that it was to
look at such a thing as that the eye by looking at it, might
see itself?
_Alcibiades._ Certainly we should.
_Socrates._ What kind of thing then do we think of by
looking at which we see things at which we look, and at the
same time see ourselves?
_Alcibiades._ 'Tis evident, Socrates, that for this purpose
we must look at mirrors and other things of like kind.
_Socrates._ You are right. And has not the eye itself, with
which we see, something of the same kind belonging to it?
_Alcibiades._ Most certainly it has.
_Socrates._ You have observed then, that the face of the
person who looks in the eye of another person, appears
visible to himself in the eye of the person opposite to him,
as in a mirror. And we therefore call this the pupil,
because it exhibits the image of that person who examines
it.
_Alcibiades._ What you say is true.
_Socrates._ The eye beholding an eye and looking in the most
excellent part of it in that which it sees, may thus see
itself?
_Alcibiades._ Apparently so.
_Socrates._ But if the eye look at any other part of the
man, or at anything whatever, except what this part of the
eye happens to be like, it will not see itself.
_Alcibiades._ It is true.
_Socrates._ If therefore the eye would see itself, it must
look in an eye, and in that place of the eye, too, where the
virtue of the eye is naturally seated; and the virtue of the
eye is sight.
_Alcibiades._ I am aware that it is so.
_Socrates._ Whether then is it not true, my friend
Alcibiades, that the soul if she know herself, must look at
soul, and especially at that place in the soul in which
wisdom, the virtue of the soul, is ingenerated, and also at
whatsoever else this virtue of the soul resembles?
_Alcibiades._ To me, Socrates, it seems true.
_Socrates._ Do we know of any place in the soul more divine
than that which is the seat of knowledge and intelligence?
_Alcibiades._ We do not.
_Socrates._ This, therefore, in the soul resembles the
divine nature. And a man, looking at this, and realizing all
that which is divine and God and wisdom, would gain the most
knowledge of himself.
_Alcibiades._ It is apparent.
_Socrates._ And to know one's self we acknowledge to be
wisdom.
_Alcibiades._ By all means.
_Socrates._ Shall we not say, therefore, that as mirrors are
clearer, purer, and more splendid than that which is most
analogous to a mirror in the eye, in like manner, God is
purer and more splendid than that which is best in our soul?
_Alcibiades._ It is likely, Socrates.
_Socrates._ Looking therefore at God, we should make use of
him as the most beautiful mirror, and among human concerns
we should look at the virtue of the soul, and thus by so
doing shall we especially see and know our very self.
_Alcibiades._ Yes.
And yet knowing the fascinations that beset gifted young men, one might
say to them at parting, as Socrates did to the accomplished Alcibiades,
when the latter intimated that he would begin thenceforward to cultivate
the science of justice:
"I wish you may persevere. But I am terribly afraid for you;
not that I in the least distrust the goodness of your
disposition; but perceiving the torrent of the times, I fear
you may be borne away with it, in spite of your own
resistance and all my endeavors in your aid."
III.--PYTHAGOREAN DISCIPLINE.
Let us see, too, how wisely the great master Pythagoras went to his
work.
"He prepared his disciples for learning by many trials; for he did not
receive into the number of his associates any who came to him till he
had subjected them to various examinations. In the first place, he
inquired after what manner they associated with their parents and
relations generally; next, he surveyed their unreasonable laughter,
their silence, their speaking when it was not proper; and farther,
still, what were their desires, their intimacies with their companions,
their conversation; how they employed their leisure time, and what were
the subjects of their joy and grief. He likewise surveyed their form,
their gait, gestures and whole motion of their body, their voice,
complexion and physiognomy, considering all these natural indications to
be the manifest signs of the unapparent manners of the soul.
Having thus subjected them to this scrutiny, he next suffered them to
pass a good while seemingly unobserved by him, that he might the better
judge of each one how he was disposed towards stability and a love of
learning, and whether he was sufficiently fortified against the
flatteries of popularity and false honor and glory. After this, he
advised such to maintain a long silence, that he might observe how far
they were disposed towards continence in speech, and that most difficult
of all victories--the victory over the tongue. Thus practically he made
trial of their aptitudes to be educated, for he was as anxious that they
should be modest and discreet, as that they should not speak
unadvisedly. He likewise directed his attention to every other
particular, such as whether they were astonished at the outbreaks of
immoderate passion and desire. Nor did he superficially consider how
they were affected by these; or whether they were contentious or
ambitious, or how they were disposed as to friendship and strife. And if
on his surveying all these particulars accurately, they appeared to him
endued with worthy manners, he next directed his attention to their
facility in learning and memory; first whether they were able to follow
what was said with rapidity and perspicuity; and in the next place,
whether a certain love and temperance attracted them to the disciplines
by which they were taught; whether they loved to learn and to be
governed; also how they were disposed as to gentleness, which he called
elegance of manners; conceiving all ferocity of temper as hostile to his
mode of education. For impudence, shamelessness, intemperance,
slothfulness, slowness of learning, unrestrained licentiousness,
disgrace and the like, are attendants of savage manners, but the
contrary of these are gentleness and mildness.
Of food he held that whatsoever obstructs divination should be shunned.
And that the juvenile age should make trial of temperance--this being
alone of all the virtues alike adapted to youths and maidens, and
comprehends the good both of body and mind, and also the desire for the
most excellent studies and pursuits. Boys he thought were especially
dear to divinity, and he exhorted women to use words of good omen
through the whole of life, and to endeavor that others may predict good
things of them. He paid great attention to the health of body and mind,
using unction and the bath often, wrestling, leaping with weights in the
hands, also pantomimes with a view to strengthening the body, selecting
for this purpose opposite exercises.
Music he thought contributed greatly to health, as well as to purifying
the heart and manners, and he called it a medicine when he so used it,
conceiving that each faculty had its particular melody. He placed in the
middle a player on the lyre, and seated around him were those who were
able to sing. And when the person struck the lyre, they sang certain
paeans, through which they were sure to be delighted, and to become
orderly and graceful, and he had melodies devised as remedies against
the passions, as anger, despondency, complaint, inordinate desire and
the rest, which afforded the greatest relief to these distempers of the
soul. He likewise used dancing, walking and conversation.
Rulers, who received their country from the multitude of citizens as a
common deposit, were to transmit it faithfully to their posterity as a
hereditary possession; their language was to be such as to render them
worthy of belief without an oath. And as parents, they were so to manage
their domestic affairs as to make the government of them the object of
deliberate choice, being kindly disposed towards their offspring, as
they were the only animals that were susceptible of moral obedience. And
they were to associate with their wives as companions for life, being
mindful that other compacts were engraved on tablets and pillars, but
those with wives were inserted in children, and that they should
endeavor to be beloved by them, not through nature alone, of which they
were not the causes, but through choice; for this was voluntary
beneficence; they remembering, also, that they received their wives from
the vestal hearth with libations, and brought them home as if they were
suppliants of the gods themselves.
By orderly conduct and temperance, they were to be examples both to
their families and the city in which they lived, revering beautiful and
worthy manners, expelling sluggishness from all their actions,
opportunity being the chief good in all. Separation of parents and
children from one another was the greatest of injuries both to
themselves and the State. Youths and virgins were to be educated in
labor and exercises conducing to health, using food convenient thereto,
and in a temperate and tolerant life. Of things in human life, there
were many in which to be late conversant was best. A boy was to be so
educated and fed, as not to have the desires awakened till the nuptial
hour. Parents benefited their children prior to their birth, and were
the causes of their good conduct afterwards. Hence the children owed
them as many thanks as a dead man would owe to him who should be able to
restore him back to life. And they were to associate with one another in
such a manner as not be in a state of hostility, and be easily
reconciled after any disputes, exhibiting a modesty of behavior to their
elders, benevolent dispositions towards parents and love and regard to
all deserving these. All who aspired after true glory, were to be such
in reality as they wished to appear to be to others. The most pure and
unadulterated character was that of him who gave himself to the
contemplation and practice of the most beautiful things, and was a lover
as well as student of wisdom.
It was by disciplines and inventions like these that he sought to heal
and purify the soul, to revive and save its divine part, and thus
conduct to the intelligible One its divine Eye, which is better worth
saving than ten thousand corporeal eyes: since by its sight alone when
thus strengthened and clarified, the truth pertaining to all beings is
clearly perceived."
IV.--MOTHER TONGUE.
"Let foreign nations of their language boast
What fine variety each tongue affords,
I like our language as our men and coast,
Who cannot dress it well want wit not words."
"Great, verily," says Camden, "was the glory of our tongue before the
Norman conquest, in this, that the old English could express most aptly
all the conceptions of the mind in their own speech without borrowing
from any."
We still draw from the same wells of meaning as did Chaucer and Camden;
the language, by additions from foreign sources, as by native growth,
having now become the most composite of any; it is the one we speak, and
affect to teach. If we have few masters, it is because we yet cultivate
other tongues at its cost. Scholars praise the exceeding richness and
beauty of the best writers of the age of Elizabeth, but fail to inform
us by what happy chances, whether by force of genius altogether, or more
natural methods of study, the language and literature came to its prime
in that period. Meanwhile it were not amiss for us to listen to the
great authors and teachers of those golden days when our tongue had the
sweep and splendor, the force, depth, accuracy, the grace and
flexibility proper to its genius and idiom, if we may learn from these
authorities by what method they attained to their proficiency in its
use; instructors of Princes, as they were, and inspirers of those who
made the literature.
Roger Ascham--Queen Elizabeth's school-master--proposed after teaching
the common rudiments of grammar to begin a course of double translation,
first from Latin into English, and shortly after from English into
Latin, correcting the mistakes of the student and leading to the
formation of a classical style, by pointing out the differences between
the re-translation and the original, and explaining their reasons. "His
whole system is built upon the principle of dispensing as much as
possible with the details of grammar, and he supports his theory by a
triumphant reference to its practical effects, especially as displayed
in the case of Queen Elizabeth, whose well known proficiency in Latin,
he declares to have been obtained without grammatical rules, after the
very simplest had been mastered."
Sir Philip Sidney, whose opinions are of the highest importance in these
matters, speaking in his "Defence of Poesie," says:
"Another will say that English wanteth grammar. Nay, truly, it hath that
praise that it wants not grammar; for grammar it might have, but needs
not, being so easie in itselfe and so void of those cumbersome
differencies of cases, genders, moods and tenses, which I think was a
piece of the tower of Babylon's curse, that a man should be put to
schoole to learn his mother tongue. But for the uttering sweetly and
properly the conceit of the minde which is the end of speech, that it
hath equally with any other tongue in the world."[D]
[Footnote D: "We learn languages," says Luther, "much better
by way of mouth at home, in the street, than out of books.
Letters are dead words; the utterances of the mouth, are
living words, which in writing can never stand forth so
distinct and excellent, as the soul of man bodies them forth
through the mouth. Tell me where was there ever a language,
which men could learn to speak with correctness and
propriety by the rules of grammar. Yet let none think or
conclude from all this, that I would reject the grammars
altogether."]
Milton, to whom, next to Shakespeare our tongue owes most, and who spent
much time in compiling an English Dictionary, writes in one of his
Italian Letters:
"Whoever in a state, knows how to form wisely the manners and men and to
rule them at home and in war, by excellent institutions, him in the
first place above all others I should esteem worthy of honor. But next
to him, the man who strives in maxims and rules the method and habit of
speaking and writing derived from a good age of the nation, and as it
were to fortify the same round with a kind of wall, the daring to
overleap which a law only short of that of Romulus should be used to
prevent. Should we choose to compare the two in respect to utility, it
is the former alone that can make the social existence of the citizens
just and holy, but it is the latter that makes it splendid and
beautiful, which is the next thing to be desired. The one, as I believe,
supplies a noble courage and intrepid counsels against an enemy invading
the territory; the other takes to himself the task of extirpating and
defeating by means of a learned detective police of ears, and a
light-infantry of good authors, that barbarism which makes large inroads
upon the minds of men and is a destructive intestine enemy to genius.
Nor is it to be considered of small importance what language, pure or
corrupt, a people has, or what is their customary degree of propriety in
speaking it--a matter which oftener than once was the salvation of
Athens. Nay, as it is Plato's opinion, that, by a change in the manner
and habit of dress, serious commotions and mutations are portended in a
commonwealth, I, for my part, would rather believe that the fall of that
city, and low and obscure condition, followed on the general vitiation
of its usage in the matter of speech. For let the words of a country be
in part unhandsome and offensive in themselves, in part debased by wear,
and wrongly uttered, and what do they declare but by no light
indication, that the inhabitants of that country are an indolent,
idly-yawning race, with minds already prepared for any amount of
servility? On the other hand, we have never heard that any empire, any
state, did not flourish in at least a middling degree as long as its
liking and care for its language lasted."
Devotees of grammatical studies have not been distinguished for any very
remarkable felicities of expression. If we consult our experience we
shall find that we owe much to the home dialect, the school, the books
we read, the letters we write; to our fellowships, the practice of such
living speakers and writers as chance threw in our way, our habits of
thinking, observations of life and things, the cultivation of the
sensibilities, imagination, the common sense, more than all else
besides. A man's speech is the measure of his culture; a graceful
utterance the first born of the arts.
Nature is the armory of genius. Cities serve it poorly; books and
colleges at second hand; the eye craves the spectacle of the horizon, of
mountain, ocean, river and plain, the clouds and stars: actual contact
with the elements, sympathy with the seasons as these rise and roll. And
whoever will strike bold strokes for institutions and literature, must
be often afoot with nature and thought in his eye for grasping the
select rhetoric for his theme.
[Illustration: Small decoration of a mask]
VI.
BOOKS.
"As great a store
Have we of books as bees of herbs, or more,
And the great task to try them, know the good,
To discern weeds and judge of wholesome food,
Is a rare scant performance."
DANIEL.
[Illustration: Decorative banner of a bee among flowers and leaves]
BOOKS.
Good books, like good friends, are few and chosen; the more select the
more enjoyable; and like these are approached with diffidence, nor
sought too familiarly nor too often, having the precedence only when
friends tire. The most mannerly of companions, accessible at all times,
in all moods, they frankly declare the author's mind, without giving
offence. Like living friends they too have their voice and
physiognomies, and their company is prized as old acquaintances. We seek
them in our need of counsel or of amusement, without impertinence or
apology, sure of having our claims allowed. A good book justifies our
theory of personal supremacy, keeping this fresh in the memory and
perennial. What were days without such fellowship? We were alone in the
world without it. Nor does our faith falter though the secret we search
for and do not find in them will not commit itself to literature, still
we take up the new issue with the old expectation, and again and again,
as we try our friends after many failures at conversation, believing
this visit will be the favored hour and all will be told us. Nor do I
know what book I can well spare, certainly none that has admitted me,
though it be but for the moment and by the most oblique glimpse, into
the mind and personality of its author; though few there are that prefer
such friendly claim to one's regard, and satisfy expectation as he turns
their leaves. Our favorites are few; since only what rises from the
heart reaches it, being caught and carried on the tongues of men
wheresoever love and letters journey.
Nor need we wonder at their scarcity or the value we set upon them;
life, the essence of good letters as of friendship, being its own best
biographer, the artist that portrays the persons and thoughts we are,
and are becoming. And the most that even he can do, is but a chance
stroke or two at this fine essence housed in the handsome dust, but too
fugitive and coy to be caught and held fast for longer than the passing
glance; the master touching ever and retouching the picture he leaves
unfinished.
"My life has been the poem I would have writ,
But I could not both live and utter it."
I find books like persons more attractive as they are the more
suggestive, more mythical and difficult to render at once to the senses,
and enjoy them the more for this blending of nature with mind,--the text
sparkling with the author's personality. What is thus implied is more
gracefully delivered than if written literally; it piques then the fancy
more and calls the higher gifts into play; and an author best serves me
who, speaking alike to imagination and reason, arms with figures apt for
occasions, thus pluming the genius for discourse. And the like may be
said of the dictionaries: opened at hazard in lively moods, the columns
become charged with thought, as if each word were blood-wise and fleshed
with meaning. Again, books professing system and completeness are wont
to be dry and unprofitable save for their facts and inferences; truth
the flowing essence of things, the substance of being, accosting the
mind most gracefully as a flowing form, fixed for the moment of passing
only in the mind's eye, and is studied to best advantage rather in books
of biography and poetry than of history or science, wherein the
personality is oftenest lost in abstractions of fact. Reading, like
conversation, is an idealism most profitable as it calls imagination
into play, and thus leads forth all other gifts.
Books of table-talk have this advantage over most others; being the best
companions for the moment, they can be taken up and laid down without
loss, and when sensible are best whetstones for the wits. With the
essayists, the poets, books of letters and lives, one's library were
always alive and inviting. Good for moments these are always good: we
may open by chance, dip anywhere, read in any order, begin at the last
paragraph and read backward as well; obvious consecutiveness being of
less consequence. Nor do I find the logic the worse when thus seemingly
broken and obscure, since each paragraph is a unit standing apart yet
all related in the perspective which the reader commands. We could not
spare from our galaxy the great essayists and moralists, Pliny,
Plutarch, Xenophon, Plato, Epictetus, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius,
Montaigne, Bacon, Sir Thomas Browne Cowley, Coleridge, and the rest;
each delineating in his proper way that antique faith in man and the
world, which being one and universal in essence, unites all mankind. We
know the history of these pieces of life, these experiences recorded for
us by their inspired authors, as if themselves were scribes of the
spirit and committed it to letters for our especial benefit.
Any library is an attraction. And there is an indescribable delight--who
has not felt it that deserves the name of scholar--in mousing at choice
among the alcoves of antique book-shops especially, and finding the
oldest of these sometimes newest of the new, fresher, more suggestive
than the book just published and praised in the reviews. Nor is the
pleasure scarcely less of cutting the leaves of the new volume, opening
by preference at the end rather than title-page, and seizing the
author's conclusions at a glance. Very few books repay the reading in
course. Nor can we excuse an author if his page does not tempt us to
copy passages into our common places, for quotation, proverbs,
meditation, or other uses. A good book is fruitful of other books; it
perpetuates its fame from age to age, and makes eras in the lives of its
readers.
One must be rich in thought and character to owe nothing to books,
though preparation is necessary to profitable reading; and the less
reading is better than more;--book-struck men are of all readers least
wise, however knowing or learned.
"Books cannot make the mind,
Which we must bring apt to be set aright,
Yet do they rectify it in that kind
And touch it so as that they turn that way
Where judgment lies. And though we may not find
The certain place of truth, yet do they stay
And entertain us near about the same,
And give the soul the best delight that may
Encheer it most, and make our spirits enflame
To thoughts of glory and to worthy deeds."
Moreover for gifts, what so gracefully bestowed as fitting books
conveying what no words of the giver could convey? Were the history of
the few books of the heart published, what more enduring compliment
would this confer on their authors! Perhaps the finest books have least
fame and find but a few choice readers. 'Tis high praise bestowed on an
author that his book is taken up with love and expectation, we coming to
his page again and again without disappointment. To be enjoyable a book
must be wholesome like nature, and flavored with the religion of wisdom.
Books of letters bring the reader nearest to the life and personality of
the writer:
"For more than kisses letters mingle souls,
For then friends absent meet."
Written with this advantage of perspective, the epistle is oftentimes
more acceptable than were the interview, more discreet and opportune,
since committing ourselves to the writing with a kind of reserved
abandonment, if I may thus characterize our mood, which in conversation
we might naturally overleap, we give that only in which another may
modestly sympathize and share--so shading our egotism as to tell all
about ourselves with the delicacy of self-respect without wounding that
of others. Epistolary correspondence is the most difficult and delicate
of all composition. And this perhaps accounts for the few books of the
kind in our or any language; and the best of these mostly written by
women who give themselves heartily to sentiment. One may think himself
fortunate if the gift be his, and his experience find expression in his
correspondence. Perhaps the diary has this advantage over letters; we
make it our confidant committing to its leaves what we would not to
another; sure of the sacred trust being kept for us. And the most
interesting biographies are composed largely of these. The more
autobiographical the more attractive. The keeping of a journal is an
education. Let every one try his hand at one and begin young. If it get
the best of his hours and an autobiography out of him, neither his time
has been misspent nor has he lived in vain. A life worth living is worth
recording. To what end lives any, if he fail of getting apparent order
at least into it; living in a manner worthy of celebrity? Life were poor
enough that does not organize the chaos and bring the joy of creation,
pronouncing it and all things good, excellence ever falling naturally
into order and melody. Let one value above all literary fame the gift of
seizing and portraying his privatest thought,--the homely furnitures and
primogenitures,--and if but partially successful consider himself as
having attained the fairest laurels the muse has to bestow. As the best
fruits of the season fall latest and keep the longest, so those of a
lifetime; and fortunate is he whose genius thus gathers his choicest
samples housed carefully in a book for any who may relish their flavor.
One cannot be well read unless well seasoned in thought and experience.
Life makes the man. And he must have lived in all his gifts and become
acclimated herein to profit by his readings. Living at the breadth of
Shakspeare, the depth of Plato, the height of Christ, gives the mastery,
or if not that, a worthy discipleship. Life alone divines life. We read
as we live; the book being for us the deeper or the shallower as we are.
If read from the reason, it answers to the reason, but fails of finding
imagination, the moral sentiment, the affections, fails of making valid
its claims upon the deepest instincts of the heart,--those critics of
inspiration and interpreters,--all books owing their credibility to the
fact of being written from, and addressed to these, as eye-witnesses and
sponsors. Mothers of our mothers we are ever at their teats. Most owe
more to tradition than to culture or literature; the best of literature
as of nurture, being still largely tinctured with tradition. Our debt to
the Hebrew scriptures has been greater doubtless than to any literature
hitherto accessible to us of the Saxon stock; greater than to all
foreign literatures besides. And now the instincts prompt thoughtful
minds as never before to explore the prime sources and drink freely at
the fountains.
"Are mouldy records now the living springs,
Whose healing waters slake the thirst within?
Oh! never yet hath mortal drank
A draught restorative
That well'd not from the depths of his own soul."
Very desirable it were since the gates of the East are now opening wide
and giving the free commerce of mind with mind, to collect and compare
the Bibles of the races for general circulation and careful reading. For
still out of the Theban night rays the light of our day and blends with
all our thinking and doing--China, Egypt, Assyria, Persia, Palestine,
Greece, Rome, Britain--the christendom and world of to-day.
Why nibbling always where
Ye nothing fresh can find
Upon those rocks?
Lo! meadows green and fair!
Come pasture here your mind,
Ye bleating flocks.
VII.
COUNSELS.
"Counsel is not so sacred a thing as praise, since the
former is only useful among men, but the latter is for the
most part reserved for the gods."--PYTHAGORAS.
[Illustration: Decorative banner of a butterfly among leaves]
COUNSELS.
I.--RELIGIOUS.
"Who shapes his Godhead out of flesh or stone,
Knows not a God; but he who lives like one."
Know, that seeing you, I divine your gods also. Why name them then one
by one so sentimentally and so often? Being yours individually, so
unmistakably in your image, surely none needs question or desire them. A
thousand thanks if you will lisp never a syllable more about them. As I
treat them civilly by my silence, why persist thus pertinaciously in
thrusting their claims upon my attention and then questioning my piety
for not christening them? O! rare respecting silence, deep is the
religion that fathoms thine; speaking most reverently when deepest, and
divining mysteries that none names devoutly. What if the sacred name
were the silent syllable in the saint's devotions, and he
"One of the few, who in his town
Honors all preachers, is his own?
Sermons ne'er hears, or not so many
As leaves no time to practise any?--
Hears, ponders reverently, and then
His practice preaches o'er again.
His parlor sermons rather are
Those to the eye than to the ear;
His prayers taking price and strength
Not from their loudness nor their length:
His murmurs have their music too,
Ye mighty pipes, as well as you;
Nor yields the noblest nest
Of warbling seraphim to the ears of love
A choicer lesson, than the joyful breast
Of some poor panting turtle dove."
One sometimes thinks silence for a century were most worshipful since
speech babbles so badly. Has not harlequin in bands and book played out
his part the world over?--the drawl of sacred names been heard till
sacred names seem profane, and it were devout to fall into silence about
them more eloquent than any speeches about sanctity? If infidelity,
indifference, scepticism, sweep secretly the breadth and depths of
Christendom, 'tis but the binding spell of these superstitions about the
name of One whom the love and admiration of all good men hold precious
and will not let perish from love and remembrance.
What were Christ Jesus' life and gospel sweet,
If not in loving hearts he fix his holy seat?
If one's life is not worshipful, no one cares for his professions. Piety
is a sentiment: the more natural it is, the wholesomer. Nor is there
piety where charity is wanting. "If one love not his brother whom he
hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen." None are deceived
as to the spirit of their acquaintances: the instinct of every village,
every home, intimates true character. We recognize goodness wherever we
find it. 'Tis the same helpful influence, beautifying the meanest as the
greatest service by its manners, doing most when least conscious, as if
it did it not.
"A man's best things are nearest him,
Lie at his feet;
It is the distant and the dim
That we are sick to greet."
Let us have unspoken creeds and these quick and operative. I wish mine
to be so, for though it embosoms doctrines fit to shine in words, it
seems most becoming to publish truths thus vital by example rather,
sentiments so private shrinking from the frost of distrust, the heat of
controversy. Personal in their traits and colored with individual hues,
they court the confidences of silence, and are unspeakable.
One needs but brighten his eyes to look deep into the depths of his
heart and settle all disputes. Enlarge by a thought our view, exalt it
by a sentiment, we find all men of our creed; or, far better, superior
to party or creed. The uprise of an idea, perception of a principle,
makes many one and inseparable. The liberal mind is of no sect; it shows
to sects their departures from the ideal standard, and thus maintains
pure religion in the world. But there are those whose minds, like the
pupil of the eye, contract as the light increases. 'Tis a poor egotism
that sees only its own image reflected in its vision. "Only as thou
beest it thou seest it." How differently the different sects interpret
the scriptures, each according to its light and training! I imagine our
Bible is more loosely read, least understood of any book in the English
tongue: conceive a fresh generation coming to its perusal as to a volume
just issued in modern type from a popular bookstore and reviewed in the
journals. How better acquit ourselves to the Bibles of the world than by
fairly measuring our private convictions with their spirit and
teachings? Let us first acquaint ourselves with these Records of
Revelation before we claim for ours the merit of being the only inspired
volume; ourselves the favored people--as if the Truth were a
geographical resident dwelling in our neighborhood only.
When thou approachest to The One,
Self from thyself thou first must free,
Thy cloak duplicity cast clean aside,
And in the Being's Being Be.
One does not like to disturb the faith of his neighbors, yet cannot
speak truly on religious themes without touching the sensibilities of
the weak, and sometimes wounding where he sought sympathy and support.
It takes a good man to speak tenderly of matters of faith and practice
in which good people have been bred, their hearts being prompt to feel
and act without questioning the head. Precious souls, if not overwise,
or strong for reform; the weak saints being as formidable impediments as
the strong sinners, both blocking the ways to amendment. But
temperament, inborn tendencies, predispositions, determine one's cast of
thinking or no-thinking, and go far to shape his religious opinions. Our
instincts, faithfully drawn out and cherished by purity of life, lead to
Theism as their flower and fruit. If swayed by the senses we are natural
Pantheists, at best idolaters and unbelievers in the Personal Mind. The
passions prevailing, incline us to Atheism, or some superstition ending
in scepticism, and indifference to all religious considerations.
"Some whom we call virtuous, are not so
In their whole substance, but their virtues grow
But in their humors, and at seasons show.
For when through tasteless, flat humility,
In dough-baked men some harmlessness we see,
'Tis but his phlegm that's virtuous and not he.
So is the blood sometimes: whoever ran
To danger unimportuned, he was then
No better than a sanguine, virtuous man.
So cloistered men, who, on pretence of fear
All contributions to this world forbear,
Have virtue in melancholy, and only there.
Spiritual, choleric critics, who in all
Religions find fault, and forgive no fall,
Have through their zeal virtue but in their gall.
We're thus but parcel gilt, to gold we're grown
When virtue is our soul's complexion--
Who knows his virtue's name or place has none."
II.--PERSONAL.
Persist in being yourself, and against fate and yourself. Faith and
persistency are life's architects, while doubt and despair bury all
under the ruins of any endeavor. You may pull all your paradises about
your ears save your earliest; that is to be yours sometime. Strive and
have; still striving till striving is having. We mount to heaven mostly
on the ruins of our cherished schemes, finding our failures were
successes. Nor need we turn sour if we fail to draw the prizes in life's
lottery. It were the speck in the fruit, the falling of our manliness
into decay. These blanks were all prizes had we the equanimity to take
them without whimpering or discontent. The calamities we suffer arise
not from circumstances chiefly, but from ourselves. If the dose is
nauseous or bitter, 'tis because we are, else it were not drank off with
the disgust we manifest. Sweet, bitter or sour,--we taste one thing in
everything tasted, and that is ourselves. Could each once be clean
delivered of himself how salutary were all things and sufficing. "'Tis
in morals as in dietetics, one cannot see his fault till he has got rid
of it."
Only virtue is fame; nor is it forward in sounding its own praises,
being sure that merit never sleeps untold, nor dies without honors. It
cannot: once lived and whispered ever so faintly in private places, it
publishes itself in spite of every concealment and sometime blazes its
fame abroad by myriads of trumpets. The light trembling in the socket of
bashfulness, or hidden under the bushel of misapprehension, or
inopportunity, flames forth at fitting moment, irradiates the world
thereafter forever, streaks the dawn, as a visitation of the day-spring
from on high.
It is as ignoble to go begging conditions as to go begging bread. If too
feeble, too proud or unapt to create these, one may make up his mind to
dispense with any advantage that power on that side of life confers. Not
a circumstance, like the animal whose place in nature is determined, but
a creator of circumstances, man brings to his help freedom, opportunity,
art, to build a world out of the world in harmony with his wants. If his
occupation is spoiling him 'tis the dictate of virtue as of prudence, to
quit it for one that in maintaining shall enrich him also. He must be a
bad economist who squanders himself on his maintenance; wasting both his
days and himself. His gifts are too costly for such cheap improvidence.
One's character is the task allotted him to form, his faculties the
implements, his genius the workman, life the engagement, and with these
gifts of nature and of God, shall he fail to quarry forth from his
opportunities a man for his heavenly task-master? "The wise man does not
submit to employments which he may undertake, but accommodates and lends
himself to them only."
Nor is any man greatest standing apart in his individualism; his
strength and dignity come by sympathy with the aims of the best men of
the community of which he is a member. Yet whoever seeks the crowd,
craving popularity for propping repute, forfeits his claim to reverence
and expires in the incense he inhales. The truly great stand upright as
columns of the temple whose dome covers all, against whose pillared
sides multitudes lean; at whose base they kneel in times of trouble.
Stand fast by your convictions and there maintain yourself against every
odds. One with yourself, you are one with Almighty God, and a majority
against all the world:
Vox priva, vox Dei.
III.--POLITICAL.
"To God, thy country, and thyself be true,
If priest and people change, keep thou thy guard."
Both conformity and nonconformity are alike impracticable. When the
conformist can stay clean in his conformity, the nonconformist come
clean out of his nonconformity, it will be time to plead
self-consistency. Nor let any stay to make proselytes. I have never
known the followers of either to come clean out of themselves even, but
casting their tributes to expediency or authority, surrender
unreservedly to party or sect and sink the man. Born free into free
institutions, it behooves all to preserve that freedom unimpaired,
neither intimidated nor bribed by persons or parties: see that these
take nothing of theirs with consent, least of all that which gives
consent its dignity and worth,--one's integrity. Good men should not
obey bad laws too well, lest bad men taking courage from the precedent,
disobey good ones.
"Know there's on earth a yet auguster thing,
Veiled though it be, than President or King."
The honorable man prefers his privilege of standing uncommitted to
parties when these fail to represent the whole of honor and justice for
the state. But when politics become attractive by being principled,
senates and cabinets the legislators and executives of justice and
common rights, servants of the High Laws, then, as an honorable man and
faithful citizen, he is won to the polls to cast a pious and patriotic
suffrage for having affairs administered through the best men, whom best
men promote to offices to which their virtues give dignity and
distinction. There are times nevertheless in one's history when
abstinence from this first privilege of a freeman and republican, seems
a duty best performed in its non-performance, the true means of
preserving self-respect, by standing magnanimously as a protest for the
right against the wrong--a vote less on the wrong side of a mixed issue,
being as two cast on the right side, the silent significance of a name
known as the representative of honor and justice, showing where lies the
wrong and the shame--the blush of a defeat on the cheek of an ill-gotten
victory. Of no party properly, a good man votes by his virtues for
mankind, too just to be claimed by any unless to save it from dishonor.
At best the state's polity is deliberative, ruling the right as far as
is practicable under the circumstances. Of mixed elements, it contents
itself with mixed results,--the best permitted under the mixed
conditions. But the statesman may not compromise principle for the sake
of accommodating legislation to suit the interests of party. If he ride
that horse too fearlessly, he is sure to be overthrown. General
intelligence interposes the effective check upon political ambition and
carries forward state affairs. But if, unequal to self-government, the
people have attained to that sense of freedom and no more, which renders
liberty a snare, then the state stumbles towards a despotism, call the
rule by any fine name you please. No greater calamity can befall a
people than that of deliberating long on issues imperilling liberty; any
impotency of indecision betraying a lapse into slavery from which the
gravest deliberative wisdom cannot rescue them. Knowingly to put on the
yoke and wear it restively meanwhile, were a servitude that only slavery
itself can cure.
Where sleep the gods
There mob-rule sways the state,
Treason hath plots and fell debate,
Brother doth brother darkly brand,
Few faithful midst sedition's storm do stand,
The whole of virtue theirs to stay the reeling land.
"States are destroyed, not so much from want of courage as for want of
virtue, and the most pernicious of all ignorance is, when men do not
love what they approve; written laws being but images of, or substitutes
for those true laws which ought to be present in every human soul
through a perfect insight into good."
THE SOUL'S ERRAND.
"Go, Soul, the Body's guest,
Upon a thankless errand;
Fear not to touch the best,
The truth shall be thy warrant;
Go, since all else must die,
And give all else the lie.
Go tell the Court it glows
And shines like rotten wood;
Go tell the Church it shows
What's good, but does not good:
If Court and Church reply,
Give Court and Church the lie.
Tell Potentates they live
Acting, but base their actions;
Not loved, unless they give,
Nor strong, save by their factions:
If Potentates reply,
Give Potentates the lie.
Tell men of high condition,
That rule affairs of state,
Their purpose is ambition,
Their practice chiefly hate:
And if they do reply,
Then give them all the lie.
Tell those that brave it most,
They beg for more by spending;
Who, in their greatest cost,
Seek nothing but commending:
And if they make reply,
Spare not to give the lie.
Tell Zeal it lacks devotion;
Tell Love it is but lust;
Tell Time it is but motion;
Tell Help it is but dust:
And wish them no reply,
For thou must give the lie.
Tell Age it daily wasteth;
Tell Honor how it alters;
Tell Beauty that it blasteth;
Tell Favor that she falters:
And as they do reply,
Give every one the lie.
Tell Wit how much she wrangles
In fickle points of niceness;
Tell Wisdom she entangles
Herself in over niceness;
And if they do reply
Then give them both the lie.
Tell Physic of her boldness;
Tell Skill it is pretension;
Tell Charity of coldness;
Tell Law it is contention;
And if they yield reply,
Then give them all the lie.
Tell Fortune of her blindness;
Tell Nature of decay;
Tell Friendship of unkindness;
Tell Justice of delay;
And if they do reply,
Then give them still the lie.
Tell Arts they have no soundness,
But vary by esteeming;
Tell Schools they lack profoundness
And stand too much on seeming:
If Arts and Schools reply,
Give Arts and Schools the lie.
Tell Faith it's fled the city;
Tell how the country erreth;
Tell manhood, shakes off pity,
Tell Virtue least preferreth;
And if they do reply,
Spare not to give the lie.
So when thou hast, as I
Commanded thee, done blabbing;
Although to give the lie
Deserves no less than stabbing;
Yet stab at thee who will,
No stab the soul can kill."
[Illustration: Small triangular decoration of two stylized fish]