nature, in the serene succession of the days and the years, in one’s
family and in true friendship, in uplifting art and science, in the
life and welfare of his nation, even in the inoffensive animal and
plant worlds, and, above all, in all the great and good activities that
are going on in the whole realm of humanity--all this is to be taken
entirely for granted. Indeed, a keen sensitiveness to such things is a
sure mark of an unspoiled temperament, and especially of years of youth
purely spent, a youth that has not, by poisonous pleasures, prematurely
deadened its feeling for the true and harmless joys of life.
Furthermore, an excessive repression of the life of the body is
certainly not advantageous for spiritual progress--still less is it a
divine command, but it is rather, whenever it appears, merely a human
device with no decisive value. On this point a thoughtful commentator
of the oldest biblical records says, very truly, that men always have a
tendency to heighten the commands of God, which are themselves properly
meted and adapted to men’s capabilities; and that, in the Old Testament
narrative of the first trial of obedience, God did not say that Adam
and Eve should not touch the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,
but only that they should not eat of its fruit; it was Eve herself who
added the further prohibition, “neither shall ye touch it,” and by so
doing placed the Tempter in the desired position of making an alleged
divine command manifestly untrue on its face, because the mere touch of
the tree did not cause death. (Genesis ii. 17, and iii. 3, 4.)
Thus it is, indeed, with many exaggerated and unnecessary commands
which parents lay upon their children or churches upon their adherents,
the non-fulfilment of which they then with equal facility overlook.
An exact and literal obedience to all the real divine commands, which
are all practicable, and a thorough scorn and disregard for all the
“commandments of men”--this is the only way by which our Christian
confessions could now bring themselves new life.
Even the inclination to undergo suffering and renunciation is somewhat
dangerous, and the more so because it is often joined with a secret
desire for praise, in which case one devil is but supplanted by
another, perhaps still more powerful. A man should not throw away
his life, not even by a lingering neglect of his powers; only, he
should not overvalue his body’s well-being nor put it too much in the
foreground.
Christ himself is in this respect an inimitable example of a simple
moderation which, at times, allowed itself to enjoy an almost luxurious
homage, as in the case of the box of precious ointment, which
evidently made Judas, the apostle of literal asceticism, to lose
faith in him. Even the most advanced Christian should live quite like
a natural man, not like a hermit or a pillar-saint, and should seek
the worth and purpose of life neither in pleasure nor in suffering and
renunciation, but only in the carrying out of the will and commission
of God. A wise saying of Blumhardt’s, often quoted, declares that one
must be twice converted, once from the natural to the spiritual life,
and then back again from the spiritual to the natural so far as is
justified; but that this is, perhaps, accomplished in some cases at
a single stroke, without a preliminary exaggeration of the spiritual
nature. Many linger too long in this double mutation, and during this
period afford no very agreeable spectacle.
Finally, one’s own power can never set the upward-striving man free
from all those enemies of his real happiness which keep him, in a very
genuine sense, from entering into true Christianity. The “old Adam”
is still to-day, as at the time when the expression was first used,
“too strong for the young Melanchthon,” and all good resolutions give
as good as no help, so long as the man will not lay hold on the aid
sent us by God himself to that end. But even he can not help unless
the man completely surrenders his will. This is the man’s share in the
work of his liberation from the fetters of the natural, selfish life;
everything else is done to him.
Dante, in particular, explains this very clearly in the twenty-first
canto of the _Purgatorio_, where the joyous trembling of the mountain
of purification, when a soul finally rises into its higher region, is
portrayed in the following verses:
“_It trembles when any spirit feels itself
So purified that it may rise, or move
For rising; and such loud acclaim ensues.
Purification by the will alone
Is proved, that, free to change society,
Seizes the soul rejoicing in her will.
Desire of bliss is present from the first;
But strong propension hinders, to that wish
By the just ordinance of heaven opposed--
Propension now as eager to fulfil
The allotted torment as erewhile to sin.
And I, who in this punishment had lain
Five hundred years and more, but now have felt
Free wish for happier clime._”
Every one acquainted with his inner life will confirm that for a long
time at first a partial will toward the good fought in him with
inclinations of which he very well knew that they would bring him just
suffering. So long as the soul is, nevertheless, unable to conquer this
desire, it will remain in essentially its former state. But if it holds
on to the impulse to freedom notwithstanding, by God’s grace there will
come a memorable day on which it will at last feel in itself the fully
determined will to move forward, and then forthwith it is free, and
afterward does not understand how it could have delayed so long.
Yet it would not be right to wait inactive till the will is thus fully
determined. Christianity, like many another thing, is learned only
through trial, not through study. On the contrary, idly talking about
it is most foreign to its spirit, and so-called learned explanations
easily make it but darker and more dubious; that is a “science” which,
like every other, one may leave entirely in the hands of those who are
called thereto, and which very often contributes nothing of moment
to their spiritual advancement. Christianity is surely completely
understood only through that spirit which the Gospel calls the Holy
Spirit. What that is, we do not know; we can only know that it is a
very real phenomenon which becomes manifest in its effects upon our
life, and which can gradually make us more and more indifferent toward
everything that the world considers as the greatest possessions and
the most indispensable pleasures. To this freedom we are called, and
it has been made possible through Christianity--what before might well
seem very doubtful. But we are not done when we have found Christianity
“interesting”--often because of its extravagances rather than because
of its real sobriety in the conception of man and his natural powers;
we must above all things make a beginning, and then progress therein
comes quite of itself.
Therefore, O soul, thou who, from the mazy gardens of the common
life of the world that no longer wholly satisfy, hast arrived at
happiness by this simplest and best of all roads, but nevertheless
still standest, somewhat trembling, before the actual entry into the
forecourts of Christianity itself (perhaps because thou seest there a
company that does not fully awaken thy confidence), take thy resolution
notwithstanding, and dare! It will not be long before thou seest at
least enough to have made thy daring seem worth while. It is but rarely
that any one turns back again from this road, and never yet, for
thousands of years, has any one who has travelled it quite to the end,
lifted up complaints of a wasted life, or even of an existence too hard
to be borne.
But how many there are to-day who complain, on the other roads to
happiness!
No one who is willing to confess the truth can deny that in every human
soul, even in one already resolutely set toward faith in transcendental
things, serious doubts can now and then arise as to the reality of
all its conceptions and hopes. They who most vehemently condemn such
temporary doubts in others are not the ones who are the best confirmed
in the faith, for by such zeal they are often only seeking forcibly
to suppress their own doubts. But in such moments, thus much remains
sure, that there is no certainty anywhere to be found as to the great
questions of the present and future life, better than that which
Christianity affords, and that there is no adequate satisfaction
to be found in trying to content oneself with only the results of
“natural science,” many of which are still very uncertain; while one
simply banishes from his thoughts all further questions, as to the
interrelation of all things in a higher sense, and as to the moral laws
of the universe,--questions on which the life and welfare of humanity
most of all depend. That will never succeed for long; after every such
period of a bare realism which limits itself to a smaller aim, in all
men not wholly superficial, not wholly submerged in the world of sense,
there arises with irresistible power the impulse to investigate anew
whether and how far the high pretension of Christianity to be the real,
the unique truth, and the only truth that brings happiness, is a just
pretension.
This impulse you also will more or less experience; otherwise you would
not have taken in your hand this book, which had its origin in that
same impulse. In no case thrust the impulse back from the threshold;
for it springs from the better part of your nature.
Accept, rather, one more bit of counsel: First consider more closely
the “prolegomena” of Christianity--those preliminary truths which
it considers to be self-evident; its dogmas take account of only
afterward, when you have already been able to resolve to live up to
these preliminary truths with all the power you have. The reverse way
is, to be sure, the more usual one, and it is the one to which we are
wont to be directed in our schools and churches. But if this more usual
course is taken, now and then there lies “a lion in the way” which does
not appear upon the path proposed in this chapter.
The power of resolve, of course, you will always be obliged to have,
for only “he who overcometh shall inherit all things;” for the
irresolute, as well as for those completely without faith, even in the
most favorable case only the decay of their personal life stands in
near and certain prospect.
VIII. THE STEPS OF LIFE
VIII. THE STEPS OF LIFE
It is an old and obvious fancy, that of dividing the inner life into
a series of steps, or of describing it in the allegorical form of a
pilgrimage with its various stages and halts and hindrances of one
sort or another. Yet I do not know of any such description that suits
the needs of our own day, especially the needs of people of culture;
indeed, it is, and has ever been, a fault of most sermons that while
they depict life’s attainable ideal with more or less exactness, they
are noways able to give as plain an account of the way thither. Yet
this is just the service (and the directions should be quite specific,
too) which the church, it would seem, is called upon to perform for
the present generation. What is known by the somewhat distasteful name
of “the cure of souls,” so far as it exists at all, has become too
professional (not to say too commercial) a matter with the churches:
in the things of the spirit there is nothing if not freedom and
individuality; yet it is just here that a kind of rigid technical
nomenclature has been devised, with expressions that once may have been
justified, but are now meaningless to many men and at some future time
will have to be replaced, perhaps, by others.
Of the writings we possess on the unfolding of the inner life by
steps, only one has come down to us from classical times; this is an
essay of Plutarch, the Greek professor of philosophy (as we should
now call him), who was born at Chæronea in Bœotia about 50 A.D., and
died between 120 and 130 A.D. at Rome, where, among other things, he
is said to have been the teacher of the future emperor Hadrian. Of his
hundred and more writings, some shorter, some longer, the “Parallel
Lives” are now almost the only ones read, and even these are less read
in the schools than is perhaps proper. Of the rest, which are usually
comprised under the general title of “Plutarch’s Ethical Writings,” one
of the most readable is that dedicated to Sosius Senecio, consul under
Trajan,--“How One may be Conscious of his Progress in Goodness.” On
the whole, it exhibits the Eclectic view (in the sense of Ciceronian
Eclecticism) as contrasted with the teachings of the Stoics, who only
recognize the perfect wise man who observes their principles, on
the one hand, and on the other, the man addicted to vice, without
intervening transitional grades. In this treatise, as each reader will
at once notice, there is a special lack of the depth which first came
into morals through Christianity (then but little known as yet), and
which will always come into morals only by that path; but it possesses
in considerable degree a sound and natural human good sense, which
is directed toward the nobler things of life, and whose development
in youthful temperaments is an indispensable purpose in so-called
classical culture.
Of the later writings of this kind the best are Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s
Progress,” a book from the great Puritan days in England, and the
“Homesickness” of Jung-Stilling, written about a hundred years ago.
In reality, the biographies of distinguished men should render this
service of pointing out the way to their contemporaries and successors;
but there are, unhappily, but few good and really true writings of
this sort. For the biographers do not always understand the inmost
experiences of those whose lives they are describing, many of which
experiences really can not be made comprehensible to them in their
full significance, since they were small occurrences with great
consequences. Yet the autobiographies, which could tell all this,
are usually marred with vanity and are sometimes the least true of
biographies. It will therefore be well, on the whole, to recognize that
in all these writings the individual character preponderates and that
there is no “method” that reveals the proper course of life. The most
useful thing about them, perhaps, is the very practical observations
that might serve to encourage the wanderer on this much-travelled,
yet universally unknown, way when he is likely to become weary, or
to enlighten him when the continuation of the journey appears too
uncertain or too much deflected from the presumably proper direction.
It is first of all to be said that every life has steps, and that
no life runs from beginning to end in unchanging uniformity like a
clear, murmuring meadow-brook, or in a straight direction, like an
artificially contrived canal. But no life perfectly resembles another
in its course, and even the apparently most natural steps often happen
in the reverse order, so that there are men who in their youth are
preternaturally wise, and have their youthful qualities only when old.
Yet there is never an inwardly healthy human life that shows no visible
development at all, or that has spurts or pauses in it that are wholly
arbitrary. A life that proceeds in a perfectly normal way is just
as rare, but in every life there are mistakes that could have been
avoided, and gaps that later it is no longer possible to fill out.
For every period in life has its purpose and its task. In spring the
tree must do little more than grow and blossom, but not bear fruit as
yet. The fruits one produces on the modern dwarfed trees, purposely
hindered in their natural growth and designed merely for a speedy
production of fruit, acquire neither the good quality nor, apparently,
the soundness of fruits ripened on trees that have attained their
natural full growth.
The various periods of life, then, must deposit and store away in
the human being each a product peculiar to itself; in childhood the
childlike nature, without which a man never becomes a well-rounded man,
exerting a kindly influence upon other men; in youth that freshness
and enthusiasm of spirit which begets the power of doing things; in
manhood and womanhood the fulness and ripeness of all the thoughts
and feelings, and the firmness that springs from a character steeled
by deeds already achieved. Only thus can age also do its worthy task,
not in falling into disconsolate decay, but in the quiet possession and
contemplation of what life was and should be, and in the preparation
for a greater and broader development.
Whoever skips any such period, or, as is more frequently the case,
hastens over it and makes no use of its peculiar advantages, will
seldom or never be in a position to retrieve it later, but will always
have a very perceptible deficiency in his make-up.
To prevent this in younger years is a matter of education, of which
I will not speak here, but in later life it is one of the chief
aspects of that self-training to which a man is indebted for the real
acquisitions of life more than to all the things that others can do for
him.
In reference to its general character, in the aspect which one usually
calls happiness or unhappiness, or a hard or easy lot, experience shows
(and in most cases very plainly) that every life consists of three
divisions, of which the first and the third are alike and the second
unlike. Whoever has had a hard, unhappy youth is more likely to have
a more favorable and successful manhood, but scarcely a cloudless end.
On the other hand, when the days of youth are golden, they are almost
always the precursor of exertions and storms in the middle part of
life, on which there follows a quieter evening of age. Oftentimes this
distinction also holds good for the minor steplike subdivisions of
these three great divisions.
Which is the happier case may well be doubtful. Very energetic men fond
of activity, who are substantially minded not to let “the vestiges of
their earthly days vanish in the æons,” will be disposed to lay the
greater value upon a successful manhood; but sunny-natured men need an
untroubled youth and likewise a rougher middle period, if they are to
be strong enough to exhibit in their age the pattern of a fully ripened
life, perfected in every direction, so far as lies in the power of man.
Once in his life, at any rate, a man must have it hard and heavy if he
is to attain to the right way himself and to gain an understanding of
the burdens of others; and on the whole a strong old age is best suited
for that. And if the childhood days have been joyous, they afford
an afterglow for the whole life, and in the reverse case, a bitter
feeling of wrong. It is likewise difficult to be obliged, for the first
time, to bear the hardest lot of all in old age.
One can not change the form of this lot; in this respect, at least,
a man is surely not the moulder of his own happiness; only, he is
not the inert slave of a blind Fate either. That is, if a hard youth
predestines him to an old age not quite without care, he can make
the best of this destiny by a clear and conscious submission and a
courageous endurance; or if he has a beautiful childhood behind him,
he can be thankful that it did not continue on thus into that stormy
period of later life which is necessary for the steeling of his
character. Thus conceived, even in these destinies the bold saying
turns out to be exactly true, that to those who love God all the
events of life, of whatever sort they may be, must turn out to their
advantage. But in the lives of all thinking men the question to be
decided is this: whether to choose much sorrow with much help from God,
or much sorrow without such help, but with the temporary forgetfulness
of momentary pleasure. The impotent Nietzschean revolt against such a
fate for men helps nothing.
Finally, one can not make of himself something quite different from
the native stuff that is in him. It is not proper that every one
should be able to become everything; a very extended many-sidedness
comes often only at the expense of depth. At the proper time rightly
to criticise oneself in order to correct the many errors of education,
which only very rarely estimates a human being quite correctly--this
is the chief task of the most decisive point of life. This point, if
life has proceeded quite normally, is at the beginning of the thirties,
when the man has the last step of education behind him, and now, “in
the midway of this our mortal life,” begins his self-training, for good
or for bad. At this moment of life some recognize, with deep pain of
soul, that they can not become all that to which the dreams of youth or
the advantages of birth and education seemed to destine them, and they
turn in despair to pleasure or to pretence. But others resolutely seek
the point whence they may conquer their special world, and henceforth
pursue a destiny which, perhaps, was not sung to them at their cradle,
but which shows itself, nevertheless, to be the right one.
On the whole, however, the dreams of youth are not to be despised.
In most cases they point to an unconscious native ability and so
likewise to the dreamer’s destination, which expresses itself at first
in fantastic pictures of the future; that is, in so far as they really
come from within and are not the products of a false education or of
a mistaken belief in the inheritance of talents. For it is only quite
rarely that talents are inherited and that the sons of great men are
themselves great. This is, to be sure, often made difficult for them
because of comparison with their fathers, and not less because of the
jealousy of men, who do not willingly suffer intellectual dynasties to
rule among them; in this they are all republicans. On the other hand,
men of much consequence seldom have or take the time to busy themselves
intently with the bringing up of their children, and in such families,
much oftener than in far simpler ones, the children fall into neglect,
unless a mother of sufficient intelligence steps in, and is not herself
too much busied with her celebrated and often very exacting husband.
It is scarcely necessary to say further that the mothers are the
deciding element of the family for the education and the formation of
the character of the children, especially the sons, and that the sons,
as a rule, take after them more than after the fathers. It is a less
familiar fact that the sons often resemble the mother’s brothers in
character and natural ability, and that the best though sometimes also
the most dangerous moulders of one’s youth are the grandmothers on the
mother’s side.
The promise of a curse upon families that have shown themselves
egotistical for several succeeding generations surely comes true; and
experience shows that a want of love towards one’s parents is avenged
through one’s own children, and, _vice versa_, a peculiar blessing
throughout life accompanies those who have shown their parents much
love.
There is no need to be anxious about the proper time for entering upon
new steps of life, if the earlier ones have been rightly used; they
will then do their own announcing through first an inner summons, and
finally a definite determination, to advance farther, and without this
experience it could not be well for any one to be in a higher plane.
We can not stand a task that is yet too great for us; such a task we
feel to be too ethereal, and we long for the coarser elements of life.
On the other hand, the divinely-led man does not as a rule know very
long beforehand what he has to do next or to what he will be called;
he could not commonly endure it. But any one who has already really
experienced many such instances of being personally guided in life
will at last be sure in his faith as to the existence of such a higher
guidance even in the life of individual men, while others (by their own
fault, to be sure) count only in the mass, not as individuals.
Finally, steps in the inner life are not, of course, for those to whom
life means nothing else than eating and drinking and dying to-morrow.
The steps of the inner life exist rather only for those who are
resolved to struggle out of a merely natural existence common to many
others, on through to a really spiritual life.
For these, Thomas à Kempis points out the safest way in the following
dialogue:
MY SON, the perfect freedom of the spirit thou canst not win nor
keep, if thou press not through to the complete renunciation of
thyself.