PUT BEAUTY INTO YOUR LIFE
When the barbarians overran Greece, desecrated her temples, and
destroyed her beautiful works of art, even their savageness was
somewhat tamed by the sense of beauty which prevailed everywhere. They
broke her beautiful statues, it is true; but the spirit of beauty
refused to die, and it transformed the savage heart and awakened even
in the barbarian a new power. From the apparent death of Grecian art
Roman art was born. "Cyclops forging iron for Vulcan could not stand
against Pericles forging thought for Greece." The barbarian's club
which destroyed the Grecian statues was no match for the chisel of
Phidias and Praxiteles.
"What is the best education?" some one asked Plato many centuries ago.
"It is," he replied, "that which gives to the body and to the soul all
the beauty and all the perfection of which they are capable."
The life that would be complete; that would be sweet and sane, as well
as strong, must be ornamented, softened, and enriched by a love of the
beautiful.
There is a lack in the make-up of a person who has no appreciation of
beauty, who does not thrill before a great picture or an entrancing
sunset, or a glimpse of beauty in nature.
Savages have no appreciation of beauty. They have a passion for
adornment, but there is nothing to show that their esthetic faculties
are developed. They merely obey their animal instincts and passions.
But as civilization advances ambition grows, wants multiply, and higher
and higher faculties show themselves, until in the highest expression
of civilization, we find aspiration and love of the beautiful most
highly developed. We find it manifested on the person, in the home, in
the environment.
The late Professor Charles Eliot Norton of Harvard University, one of
the finest thinkers of his day, said that beauty has played an immense
part in the development of the highest qualities in human beings; and
that civilization could be measured by its architecture, sculpture, and
painting.
What an infinite satisfaction comes from beginning early in life to
cultivate our finer qualities, to develop finer sentiments, purer
tastes, more delicate feelings, the love of the beautiful in all its
varied forms of expression!
One can make no better investment than the cultivation of a taste for
the beautiful, for it will bring rainbow hues and enduring joys to the
whole life. It will not only greatly increase one's capacity for
happiness, but also one's efficiency.
A remarkable instance of the elevating, refining influence of beauty
has been demonstrated by a Chicago school-teacher, who fitted up in her
school a "beauty corner" for her pupils. It was furnished with a
stained glass window, a divan covered with an Oriental rug, and a few
fine photographs and paintings, among which was a picture of the
Sistine Madonna. Several other esthetic trifles, artistically
arranged, completed the furnishings of the "beauty corner." The
children took great delight in their little retreat, especially in the
exquisite coloring of the stained glass window. Insensibly their
conduct and demeanor were affected by the beautiful objects with which
they daily associated. They became more gentle, more refined, more
thoughtful and considerate. A young Italian boy, in particular, who
had been incorrigible before the establishment of the "beauty corner,"
became, in a short time, so changed and softened that the teacher was
astonished. One day she asked him what it was that made him so good
lately. Pointing to the picture of the Sistine Madonna the boy said,
"How can a feller do bad things when she's looking at him?"
Character is fed largely through the eye and ear. The thousand voices
in nature of bird and insect and brook, the soughing of the wind
through the trees, the scent of flower and meadow, the myriad tints in
earth and sky, in ocean and forest, mountain and hill, are just as
important for the development of a real man as the education he
receives in the schools. If you take no beauty into your life through
the eye or the ear to stimulate and develop your esthetic faculties,
your nature will be hard, juiceless, and unattractive.
Beauty is a quality of divinity, and to live much with the beautiful is
to live close to the divine. "The more we see of beauty everywhere; in
nature, in life, in man and child, in work and rest, in the outward and
the inward world, the more we see of God (good)."
There are many evidences in the New Testament that Christ was a great
lover of the beautiful especially in nature. Was it not He who said:
"Consider the lilies of the field; they toil not, neither do they spin;
yet Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these"?
Back of the lily and the rose, back of the landscape, back of all
beautiful things that enchant us, there must be a great lover of the
beautiful and a great beauty-principle. Every star that twinkles in
the sky, every flower, bids us look behind it for its source, points us
to the great Author of the beautiful.
The love of beauty plays a very important part in the poised,
symmetrical life. We little realize how much we are influenced by
beautiful people and things. We may see them so often that they become
common in our experience and fail to attract much of our conscious
attention, but every beautiful picture, every sunset and bit of
landscape, every beautiful face and form and flower, beauty in any
form, wherever we encounter it, ennobles, refines and elevates
character.
There is everything in keeping the soul and mind responsive to beauty.
It is a great refreshener, recuperator, life-giver, health promoter.
Our American life tends to kill the finer sentiments; to discourage the
development of charm and grace as well as beauty; it over-emphasizes
the value of material things and under-estimates that of esthetic
things, which are far more developed in countries where the dollar is
not the God.
As long as we persist in sending all the sap and energy of our being
into the money-making gland or faculty and letting the social faculty,
the esthetic faculty, and all the finer, nobler faculties lie dormant,
and even die, we certainly can not expect a well-rounded and
symmetrical life, for only faculties that are used, brain cells that
are exercised, grow; all others atrophy. If the finer instincts in man
and the nobler qualities that live in the higher brain are
under-developed, and the coarser instincts which dwell in the lower
brain close to the brute faculties are over-developed, man must pay the
penalty of animality and will lack appreciation of all that is finest
and most beautiful in life.
"The vision that you hold in your mind, the ideal that is enthroned in
your heart--this you will build your life by, this you will become."
It is the quality of mind, of ideals, and not mere things, that make a
man.
It is as essential to cultivate the esthetic faculties and the heart
qualities as to cultivate what we call the intellect. The time will
come when our children will be taught, both at home and in school, to
consider beauty as a most precious gift, which must be preserved in
purity, sweetness, and cleanliness, and regarded as a divine instrument
of education.
There is no investment which will give such returns as the culture of
the finer self, the development of the sense of the beautiful, the
sublime, and the true; the development of qualities that are crushed
out or strangled in the mere dollar-chaser.
There are a thousand evidences in us that we were intended for temples
of beauty, of sweetness, of loveliness, of beautiful ideas, and not
mere storehouses for vulgar things.
There is nothing which will pay so well as to train the finest and
truest, the most beautiful qualities in us in order that we may see
beauty everywhere and be able to extract sweetness from everything.
Everywhere we go there are a thousand things to educate the best there
is in us. Every sunset, landscape, mountain, hill, and tree has
secrets of charm and beauty waiting for us. In every patch of meadow
or wheat, in every leaf and flower, the trained eye will see beauty
which would ravish an angel. The cultured ear will find harmony in
forest and field, melody in the babbling brook, and untold pleasure in
all Nature's songs.
Whatever our vocation, we should resolve that we will not strangle all
that is finest and noblest in us for the sake of the dollar, but that
we will _put beauty into our life at every opportunity_.
Just in proportion to your love for the beautiful will you acquire its
charms and develop its graces. The beauty thought, the beauty ideal,
will outpicture themselves in the face and manner. If you are in love
with beauty you will be an artist of some kind. Your profession may be
to make the home beautiful and sweet, or you may work at a trade; but
whatever your vocation, if you are in love with the beautiful, it will
purify your taste, elevate and enrich your life, and make you an artist
instead of a mere artisan.
There is no doubt that in the future beauty will play an infinitely
greater part in civilized life than it has thus far. It is becoming
commercialized everywhere. The trouble with us is that the tremendous
material-prizes in this land of opportunity are so tempting that we
have lost sight of the higher man. We have developed ourselves along
the animal side of our nature; the greedy, grasping side. The great
majority of us are still living in the basement of our beings. Now and
then one rises to the drawing-room. Now and then one ascends to the
upper stories and gets a glimpse of the life beautiful, the life worth
while.
There is nothing on earth that will so slake the thirst of the soul as
the beauty which expresses itself in sweetness and light.
An old traveling man relates that once when on a trip to the West he
sat next to an elderly lady who every now and then would lean out of
the open window and pour some thick salt--it seemed to him--from a
bottle. When she had emptied the bottle she would refill it from a
hand-bag.
A friend to whom this man related the incident told him he was
acquainted with the lady, who was a great lover of flowers and an
earnest follower of the precept: "Scatter your flowers as you go, for
you may never travel the same road again." He said she added greatly
to the beauty of the landscape along the railroads on which she
traveled, by her custom of scattering flower seeds along the track as
she rode. Many roads have thus been beautified and refreshed by this
old lady's love of the beautiful and her effort to scatter beauty
wherever she went.
If we would all cultivate a love of the beautiful and scatter beauty
seeds as we go through life, what a paradise this earth would become!
What a splendid opportunity a vacation in the country offers to put
beauty into the life; to cultivate the esthetic faculties, which in
most people are wholly undeveloped and inactive! To some it is like
going into God's great gallery of charm and beauty. They find in the
landscape, the valley, the mountains, the fields, the meadows, the
flowers, the streams, the brooks and the rivers, riches that no money
can buy; beauties that would enchant the angels. But this beauty and
glory can not be bought; they are only for those who can see them,
appreciate them--who can read their message and respond to their
affinity.
Have you never felt the marvelous power of beauty in nature? If not,
you have missed one of the most exquisite joys in life. I was once
going through the Yosemite Valley, and after riding one hundred miles
in a stage-coach over rough mountain roads, I was so completely
exhausted that it did not seem as though I could keep my seat until we
traveled over the ten more miles which would bring us to our
destination. But on looking down from the top of the mountain I caught
a glimpse of the celebrated Yosemite Falls and the surrounding scenery,
just as the sun broke through the clouds; and there was revealed a
picture of such rare beauty and marvelous picturesqueness that every
particle of fatigue, brain-fag, and muscle weariness departed in an
instant. My whole soul thrilled with a winged sense of sublimity,
grandeur, and beauty, which I had never experienced before, and which I
never can forget. I felt a spiritual uplift which brought tears of joy
to my eyes.
No one can contemplate the wonderful beauties of Nature and doubt that
the Creator must have intended that man, made in His own image and
likeness, should be equally beautiful.
Beauty of character, charm of manner, attractiveness and graciousness
of expression, a godlike bearing, are our birthrights. Yet how ugly,
stiff, coarse, and harsh in appearance and bearing many of us are! No
one can afford to disregard his good looks or personal appearance.
But if we wish to beautify the outer, we must first beautify the inner,
for every thought and every motion shapes the delicate tracings of our
face for ugliness or beauty. Inharmonious and destructive attitudes of
mind will warp and mar the most beautiful features.
Shakespeare says: "God has given you one face and you make yourselves
another." The mind can make beauty or ugliness at will.
A sweet, noble disposition is absolutely essential to the highest form
of beauty. It has transformed many a plain face. A bad temper, ill
nature, jealousy, will ruin the most beautiful face ever created.
After all, there is no beauty like that produced by a lovely character.
Neither cosmetics, massage, nor drugs can remove the lines of
prejudice, selfishness, envy, anxiety, mental vacillation that are the
results of wrong thought habits.
Beauty is from within. If every human being would cultivate a gracious
mentality, not only would what he expressed be artistically beautiful,
but also his body. There would indeed be grace and charm, a
superiority about him, which would be even greater than mere physical
beauty.
We have all seen even very plain women who, because of the charm of
their personality, impressed us as transcendently beautiful. The
exquisite soul qualities expressed through the body transformed it into
their likeness. A fine spirit speaking through the plainest body will
make it beautiful.
Some one, speaking of Fanny Kemble, said: "Although she was very stout
and short, and had a very red face, yet she impressed me as the supreme
embodiment of majestic attributes. I never saw so commanding a
personality in feminine form. Any type of mere physical beauty would
have paled to insignificance by her side."
Antoine Berryer says truly: "There are no ugly women. There are only
women who do not know how to look pretty."
The highest beauty--beauty that is far superior to mere regularity of
feature or form--is within reach of everybody. It is perfectly
possible for one, even with the homeliest face, to make herself
beautiful by the habit of perpetually holding in mind the beauty
thought, not the thought of mere superficial beauty, but that of heart
beauty, soul beauty, and by the cultivation of a spirit of kindness,
hopefulness, and unselfishness.
The basis of all real personal beauty is a kindly, helpful bearing and
a desire to scatter sunshine and good cheer everywhere, and this,
shining through the face, makes it beautiful. The longing and the
effort to be beautiful in character can not fail to make the life
beautiful, and since the outward is but an expression of the inward, a
mere outpicturing on the body of the habitual thought and dominating
motives, the face, the manners, and the bearing must follow the thought
and become sweet and attractive. If you hold the beauty thought, the
love thought, persistently in the mind, you will make such an
impression of harmony and sweetness wherever you go that no one will
notice any plainness or deformity of person.
There are girls who have dwelt upon what they consider their
unfortunate plainness so long that they have seriously exaggerated it.
They are not half so plain as they think they are; and, were it not for
the fact that they have made themselves very sensitive and
self-conscious on the subject, others would not notice it at all. In
fact, if they could get rid of their sensitiveness and be natural, they
could, with persistent effort, make up in sprightliness of thought, in
cheerfulness of manner, in intelligence, and in cheery helpfulness,
what they lack in grace and beauty of face.
We admire the beautiful face, the beautiful form, but we love the face
illumined by a beautiful soul. We love it because it suggests the
ideal of the possible perfect man or woman, the ideal which was the
Creator's model.
It is not the outward form of our dearest friend, but our ideal of
friendship which he arouses or suggests in us that stirs up and brings
into exercise our love and admiration. The highest beauty does not
exist in the actual. It is the ideal, possible beauty, which the
person or object symbolizes or suggests, that gives us delight.
Everyone should endeavor to be beautiful and attractive; to be as
complete a human being as possible. There is not a taint of vanity in
the desire for the highest beauty.
The love of beauty that confines itself to mere external form, however,
misses its deepest significance. Beauty of form, of coloring, of light
and shade, of sound, make our world beautiful; yet the mind that is
warped and twisted can not see all this infinite beauty. It is the
indwelling spirit, the ideal in the soul, that makes all things
beautiful; that inspires and lifts us above ourselves.
We love the outwardly beautiful, because we crave perfection, and we
can not help admiring those persons and things that most nearly embody
or measure up to our human ideal.
But a beautiful character will make beauty and poetry out of the
prosiest environment, bring sunshine into the darkest home, and develop
beauty and grace amid the ugliest surroundings.
What would become of us if it were not for the great souls who realize
the divinity of life, who insist upon bringing out and emphasizing its
poetry, its music, its harmony and beauty?
How sordid and common our lives would become but for these
beauty-makers, these inspirers, these people who bring out all that is
best and most attractive in every place, every situation and condition!
There is no accomplishment, no trait of character, no quality of mind,
which will give greater satisfaction and pleasure or contribute more to
one's welfare than an appreciation of the beautiful. How many people
might be saved from wrong-doing, even from lives of crime, by the
cultivation of the esthetic faculties in their childhood! A love of
the truly beautiful would save children from things which encoarsen and
brutalize their natures. It would shield them from a multitude of
temptations.
Parents do not take sufficient pains to develop the love and
appreciation of beauty in their children. They do not realize that in
impressionable youth, everything about the home, even the pictures, the
paper on the wall, affect the growing character. They should never
lose an opportunity of letting their boys and girls see beautiful works
of art, hear beautiful music; they should make a practise of reading to
them or having them read very often some lofty poem, or inspirational
passages from some great writer, that will fill their minds with
thoughts of beauty, open their souls to the inflow of the Divine Mind,
the Divine Love which encompasses us round about. The influences that
moved our youth determine the character, the success and happiness of
our whole lives.
Every soul is born responsive to the beautiful, but this instinctive
love of beauty must be fostered through the eye and the mind must be
cultivated, or it will die. The craving for beauty is as strong in a
child of the slums as in a favorite of fortune. "The physical hunger
of the poor, the yearning of their stomachs," says Jacob A. Riis, "is
not half so bitter, or so little likely to be satisfied as their
esthetic hunger, their starving for the beautiful."
Mr. Riis has often tried to take flowers from his Long Island home to
the "poors" in Mulberry Street, New York. "But they never got there,"
he says. "Before I had gone half a block from the ferry I was held up
by a shrieky mob of children who cried for the posies and would not let
me go another step till I had given them one. And when they got it
they ran, shielding the flower with the most jealous care, to some
place where they could hide and gloat over their treasure. They came
dragging big, fat babies and little weazened ones that they might get a
share, and the babies' eyes grew round and big at the sight of the
golden glory from the fields, the like of which had never come their
way. The smaller the baby, and the poorer, the more wistful its look,
and so my flowers went. Who could have said them no?
"I learned then what I had but vaguely understood before, that there is
a hunger that is worse than that which starves the body and gets into
the newspapers. All children love beauty and beautiful things. It is
the spark of the divine nature that is in them and justifies itself!
To that ideal their souls grow. When they cry out for it they are
trying to tell us in the only way they can that if we let the slum
starve the ideal, with its dirt and its ugliness and its hard-trodden
mud where flowers were meant to grow, we are starving that which we
little know. A man, a human, may grow a big body without a soul; but
as a citizen, as a mother, he or she is worth nothing to the
commonwealth. The mark they are going to leave upon it is the black
smudge of the slum.
"So when in these latter days we invade that slum to make homes there
and teach the mothers to make them beautiful; when we gather the
children into kindergartens, hang pictures in the schools; when we
build beautiful new schools and public buildings and let in the light,
with grass and flower and bird, where darkness and foulness were
before; when we teach the children to dance and play and enjoy
themselves--alas! that it should ever be needed--we are trying to wipe
off the smudge, and to lift the heavy mortgage which it put on the
morrow, a much heavier one in the loss of citizenship than any
community, even the republic, can long endure. We are paying arrears
of debt which we incurred by our sad neglect, and we could be about no
better business."
There are many poor children in the slums of New York, Mr. Millionaire,
who could go into your drawing-room and carry away from its rich
canvases, its costly furnishings, a vision of beauty which you never
perceived in them because your esthetic faculties, your finer
sensibilities, were early stifled by your selfish pursuit of the dollar.
The world is full of beautiful things, but the majority have not been
trained to discern them. We can not see all the beauty that lies
around us, because our eyes have not been trained to see it; our
esthetic faculties have not been developed. We are like the lady who,
standing with the great artist, Turner, before one of his wonderful
landscapes, cried out in amazement: "Why, Mr. Turner, I can not see
those things in nature that you have put in your picture."
"Don't you wish you could, madam?" he replied. Just think what rare
treats we shut out of our lives in our mad, selfish, insane pursuit of
the dollar! Do you not wish that you could see the marvels that Turner
saw in a landscape, that Ruskin saw in a sunset? Do you not wish that
you had put a little more beauty into your life instead of allowing
your nature to become encoarsened, your esthetic faculties blinded and
your finer instincts blighted by the pursuit of the coarser things of
life, instead of developing your brute instincts of pushing, elbowing
your way through the world for a few more dollars, in your effort to
get something away from somebody else?
Fortunate is the person who has been educated to the perception of
beauty; he possesses a heritage of which no reverses can rob him. Yet
it is a heritage possible to all who will take the trouble to begin
early in life to cultivate the finer qualities of the soul, the eye,
and the heart. "I am a lover of untainted and immortal beauty,"
exclaims Emerson. "Oh, world, what pictures and what harmony are
thine!"
A great scientist tells us that there is no natural object in the
universe which, if seen as the Master sees it, coupled with all its
infinite meaning, its utility and purpose, is not beautiful. Beauty is
God's handwriting. Just as the most disgusting object, if put under a
magnifying glass of sufficient power, would reveal beauties undreamed
of, so even the most unlovely environment, the most cruel conditions,
will, when viewed through the glass of a trained and disciplined mind,
show something of the beautiful and the hopeful. A life that has been
rightly trained will extract sweetness from everything; it will see
beauty everywhere.
Situated as we are in a world of beauty and sublimity, we have no right
to devote practically all of our energies and to sap all our life
forces in the pursuit of selfish aims, in accumulating material wealth,
in piling up dollars. It is our duty to treat life as a glory, not as
a grind or a purely business transaction, dealing wholly with money and
bread-and-butter questions. Wherever you are, put beauty into your
life.