revising the somewhat unfavorable opinion of us which he had formed
earlier and at a distance, still wrote in his last paper on Civilization
in the United States that America, in spite of its excellences, is an
uninteresting land. He thought our institutions remarkable. He pointed
out how close a fit exists between them and the character of the
citizens, a fit so close as is hardly to be found in other countries. He
saw much that is of promise in our future. But after all, he declares
that no man will live here if he can live elsewhere, because America is
an uninteresting land.
This remark of Mr. Arnold's is one which we may well ponder. As I
consider how many of you are preparing to go forth from college and
establish yourselves in this country, I ask myself whether you must find
your days uninteresting. You certainly have not been finding them
uninteresting here. Where were college days ever dull? It is a beautiful
circumstance that, the world over, the period of education is the
period of romance. No such thing was ever heard of as a college student
who did not enjoy himself, a college student who was not full of hope.
And if this has been the case with us prosaic males of the past, what
must be the experience of your own hopeful sex? I am sure you are
looking forward with eagerness to your intended work. Is it to be
blighted? Are you to find life dull? It might seem from the remark of
Mr. Arnold that it would probably be so, for you must live in an
uninteresting land.
When this remark of Mr. Arnold's was first made a multitude of voices in
all parts of our country declared that Mr. Arnold did not know what he
was talking about. As a stupid Englishman he had come here and had
failed to see what our land contains. In reality every corner of it is
stuffed with that beauty and distinction which he denied. For that was
the offensive feature of his statement: he had said in substance the
chief sources of interest are beauty and distinction. America is not
beautiful. Its scenery, its people, its past, are not distinguished. It
is impossible, therefore, for an intelligent and cultivated man to find
permanent interests here.
The ordinary reply to these unpleasant sayings was, "America is
beautiful, America is distinguished." But on the face of the matter this
reply might well be distrusted. Mr. Arnold is not a man likely to make
such a mistake. He is a trained observer. His life has been passed in
criticism, and criticism of an extremely delicate sort. It seems to me
it must be rather his standards than his facts which are at fault. Many
of us would be slow to believe our teacher had made an error in
observation; for to many of us he has been a very great teacher indeed.
Through him we have learned the charm of simplicity, the refinement of
exactitude, the strength of finished form; we have learned calmness in
trial too, the patience of duty, ability to wait when in doubt; in
short, we have learned dignity, and he who teaches us dignity is not a
man lightly to be forgotten or disparaged. I say, therefore, that this
answer to Mr. Arnold, that he was in error, is one which on its face
might prudently be distrusted.
But for other than prudential reasons I incline to agree with Mr.
Arnold's opinion. Even though I were not naturally disposed to
credit his judgment, I should be obliged to acknowledge that my own
observations largely coincide with his. In Europe I think I find
beauty more abundant than in America. Certainly the distinguished
objects, the distinguished persons, whom I go there to see, are more
numerous than those I might by searching find here. I cannot think this
portion of Mr. Arnold's statement can be impugned. And must we then
accept his conclusion and agree that your lives, while sheltered in
this interesting college, are themselves interesting; but that when
you go forth the romance is to pass away? I do not believe it,
because I question the standard which Mr. Arnold employs. He tells us
that the sources of the interesting are beauty and distinction. I
doubt it. However much delight and refreshment these may contribute
to our lives, I do not believe they predominantly constitute our
interests.
Evidently Mr. Arnold cannot have reached his opinion through
observation, for the commonest facts of experience confute him. There is
in every community a certain class of persons whose business it is to
discover what people regard as interesting. These are the newspaper
editors; they are paid to find out for us interesting matters every day.
There is nothing they like better than to get hold of something
interesting which has not been observed before. Are they then searchers
for beauty and distinction? I should say not. Here are the subjects
which these seekers after interesting things discussed in my morning
paper. There is an account of disturbances in South America. There is a
statement about Mr. Blaine's health. There is a report of a prize fight.
There are speculations about the next general election. There is a
description of a fashionable wedding. These things interest me, and I
suspect they interest the majority of the readers of that paper; though
they can hardly be called beautiful or distinguished. Obviously,
therefore, if Mr. Arnold had inspected the actual interests of to-day,
he would have been obliged to recognize some other basis for them than
beauty and distinction.
Yet I suppose all will feel it would be better if the trivial matters
which excite our interest in the morning journal were of a more
beautiful, of a more distinguished sort. Our interests would be more
honorable then. These things interest merely because they are facts, not
because they are beautiful. A fact is interesting through being a fact,
and this commonest and most basal of interests Mr. Arnold has
overlooked. He has not perceived that life itself is its own unceasing
interest.
Before we can decide, however, whether he has overlooked anything more,
we must determine what is meant by beauty. Let us analyze the matter a
little. Let us see if we can detect why the beautiful and the
distinguished are interesting, and still how we can provide a place for
the other interests which are omitted in his statement. If we should
look at a tree and ask ourselves why this tree is more beautiful than
another, we should probably find we had thought it so on some such
grounds as these: the total bunch of branches and leaves, that exquisite
green mass sunning itself, is no larger than can well be supported on
the brown trunk. It is large enough; there is nothing lacking. If it
were smaller, the office of the trunk would hardly be fulfilled. If
larger, the trunk would be overpowered. Those branches which extend
themselves to the right adequately balance those which are extended to
the left. Scrutinizing it, we find every leaf in order, each one ready
to aerate its little sap and so conduce to the life of the whole. There
is no decay, no broken branch. Nothing is deficient, but at the same
time there is nothing superfluous. Each part ministers to every part. In
all parts the tree is proportionate--beautiful, intrinsically beautiful,
because it is unsuperfluous, unlacking.
And when we turn to other larger, more intricately beautiful objects,
we find the same principle involved. Fulness of relations among the
parts, perfection of organism, absence of incongruity, constitute the
beauty of the object. Were you ever in Wiltshire in England, and did
you visit the splendid seat of the Earls of Pembroke, Wilton House?
It is a magnificent pile, designed by Holbein the painter, erected
before Elizabeth began to reign. Its green lawns, prepared ages ago,
were adapted to their positions originally and perform their ancient
offices to-day. Time has changed its gardens only by making them more
lovely than when they were planned. So harmonious with one another are
grounds and castle that, looking on the stately dwelling, one imagines
that the Creator himself must have had it in mind in his design of
the spot. And when you enter, all is equally congruous. Around the
central court runs the cloistered statuary gallery, out of which open
the several halls. Passing through these, you notice the portraits
not only of past members of the family--men who have been among the
most distinguished of England's worthies--but also portraits of the
eminent friends of the Pembrokes, painted by notable artists who were
often themselves also friends of the family. In the library is shown
Sidney's "Arcadia," written in this very garden, with a lock of
Elizabeth's hair inclosed. In the chief hall a play of Shakespeare's
is reported to have been performed by his company. Half a dozen names
that shine in literature lend intellectual glory to the place. But
as you walk from room to room, amazed at the accumulation of wealth and
proud tradition, you perceive how each casual object makes its
separate contribution to the general impression of stateliness. A
glance from a window discloses an enchanting view: in the distance, past
the cedars, rises the spire of Salisbury Cathedral, one of the most
peaceful and aspiring in England. All parts--scenery, buildings,
rich possessions, historic heritages--minister to parts. Romantic
imagination is stirred. It is beautiful, beautiful beyond anything
America can show.
And if we turn to that region where beauty is most subtly embodied,
if we turn to human character, we find the conditions not dissimilar.
The character which impresses us most is that which has fully
organized its powers, so that every ability finds its appropriate
place without prominence; one with no false humility and without
self-assertion; a character which cannot be overthrown by petty
circumstance, but, steadfast in itself, no part lacking, no part
superfluous, easily lets its ample functions assist one another in all
that they are summoned to perform. When we behold a man like this, we
say, "This is what I would be. Here is the goal toward which I would
tend. This man, like Wilton House, like the beautiful tree, is a
finished thing." It is true when we turn our attention back and once
more criticise, we see that it is not so. No human character can be
finished. It is its glory that it cannot be. It must ever press
forward; each step reached is but the vantage-ground for a further
step. There is no completeness in human character--in human character
save one.
And must we then consider human character uninteresting? According to
Mr. Arnold's standard perhaps we ought to do so. But through this very
case the narrowness of that standard becomes apparent. Mr. Arnold
rightly perceives that beauty is one of our higher interests. It
certainly is not our only or our highest, because in that which is most
profoundly interesting, human life, the completeness of parts which
constitutes beauty is never reached. There must obviously be another and
a higher source of interest, one too exalted to be found where awhile
ago I sketched it, in the mere occurrence of a fact. We cannot say that
all events, simply because they occur, are alike interesting. To find in
them an intelligent interest we must rate their worth. I agree,
accordingly, with Mr. Arnold in thinking that it is the passion for
perfection, the assessment of worths, which is at the root of all
enduring interests. But I believe that in the history of the world this
passion for perfection, this deepest root of human interests, has
presented itself in two forms. The Greek conceived it in one way, the
Christian has conceived it in another.
It was the office of that astonishing people, the Greeks, to teach us to
honor completeness, the majesty of the rounded whole. We see this in
every department of their marvellous life. Whenever we look at a Greek
statue, it seems impossible that it should be otherwise without loss; we
cannot imagine any portion changed; the thing has reached its
completeness. Before it we can only bow and feel at rest. Just so it is
when we examine Greek architecture. There too we find the same ordered
proportion, the same adjustment of part to part. And if we turn to Greek
literature, the stately symmetry is no less remarkable. What page of
Sophocles could be stricken out? What page--what sentence? Just enough,
not more than enough! The thought has grown, has asserted its entirety;
and when that entirety has been reached, it has stopped, delighted with
its own perfection. A splendid ideal, an ideal which never can fail, I
am sure, to interest man so long as he remains intelligent!
And yet this beautiful Greek work shows only one aspect of the world. It
omitted something, it omitted formative life. Joy in birth, delight in
beginnings, interest in origins,--these things did not belong to the
Greek; they came in with Christianity. It is Jesus Christ who turns our
attention toward growth, and so teaches us to delight in the imperfect
rather than in the perfect. It is he who, wishing to give to his
disciples a model of what they should be, does not select the completed
man, but takes the little child and sets him before them and to the
supercilious says, "Take heed that ye despise not one of these little
ones." He teaches us to reverence the beginning of things. And at first
thought it might well seem that this reverence for the imperfect was a
retrogression. What! is not a consummate man more admirable than a
child? "No," Jesus answered; and because he answered so, pity was born.
Before the coming of Jesus Christ, I think we may say that the sick, the
afflicted, the child--shall I not say the woman?--were but slightly
understood. It is because God has come down from heaven, manifesting
even himself in forms of imperfection, it is on this account that our
intellectual horizon has been enlarged. We may now delight in the lowly,
we may stoop and gather imperfect things and rejoice in them,--rejoice
beyond the old Greek rejoicing.
Yet it is easy to mistake the nature of this change of standard, and in
doing so to run into grave moral danger. If we content ourselves with
the imperfect rather than with the perfect, we are barbarians. We are
not Christians nor are we Greeks, we are barbarians. But that is not the
spirit of Jesus. He teaches us to catch the future in the instant, to
see the infinite in the finite, to watch the growth of the perfect out
of the imperfect. And he teaches us that this delight in progress, in
growth, in aspiration, in completing, may rightly be greater than our
exultation in completeness. In his view the joy of perfecting is beyond
the joy of perfection.
Now I want to be sure that you young women, who are preparing yourselves
here for larger life and are soon to emerge into the perplexing world,
go forth with clear and Christian purpose. For though what I have been
discussing may appear dry and abstract, it is an extremely practical
matter. Consider a moment in which direction you are to seek the
interests of your life. Will you demand that the things about you shall
already possess their perfection? Will you ask from life that it be
completed, finished, beautiful? If so, you are doomed to dreary days. Or
are you to get your intellectual eyes open, see beauty in the making,
and come to rejoice in it there rather than after it is made? That is
the question I wish to present to-day; and I shall ask you to examine
several provinces of life and see how different they appear when
surveyed from one point of view or from the other.
Undoubtedly all of you on leaving here will go into some home, either
the home of your parents or--less fortunate--some stranger's home. And
when you come there, I think I can foretell one thing: it will be a
tolerably imperfect place in which you find yourself. You will notice a
great many points in which it is improvable; that is to say, a great
many respects in which you might properly wish it otherwise. It will
seem to you, I dare say, a little plain, a little commonplace, compared
with your beautiful college and the college life here. I doubt whether
you will find all the members of your family--dear though they may
be--so wise, so gentle-mannered, so able to contribute to your
intellectual life as are your companions here. Will you feel then, "Ah!
home is a dull place; I wish I were back in college again! I think I was
made for college life. Possibly enough I was made for a wealthy life. I
am sure I was made for a comfortable life. But I do not find these
things here. I will sit and wish I had them. Of course I ought not to
enjoy a home that is short of perfection; and I recognize that this is a
good way from complete." Is this to be your attitude? Or are you going
to say, "How interesting this home! What a brave struggle the dear
people are making with the resources at their command! What kindness is
shown by my tired mother; how swift she is in finding out the many small
wants of the household! How diligent my father! Should I, if I had had
only their narrow opportunities, be so intelligent, so kind, so
self-sacrificing as they? What can I do to show them my gratitude? What
can I contribute toward the furtherance, the enlargement, the
perfecting, of this home?" That is the wise course. Enter this home not
merely as a matter of loving duty, but find in it also your own strong
interests, and learn to say, "This home is not a perfect home, happily
not a perfect home. I have something here to do. It is far more
interesting than if it were already complete."
And again, you will not always live in a place so attractive as
Cleveland. There are cities which have not your beautiful lake, your
distant views, your charming houses excellently shaded with trees. These
things are exceptional and cannot always be yours. You may be obliged to
live in an American town which appears to you highly unfinished, a town
which constantly suggests that much still remains to be done. And then
are you going to say, "This place is not beautiful, and I of course am a
lover of the beautiful. How could one so superior as I rest in such
surroundings? I could not respect myself were I not discontented." Is
that to be your attitude? It is, I am sorry to think, the attitude of
many who go from our colleges. They have been taught to reverence
perfection, to honor excellence; and instead of making it their work to
carry this excellence forth, and to be interested in spreading it far
and wide in the world, they sit down and mourn that it has not yet come.
How dull the world would be had it come! Perfection, beauty? It
constitutes a resting-place for us; it does not constitute our
working-place.
I maintain, therefore, in regard to our land as a whole that there is no
other so interesting on the face of the earth; and I am led to this
conviction by the very reasoning which brought Mr. Arnold to a contrary
opinion. I accept his judgment of the beauty of America. His premise is
correct, but it should have conducted him to the opposite conclusion. In
America we still are in the making. We are not yet beautiful and
distinguished; and that is why America, beyond every other country,
awakens a noble interest. The beauty which is in the old lands, and
which refreshes for a season, is after all a species of death. Those who
dwell among such scenes are appeased, they are not quickened. Let them
keep their past; we have our future. We may do much. What they can do is
largely at an end.
In literature also I wish to bring these distinctions before you, these
differences of standard; and perhaps I cannot accomplish this better
than by exhibiting them as they are presented in a few verses from the
poet of the imperfect. I suppose if we try to mark out with precision
the work of Mr. Browning,--I mean not to mark it out as the Browning
societies do, but to mark it out with precision,--we might say that its
distinctive feature is that he has guided himself by the principle on
which I have insisted: he has sought for beauty where there is seeming
chaos; he has loved growth, has prized progress, has noted the advance
of the spiritual, the pressing on of the finite soul through hindrance
to its junction with the infinite. This it is which has inspired his
somewhat crabbed verses, and has made men willing to undergo the labor
of reading them, that they too may partake of his insight. In one of his
poems--one which seems to me to contain some of his sublimest as well as
some of his most commonplace lines, the poem on "Old Pictures in
Florence,"--he discriminates between Greek and Christian art in much the
same way I have done. In "Greek Art," Mr. Browning says:--
You saw yourself as you wished you were,
As you might have been, as you cannot be;
Earth here, rebuked by Olympus there;
And grew content in your poor degree
With your little power, by those statues' godhead,
And your little scope, by their eyes' full sway,
And your little grace, by their grace embodied,
And your little date, by their forms that stay.
You would fain be kinglier, say, than I am?
Even so, you will not sit like Theseus.
You would prove a model? The son of Priam
Has yet the advantage in arms' and knees' use.
You're wroth--can you slay your snake like Apollo?
You're grieved--still Niobe's the grander!
You live--there's the Racers' frieze to follow:
You die--there's the dying Alexander.
So, testing your weakness by their strength,
Your meagre charms by their rounded beauty,
Measured by Art in your breadth and length,
You learned--to submit is a mortal's duty.
Growth came when, looking your last on them all,
You turned your eyes inwardly one fine day
And cried with a start--What if we so small
Be greater and grander the while than they!
Are they perfect of lineament, perfect of stature?
In both, of such lower types are we
Precisely because of our wider nature;
For time, theirs--ours, for eternity.
To-day's brief passion limits their range;
It seethes with the morrow for us and more.
They are perfect--how else? they shall never change:
We are faulty--why not? we have time in store.
The Artificer's hand is not arrested
With us; we are rough-hewn, no-wise polished:
They stand for our copy, and once invested
With all they can teach, we shall see them abolished.
You will notice that in this subtle study Mr. Browning points out how
through contact with perfection there may come content with our present
lot. This I call the danger of perfection, our possible belittlement
through beauty. For in the lives of us all there should be a divine
discontent,--not devilish discontent, but divine discontent,--a
consciousness that life may be larger than we have yet attained, that we
are to press beyond what we have reached, that joy lies in the future,
in that which has not been found, rather than in the realized present.
And it seems to me if ever a people were called on to understand this
glory of the imperfect, it is we of America, it is you of the Middle
West; it is especially you who are undertaking here the experiment of a
woman's college. You are at the beginning, and that fact should lend an
interest to your work which cannot so readily be realized in our older
institutions. As you look eastward upon my own huge university, Harvard
University, it probably appears to you singularly beautiful, reverend in
its age, magnificent in its endowments, equable in its working; perhaps
you contemplate it as nearing perfection, and contrast your incipient
college with it as hardly deserving the name. You are entirely mistaken.
Harvard University, to its glory be it said, is enormously unfinished;
it is a great way from perfect; it is full of blemishes. We are
tinkering at it all the time; and if it were not so, I for one should
decline to be connected with it. Its interest for me would cease. You
are to start free from some trammels that we feel. Because we have so
large a past laid upon us we have not some freedoms of growth, some
opportunities of enlargement, which you possess. Accordingly, in your
very experiment here you have a superb illustration of the principle I
am trying to explain. This young and imperfect college should interest
you who are members of it; it should interest this intelligent city.
Wise patrons should find here a germ capable of such broad and
interesting growth as may well call out their heartiest enthusiasm.