Simplicity is the elimination of the non-essential in all things. It
reduces life to its minimum of real needs; raises it to its maximum of
powers. Simplicity means the survival,—not of the fittest, but of the
best. In morals it kills the weeds of vice and weakness so that the
flowers of virtue and strength may have room to grow. Simplicity cuts
off waste and intensifies concentration. It converts flickering torches
into searchlights.
All great truths are simple. The essence of Christianity could be given
in a few words; a lifetime would be but continued seeking to make those
words real and living in thoughts and acts. The true Christian’s
individual belief is always simpler than his church creed, and upon
these vital, foundation elements he builds his life. Higher criticism
never rises to the heights of his simplicity. He does not care whether
the whale swallowed Jonah or Jonah swallowed the whale. Hair-splitting
interpretation of words and phrases is an intellectual dissipation he
has no time for. He cares naught for the anatomy of religion; he has its
soul. His simple faith he lives,—in thought and word and act, day by
day. Like the lark he lives nearest the ground; like the lark he soars
highest toward heaven.
The minister whose sermons are made up merely of flowers of rhetoric,
sprigs of quotation, sweet fancy, and perfumed commonplaces,
is—consciously or unconsciously—posing in the pulpit. His literary
charlotte-russes, sweet froth on a spongy, pulpy base, never helped a
human soul,—they give neither strength nor inspiration. If the mind and
heart of the preacher were really thrilled with the greatness and
simplicity of religion, he would, week by week, apply the ringing truths
of his faith to the vital problems of daily living. The test of a
strong, simple sermon is results,—not the Sunday praise of his
auditors, but their bettered lives during the week. People who pray on
their knees on Sunday and prey on their neighbors on Monday, need
simplicity in their faith.
No character can be simple unless it is based on truth—unless it is
lived in harmony with one’s own conscience and ideals. Simplicity is the
pure white light of a life lived from within. It is destroyed by any
attempt to live in harmony with public opinion. Public opinion is a
conscience owned by a syndicate,—where the individual is merely a
stockholder. But the individual has a conscience of which he is sole
proprietor. Adjusting his life to his own ideals is the royal road to
simplicity. Affectation is the confession of inferiority; it is an
unnecessary proclamation that one is not living the life he pretends to
live.
Simplicity is restful contempt for the non-essentials of life. It is
restless hunger for the non-essentials that is the secret of most of the
discontent of the world. It is constant striving to outshine others that
kills simplicity and happiness.
Nature, in all her revelations, seeks to teach man the greatness of
simplicity. Health is but the living of a physical life in harmony with
a few simple, clearly defined laws. Simple food, simple exercise, simple
precautions will work wonders. But man grows tired of the simple things,
he yields to subtle temptations in eating and drinking, listens to his
palate instead of to Nature,—and he suffers. He is then led into
intimate acquaintance with dyspepsia, and he sits like a child at his
own bounteous table, forced to limit his eating to simple food that he
scorned.
There is a tonic strength, in the hour of sorrow and affliction, in
escaping from the world and society and getting back to the simple
duties and interests we have slighted and forgotten. Our world grows
smaller, but it grows dearer and greater. Simple things have a new charm
for us, and we suddenly realize that we have been renouncing all that is
greatest and best, in our pursuit of some phantom.
Simplicity is the characteristic that is most difficult to simulate. The
signature that is most difficult to imitate is the one that is most
simple, most individual and most free from flourishes. The bank note
that is the most difficult to counterfeit successfully is the one that
contains the fewest lines and has the least intricate detail. So simple
is it that any departure from the normal is instantly apparent. So is it
also in mind and in morals.
Simplicity in act is the outward expression of simplicity in thought.
Men who carry on their shoulders the fate of a nation are quiet, modest,
unassuming. They are often made gentle, calm and simple by the
discipline of their responsibility. They have no room in their minds for
the pettiness of personal vanity. It is ever the drum-major who grows
pompous when he thinks that the whole world is watching him as he
marches at the head of the procession. The great general, bowed with the
honors of many campaigns, is simple and unaffected as a child.
The college graduate assumes the airs of one to whom is committed the
wisdom of the ages, while the great man of science, the Columbus of some
great continent of investigation, is simple and humble.
The longest Latin derivatives seem necessary to express the thoughts of
young writers. The world’s great masters in literature can move mankind
to tears, give light and life to thousands in darkness and doubt, or
scourge a nation for its folly,—by words so simple as to be
commonplace. But transfigured by the divinity of genius, there seems
almost a miracle in words.
Life grows wondrously beautiful when we look at it as simple, when we
can brush aside the trivial cares and sorrows and worries and failures
and say: “They don’t count. They are not the real things of life; they
are but interruptions. There is something within me, my individuality,
that makes all these gnats of trouble seem too trifling for me to permit
them to have any dominion over me.” Simplicity is a mental soil where
artifice, lying, deceit, treachery and selfish, low ambition,—cannot
grow.
The man whose character is simple looks truth and honesty so straight in
the face that he has no consciousness of intrigue and corruption around
him. He is deaf to the hints and whispers of wrongs that a suspicious
nature would suspect even before they existed. He scorns to meet
intrigue with intrigue, to hold power by bribery, to pay weak tribute to
an inferior that has a temporary inning. To true simplicity, to perceive
a truth is to begin to live it, to see a duty is to begin to do it.
Nothing great can ever enter into the consciousness of a man of
simplicity and remain but a theory. Simplicity in a character is like
the needle of a compass,—it knows only one point, its North, its ideal.
Let us seek to cultivate this simplicity in all things in our life. The
first step toward simplicity is “simplifying.” The beginning of mental
or moral progress or reform is always renunciation or sacrifice. It is
rejection, surrender or destruction of separate phases of habit or life
that have kept us from higher things. Reform your diet and you simplify
it; make your speech truer and higher and you simplify it; reform your
morals and you begin to cut off your immorals. The secret of all true
greatness is simplicity. Make simplicity the keynote of your life and
you will be great, no matter though your life be humble and your
influence seem but little. Simple habits, simple manners, simple needs,
simple words, simple faiths,—all are the pure manifestations of a mind
and heart of simplicity.
Simplicity is never to be associated with weakness and ignorance. It
means reducing tons of ore to nuggets of gold. It means the light of
fullest knowledge; it means that the individual has seen the folly and
the nothingness of those things that make up the sum of the life of
others. He has lived _down_ what others are blindly seeking to live _up_
to. Simplicity is the sun of a self-centred and pure life,—the secret
of any specific greatness in the life of the individual.