MEANS AND ENDS
OF EDUCATION
BY
J. L. SPALDING
Bishop of Peoria
WHO BRINGETH MANY THINGS,
FOR EACH ONE SOMETHING BRINGS
CHICAGO
A. C. McCLURG AND COMPANY
1895
COPYRIGHT
BY A. C. MCCLURG £ Co.
A.D. 1895
By Bishop Spalding
EDUCATION AND THE HIGHER LIFE. 12mo. $1.00.
THINGS OF THE MIND. 12mo. $1.00.
MEANS AND ENDS OF EDUCATION. 12mo. $1.00.
A. C. McCLURG AND CO.
CHICAGO.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I. TRUTH AND LOVE II. TRUTH AND LOVE III. THE MAKING OF ONE'S SELF IV. WOMAN AND EDUCATION V. THE SCOPE OF PUBLIC-SCHOOL EDUCATION VI. THE RELIGIOUS ELEMENT IN EDUCATION VII. THE HIGHER EDUCATION
MEANS AND ENDS OF EDUCATION.
CHAPTER I.
TRUTH AND LOVE.
None of us yet know, for none of us have yet been taught in early youth, what fairy palaces we may build of beautiful thought—proof against all adversity;—bright fancies, satisfied memories, noble histories, faithful sayings, treasure-houses of precious and restful thoughts; which care cannot disturb, nor pain make gloomy, nor poverty take away from us—houses built without hands for our souls to live in.—RUSKIN.
Stirred up with high hopes of living to be brave men and worthy patriots, dear to God and famous to all ages.—MILTON.
A great man's house is filled chiefly with menials and creatures of ceremony; and great libraries contain, for the most part, books as dry and lifeless as the dust that gathers on them: but from amidst these dead leaves an immortal mind here and there looks forth with light and love.
From the point of view of the bank president, Emerson tells us, books are merely so much rubbish. But in his eyes the flowers also, the flowing water, the fresh air, the floating clouds, children's voices, the thrill of love, the fancy's play, the mountains, and the stars are worthless.
Not one in a hundred who buy Shakspere, or Milton, or a work of any other great mind, feels a genuine longing to get at the secret of its power and truth; but to those alone who feel this longing is the secret revealed. We must love the man of genius, if we would have him speak to us. We learn to know ourselves, not by studying the behavior of matter, but through experience of life and intimate acquaintance with literature. Our spiritual as well as our physical being springs from that of our ancestors. Freedom, however, gives the soul the power not only to develop what it inherits, but to grow into conscious communion with the thought and love, the hope and faith of the noble dead, and, in thus enlarging itself, to become the inspiration and source of richer and wider life for those who follow. As parents are consoled by the thought of surviving in their descendants, great minds are upheld and strengthened in their ceaseless labors by the hope of entering as an added impulse to better things, from generation to generation, into the lives of thousands. The greatest misfortune which can befall genius is to be sold to the advocacy of what is not truth and love and goodness and beauty. The proper translation of timeo hominem unius libri is not, "I fear a man of one book," but "I dread a man of one book:" for he is sure to be narrow, one-sided, and unreasonable. The right phrase enters at once into our spiritual world, and its power becomes as real as that of material objects. The truth to which it gives body is borne in upon us as a star or a mountain is borne in upon us. Kings and rich men live in history when genius happens to throw the light of abiding worlds upon their ephemeral estate. Carthage is the typical city of merchants and traders. Why is it remembered? Because Hannibal was a warrior and Virgil a poet.
The strong man is he who knows how and is able to become and be himself; the magnanimous man is he who, being strong, knows how and is able to issue forth from himself, as from a fortress, to guide, protect, encourage, and save others. Life's current flows pure and unimpeded within him, and on its wave his thought and love are borne to bless his fellowmen. If he who gives a cup of water in the right spirit does God's work, so does he who sows or reaps, or builds or sweeps, or utters helpful truth or plays with children or cheers the lonely, or does any other fair or useful thing. Take not seriously one who treats with derision men or books that have been deemed worthy of attention by the best minds. He is false or foolish. As we cherish a human being for the courage and love he inspires, so books are dear to us for the noble thoughts and generous moods they call into being. To drink the spirit of a great author is worth more than a knowledge of his teaching.
He who desires to grow wise should bring his reason to bear habitually upon what he sees and hears not less than upon what he reads; for thus he soon comes to understand that whatever he thinks or feels, says or does, whatever happens within the sphere of his conscious life, may be made the means of self-improvement. "He is not born for glory," says Vauvenargues, "who knows not the worth of time." The educational value of books lies in their power to set the intellectual atmosphere in vibration, thereby rousing the mind to self-activity; and those which have not this power lack vitality.
If in a whole volume we find one passage in which truth is expressed in a noble and striking manner, we have not read in vain. To read with profit, we should read as a serious student reads, with the mind all alive and held to the subject; for reading is thinking, and it is valuable in proportion to the stimulus it gives to the exercise of faculty. The conversation of high and ingenuous minds is doubtless as instructive as it is delightful, but it is seldom in
When the mind at last finds itself rightly at home in its world, it is as delighted as children making escape from restraining walls, as full of spirit as colts newly turned upon the greensward.
In the realm of truth each one is king, and what he knows is as much his own as though he were its first discoverer. However firmly thou holdest to thy opinions, if truth appears on the opposite side, throw down thy arms at once. A book has the power almost of a human being to inspire admiration or disgust, love or hatred. To be useful is a noble thing, to be necessary is not desirable. The youth has not enough ambition unless he has too much. It is difficult to give lessons in the art of pleasing without teaching that of lying. The discouraged are already vanquished. In judging the deed let not the character of the doer influence thy opinion, for good is good, evil evil, by whomsoever done. When the author is rightly inspired his words need not interpretation. They are as natural and as beautiful as the faces of children or as new-blown flowers, and their meaning is plain. The spirit and love of dogmatism is characteristic of the imperfectly educated. As there is a communion of saints, there is a communion of noble minds, living and dead. To speak of love which is not felt, of piety which is not a living sentiment within us, is to weaken both in ourselves and in those who hear us the power of faith and affection. The best that has been known and experienced by minds and hearts lies asleep in books, ready to awaken for whoever holds the magician's wand. Books which at their first appearance create a breeze of excitement, are forgotten when the wind falls.
A human soul rightly uttering itself, in whatever age or country, ceases to belong to any age or country, and becomes part of the universal life of man. A sprightly wit may serve only to lead us astray, and to enmesh us more hopelessly in error. Deeper knowledge is the remedy for the foolishness of sciolism: like cures like. In the books in which men worth knowing have put some of the vital quality which makes them worth knowing, there is perennial inspiration. They are the form and substance of an immortal spirit which, in creating them, became itself. "I have not made my book," says Montaigne, "more than my book has made me."
Were one to ask an acquaintance who knows men to point out the individuals whom he should make his friends, his request would probably receive an unsatisfactory reply: for how, except by trial, is it possible to say who will suit whom? Those whose friendship would be valuable might, for whatever cause, be disagreeable to him, as the greatest and noblest may be unpleasant companions. Many a one whom we admire as he stands forth in history, whose words and deeds thrill and uplift us, we should detest had we known him in life; and others to whom we might have been drawn would have cared nothing for us. Between men and books there is doubtless a wide difference, though a good book contains the best of the life of some true man. But when we are asked to point out the books one should learn to love, we are confronted with much the same difficulty as had we been asked to name the persons whom he should make his friends. A book can have worth for us only when we have learned to love it; and since a real book, like a real man, has its proper character, it is not easy to determine whom it will please or displease. Once it has taken a safe place in literature, it will, of course, be praised by everybody; but this, like the praise of men, is often meaningless. All who read know something about the great books, but their knowledge, unless it leads them to intimate acquaintance with some one or several of these books, has little worth. Books are, indeed, a world which each one must discover for himself. Another may tell us about them, but the truth and beauty there is in them for each one, each one must find. The value of a book, like that of a man, lies not in its freedom from fault, but in its qualities, in the good it contains. Words which inspire the love of spiritual beauty and noble action cannot be false: the consent of the wise places them in the canon. The imperishable goods are truth, freedom, love, and beauty. Valuable alone is that which enriches and ennobles life. There are natures for whom the lack of knowledge is as painful as the lack of food. They are ahungered and athirst for it, and their suffering impels them to ceaseless meditation and study, as the only means of relief.
The self-educator's first and simplest aim should be to learn to know and do well whatever he knows and does; and to this end let him often observe and consider how rare are they who know anything thoroughly or do well any of the hundred things which are part of daily life: who talk well, or write well, or behave well. Herbert Spencer affirms that it is better to learn the meanings of things than the meanings of words; but he loses sight of the fact that the meanings of things become plain only when things are clothed in words, which, in truth, are things, being nothing else than the very form and body of nature as it reveals itself within the mind of man. The world is chiefly a mental fact. From mind it receives the forms of time and space, the principle of causality, color, warmth, and beauty. Were there no mind, there would be no world. The end of man is the pursuit of perfection, through communion with God, his fellows, and nature, by means of knowledge and conduct, of faith, hope, admiration, and love. It is easy to praise work overmuch. Like money, it is a means, not an end, and it is good or evil as it is made to help or harm the worker, for man is an end, not a means. The work which millions are still forced to do is a curse,—the trail of the serpent is over it all, and no people has the right to call itself civilized, while work which dehumanizes is not merely permitted, but encouraged.
Let us not teach the young to believe they are born into a world of delights and pleasures, but let us strive to enable them to realize that, upon this earth, only the wise and good and strong can make themselves really at home; that for the wicked and the weak its very delights and pleasures turn to sorrow and suffering. We pity the hard-driven beast of burden. How then is it possible to look with complacency on a world in which multitudes of human beings are condemned to the work of the ox and the ass? For the healthy man, wealth and happiness would seem to be identical, if his desires are confined to the things of which money is the equivalent. But this is a delusion, for the plenary possession of these things has never satisfied a human being. Man needs virtue, knowledge, love, and to take the obvious view, he needs the power to enjoy the things money buys; and of this money deprives him.
When we consider the many unworthy means men take to gain wealth and office, we are forced to believe that to reach their ends they are ready to profess to hold opinions and beliefs about which they care nothing or which they really do not accept at all. By this following of time-servers and place-hunters every noble cause is weakened and the purest faith is corrupted.
To labor for those we love, to sit in the hours of rest, with wife and children about us, smiling in the blaze of the fire we have lighted,
In the Universe there is nothing which exists separate and apart from other things. The satellites hold to the planets, the planets to the suns, the suns to one another, all in obedience to the same laws which bind the body to earth, and cause the water to flow and the vapor to rise. For the senses there is separateness, but for the mind there is union and unity. Communion is the law of souls as of bodies. Both are immersed in a boundless world, from which if they could be drawn forth they would cease to be. The principle of this infinite harmony is love, is God.
The right human bond is that which unites soul with soul; and only they are truly akin who consciously live in the same world, who think, believe, and love alike, who hope for the same things, aspire to the same ends.
Our mental view never reaches the ultimate nature of being, and hence our knowledge, whether of material or of spiritual things, is incomplete. Faith is the effort to supply the defect which inheres in all our knowing. Knowledge springs from faith, faith from knowledge, as rivers from clouds, clouds from rivers. The more we know, the more we believe; and our growing consciousness does not make us content to rest in a mechanical view of nature, but it brings home to us with increasing power the awfulness of the infinite mystery, which we more and more clearly perceive to be a spiritual rather than a material fact. If at present there is a certain failure of will and consequent discouragement in the pursuit of moral and intellectual perfection, this is a result of our passing bewilderment in the presence of the revelations of science and of the mighty forces it places in the hands of man, and not of any new knowledge which tends to inspire misgivings concerning the being of God and our kinship with Him:—-
From nature up to law, from law to love:
This is the ascendant path in which we move,
Impelled by God in ways that lighten still,
Till all things meet in one eternal thrill.
As the Universe revealed by the Copernican astronomy and the other natural sciences is infinitely more sublime and marvellous than such a world as the Israelites, the Greeks, or the Romans imagined, so they who see rightly in the luminous ether of modern intelligence understand better than the ancients that human life is not an ephemeral and superficial, but an immortal and central power, enrooted in God, and drawing its substance and sustenance from Him.
The appeal to shame is a poor argument. The fact that men of great intellectual power and learning have held an opinion to be true does not make it so. New knowledge may have shown it to be false, or the general advance of the race may have changed the point of view. The presumption of the larger wisdom of the Ancients we cannot accept: for we, not they, are the true ancients. The purest and the holiest prayer men speak is this: "Thy will be done." They who utter it from the inmost soul, find peace, even as a fretful child sinks to rest upon the mother's bosom. In learning to love the will of God they come at last not merely to believe, but to feel that His will guides the Universe, and that all will be well. When an utterance comes forth from the depths of our spiritual being, men cannot but hearken. It is as though we should bring to exiles tidings of a long-lost home and country.
To what a weight he stoops who addresses himself with fixed resolve to the life of thought! The burden indeed is heavy, but the pathway lies through pleasant fields where great souls move to and fro in freedom and at peace. And as he grows accustomed to his labor, the world widens, the heavens break open, the dead live again, and with them he rises into the high regions where the petty cares and passions of mortals do not reach.
He who would educate himself must make use of his own powers. He must observe, think, examine, read, argue, ponder; he must learn when to hold judgment in suspense, and when to give the wings of the soul free sweep through the high and serene realms of truth and beauty. The farther we dwell from the crowd, with its current opinion, the better and truer shall we and our thoughts become. They who write for multitudinous readers rise with difficulty above the dignity of mountebanks.
There is a radical defect in the character of whoever works in the spirit of a trifler, however blameless his conduct. The power to inspire faith in the seriousness and goodness of life is a sufficient test of the worth of a scheme of education.
No one should fill an office which he is unable to hold without hindrance to the play of mind and heart that makes him a man. The dignities we possess at the cost of knowledge and virtue are like jewels for the sake of which one goes hungry and naked; mere glittering baubles for which we barter the soul's prosperity.
Experience is personal, and it is largely incommunicable; but genius—and in this lies its power and charm—renders it communicable. What the poet or the painter has felt and seen, he makes all men feel and see. The difference between man and man, between the child and the youth, the youth and the adult, is chiefly a difference in feeling, in the manner in which they are impressed; and it is our nature to be drawn in admiration or reverence to those who by their words or deeds give us deeper impressions of the worth of life, and thus open for us new sources of feeling.
Fair thoughts rise in the heart and mind of genius, like the fragrant breath which the dewy flowers exhale in the face of the rising sun, and they utter themselves as simply as matin songs warbled by sweet-throated birds.
Faith in the infinite nature and worth of truth, goodness, and love, is the dawn which shall merge into the fulness of day, when, in other worlds, God looks upon the soul, reborn from out this seemingness.
Our position, our reputation, our wealth, our comforts, are but a vesture like the body itself. They shall fall away, and we shall remain with God. There is no liberty but obedience to the impulse of the higher nature which urges us to think nobly, to act rightly, and to love constantly. The dominion of appetite is slavery; the dominion of reason and conscience is freedom.
Renan somewhere says he could wish for nothing better than that a little volume of selections from his writings might commend itself to young women, whose fair faces should bend over it, and find there a reflection of their own pure souls. But where there is no God, the soul is not mirrored, and we never really love an author who weakens faith and hope.
With whatever success we advance towards the wide and serene life of the pure reason, let us still cling to faith, hope, and love, the primal powers which keep watch at our birth, and which bend over our cradles, and which alone lift us into the world of enduring peace and hold us within the sheltering arms of God. In the enlightened mind, faith is a higher virtue than it can be for the ignorant, and to sustain it there is need of a nobler life.
He whom neither
The intellect does not recognize that conscience may forbid its exercise, since knowledge cannot be evil. If earth were a hell and life a curse and the Universe but a cinder, it would still be good to know the fact. The saddest truth is better than the merriest lie.
To know a thing is to be conscious of its relation to the mind. We know it, not in itself, but in and through this relation. Our knowledge of God, who is the absolute, is not absolute knowledge, but a knowledge of Him in so far as He is related to the mind of man. Since, however, mind is reason and not unreason, there is harmony between it and things, between it and God; and hence to be conscious of its relation to God and the universe is to be conscious of a real relation, in which both the thinker and his thought are in truth what they seem to be. The ultimate reality is inferred, not directly perceived. It reveals itself to the purest faith and love, and may be hidden from one who knows all the sciences.
As man's relations to his fellows make him a social and political being, so his relations to the unseen power behind and within the visible world, of whose presence he is always, however dimly, conscious, and to whom he refers whatever touches the senses, as well as the principle of life itself, make him a religious being.
In identifying what seem to be our particular interests with the interests of all, we make escape from narrowness and isolation into the general life of humanity; and when we come to understand that not only mankind but all nature is a Unity in the Consciousness of the Infinite and Eternal, bound together by thought and love, we enter into the glorious liberty of the Sons of God, and feel that nor height nor depth nor things past nor things to come shall separate us from the divine charity. We are akin to all that may become part of our life; and whatever we know or love or admire is spiritualized and made human. To understand the things of the spirit we must have spiritual experience. The intuitions of time and space, as well as the principle of causality, are given in the constitution of the mind. So is the idea of being, of perfection, of beauty, of eternity, of infinity, of duty. To think implies being, to perceive things as existing in time and space implies consciousness of eternity and infinity. To know the imperfect is possible only in the light of the perfect. Subject is itself object, the first known and best understood, and the laws of mind are laws of being. If the constitution of mind makes the revelation of the material world possible only under the forms of time and space, intelligible only as sequence of cause and effect, the reason is to be found in the nature of things. If the constitution of mind postulates one who knows and shapes, in a world in which whatever is, is intelligible, in which there is order, proportion, and purpose, it is because such an One is given in the nature of things, and He is God. However living our faith, it is faith and not knowledge; and should it become knowledge, it would cease to be faith.
There are three kinds of authors,—those who impart knowledge, those who give delight, and those who strengthen and inspire.
A noble thought rightly expressed sweeps the higher nerve centres as the touch of a perfect performer the strings of an instrument; but if the instrument is poor and irresponsive, the appeal is made in vain. Life has the power to propagate itself, and if the words thou utterest are living, they will strike root somewhere and bud and blossom and bear fruit; but if there is no life in them, be content to have them fall and lie amid the dust of the dead. God and the universe are what they are, and the best even genius can do is to throw over them a revealing light. He who feels that he is always in the presence of God will strive as religiously to think only what is true as he will strive to do only what is right. A phrase which leaps forth aglow with life from the heart and brain of genius, not only lives forever, but retains forever the power to awaken, when brought into contact with a brain and heart, the thrill with which it first came into being.
Only a few know and love the poet, but they are young and fair, and the music of high thoughts and pure love is rhythmic with the current of their blood; and if among them there be found some who are old, they are choice spirits who have risen from out the lapses of time into regions where what is true and beautiful is so forever. This little band of chosen ones accompanies him adown the centuries, and listens to the melody which wells in his heart and breaks into songs that shall give delight as long as the air of spring is pleasant and the flowers fragrant and the carollings of birds delightful; and while the poet strolls on the outskirts of time, thus loved and thus attended, the stormy and glittering favorites of the crowd drop from sight and are forgotten, or remembered but as the echo of a name.
A line from Homer, which sounds like a response from our own heart, is clothed with the mystery of diviner power, because it makes us feel that we were alive thousands of years ago amid the Grecian isles, thus revealing to us the unreality of time and space, and the everlasting nature of truth and beauty.
As it is right to admire and love whatever is good wherever it is found, it needs must be the part of wisdom to seek to know and appreciate all that is true and high in the works of genius, though there, like precious stones and metals in the mine, it be mingled with baser matter. It is but narrowness or intellectual pharisaism to turn from a great author because in his life and works there may be things of which we cannot approve. Shall we abandon God because His world is full of evil, or Christ because there is corruption in the church? St. Paul appeals to pagan literature, St. Augustine is the disciple of Plato, St. Thomas Aquinas of Aristotle, and the culture and civilization of Christendom are largely due to influences which are not Christian. Whatever is good is from God. There is no surer mark of the lack of culture than the use of ill-natured and abusive epithets. To feel the need of injurious words to express one's opinion, merely shows that one is angry, and anger is vulgar.
Whatever is inspired by vanity is in bad taste. This is why a showy style is a false style, why fine writing is poor writing. The author yields to the spirit of vainglory, whereas he should be wholly bent upon uttering his thought as he knows it. It is as though he should call our attention to a costly garb when what we want to see is a man.
As a plain face is better than a mask, though fine, so one's own style, though inferior, is better than any which is borrowed.
True books survive without help or let of critics, by virtue of their vital quality, which attracts kindred spirits with irresistible power.
When their worth becomes known, the critics set up a howl of praise, and many buy; but only a few make them their serious study, and learn to know and love them. Truth is the mind's food; and, like that of the body, it is nourishment only when it has been digested and assimilated. It is, after all, but a little while since man began to think. As yet he is learning the alphabet. Take heart then, and apply thy mind. As we grow older the years seem to run to months, the months to weeks, the weeks to days, the days to hours, the hours to moments, until time, like an exhalation, appears to dissolve in the inane, and become the nothing it was and is and will be for eternity.
If thought were given us, like house and clothing, merely for our personal comfort, wisdom would lead us to think with and like all the world. They who are eager for the good opinion of others seem to have but weak faith in their own worth.
The art of pleasing would better deserve our study were there more who are worth pleasing, or were it less
Know thyself was the sum of what Socrates taught, and each of the seven wise men rested his fame upon an apothegm. To expect the multitude to appreciate the best in life or literature, is to expect them to be what they have never been and will probably never be. Would you have an ox admire the sunrise or the pearly dew, when all he feels the need of is grass? Appeal to the many if you will, but if your appeal is for the highest, only the few will hearken.
Consider not what great men or books are worth in themselves, but what they are worth to thee; for thou art able to judge of their value only in so far as thou understandest and lovest them.
If thou canst not bear trouble, sorrow, and disappointment without loss of composure, thou art poorly equipped for life's struggle. If thou mayst not lead the life thou wouldst wish, thou canst at least make the life thou leadest the means to improve thyself. If we were so constituted that thought, feeling, and imagination might have free and healthful play in ever-during darkness and isolation, life would still be good. Could I live surrounded by those I love, I should feel less keenly the discontent which the consciousness of my higher needs creates; and besides, it is not easy to rest in the comforts and luxuries which make and keep us inferior, except in the company of those we love. If our ordinary power of sight were as great as that we gain with the help of the microscope, the world would become for us a place of horrors; and if we could clearly see ourselves as we are, life would be less endurable. God blurs our vision as a mother hides from her child its wound.
Pleasures which quickly end in revulsion of feeling are but momentary escapes from pain; and they alone are fortunate who are able to persevere in pursuits which give them pure delight. "All good," says Kant, "which is not based on the highest moral principle is but empty appearance and splendid misery."
Sensations of color, taste, sound, smell, touch, heat and cold, perceptions of magnitude, and temporal and spatial relations, is the sum of what we know; and yet we are conscious that reason means infinitely more than this, that its proper object is the eternal world of truth, goodness, and beauty. Think for thyself with a single view to truth; for so only will thy thought be of worth and service to others. We feel ourselves only in action, and hence the need of doing lest we lose ourselves and be swallowed in nothingness. And for the old and feeble even worry, I suppose, is a comfort, for it helps to keep this self-consciousness alive. It is impossible to say whence a thought comes, and it is often difficult to determine the occasion by which it has been suggested.
Fortunate are the children all of whose knowledge comes from man and nature in their purity, whose memory holds no words which are not the symbols of what they themselves have seen and felt, in whose minds no will-o'-the-wisp from chimera worlds flits to and fro. It is only by keeping men in ignorance and vice that it is possible to keep them from the contagion of great thoughts. They who have little are thought to have no right to anything. Thus the plagiarized sayings of Napoleon and other nurslings of fame pass for their own; who their real authors were, seeming to be a matter of indifference.
If I am not pleased with myself, but should wish to be other than I am, why should I think highly of the influences which have made me what I am? Should I publish what I believe to be true and well expressed, and competent judges should declare it to be worthless in form and substance, the verdict would be interesting to me, and I should set to work to discover why and how I had so far failed in discernment. "A thoroughly cultivated man," says Fontenelle, "is informed by all the thinkers of the past, as though he had lived and continued to grow in knowledge during all the centuries." The author is rewarded when his readers are made better.
The most persuasive of men are the praisers of patent medicines. Their eloquence is more richly rewarded than that of all the orators, who also are paid, for the most part, in inverse ratio to the amount of truth they utter. Fame, as fame, is the merest vanity. No wise man wishes to be talked and written about, living or dead, to be a theme chiefly for fools.
Literature is writing in which genuine thought and feeling are rightly expressed. They who content themselves with what others have uttered, learn nothing. The blind need a guide, but they who are able to see should look for themselves. There is, indeed, in the words of genius a glow which never dies; but it only dazzles and misleads, if it fails to stimulate and strengthen our own powers of vision. True speech is not idle; it is utterance of life, the mate of action, and the begetter of noble deeds. Strive for knowledge and strength, but do not appear to have them.
"A book," says La Bruyère, "which exalts the mind and inspires high and manly thoughts, is good, and the work of a master." A phrase suffices to tell the man is ignorant or the book worthless. As the body is nourished by dead things, vegetable and animal, so the mind feeds on the thoughts of those who have ceased to live, which, it would seem, are never rightly understood until the thinkers have passed away.
To be unwilling to be proved wrong is to fail in love of truth; to resent an objection is to lack culture. One may believe what cannot be demonstrated, but to grow angry because there is no proof is absurd.
To do deeds and to utter thoughts which long after we have departed shall remain to cheer, to illumine, to strengthen and console, is to be like God; and the desire of noble minds is not of praise, but of abiding power for good.
He who is certain of himself needs not the good opinion of men, not of those even who are competent to judge. Only the vain and foolish or the designing and dishonest will wish to receive credit for more ability and virtue than they have. An exaggerated reputation may nourish conceit or win favor; but the wise and the good put away conceit, and desire not favors which are granted from mistaken notions.
"I hate false words," says Landor, "and seek with care, difficulty, and moroseness those that fit the thing."
Dwell not with complacency upon aught thou hast or hast achieved, but address thyself each day, like a simple-hearted child, to the task God sets thee; and remember when the last hour comes thou canst carry nothing to Him but faith in His mercy and goodness.
CHAPTER II.
TRUTH AND LOVE.
Truth, which only doth judge itself, teacheth that the inquiry of truth, which is the love-making or wooing of it; the knowledge of truth, which is the presence of it; and the belief of truth, which is the enjoying of it, is the sovereign good of human nature.—BACON.
As those who have little think their little much, so those who have few ideas believe with obstinacy that they are the sum of all truth. If the world could but be made to see what they see there would be no ills. They have not even a suspicion of the unutterable complexity of the warp and woof of nature and of life; and when their opinions are combated they imagine they thereby acquire new importance, and they defend them with such zeal that they make proselytes and found sects in religion, politics, and literature. The source of the greater part of error is the absoluteness the mind attributes to its knowledge and, as part of this, the persuasion that at each stage of our mental life, we are capable of seeing things as they are. The aim of the philosopher, as of the Christian, is to
"The brief precept," says St. Augustine, "is given there once for all,—Love, and do what thou wilt. If thou art silent, be silent for love; if thou speakest, speak for love; if thou correctest, correct for love; if thou sparest, spare for love. The root of love is within, and from it only good can come." Life springs from love, and love is its being, aim, and end. Each soul is born of souls yearning that he be born, and he lives only so far as he leaves himself and becomes through love part of the life of God and the race of man.
Primordial matter, with which the physicists start, is twin brother of nothing. In every conceivable hypothesis, we assume either that nothing is the cause of something, or that from the beginning there was something or some one who is all the universe may become. If truth and love and goodness are of the essence of the highest life evolved in nature, they are of the essence of that by which nature exists and energizes. If reason is valid at all, it avails as an immovable foundation for faith in God and in man's kinship with him. The larger the world we live in, the greater the opportunities for self-education. He who knows friends and foes, who is commended and found fault with, who tastes the delights of home and breathes the air of strange lands, who is followed and opposed, who triumphs and suffers defeat, who contends with many and is left alone, who dwells with his own thoughts and in the company of the great minds of all time,—necessarily gains wisdom and power, and learns to feel himself a man.
Science springs from man's yearning for truth; art, from his yearning for beauty; religion, from his yearning for love: and as truth, beauty, and love are a harmony, so are science, art, and religion; and if conflicts arise, they are the results of ignorance and passion. The charm of faith, hope, and love, of knowledge, beauty, and religion, lies in their power to open life's prison, thus permitting the soul to escape to commune with the Infinite and Eternal, with the boundless mysterious world of being which forever draws us on and forever eludes our grasp. The higher the man, the more urgent this need of self-escape.
We look upon lifelong imprisonment of the body as among the greatest of evils, but that the mind should be suffered to languish in the dungeon of ignorance, error, and prejudice, seems comparatively a slight thing. Thy whole business, as a rational being, is to know and follow truth,—with gratitude and joy if possible, but, in any case, with courage and resignation. Mind maketh man; and the most money and place can do, is to make millionnaires and titularies.
The Alpine guides, who lead travellers through the sublimest scenery in the world, are as insensible to its grandeur as the stocks they grasp; and we nearly all are as indifferent as these drudges to Nature's divine spectacle, with its starlit heavens, its risings and settings of sun and moon, its storms and calms, its changes of season, its clouds and snows and breath of many-tinted flowers, its children's faces, and plumage and songs of birds.
As we judge of many things by samples, a glance may suffice to show the worthlessness of a book, but the value of one that is genuine is not quickly perceived, for it reveals itself the more the oftener it is read and pondered. There is not a more certain, a purer, or a more delightful source of contentment and independence than a taste for the best literature. In the midst of occupations and cares of whatever kind it enables us to look forward to the hour when the noblest minds and most generous hearts shall welcome us to their company to be entertained with great thoughts rightly uttered and with information concerning whatever is of interest to man.
In every home the best works of the great poets, historians, philosophers, orators, and story-writers should lie within reach of the young, who should be permitted, not urged, to read them. We may know a man by the company he keeps; we may know him better still by the books he loves: and if he loves none, he is not worth knowing.
Matthew Arnold praises culture for "its inexhaustible indulgence, its consideration of circumstances, its severe judgment of actions joined to its merciful judgment of persons."
When we have learned to love work, to love honest work, work well done, excellently well done, we have within ourselves the most fruitful principle of education.
Who shall speak ill of bodily health and vigor? Herbert Spencer affirms that it is man's first duty to be a good animal. But since we cannot all be athletes or be well even, let us not refuse to find consolation in the fact that much of what is greatest, whether in the world of thought or action, has been wrought by mighty souls in feeble and suffering bodies; and since men gladly risk health and life to acquire gold, shall we not be willing, if need be, to be "sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought," if so we may attain to truth and love?
Great things are accomplished only by concentration. What we ourselves think, love, and do, until it becomes a habit, is the form and substance of our life.
To live in the company of those who have or seek culture is to breathe the vital air of mental health and vigor.
The scientific investigator gives his whole attention to the facts before him; but the discipline of close observation, however favorable it may be to accuracy, weakens capacity for wide and profound views. On the other hand, the speculative thinker is apt to grow heedless or oblivious of facts. Hence a minute observer is seldom a great philosopher, a great philosopher rarely a careful observer.
"Employment," says Ruskin, "is the half, and the primal half of education, for it forms the habits of body and mind, and these are the constitution of man." Tell me at and in what thou workest, and I will tell thee what thou art. The secret of education lies in the words of Christ,—He that hath eyes to see, let him see; he that hath ears to hear, let him hear. The soul must flow through the channels of the senses until it meets the universe and clothes it with the beauty and meaning which reveal God.
When I think of all the truth which still remains for me to learn, of all the good I yet may do, of all the friends I still may serve, of all the beauty I may see, life seems as fresh and fair, as full of promise, as is to loving souls the dawn of their bridal day. Animals, children, savages, the thoughtless and frivolous, live in the present alone; they consequently lead a narrow, ephemeral, and superficial existence. They strike no deep roots into the past, they forebode no divine future, they enter not behind the veil where the soul finds ever-during truth and power.
"The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers."
Whatever sets the mind in motion may lead us to secret worlds, though it be a falling apple, as with Newton, or the swing of the pendulum, as with Galileo, or a boy's kite, as with Franklin, or throwing pebbles into the water, as with Turner. Watt sat musing by the fire, and noticed the rise and fall of the lid of the boiling kettle, and the steam engine, like a vision from unknown spheres, rose before his imagination. A child, carelessly playing with the glasses that lay on the table of a spectacle-maker, gave the clew to the invention of the telescope. The pestle, flying from the hand of Schwarz, told him he had found the explosive which has transformed the world. Drifting plants, of a strange species, whispered to Columbus of a continent that lay across the Atlantic. Patient observation and work are the mightiest conquerors.
Among
Forever to be blessed and cherished is the love-inspired mother or the teacher whose generous heart and luminous mind first leads us to believe in the priceless worth of wisdom and virtue, thus kindling within the soul a quenchless fire which warms and irradiates our whole being.
To be God's workman, to strive, to endure, to labor, even to the end, for truth and righteousness, this is life.
"My desire," says Dante, "and my will rolled onward, like a wheel in even motion, swayed by the love which moves the sun and all the stars."
If there are any who shrink from wrong more than from disgrace they best deserve to be called religious.
Strive not to be original or profound, but to think justly and to express clearly what thou seest; and so it may happen that thy view shall pierce deeper than thou knowest.
The words and deeds which are most certain to escape oblivion are those which nourish the higher life of the soul. Self-love, the love of one's real self, of one's soul, is the indispensable virtue. It is this we seek when we strive to know and love truth and justice; it is this we seek, when we love God and our fellow-men. In turning from ourselves to find them, we still seek ourselves; in abandoning life we seek richer and fuller life.
Truth separate from love is but half truth. Think of that which unites thee with thy fellows rather than of what divides thee from them. Religion is the bond of love, and not a subject for a debating club. If thou wouldst refute thy adversaries, commit the task to thy life more than to thy words. Read the history of controversy and ask thyself whether there is in it the spirit of Christ, the meek and lowly One? Its champions belong to the schools of the sophists rather than to the worshippers of God in spirit and in truth. And what has been the issue of all their disputes but hatreds and sects, persecutions and wars? If it is my duty to be polite and helpful to my neighbor, it is plainly also my duty to treat his opinions and beliefs with consideration and fairness.
There is a place in South America where the whole population have the goitre, and if a stranger who is free from the deformity chances to pass among them, they jeer and cry, "There goes one who has no goitre." What could be more delightfully human? We think it a holy thing to put down duelling, the battle of one with one; but we are full of enthusiasm over battles of a hundred thousand with a hundred thousand. Thus the Southern slave-owners were sworn advocates of the rights of man and of popular liberty.
The explanation of many provoking things is to be found in Dr. Johnson's words,—"Ignorance, simple ignorance;" but of many more probably in these other words,—Greed, simple greed.
"In science," says Bulwer, "read by preference the newest books; in literature, the oldest." This is wiser than Emerson's saying: "Never read a book which is not a year old."
The facility with which it is now possible to get at whatever is known on any subject has a tendency to create the opinion that reading up in this or that direction is education, whereas such reading as is generally done, is unfavorable to discipline of mind. Shall our Chautauquas and summer schools help to foster this superstition?
What passion can be more innocent than the passion for knowledge? And what passion gives better promise of blessings to one's self and to one's fellow-men? Why desire to have force and numbers on thy side? Is it not enough that thou hast truth and justice?
The loss of the good opinion of one's friends is to be regretted, but the loss of self-respect is the only true beggary.
Zeal for a party or a sect is more certain of earthly reward than zeal for truth and religion.
As it is unfortunate for the young to have abundance of money, fine clothes, and social success, so popularity is hurtful to the prosperity of the best gifts. It draws the mind away from the silence and strength of eternal truth and love into a world of clamor and noise. Patience is the student's great virtue; it is the mark of the best quality of mind. It takes an eternity to unfold a universe; man is the sum of the achievements of innumerable ages, and whatever endures is slow in acquiring the virtues which make for permanence.
The will to know, manifesting itself in persistent impulse, in never-satisfied yearning, is the power which urges to mental effort and enables us to attain culture.
"If a thing is good," says Landor, "it may be repeated. The repetition shows no want of invention; it shows only what is uppermost in the mind, and by what the writer is most agitated and inflamed." What hast thou learned to admire, to long for, to love, genuinely to hope for and believe? The answer tells thy worth and that of the education thou hast received.
When we have said a thousand things in praise of education, we must, at last, come back to the fundamental fact that nearly everything depends on the kind of people of whom we are descended, and on the kind of family in which our young years have passed. Nearly everything, but not everything; and it is this little which makes liberty possible, which inspires hope and courage, which, like the indefinable something that gives the work of genius its worth and stamp, makes us children of God and masters of ourselves. "Wisdom is the principal thing," says Solomon; "therefore get wisdom, and with all thy getting, get understanding."
He who makes himself the best man is the most successful one, while he who gains most money or notoriety may fail utterly as man.
With the advance of civilization our wants increase; and yet it is the business of religion and culture to raise us above the things money buys, and consequently to diminish our wants. They who are nearest to God have fewest wants; and they who know and follow truth need not place or title or wealth.
To every one the tempter comes, with a thousand pretexts drawn both from the intellect and the emotional nature, promising to lull conscience to sleep that he may lead the lower life in peace; but he who hearkens becomes a victim as helpless and as wretched as the victims of alcohol and opium.
In deliberate persevering action for high ends, all the subconscious forces within us, the many currents, which, like hidden water-veins, go to make our being, are taken up and turned in a deep-flowing stream into the ocean of our life. In such course of conduct the baser self is swallowed, and we learn to feel that we are part of the divine energy which moves the universe to finer issues. As life is only by moments and in narrow space, a little thing may disturb us and a little thing may take away the cause of our trouble. We are petty beings in a world of petty concerns. A little food, a little sleep, a little joy is enough to make us happy. A word can fill us with dismay, a breath can blow out the flickering flame of our self-consciousness. I often ride among graves, and think how easy it is for the fretful children of men to grow quiet. There they lie, having become weary of their toys and plays, on the breast of the great mother from whom they sprang, about whose face they frolicked and fought and cried for a day, and then fell back into her all-receiving arms, as raindrops fall into the water and mingle with it and are lost. No sight is so pathetic as that of a vast throng seeking to enjoy themselves. The
They who in good faith inflicted the tortures of the Inquisition were led not by the light of reason, or that which springs from the contemplation of the life of Christ, but by the notion that the rack and fagot are instruments of mercy, if employed to save men from eternal torments; and tyrants, who are always cruel, gave encouragement and aid to the victims of fanaticism. Why should the sorrow or the sin or the loss of any human being give me pleasure? Is it not always the same story? In the fall of one we all are degraded, since, whoever fails, it is our common nature which suffers hurt.
Whether or not we have come forth from a merely animal condition, let us thank God we are human, and bend all our energies to remove the race farther and farther from the life over which thought and love and conscience have no dominion.
In the presence of the mighty machine, whose wheels and arms are everywhere, whose power is drawn from the exhaustless oceans and the boundless heavens, the importance of the individual dwindles and seems threatened with extinction. At such a time it is good to know that a right human soul is greater than a universe of machinery.
We feel that we are higher than all the suns and planets, because we know and love, and they do not; but when, in the light of this superiority, we turn to the thought of our own littleness, being scarcely more than nothing, such trouble rises in the soul that we throw ourselves upon God to escape doubt of the reality of life. If we believe that man is what he eats, his education is simply a question of alimentation; but if we hold that he is what he knows, and loves, and yearns, and strives for, his education is a problem of soul-nutrition.
The child is made educable by its faith in the father and mother, which is nothing else than faith in their truth and love; and the educableness of the man is in proportion to his faith in the sovereign and infinite nature of truth and love, which is faith in God.
It is in youth that we are most susceptible of education, because it is the privilege of youth to be free from tyrannic cares, and to be sensitive to the charm of noble and disinterested passions. If we show the young soul the way to higher worlds, he will not ask us to strew it with flowers, or pave it with gold, but he will be content to walk with bruised feet along mountain wastes, if at the summit is illumination and joy and peace.
As in religion many are called but few chosen, as in the race for wealth and place many start but few win the prize, so in the pursuit of intellectual and moral excellence, of the few who begin, the most soon weary, while of the remnant, many grow infirm in purpose or in body before the goal is reached.
Time and space, which hold all things, separate all things; but religion and culture bind them into unity through faith in God and through knowledge, thus forming a communion of holy souls and noble minds, for whom discord and division disappear in the harmony of the divine order in which temporal and spatial conditions of separateness yield to the eternal presence of truth and love. New ideas seem at first to remain upon the surface of the soul, and generations sometimes pass before they enter into its substance and become motives of conduct; and, in the same way, sentiments may influence conduct, when the notions from which they sprang have long been rejected. The old truth must renew itself as the race renews itself; it must be re-interpreted and re-applied to the life of each individual and of each generation, if its liberating and regenerating power is to have free scope. Reason and conscience are God's most precious gifts; and what does He ask but that we make use of them?
Right thinking, like right doing, is the result of innumerable efforts, innumerable failures, the final outcome of which is a habit of right thought and conduct.
Whoever believes in truth, freedom, and love, and follows after them with his whole heart, walks in God's highway, which leads to peace and blessedness.
A thing may be obscure from defect of light or defect of sight; and in the same way an author may be found dull either because he is so, or because his readers are dull. The noblest book even is but dead matter until a mind akin to its creator's awakens it to life again.
The appeal to the imagination has infinitely more charm than the appeal to the senses.
"But when evening falls," says Machiavelli, "I go home and enter my study. On the threshold I lay aside my country garments, soiled with mire, and array myself in courtly garb. Thus attired, I make my entrance into the ancient courts of the men of old, where they receive me with love, and where I feed upon that food which only is my own, and for which I was born. For four hours' space I feel no annoyance, forget all care; poverty cannot frighten nor death appall me." A man of genius works for all, for he compels all to think. An enlightened mind and a generous heart make the world good and fair.
Where there is perfect confidence, conversation does not drag; while for those who love it is enough that they be together: if they are silent, it is well; if they speak, mere nothings suffice.
The world of knowledge, all that men know, is, in truth, little and simple enough. It seems vast and intricate because we are imperfectly educated.
The soul, like the body, has its atmosphere, out of which it cannot live.
When opinions take the place of convictions, ideas that of beliefs, great characters become rare.
The pith of virtue lies not in thinking, but in doing. A real man strives to assert himself; for whether he seeks wealth, or power, or fame, or truth, or virtue, or the good of his fellows, he knows that he can succeed only through self-assertion, through the prevalence of his own thought and life.
They who abdicate the rights God gives the individual, seek in vain to preserve by constitutional enactments a semblance of liberty.
If it is human to hate whom we have injured, it is not less so to despise whom we have deceived; and yet those who are easily deceived are the most innocent or the most high-minded and generous. It seems hardly a human and must therefore be a divine thing, to live and deal with men without in any way giving them trouble and annoyance. Truth loves not contention, and when men fight for it, it vanishes in the noise and smoke of the combat.
The controversies of the schools, whether of philosophy, theology, literature, or natural science, have been among the saddest exhibitions of ineptitude. Is it conceivable that a thinker, or a believer, or a scholar, or an investigator should wrangle in the spirit of a pothouse politician? The more certain we are of ourselves and of the truth of what we hold, the easier it is for us to be patient and tolerant.
Wicked is whoever finds pleasure in another's pain. We can know more than we can love. Hence communion with the world is wider through the mind than through the heart, though less
The wise man never utters words of scorn,
For he best knows such words are devil-born.
Our opponents are as necessary to us as our friends, and when those who have nobly combated us die, they seem to take with them part of our mental vigor; they leave us with a deeper sense of the illusiveness of life. Freedom is found only where honest criticism of men and measures is recognized as a common right.
As one man's meat is another's poison, so in the world of intelligible things what refreshes and invigorates one, may weary and depress another. What delights the child makes no impression upon the man. Men and women, the ignorant and the learned, philosophers and poets, mothers and maidens, doers and dreamers, find their entertainment largely in different worlds. Napoleon despised the idealogue; the idealogue sees in him but a conscienceless force.
Outcries against wrong have little efficacy. They alone improve men who inspire them with new confidence, new courage, who help them to renew and purify the inner sources of life. Harsh zeal provokes excess, because it provokes contradiction. Whoever stirs the soul to new depths, whoever awakens the mind to new thoughts and aspirations, is a benefactor. The common man sees the fruits of his toil; the seed which divine men sow, ripens for others. The counsels worldlings give to genius can only mislead. Not only the truth which Christ taught, but the truth which nearly all sublime thinkers have taught, has seemed to the generation to which it was announced but a beggarly lie. The powerful have sneered with Pilate, while the mob have done the teachers to death.
Make truth thy garb, thy house, wherein thou movest and dwellest, and art comfortable and at home.
If thou knowest what thou knowest and believest what thou believest, thou canst not be disturbed by contradiction, but shalt feel that thy opposers are appointed by God to confirm thee in truth.
As the merchant keeps journal and ledger, so should he whose wealth is truth, take account in writing of the thoughts he gains from observation, reflection, reading, and intercourse with men. We become perfectly conscious of our impressions only in giving expression to them; hence ability to express what we feel and know is one of the chief and most important aims and ends of education.
What thou mayst not learn without employing spies, or listening to the stories of the malignant or the gossip of the vulgar, be content not to know.
Our miseries spring from idleness and sin; and idleness is sin and the mother of sin. "To confide in one's self and become something of worth," says Michelangelo, "is the best and safest course." Life-weariness, when it is not the result of long suffering, comes of lack of love, for to love any human being in a true and noble way makes life good. Whatever mistakes thou mayst have made in the choice of a profession and in other things, it is still possible for thee to will and do good, to know truth, and to love beauty, and this is the best life can give. Think of living, and thou shalt find no time to repine.
The character of the believer determines the character of his faith, whatever the formulas by which it is expressed. What we are is the chief constituent of the world in which we now live, and this must be true also of the world in which we believe and for which we hope. For the sensualist a spiritual heaven has neither significance nor attractiveness. The highest truth the noblest see has no meaning for the multitude, or but a distorted meaning. What is divinest in the teaching of Christ, only one in thousands, now after the lapse of centuries, rightly understands and appreciates. It is not so much the things we believe, know, and do, as the things on which we lay the chief stress of hope and desire, that shape our course and decide our destiny.
They alone receive the higher gifts, who, to obtain them, renounce the lower pleasures and rewards of life. Those races are noblest, those individuals are noblest, who care most for the past and the future, whose thoughts and hopes are least confined to the world of sense which from moment to moment ceaselessly urges its claims to attention. Desire fanned by imagination, when it turns to sensual things, makes men brutish; but when its object is intellectual and moral, it lifts them to worlds of pure and enduring delight.
When we would form an estimate of a man, we consider not what he knows, believes, and does, but what kind of being his knowledge, faith, and works have made of him. He who makes us learn more than he teaches has genius. Whoever has freed himself from envy and bitterness may begin to try to see things as they are.
Each one is the outcome of millions of causes, which, so far as he can see, are accidental. How ridiculous then to complain that if this or that only had not
Books, to be interesting to the many, must abound in narrative, must run on like chattering girls, and make little demand upon attention. The appeal to thought is like a beggar's appeal for alms,—heeded by one only in hundreds who pass; for, to the multitude, mental effort is as disagreeable as parting with their money.