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+Project Gutenberg's Education and the Higher Life, by J. L. Spalding
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Education and the Higher Life
+
+Author: J. L. Spalding
+
+Release Date: April 12, 2007 [EBook #21045]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EDUCATION AND THE HIGHER LIFE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Sigal Alon, Marcia, Fox in the Stars and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+EDUCATION AND THE HIGHER LIFE
+
+
+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.
+
+THOUGHTS AND THEORIES OF LIFE AND EDUCATION. 12mo. $1.00.
+
+OPPORTUNITY AND OTHER ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES. 12mo. $1.00.
+
+SONGS: CHIEFLY FROM THE GERMAN. 16mo, gilt top. $1.25.
+
+A. C. McCLURG & CO.
+
+CHICAGO.
+
+
+
+EDUCATION
+AND
+THE HIGHER LIFE
+
+BY
+
+J. L. Spalding
+
+Bishop of Peoria
+
+
+    The business of education is not, as I think, to perfect the learner
+    in any of the sciences, but to give his mind that freedom and
+    disposition, and those habits, which may enable him to attain every
+    part of knowledge himself.--LOCKE
+
+
+SIXTH EDITION
+
+CHICAGO
+
+A. C. McCLURG & CO.
+
+1900
+
+_Copyright_,
+
+BY A. C. MCCLURG AND CO.,
+
+A. D. 1890.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+      CHAPTER                                  PAGE
+
+   I. IDEALS                                          7
+
+  II. EXERCISE OF MIND                               30
+
+ III. THE LOVE OF EXCELLENCE                         51
+
+  IV. CULTURE AND THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE              73
+
+   V. SELF-CULTURE                                   92
+
+  VI. GROWTH AND DUTY                               117
+
+ VII. RIGHT HUMAN LIFE                              144
+
+VIII. UNIVERSITY EDUCATION                          172
+
+
+
+
+EDUCATION
+AND
+THE HIGHER LIFE.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+IDEALS.
+
+
+                                A noble aim,
+    Faithfully kept, is as a noble deed.
+
+WORDSWORTH.
+
+
+To few men does life bring a brighter day than that which places the
+crown upon their scholastic labors, and bids them go forth from the
+halls of the Alma Mater to the great world's battlefield. There is a
+freshness in these early triumphs which, like the bloom and fragrance of
+the flower, is quickly lost, never to be found again even by those for
+whom Fortune reserves her most choice gifts. Fame, though hymned by
+myriad tongues, is not so sweet as the delight we drink from the
+tear-dimmed eyes of our mothers and sisters, in the sacred hours when we
+can yet claim as our own the love of higher things, the faith and hope
+which make this mortal life immortal, and fill a moment with a wealth of
+memories which lasts through years. The highest joy is serious, and in
+the midst of supreme delight there comes to the soul a stillness which
+permits it to rise to the serene sphere where truth is most gladly heard
+and most easily perceived; and in such exaltation, the young see that
+life is not what they take it to be. They think it long; it is short.
+They think it happy; it is full of cares and sorrows. This two-fold
+illusion widens the horizon of life and tinges it with gold. It gives to
+youth its charm and makes of it a blessed time to which we ever turn
+regretful eyes. But I am wrong to call illusion that which in truth is
+but an omen of the divine possibilities of man's nature. To the young,
+life is not mean or short, because the blessed freedom of youth may make
+it noble and immortal. The young stand upon the threshold of the world.
+Of the many careers which are open to human activity, they will choose
+one; and their fortunes will be various, even though their merits should
+be equal. But if position, fame, and wealth are often denied to the most
+persistent efforts and the best ability, it is consoling to know they
+are not the highest; and as they are not the end of life, they should
+not be made its aim. An aim, nevertheless, we must have, if we hope to
+live to good purpose. All men, in fact, whether or not they know it,
+have an ideal, base or lofty, which molds character and shapes destiny.
+Whether it be pleasure or gain or renown or knowledge, or several of
+these, or something else, we all associate life with some end, or ends,
+the attainment of which seems to us most desirable.
+
+This ideal, that which in our inmost souls we love and desire, which we
+lay to heart and live by, is at once the truest expression of our nature
+and the most potent agency in developing its powers. Now, in youth we
+form the ideals which we labor to body forth in our lives. What in these
+growing days we yearn for with all our being, is heaped upon us in old
+age. All important, therefore, is the choice of an ideal; for this more
+than rules or precepts will determine what we are to become. The love of
+the best is twin-born with the soul. What is the best? What is the
+worthiest life-aim? It must be something which is within the reach of
+every one, as Nature's best gifts--air and sunshine and water--belong to
+all. What only the few can attain, cannot be life's real end or the
+highest good. The best is not far removed from any one of us, but is
+alike near to the poor and the rich, to the learned and the ignorant, to
+the shepherd and the king, and only the best can give to the soul
+repose and contentment. What then is the true life-ideal? Recalling to
+mind the thoughts and theories of many men, I can find nothing better
+than this, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God." "Love not pleasure," says
+Carlyle, "love God. This is the everlasting Yea, wherein all
+contradiction is solved; wherein whoso walks and works, it is well with
+him."
+
+To the high and aspiring heart of youth, fame, honor, glory, appeal with
+such irresistible power, and appear clad in forms so beautiful, that at
+a time of life when all of us are unreal in our sentiments and crude in
+our opinions, they are often mistaken for the best. But fame is good
+only in so far as it gives power for good. For the rest, it is nominal.
+They who have deserved it care not for it. A great soul is above all
+praise and dispraise of men, which are ever given ignorantly and without
+fine discernment. The popular breath, even when winnowed by the winds of
+centuries, is hardly pure.
+
+And then fame cannot be the good of which I speak, for only a very few
+can even hope for it. To nearly all, the gifts which make it possible
+are denied; and to others, the opportunities. Many, indeed, love and win
+notoriety, but such as they need not detain us here. A lower race of
+youth, in whom the blood is warmer than the soul, think pleasure life's
+best gift, and are content to let occasion die, while they revel in the
+elysium of the senses. But to make pleasure an end is to thwart one's
+purpose, for joy is good only when it comes unbidden. The pleasure we
+seek begins already to pall. It is good, indeed, if it come as
+refreshment to the weary, solace to the heavy-hearted, and rest to the
+careworn; but if sought for its own sake, it is "the honey of poison
+flowers and all the measureless ill." Only the young, or the depraved,
+can believe that to live for pleasure is not to be foreordained to
+misery. Whoso loves God or freedom or growth of mind or strength of
+heart, feels that pleasure is his foe.
+
+
+    "A king of feasts and flowers, and wine and revel,
+    And love and mirth, was never King of glory."
+
+
+Of money, as the end or ideal of life, it should not be necessary to
+speak. As a fine contempt for life, a willingness to throw it away in
+defence of any just cause or noble opinion, is one of the privileges of
+youth, so the generous heart of the young holds cheap the material
+comforts which money procures. To be young is to be free, to be able to
+live anywhere on land or sea, in the midst of deserts or among strange
+people; is to be able to fit the mind and body to all circumstance, and
+to rise almost above Nature's iron law. He who is impelled by this high
+and heavenly spirit will dream of flying and not of hobbling through
+life on golden crutches. Let the feeble and the old put their trust in
+money; but where there is strength and youth, the soul should be our
+guide.
+
+And yet the very law and movement of our whole social life seem to point
+to riches as the chief good.
+
+
+    "What is that which I should turn to, lighting upon days like these?
+    Every door is barred with gold, and opens but to golden keys."
+
+
+Money is the god in whom we put our trust, to whom instinctively we pay
+homage. We believe that the rich are fortunate, are happy, that the best
+of life has been given to them. We have faith in the power of money, in
+its sovereign efficacy to save us not only from beggary, from sneers and
+insults, but we believe that it can transform us, and take away the
+poverty of mind, the narrowness of heart, the dullness of imagination,
+which make us weak, hard, and common. Even our hatred of the rich is but
+another form of the worship of money. The poor think they are wretched,
+because they think money the chief good; and if they are right, then is
+it a holy work to strive to overthrow society as it is now constituted.
+Buckle and Strauss find fault with the Christian religion because it
+does not inculcate the love of money. But in this, faith and reason are
+in harmony. Wealth is not the best, and to make it the end of life is
+idolatry, and as Saint Paul declares, the root of evil. Man is more than
+money, as the workman is more than his tools. The soul craves quite
+other nourishment than that which the whole material universe can
+supply. Man's chief good lies in the infinite world of thought and
+righteousness. Fame and wealth and pleasure are good when they are born
+of high thinking and right living, when they lead to purer faith and
+love; but if they are sought as ends and loved for themselves, they
+blight and corrupt. The value of culture is great, and the ideal it
+presents points in the right direction in bidding us build up the being
+which we are. But since man is not the highest, he may not rest in
+himself, and culture therefore is a means rather than an end. If we make
+it the chief aim of life, it degenerates into a principle of exclusion,
+destroys sympathy, and terminates in a sort of self-worship.
+
+What remains, then, but the ideal which I have proposed?--"Seek ye first
+the Kingdom of God." Unless the light of Heaven fall along our way,
+thick darkness gathers about us, and in the end, whatever our success
+may have been, we fail, and are without God and without hope. So long
+as any seriousness is left, religion is man's first and deepest concern;
+to be indifferent is to be dull or depraved, and doubt is disease.
+Difficulties assuredly there are, underlying not only faith, but all
+systems of knowledge. How am I certain that I know anything? is a
+question, debated in all past time, debatable in all future time; but we
+are none the less certain that we know. The mind is governed by laws
+which neither science nor philosophy can change, and while theories and
+systems rise and pass away, the eternal problems present themselves ever
+anew clothed in the eternal mystery. But little discernment is needed to
+enable us to perceive how poor and symbolic are the thoughts of the
+multitude. Half in pity, half in contempt, we rise to higher regions
+only to discover that wherever we may be there also are the laws and the
+limitations of our being; and that in whatsoever sanctuaries we may take
+refuge, we are still of the crowd. We cannot grasp the Infinite;
+language cannot express even what we know of the Divine Being, and hence
+there remains a background of darkness, where it is possible to adore,
+or to mock. But religion dispels more mystery than it involves. With it,
+there is twilight in the world; without it, night. We are in the world
+to act, not to doubt. Leaving quibbles to those who can find no better
+use for life, the wise, with firm faith in God and man, strive to make
+themselves worthy to do brave and righteous work. Distrust is the last
+wisdom a great heart learns; and noble natures feel that the generous
+view is, in the end, the true view. For them life means good; they find
+strength and joy in this wholesome and cheerful faith, and if they are
+in error, it can never be known, for if death end all, with it knowledge
+ceases. Perceiving this, they strive to gain spiritual insight, they
+look to God; toward him they turn the current of their thought and love;
+the unseen world of truth and beauty becomes their home; and while
+matter flows on and breaks and remakes itself to break again, they dwell
+in the presence of the Eternal, and become co-workers with the Infinite
+Power which makes goodness good, and justice right. They love knowledge,
+because God knows all things; they love beauty, because he is its
+source; they love the soul, because it brings man into conscious
+communion with him and his universe. If their ideal is poetical, they
+catch in the finer spirit of truth which the poet breathes, the
+fragrance of the breath of God; if it is scientific, they discover in
+the laws of Nature the harmony of his attributes; if it is political and
+social, they trace the principles of justice and liberty to him; if it
+is philanthropic, they understand that love which is the basis, aim,
+and end of life is also God.
+
+The root of their being is in him, and the illusory world of the senses
+cannot dim their vision of the real world which is eternal. By
+self-analysis the mind is sublimated until it becomes a shadow in a
+shadowy universe; and the criticism of the reason drives us to doubt and
+inaction, from which we are redeemed by our necessary faith in our own
+freedom, in our power to act, and in the duty of acting in obedience to
+higher law. Knowledge comes of doing. Never to act is never to know. The
+world of which we are conscious is the world against which we throw
+ourselves by the power of the will; hence life is chiefly conduct, and
+its ideal is not merely religious, but moral. The duty of obedience to
+our better self determines the purpose and end of action, for the better
+self is under the impulse of God. Whether we look without or within, we
+find things are as they should not be; and there awakens the desire,
+nay, the demand that they be made other and better. The actual is a
+mockery unless it may be looked upon as the means of a higher state. If
+all things come forth only to perish and again come forth as they were
+before; if life is a monster which destroys itself that it may again be
+born, again to destroy itself,--were it not better that the tragedy
+should cease? For many centuries men have been struggling for richer and
+happier life; and yet when we behold the sins, the miseries, the wrongs,
+the sorrows, of which the world is full, we are tempted to think that
+progress means failure. The multitude are still condemned to toil from
+youth to age to provide the food by which life is kept in the body;
+immortal spirits are still driven by hard necessity to fix their
+thoughts upon matter from which they with much labor dig forth what
+nourishes the animal. Like the savage, we still tremble before the
+pitiless might of Nature. Floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, untimely
+frosts, destroy in a moment what with long and painful effort has been
+provided. Pestilence still stalks through the earth to slay and make
+desolate. Each day a hundred thousand human beings die; and how many of
+these perish as the victims of sins of ignorance, of selfishness, of
+sensuality.
+
+To-day, as of old, it would seem man's worst enemy is man. What hordes
+still wander through Asia and Africa, seeking opportunity for murder and
+rapine; what multitudes are still hunted like beasts, caught and sold
+into slavery. In Europe millions of men stand, arms in hand, waiting for
+the slaughter. They still believe, because they were born on different
+sides of a river and speak different languages, that they are natural
+enemies, made to destroy one another. And in our own country, what other
+sufferings and wrongs,--greed, sensuality, injustice, deceit,--make us
+enemies one of another! There is a general struggle in which each one
+strives to get the most, heedless of the misery of others. We trade upon
+the weaknesses, the vices, and the follies of our fellow-men; and every
+attempt at reform is met by an army of upholders of abuse. When we
+consider the murders, the suicides, the divorces, the adulteries, the
+prostitutions, the brawls, the drunkenness, the dishonesties, the
+political and official corruptions, of which our life is full, it is
+difficult to have complacent thoughts of ourselves. Consider, too, our
+prisons, our insane asylums, our poor-houses; the multitudes of old men
+and women, who having worn out strength and health in toil which barely
+gave them food and raiment, are thrust aside, no longer now fit to be
+bought and sold; the countless young people, who have, as we say, been
+educated, but who have not been taught the principles and habits which
+lead to honorable living; the thousands in our great cities who are
+driven into surroundings which pervert and undermine character. And
+worse still, the good, instead of uniting to labor for a better state
+of things, misunderstand and thwart one another. They divide into
+parties, are jealous and contentious, and waste their time and exhaust
+their strength in foolish and futile controversies. They are not anxious
+that good be done, nor asking nor caring by whom; but they seek credit
+for themselves, and while they seem to be laboring for the general
+welfare, are striving rather to satisfy their own selfish vanity.
+
+But the knowledge of all this does not discourage him who, guided by the
+light of true ideals, labors to make reason and the will of God prevail.
+If things are bad he knows they have been worse. Never before have the
+faith and culture which make us human, which make us strong and wise,
+been the possession of so large a portion of the race. Religion and
+civilization have diffused themselves, from little centres--from Athens
+and Jerusalem and Rome--until people after people, whole continents,
+have been brought under their influence. And in our day this diffusion
+is so rapid that it spreads farther in a decade than formerly in
+centuries. For ages, mountains and rivers and oceans were barriers
+behind which tribes and nations entrenched themselves against the human
+foe. But we have tunneled the mountains; we have bridged the rivers; we
+have tamed the oceans. We hitch steam and electricity to our wagons,
+and in a few days make the circuit of the globe. All lands, all seas,
+are open to us. The race is getting acquainted with itself. We make a
+comparative study of all literatures, of all religions, of all
+philosophies, of all political systems. We find some soul of goodness in
+whatever struggles and yearnings have tried man's heart. As the products
+of every clime are carried everywhere, like gifts from other worlds, so
+the highest science and the purest religion are communicated and taught
+throughout the earth: and as a result, national prejudices and
+antagonisms are beginning to disappear; wars are becoming less frequent
+and less cruel; established wrongs are yielding to the pressure of
+opinion; privileged classes are losing their hold upon the imagination;
+and opportunity offers itself to ever-increasing numbers.
+
+Now, in all this, what do we perceive but the purpose of God, urging
+mankind to wider and nobler life? History is his many-chambered school.
+Here he has taught this lesson, and there another, still leading his
+children out of the darkness of sin and ignorance toward the light of
+righteousness and love, until his kingdom come, until his will be done
+on earth as it is in heaven. To believe in God and in this divine
+education, and to make co-operation with his providential guidance of
+the race a life-aim is to have an ideal which is not only the highest,
+but which also blends all other true ideals into harmony. And the lovers
+of culture should be the first to perceive that intellectual good is
+empty, illusory, unless there be added to it the good of the heart, the
+good of conscience. To live for the cultivation of one's mind, is, after
+all, to live for one's self, and therefore out of harmony with the
+eternal law which makes it impossible for us to find ourselves except in
+what is not ourselves. "It is the capital fault of all cultivated men,"
+says Goethe, "that they devote their whole energies to the carrying out
+of a mere idea, and seldom or never to the realization of practical
+good." Whatever may be said in praise of culture, of its power to make
+its possessor at home in the world of the best thought, the purest
+sentiment, the highest achievements of the race; of the freedom, the
+mildness, the reasonableness of the temper it begets; of its aim at
+completeness and perfection,--it is nevertheless true, that if it be
+sought apart from faith in God and devotion to man, its tendency is to
+produce an artificial and unsympathetic character. The primal impulse of
+our nature is to action; and unless we can make our thought a kind of
+deed, it seems to be vain and unreal; and unless the harmonious
+development of all the endowments which make the beauty and dignity of
+human life, give us new strength and will to work with God for the good
+of men, sadness and a sense of failure fall upon us. To have a
+cultivated mind, to be able to see things on many sides, to have wide
+sympathy and the power of generous appreciation,--is most desirable, and
+without something of all this, not only is our life narrow and
+uninteresting, but our energy is turned in wrong directions, and our
+very religion is in danger of losing its catholicity.
+
+Culture, then, is necessary. We need it as a corrective of the tendency
+to seek the good of life in what is external, as a means of helping us
+to overcome our vulgar self-complacency, our satisfaction with low aims
+and cheap accomplishments, our belief in the sovereign potency of
+machines and measures. We need it to make our lives less unlovely, less
+hard, less material; to help us to understand the idolatry of the
+worship of steam and electricity, the utter insufficiency of the ideals
+of industrialism. But if culture is to become a mighty transforming
+influence it must be wedded to religious faith, without which, while it
+widens the intellectual view, it weakens the will to act. To take us out
+of ourselves and to urge us on to labor with God that we may leave the
+world better because we have lived, religion alone has power. It gives
+new vigor to the cultivated mind; it takes away the exclusive and
+fastidious temper which a purely intellectual habit tends to produce; it
+enlarges sympathy; it teaches reverence; it nourishes faith, inspires
+hope, exalts the imagination, and keeps alive the fire of love. To lead
+a noble, a beautiful, and a useful life, we should accept and follow the
+ideals both of religion and of culture. In the midst of the
+transformations of many kinds which are taking place in the civilized
+world, neither the uneducated nor the irreligious mind can be of help.
+Large and tolerant views are necessary; but not less so is the
+enthusiasm, the earnestness, the charity of Christian faith. They who
+are to be leaders in the great movements upon which we have entered,
+must both know and believe. They must understand the age, must
+sympathize with whatever is true and beneficent in its aspirations, must
+hail with thankfulness whatever help science, and art, and culture can
+bring; but they must also know and feel that man is of the race of God,
+and that his real and true life is in the unseen, infinite, and eternal
+world of thought and love, with which the actual world of the senses
+must be brought into ever-increasing harmony. Liberty and equality are
+good, wealth is good, and with them we can do much, but not all that
+needs to be done. The spirit of Christ is not merely the spirit of
+liberty and equality; it is more essentially the spirit of love, of
+sympathy, of goodness; and this spirit must breathe upon our social life
+until it becomes as different from what it is as is fragrant spring from
+cheerless winter. Sympathy must become universal; not merely as a
+sentiment prompting to deeds of helpfulness and mercy, but as the
+informing principle of society until it attains such perfectness that
+whatever is loss or gain for one, shall be felt as loss or gain for all.
+The narrow, exclusive self must lose itself in wider aims, in generous
+deeds, in the comprehensive love of God and man. The good must no longer
+thwart one another; the weak must be protected; the wicked must be
+surrounded by influences which make for righteousness; and the forces of
+Nature itself must more and more be brought under man's control.
+Pestilence and famine must no longer bring death and desolation; men
+must no longer drink impure water and adulterated liquors, no longer
+must they breathe the poisonous air of badly constructed houses;
+dwellings which are now made warm in winter, must be made cool in
+summer; miasmatic swamps must be drained; saloons, which stand like
+painted harlots to lure men to sin and death, must be closed. Women
+must have the same rights and privileges as men; children must no longer
+be made the victims of mammon and offered in sacrifice in his temple,
+the factory; ignorance, which is the most fruitful cause of misery, must
+give place to knowledge; war must be condemned as public murder, and our
+present system of industrial competition must be considered worse than
+war; the social organization, which makes the few rich, and dooms the
+many to the slavery of poorly paid toil, must cease to exist; and if the
+political state is responsible for this cruelty, it must find a remedy,
+or be overthrown; society must be made to rest upon justice and love,
+without which it is but organized wrong. These principles must so
+thoroughly pervade our public life that it can no more be the interest
+of any one to wrong his fellow, to grow rich at the cost of the poverty
+and misery of another. Life must be prolonged both by removing many of
+the physical causes of death, and by making men more rational and
+religious, more willing and able to deny themselves those indulgences
+which are but a kind of slow suicide.
+
+Never before have questions so vast, so complex, so pregnant with
+meaning, so fraught with the promise of good, presented themselves; and
+it can hardly be vanity or conceit which prompts us to believe that in
+this mighty movement toward a social life in harmony with our idea of
+God and with the aspirations of the soul, America is the divinely
+appointed leader. But if this faith is not to be a mere delusion, it
+must become for the best among us the impulse to strong and persevering
+effort. Not by millionaires and not by politicians shall this salvation
+be wrought; but by men who to pure religion add the best intellectual
+culture. The American youth must learn patience; he must acquire that
+serene confidence in the power of labor, which makes workers willing to
+wait. He must not, like a foolish child, rush forward to pluck the fruit
+before it is ripe, lest this be his epitaph: The promise of his early
+life was great, his performance insignificant.
+
+Do not our young men lack noble ambition? Are they not satisfied with
+low aims? To be a legislator; to be a governor; to be talked about; to
+live in a marble house,--seems to them a thing to be desired. Unhappy
+youths from whom the power and goodness of life are hidden, who,
+standing in the presence of the unseen, infinite world of truth and
+beauty, can only dream some aldermanic nightmare. They thrust themselves
+into the noisy crowd, and are thrown into contact with disenchanting
+experience at a time of life when the mind and heart should draw
+nourishment and wisdom from communion with God and with great thoughts.
+Amid the universal clatter of tongues, and in the overflowing ceaseless
+stream of newspaper gossip, the soul is bewildered and stifled. In a
+blatant land, the young should learn to be silent. The noblest minds are
+fashioned in secrecy, through long travail like,--
+
+
+    "Wines that, Heaven knows where,
+    Have sucked the fire of some forgotten sun
+    And kept it thro' a hundred years of gloom
+    Yet glowing in a heart of ruby."
+
+
+Is it not worth the labor and expectation of a life-time to be able to
+do, even once, the right thing excellently well? The eager passion for
+display, the desire to speak and act in the eyes of the world, is
+boyish. Will is concentration, and a great purpose works in secrecy. Oh,
+the goodness and the seriousness of life, the illimitable reach of
+achievement, which it opens to the young who have a great heart and
+noble aims! With them is God's almighty power and love, and his very
+presence is hidden from them by a film only. From this little islet they
+look out upon infinite worlds; heaven bends over them, and earth bears
+them up as though it would have them fly. How is it possible to remain
+inferior when we believe in God and know that this age is the right
+moment for all high and holy work? The yearning for guidance has never
+been so great. We have reached heights where the brain swims, and
+thoughts are confused, and it is held to be questionable whether we are
+to turn backward or to move onward to the land of promise; whether we
+are to be overwhelmed by the material world which we have so
+marvelously transformed, or with the aid of the secrets we have
+learned, are to rise Godward to a purer and fairer life of knowledge,
+justice, and love.
+
+Is the material progress of the nineteenth century a cradle or a grave?
+Are we to continue to dig and delve and peer into matter until God and
+the soul fade from our view and we become like the things we work in? To
+put such questions to the multitude were idle. There is here no affair
+of votes and majorities. Human nature has not changed, and now, as in
+the past, crowds follow leaders. What the best minds and the most
+energetic characters believe and teach and put in practice, the millions
+will come to accept. The doubt is whether the leaders will be
+worthy,--the real permanent leaders, for the noisy apparent leaders can
+never be so. And here we touch the core of the problem which Americans
+have to solve. No other people has such numbers who are ready to thrust
+themselves forward as leaders, no other has so few who are really able
+to lead. In mitigation of this fact, it may be said with truth, that
+nowhere else is it so difficult to lead; for nowhere else does force
+rule so little. Every one has opinions; the whole nation is awakened;
+thousands are able to discuss any subject with plausibility; and to be
+simply keen-witted and versatile is to be of the crowd. We need men
+whose intellectual view embraces the history of the race, who are
+familiar with all literature, who have studied all social movements, who
+are acquainted with the development of philosophic thought, who are not
+blinded by physical miracles and industrial wonders, but know how to
+appreciate all truth, all beauty, all goodness. And to this wide culture
+they must join the earnestness, the confidence, the charity, and the
+purity of motive which Christian faith inspires. We need scholars who
+are saints, and saints who are scholars. We need men of genius who live
+for God and their country; men of action who seek for light in the
+company of those who know; men of religion who understand that God
+reveals himself in science, and works in Nature as in the soul of man,
+for the good of those who love him. Let us know the right moment, and
+let us know that it comes for those alone who are prepared.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+EXERCISE OF MIND.
+
+
+     O heavens! how awful is the might of souls
+     And what they do within themselves while yet
+     The yoke of earth is new to them, the world
+     Nothing but a wild field where they were sown.
+
+     WORDSWORTH.
+
+
+
+Learning is acquaintance with what others have felt, thought, and done;
+knowledge is the result of what we ourselves have felt, thought, and
+done. Hence a man knows best what he has taught himself; what personal
+contact with God, with man, and with Nature has made his own. The
+important thing, then, is not so much to know the thoughts and loves of
+others, as to be able ourselves to think truly, and to love nobly. The
+aim should be to rouse, strengthen, and illumine the mind rather than to
+store it with learning; and the great educational problem has been, and
+is, how to give to the soul purity of intention, to the conscience
+steadfastness, and to the mind force, pliability, and openness to light;
+or in other words, how to bring philosophy and religion to the aid of
+the will so that the better self shall prevail and each generation
+introduce its successor to a higher plane of life.
+
+To this end the efforts of all teachers have, with more or less
+consciousness, tended; and in this direction too, along winding ways and
+with periods of arrest or partial return, the race of man has for ages
+been moving; and he who aspires to gain a place in the van of the mighty
+army on its heavenward march,--
+
+
+    "And draw new furrows 'neath the healthy morn
+    And plant the great Hereafter in this Now,"--
+
+
+may be rash, but his spirit is not ignoble. To him it may not be given
+"to fan and winnow from the coming step of Time the chaff of custom;"
+but if he persevere he may confidently hope that his thought and love
+shall at length rise to fairer and more enduring worlds. He weds himself
+to things of light, seeks aids to true life within, learns to live with
+the noble dead, and with the great souls of the present who have uttered
+the truth whereby they live, in a way more intimate and higher than that
+granted to those who are with them day by day; for minds are not
+separated by time and space, but by quality of thought. But to be able
+to love this life, and with all one's heart to seek this close communion
+with God, with noble souls, and with Nature is not easy, and it may be
+that it is impossible for those who are not drawn to it by irresistible
+instincts. For the intellect, at least, attractions are proportional to
+destiny; and the art of intellectual life is not most surely learned by
+those whom circumstances favor, but by those whom will impels onward to
+exercise of mind; whom neither daily wants, nor animal appetites, nor
+hope of gain, nor low ambition, nor sneers of worldlings, nor prayers of
+friends, nor aught else can turn from the pursuit of wisdom; who, with
+ceaseless labor and with patient thought, eat their way in silence, like
+caterpillars, to the light, become their own companions, walk uplifted
+by their own thoughts, and by slow and imperceptible processes are
+transformed and grow to be the embodiment of the truth and beauty which
+they see and love.
+
+The overmastering love of mental exercise, of the good of the intellect,
+is probably never found in formal and prosaic minds; or if so, its first
+awakening is in the early years when to think is to feel, when the soul,
+fresh from God, comes trailing clouds of glory, and the sun and moon and
+stars, and the hills and flowing waters seem but made to crown with joy
+hearts that love. It is in these dewy dawns that the image of beauty is
+imprinted on the soul and the sense of mystery awakens. We move about
+and become a part of all we see, grow akin to stones and leaves and
+birds, and to all young and happy things. We lose ourselves in life
+which is poured round us like an unending sea; are natural, healthful,
+alive to all we see and touch; have no misgivings, but walk as though
+the eternal God held us by the hand. These are the fair spring days when
+we suck honey that shall nourish us in the winters of which we do not
+dream; when sunsets interfuse themselves with all our being until we are
+dyed in the many-tinted glory; when the miracle of the changing year is
+the soul's fair seed-time; when lying in the grass, the head resting in
+clasped hands, while soft white clouds float lazily through azure skies,
+and the birds warble, and the waters murmur, and the flowers breathe
+fragrance, we feel a kind of unconscious consciousness of a universal
+life in Nature. The very rocks seem to be listening to what the leaves
+whisper; and through the silent eternities we almost see the dead
+becoming the living, the living the dead, until both grow to be one, and
+whatever is, is life.
+
+He who has never had these visions; has never heard these airy voices;
+has never seemed about to catch a glimpse of the inner heart of being,
+pulsing beneath the veil of visible things; has never felt that he
+himself is a spirit looking blindly on a universe, which if his eyes
+could but see and his ears hear, would be revealed as the very heaven of
+the infinite God,--must forever lack something of the freshness, of the
+eager delight, with which a poetic mind contemplates the world and
+follows whither the divine intimations point. This early intercourse
+with Nature nourishes the soul, deepens the intellect, exalts the
+imagination, and fills the memory with fair and noble forms and images
+which abide with us, and as years pass on, gain in softness and purity
+what they may lose in distinctness of outline and color. This is the
+source of intellectual wealth, of tranquil moods, of patience in the
+midst of opposition, of confidence in the fruitfulness of labor and the
+transforming power of time. Here is given the material which must be
+molded into form; the rude blocks which must be cut and dressed and
+fitted together until they become a spiritual temple wherein the soul
+may rest at one with God and Nature, and with its own thought and love.
+To run, to jump, to ride, to swim, to skate, to sit in the shade of
+trees by flowing water, to watch reapers at their work, to look on
+orchards blossoming, to dream in the silence that lies amid the hills,
+to feel the solemn loneliness of deep woods, to follow cattle as they
+crop the sweet-scented clover,--to learn to know, as one knows a
+mother's face, every change that comes over the heavens from the dewy
+freshness of early dawn to the restful calm of evening, from the
+overpowering mystery of the starlit sky to the tender human look with
+which the moon smiles upon the earth,--all this is education of a higher
+and altogether more real kind than it is possible to receive within the
+walls of a school; and lacking this, nothing shall have power to develop
+the faculties of the soul in symmetry and completeness. Hence a
+philosopher has said there are ten thousand chances to one that genius,
+talent, and virtue shall issue from a farmhouse rather than from a
+palace. The daily intercourse with Nature in childhood and youth
+intertwines with noble and enduring objects the passions which form the
+mind and heart of man, whereas those who are shut out from such
+communion are necessarily thrown into contact with what is mean and
+vulgar; and since our early years, whatever our surroundings may have
+been, seem to us sweet and fair because life itself is then a
+clear-flowing fountain, they cannot help blending the memory of that
+innocent and happy time with thoughts of base and mechanical objects,
+or, it may be, of low and ignoble associates.
+
+He is fortunate who, during the first ten years of his life, escapes the
+confinement and repression of school, and lives at home in the country
+amid the fields and the woods, day by day growing familiar with the look
+on Nature's face, with all her moods, with every common object, with
+living things in the air and the water and on the earth; who sees the
+corn sprout, and watches it grow week after week until the yellow
+harvest waves in the sunlight; who looks with unawed eye on rising
+thunder-clouds and shouts with glee amid the lightning's play; who
+learns to know that whatever he looks upon is thereby humanized, and to
+feel that he is part of all he sees and loves. He will carry with him to
+the study of the intellectual and spiritual world of men's thoughts shut
+up in books, a strength of mind, a depth and freshness of heart which
+only those can own who have drunk at Nature's deep flowing fountain, and
+come up to life's training-course wet with her dews and with the
+fragrance of her flowers on their breath. In the eyes of the old Greeks,
+who first made education a science, the scholar was an idler,--one who
+had leisure to look about him, to stroll amid the olive groves, to let
+his eye rest upon the purple hills or the blue sea studded with green
+isles, to listen to the brooks and the nightingales, to read the lesson
+the fair earth teaches more than that imprinted on parchment; and the
+school must still preserve something of this freedom from constraint,
+must encourage the play of body and of mind, the delight natural to the
+young in the exercise of strength of whatever kind, and thus as far as
+possible lighten the labor and drudgery of elementary studies with
+thoughts of liberty, of beauty, and of excellence. Let the boy feel how
+good it is to be alive though life meant only the narrow world and the
+mere surfaces of things with which alone it is possible for him to be
+acquainted; and then when we ask him to believe that in high thinking
+and in noble acting he will find a life infinitely more worthy, his
+eager soul will be inflamed with a desire for knowledge and virtue, and
+bearing in his heart the strength and wealth of imagination gained from
+his early experience, his thoughts will turn to great and good men. Dim
+visions of mighty conquerors, of poets at whose song the woods and waves
+grow calm, of orators whose words with storm-like force, whatever way
+they take, sweep with them the wills of men,--will rise before his mind.
+His young fancy will endow them with preternatural qualities; and he
+will yearn to draw near, to mingle with them and to catch the secret of
+their divine power. The germ of the godlike within his bosom bursts and
+springs. What they were, why may not he also become? What bars are
+thrown athwart his path, what obstacles hem his way, which, whoever in
+any age has excelled, has not had to break down and surmount? Here the
+wise teacher comes to cheer him, to tell him his faith is not wrong, his
+hope not without promise of attainment if he but trust himself, and bend
+his whole mind to the task; that whatever goal within the scope of human
+power, the will sets to itself, it may reach.
+
+In order to develop, strengthen, and confirm this high mood, this noble
+temper, let him by all means be made acquainted with the language and
+genius of Greece. Here he will be introduced to a world of thought and
+sentiment almost as fresh, as fair and many-sided as Nature
+herself,--the fragrant blossoming in myriad hues and forms of the life
+and mind of the most richly endowed portion of the human race. Not only
+are the Greeks the most highly-gifted of all people, but in this
+classical age they have also this special charm and power,--that the
+keenest intellectual faculties are in them united with the feelings,
+hopes, and fancies of a noble and great-hearted youth. Even Socrates and
+Plato talk like high-souled boys who can see the world only in the light
+of ideals, for whom what the mind beholds and the heart loves is alone
+real. How healthfully they look on life, with what delight they breathe
+the air! What fine contempt have they not of death, thinking no fortune
+so good as that which comes to the hero who dies in a worthy cause!
+There is Athens, already the world's university; but no books, no
+libraries, no lecture-halls, only great teachers who walk about followed
+by a crowd of youths eager to drink in their words. Here is the
+Acropolis, with its snow-white temples and propylæum, fair and chaste as
+though they had been built in heaven and gently lowered to this Attic
+mound by the hands of angels. There in the Parthenon are the sculptures
+of Phidias, and yonder in the temple of the Dioscuri, the paintings of
+Polygnotus,--ideal beauty bodied forth to lure the souls of men to
+unseen and eternal worlds. If they turn to the east, the isles of the
+Ægean look up to them like virgins who welcome happy lovers; to the
+west, Mount Pentelicus, from whose heart the architectural glory of the
+city has been carved, bids them think what patience will enable man's
+genius to accomplish; and to the north, Hymettus, fragrant with the
+breath of a thousand herbs and musical with the hum of bees, stoops with
+gentle undulations to their feet. They live in the air; their temples
+are open to the sunlight; their theatres are uncovered to the heavens;
+and whithersoever they move, they are surrounded by what is fair, noble,
+and inspiring. This free and happy life in the company of great
+teachers becomes the stimulus to the keenest exercise of mind. They are
+as eager to see things in a true light as they are quick to sympathize
+with whatever is heroic or beautiful; and all their talk is of truth and
+justice, the good, the fair, the excellent, of philosophy, religion,
+poetry, and art, and of whatever else seems favorable to human life and
+to the development of ideal manhood. Of the merely useful they have the
+scorn of young and inexperienced minds; and Hippocrates proclaims
+himself ready to give Protagoras, not only whatever he himself
+possesses, but also the property of his friends, if he will but teach
+him wisdom. Superior knowledge was to them of all things the most
+admirable and the most to be desired. What noble thoughts have they not
+concerning education? "An intelligent man," says Plato, "will prize
+those studies which result in his soul getting soberness, righteousness,
+and wisdom, and will less value the others." The culture of the mind is
+made a kind of religion, in the spreading of which the personal
+influence of the teacher is not less active than the truths he sets
+forth. Bonds of affection bind the disciple to the master whose words
+have for him the sacredness of wisdom and the charm of genius, power to
+confirm the will, and warmth and color whereby the imagination is
+raised.
+
+This secret of making knowledge attractive, of clothing truth in chaste
+and beautiful language, of associating it with whatever is fair and
+noble in Nature, and of relating it to life and conduct, which is part
+of the genius of Greece, still lives in her literature; and to read the
+words of her poets, orators, and philosophers is to feel the presence of
+a high and active spirit, is to breathe in an intellectual atmosphere of
+light and liberty, is of itself enlargement and cultivation of mind.
+Hence, in the realms of thought, the Greeks are the civilizers and
+emancipators of the world; and whoever thinks, is to some extent their
+debtor. The music of their eloquence and poetry can never grow silent;
+the forms of beauty their genius has created can never perish, and never
+cease to win the admiration and love of noble minds and gentle hearts,
+or to be the inspiration, generation after generation, to high thoughts
+and heroic moods. So long as glory, beauty, freedom, light, and gladness
+shall seem good and fair, so long will the finer spirits of the world
+feel the attraction and the charm of Greece, and know the sweet surprise
+which thrilled the heart of Keats when first he read Homer:--
+
+
+    "Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
+    When a new planet swims into his ken,
+    Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
+    He stared at the Pacific, and all his men
+    Looked at each other with a wild surmise,
+    Silent, upon a peak in Darien."
+
+
+In a less degree, Roman literature, which is the offspring of Greek
+culture, has value as an intellectual stimulus and discipline. Here also
+the youthful mind is brought into the presence of a great and noble
+people, who, if they have less genius and a duller sense of beauty than
+the Greeks, excel them in steadiness of purpose, in dignity of
+character, in reverence for law and religion, and above all in the art
+of governing.
+
+The educational value of the classics does not lie so much in the Greek
+and Latin languages as in the type of mind, the sense of proportion and
+beauty, the heroic temper, the philosophic mood, the keen relish for
+high enterprise, and the joyful love of life which they make known to
+us. The world to which they introduce us is so remote that the
+pre-occupations and vulgarities of the present, by which we all are
+hemmed and warped, fall away from us; and it is at the same time so real
+and of such absorbing interest that we are caught up in spirit and
+carried to the Attic Plain and the hills of Latium. They are useful, not
+because they teach us anything that may not be learned and learned more
+accurately from modern books, but because they move the mind, fire the
+heart, ennoble and refine the imagination in a way which nothing else
+has power to do. They are sources of inspiration; they first roused the
+modern mind to activity; and the potency of their influence can never
+cease to be felt by those whose aptitudes lead them to the love of
+intellectual perfection, who delight in the free play of the mind, who
+are attracted by what is symmetrical, who have the instinct for beauty,
+who swim in a current of ideas as naturally as birds fly in the air.
+They appeal to the mind as a whole, stimulate all its faculties, awaken
+a many-sided sympathy both with Nature and with the world of men. They
+widen our view of life, bring forth in us the consciousness of our
+kinship with the human race, and of the application to ourselves,
+however common and uninspiring our surroundings may be, of the best
+thoughts and noblest deeds which have ever sprung from the brain and
+heart of man. They help to make one, again to quote Plato, "A lover, not
+of a part of wisdom, but of the whole; who has a taste for every sort of
+knowledge, and is curious to learn and is never satisfied; who has
+magnificence of mind, and is a spectator of all time and all existence;
+who is harmoniously constituted, of a well-proportioned and gracious
+mind, whose own nature will move spontaneously toward the true being of
+everything; who has a good memory, and is quick to learn, noble,
+gracious, the friend of truth, justice, courage, temperance." The ideal
+presented is that of complete harmonious culture, the aim of which is
+not to make an artisan, a physician, a merchant, a lawyer, but a man
+alive in all his faculties, touching the world at many points, for whom
+all knowledge is desirable, all beauty lovable, and for whom fine
+bearing and noble acting are indispensable.
+
+It is needless to point out in what, or why, the Greeks failed, since
+here there is question only of intellectual life, and in this they did
+not fail. Nor is there any thought, in what has here been said, of
+depreciating the worth of the study of science, without a certain
+knowledge of which no one, in this age, can in any true sense, be called
+educated. Whoever, indeed, learns a language properly, acquires
+scientific knowledge; and the Greeks are not only the masters in poetry
+and eloquence, they are also the guides to the right use of reason and
+to scientific method, and the teachers of mathematics, logic, and
+physics. He who pursues culture, in the Greek spirit, who desires to see
+things as they are, to know the best that has been thought and done by
+men, will fear nothing so much as the exclusion of any truth, and he
+will be anxious to acquaint himself not only with the method, but as
+far as possible with the facts, of physical science. Still he perceives
+that however great the value of natural knowledge may be, it is, as an
+instrument of culture, inferior to literature. We are educated by what
+calls forth in us love and admiration, by what creates the exalted mood
+and the steadfast purpose. In bowing with reverence to what is above us,
+we are uplifted. When we are moved, we are more alive; we are stronger,
+tenderer, nobler. Now to look upon Nature with the detective eye of the
+man of science is to be cold and unsympathetic; to learn by methodic
+experiment is to gain knowledge, which, since it is only remotely or
+indirectly related to life, is but little interesting. Such knowledge is
+a fragment, and a fragment extremely difficult to fit into the temple
+built by thought and love, by hope and imagination; and hence when we
+have learned a great deal about chemical elements, geologic epochs,
+correlation of forces, and sidereal spaces, we are rather astonished
+than enlightened. We are brought into the presence of a world which is
+not that of the senses, nor yet that which faith, hope, and love
+forebode; and the bearing it may have upon human life is of more
+interest to us than the facts made known. We are, indeed, curious to
+know whatever may, with any certainty, be told us of atoms and
+biogenesis; but our real concern is to learn what significance such
+truth may have in its relation to questions of God and the soul.
+
+There is doubtless a disciplinary value in the study of physical
+science. It trains the mind to habits of patient attention, of careful
+observation, teaches the danger of hasty generalization, and diminishes
+intellectual conceit; but these results may also be obtained by other
+means. The aim of education is not simply to develop this or the other
+faculty, however indispensable, nor yet to make one thoroughly
+conversant with a particular order of facts, but the aim is to bring
+about a conscious participation in the life of the race, to evoke all
+the powers of man, so that his whole being shall be quickened and made
+responsive to the touch of things seen and unseen; and the study of
+science is less adapted to the attainment of this end than the study of
+human letters. The scientific temper draws to specialties; and
+specialists are narrow, are incomplete. They, each in his own line, do
+good work, and are the chief agents for the increase of natural
+knowledge, and are, we may grant, leaders in every kind of improvement;
+but like the operatives who provide our comforts and luxuries, they are
+themselves warped and crippled by what they do. The habit of looking at
+a single order of facts, coldly and always from the same point of view,
+takes from the mind flexibility, weakens the imagination, and puts
+fetters on the soul; and hence though it is important that there be
+specialists, the kind of education by which they are formed, while it is
+suited to make a geologist, a chemist, a mathematician, or a botanist,
+is not suited to call forth the free and harmonious play of all man's
+powers. We do not live on facts alone, much less on facts of a single
+kind. Religion and poetry, love, hope, and imagination are as essential
+to our well-being as science. Human life is knowledge, is faith, is
+conduct, is beauty, is manners; it unfolds itself in many directions and
+shoots its roots into infinitude; and for the general purposes of
+education, science is learned to best advantage when it is embodied in
+literature, and its methods and results, rather than the details of its
+work, are presented to us. Whatever it is able to do, to improve the
+mind, to widen the range of thought, to give true notions of the
+workings of Nature,--it will do for whoever learns accurately its
+general conceptions and results; and these cannot remain unknown to him
+whose aim is culture, for such an one is, as Plato says, "A lover not of
+a part of wisdom, but of the whole, and has a taste for every sort of
+knowledge, and is curious to learn, and is never satisfied; and though
+he will not know medicine like a physician, or the heavens like an
+astronomer, or the vegetable kingdom like a botanist, his mind will play
+over all these realms with freedom, and he will know how to relate the
+principles and facts of all the sciences to our sense for beauty, for
+conduct, for life and religion in a way which a mere specialist can
+never find." And his view will not only be wider and less impeded, it
+will also be deeper than that of the man of science; for he who sees but
+one order of things sees only their surfaces, just as he who sees but
+one thing sees nothing at all.
+
+It would be a mistake to imagine that the ideal here commended, means
+superficial accomplishments, an excessive love of style and the
+ornaments of poetry and eloquence, or preoccupation in favor of aught
+external or frivolous. It is the very opposite of dilettantism, and if
+it mean anything, means thoroughness, and a thoroughness which can come
+only of untiring labor carried on through many years; for time and
+intercourse with men and varied experience are indispensable elements.
+It is like the ideal of religion which makes the saint think himself a
+sinner; it is as exacting as the miser's thought which makes millions
+seem to be beggary; like the artist's vision, like the poet's dream, it
+allures and yet forbids hope of attainment. The seeker after wisdom
+must have a high purpose, a strong soul, and the purest love of truth.
+He cannot live in the senses alone, nor in the mind, nor in the heart
+alone, but the spiritual being, which is himself, yearns for whatever is
+good, whatever is true, whatever is fair, and so he finds himself akin
+to the infinite God and to all that he has made. When his thought is
+carried out to atoms weaving the garment which is our body, and molding
+the world we see and touch; when he beholds motion lighting, warming,
+thrilling the universe,--he is filled with intellectual joy, but at the
+same time he perceives that all this is but a phase of truth; that God
+and the boundless facts are infinitely more than drilled atomics
+marshaled rank on rank until they form the countless hosts of the
+heavens. When the men of science have labeled the elements, and put
+tickets upon all natural compounds, and with complacency declare that
+this is the whole truth, he looks on the flowers around him and the
+blooming children, on the stars above his head, on the sun slow wheeling
+down the western horizon, on the moon climbing some eastern hill, and
+his inmost soul is glad because he feels the thrill of the infinite,
+living Spirit, and forebodes to what fair countries we are bound.
+
+And when they proclaim the wonders science has wrought,--increase of
+physical enjoyment and social comfort; the yoking of lightning and steam
+to make them work for man; the providing of more abundant food; the
+building of more wholesome dwellings; the lengthening of life; temporal
+benefits of every kind,--he joins with those who utter praise, but knows
+that infinitely more than all this goes to the making of man's life. So
+he turns his mind in many directions, and while he looks on the truth in
+science, does not grow blind to the truth in religion; while he knows
+the value of what is practically useful, understands also the priceless
+worth of what is noble and beautiful, and his acquaintance with many
+kinds of thought, with many shades of opinion confirms him, as Joubert
+says, in the acceptance of the best.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE LOVE OF EXCELLENCE.
+
+
+     Why is this glorious creature to be found One only in ten thousand?
+     what one is, Why may not millions be? what bars are thrown By
+     Nature in the way of such a hope?
+
+     WORDSWORTH.
+
+
+
+He teaches to good purpose who inspires the love of excellence, and who
+sends his pupils forth from the school's narrow walls with such desire
+for self-improvement that the whole world becomes to them a
+God-appointed university. And why shall not every youth hope to enter
+the narrow circle of those for whom to live, is to think, who behold
+"the bright countenance of truth in the quiet and still air of
+delightful studies." An enlightened mind is like a fair and pleasant
+friend who comes to cheer us in every hour of loneliness and gloom; it
+is like noble birth which admits to all best company; it is like wealth
+which surrounds us with whatever is rarest and most precious; it is like
+virtue which lives in an atmosphere of light and serenity, and is itself
+enough for itself. Whatever our labors, our cares, our disappointments,
+a free and open mind, by holding us in communion with the highest and
+the fairest, will fill the soul with strength and joy. The artist, day
+by day, year in and year out, hangs over his work, and finds enough
+delight in the beauty he creates; and shall not the friend of the soul
+be glad in striving ceaselessly to make his knowledge and his love less
+unlike the knowledge and the love of God? Seldom is opportunity of
+victory offered to great captains, the orator rarely finds fit theme and
+audience, hardly shall the hero meet with occasions worthy of the
+sacrifice of life; but he who labors to shape his mind to the heavenly
+forms of truth and beauty beholds them ever present and appealing. Life
+without thought and love is worthless; and to the best men and women
+belong only those who cultivate with earnestness and perseverance their
+spiritual faculties, who strive daily to know more, to love more, to be
+more beautiful. They are the chosen ones, and all others, even though
+they sit on thrones, are but the crowd.
+
+Without a free and open mind there is no high and glad human life. You
+may as well point to the savage drowsing in his tent, or to cattle
+knee-deep in clover, and bid me think them high, as to ask me to admire
+where I can behold neither intelligence nor love. All that we possess is
+qualified by what we are. Gold makes not the miser rich, nor its lack a
+true man poor; and he who has gained insight into the fair truth that he
+is a part of all he sees and loves, is richer than kings, and lives like
+a god in his universe. Possibilities for us are measured by the kind of
+work in which we put our hearts. If a man's thoughts are wholly busy
+with carpentering do not expect him to become anything else than a
+carpenter; but if his aim is to build up his own being, to make his mind
+luminous, his heart tender and pure, his will steadfast, who but God
+shall fix a limit beyond which he may not hope to go. Education, indeed,
+cannot confer organic power; but it alone gives us the faculty to
+perceive how infinitely wonderful and fair are man's endowments, how
+boundless his inheritance, how full of deathless hope is that to which
+he may aspire. Religion, philosophy, poetry, science,--all bring us into
+the presence of an ideal of ceaseless growth toward an all-perfect
+Infinite, dimly discerned and unapproachable, but which fascinates the
+soul and haunts the imagination with its deep mystery, until what we
+long for becomes more real than all that we possess, and yearning is our
+highest happiness. Ah! who would throw a veil over the vision on which
+young eyes rest when young hearts feel that ideal things alone are real?
+Who would rob them of this divine principle of progress which makes
+growth the best of life?
+
+
+                        "Many are our joys
+    In youth; but oh, what happiness to live
+    When every hour brings palpable access
+    Of knowledge, when all knowledge is delight!"
+
+
+In all ages, we know those made wise by experience, which teaches us to
+expect little, whether of ourselves or others, have made the thoughts
+and hopes of youth a jest, even as men have made religion a jest, having
+nothing to offer us in compensation for its loss, but witticisms and
+despair. This is the fatal fault of life, that when we have obtained
+what is good,--as wealth, position, wife, and friends,--we lose all hope
+of the best, and with our mockery discourage those who have ideal aims;
+who, remembering how the soul felt in life's dawn, retain a sense of
+God's presence in the world, to whom with growing faculties they aspire,
+feeling that whatsoever point they reach, they still have something to
+pursue. This is the principle of the diviner mind in all high and heroic
+natures; this is the spring-head of deeds that make laws, of "thoughts
+that enrich the blood of the world;" this is the power which gives to
+resolve the force of destiny, and clothes the soul with the heavenliest
+strength and beauty when it stands single and alone, of men abandoned
+and almost of God.
+
+There is little danger that too many shall ever hearken to the
+invitation from the fair worlds to which all souls belong, and where
+alone they can be luminous and free. For centuries, now, what
+innumerable voices have pleaded with men to make themselves worthy of
+heaven; while they have moved on heedless of the heaven that lies about
+us here, placing their hopes and aims in material and perishable
+elements, athirst neither for truth, nor beauty, nor aught that is
+divinely good! They sleep, they wake, they eat, they drink; they tread
+the beaten path with ceaseless iteration, and so they die. If one come
+appealing for culture of intellect, not because they who know, are
+stronger than the ignorant and make them their servants, but because an
+open, free, and flexible mind is good and fair, better than birth,
+position, and wealth, they turn away as though he trifled with their
+common-sense. Life, they say, is not for knowledge, but knowledge for
+life; and they neither truly know, nor live. And if here and there some
+nobler soul stand forth, he degrades himself to an aspirant to fame,
+forgetting truth and love.
+
+
+    Enough there are on earth who reap and sow,
+    Enough who give their lives to common gain,
+    Enough who toil with spade and axe and plane,
+    Enough who sail the seas where rude winds blow;
+    Enough who make their life unmeaning show,
+    Enough who plead in courts, who physic pain;
+    Enough who follow in the lover's train,
+    And taste of wedded hearts the bliss and woe.
+
+    A few at least may love the poet's song,
+    May walk with him, their visionary guide,
+    Far from the crowd, nor do the world a wrong;
+    Or on his wings through deep blue skies may glide
+    And float, by light transfused, like clouds along
+    Above the earth and over oceans wide.
+
+
+With unresting, wearing thought and labor we are striving to make earth
+more habitable. We drag forth from its inner parts whatever treasures
+are hidden there; with steam's mighty force we mold brute matter into
+every fair and serviceable form; we build great cities, we spread the
+fabric of our trade; the engine's iron heart goes throbbing through
+tunneled mountains and over storm-swept seas to bear us and our wealth
+to all regions of the globe; we talk to one another from city to city,
+and from continent to continent along ocean's oozy depths the lightning
+flashes our words, spreading beneath our eyes each morning the whole
+world's gossip,--but in the midst of this miraculous transformation, we
+ourselves remain small, hard, and narrow, without great thoughts or
+great loves or immortal hopes. We are a crowd where the highest and the
+best lose individuality, and are swept along as though democracy were a
+tyranny of the average man under which superiority of whatever kind is
+criminal. Our population increases, our cities grow, our roads are
+lengthened, our machinery is made more perfect, the number of our
+schools is multiplied, our newspapers are read in ever-widening circles,
+the spirit of humanity and of freedom breathes through our life; but the
+individual remains common-place and uninteresting. He lacks
+intelligence, has no perception of what is excellent, no faith in
+ideals, no reverence for genius, no belief in any highest sort of man
+who has not shown his worth in winning wealth, position, or notoriety.
+We have a thousand poets and no poetry, a thousand orators and no
+eloquence, a thousand philosophers and no philosophy. Every city points
+to its successful men who have millions, but are themselves poor and
+unintelligent; to its writers who, having sold their talent to
+newspapers and magazines, sink to the level of those they address,
+dealing only with what is of momentary interest, or if the question be
+deep, they move on the surface, lest the many-eyed crowd lose sight of
+them. The preacher gets an audience and pay on condition that he stoop
+to the gossip which centres around new theories, startling events, and
+mechanical schemes for the improvement of the country. If to get money
+be the end of writing and preaching, then must we seek to please the
+multitude who are willing to pay those who entertain and amuse them.
+Will not our friends, even, conceive a mean opinion of our ability, if
+we fail to gain public recognition?
+
+So we make ourselves "motleys to the view, and sell cheap what is most
+dear." We must, perforce, show the endowment which can be brought to
+perfection only if it be permitted to grow in secrecy and solitude. The
+worst foe of excellence is the desire to appear; for when once we have
+made men talk of us, we seem to be doing nothing if they are silent, and
+thus the love of notoriety becomes the bane of true work and right
+living. To be one of a crowd is not to be at all; and if we are resolved
+to put our thoughts and acts to the test of reason, and to live for what
+is permanently true and great, we must consent, like the best of all
+ages, to be lonely in the world. All life, except the life of thought
+and love, is dull and superficial. The young love for a while, and are
+happy; a few think; and for the rest existence is but the treadmill of
+monotonous sensation. There are but few, who, through work and
+knowledge, through faith and hope and love, seek to escape from the
+narrowness and misery of life to the summits of thought where the soul
+breathes a purer air, and whence is seen the fairer world the multitude
+forebodes. There are but few whose life is
+
+
+    "Effort and expectation and desire,
+    And something evermore about to be;"
+
+
+but few who understand how much the destiny of Man hangs upon single
+persons; but few who feel that what they love and teach, millions must
+know and love.
+
+
+    "A people is but the attempt of many
+    To rise to the completer life of one;
+    And those who live as models for the mass
+    Are singly of more value than them all."
+
+
+Only the noblest souls awaken within us divine aspirations. They are the
+music, the poetry, which warms and illumines whole generations; they are
+the few who, born with rich endowments, by ceaseless labor develop their
+powers until they become capable of work which, were it not for them,
+could not be done at all. History is the biography of aristocrats, of
+the chosen ones with whom all improvement originates, who found States,
+establish civilizations, create literatures, and teach wisdom. They work
+not for themselves; for in spite of human selfishness and the personal
+aims of the ambitious, the poet, the scholar, and the statesman bless
+the world. They lead us through happy isles; they clothe our thoughts
+and hopes with beauty and with strength; they dissipate the general
+gloom; they widen the sphere of life; they bring the multitude beneath
+the sway of law.
+
+Now, here in America, once for all, whatever the thoughtless may
+imagine, we have lost faith in the worth of artificial distinctions.
+Indeed plausible arguments may be found to prove that the kind of man
+democracy tends to form, has no reverence for distinctions of whatever
+kind, and is without ideals, and that as he is envious of men made by
+money, so he looks with the contempt of unenlightened common-sense upon
+those whom character and intellect raise above him. This is not truth.
+The higher you lift the mass, the more will they acknowledge and
+appreciate worth, the clearer will they see that what makes man human,
+beautiful, and beneficent is conduct and intelligence; and so increasing
+enlightenment will turn thought and admiration from position and wealth,
+from the pomp and show of life to what makes a man's self, his
+character, his mind, his manners even,--for the source of manners lies
+within us. In a society like ours, the chosen ones, the best, the models
+of life, and the leaders of thought will be distinguished from the crowd
+not by accident or circumstance, but by inner strength and beauty, by
+finer knowledge, by purer love, by a deeper faith in God, by a more
+steadfast trust that it must, and shall be, well with a world which God
+makes and rules, and which to the fairest mind is fairest, and to the
+holiest soul most sacred.
+
+Here and now, if ever anywhere at any time, there is need of men, there
+is appeal to what is godlike in man, calling upon us to rise above our
+prosperities, our politics, our mechanical aims and implements, and to
+turn the courage, energy, and practical sense which have wrought with
+miraculous power in developing the material resources of America, to the
+cultivation of our spiritual faculties. We alone of the great modern
+nations are without classical writers of our own, without a national
+literature. The thought and love of this people, its philosophy, poetry,
+and art lies yet in the bud; and our tens of thousands of books, even
+the better sort, must perish to enrich the soil that nourishes a life of
+heavenly promise. Hitherto we have been sad imitators of the English,
+but not the best the English have done will satisfy America. Their
+language indeed will remain ours, and their men of genius, above all
+their poets, will enrich our minds with great thoughts nobly expressed.
+But a literature is a national growth; it is the expression of a
+people's life and character, the more or less perfect utterance of what
+it loves, aims at, believes in, hopes for; it has the qualities and the
+defects of the national spirit; it bears the marks of the thousand
+influences that help to make that spirit what it is,--and English
+literature cannot be American literature, for the simple reason that
+Americans are not Englishmen, any more than they are Germans or
+Frenchmen. We must be ourselves in our thinking and writing, as in our
+living, or be insignificant, for it is a man's life that gives meaning
+to his thought; and to write as a disciple is to write in an inferior
+way, since the mind at its best is illumined by truth itself and not
+taught by the words of another. It is not to be believed that this
+great, intelligent, yearning American world will content itself with the
+trick and mannerism of foreign accent and style, or that those who build
+on any other than the broad foundation of our own national life shall be
+accepted as teachers and guides. There is, of course, no method known to
+man by which a great author may be formed; no science which teaches how
+a literature may be created. The men who have written what the world
+will not permit to die have written generally without any clear
+knowledge of the worth of their work, just as great discoverers and
+inventors seem to stumble on what they seek; nevertheless one may hope
+by right endeavor to make himself capable of uttering true thoughts so
+that they shall become intelligible and attractive to others; he may
+educate himself to know and love the best that has been spoken and
+written by men of genius, and so become a power to lift the aims and
+enlarge the views of his fellow-men. If many strive in this way to
+unfold their gifts and to cultivate their faculties, their influence
+will finally pervade the life and thought of thousands, and it may be of
+the whole people.
+
+I do not at all forget Aristotle's saying that "life is practice and not
+theory;" that men are born to do and suffer, and not to dream and weave
+systems; that conduct and not culture is the basis of character and the
+source of strength; that a knowledge of Nature is of vastly more
+importance to our material comfort and progress than philosophy, poetry,
+and art. This is not to be called in question; but in this country and
+age it seems hardly necessary that it be emphasized, for what is the
+whole world insisting upon but the necessity of scientific instruction,
+the importance of practical education, the cultivation of the
+money-getting faculty and habit, and the futility of philosophy, poetry,
+and art? Who is there that denies the worth of what is useful? Where is
+there one who does not approve and encourage whatever brings increase of
+wealth? Are we not all ready to applaud projects which give promise of
+providing more abundant food, better clothing, and more healthful
+surrounding for the poor? Does not our national genius seem to lie
+altogether in the line of what is practically useful? Is it not our
+boast and our great achievement that we have in a single century made
+the wilderness of a vast continent habitable, have so ploughed and
+drained and planted and built that it can now easily maintain hundreds
+of millions in gluttonous plenty? Is not our whole social and political
+organization of a kind which fits us to deal with questions and affairs
+that concern our temporal and material welfare? What innumerable
+individuals among us are congressmen, legislators, supervisors, bank and
+school directors, presidents of boards and companies, committee-men,
+councilmen, heads of lodges and societies, lawyers, professors,
+teachers, editors, colonels, generals, judges, party-leaders, so that
+the sovereign people seems to have life and being only in its titled
+representatives! What does this universal reign of title and office mean
+but the practical education which responsibility gives? If from the
+midst of this paradise of utility, materialism, and business, a voice is
+raised to plead for culture, for intelligence, for beauty, for
+philosophy, poetry, and art, why need any one take alarm? While human
+nature remains what it is, can there be danger that the many will be
+drawn away from what appeals to the senses, to what the soul loves and
+yearns for? If the Almighty God does not win the multitude to the love
+of righteousness and wisdom, how shall the words of man prevail?
+
+It is a mistake to oppose use to beauty, the serviceable to the
+excellent, since they belong together. Beauty is the blossom that makes
+the fruit-tree fair and fragrant. Life means more than meat and drink,
+house and clothing. To live is also to admire, to love, to lose one's
+self in the contemplation of the splendor with which Nature is clothed.
+Human life is the marriage of souls with things of light. Its basis,
+aim, and end is love, and love makes its object beautiful. Man may not
+even consent to eat, except with decency and grace; he must have light
+and flowers and the rippling music of kindly speech, that as far as
+possible he may forget that his act is merely animal and useful. He will
+lose sight of the fact that clothing is intended for protection and
+comfort, rather than not dress to make himself beautiful. To speak
+merely to be understood, and not to speak also with ease and elegance,
+is not to be a gentleman. How easily words find the way to the heart
+when uttered in melodious cadence by the lips of the fair and young.
+Home is the centre and seat of whatever is most useful to us; and yet to
+think of home is to think of spring-time and flowers, of the songs of
+birds and flowing waters, of the voices of children, of floating clouds
+and sunsets that linger as though heaven were loath to bid adieu to
+earth. The warmth, the color, and the light of their boyish days still
+glow in the hearts and imagination of noble men, and redeem the busy
+trafficking world of their daily life from utter vulgarity. What hues
+has not God painted on the air, the water, the fruit, and the grain that
+are the very substance and nutriment of our bodies? Beauty is nobly
+useful. It illumines the mind, raises the imagination, and warms the
+heart. It is not an added quality, but grows from the inner nature of
+things; it is the thought of God working outward. Only from drunken eyes
+can you with paint and tinsel hide inward deformity. The beauty of hills
+and waves, of flowers and clouds, of children at play, of reapers at
+work, of heroes in battle, of poets inspired, of saints rapt in
+adoration,--rises from central depths of being, and is concealed from
+frivolous minds. Even in the presence of death, the hallowing spirit of
+beauty is felt. The full-ripe fruit that gently falls in the quiet air
+of long summer days, the yellow sheaves glinting in the rays of
+autumn's sun, the leaf which the kiss of the hoar frost has made
+blood-red and loosened from the parent stem,--are images of death but
+they suggest only calm and pleasant thoughts. The Bedouin, who, sitting
+amid the ruins of Ephesus, thinks but of his goats and pigs, heedless of
+Diana's temple, Alexander's glory, and the words of Saint Paul, is the
+type of those who place the useful above the excellent and the fair; and
+as men who in their boards of trade buy and sell cattle and corn, dream
+not of green fields and of grain turning to gold in the sun of June, so
+we all, in the business and worry of life, lose sight of beauty which
+makes the heart glad and keeps it young.
+
+The mind of man is the earthly home of beauty, and if any real thing
+were fair as the tender thought of imaginative youth, heaven were not
+far. All we love is but our thought of what only thought makes known and
+makes beautiful, and for what we know love's thought may be the essence
+of all things.
+
+
+    Fairer than waters where soft moonlight lies,
+    Than flowers that slumber on the breast of Spring,
+    Than leafy trees in June when glad birds sing,
+    Than a cool summer dawn, than sunset skies;
+
+    Than love, gleaming through Beauty's deep blue eyes,
+    Than laughing child, than orchards blossoming;
+    Than girls whose voices make the woodland ring,
+    Than ruby lips that utter sweet replies,--
+
+    Fairer than these, than all that may be seen,
+    Is the poetic mind, which sheds the light
+    Of heaven on earthly things, as Night's young Queen
+    Forth-looking from some jagged mountain height
+    Clothes the whole earth with her soft silvery sheen
+    And makes the beauty whereof eyes have sight.
+
+
+Nature is neither sad nor joyful. We but see in her the reflection of
+our own minds. Gay scenes depress the melancholy, and gloomy prospects
+have not the power to rob the happy of their contentment. The spring may
+fill us with fresh and fragrant thoughts, or may but remind us of all
+the hopes and joys we have lost; and autumn will speak to one of decay
+and death, to another of sleep and rest, after toil, to prepare for a
+new and brighter awakening. All the glory of dawn and sunset is but
+etheric waves thrilling the vapory air and impinging on the optic nerve;
+but behind it all is the magician who sees and knows, who thinks and
+loves. "It is the mind that makes the body rich." Thoughts take shape
+and coloring from souls through which they pass; and a free and open
+mind looks upon the world in the mood in which a fair woman beholds
+herself in a mirror. The world is his as much as the face is hers. If we
+could live in the fairest spot of earth, and in the company of those who
+are dear, the source of our happiness would still be our own thought and
+love; and if they are great and noble, we cannot be miserable however
+meanly surrounded. What is reality but a state of soul, finite in man,
+infinite in God? Theory underlies fact, and to the divine mind all
+things are godlike and beautiful. The chemical elements are as sweet and
+pure in the buried corpse as in the blooming body of youth; and it is
+defective intellect, the warp of ignorance and sin, which hides from
+human eyes the perfect beauty of the world.
+
+
+            "Earth's crammed with heaven,
+    And every common bush afire with God;
+    But only he who sees, takes off his shoes."
+
+
+What we all need is not so much greater knowledge, as a luminous and
+symmetrical mind which, whatsoever way it turn, shall reflect the things
+that are, not in isolation and abstraction, but in the living unity and
+harmony wherein they have their being.
+
+The worth of religion is infinite, the value of conduct is paramount;
+but he who lacks intellectual culture, whatever else he may be, is
+narrow, awkward, unintelligent. The mirror of his soul is dim, the
+motions of his spirit are sluggish, and the divine image which is
+himself is blurred.
+
+But let no one imagine that this life of the soul in the mind is easy;
+for it is only less difficult than the life of the soul in God. To
+learn many things; to master this or that science; to have skill in law
+or medicine; to acquaint one's self with the facts of history, with the
+opinions of philosophers or the teachings of theologians,--is
+comparatively not a difficult task; and there are hundreds who are
+learned, who are skillful, who are able, who have acuteness and depth and
+information, for one who has an open, free, and flexible mind,--which is
+alive and active in many directions, touching the world of God and
+Nature at many points, and beholding truth and beauty from many sides;
+which is serious, sober, and reasonable, but also fresh, gentle, and
+sympathetic; which enters with equal ease into the philosopher's
+thought, the poet's vision, and the ecstasy of the saint; which excludes
+no truth, is indifferent to no beauty, refuses homage to no goodness.
+The ideal of culture indeed, like that of religion, like that of art,
+lies beyond our reach, since the truth and beauty which lure us on, and
+flee the farther the longer we pursue, are nothing less than the eternal
+and infinite God.
+
+And culture, if it is not to end in mere frivolity and gloss, must be
+pursued, like religion and art, with earnestness and reverence. If the
+spirit in which we work is not deep and holy, we may become accomplished
+but we shall not gain wisdom, power, and love. The beginner seeks to
+convert his belief into knowledge; but the trained thinker knows that
+knowledge ends in belief, since beyond our little islets of intellectual
+vision, lies the boundless, fathomless expanse of unknown worlds where
+faith and hope alone can be our guides. Once individual man was
+insignificant; but now the earth itself is become so,--a mere dot in
+infinite space, where, for a moment, men wriggle like animalcules in a
+drop of water. And if at times a flash of light suddenly gleam athwart
+the mind, and it seem as though we were about to get a glimpse into the
+inner heart of being, the brightness quickly dies, and only the surfaces
+of things remain visible. Oh, the unimaginable length of ages when on
+the earth there was no living thing! then life's ugly, slimy beginnings;
+then the conscious soul's fitful dream stretching forth to endless time
+and space; then the final sleep in abysmal night with its one star of
+hope twinkling before the all-hidden throne of God, in the shadow of
+whose too great light faith kneels and waits!
+
+Why shall he whose mind is free, symmetrical, and open, be tempted to
+vain glory, to frivolous boasting? Shall not life be more solemn and
+sacred to him than to another? Shall he indulge scorn for any being whom
+God has made, for any thought which has strengthened and consoled the
+human heart? Shall he not perceive, more clearly than others, that the
+unseen Power by whom all things are, is akin to thought and love, and
+that they alone bring help to man who make him feel that faith and hope
+mean good, and are fountains of larger and more enduring life? The
+highest mind, like the purest heart, is a witness of the soul and of
+God.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+CULTURE AND THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE.
+
+
+     But try, I urge,--the trying shall suffice: The aim, if reached or
+     not, makes great the life.
+
+     BROWNING.
+
+
+
+The mass of mankind, if we pass the whole race in review, are sunk in
+gross ignorance; and even in civilized nations, where education is free,
+the multitude have but a rude acquaintance with the elements of
+knowledge. Their ability to read and write hardly serves intellectual
+and moral ends; and such learning as they possess seems only to weaken
+their power to admire and love what is best in life and thought.
+
+If we turn to the more cultivated, whose numbers even in the most
+enlightened countries are not great, we find but here and there an
+individual who has anything better than a sort of mechanical cleverness.
+Students, it has been said, on leaving college, quickly divide into two
+classes,--those who have learned nothing, and those who have forgotten
+everything. In the professions, the lawyer tends to become an advocate,
+the physician an empiric, the theologian a dogmatist; and these are but
+instances of a general falling away from ideals. The student of physical
+science is subdued to what he works in; the man of letters loses depth
+and earnestness; and the teacher, whose business it is to rouse and
+illumine souls, shrivels until he becomes merely a repeater of facts and
+doctrines in which there is no life, no power to exalt the imagination
+or to give tone to the intellect. The teacher cannot create talent, and
+his best work lies in stimulating and directing energy and impulse; but
+this he seldom strives to do or to make himself capable of doing; and
+hence pupils very generally leave school as men quit a prison, with a
+sense of emancipation, and with a desire to forget both the place and
+the kind of life there encouraged. A talent is like seed-corn,--it bears
+within itself the power to break the confining walls and to spring
+upward to light, if only it be sown in proper soil, where the rain and
+the sunshine fall; but this is a truth which those who make education a
+business are slow to accept. They repress; they overawe; they are
+dictatorial; they prescribe rules and methods for minds which can gain
+strength and wisdom only by following the bent given by their
+endowments,--and thus the young, who are most easily discouraged in
+things which concern their highest gifts, lose heart, turn away from
+ideals, and abandon the pursuit of excellence. The nobler the mind, the
+greater the danger of its being wrongly dealt with. We seldom find a man
+whose thinking has helped to form opinion and to create literature, who,
+if he care to say what he feels, will not declare that his scholastic
+training was bad. Milton, Gray, Dryden, Wordsworth, Byron, Cowley,
+Addison, Gibbon, Locke, Shelley, and Cowper had no love for the schools
+to which they were sent; Swift and Goldsmith received no college honors;
+and Pope, Thomson, Burns, and Shakespeare had little or nothing to do
+with institutions of learning. A man educates himself; and the best work
+teachers can do, is to inspire the love of mental exercise and a living
+faith in the power of labor to develop faculty, and to open worlds of
+use and delight which are infinite, and which each individual must
+rediscover for himself. It is the educator's business to cherish the
+aspirations of the young, to inspire them with confidence in themselves,
+and to make them feel and understand that no labor can be too great or
+too long, if its result be cultivation and enlightenment of mind. For
+them ideals are real; their life is as yet wrapped in the bud; and to
+encourage them to believe that if they are but true to themselves, the
+flower and the fruit will be fair and health-bringing, is to open for
+them the fountain of hope and noble endeavor.
+
+What men have done, men can still do. Nay, shall we not rather believe
+that the best is yet to be done? The peoples whom we call ancient were
+but rude beginners. We are the true ancients, the inheritors of all the
+wisdom and all the heroism of the past. We stand in a wider world, and
+move forward with more conscious purpose along more open ways. Of the
+past we see but the summits, illumined by the rays of genius and glory.
+Could we look upon the plains where the multitudes lie in darkness,
+wearing the triple chain of servitude, ignorance, and want, we should
+understand how fair and beneficent our own age is. Enthusiasm for the
+past cannot inspire the best intellectual work. The heart turns to the
+past; but the mind looks to the future, and is forever untwisting the
+cords which bind us to the things that pleased a childlike fancy. To
+grow is to outgrow; and whatever of the past survives, survives, as the
+very word implies, because it is still living and applicable here and
+now. Let not the young believe that the age of the heroic and godlike is
+gone. Good and the means of good are not harder to reconcile to-day than
+they were a hundred or a thousand years ago, and they who have a heart
+may now, as the best have done in the past, wring even from despair the
+courage on which victory loves to smile. If we are weak and inferior the
+fault lies in ourselves, not in the age. We are the age; and if we but
+will and work, opportunities are offered us to become and to perform
+whatever may crown and glorify a human soul. The time for doing best
+things, like eternity, is ever present. Let but the man stand forth, and
+he will find and do his work.
+
+We are too near our own age to discern its true glory, which shall best
+appear from the vantage-ground of another century; but surely we can
+feel that it throbs with life, with immortal yearnings, with
+ever-growing desire to give to all men higher thoughts and purer loves.
+Society, the State, the Church, the individual, are striving with
+conscious purpose to make life moral and intelligent. We have become
+more humane than men have ever been, and accept more fully the duty and
+the task of extending the domain of justice, of goodness, and of truth.
+The aim of our civilization is not merely to instruct the ignorant, but
+to make ignorance impossible; not merely to feed the hungry, but to do
+away with famine; not merely to visit the captive, but to make captivity
+the means of his regeneration. Already the chains of the slave have
+been broken, and the earth has become the home of God's free children.
+Disease has been tracked to its secret hiding-places, and barriers have
+been built against pestilence and contagion. War has become less
+frequent and less barbarous; persecution for opinion and belief has
+become rare; man's inhumanity to woman, which is the deepest stain upon
+the history of the race, has yielded to the influence of religion and
+knowledge; and with ever-increasing force the truth is borne in upon
+those who think and observe, that the fate of the rich and high-placed
+cannot be separated from that of the poor and lowly. While we earnestly
+strive to control and repress every kind of moral evil, we feel that
+society itself is responsible for sin and crime, and that social and
+political conditions and constitutions must change, until the weak and
+the heavy-laden are protected from the heartlessness of the strong and
+fortunate. Not only must those who labor with their hands have larger
+opportunities than hitherto have ever been given them, but in the whole
+social life of man there must be more justice, more love, more
+tenderness, more of the spirit of Christ, than hitherto has ever been
+found there.
+
+What marvelous, intellectual work are we not doing? What admirable
+expression of the highest truth do we not find in the best writers of
+our age! It is not all pure gold; but whether we take a religious, a
+moral, or an intellectual point of view, we may not affirm of the
+literature of any age or country that it is perfect. When man clothes in
+words what he thinks and loves, what he knows and believes, his work
+bears the marks of his defects not less than those of his qualities.
+Nay, if we turn to the Bible itself, how much do we not find there which
+we either fail to comprehend or are unable to apply! Has not the mind of
+Christendom been trained and illumined by the literatures of Greece and
+Rome, which in moral purity, in elevation of sentiment, in breadth and
+depth of thought, in the knowledge of the laws of Nature, in scientific
+accuracy, in sympathy and tenderness, are altogether inferior to the
+best writings of our own day? It is a mistake to suppose that this is a
+material age in which the love of religion, of poetry, of art, of
+excellence of whatever kind, is dead. The love of what is best has never
+at any time been alive save in the hearts of the chosen few; and in such
+souls it burns now with as sweet and steady a glow as when Plato spoke,
+and the blessed Saviour uttered words of divine wisdom. Here and now, in
+and around us, there is the heavenly presence of budding life, of
+widening vision, of "new thoughts urgent as the growth of wings." Let
+us turn the white forehead of hope to the fair time, and deem no labor
+great by which we shall become less unfit to do the work of God and man.
+
+
+    "Nay, never falter; no great deed is done
+    By falterers who ask for certainty.
+    No good is certain but the steadfast mind,
+    The undivided will to seek the good:
+    'T is that compels the elements and wrings
+    A human music from the indifferent air.
+    The greatest gift the hero leaves his race
+    Is to have been a hero. Say we fail!
+    We feed the high tradition of the world
+    And leave our spirit in our children's breasts."
+
+
+But to enter upon such a course of life with well-founded hope of
+success, we must be reverent and devout. The thrill of awe is, as Goethe
+says, the best thing humanity has. We must understand and feel that the
+visible is but the shadow of the invisible, that the soul has its roots
+in God, whose kingdom is within us. We must perceive that what we know,
+believe, admire, love, and yearn for makes our real life; that we are
+worth what we _are_, and not what we possess and use. We must be lovers
+of perfection, as the divine Saviour bids us become,--"Be ye perfect,
+even as your Father in heaven is perfect." We must be conscious of the
+immortal spirit which is ourself, and walk in the company of God and of
+just men made perfect, striving after light and purity and strength,
+which are of the soul. We must love the inward, the true, and the
+eternal rather than the outward and transitory. We must believe that in
+very truth we are akin to God, that God is in us, and we in him, and
+consequently that it is our first duty to follow after perfection,
+completeness of life, in thought, in love, and in conduct. As it is good
+to know, so is it good to be strong, to be patient, to be humble, to be
+helpful; so is it good to do right, though the deed should be our only
+reward.
+
+But we are beset by all manner of temptations to turn aside from a high
+and noble way of living. The line of least resistance for us is the
+common highway of money-getters and place-winners; and the moment a man
+gives evidence of ability, the whole world urges him to put it to
+immediate use. Our public opinion identifies the good with the useful,
+all else is visionary and unreal. The average man controls us not only
+in politics, but in religion, in art, and in literature. To turn away
+from material good in order to gain spiritual and intellectual benefit
+is held to be evidence of a feeble or perverted understanding. If a man
+is eloquent, let him become a lawyer, a politician, or a preacher; if he
+have a talent for science, let him become a physician, a practical
+chemist, or a civil engineer; if he have skill in writing, let him
+become a journalist or a contributor to magazines. No one asks himself,
+What shall I do to gain wisdom, strength, virtue, completeness of life;
+but the universal question is, How shall I make a living, get money,
+position, notoriety? In our hearts we should rather have the riches of a
+Rothschild than the mind of Plato, the imagination of Shakespeare, or
+the soul of Saint Theresa. We believe the best is outside of us, that
+the aids to the most desirable kind of life are to be found in material
+and mechanical things. We talk with pride of our numbers, our
+institutions, our machines; we love the display and noise of life, are
+eager to mingle in crowds, to live in great cities, and to listen to
+exaggerated and declamatory speech. The soberness of wisdom, the
+humility of religion, the plainness of worth, are unattractive and
+unrecognized. We rush after material things, like hunters after game;
+and in the excitement of the chase our pulse grows quick, and our vision
+confused. We have lost the art of patient work and expectation. We are
+no more capable of living in our work, of making it the means of our
+growth and happiness. What we do, must be quickly done, must have
+immediate results. Our success in solving the political and social
+problems has spoiled us. When we hear of a man who has been prosperous
+for years, whom no misfortune has sobered and softened, we expect him to
+be narrow and supercilious; and in the same way, a prosperous people are
+exposed to the danger of becoming self-complacent and superficial. We
+exaggerate the importance of our own achievements and think that which
+we have accomplished is the best; whereas the wise hold what they have
+done in slight esteem, and think only of becoming themselves nobler and
+wiser. Instead of boasting of our civilization, because we have
+industrial and commercial prosperity, wealth and liberty, churches,
+schools, and newspapers, we ought to ask ourselves whether civilization
+does not imply something more and higher than this,--what kind of soul
+lives and loves and thinks in this environment? Instead of trying to
+persuade ourselves that we are the greatest and most enlightened people,
+would it not be worth while to ask ourselves, in a dispassionate temper,
+whether our best men and women are the most intellectual, the most
+interesting, and the most Christian men and women to be found in the
+world? Do they not lack repose, distinction, a sense for complete and
+harmonious living? Must we not still look to Europe for our best
+religious and philosophic thought, our best poetry, painting, music,
+and architecture? "Let the passion for America," says Emerson, "cast out
+the passion for Europe." This is desirable, but numbers and wealth will
+not bring it about. While the best is said and done in Europe, the
+better sort of Americans will look thither,--just as Europe looks to us
+for corn and cotton, or mechanical appliances. We have done much, and
+much that it was well to do. We have, as Matthew Arnold says, solved the
+political and social problems better than any other people, though we
+ourselves perceive that the solution is by no means final. The
+conditions of our life are favorable to the many. It is easier for a man
+to assert himself here, than it is or has ever been elsewhere. A little
+sense, a little energy, is all that any one needs to make himself
+independent and comfortable; and because success of this kind is so easy
+it threatens to absorb our whole life. They alone seem to be living
+worthily who are doing practical work, who are developing the natural
+wealth of the country, starting new enterprises and inventing new
+machines. The political problems which interest us are financial;
+schools are maintained and fostered because they protect and strengthen
+our institutions; religious beliefs are tolerated and encouraged because
+they are aids to morality,--and morality means sobriety, honesty,
+industry, which lead to thrift. Then there is an idea that religion is a
+conservative power, useful as a bulwark against the assaults of
+anti-social fanatics. Philosophy, poetry, and art are not considered
+seriously, because they are not seen to bear any clear relation to our
+institutions and temporal well-being. Opinion rules the wide world over;
+and in the face of this strong public opinion which lays stress chiefly
+upon external things,--the environment, the machinery of life,--and not
+upon spiritual and intellectual qualities, it is not easy to love
+knowledge and virtue for themselves, for the strength and beauty they
+give to the soul, for their power to build up the being which is a man's
+very self. It is rare that men have faith in what but few believe in;
+they are gregarious, and need the encouragement that comes of having
+aims and hopes of which the millions approve.
+
+The predominance of the average man, of which our public opinion is the
+result, puts other obstacles in the way of culture. It makes us
+self-complacent, easily satisfied with what we perform. A representative
+man will become a lawyer, a soldier, a merchant, a legislator, an
+author, in turns, as occasion offers, and he has no doubt of his
+sufficiency; because average work is all that is expected of any one. To
+be able to do anything fairly well seems to us a more desirable
+accomplishment than to be able to do some one thing better than anybody
+else. But this is a view which only those may take who live in an
+imperfectly developed society. As men become more cultivated, they more
+and more want only the best; and the noblest natures feel the desire to
+do their best, not with their actual power, but with the skill which
+forty or fifty years of discipline and effort might give them. They are
+laborious; they are patient; they persevere in one direction; they
+believe that if they but continue to observe, to think, to read, to
+compare, and to express in plain words what they know, their power of
+seeing and of uttering will continue to grow. The charm of increasing
+faculty in an infinite world sways and controls them. They never know
+enough; they are never able to say well enough what they know; and so
+they grow old still learning many things. They work in a spirit wholly
+different from that of the common man, who if he get through with what
+he has in hand is satisfied. They have an artist's sense of perfection;
+and like Virgil would burn the works which if they once escape their own
+hands, the world will never permit to perish.
+
+It is hard to resist when many invite to utterance; and with us whoever
+has ability is urged to put himself forward, and consequently to
+dissipate in crude performances energies which if employed in
+self-culture might make of him a philosopher, a poet, or a man of
+science. As it is easier to act than to think, the multitude of course
+will be only talkers, writers, and performers; but a great and civilized
+people must have at least a few men who take rank with the profound
+thinkers and finished scholars of the world. No lover of America can
+help thinking it undesirable that any one should be able to say of us
+with truth, what Locke has said, "The Americans are not all born with
+worse understandings than the Europeans, though we see none of them have
+such reaches in the arts and sciences." It is our aim to create the
+highest civilization; but the highest civilization is favorable to the
+highest life, which implies and requires more than the possession of
+material things. Conduct is necessary, knowledge is necessary, beauty is
+necessary, manners are necessary, and a civilized people must develop
+life in all these directions, and as far as such a thing is possible,
+harmoniously. Whoever excels in conduct, or in knowledge, or in a sense
+for the beautiful, or in manners, helps to raise the standard of
+living,--helps to give worth, dignity, charm, and refinement to life. It
+is hard to take interest in a people who have no profound thinkers, no
+great artists, no accomplished scholars, for only such men can lift a
+people above the provincial spirit, and bring them into conscious
+relationship with former ages and the wide world. The rule of the people
+looks to something higher than opportunity for every man to have food
+and a home; to something more than putting a church, a school, and a
+newspaper at every man's door. Saints and heroes, philosophers and
+poets, are a people's glory. They give us nobler loves, higher thoughts,
+diviner aims. They show us how like a god man may become; and political
+and social institutions which make saints and heroes, philosophers and
+poets, impossible, can have but inferior value. And there is some
+radical wrong where the noblest manhood and womanhood are not
+appreciated and reverenced. Not to recognize genuine worth is the mark
+of a superficial and vulgar character. The servile spirit has no
+conception of the heroic nature; and they who measure life by material
+standards, do not perceive the infinite which is in man and which makes
+him godlike. A few only in any age or nation love the best, follow after
+ideal aims; but when these few are wanting, all life becomes
+common-place, and the millions pass from the cradle to the grave and
+leave no lasting impression upon the world.
+
+The practical turn of mind which finds expression in our commercial and
+industrial achievements, makes itself felt also in our intellectual
+activity, and those among us who have knowledge and power of utterance
+are expected, almost required, to throw themselves into the breakers of
+controversy, to discuss the hundred political, social, religious,
+financial, sanitary, and educational problems which are ever waiting to
+be solved. Let them enter the lists, let them take sides, let them
+strive to see clear in an atmosphere of smoke and fog; and not to do
+this is, in the estimation of the many, to be a dreamer, a dilettante, a
+thinker to no purpose. But this is precisely what those who seek to
+cultivate themselves, who seek to learn and communicate the best that is
+known, ought not to do. They should live in a serene air, in a world of
+tranquility and peace, where the soul is not troubled by contention,
+where the view is not perturbed by passion. They should have leisure,
+which is the original meaning of school and scholar; for the mind, like
+the soul, is refreshed and strengthened by quiet meditation. Its
+improvement is slow, is imperceptible often; its training is the result
+of delicate methods which require patience and perseverance, faith in
+ideals, and a constant looking to the all-perfect Infinite; and to throw
+it into the noise and confusion of the busy excited world of practical
+affairs is to stunt and warp its growth. We do not hitch a race-horse to
+the plough, nor should we ask the best intellects to do the common work
+of which every man is capable. They render the best service, when living
+in communion with the highest and most cultivated minds of the past and
+present, they learn and teach the way of looking and thinking, of
+behaving and doing, which has been followed by the greatest and noblest
+of the race. Political and social questions are forever changing; views
+which commend themselves to-day will in a few years seem absurd;
+measures which are thought to be of vital importance will grow to be
+inapplicable. To talk and write about such things is well,--may help to
+prevent stagnation and corruption in public life; but they exercise
+altogether a higher office, who live in the presence of what is
+permanently true and good and beautiful, who believe in ideal aims and
+ends and prevent the masses from losing sight of what constitutes man's
+real worth. They do what they alone can do, whereas the practical and
+the useful may be any one's work. They may not, of course, isolate
+themselves; on the contrary they must live closer than other men not
+only to God and Nature, but also to the past and present history of
+their country and of mankind. They study the movements of the age, but
+they study them in a philosophic and not in a partisan spirit. They seek
+to know, not what is popular, but what is right and good; and they often
+see clearly where the view of others is uncertain and confused.
+Encouragements and rewards are not necessary for them, for they are
+drawn to the knowledge and love of the best by irresistible attractions,
+and the more they learn and love the more beneficent and joy-giving does
+their life become. Their aims and ends are in harmony with the highest
+reason and the highest faith. The world they live in abides; and if they
+are neglected or forgotten now, they can wait, for truth and goodness
+and beauty can never lose their power or their charm.
+
+
+    "The worthiest poets have remained uncrowned
+    Till death has bleached their foreheads to the bone."
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+SELF-CULTURE.
+
+
+                  There is
+    One great society alone on earth
+    The noble Living and the noble Dead.
+
+    WORDSWORTH.
+
+
+
+The passion for truth and for the culture which makes its possession
+possible is not rightly felt by the heart of boy or of youth; it is the
+man's passion, and its power over him is most irresistibly asserted when
+outward restraint has been removed, when escaping from the control of
+parents and teachers he is left to himself to shape his course and seek
+his own ends. When his companions have finished their studies he feels
+that his own are now properly only about to begin; when they are
+dreaming of liberty and pleasure, of wealth and success, of the world
+and its honors, his mind is haunted by the mystery of God and Nature, by
+visions of dimly discerned truth and beauty which he must follow
+whithersoever they lead; and already he perceives that wisdom comes to
+those alone who toil and cease not from labor, who suffer and are
+patient. Hitherto he has learned the lessons given him by teachers
+appointed by others; henceforth he is himself to choose his instructors.
+As once, half-unconscious, he played in the smile or frown of Nature,
+and drank knowledge with delight, so now in the world of man's thought,
+hope, and love, he is, with deliberate purpose, to seek what is good for
+the nourishment of his soul. Happy is he, for nearly all men toil and
+suffer that they may live; but he is also to have time to labor, to make
+life intelligent and fair. He must know not only what the blind atoms
+are doing, but what saints, sages, and heroes have loved, thought, and
+done. He will still keep close to Nature who, though she utters myriad
+sounds, never speaks a human word; but he will also lend his ear to the
+voice of wisdom which lies asleep in books, and to sympathetic minds
+whispers from other worlds whatever high or holy truth has consecrated
+the life of man. His guiding thought must be how to make the work by
+which he maintains himself in the world subserve moral and intellectual
+ends; for his aim is not merely or chiefly to have goods, but to be wise
+and good, and therefore to build up within himself the power of conduct
+and the power of intelligence which makes man human, and distinguishes
+him from whatever else on earth has life.
+
+It is our indolence and frivolity that make routine duties, however
+distracting or importunate, incompatible with the serious application
+which the work of self-culture demands; but we are by nature indolent
+and frivolous, and only education can make us earnest and laborious.
+None but a cultivated mind can understand that if the whole human race
+could be turned loose, to eat and drink and play like thoughtless
+children, life would become meaningless; that a paradise in which work
+should not be necessary would become wearisome. The progress of the race
+is the result of effort, physical, religious, moral, and intellectual;
+and the advance of individuals is proportional to their exertion. Nature
+herself pushes the young to bodily exercise; but though activity is for
+them a kind of necessity, only the discipline of habit will lead them to
+prefer labor to idleness; and they will not even use their senses
+properly unless they are taught to look and to listen,--just as they are
+taught to walk and to ride. The habit of manual labor, as it is directly
+related to the animal existence to which man is prone, and supplies the
+physical wants whose urgency is most keenly felt, is acquired with least
+difficulty, and it prepares the way for moral and intellectual life; but
+it especially favors the life which has regard to temporal ends and
+conduces to comfort and well-being. They whose instrument is the brain
+rarely aim at anything higher than wealth and position; and if they
+become rich and prominent, they remain narrow and uninteresting. They
+talk of progress, of new inventions and discoveries, and they neglect to
+improve themselves; they boast of the greatness of their country, while
+their real world is one of vulgar thought and desire; they take interest
+in what seems to concern the general welfare, but fail to make
+themselves centres of light and love. What is worse they have the
+conceit of wisdom,--they lack reverence; they are impatient, and must
+have at once what they seek. But the better among us see the
+insufficiency of the popular aims, and begin to yearn for something
+other than a life of politics, newspapers, and financial enterprise.
+They desire to know and love the best that is known, and they are
+willing to be poor and obscure, if they may but gain entrance into this
+higher world. "I shall ever consider myself," says Descartes, "more
+obliged to those who leave me to my leisure, than I should to any who
+might offer me the most honorable employments." This is the thought of
+every true student and lover of wisdom; for he feels that whatever a
+man's occupation may be, his business is to improve his mind and to form
+his character. He desires not to be known and appreciated, but to know
+and appreciate; not to _have_ more, but to _be_ more; not to have
+friends, but to be the friend of man,--which he is when he is the lover
+of truth. He turns from vulgar pleasures as he turns from pain, because
+both pleasure and pain in fastening the soul to the body deprive it of
+freedom and hinder the play of the mind.
+
+
+    He loves the best with single heart
+    And without thought what gifts it bring.
+
+
+Unless one have deep faith in the good of culture he will easily become
+discouraged in the work which is here urged upon him. He must be drawn
+to the love of intellectual excellence by an attraction such as a poet
+feels in the presence of beauty; he must believe in it as a miser
+believes in gold; he must seek it as a lover seeks the beloved. Our
+wants determine our pleasures, and they who have no intellectual
+cravings feel not the need of exercise of mind. They are born and remain
+inferior. They are content with the world which seems to be real,
+forgetting the higher one, which alone is real; they are not urged to
+the intellectual life by irresistible instincts. They are discouraged by
+difficulties, thwarted by obstacles which lie in the path of all who
+strive to move forward and to gain higher planes. It is not possible to
+advance except along the road of toil, of struggle, and of suffering.
+We cannot emerge even from childish ignorance and weakness without
+experiencing a sense of loss. Mental work in the beginning and for a
+long time is weariness, is little better than drudgery. We labor, and
+there seems to be no gain; we study and there seems to be no increase of
+knowledge or power; and if we persevere, we are led by faith and hope,
+not by any clear perception of the result of persistent application.
+Genius itself is not exempt from this law. Poets and artists work with
+an intensity unknown to others, and are distinguished by their faith in
+the power of labor. The consummate musician must practice for hours, day
+by day, year in and year out. The brain is the most delicate and the
+finest of instruments, and it is vain to imagine that anything else than
+ceaseless, patient effort will enable us to use it with perfect skill;
+indeed, it is only after long study that we become capable of
+understanding what the perfection of the intellect is, that we become
+capable of discerning what is excellent, beautiful, and true in style
+and thought.
+
+Discouragement and weariness will, again and again, suggest doubts
+concerning the wisdom of this ceaseless effort to improve one's self.
+Why persist in the pursuit of what can never be completely attained?
+Why toil to gain what the mass of men neither admire nor love? Why wear
+out life in a course of action which leads neither to wealth nor honors?
+Why turn away from pleasures which lie near us to follow after ideal
+things? These are questions which force themselves upon us; and it
+requires faith and courage not to be shaken by this sophistry. Visions
+of ideal life float before young eyes, and if to be attracted by what is
+high and fair were enough, it were not difficult to be saint, sage, or
+hero; but when we perceive that the way to the best is the road of toil
+and drudgery, that we must labor long and accomplish little, wander far
+and doubt our progress, must suffer much and feel misgivings whether it
+is not in vain,--then only the noblest and the bravest still push
+forward in obedience to inward law. The ideal of culture appeals to them
+with irresistible force. They consent to lack wealth, and the approval
+of friends and the world's applause; they are willing to turn away when
+fair hands hold out the cup of pleasure, when bright eyes and smiling
+lips woo to indulgence. If, you ask, How long? They answer, Until we
+die! They are lovers of wisdom and do not trust to hope of temporal
+reward. Their aim is light and purity of mind and heart; these they
+would not barter for comfort and position. As saints, while doing the
+common work of men, walk uplifted to worlds invisible, so they, amid the
+noise and distractions of life still hear the appealing voice of truth;
+and as parted lovers dream only of the hour when they shall meet again,
+so these chosen spirits, in the midst of whatever cares and labors, turn
+to the time when thought shall people their solitude as with the
+presence of angels. They hear heavenly voices asking, Why stay ye on the
+earth, unless to grow? Vanity, frivolity, and fickleness die within
+them; and they grow to be humble and courageous, disinterested and
+laborious, strong and persevering. The cultivation of their higher
+nature becomes the law of their life; and the sense of duty, "stern
+daughter of the voice of God," which of all motives that sway the heart,
+best stands the test of reason, becomes their guide and support. Thus
+culture, which looks to the Infinite and All-wise as to its ideal, rests
+upon the basis of morality and religion.
+
+To think is difficult, and they who wish to grow in power of thought
+must hoard their strength. Excess, of whatever kind, is a waste of
+intellectual force. The weakness of men of genius has impoverished the
+world. Sensual indulgence diminishes spiritual insight; it perverts
+reason, and deadens love; it enfeebles the physical man, and weakens the
+organs of sense, which are the avenues of the soul. The higher self is
+developed harmoniously only when it springs from a healthful body. It is
+the lack of moral balance which makes genius akin to madness. Nothing is
+so sane as reason, and great minds fall from truth only when they fail
+in the strength which comes of righteous conduct.
+
+Let the lover of wisdom then strive to live in a healthy body that his
+senses may report truly of the universe in which he dwells. But this is
+not easy; for mental labor exhausts, and if the vital forces are still
+further diminished by dissipation, disease and premature decay of the
+intellectual faculties will be the result. The ideal of culture embraces
+the whole man, physical, moral, religious, and intellectual; and the
+loss of health or morality or faith cannot but impede the harmonious
+development of the mind itself. Passion is the foe of reason, and may
+easily become strong enough to extinguish its light. He who wishes to
+educate himself must learn to resist the desires of his lower nature,
+which if indulged deaden sensibility, weaken the will, take from the
+imagination its freshness, and from the heart the power of loving. The
+task he has set himself is arduous, and he cannot have too much energy,
+too much warmth of soul, too much capacity for labor. Let him not waste,
+like a mere animal, the strength which was given him that he might
+learn to know and love infinite truth and beauty. The dwelling with
+one's self and with thoughts of what is true and high, which is an
+essential condition of mental growth, is impossible when the sanctuary
+of the soul is filled with unclean images. Intellectual honesty, the
+disinterested love of truth, without which no progress can be made, will
+hardly be found in those who are the slaves of unworthy passions. The
+more religious a man is, the more does he believe in the worth and
+sacredness of truth, and the more willing does he become to throw all
+his energies with persevering diligence into the work of
+self-improvement. They who fail to see in the universe an all-wise,
+all-holy, and all-powerful Being, from whom are all things and to whom
+all things turn, easily come to doubt whether it holds anything of true
+worth. History teaches this, and it requires little reflection to
+perceive that it must be so. Of the Solitary, Wordsworth says,--
+
+
+                      "But in despite
+    Of all this outside bravery, within
+    He neither felt encouragement nor hope;
+    For moral dignity and strength of mind
+    Were wanting, and simplicity of life
+    And reverence for himself; and, last and best,
+    Confiding thoughts, through love and fear of Him
+    Before whose sight the troubles of this world
+    Are vain."
+
+
+The corrupt and the ignorant easily learn to feel contempt, but the
+scholar is reverent. He moves in the midst of infinite worlds, and knows
+that the least is part of the whole.
+
+Now, how shall he who is resolved to educate himself set about his work?
+What advice shall be given him? What rules shall be made for him that he
+may not waste time and energy? He who yearns for the cultivation of mind
+which makes wisdom possible must work his way to the light. All
+intellectual men strive to educate themselves, but each one strives in a
+different way. They all aim at insight rather than information, at the
+perfect use of their faculties rather than learning. The power to see
+things as they are, is what they want; and therefore they look, observe,
+examine, compare, analyze, meditate, read, and write. And they keep
+doing this day by day; and the longer they work, the more attractive
+their work grows to be. Descartes, who is a typical lover of the
+intellectual life, looked upon himself simply as a thinking being, and
+gave all his thought to the cultivation of his higher faculties in the
+hope that he might finally discover some truth which would bring
+blessings to men. He had no thought of literary fame, published little,
+and sedulously avoided whatever might bring him into notoriety. "Those,"
+he says, "who wish to know how to speak of everything and to acquire a
+reputation for learning, will succeed most easily if they content
+themselves with the semblance of truth, which may readily be found." The
+love of truth is the mark of the real student. What is, is; it is man's
+business to know it. He is the foe of pretense; sham for him means
+shame. He will have sound knowledge; he will do his work well; whether
+men shall applaud or reward him for it, is a foreign consideration. He
+obeys an inward law, and the praise of those who cannot understand him
+sounds to him like mockery. True thought, like right conduct, is its own
+reward. To see truth and to love it is enough,--is more than to have the
+worship of the world. The important thing is to be a man, to have a
+serious purpose, to be in earnest, to yearn for what is good and holy;
+and without this the culture of the intellect will not avail.
+
+We must build upon the broad foundation of man's life, and not upon any
+special faculty. The merely literary man is often the most pitiful of
+men,--able, it may be, to do little else than complain that his merits
+are not recognized. Let it not be imagined then that the lover of
+wisdom, the follower of intellectual good, should propose to himself a
+literary career. He may of course be or become a man of letters, but
+this is incidental to his life-purpose, which is to develop within
+himself the power of knowing and loving. He will learn to think rightly
+and to act well, first of all; for he knows that a man's writing cannot
+be worth more than he himself is worth. He is a seeker after truth and
+perfection; and understanding at the price of what countless labors
+these may be hoped for, he is slow to imagine that words of his may be
+of help to others.
+
+Observation, reading, and writing are the chief means by which thought
+is stimulated, the mind developed, and the intellect cultivated. The
+habit of looking and the habit of thinking are closely related. A man
+thinks as he sees; and for a mind like Shakespeare's, for instance,
+observation is almost the only thing that is necessary for its
+development. The boundless world breaks in upon him with creative force.
+His sympathy is universal, and therefore so is his interest. He sees the
+like in the unlike, the differences in things which are similar. Every
+little bird and every little flower are known to him. He contemplates
+Falstaff and Poor Tom with as much interest as though they were Hamlet
+and King Lear. In all original minds the power of observation is great.
+It is the chief source of our earliest knowledge, of that which touches
+us most nearly and most deeply colors the imagination. When the boy is
+wandering through fields, sitting in the shade of trees, or lying on the
+banks of murmuring streams, he is not only learning more delightful
+things than books will ever teach him, but he is also acquiring the
+habit of attention, of looking at what he sees, which nowhere else can
+be gotten in so natural and pleasant a way. Hence the best minds have
+either been born in the country or have passed there some of their early
+years. Unless we have first learned to look with the eye, we shall never
+learn to look with the mind. They who walk unmoved beneath the starlit
+heavens, or by the ever-moving ocean, or amid the silent mountains; who
+do not find, like Wordsworth, that the meanest flower that blows gives
+thoughts which often lie too deep for tears, will not derive great help
+from the world of books. But in the world of books the intellectual must
+also make themselves at home and live, must thence draw nourishment,
+light, wisdom, strength, for there as nowhere else the mind of man has
+stamped its image; and there the thoughts of the master spirits still
+breathe, still glow with truth and beauty. The best books are powers
+
+
+    "Forever to be hallowed; only less,
+    For what we are and what we may become,
+    Than Nature's self, which is the breath of God,
+    Or his pure Word, by miracle revealed."
+
+
+But it is as difficult to know books as to know men. There are but few
+men who can be of intellectual service to us; and there are but few
+books which stimulate and nourish the mind. The best books are, as
+Milton says, "the precious life-blood of a master spirit;" and it is
+absurd to suppose that they will reveal their secret to every chance
+comer, to every heedless reader. As it takes a hero to know a hero, so
+only an awakened mind can love and understand the great thinkers. The
+reading of the ignorant is chiefly a mechanical proceeding; and, indeed,
+for men in general reading is little better than waste of time. Their
+reading, like their conversation, leaves them what they were, or worse.
+The mass of printed matter has no greater value from an intellectual
+point of view at least than the wide ever-flowing stream of talk; and
+for the multitude it is all the same whether they gossip and complain,
+or read and nod. However much they read, they remain unintelligent; what
+knowledge they gain is fragmentary, unreal; they learn merely enough to
+talk about what they do not understand. We may of course read for
+entertainment, as we may talk for entertainment; but this is merely a
+recreation of the mind, which is good only because it rests and prepares
+us for work. The wise read books to be enlightened, uplifted, and
+inspired. Their reading is a labor in which every faculty of the mind
+is awake and active. They are attentive; they weigh, compare, judge.
+They re-create within their own minds the images produced by the author;
+they seek to enter into his inmost thought; they admire each well-turned
+phrase, each happy epithet; they walk with him, and make themselves at
+home in the wonderland which his genius has called into being; past
+centuries rise before them, and they almost forget that they did not
+hear Plato discourse in the Academy, or stroll with Horace along the
+Sacred Way. As they are brought thus intimately into the company of the
+noblest minds, they think as they thought, feel as they felt, and so are
+enlightened and inspired. They drink the spirit of the mighty dead, and
+gradually come to live in a higher and richer world. The best in life
+and literature is seen to be such only by those who have made themselves
+worthy of the heavenly vision; and once we have learned to love the few
+real books of the world, or rather what in these few is eternally true
+and beautiful, we breathe the atmosphere of the intellectual life. What
+is frivolous, or false, or vulgar can no longer please us; having seen
+and loved what is high we may not sink to the lower.
+
+Knowledge may be useful, and yet have little power to nourish, train,
+and enlarge the mind, and it is its disciplinary and educational value
+which we are here considering. Medicine for a physician, law for an
+attorney, theology for a clergyman, is the most useful knowledge; but
+they are not therefore the best means of intellectual culture. Natural
+science, though it is most useful, ministering as it does in a thousand
+ways and with ever-increasing efficacy to our wants and comforts, has
+but an inferior educational power. Acquaintance with the uniform
+co-existences and sequences of phenomena is not a mental tonic. Such
+knowledge not only leaves us unmoved,--it has a tendency even to fetter
+the free play of the mind and to chill the imagination. It unweaves the
+rainbow, and leaves us the dead chemical elements. The information we
+have gained is practical, but it does not exalt the soul or render us
+more keenly alive to the divine beauty which rests on Nature's face. It
+does not enable us, as does the knowledge of literature and history, to
+participate in the conscious life of the race. It makes no appeal to our
+nobler human instincts. There is no book on natural science, nor can
+there ever be one, which may take a place among the few immortal works
+which men never cease to read and love. Physical science has its own
+domain, and its study will continue to enrich the world, to make
+specialists of a hundred kinds; but it never can take the place of
+literature and history as a means of culture; and as an educational
+force its value is greatest when it is studied not experimentally, but
+as literature,--though of course, every cultivated man should be
+familiar with the inductive method, and should receive consequently a
+certain scientific training.
+
+History, in bringing us into the presence of the greatest men and in
+showing us their mightiest achievements, rouses our whole being. It sets
+the mind aglow, awakens enthusiasm, and fires the imagination. It makes
+us feel how blessed a thing it is "to scorn delights and live laborious
+days;" how divine to perish in bringing truth and holiness to men. We
+commingle with the makers of the world; we hear them speak and see them
+act; we catch the spirit of their lofty purpose, their high courage,
+their noble eloquence. When we drink deeply of the wisdom which history
+teaches, we come to understand that truth and justice, heroism and
+religion, which are the virtues of the greatest men, may be ours as
+easily as theirs; that opportunity for true men is ever present, and
+that the task set for each one of us is as sacred and important as any
+which has ever been entrusted to the human mind and will. Our thought
+is widened, our hearts are strengthened, and we come to feel that it
+shall be well for others that we too have lived. When we have learned to
+be at home with lofty and generous natures, the heroic mood becomes
+natural to us.
+
+There are of course but few histories which have this tonic effect upon
+the mind and the will, but with these the lover of culture should make
+himself familiar. Each one must find the book he needs; and though he
+should find no help in a volume which time and the consent of the
+learned have consecrated, let him not be discouraged, but continue to
+seek and to read until he meet with the author who fills his soul with
+joy and opens to his wondering eyes visions of new worlds. To love any
+great book so that we read it--or at least those portions of it which
+especially appeal to us--many times, and always with new pleasure (as a
+mother never wearies of looking upon her child), until the thought and
+style of the author become almost our own, is to learn the secret of
+self-education; for he who understands and loves one great book is sure
+to find his way to the love and knowledge of other works of genius. He
+will not read chiefly to gain information, but he will read for
+exaltation of spirit, for enlightenment, for strength of soul, for the
+help which springs from contact with generous and awakened minds. He
+will mark his favorite passages and refer to them often, as one loves to
+revisit places where he has been happy; and these very pencil-marks will
+become dear to him as tokens of truth revealed, of wisdom gained, of joy
+bestowed. The best reading is that which most profoundly stimulates
+thought, which brings our own minds into active, conscious communion
+with the mind of the author; and hence the best poetry is the most
+efficacious and the most delightful aid to mental improvement.
+
+Poetry is, as Aristotle says, the most philosophic of all writing. It is
+also the writing which is most instinct with passion, with life. It
+springs from intense thought and feeling, and bears within itself the
+power to call forth thought and feeling. It is thought transfused with
+the glow of emotion, and consequently thought made beautiful,
+attractive, contagious. It is, to quote Wordsworth, "the breath and
+finer spirit of all knowledge; it is the impassioned expression which is
+in the countenance of all science." The poet has more enthusiasm and
+tenderness than other men, a more sensitive soul, a more comprehensive
+mind. His wider sympathy gives him greater insight; and his power to see
+absent things as though they were present enables him to bring the
+distant and the past before our eyes, to make them live again in a new
+and immortal world; he stimulates the whole mind and appeals to every
+faculty of the soul. The greatest philosophers are, like Plato, poets
+too; and unless the historian is also a poet, there is no inspiration,
+no life in what he writes. It is as superficial and vulgar to sneer at
+poetry as to sneer at religion; and they alone are mockers who have eyes
+but for some counterfeit. To be able to read a true poet is not a gift
+of Nature; it is a faculty to be acquired. He creates, as Wordsworth
+says, the taste by which he is appreciated. To imagine we may read him
+as we read a frivolous novel is absurd; it may well happen we shall see
+no truth or beauty in him until patient study has made it plain. It
+often takes the world a hundred years or more to recognize a great poet;
+and a knowledge of his worth can be had by the student only at the price
+of patient labor. Wordsworth will attract scarcely any one at the first
+glance; the great number of readers will soon weary of him and throw him
+aside; but those who learn to understand him find in his writings
+treasures above all price. There are but a few great poems in the
+literatures of the different nations, but he who wishes to have a
+cultivated mind must, at the cost of whatever time and labor, make
+himself familiar with them; for there alone are found the best thoughts
+clothed in fittest words; there alone are rightly portrayed the noblest
+characters; there alone is the world of men and things transfigured by
+the imagination and illumined by the pure light of the mind. True poets
+help us to see, they teach us to admire, they lift our thoughts, they
+appeal to our higher nature; they give us nobler loves, more exalted
+aims, more spiritual purposes; they make us feel that to live for money
+or place is to lead a narrow and a slavish life; and to men around whom
+the fetters of material and hardening cares are growing, they cry and
+bid them--
+
+
+                                     "Look abroad
+    And see to what fair countries they are bound."
+
+
+But even the greatest poets have weaknesses, and are great only by
+comparison. There is not one who however he may enchant and strengthen,
+does not also disappoint us. The perfect poet the future will bring; and
+to his coming we shall look with more eager expectation than if we
+foresaw man dowered with wings. The elevation we forebode is of the
+soul, not of the body. Progress we have already made. It is no longer
+possible for a true poet to sing of sensual delights; the man he creates
+is now no more the slave "of low ambition or distempered love." His
+theme is rather--
+
+
+    "No other than the heart of man
+    As found among the best of those who live,
+    Not unexalted by religious faith,
+    Nor uninformed by books, good books, though few,
+    In Nature's presence."
+
+
+Writing is as great an aid to the cultivation of the mind as reading. It
+is indeed indispensable, and the accuracy of thought and expression of
+which Bacon speaks, is but one of its good results. "By writing," says
+Saint Augustine, "I have learned many things which nothing else had
+taught me." There is, of course, no question here of writing for
+publication. To do this no one should be urged. The farther we are from
+all thought of readers, the nearer are we to truth; and once an author
+has published, a sort of madness comes over him, and he seems to be
+doing nothing unless he continue to publish. The truly intellectual man
+leads an interior life; he dwells habitually in the presence of God, of
+Nature, and of his own soul; he swims in a current of ideas, looks out
+upon a world of truth and beauty; he would rather gain some new vision
+of the eternal reality than to have a mountain of gold or the suffrages
+of a whole people. The great hindrance is lack of the power of
+prolonged attention, of sustained thought; and this the habit of
+serious writing gives. But the habit itself is difficult to acquire. At
+first in attempting to write we are discouraged to find how crude, how
+unreal, how little within our control our knowledge is; and it will
+often happen that we shall simply hold the pen in idleness, either
+because we find nothing to write, or because the proper way to express
+what we think eludes our efforts. When this happens day after day, the
+temptation will come to abandon our purpose, and to seek easier and less
+effective means of developing mental strength, or else we shall write
+carelessly and without thought, which is even a greater evil than not to
+write at all. In the writing of which I am thinking there is no question
+of style, of what critics and readers will say; all that is asked is
+that we apply our minds to things as they appear to us, and put in plain
+words what we see. Thus our style will become the expression of our
+thought and life. It will be the outgrowth of a natural method, and
+consequently will have genuine worth. What is written in this way should
+be preserved, not that others may see it, but that we ourselves by
+comparing our earlier with our later essays may be encouraged by the
+evidence of improvement. It is not necessary to make choice of a
+subject,--whatever interests us is a fit theme; and if nothing should
+happen specially to interest us, by writing we shall gain interest in
+many things.
+
+The method here proposed requires serious application, perseverance,
+diligence: it is difficult; but they who have the courage to continue to
+write, undeterred by difficulties, will gain more than they hope for.
+They will grow in strength, in accuracy, in pliancy, in openness of
+mind; they will become capable of profound and just views, and will
+gradually rise to worlds of truth and beauty of which the common man
+does not dream. And it will frequently happen that there will be
+permanent value in what is written not to please the crowd or to flatter
+a capricious public opinion, or to win gold or applause, but simply in
+the presence of God and one's own soul to bear witness to truth. As the
+painter takes pallet and brush, the musician his instrument, each to
+perfect himself in his art, so he who desires to learn how to think
+should take the pen, and day by day write something of the truth and
+love, the hope and faith, which make him a living man.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+GROWTH AND DUTY.
+
+
+     Why stay we on the earth unless to grow?
+
+     BROWNING.
+
+
+
+What life is in itself we do not know, any more than we know what matter
+is in itself; but we know something of the properties of matter, and we
+also have some knowledge of the laws of life. Here it is sufficient to
+call attention to the law of growth, through which the living receive
+the power of self-development,--of bringing their endowments into act,
+of building up the being which they are. Whatever living thing is strong
+or beautiful has been made so by growth, since life begins in darkness
+and impotence. To grow is to be fresh and joyous. Hence the spring is
+the glad time; for the earth itself then seems to renew its youth, and
+enter on a fairer life. The growing grass, the budding leaves, the
+sprouting corn, coming as with unheard shout from regions of the dead,
+fill us with happy thoughts, because in them we behold the vigor of
+life, bringing promise of higher things.
+
+Nature herself seems to rejoice in this vital energy; for the insects
+hum, the birds sing, the lambs skip, and the very brooks give forth a
+merry sound. Growth leads us through Wonderland. It touches the germs
+lying in darkness, and the myriad forms of life spring to view; the
+mists are lifted from the valleys, and flowers bloom and shed fragrance
+through the air. Only the growing--those who each moment are becoming
+something more than they were--feel the worth and joyousness of life.
+Upon the youth nothing palls, for he is himself day by day rising into
+higher and wider worlds. To grow is to have faith, hope, courage.
+
+The boy who has become able to do what a while ago was impossible to
+him, easily believes that nothing is impossible; and as his powers
+unfold, his self-confidence is nourished; he exults in the consciousness
+of increasing strength, and cannot in any way be made to understand the
+doubts and faint-heartedness of men who have ceased to grow. Each hour
+he puts off some impotence, and why shall he not have faith in his
+destiny, and feel that he shall yet grow to be poet, orator, hero, or
+what you will that is great and noble? And as he delights in life, we
+take delight in him.
+
+In the same way a young race of people possesses a magic charm. Homer's
+heroes are barbarians; but they are inspiring, because they belong to a
+growing race, and we see in them the budding promise of the day when
+Alexander's sword shall conquer the world; when Plato shall teach the
+philosophy which all men who think must know; and when Pericles shall
+bid the arts blossom in a perfection which is the despair of succeeding
+generations. And so in the Middle Ages there is barbarism enough, with
+its lawlessness and ignorance; but there is also faith, courage,
+strength, which tell of youth, and point to a time of mature faculty and
+high achievement. There is the rich purple dawn which shall grow into
+the full day of our modern life.
+
+Here in this New World we are the new people, in whose growth what
+highest hopes, what heavenly promises lie! All the nations which are
+moving forward, are moving in directions in which we have gone before
+them,--to larger political and religious liberty; to wider and more
+general education; to the destroying of privilege and the
+disestablishment of churches; to the recognition of the equal rights not
+only of all men, but of all men and women.
+
+We also lead the way in the revolution which has been set in motion by
+the application of science to mechanical purposes, one of the results
+of which is seen in the industrial and commercial miracles of the
+present century. It is our vigorous growth which makes us the most
+interesting and attractive of the modern peoples. For whether men love
+us, or whether they hate us, they find it impossible to ignore us,
+unless they wish to argue themselves unknown; and the millions who yearn
+for freedom and opportunity turn first of all to us.
+
+But observant minds, however much they may love America, however great
+their faith in popular government may be, cannot contemplate our actual
+condition without a sense of disquietude; for there are aspects of our
+social evolution which sadden and depress even the most patriotic and
+loyal hearts. It would seem, for instance, that with us, while the
+multitude are made comfortable and keen-witted, the individual remains
+common-place and weak; so that on all sides people are beginning to ask
+themselves what is the good of all this money and machinery if the race
+of godlike men is to die out, or indeed if the result is not to be some
+nobler and better sort of man than the one with whom we have all along
+been familiar. Is not the yearning for divine men inborn? In the heroic
+ages such men were worshiped as gods, and one of the calamities of
+times of degeneracy is the dying out of faith in the worth of true
+manhood caused by the disappearance of superior men. Such men alone are
+memorable, and give to history its inspiring and educating power. The
+ruins of Athens and Rome, the cathedrals and castles of Europe, uplift
+and strengthen the heart, because they bid us reflect what thoughts and
+hopes were theirs who thus could build.
+
+How quickly kings and peasants, millionaires and paupers, become a
+common, undistinguished crowd! But the hero, the poet, the saint, defy
+the ages and remain luminous and separate like stars. They--
+
+
+    "Waged contention with their time's decay,
+    And of the past are all that cannot pass away."
+
+
+The soul, which makes man immortal, has alone the power to make him
+beneficent and beautiful.
+
+But in this highest kind of man, in whom soul--that is, faith, hope,
+love, courage, intellect--is supreme, we Americans, who are on the crest
+of the topmost waves of the stream of tendency, are not rich. We have
+our popular heroes; but so has every petty people, every tribe its
+heroes. The dithyrambic prose in which it is the fashion to celebrate
+our conspicuous men has a hollow sound, very like cant. A marvelous
+development of wealth and numbers has taken place in America; but what
+American--poet, philosopher, scientist, warrior, ruler, saint--is there
+who can take his place with the foremost men of all this world? The
+American people seem still to be somewhat in the position of our new
+millionaires: their fortune is above them, overshadows, and oppresses
+them. They live in fine houses, and have common thoughts; they have
+costly libraries, and cheap culture; and their rich clothing poorly
+hides their coarse breeding. Nor does the tendency seem to be toward a
+nobler type of manhood.
+
+The leaders of the Revolution, the framers of the Federal Constitution,
+the men who contended for State-rights, and still more those who led in
+the great struggle for human rights were of stronger and nobler mold
+than the politicians who now crowd the halls of Congress. The promise of
+a literature which a generation ago budded forth in New England was, it
+appears, delusive. What a sad book is not that recently issued from the
+press on the poets of America! It is the chapter on snakes in Ireland
+which we have all read,--there are none. And are not our literary men
+whom it is possible to admire and love either dead or old enough to die?
+
+All this, however, need not be cause for discouragement, if in the
+generations which are springing up around us, and which are soon to
+enter upon the scene of active life, we could discover the boundless
+confidence, the high courage, the noble sentiments, which make the
+faults of youth more attractive than the formal virtues of a maturer
+age. But youth seems about to disappear from our life, to leave only
+children and men. For a true youth the age of chivalry has not passed,
+nor has the age of faith, nor the age of poetry, nor the age of aught
+that is godlike and ideal. To our young men, however, high thoughts and
+heroic sentiments are what they are to a railroad president or a bank
+cashier,--mere nonsense. Life for them is wholly prosaic and without
+illusions. They transform ideas into interests, faith into a
+speculation, and love into a financial transaction. They have no vague
+yearnings for what cannot be; hardly have they any passions. They are
+cold and calculating. They deny themselves, and do not believe in
+self-denial; they are active, and do not love labor; they are energetic,
+and have no enthusiasm; they approach life with the hard, mechanical
+thoughts with which a scientist studies matter. Their one idea is
+success, and success for them is money. Money means power, it means
+leisure, it means self-indulgence, it means display; it means, in a
+word, the thousand comforts and luxuries which, in their opinion,
+constitute the good of life.
+
+In aristocratic societies the young have had a passion for distinction.
+They have held it to be an excellent thing to belong to a noble family,
+to occupy an elevated position, to wear the glittering badges of birth
+and of office. In ages of religious faith they have been smitten with
+the love of divine ideals; they have yearned for God, and given all the
+strength of their hearts to make his will prevail. But to our youth
+distinction of birth is fictitious, and God is problematic; and so they
+are left face to face with material aims and ends; and of such aims and
+ends money is the universal equivalent.
+
+Now, it could not ever occur to me to think of denying that the basis of
+human life, individual and social, is material. Matter is part of our
+nature; we are bedded in it, and by it are nourished. It is the
+instrument we must use even when we think and love, when we hope and
+pray. Upon this foundation our spiritual being is built; upon this
+foundation our social welfare rests.
+
+Concern for material interests is one of the chief causes of human
+progress; since nothing else so stimulates to effort, and effort is the
+law of growth. The savage who has no conception of money, but is
+satisfied with what Nature provides, remains forever a savage. Habits
+of industry, of order, of punctuality, of economy and thrift, are, to a
+great extent, the result of our money-getting propensities. Our material
+wants are more urgent, more irresistible; they press more constantly
+upon us than any other; and those whom they fail to rouse to exertion
+are, as a rule, hopelessly given over to indolence and sloth. In the
+stimulus of these lower needs, then, is found the impulse which drives
+men to labor; and without labor welfare is not possible.
+
+
+    The poor must work, if they would drink and eat;
+      The weak must work, if they in strength would grow;
+      The ignorant must work, if they would know;
+    The sad must work, if they sweet joy would meet.
+
+    The strong must work, if they would shun defeat;
+      The rich must work, if they would flee from woe;
+      The proud must work, if they would upward go;
+    The brave must work, if they would not retreat.
+
+    So for all men the law of work is plain;
+      It gives them food, strength, knowledge, vict'ry, peace;
+    It makes joy possible, and lessens pain;
+      From passion's lawless power it wins release,
+    Confirms the heart, and widens reason's reign,
+      Makes men like God, whose work can never cease.
+
+
+Whatever enables man to overcome his inborn love of ease is, in so far,
+the source of good. Now, money represents what more than anything else
+has this stimulating power. It is the equivalent of what we eat and
+drink, of the homes we live in, of the comforts with which we surround
+ourselves, of the independence which makes us free to go here or there,
+to do this or that,--to spend the winter where orange blossoms perfume
+the soft air, and the summer where ocean breezes quicken the pulse of
+life. It unlocks for us the treasury of the world, opens to our gaze
+whatever is sublime or beautiful; introduces us to the master-minds who
+live in their works; it leads us where orators declaim, and singers
+thrill the soul with ecstasy. Nay, more, with it we build churches,
+endow schools, and provide hospitals and asylums for the weak and
+helpless. It is, indeed, like a god of this nether world, holding
+dominion over many spheres of life and receiving the heart-worship of
+millions.
+
+Yet, if we make money and its equivalents a life-purpose--the aim and
+end of our earthly hopes--our service becomes idolatry, and a blight
+falls upon the nobler self. Money is the equivalent of what is
+venal,--of all that may be bought or sold; but the best, the godlike,
+the distinctively human, cannot be bought or sold. A rich man can buy a
+wife, but not a woman's love; he can buy books, but not an appreciative
+mind; he can buy a pew, but not a pure conscience; he can buy men's
+votes and flattery, but not their respect. The money-world is visible,
+material, mechanical, external; the world of the soul, of the better
+self, is invisible, spiritual, vital. God's kingdom is within. What we
+have is not what we are; and the all-important thing is to be, and not
+to have. Our possessions belong to us only in a mechanical way. The
+poet's soul owns the stars and the moonlit heavens, the mountains and
+rivers, the flowers and the birds, more truly than a millionaire owns
+his bonds. What I know is mine, and what I love is mine; and as my
+knowledge widens and my love deepens, my life is enlarged and
+intensified. But, since all human knowledge is imperfect and narrow, the
+soul stretches forth the tendrils of faith and hope. Looking upon
+shadows, we believe in realities; possessing what is vain and empty, we
+trust to the future to bring what is full and complete.
+
+All noble literature and life has its origin in regions where the mind
+sees but darkly; where faith is more potent than knowledge; where hope
+is larger than possession, and love mightier than sensation. The soul is
+dwarfed whenever it clings to what is palpable and plain, fixed and
+bounded. Its home is in worlds which cannot be measured and weighed. It
+has infinite hopes, and longings, and fears; lives in the conflux of
+immensities; bathes on shores where waves of boundless yearning break.
+Borne on the wings of time, it still feels that only what is eternal is
+real,--that what death can destroy is even now but a shadow. To it all
+outward things are formal, and what is less than God is hardly aught. In
+this mysterious, super-sensible world all true ideals originate, and such
+ideals are to human life as rain and sunshine to the corn by which it is
+nourished.
+
+What hope for the future is there, then, when the young have no
+enthusiasm, no heavenly illusions, no divine aspirations, no faith that
+man may become godlike, more than poets have ever imagined, or
+philosophers dreamed?--when money, and what money buys, is the highest
+they know, and therefore the highest they are able to love?--when even
+the ambitious among them set out with the deliberate purpose of becoming
+the beggars of men's votes; of winning an office the chief worth of
+which, in their eyes, lies in its emoluments?--when even the glorious
+and far-sounding voice of fame for them means only the gabble and cackle
+of notoriety?
+
+The only example which I can call to mind of an historic people whose
+ideals are altogether material and mechanical, is that of China. Are we,
+then, destined to become a sort of Chinese Empire, with three hundred
+millions of human beings, and not a divine man or woman?
+
+Is what Carlyle says is hitherto our sole achievement--the bringing into
+existence of an almost incredible number of bores--is this to be the
+final outcome of our national life? Is the commonest man the only type
+which in a democratic society will in the end survive? Does universal
+equality mean universal inferiority? Are republican institutions fatal
+to noble personality? Are the people as little friendly to men of moral
+and intellectual superiority as they are to men of great wealth! Is
+their dislike of the millionaires but a symptom of their aversion to
+all who in any way are distinguished from the crowd? And is this the
+explanation of the blight which falls upon the imagination and the
+hearts of the young?
+
+Ah! surely, we who have faith in human nature, who believe in freedom
+and in popular government, can never doubt what answer must be given to
+all these questions. A society which inevitably represses what is
+highest in the best sort of men is an evil society. A civilization which
+destroys faith in genius, in heroism, in sanctity, is the forerunner of
+barbarism. Individuality is man's noblest triumph over fate, his most
+heavenly assertion of the freedom of the soul; and a world in which
+individuality is made impossible is a slavish world. There man dwindles,
+becomes one of a multitude, the impersonal product of a general law;
+and all his godlike strength and beauty are lost. Is not one true poet
+more precious than a whole generation of millionaires; one philosopher
+of more worth than ten thousand members of Congress; one man who sees
+and loves God dearer than an army of able editors?
+
+The greater our control of Nature becomes, the more its treasures are
+explored and utilized, the greater the need of strong personality to
+counteract the fatal force of matter. Just as men in tropical countries
+are overwhelmed and dwarfed by Nature's rich profusion, so in this age,
+in which industry and science have produced resources far beyond the
+power of unassisted Nature, only strong characters, marked
+individualities, can resist the influence of wealth and machinery, which
+tend to make man of less importance than that which he eats and
+wears,--to make him subordinate to the tools he uses.
+
+From many sides personality, which is the fountain-head of worth,
+genius, and power, is menaced. The spirit of the time would deny that
+God is a Person, and holds man's personality in slight esteem, as not
+rooted in the soul, but in aggregated atoms. The whole social network,
+in whose meshes we are all caught, cripples and paralyzes individuality.
+We must belong to a party, to a society, to a ring, to a clique, and
+deliver up our living thought to these soulless entities. Or, if we
+remain aloof from such affiliation, we must have no honest conviction,
+no fixed principles, but fit our words to business and professional
+interests, and conform to the exigencies of the prevailing whim. The
+minister is hired to preach not what he believes, but what the people
+wish to hear; the congressman is elected to vote not in the light of his
+own mind, but in obedience to the dictates of those who send him; the
+newspaper circulates not because it is filled with words of truth and
+wisdom, but because it panders to the pruriency and prejudice of its
+patrons; and a book is popular in inverse ratio to its individuality and
+worth. Our National Library is filled with books which have copyright,
+but no other right, human or divine, to exist at all; and when one of us
+does succeed in asserting his personality, he usually only makes himself
+odd and ridiculous. He rushes into polygamous Mormonism, or buffoon
+revivalism, or shallow-minded atheism; nay, he will even become an
+anarchist, because a few men have too much money and too little soul.
+What we need is neither the absence of individuality nor a morbid
+individuality, but high and strong personalities.
+
+If our country is to be great and forever memorable, something quite
+other than wealth and numbers will make it so. Were there but question
+of countless millions of dollars and people, then indeed the victory
+would already have been gained. If we are to serve the highest interests
+of mankind, and to mark an advance in human history, we must do more
+than establish universal suffrage, and teach every child to read and
+write. As true criticism deals only with men of genius or of the best
+talent, and takes no serious notice of mechanical writers and
+book-makers, so true history loses sight of nations whose only
+distinction lies in their riches and populousness.
+
+The noblest and most gifted men and women are alone supremely
+interesting and abidingly memorable. We have already reached a point
+where we perceive the unreality of the importance which the chronicles
+have sought to give to mere kings and captains. If the king was a hero,
+we love him; but if he was a sot or a coward, his jeweled crown and
+purple robes leave him as unconsidered by us as the beggar in his rags.
+Whatever influence, favorable or unfavorable, democracy may exert to
+make easy or difficult the advent of the noblest kind of man, an age in
+which the people think and rule will strip from all sham greatness its
+trappings and tinsel. The parade hero and windy orator will be gazed at
+and applauded, but they are all the while transparent and contemptible.
+The scientific spirit, too, which now prevails, is the foe of all
+pretense; it looks at things in their naked reality, is concerned to get
+a view of the fact as it is, without a care whether it be a beautiful or
+an ugly, a sweet or a bitter truth. The fact is what it is, and nothing
+can be gained by believing it to be what it is not.
+
+This is a most wise and human way of looking at things, if men will only
+not forget that the mind sees farther than the eye, that the heart feels
+deeper than the hand; and that where knowledge fails, faith is left;
+where possession is denied, hope remains. The young must enter upon
+their life-work with the conviction that only what is real is true,
+good, and beautiful; and that the unreal is altogether futile and vain.
+
+Now, the most real thing for every man, if he is a man, is his own soul.
+His thought, his love, his faith, his hope, are but his soul thinking,
+loving, believing, hoping. His joy and misery are but his soul glad or
+sad. Hence, so far as we are able to see or argue, the essence of
+reality is spiritual; and since the soul is conscious that it is not the
+supreme reality, but is dependent, illumined by a truth higher than
+itself, nourished by a love larger than its own, it has a dim vision of
+the Infinite Being as essentially real and essentially spiritual. A
+living faith in this infinite spiritual reality is the fountain-head not
+only of religion, but of noble life. All wavering here is a symptom of
+psychic paralysis. When the infinite reality becomes questionable, then
+all things become material and vile. The world becomes a world of sight
+and sound, of taste and touch. The soul is poured through the senses and
+dissipated; the current of life stagnates, and grows fetid in sloughs
+and marshes. Minds for whom God is the Unknowable have no faith in
+knowledge at all, except as the equivalent of weight and measure, of
+taste and touch and smell.
+
+Now, if all that may be known and desired is reduced to this material
+expression, how dull and beggarly does not life become,--mere atomic
+integration and disintegration, the poor human pneumatic-machine purring
+along the dusty road of matter, bound and helpless and soulless as a
+clanking engine! No high life, in individuals or nations, is to be hoped
+for, unless it is enrooted in the infinite spiritual reality,--in God.
+It is forever indubitable that the highest is not material, and no
+argument is therefore needed to show that when spiritual ideals lose
+their power of attraction, life sinks to lower beds.
+
+Sight is the noblest sense, and the starlit sky is the most sublime
+object we can behold. But what do we in reality see there? Only a kind
+of large tent, dimly lighted with gas jets. This is the noblest thing
+the noblest sense reveals. But let the soul appear, and the tent flies
+into invisible shreds; the heavens break open from abyss to abyss, still
+widening into limitless expanse, until imagination reels. The gas jets
+grow into suns, blazing since innumerable ages with unendurable light,
+and binding whole planetary systems into harmony and life. So infinitely
+does the soul transcend the senses! The world it lives in is boundless,
+eternal, sublime. This is its home; this the sphere in which it grows,
+and awakens to consciousness of kinship with God. This is the
+fathomless, shoreless abyss of being wherein it is plunged, from which
+it draws its life, its yearning for the absolute, its undying hope, its
+love of the best, its craving for immortality, its instinct for eternal
+things. To condemn it to work merely for money, for position, for
+applause, for pleasure, is to degrade it to the condition of a slave. It
+is as though we should take some supreme poet or hero and bid him break
+stones or grind corn,--he who has the faculty to give to truth its
+divinest form, and to lift the hearts of nations to the love of heavenly
+things.
+
+Whatever our lot on earth may be--whether we toil with the hand, with
+the brain, or with the heart--we may not bind the soul to any slavish
+service. Let us do our work like men,--till the soil, build homes,
+refine brute matter, be learned in law, in medicine, in theology; but
+let us never chain our souls to what they work in. No earthly work can
+lay claim to the whole life of man; for every man is born for God, for
+the Universe, and may not narrow his mind. We must have some practical
+thing to do in the world,--some way of living which will place us in
+harmony with the requirements and needs of earthly life; and what this
+daily business of ours shall be, each one, in view of his endowments and
+surroundings, must decide for himself.
+
+It is well to bear in mind that every kind of life has its advantages,
+except an immoral life. Whatever we make of ourselves, then,--whether
+farmers, mechanics, lawyers, doctors, or priests,--let us above all
+things first have a care that we are men; and if we are to be men, our
+special business work must form only a part of our life-work. The
+aim--at least in this way alone can I look at human life--is not to make
+rich and successful bankers, merchants, farmers, lawyers, and doctors,
+but to make noble and enlightened men. Hence the final thought in all
+work is that we work not to have more, but to be more; not for higher
+place, but for greater worth; not for fame, but for knowledge. In a
+word, the final thought is that we labor to upbuild the being which we
+are, and not merely to build round our real self with marble and gold
+and precious stones. This is but the Christian teaching which has
+transformed the world; which declares that it is the business of slaves
+even, of beggars and outcasts, to work first of all for God and the
+soul. The end is infinite, the aim must be the highest. Not to know
+this, not to hear the heavenly invitation, is to be shut out from
+communion with the best; is to be cut off from the source of growth; is
+to be given over to modes of thought which fatally lead to mediocrity
+and vulgarity of life.
+
+
+    To live for common ends is to be common.
+    The highest faith makes still the highest man;
+    For we grow like the things our souls believe,
+    And rise or sink as we aim high or low.
+    No mirror shows such likeness of the face
+    As faith we live by of the heart and mind.
+    We are in very truth that which we love;
+    And love, like noblest deeds, is born of faith.
+    The lover and the hero reason not,
+    But they believe in what they love and do.
+    All else is accident,--this is the soul
+    Of life, and lifts the whole man to itself,
+    Like a key-note, which, running through all sounds,
+    Upbears them all in perfect harmony.
+
+
+We cannot set a limit to the knowledge and love of man, because they
+spring from God, and move forever toward him who is without limit. That
+we have been made capable of this ceaseless approach to an infinite
+ideal is the radical fact in our nature. Through this we are human;
+through this we are immortal; through this we are lifted above matter,
+look through the rippling stream of time on the calm ocean of eternity,
+and beyond the utmost bounds of space, see simple being,--life and
+thought and love, deathless, imageless, absolute. This ideal creates the
+law of duty, for it makes the distinction between right and wrong. Hence
+the first duty of man is to make himself like God, through knowledge
+ever-widening, through love ever-deepening, through life ever-growing.
+
+So only can we serve God, so only can we love him. To be content with
+ignorance is infidelity to his infinite truth. To rest in a lesser love
+is to deny the boundless charity which holds the heavens together and
+makes them beautiful, which to every creature gives its fellow, which
+for the young bird makes the nest, for the child the mother's breast,
+and in the heart of man sows the seed of faith and hope and heavenly
+pity.
+
+Ceaseless growth toward God,--this is the ideal, this is the law of
+human life, proposed and sanctioned alike by Religion, Philosophy, and
+Poetry. _Dulcissima vita sentire in dies se fieri meliorem._
+
+
+    Upward to move along a Godward way,
+      Where love and knowledge still increase,
+    And clouds and darkness yield to growing day,
+      Is more than wealth or fame or peace.
+
+    No other blessing shall I ever ask.
+      This is the best that life can give;
+    This only is the soul's immortal task
+      For which 't is worth the pain to live.
+
+
+It is man's chief blessedness that there lie in his nature infinite
+possibilities of growth. The growth of animals comes quickly to an end,
+and when they cease to grow they cease to be joyful; but man, whose
+bodily development even is slow, is capable of rising to wider knowledge
+and purer love through unending ages. Hence even when he is old,--if he
+has lived for what is great and exalted,--his mind is clear, his heart
+is tender, and his soul is glad. Only those races are noble, only those
+individuals are worthy, who yield without reserve to the power of this
+impulse to ceaseless progress. Behold how the race from which we have
+sprung--the Aryan--breaks forth into ever new developments of strength
+and beauty in Greece, in Italy, in France, in England, in Germany, in
+America; creating literature, philosophy, science, art; receiving
+Christian truth, and through its aid rising to diviner heights of
+wisdom, power, freedom, love, and knowledge.
+
+And so there are individuals--and they are born to teach and to
+rule--for whom to live is to grow; who, forgetting what they have been,
+and what they are, think ever only of becoming more and more. Their
+education is never finished; their development is never complete; their
+work is never done. From victories won they look to other battlefields;
+from every height of knowledge they peer into the widening nescience;
+from all achievements and possessions they turn away toward the
+unapproachable Infinite, to whom they are drawn. Walking in the shadow
+of the too great light of God, they are illumined, and they are
+darkened. This makes Newton think his knowledge ignorance; this makes
+Saint Paul think his heroic virtue naught. Oh, blessed men, who make us
+feel that we are of the race of God; who measure and weigh the heavens;
+who love with boundless love; who toil and are patient; who teach us
+that workers can wait! They are in love with life; they yearn for fuller
+life. Life is good, and the highest life is God; and wherever man grows
+in knowledge, wisdom, and strength, in faith, hope, and love, he walks
+in the way of heaven.
+
+To you, young gentlemen, who are about to quit these halls, to continue
+amid other surroundings the work of education which here has but begun,
+what words shall I more directly speak? If hitherto you have wrought to
+any purpose, you will go forth into the world filled with resolute will
+and noble enthusiasm to labor even unto the end in building up the being
+which is yourself, that you may unceasingly approach the type of perfect
+manhood. This deep-glowing fervor of enthusiasm for what is highest and
+best is worth more to you, and to any man, than all that may be learned
+in colleges. If ambition is akin to pride, and therefore to folly, it is
+none the less a mighty spur to noble action; and where it is not found
+in youth, budding and blossoming like the leaves and flowers in spring,
+what promise is there of the ripe fruit which nourishes life? The love
+of excellence bears us up on the swift wing and plumes of high desire,--
+
+
+    Without which whosoe'er consumes his days,
+    Leaveth such vestige of himself on earth
+    As smoke in air or foam upon the wave.
+
+
+Do not place before your eyes the standard of vulgar success. Do not
+say, I will study, labor, exercise myself, that I may become able to get
+wealth or office, for to this kind of work the necessities of life and
+the tendency of the age will drive you; whereas, if you hope to be true
+and high, it is your business to hold yourselves above the spirit of the
+age. It is our worst misfortune that we have no ideals. Our very
+religion, it would seem, is not able to give us a living faith in the
+reality of ideals; for we are no longer wholly convinced that souls live
+in the atmosphere of God as truly as lungs breathe the air of earth. We
+find it difficult even to think of striving for what is eternal,
+all-holy, and perfect, so unreal, so delusive do such thoughts seem.
+
+Who will understand that to be is better than to have, and that in truth
+a man is worth only what he is? Who will believe that the kingdom of
+this world, not less than the kingdom of Heaven, lies within? Who, even
+in thinking of the worth of a pious and righteous life, is not swayed by
+some sort of honesty-best-policy principle? We love knowledge because we
+think it is power; and virtue, because we are told as a rule it
+succeeds. Ah! do you love knowledge for itself?--for it is good, it is
+godlike to know. Do you love virtue for its own sake?--for it is
+eternally and absolutely right to be virtuous. Instead of giving your
+thoughts and desires to wealth and position, learn to know how little of
+such things a true and wise man needs; for the secret of a happy life
+does not lie in the means and opportunities of indulging our weaknesses,
+but in knowing how to be content with what is reasonable, that time and
+strength may remain for the cultivation of our nobler nature. Ask God to
+inspire you with some great thought, some abiding love of what is
+excellent, which may fill you with gladness and courage, and in the
+midst of the labors, the trials, and the disappointments of life, keep
+you still strong and serene.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+RIGHT HUMAN LIFE.
+
+
+    What do we gather hence but firmer faith
+    That every gift of noble origin
+    Is breathed upon by Hope's perpetual breath;
+    That virtue and the faculties within
+    Are vital, and that riches are akin
+    To fear, to change, to cowardice, and death?
+
+    WORDSWORTH.
+
+
+
+What is so delightful as spring weather? To it, whatever mystery life
+can make plain, it reveals. There is universal utterance. Water leaps
+from its winding sheet of snow; the streams spring out to wander till
+they find their source; the corn sprouts to receive the sun's warm kiss;
+the buds unfold, the blossoms send forth fragrance, the heavens weep for
+joy; the birds sing, the children shout, and the fuller pulse of life
+gives, even to the old, fresh thoughts and young desires. Now, what is
+all this but a symbol of the soul, which feels the urgency of God
+calling upon it to make itself alive in him and in his universe of truth
+and beauty?
+
+But the season of growth is also the time of blight. A hundred germs
+perish for one that ripens into wholesome fruit; a hundred young lives
+suffer physical or moral ruin for one that develops into some likeness
+of true manhood. And upon what slight causes success or failure seems to
+depend!
+
+As a mere word, a glance, will bring the blood to a maiden's cheek, so
+may it sow the germ of moral death in the heart of youth. How helpless
+and ignorant the young are in their seeming strength and smartness: how
+self-sufficient in their unwisdom, how little amenable to reason, how
+slow to perceive true ideals. What patient, persevering effort is
+required to form character, and what a little thing will poison life in
+its source! How easy it is to see and understand what is coarse and
+evil, how difficult to appreciate what is pure and excellent. How
+quickly a boy learns to find pleasure in what is animal or brutal; but
+what infinite pains must be taken before he is won to the love of truth
+and goodness. Caricature delights him, and he has no eyes for the chaste
+beauty of perfect art. The story of an outlaw fills him with enthusiasm,
+and the heroic struggles of godlike souls are for him meaningless. He
+gazes with envious awe upon some vulgar rich man, and finds a
+philosopher, or a saint, only queer. He studies because he has been sent
+to school, where ignorance will expose him to ridicule and humiliation,
+and possibly too, because he is told that knowledge will help him to win
+money and influence. However great his proficiency, he is in truth but a
+barbarian, without wisdom, without reverence, without gentleness. He has
+been brought only in a vague way into communion with the conscious life
+of the race; he has no true conception of the dignity of souls, no sense
+of the beauty of modest and unselfish action. He mistakes rudeness for
+strength, boastfulness for ability, disrespect for independence,
+profanity for manliness, brutality for courage.
+
+And to add to his misfortune, he is blind to his own weakness and
+ignorance. A sneer or a jest is his reply to the voice of wisdom, as
+with a light heart he walks in the road to ruin; and thus it happens
+that for one who becomes a true and noble man, a hundred go astray or
+sink into an unintelligent and vulgar kind of life. This fact is
+concealed from the eyes of the young, from the eyes of the multitude,
+indeed. As we hide the dead in the earth that we may quickly forget our
+loss, so society buries from sight and thought those who fail. Their
+number is so great that the oblivion which soon overwhelms them is
+needful to save even the brave from discouragement. Of a hundred college
+boys the lives of twenty-five will be ruined by dissipation, by sensual
+indulgence; twenty-five others will be wrecked by unhappy marriages,
+foolish financial schemes, dishonesty and indolence; of the remaining
+fifty, forty, let us say, will manage to get on without loss of
+respectability, while the ten (who are still left) will win a sort of
+notoriety by getting rich or by getting elected to office. Of the
+hundred will one become a saint, a philosopher, a poet, a statesman, or
+even a man of superior ability in natural knowledge or literature? And
+if this estimate is rightly made they all fail; and the emergence of a
+high and noble mind is so improbable that it may almost be looked upon,
+like the birth of a genius, as an accident, so impossible is it, with
+our limited view, to bring such cases within the domain of law. These
+hundred college boys have been taken from a thousand youths. The nine
+hundred have remained outside the doors which open into the halls of
+culture, away from the special influences which thought and ingenuity
+have created to develop and perfect man's endowments. As they are less
+favored, we demand less of them, and are content to have them reinforce
+the unenlightened army of laborers and money-getters. But when we come
+among those to whom leisure and opportunity are given that they may
+learn to think truly and to act nobly, and find that they fail in this,
+as nearly all of them do fail, we are disappointed and saddened. The
+thoughtless imagine that those who provide food and shelter do the most
+important work; but such work is the most important only where there is
+no intellectual, moral, or religious life. That is most necessary which
+nourishes the highest faculty, and wherever civilization exists,
+enlightened minds and great characters are indispensable. The animal and
+the savage, without much difficulty, find what satisfies appetite; but
+God appoints that only living souls shall provide what keeps souls
+alive. Now this soul-life, which manifests itself in thought, in
+conduct, in hope, faith, and love, makes us human and lifts us above
+every other kind of earthly existence. It is our distinctive attribute,
+the godlike side of our being, which, under penalty of sinking to lower
+worlds, we must bring out and cultivate. The plant is alive. By its own
+energy it springs from darkness, it grows, it waves its green leaves
+beneath the blue heavens; but it is blind, deaf and dumb, senseless,
+dead to the world of sight and sound, of taste and smell. The animal too
+is alive, and in a higher way: for all the glories of Nature are painted
+upon its eye; all sounds strike upon its ear; it moves about and has all
+the sensations of physical pleasure of which man is capable; but it is
+without thought, without sense of right and wrong, without imagination,
+without hope and faith. It is plain then that human life, in its highest
+sense, is life of the soul,--a life of thought and love, of faith and
+hope, of imagination and desire; and men are high or low as they partake
+more or less of this true life. By this standard, and by no other,
+reason requires that we form an estimate of human worth. To be a king,
+to have money, to live in splendor, to meet with approval from few or
+many,--is accidental, is something which may happen to an ignorant, a
+heartless, a depraved, a vulgar man. The most vicious and brutal of men
+have, again and again, held the most exalted positions, and as a rule
+cringing and lying, trickery and robbery, or speculation and gambling,
+have been and are the means by which great fortunes are acquired.
+Position, then, and money are distinguishable from worth; and they may
+be and often are found where the life of thought and love, of faith and
+hope, of imagination and desire, is almost wholly wanting. Now, it is
+this life--the only true human life--which education should bring forth
+and strengthen; and the failure to lead this life, of those who pass
+through our institutions of learning, is a subject of deep concern for
+all who observe and reflect; for among them we look for the leaders who
+shall cause wisdom and goodness to prevail over ignorance and appetite.
+If those who receive the best nurture and care remain on the low plains
+of a hardly more than animal existence, what hope is there that the
+multitude shall rise to nobler ways of living?
+
+There is question here of the most vital interests; and if we discover
+the causes of the evil, a remedy may be found. These causes of failure
+lie partly in our environment and partly within ourselves. In the home,
+in which we receive the first and the most enduring impressions, true
+views and noble aims are frequently wanting; and thus false and low
+estimates of life are formed at a time when what we learn sinks into the
+very substance of the mind, and colors and shapes all our future seeing
+and loving. This primal experience accompanies us, and hangs about us
+like a mist to shut out the view of fairer worlds. Enthusiasm for
+intellectual and moral excellence is never roused, because our young
+souls were not made magnetic by the words and deeds of those whom we
+looked up to as gods. Fortunate is he who bears with him into the
+life-struggle pure memories of a happy home. When I think of the bees I
+have seen coming back to the hive, honey-laden, in the golden light of
+setting suns, when I was a boy at home, a feeling comes over me as
+though I had lived in paradise and been driven forth into a bleak
+world. When one is young, and one's father and mother are full of health
+and joy; when the roses are blooming and the brooks are laughing to
+themselves from simple gladness, and the floating clouds and the silent
+stars seem to have human thoughts,--what more could we ask of God but to
+know that all this is eternal, and is from him?
+
+In such a mood, how easy it is to turn the childlike soul to the world
+of spiritual and immortal things. With what efficacy then a mother's
+soft voice teaches us that we were born upon this earth for no other
+purpose than to know truth, to love goodness, to do right, that so,
+having made ourselves godlike, we may forever be with God. And if these
+high lessons blend in our thought with memories which make home a type
+of heaven, how shall they not through life be a spur to noble endeavor
+to accomplish the task thus set us? When great-hearted, high-souled boys
+go forth to college from homes of intelligence and love, then is there
+well-founded hope that they shall grow to be wise and helpful men, who
+know and teach truth, who see and create beauty, who do and make others
+do what becomes a man. Of hardly less importance is the neighborhood in
+which our early years are passed, and next to the companionship of the
+home fireside, a boy's best neighbor is Nature. Well for him shall it
+be, if, like colts and calves, and all happy young things, he is
+permitted to breath the wholesome air of woods and fields, to drink from
+flowing streams, to lie in the shade of trees on the green sward, or to
+stand alone beneath the silent starlit heavens until the thought and
+feeling of the infinite and eternal sink deep into his soul, and make it
+impossible that he should ever look upon the universe of time and space,
+or the universe of duty's law within his breast, in a shallow or
+irreverent spirit. Little shall be said to him, and little shall he
+speak, and to the unobservant he shall seem dull; but he is Nature's
+nursling, and she paints her colors on his brain and infuses her
+strength into his heart. She hardens him and teaches him patience; she
+shows him real things, fills him with the love of truth, and makes him
+understand that sham is shame.
+
+His progress may be slow; but he will persevere, he will have faith in
+the power of labor and of time, and when in after years we shall look
+about for a man with some Diogenes' lantern, there are a thousand
+chances to one that when we find him we shall find him country-born, not
+city-bred. Too soon is the town-boy made self-conscious; he is
+precocious; all the tricks and devices of civilization are known to
+him; all artifices and contrivances he sees in shop-windows; the street,
+the theatre, the newspaper are the rivals of the home, and they quickly
+teach him irreverence and disobedience. He loses innocence, experience
+of evil gives him flippant views. He becomes wise in his own conceit;
+having eyes only for the surfaces of things, he easily persuades himself
+that he knows all. Of such a youth how shall any college make an
+enlightened, a noble, and a reverent man? But the home and the
+neighborhood are not our whole environment. As we are immersed in an
+atmospheric ocean, so do we swim in the current of our national life. To
+praise this life is easy. We all see and feel how vigorous it is, how
+confident, how eager. Here is a world of busy men and women, active in
+many directions. They found States, they build cities, they create
+wealth, they discuss all problems, they try all experiments, they hurry
+on to new tasks, and think they have done nothing while aught remains to
+do.
+
+They live in the midst of the excitement of ever-recurring elections, of
+speculation, of financial schemes and commercial enterprises. It is an
+unrestful, feverish, practical life, in which all the strong natures are
+thinking of doing something, of gaining something,--a life in the
+market-place, where high thought and noble conduct are all but
+impossible, where the effort to make one's self a man, instead of
+striving to get so many thousands of money, would seem ridiculous. It is
+a life of inventions and manufactures, of getting and spending, in which
+we bring forth and consume in a single century what it has taken Nature
+many thousand years to hoard. Our aim is to have more rather than to be
+more; our ideal is that of material progress; our praise is given to
+those who invent and discover the means of augmenting wealth. Liberty is
+opportunity to get rich; education is the development of the
+money-getting faculty. Our national life may, of course, be looked at
+from many sides, but the general drift of opinion and effort is in the
+direction here pointed out. Nine tenths of our thought and energy are
+given to material interests, and these interests represent nine tenths
+of our achievements. This may be true of men in general, it may be true
+also that material progress is a condition of moral and intellectual
+growth; but none the less is it true that right human life is a life of
+thought and love, of hope and faith, of imagination and desire.
+Consequently in a well-ordered society, the chief aim--nine tenths of
+all effort, let us say--will have for its object the creation of
+enlightened and loving men and women, whom faith and hope shall make
+strong, whom imagination shall refresh, and the desire of perfection
+shall keep active. The aims which the ideals of democracy suggest are
+not wholly or chiefly material. We strive, indeed, to create a social
+condition in which comfort and plenty shall be within the reach of all;
+but the better among us understand that this is but an inferior part of
+our work, and they take no delight whatever in our great fortunes and
+great cities. If democracy is the best government, it follows that it is
+the kind of government which is most favorable to virtue, intelligence,
+and religion. It is faint praise to say that in America there is more
+enterprise, more wealth, than elsewhere. What we should strive to make
+ourselves able to say, is, that there is here a more truly human life,
+more public and private honesty, purity, sympathy, and helpfulness; more
+love of knowledge, more perfect openness to light, greater desire to
+learn, and greater willingness to accept truth than is to be found
+elsewhere. It should be our endeavor to create a world of which it may
+be said, there life is more pleasant, beauty more highly prized,
+goodness held in greater reverence, the sense of honor finer, the
+recognition of talent and worth completer than elsewhere.
+
+Wealth and population should be considered merely as means, which, if we
+ourselves do not sink beneath our fortune, we shall use to help us to
+develop on a vast scale, a nobler, freer, and fairer life than hitherto
+has ever existed. We Americans have a great capacity for seeing things
+as they are. A thousand shams and glittering vanities have gone down
+before our straight-looking eyes; and because such things fail to
+impress us, we seem to be irreverent. We must look more steadfastly,
+deeper still, until we clearly perceive and understand that to live for
+money is to lead a false and vulgar life, to rest with complacency in
+mere numbers is to have a superficial and unreal mind. To form a right
+judgment of a people, as of individuals, we must consider what they are;
+not what they have, except in so far as their possessions are the result
+of work which at once forms and reveals character. And we must know that
+work is good only in as much as it helps to make life human,--that is,
+intelligent, moral and religious. And what we have the right to demand
+of those to whom we give a higher education is, that they shall body
+forth these principles in their lives and become leaders in the task of
+spreading them among the multitude. We demand, first of all, that they
+become men whose hearts are pure and loving, whose minds are open and
+enlightened, whose motives are benevolent and generous, whose purposes
+are high and religious; and if they are such men, it shall matter
+little to what special pursuits they turn, for whatever their
+occupation, honor, truth, and intelligence shall go with them, bearing,
+like mercy, a blessing for those who give and a blessing for those who
+receive. The spirit in which they work shall be more than what they do,
+as they themselves shall be more than what they accomplish.
+
+A right spirit transforms the whole man, and the first and highest aim
+of the educator should be to impart a new heart, a new purpose, which
+shall bring into play forces that may oppose and overcome those faults
+of the young of which I have spoken, and which, if not corrected, lead
+to failure.
+
+And here we come to the causes of ill success which lie within
+ourselves. We have our individual qualities and defects, and we have
+also the qualities and defects of the people whence we are sprung, and
+of the time-spirit into which we are born. It is the aim of education,
+as it is the aim of religion, to lift us above the spirit of the age;
+but in attempting to do this, they who lose sight of what is true and
+beneficent in that spirit, commit a serious blunder. A national spirit,
+too, is a narrow, and often a harsh and selfish spirit; but when culture
+and religion strive to make us citizens of the world and universally
+benevolent, a care must be had that we retain what is strong and noble
+in the character we inherit from our ancestors.
+
+The lover of intellectual excellence, however, is little inclined to
+dwell with complacency either upon his own qualities, or upon the
+greatness of his country or his age. The untaught optimism which leads
+the crowd to exaggerate the worth of whatever they in any way identify
+with themselves, he looks upon with suspicion, if not with aversion.
+Self-complacency is pleasant; but truth alone is good, and they who
+think least are best content with themselves and with their world. He
+who seeks to improve his mind, neither boasts of his age and country,
+nor rails at them; but tries to understand them as he tries to know
+himself. The important knowledge here is of obstacles and defects; for
+when these are removed, to advance is easy. The first lesson which we
+must learn is that in the work of mental culture, time and patience are
+necessary elements. The young, who are eager and restless, find it
+difficult to work with patience and perseverance, especially when the
+reward of labor is remote, and in the excitement and hurry of American
+life, such work often seems to be impossible. But by this kind of work
+alone can true culture be acquired. It is this Buffoon means when he
+calls genius a great capacity for taking pains. When Albert Dürer said,
+"Sir, it cannot be better done;" he simply meant that he had bestowed
+infinite pains upon his work. Now, they who are in a hurry cannot take
+pains; and they who work for money will take pains only in so far as it
+is profitable to do so. We must live in our work and love it for its own
+sake. To do work we love makes us happy, makes us free, and according to
+its kind educates us; and whatever its kind, it will at least teach us
+the sovereign virtue of patience, and give us something of the spirit of
+the old masters who in dingy shops ceased not from labor, and kept their
+cheerful serenity to the end, though the outcome was only the most
+perfect fiddle, or a deathless head. But they themselves had the souls
+of artists, and were honest men, who in their work found joy and
+freedom, and therefore what they did remains as a source of delight and
+inspiration. If we find it impossible to put our hearts into our work
+and consequently impossible to take infinite pains with it, then this is
+work for which we were not born. The impatient cannot love the labor by
+which the mind is cultivated, because impatience implies a sense of
+restraint, a lack of freedom. They are restless, easily grow weary or
+despondent, find fault with themselves and their task, and either throw
+off the yoke or bear it in a spirit of disappointment and bitterness.
+As they fail to make themselves strong and serene, their work bears the
+marks of haste and feebleness, for work reveals character; it is the
+likeness of the doer, as style shows the man. Then the young are blinded
+by the glitter and glare of life, by the splendors of position and
+wealth; they are drawn to what is external; they would be here and
+there; they love the unchartered liberty of chance desires, and are
+easily brought to look upon the task of self-improvement as a slavish
+work. They would have done with study that they may be free, may enter
+into what they suppose to be a fair and rich heritage. They cannot
+understand that so long as they are narrow, sensual, and unenlightened,
+the possession of a world could not make them high or happy. They do not
+know that to have liberty, without the power of using it for worthy
+ends, is a curse not a blessing. They imagine that experience of the
+world's ways and wickedness will make them wise, whereas it will make
+them depraved.
+
+How can they realize that the good of life consists in being, and not in
+having? that we are worth what our knowledge, love, admiration, hope,
+faith, and desire make us worth? They will not perceive that happiness
+and unhappiness are conditions of soul, and consequently that the wise,
+the loving, and the strong, whatever their outward fortune, are happy,
+while the ignorant, the heartless, and the weak are miserable. To know
+ourselves, we should seek to discover the kind of life our influence
+tends to create. Consider the kind of world college boys make for
+themselves, the things they admire, the companions they find pleasant,
+the subjects in which they take interest, the books that delight
+them,--and one great cause of the failure of education will be made
+plain; for though they are sent to school to be taught by professors,
+their influence upon one another is paramount. Instead of helping one
+another to see that their real business is to educate themselves, they
+persuade one another that life is given for common ends and vulgar
+pleasures. Hence they look with envy upon their companions who are the
+sons of rich men, as they have not lived long enough to learn that the
+fate of four fifths of the sons of rich men in this country, is moral
+and physical ruin. If such is the public opinion of the world in which
+they live; and if even strong men are feeble in the presence of public
+opinion,--how shall we find fault with them for not being attracted by
+the ideals of intellectual and moral excellence. For the trained mind
+even to think is difficult, and for them independent thought is almost
+impossible. They do not know the little less than creative power of
+right education, or that as we are changed by action, we are
+transformed by thought. What patient labor may do to exalt and refine
+the mental faculties, until we become capable of entering into the life
+of every age and every people, has not been shown to them; and hence
+they are not inspired by the high hope of dwelling, in very truth, with
+all the noble and heroic souls who have passed through this world and
+left record of themselves. We bid the youth learn many things which he
+cannot but find both useless and uninteresting. And yet unless we
+discover the secret of winning him to the love of study, the educational
+value of what he learns is lost; for what leaves him unmoved, leaves him
+unimproved. His information and accomplishments are comparatively
+unimportant. What he himself is, and what his real self gives us grounds
+for hoping he shall become, is the true concern. To be able to translate
+Æschylus or Plato is not a great thing; but it is a great thing to have
+the Greek's sense of what is fair, noble and intellectual. To be able to
+solve a complex mathematical problem may be unimportant; but to have the
+mental habit of accurate, close, patient thinking is important. It is
+easy to forget one's Greek or the higher mathematics; but an
+intellectual or a moral habit is not easily lost.
+
+He who has right habits will go farther and rise higher than he who has
+only brilliant attainments. It is an error, and a very common one, to
+suppose that education is merely, or chiefly, a mental process, and
+consequently that the best school is that in which the various kinds of
+knowledge are best taught. Our whole being, physical, intellectual, and
+moral, is subject to the law of education. We may educate the eye, the
+ear, the hand, the foot; and each member of the body may be trained in
+many ways. The eye of the microscopist has received a training different
+from that of the painter; the sculptor's hand has been taught a cunning
+unlike that of the surgeon; the voice of the orator is developed in one
+way, that of the singer in another. And so the faculties of the mind may
+be drawn forth, and each one in various ways. The powers of observation,
+of reflection, of intuition, of imagination, are all educable. One of
+the most important and most difficult lessons to learn is that of
+attention. We know only what we are conscious of, and we are conscious
+only of that to which we give heed. If we but hold the mind to any
+subject with perseverance, it will deliver its secret. The little
+knowledge we have is often vague and unreal, because we are heedless,
+because we have never taught ourselves to dwell in conscious communion
+with the objects of thought. The trained eye sees innumerable beauties
+which are hidden from others, and so the mind which is taught to look
+right sees truths the uneducated can never know. We may be taught to
+judge as well as to look. Indeed, once we have learned to see things as
+they are, correct opinions and judgments naturally follow. All faculty
+is the result of education. Poets, orators, philosophers, and saints
+bring not their gifts into the world with them; but by looking and
+thinking, doing and striving, they rise from the poor elements of
+half-conscious life to the clear vision of truth and beauty. Natural
+endowments are not equal; but the chief cause of inequality lies in the
+unequal efforts which men make to develop their endowments. The lack of
+imagination in the multitude makes their life dull, uninteresting, and
+material, and it is assumed that we are born with, or without,
+imagination, and that there is no remedy for this misery. And those who
+admit that imagination is subject to the law of development, frequently
+hold that it should be repressed rather than strengthened. Doubtless the
+imagination can be cultivated, just as the eye or the ear, the judgment
+or the reason, can be cultivated; and since imagination, like faith,
+hope, and love, helps us to live in higher and fairer worlds, an
+educator is false to his calling when he leaves it unimproved. The
+classics, and especially poetry, are the great means of intellectual
+culture, because more than anything else they have power to exalt and
+ennoble the imagination. To suppose that this faculty is one which only
+poets and artists need, is to take a shallow and partial view. The
+historian, the student of Nature, the statesman, the minister of
+religion, the teacher, the mechanic even, if they are to do good work,
+must possess imagination, which is at once an intellectual, a moral, and
+a religious faculty. It is the mother and mistress of faith, hope, and
+love. It is the source of great thoughts, of high aspirations, and of
+heavenly dreams. Without it the illimitable starlit expanse loses its
+sublimity, oceans and mountains their awfulness and majesty, flowers
+their beauty, home its sacred charm, youth its halo, and the grave its
+solemn mystery.
+
+Those powers within us which are directly related to conduct, the
+impulses to self-preservation, and to the propagation of the race, are
+subject to the law of education, not less than our physical and
+intellectual endowments. And the importance of dealing rightly with
+these powers is readily perceived if we reflect that conduct is the
+greater part of human life, which is a life of thought and love, of hope
+and faith, of imagination and desire.
+
+As we can educate the faculties of thought and imagination, so can we
+develop the power to love, to hope, to believe, and to desire. When
+there is question of the intellect, teachers seek to impart information
+rather than to strengthen the mind, and when there is question of the
+moral nature, they have recourse to precepts and maxims instead of
+striving to confirm the will and to direct impulse. It is generally
+held, in fact, that will is a gift, not a growth, and the same view is
+taken of all our moral dispositions. We are supposed to receive from
+Nature a warm or a cold heart, a hopeful or a despondent temper, a
+believing or a skeptical turn of mind, a spiritual or a sensual bent.
+Now as I have already admitted, endowments are unlike; but what has this
+to do with the drift of the argument? Minds, though by nature unequal,
+may all be educated; and so wills may be educated, and so that which
+makes us capable of faith, hope, and desire, may be drawn forth,
+strengthened, and refined. Emerson, whose thought is predominantly
+spiritual, takes a low and material view of the moral faculties,
+confusing strength of will with health. "Courage," he says, "is the
+degree of circulation of the blood in the arteries.... When one has a
+plus of health, all difficulties vanish before it." But will is a moral
+rather than a constitutional power; and in so far as it is moral, it
+may be cultivated and directed to noble aims and ends. And if the
+teacher perform this work with fine knowledge and tact, he becomes an
+educator; for upon the will, more than upon the intellectual faculties,
+success or failure depends. Whatever we are able to will, we are able to
+learn to do; and the best service we can render another is to rouse and
+confirm within him the will to live and to work, that he may make
+himself a complete man, that thus he may become a benefactor of men and
+a co-worker with God. The rational will, which is the educated will,
+should give impulse and guidance to all our thinking, loving, and doing.
+It should control appetite; it should nourish faith and hope; it should
+lead us on through the illusory world of sensual delights, through the
+hardly less illusory world of wealth and power, still bidding us look
+and see that the world to which the conscious self really belongs, is
+infinite and eternal, and that to seek to rest in aught else is to
+apostatize from reason and conscience. Thus it would awaken in us a
+divine discontent, a sacred unrest, which might urge us on through the
+darkness of appetite and the unwholesome air of avarice and ambition,
+whispering to us that our life-work is to know truth, to love beauty, to
+do righteousness. To none is the education of the will so necessary as
+to the lovers of intellectual excellence, for they who live in the world
+of ideas are easily content to let the world of deeds take care of
+itself. As the astronomer sees the earth lost like a grain of sand in
+infinite space, so to the wide and deep view of one who is familiar with
+the course of human thought and action, what any man, what the whole
+race of man, may do, can seem but insignificant. From the vanity and
+noise of actors who fret and storm for their brief hour, and then pass
+forever from life's stage, he flies to ideal worlds where truth never
+changes, where beauty never grows old, and lives more richly blest than
+lovers in Tempe or the dales of Arcady. And then the habit of looking at
+things from many sides leads to doubt, hesitation, and inaction. While
+the wise deliberate, the young and inexperienced have won or lost the
+battle. Thus the purely intellectual life tends to weaken faith, hope,
+and desire, which are the sources whence conduct springs, the drying up
+of which leaves us amid barren wastes, where high thinking, if it be not
+impossible, brings neither strength nor joy; for the secret of strength
+and joy lies in doing and not in thinking. It is a law of our nature
+that conduct brings the most certain and the most permanent
+satisfaction, and hence whatever our ideals, the pursuit should be
+inspired by the sense of duty.
+
+
+    "Stern law-giver! yet thou dost wear
+    The Godhead's most benignant grace;
+    Nor know we anything so fair
+    As is the smile upon thy face.
+    Flowers laugh before thee on their beds
+    And fragrance in thy footing treads."
+
+
+Then only do we move with certain step when we hear God's voice bidding
+us go forward, as he commands the starry host to fly onward, and all
+living things to spring upward to light and warmth. When we understand
+that he has made progress the law of life, we learn to feel that not to
+grow is not to live. Then our view is enlarged; we become lovers of
+perfection; we cherish every gift, and in many ways we strive to
+cultivate the many powers which go to the making of a man. They all are
+from him, and from him is the effort by which they are improved. We were
+born to make ourselves alive in him and in his universe, and like the
+setter in the field, we stretch eye and ear and nose to catch whatever
+message may be borne to us from his boundless game park. We observe,
+reflect, compare; we read best books; we listen to whoever speaks what
+he knows and feels to be truth. We take delight in whatever in Nature is
+sublime or beautiful, and fresh thoughts and innocent hearts make us
+glad. Wherever an atom thrills, there too is God, and in him we feel the
+thrill and are at home. Our faith grows pure; our hope is confirmed; and
+our love and sympathy identify us with an ever-widening sphere of life
+beyond us. The exclusive self passes into the larger movement of the
+social and religious world around us, which, as we now realize, is also
+within us, giving aims and motives to our love and self-devotion. We
+understand that what hurts another can never help us, and that our
+private good must tend to become a general blessing. Thus we find and
+love ourselves in the intellectual, moral, and religious life of the
+race, which is a type and symbol of the infinite life of God, the omen
+and promise of the soul's survival. As we become conscious of ourselves
+only through communion with what is not ourselves, so we truly live only
+when we live for God and the world he creates,--losing life that we may
+find it; dying, like seed-corn, that we may rise to a new and richer
+life. Not what gratifies our selfish or sensual nature will help us to
+lead this right human life; but that which illumines and deepens thought
+and love, which gives to faith a boundless scope, to hope an everlasting
+foundation, to desire the infinite beauty which, though unseen, is felt,
+like memory of music fled. The unseen world ceases to be a future
+world; and is recognized as the very world in which we now think and
+love, and so intellectual and moral life passes into the sphere of
+religion. We no longer pursue ideals which forever elude us, but we
+become partakers of the divine life; for in giving ourselves to the
+Eternal and Infinite we find God in our souls. The ideal is made real;
+God is with us, and through faith, hope, and love we are one with him,
+and all is well. Henceforth in seeking to know more, to become more, we
+are animated by a divine spirit. Now we may grow old, still learning
+many things, still smitten with the love of beauty, still finding
+delight in fresh thoughts and innocent pleasures, and it may be that we
+shall be found to be teachers of wisdom and of holiness. Then, indeed,
+shall we be happy, for it is better to teach truth than to win battles.
+A war-hero supposes a barbarous condition of the race, and when all
+shall be civilized, they who know and love the most shall be held to be
+the greatest and the best.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+UNIVERSITY EDUCATION.
+
+
+As they who look on the ocean think of its vastness; of the many shores
+in many climes visited by its waves to ply "their priest-like task of
+clean ablution;" of cities and empires that rose beside its waters,
+flourished, decayed, and became a memory; of others that shall rise and
+also pass away, while the moving element remains,--so we to-day
+beholding ancient Faith, laying, in the New World, the cornerstone of an
+institution which better than anything else symbolizes the aim and
+tendency of modern life, find ourselves dwelling in thought upon what
+has been and what will be.
+
+On the one hand rises the venerable form of that religion whose voice
+re-echoed in the hearts of Abraham, Moses, David, and Isaiah; whose
+lips, when the Saviour spoke, uttered diviner truth and thrilled the
+hearts of men with purer love, living with them in deserts and
+catacombs, leading them along bloodstained ways to victory and peace,
+until at length the Church gleamed forth from amid the parting
+storm-clouds and shone like a mountain-built city bathed in sunlight. On
+the other stands the Genius of the Republic, the embodied spirit of the
+sovereign people, who, accepting as literal truth the Christian
+principles that God is a Father, and men brothers and therefore equal,
+strive to take from political society the blindness and fatality of
+natural law, and to endow it with the divine and human attributes of
+justice, mercy, and intelligence. From the very beginning our American
+history is full of religious zeal, of high courage and strong endeavor.
+When Columbus, saddened by the frivolousness or the perfidy of courts,
+but unshaken in his purpose, walked the streets of the Spanish capital,
+lonely and forsaken, the children, as he passed along, would point to
+their foreheads and smile, for was not his mind unhinged, and did he not
+believe the world was round and on the other side men walked like flies
+upon a ceiling? But a woman's heart understood that his folly was of the
+kind which is the wisdom of God, and with her help he set sail, not
+timidly or doubting like the Portuguese who for fifty years hugged the
+African coast, advancing and then receding, but facing the awful and
+untraveled ocean with a heart stronger than its storm-swept billows, he
+steered due west. In his journal, day after day, he wrote these simple
+but sublime words, "That day he sailed westward, which was his course."
+And still, as hope rose and fell, as misgivings and terrors seized on
+his men, as the compass varied in inexplicable ways as though they were
+entering regions where the very laws of Nature change, the soul of the
+great admiral stood firm and each evening he wrote again the self-same
+words, "that day he sailed westward which was his course," until at
+length seeing what he foresaw, he gave to Christendom another world and
+enlarged the boundaries and scope of earthly life. What hearts had not
+the men who in New England, in Virginia, in Maryland, and elsewhere,
+settled in little bands on the edge of vast and unexplored regions,
+covered by interminable forests, where savages lay in wait, athirst for
+blood. We hear without surprise that wise and prudent men looked upon
+the early attempts to take possession of America as not less wild and
+visionary than the legendary exploits of Amadis de Gaul; but what
+Utopian dreamer, what poet soaring in the high regions of his fancy,
+could have imagined two centuries and a half ago the beauty, the power,
+the free and majestic sweep of the stream of human life which has poured
+across this continent? Who could have dared to hope that the religious
+exiles who sought here a home for the Christian conscience were a seed,
+the least of all, which was destined to grow into a tree whose boughs
+should shelter the land, and bring refreshment to the weary and
+heavy-laden from every part of the earth?
+
+Who could have thought that these fugitives from the tyrant's power
+would, in little more than a century, grow like the tribes of Israel
+into a people able to withstand the onslaughts of the oppressor, and to
+abolish forever within their borders despotic rule? Who could have had
+faith that men of different creeds, speaking various tongues, bred in
+unlike social conditions, would here coalesce and co-operate for the
+general purposes of free government? Above all, who could have believed
+that a form of government rarely tried, even in small States, and when
+tried found practicable only for brief periods, would here become so
+stable, so strong, that every hamlet, every village, is self-poised and
+manages its own affairs? The achievement is greater than we are able to
+know; nor does it lie chiefly in the millions who coming from many lands
+have here made homes and found themselves free; nor in the building of
+cities, the clearing of forests, the draining of swamps, the binding of
+two oceans, and the opening of lines of rapid communication in every
+direction. Not to numbers or wealth do we owe our significance among
+the nations; but to the fact that we have shown that respect for law is
+compatible with civil and religious liberty; that a free people can
+become prosperous and strong, and preserve order without king or
+standing army; that the State and the Church can move in separate orbits
+and still co-operate for the common welfare; that men of different races
+and beliefs may live together in peace; that in spite of an abnormally
+rapid increase of population and of wealth, and of the many evils thence
+resulting, the prevailing tendency is to sanity of thought and
+sentiment, thus plainly manifesting the vigor of our life and
+institutions; that the government of the majority, where men put their
+trust in God and in knowledge, is in the end the government of the good
+and the wise. We have thus helped to establish confidence in human
+nature; to prove that man's instincts, like the laws of Nature, are
+conservative; to show that the enthusiasts who would overturn
+everything, destroy everything, have no abiding place or influence in
+the affairs of a free people, as volcanic and cyclonic forces are but
+transitory and superficial in their action upon the earth. We have shown
+in a word that under a popular government, where men are faithful and
+intelligent, it is as impossible that society should become chaotic as
+that the planets should dissolve into star dust.
+
+It is difficult to realize what an advance this is on all previous views
+of political life; how full it is of promise, how accordant with the
+sentiments of the noblest minds in every part of the world. It gives us
+the leading place among the nations which are moving along rising ways
+to higher and freer life. To turn to the Catholic Church in America; all
+observers remark its great development here, the rapid increase in the
+number of its adherents, its growth in wealth and influence, the firm
+yet gentle hand with which it brings heterogeneous populations under the
+control of a common faith and discipline, the ease with which it adapts
+itself to new conditions and organizes itself in every part of the
+country. It is not a little thing, in spite of unfriendly public opinion
+and of great and numerous obstacles, in spite of the burden which high
+achievements impose and of the lack of easy and supple movement which
+gathering years imply, to enter new fields, to bend one's self to
+unaccustomed work, and to struggle for the right to live in the midst of
+a generation heedless of the good, and mindful only of the evil which
+has been associated with one's life. This is what the Catholic Church in
+America has had to do, and has done with a success which recalls the
+memory of the spread of Christianity through the Roman Empire. It
+counts its members here by millions, while a hundred years ago it
+counted them by thousands; and its priests, churches, schools, and
+institutions of charity it reckons by the thousand, while then they
+could be counted hardly by tens. Public opinion which was then hostile
+is no longer so in the same degree. Prejudice has not indeed ceased to
+exist; for where there is question of religion, of society, of politics,
+even the fairest minds fail to see things as they are, and the
+multitude, it may be supposed, will never become impartial; but the
+tendency of our life and of the age is opposed to bigotry, and as we
+lose faith in the justice and efficacy of persecution, we perceive more
+clearly that true religion can neither be defended nor propagated by
+violence and intolerance, by appeals to sectarian bitterness and
+national hatred. By none is this more sincerely acknowledged, or more
+deeply felt, than by the Catholics of the United States.
+
+The special significance of our American Catholic history is not found
+in the phases of our life which attract attention, and are a common
+theme for declamation; but it lies in the fact that our example proves
+that the Church can thrive where it is neither protected nor persecuted,
+but is simply left to itself to manage its own affairs and to do its
+work. Such an experiment had never been made when we became an
+independent people, and its success is of world-wide import, because
+this is the modern tendency and the position toward the Church which all
+the nations will sooner or later assume; just as they all will be forced
+finally to accept popular rule. The great underlying principle of
+democracy,--that men are brothers and have equal rights, and that God
+clothes the soul with freedom,--is a truth taught by Christ, is a truth
+proclaimed by the Church; and the faith of Christians in this principle,
+in spite of hesitations and misgivings, of oppositions and obstacles and
+inconceivable difficulties, has finally given to it its modern vigor and
+beneficent power. The spirit of love and mercy, which is the spirit of
+Christ, breathes like a heavenly zephyr through the whole earth, and
+under its influence the age is moved to attempt greater things than
+hitherto have seemed possible. Never before has sympathy among men been
+so widespread; never has the desire to come to the relief of all who
+suffer pain or wrong been so general or so intelligent. To feed the
+hungry, to clothe the naked, to visit the sick, seems now comparatively
+a little thing. Our purpose is to create a social condition in which
+none shall lack food or clothing or shelter; following the divine
+command: "O Israel, thou shalt not suffer that there be a beggar or a
+pauper within thy borders." Kindness to slaves ceased to be a virtue for
+us when we abolished slavery; and we look forward to the day when nor
+man nor woman nor child shall work and still be condemned to a life of
+misery. That great blot upon the page of history, woman's fate, has
+partly been erased, and we are drawing near to the time when in the
+world as in Christ there shall be made no distinction between slave and
+freeman, between man and woman. If we compare modern with ancient and
+medieval epochs, wars have become less frequent, and in war men have
+become more humane and merciful.
+
+Increasing knowledge of human life as it is found in the savage, in the
+barbarian, and in the civilized man, fixes us more unalterably in our
+belief in the worth of progress. The savage and the barbarian are
+hopelessly ignorant, and therefore weak and wretched, since ignorance is
+the chief source of man's misery. "My people," says the prophet, "are
+destroyed for lack of knowledge." From ignorance rather than from
+depravity have sprung the most appalling crimes, the most pernicious
+vices. In darkness of mind men have worshiped senseless material
+things, have deified every cruel and carnal passion; at the dictate of
+unenlightened conscience they have oppressed, laid waste, and murdered;
+for lack of knowledge they have perished in the snows of winter, been
+wasted by miasmatic air, have fallen victims to famine and pestilence,
+and have bowed for centuries beneath the degrading yoke of tyranny.
+Science is a ministering angel. The Jesuits by bringing quinine to the
+knowledge of civilized man have done more to relieve suffering than all
+the builders of hospitals. Vaccine has wrought more potently than the
+all-forgetful love of mothers; more than all the patriots gunpowder has
+won victories over tyrants; and the printing-press is a greater teacher
+than philosophers, writers, poets, schools, and universities. Like a
+heavenly messenger the compass guides man whithersoever he will go,
+still turning to the one fixed point, as turn the hearts of the children
+of men to God. The nations intermingle and lose their jealousies and
+hatreds, borne everywhere by the power of steam; and the thoughts of men
+are carried by lightning round the whole earth. Commerce has become a
+world-wide interchange of good offices; and while it adds to the comfort
+of all, it enlarges thought and strengthens sympathy. Our greater
+knowledge has enabled us to lengthen human life; to extinguish some of
+the most virulent diseases; to perform surgical operations without pain;
+to increase the fertility of the soil; to make pestilential regions
+habitable; to illumine our cities and homes at night with the
+brilliancy of day; to give to laborers better clothing and dwellings
+than princes in other ages have had. It has opened to our vision the
+limitless sidereal expanse, and revealed to us a heavenly glory which
+transcends the imagination of inspired poets. Before this new light the
+earth has dwindled away and become an atom, as the stars hide when the
+great sun wheels upward from out the night. We have looked into the very
+heart of the sun itself, and know of what it is made; and with the
+microscope we have caught sight of the marvelous world of the
+infinitesimally small, have seen what human eye had never beheld, and
+have watched unseen life building up and breaking down all living
+organisms. We have learned how to walk secure in the depths of ocean, to
+soar in mid-air, to rush on our way unimpeded through the stony hearts
+of mountains. We see the earth grow from a fire-ball to be the home of
+man; we know its anatomy; we read its history; and we behold races of
+animals which passed away ages before the eye of man looked forth upon
+the boundless mystery and saw the shadow of the presence of the infinite
+God. Better than the Greeks we know the history of Greece; than the
+Romans that of Rome. Words that were never written have whispered to us
+the dreams and hopes of people that perished and left no record; and the
+more we have learned of the past the more clearly do we perceive how far
+the present age surpasses all others in knowledge and in power.
+
+The mighty movement by which this development has been caused, has not
+slackened, but seems each day to gain new force; and the marvelous
+changes, political, social, moral, intellectual, and physical, which
+give character to the nineteenth century are but the prelude to a drama
+which shall make all past achievements of our race appear weak and
+contemptible. To imagine that our superiority is merely mechanical and
+material is to fail to see things as they are. Greater individuals may
+have lived than now are living, but never before has the world been
+governed with so much wisdom and so much justice; and the power back of
+our progress is intellectual, moral, and religious. Science is not
+material. It is the product of intellect and will; and the great
+founders of modern science, Copernicus, Kepler, Bacon, Descartes,
+Galileo, Newton, Leibnitz, Ampère, Liebig, Fresnel, Faraday, and Mayer,
+were Christians. "However paradoxical it may sound," says
+DuBois-Reymond, "modern science owes its origin to Christianity."
+
+Since the course of events is left chiefly to the direction of natural
+causes, and since science enables man to bend the stars, the lightning,
+the winds, and the waves to his purposes, what shall resist the onward
+march of those who are armed with such power? Since life is a warfare, a
+struggle, how shall the ignorant and the thoughtless survive in a
+conflict in which natural knowledge has placed in the hands of the wise
+forces which the angels may not wield? Since the prosperity of the
+Church is left subject to human influence, shall the Son of Man find
+faith on earth when he comes if the most potent instrument God has given
+to man is abandoned to those who know not Christ? Why should we who
+reckon it a part of the glory of the Church in the past that she labored
+to civilize barbarians, to emancipate slaves, to elevate woman, to
+preserve the classical writings, to foster music, painting, sculpture,
+architecture, poetry, and eloquence, think it no part of her mission now
+to encourage scientific research? To be Catholic is to be drawn not only
+to the love of whatever is good and beautiful, but also to the love of
+whatever is true; and to do the best work the Catholic Church must fit
+herself to a constantly changing environment, to the character of every
+people, and to the wants of each age. Has not Christ declared that
+whoever is not against us is for us; and may we not therefore find
+friends in all who work for worthy ends,--for liberty and knowledge, for
+increase of power and love? This large sympathy, which true religion and
+the best culture promote, is Catholic, and it is also American; for here
+with us, I think, the whole world is for men of good-will who are not
+fools. We who are the children of ancient Faith, who inherit the boon
+from fathers who held it to be above all price, are saved, where there
+is question of former times, from irreverent thoughts and shallow views.
+
+
+    For us the long past ages have not flown;
+    Like our own deeds they travel with us still;
+    Reviling them, we but ourselves disown;
+    We are the stream their many currents fill.
+    From their rich youth our manhood has upgrown,
+    And in our blood their hopes and loves yet thrill.
+
+
+But if like the old, the Church can look to the past, like the young,
+she can look to the future. If there are Catholics who linger regretful
+amid glories that have vanished, there are also Catholics who in the
+midst of their work feel a confidence which leaves no place for regret;
+who well understand that the earthly environment in which the Church
+lives is subject to change and decay, and that new surroundings imply
+new tasks and impose new duties. The splendor of the medieval Church,
+its worldly power, the pomp of its ceremonial, the glittering pageantry
+in which its pontiffs and prelates vied with kings and emperors in
+gorgeous display, are gone, or going; and were it given to man to recall
+the past, the spirit whereby it lived would still be wanting. But it is
+the mark of youthful and barbarous natures to have eyes chiefly for the
+garb and circumstance of religion, to see the body only and not the
+soul. At all events the course of life is onward, and enthusiasm for the
+past cannot become the source of great and far reaching action. The
+present alone gives opportunity; and the face of hope turns to the
+future, and the wise are busy with what lies at hand, with immediate
+duty, and not with schemes for bringing back the things that have passed
+away. Leaving their dead with the dead, they work for life and for the
+living.
+
+As in each individual there is a better and a worse self, so in each age
+there are conflicting tendencies; but it is the part of enlightened
+minds and generous hearts to see what is true, and to love what is good.
+The fault-finder is hateful both in life and in literature; and it is
+Iago, the most despicable of characters, whom Shakespeare makes say, "I
+am nothing if not critical." A Christian of all men is without excuse
+for being fretful and sour, for thinking and acting as though this were
+a devil's world, and not the eternal God's, as though there were danger
+lest the Almighty should not prevail. We know that God is, and therefore
+that all will be well; and if it were conceivable that God is not, it
+would still be the part of a true man to labor to make knowledge and
+virtue prevail. The criticism of the age which gives a better
+understanding of its needs is good; all other is baneful.
+
+Opinion rules the world, and a right appreciation of the influences by
+which opinion is molded is the surest guide to a knowledge of the time.
+In ignorant and barbarous ages the notions and beliefs of men are crude,
+and are controlled by a few, for only a few possess knowledge and
+influence; and even in the age of Pericles and Augustus, the thought of
+mankind means the thoughts of some dozens of men. A few vigorous minds
+founded schools of opinion and style, became intellectual dictators, and
+asserted their authority for centuries. As the art of printing was yet
+unknown, and books were rare, the teacher was the speaker; orators held
+sway over the destiny of nations; and the Christian pulpit became the
+world's university. But the printing-press in giving to thought a
+permanent form which is placed under the eyes of the whole world has
+made the passion, the splendor, the majestic phrase of oratory seem
+unreal as an actor's speech, evanescent as a singer's tones; and hence
+the pulpit and the rostrum, though they still have influence, can never
+again exercise the control over opinion which belonged to them when all
+men had not become readers.
+
+What is true of eloquence may be affirmed of all art. In spite of
+ourselves, even the best of us find it difficult to make art a serious
+business; and unless taken seriously, it is vain, loses its soul, and
+falls into the hands of pretenders and sentimentalists. Once painting,
+sculpture, architecture, and song were the expression of thoughts and
+moods which irresistibly appealed for utterance; but with us they are a
+fashion, like cosmetics and laces. Poetry, the highest of arts, has lost
+its original character of song, and the poet now deals, in an
+imaginative way, with problems which puzzle metaphysicians and
+theologians. The causes that have robbed art of so much of its charm and
+power have necessarily diminished the influence of ceremonial worship,
+which is the artistic expression of the soul's faith and love, of its
+hopes and yearnings. We are, indeed, still subdued by the majesty of
+dimly lighted cathedrals, by solemn music, and the various symbolism of
+the ritual, but we feel not the deep awe of our fathers whose knees
+furrowed the pavement stones, and whose burning lips kissed them smooth;
+and to blame ourselves for this would serve no purpose. To those who
+find no pleasure in sweet sounds, we pipe in vain, and argument to show
+that one ought to be moved by what leaves him cold, is meaningless.
+Emotion is spontaneous, and adorers, like lovers, neither ask nor care
+for reasons. There is in fact an element of illusion in feeling; passion
+is non-rational; and when the spirit of the time is intellectual, men
+are seldom devout, however religious they may be. The scientific habit
+of mind is not favorable to childlike and unreasoning faith; and the new
+views of the physical universe which the modern mind is forced to take,
+bring us face to face with new problems in religion and morals, in
+politics and society.
+
+Whatever we may think of the past, whatever we may fear or hope for the
+future, if we would make an impression on the world around us, we must
+understand the thoughts, the purposes, and the methods of those with
+whom we live; and we must at the same time recognize that though the
+truth of religion be unchangeable, the mind of man is not so, and that
+the point of view varies not only from people to people, and from age to
+age, but from year to year in the growing thought of the individual and
+of the world. As in travelling round the earth, time changes, and when
+it is morning here, it is evening there, so with difference of latitude
+and longitude, of civilization and barbarism, the opinions and manners
+of men grow different. They who observe from positions widely separate
+do not see the same things, or do not see them in the same light. Proof
+for a peasant is not proof for a philosopher; and arguments which in one
+age are held to be unanswerable, in another lose power to convince, or
+become altogether meaningless. It is not to be imagined that the hearts
+of Christians should again burn with the devotional enthusiasm and the
+warlike ardor of the Crusaders; and just as little is it conceivable
+that men should again become passionately interested in the questions
+which in the fourth and fifth centuries filled the world with the noise
+of theological disputation. It were mere loss of time to beat now the
+waste fields of the Protestant controversy. Wiseman's book on science
+and revealed religion, which fifty years ago attracted attention, lies
+like a stranded ship on a deserted shore, and attempts of the kind are
+held in slight esteem. The immature mind is eager to reduce faith to
+knowledge; but the accomplished thinker understands that knowledge
+begins and ends in faith. There is oppugnancy between belief in an
+all-wise, all-good, and all-powerful God, and belief in the divine
+origin of Nature, whose face is smeared with filth and blood; but we
+hold that the conflicting faiths and increasing knowledge cannot add to
+the difficulty. On the contrary, the higher the intelligence, the purer
+Nature seems to grow. The chemical elements are as fair and sweet in the
+corpse as in the living body, and the earthquake and the cyclone obey
+the same laws which make the waters flow and the zephyrs breathe
+perfume. It is the imagination and not the reason that is overwhelmed by
+the idea of unending space and time. To the intellect, eternity is not
+more mysterious than the present moment, and the distance which
+separates us from the remotest stars is not more incomprehensible than a
+hand's breadth. Science is the widening thought of man, working on the
+hypothesis of universal intelligibility toward universal intelligence;
+and religion is the soul, escaping from the labyrinth of matter to the
+light and love of the Infinite; and on the heights they meet and are at
+peace.
+
+Meanwhile they who seek natural knowledge must admit that faith, hope,
+and love are the everlasting foundations of human life, and that a
+philosophic creed is as sterile as Platonic love; and they who uphold
+religion must confess that faith which ignorance alone can keep alive
+is little better than superstition. To strive to attain truth under
+whatever form is to seek to know God; and yet no ideal can be true for
+man, unless it can be made to minister to faith, hope, and love; for by
+them we live. Let us then teach ourselves to see things as they are,
+without preoccupation or misgivings lest what is should ever make it
+impossible, for us to believe and hope in the better yet to be. Science
+and morality need religion as much as thought and action require
+emotion; and beyond the utmost reach of the human mind lie the boundless
+worlds of mystery where the soul must believe and adore what it can but
+dimly discern. The Copernican theory of the heavens startled believers
+at first; but we have long since grown accustomed to the new view which
+reveals to us a universe infinitely more glorious than aught the
+ancients ever imagined. We do not rightly see either the things which
+are always around us, or those which for the first time are presented to
+our eyes; and when novel theories of the visible world, which in some
+sense is part of our very being, profoundly alter our traditional
+notions, the mind is disturbed and overclouded, and the lapse of time
+alone can make plain the real bearing of the new learning upon life,
+upon religion, and upon society. There can be no doubt but increase of
+knowledge involves incidental evils, just as the progress of
+civilization multiplies our wants; but the wise are not therefore driven
+to seek help from ignorance and barbarism. Whatever the loss, all
+knowledge is gain. The evils that spring from enlightenment of mind will
+find their remedy in greater enlightenment. Such at least is the faith
+of an age whose striking characteristic is confidence in education. Men
+have ceased to care for the bliss there may be in ignorance, and those
+who dread knowledge, if such there still be, are as far away from the
+life of this century as the dead whose bones crumbled to dust a thousand
+years ago.
+
+The aim the best now propose to themselves is to provide not wealth or
+pleasure, or better machinery or more leisure, but a higher and more
+effective kind of education; and hence whatever one's preoccupation,
+whether social, political, religious, or industrial, the question of
+education forces itself upon his attention. Pedagogy has grown to be a
+science, and chairs are founded in universities to expound the theory
+and art of teaching. The learning of former times has become the
+ignorance of our own; and the classical writings have ceased to be the
+treasure-house of knowledge, and in consequence their educational value
+has diminished.
+
+Whoever three hundred years ago wished to acquaint himself with
+philosophic, poetic, or eloquent expression of the best that was known,
+was compelled to seek for it in the Greek and Latin authors; but now
+Greek and Latin are accomplishments chiefly, and a classical scholar, if
+unacquainted with modern science and literature, is hopelessly ignorant.
+"If any one," said Hegius, the teacher of Erasmus, "wishes to learn
+grammar, rhetoric, mathematics, history, or holy scripture, let him read
+Greek;" and in his day this was as true as it is false and absurd in our
+own. In the Middle Ages, Latin was made the groundwork of the
+educational system, not on account of any special value it may have been
+supposed to possess as a mental discipline, but because it was the
+language of the learned, of all who spoke or wrote on questions of
+religion, philosophy, literature, and science; but now, who that is able
+to think dreams of burying his thought in a Greek or Roman urn? The
+Germans in philosophy, the English in poetry, have surpassed the Greeks;
+and French prose is not inferior in qualities of style to the ancient
+classics, and in wealth of thought and knowledge so far excels them as
+to preclude comparison.
+
+The life of Greece and Rome, compared with ours, was narrow and
+superficial; their ideas of Nature were crude and often grotesque; they
+lacked sympathy; the Greek had no sense of sin; the Roman none of the
+mercy which tempers justice. In their eyes the child was not holy, woman
+was not sacred, the slave was not man. Their notion of liberty was
+political and patriotic merely; the human soul, standing forth alone,
+and appealing from States and emperors to the living God, was to them a
+scandal. Now literature is the outgrowth of a people's life and thought,
+and the nobler the life, the more enlightened the thought, the more
+valuable will the expression be; and since there is greater knowledge,
+wisdom, freedom, justice, mercy, goodness, power, in Christendom now
+than ever existed in the pagan world, it would certainly be an anomaly
+if modern literature were inferior to the classical. The ancients,
+indeed, excel us in the sense for form and symmetry. There is also a
+freshness in their words, a joyousness in their life, a certain heroic
+temper in their thinking and acting, which give them power to engage the
+emotions; and hence to deny them exceptional educational value is to
+take a partial view. But even though we grant that the study of their
+literatures is in certain respects the best intellectual discipline,
+education, it must be admitted, means knowledge as well as training; and
+thorough training is something more than refined taste. It is strength
+as well, and ability to think in many directions and on many subjects.
+Nothing known to men should escape the attention of the wise; for the
+knowledge of the age determines what is demanded of the scholar. And
+since it is our privilege to live at a time when knowledge is increasing
+more rapidly even than population and wealth, we must, if we hope to
+stand in the front ranks of those who know, keep pace with the onward
+movement of mind. To turn away from this outburst of splendor and power;
+to look back to pagan civilization or Christian barbarism,--is to love
+darkness more than light. Aristotle is a great mind, but his learning is
+crude and his ideas of Nature are frequently grotesque. Saint Thomas is
+a powerful intellect; but his point of view in all that concerns natural
+knowledge has long since vanished from sight. What poverty of learning
+does not the early medieval scheme of education reveal; and when in the
+twelfth century the idea of a university rises in the best minds, how
+incomplete and vague it is! Amid the ruins of castles and cathedrals we
+grow humble, and think ourselves inferior to men who thus could build.
+But they were not as strong as we, and they led a more ignorant and a
+blinder life; and so when we read of great names of the past, the mists
+of illusion fill the skies, and our eyes are dimmed by the glory of
+clouds tinged with the splendors of a sun that has set.
+
+Certainly a true university will be the home both of ancient wisdom and
+of new learning; it will teach the best that is known, and encourage
+research; it will stimulate thought, refine taste, and awaken the love
+of excellence; it will be at once a scientific institute, a school of
+culture, and a training ground for the business of life; it will educate
+the minds that give direction to the age; it will be a nursery of ideas,
+a centre of influence. The good we do men is quickly lost, the truth we
+leave them remains forever; and therefore the aim of the best education
+is to enable students to see what is true, and to inspire them with the
+love of all truth. Professional knowledge brings most profit to the
+individual; but philosophy and literature, science and art, elevate and
+refine the spirit of the whole people, and hence the university will
+make culture its first aim, and its scope will widen as the thoughts and
+attainments of men are enlarged and multiplied. Here if anywhere shall
+be found teachers whose one passion is the love of truth, which is the
+love of God and of man; who look on all things with a serene eye; who
+bring to every question a calm, unbiased mind; who, where the light of
+the intellect fails, walk by faith and accept the omen of hope; who
+understand that to be distrustful of science is to lack culture, to
+doubt the good of progress is to lack knowledge, and to question the
+necessity of religion is to want wisdom; who know that in a God-made and
+God-governed world it must lie in the nature of things that reason and
+virtue should tend to prevail, in spite of the fact that in every age
+the majority of men think foolishly and act unwisely. How divine is not
+man's apprehensive endowment! When we see beauty fade, the singer lose
+her charm, the performer his skill, we feel no commiseration; but when
+we behold a noble mind falling to decay, we are saddened, for we cannot
+believe that the godlike and immortal faculty should be subject to
+death's power. It is a reflection of the light that never yet was seen
+on sea or land; it is the magician who shapes and colors the universe,
+as a drop of water mirrors the boundless sky. Is not this the first word
+the Eternal speaks?--"Let there be light." And does not the blessed
+Saviour come talking of life, of light, of truth, of joy, and peace?
+Have not the Christian nations moved forward following after liberty and
+knowledge? Is not our religion the worship of God in spirit and in
+truth? Is not its motive Love, divine and human, and is not knowledge
+Love's guide and minister?
+
+The future prevails over the present, the unseen over what touches the
+senses only in high and cultivated natures; and it is held to be the
+supreme triumph of God over souls when the young, to whom the earth
+seems to be heaven revealed and made palpable, turn from all the beauty
+and contagious joy to seek, to serve, to love Him who is the infinite
+and only real good. Yet this is what we ask of the lovers of
+intellectual excellence, who work without hope of temporal reward and
+without the strength of heart which is found in obeying the Divine Will;
+for mental improvement is seldom urged as a religious duty, although it
+is plain that to seek to know truth is to seek to know God, in whom and
+through whom and by whom all things are, and whose infinite nature and
+most awful power may best be seen by the largest and most enlightened
+mind. Mind is Heaven's pioneer making way for faith, hope, and love, for
+higher aims and nobler life; and to doubt its worth and excellence is to
+deny the reasonableness of religion, since belief, if not wholly blind,
+must rest on knowledge. The best culture serves spiritual and moral
+ends. Its aim and purpose is to make reason prevail over sense and
+appetite; to raise man not only to a perception of the harmonies of
+truth, but also to the love of whatever is good and fair. Not in a
+darkened mind does the white ray of heavenly light break into prismatic
+glory; not through the mists of ignorance is the sweet countenance of
+the divine Saviour best discerned. If some have pursued a sublime art
+frivolously; have soiled a fair mind by ignoble life,--this leaves the
+good of the intellect untouched. Some who have made strongest profession
+of religion, who have held high and the highest places in the Church,
+have been unworthy, but we do not thence infer that the tendency of
+religion is to make men so. They who praise the bliss and worth of
+ignorance are sophists. Stupidity is more to be dreaded than malignity;
+for ignorance, and not malice, is the most fruitful cause of human
+misery. Let knowledge grow, let truth prevail. Since God is God, the
+universe is good, and the more we know of its laws, the plainer will the
+right way become. The investigator and the thinker, the man of culture
+and the man of genius, cannot free themselves from bias and limitation;
+but the work they do will help me and all men.
+
+Indifference or opposition to the intellectual life is but a survival of
+the general anti-educational prejudices of former ages. It is also a
+kind of envy, prompting us to find fault with whatever excellence is a
+reproach to our unworthiness. The disinterested love of truth is a rare
+virtue, most difficult to acquire and most difficult to preserve. If
+knowledge bring power and wealth, if it give fame and pleasure, it is
+dear to us; but how many are able to love it for its own sake? Do not
+nearly all men strive to convince themselves of the truth of those
+opinions which they are interested in holding? What is true, good, or
+fair is rarely at once admitted to be so; but what is practically useful
+men quickly accept, because they live chiefly in the world of external
+things, and care little for the spiritual realms of truth and beauty.
+The ignorant do not even believe that knowledge gives power and
+pleasure, and the educated, except the chosen few, value it only for the
+power and pleasure it gives. As the disinterested love of truth is rare,
+so is perfect sincerity. Indeed, insincerity is here the radical vice.
+Good faith is essential to faith; and a sophistical mind is as immoral
+and irreligious as a depraved heart. Let a man be true, seek and speak
+truth, and all good things are possible; but when he persuades himself
+that a lie may be useful and ought to be propagated, he becomes the
+enemy of his own soul and the foe of all that makes life high and
+godlike.
+
+Now, to be able to desire to see things as they are, whatever their
+relations to ourselves may be, and to speak of them simply as they
+appear to us, is one result of the best training of the intellect, which
+in the world of thought and opinion gives us that sweet indifference
+which is the rule of saints when they submit the conduct of their lives
+wholly to divine guidance. Why should he whose mind is strong, and rests
+on God, be disturbed? It is with opinion as with life. We cannot tell
+what moment truth will overthrow the one and death the other; but
+thought cannot change the nature of things. The clouds dissolve, but the
+eternal heavens remain. Over the bloodiest battlefields they bend calm
+and serene, and trees drink the sunlight and flowers exhale perfume. The
+moonbeam kisses the crater's lip. Over buried cities the yellow harvest
+waves, and all the catastrophes of endless time are present to God, who
+dwells in infinite peace. He sees the universe and is not troubled, and
+shall not we who are akin to him learn to look upon our little meteorite
+without losing repose of mind and heart? Were it not a sweeter piety to
+trust that he who made all things will know how to make all things
+right; and therefore not to grow anxious lest some investigator should
+find him at fault or thwart his plans? As living bodies are immersed in
+an invisible substance which feeds the flame of life, so souls breathe
+and think and love in the atmosphere of God, and the higher their
+thought and love the more do they partake of the divine nature. Many
+things, in this age of transition, are passing away; but true thoughts
+and pure love are immortal, and whatever opinions as to other things a
+man may hold, all know that to be human is to be intelligent and moral,
+and therefore religious. A hundred years hence our present machinery may
+seem to be as rude as the implements of the middle age look to us, and
+our political and social organization may appear barbarous,--so rapid
+has the movement of life become. But we do not envy those who shall then
+be living, partly it may be because we can have but dim visions of the
+greater blessings they shall enjoy, but chiefly because we feel that
+after all the true worth of life lies in nothing of this kind, but in
+knowing and doing, in believing and loving; and that it would not be
+easier to live for truth and righteousness were electricity applied to
+aerial navigation and all the heavens filled with argosies of magic
+sail. It is not possible to love sincerely the best thoughts, as it is
+not possible to love God when our aim is something external, or when we
+believe that what is mechanical merely has power to regenerate and exalt
+mankind.
+
+
+                    "It takes a soul
+    To move a body; it takes a high-souled man
+    To move the masses ... even to a cleaner sty;
+    It takes the ideal to blow a hair's-breadth off
+    The dust of the actual--Ah, your Fouriers failed,
+    Because not poets enough to understand
+    That life develops from within."
+
+
+He who believes in culture must believe in God; for what but God do we
+mean when we talk of loving the best thoughts and the highest beauty? No
+God, no best; but at most better and worse. And how shall a man's
+delight in his growing knowledge not be blighted by a hidden taint, if
+he is persuaded that at the core of the universe there is only blind
+unconscious force? But if he believe that God is infinite power working
+for truth and love, then can he also feel that in seeking to prepare his
+mind for the perception of truth and his heart for the love of what is
+good and fair, he is working with God, and moves along the way in which
+his omnipotent hand guides heavenly spirits and all the countless
+worlds. He desires that all men should be wiser and stronger and more
+loving, even though he should be doomed to remain as he is, for then
+they would have power to help him. He is certain of himself, and feels
+no fear nor anger when his opinions are opposed. He learns to bear what
+he cannot prevent, knowing that courage and patience make tolerable
+immedicable ills. He feels no self-complacency, but rather the
+self-dissatisfaction which comes of the consciousness of possessing
+faculties which he can but imperfectly use. And this discontent he
+believes to be the infinite God stirring within the soul. As the
+earthquake which swallows some island in another hemisphere disturbs not
+the even tenor of our way, so the passions of men whose world is other
+than his, who dwell remote from what he contemplates and loves, shake
+not his tranquil mind. While they threaten and pursue, his thought moves
+in spheres unknown to them. He knows how little life at the best can
+give, and is not hard to console for the loss of anything. There is no
+true thought which he would not gladly make his own, even though it
+should be the watchword of his enemies. Since morality is practical
+truth, he understands that increasing knowledge will make it at once
+more evident and more attractive. Hatred between races and nations he
+holds to be not less unchristian than the hatred which arms the
+individual against his fellow-man. It is impossible for him to be a
+scoffer; for whatever has strengthened or consoled a human soul is
+sacred in his eyes; and wherever there is question of what is socially
+complex, as of a religion or a civilization, there is question of many
+human lives, their hopes, their joys, their strivings, their yearnings,
+disappointments, agonies, and deaths; and he is able to perceive that in
+the ports of levity there is no refuge for hearts that mourn. Does not
+love itself, in its heaven of bliss, turn away from him who mocks? The
+lover of the intellectual life knows neither contempt nor indignation,
+is not elated by success or cast down by failure; money cannot make him
+rich, and poverty helps to make him free. His own experience teaches him
+that men in becoming wiser will become nobler and happier; and this
+sweet truth has in his eyes almost the elements of a religion. With
+growing knowledge his power of sympathy is enlarged; until like Saint
+Francis, he can call the sun his brother and the moon his sister; can
+grieve with homeless winds, and feel a kinship with the clod. The very
+agonies by which his soul has been wrung open to his gaze visions of
+truth which else he had never caught, and so he finds even in things
+evil some touch of goodness. Praise and blame are for children, but to
+him impertinent. He is tolerant of absurdity because it is so
+all-pervading that he whom it fills with indignation can have no repose.
+While he labors like other men to keep his place in the world, he
+strives to make the work whereby he maintains himself, and those who
+cling to him, serve intellectual and moral ends. He has a meek and
+lowly heart, and he has also a free and illumined mind, and a soul
+without fear. He knows that no gift or accomplishment is incompatible
+with true religion; for has not the Church intellects as many-sided and
+as high as Augustine and Chrysostom, Dante and Calderon, Descartes and
+Da Vinci, De Vega and Cervantes, Bossuet and Pascal, Saint Bernard and
+Gregory the Seventh, Aquinas and Michael Angelo, Mozart and Fénelon? Ah!
+I behold the youthful throng, happier than we, who here, in their own
+sweet country,--in this city of government and of law with its wide
+streets, its open spaces, its air of freedom and of light,--undisturbed
+by the soul-depressing hum of commerce and the unintellectual din of
+machinery, shall hearken to the voice of wisdom and walk in the pleasant
+ways of knowledge, alive, in every sense, to catch whatever message may
+come to them from God's universe; who, as they are drawn to what is
+higher than themselves, shall be drawn together, like planets to a sun;
+whose minds, aglow with high thinking, shall taste joy and delight
+fresher and purer than merriest laughter ever tells. Who has not seen,
+when leaden clouds fill the sky and throw gloomy shadows on the earth,
+some little meadow amid the hills, with its trees and flowers, its
+grazing kine and running brook, all bathed in sunlight, and smiling as
+though a mother said, Come hither, darling?
+
+Such to my fancy is this favored spot, whose invitation is to the
+fortunate few who believe that "the noblest mind the best contentment
+has," and that the fairest land is that which brings forth and nurtures
+the fairest souls. When youthful friends drift apart, and meet again
+after years, they find they have been living not only in different
+cities, but in different worlds. Those who shall come up to the
+university must turn away from much the world holds dear; and while the
+companions they leave behind shall linger in pleasant places or shall
+get money, position, and applause, they must move on amid
+ever-increasing loneliness of life and thought. Xanthippe would have had
+altogether a better opinion of Socrates had he not been a philosopher,
+and the best we do is often that for which our age and our friends care
+the least; but they who have once tasted the delights of a cultivated
+mind would not exchange them for the gifts of fortune, and to have
+beheld the fair face of wisdom is to be forever her votary. Words spoken
+for the masses grow obsolete; but what is fit to be heard by the chosen
+few shall be true and beautiful while such minds are found on earth. In
+the end, it is this little band--this intellectual aristocracy--who
+move and guide the world. They see what is possible, outline projects,
+and give impulse, while the people do the work. That which is strongest
+in man is mind; and when a mind truly vigorous, open, supple, and
+illumined reveals itself, we follow in its path of light. How it may be
+I do not know; but the very brain and heart of genius throbs forever in
+the words on which its spirit has breathed. Let this seed, though hidden
+like the grain in mummy pits for thousands of years, but fall on proper
+soil, and soon the golden harvest shall wave beneath the dome of azure
+skies; let but some generous youth bend over the electric page, and lo!
+all his being shall thrill and flame with new-born life and light.
+Genius is a gift. But whoever keeps on doing in all earnestness
+something which he need not do, and for which the world cares hardly at
+all, if he have not genius, has at least one of its chief marks; and it
+is, I think, an important function of a university to create an
+intellectual atmosphere in which the love of excellence shall become
+contagious, which whosoever breathes shall, like the Sibyl, feel the
+inspiration of divine thoughts.
+
+Sweet home! where Wisdom, like a mother, shall lead her children in
+pleasant ways, and to their thoughts a touch of heaven lend! From thee
+I claim for my faith and my country more blessings than I can speak,--
+
+
+    Our scattered knowledges together bind;
+      Our freedom consecrate to noble aims.
+    To music set the visions of the mind;
+      Give utterance to the truth pure faith proclaims.
+    Lead where the perfect beauty lies enshrined,
+      Whose sight the blood of low-born passion tames.
+
+
+And now, how shall I more fittingly conclude than with the name of her
+whose generous heart and enlightened mind were the impulse which has
+given to what had long been hope deferred and a dreamlike vision,
+existence and a dwelling-place,--Mary Gwendolen Caldwell.
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+By RT. REV. J. L. SPALDING.
+
+
+=Thoughts and Theories of Life and Education=. 12mo, 235 pages, $1.00.
+
+The bishop writes out of the fullness of his heart, and with abundant
+love and charity. His works make the world wiser, happier, and better.
+These "Thoughts and Theories" are couched in polished English, in
+sentences terse and full of meaning; few living writers command a more
+charming style.
+
+
+=Education and the Higher Life=. 12mo, 210 pages, $1.00.
+
+Bishop Spalding has struck a note which must vibrate in every heart
+which loves the glory of Christianity and the progress of humanity....
+The book is a stimulant, a tonic, a trumpet-call to higher things, a
+beacon light for better days.--_The Catholic Union and Times_.
+
+
+=Things of the Mind=. 12mo, 237 pages, $1.00.
+
+Out of a disciplined and fertile mind he pours forth epigrammatic
+sentences and suggestions in a fashion which recalls Emerson. He is
+always and everywhere American, and the last chapter is at once wisely
+critical and soundly laudatory of our country.--_The Sunday School
+Times, Philadelphia_.
+
+
+=Means and Ends of Education=. 12mo, 232 pages, $1.00.
+
+Bishop Spalding comes nearer being an essayist in education than any
+other American. He has that rarest of educational gifts,--the ability to
+throw light brilliantly, and yet softly, making his paragraphs both
+bright and mellow, all without "preaching," without pedantry, and
+without being cranky.--_Journal of Education_, Boston.
+
+
+=Opportunity, and Other Essays and Addresses=. 12mo, 228 pages, $1.00.
+
+In this volume, as in his other books, Bishop Spalding is occupied with
+the larger problems of education. In addition to the specifically
+educational subjects there are themes of the widest possible interest,
+to the treatment of which the ripe experience of the writer gives high
+value.
+
+
+=Songs, chiefly from the German=. 16mo, gilt top, $1.25.
+
+He has gathered the flowers from the German garden of song and
+translated them, giving a literal rendering, but still preserving the
+melody,--an art which was thought to have been lost with
+Longfellow.--_The Chicago Record_.
+
+
+_Sold by all booksellers, or mailed, on receipt of price, by_
+
+A. C. McCLURG & CO., PUBLISHERS,
+CHICAGO.
+
+
+
+
+By Mrs. Elizabeth Wormeley Latimer.
+
+
+_JUDEA: From Cyrus to Titus, 537 B. C.--70 A. D._ Handsomely illustrated.
+8vo. $2.50.
+
+This is a book for the people rather than for scholars, but written with
+the resources of scholarship at command. Not entering into the mooted
+questions of criticism, it is a well written narrative of the eventful
+period it covers, presenting the story of Judea in its connection with
+the general movement of the world, as well as with the career of
+illustrious men.--_The Outlook_, New York.
+
+
+
+
+Mrs. Latimer's Former Works.
+
+
+_My Scrap Book of the French Revolution._ Illustrated. 8vo. $2.50.
+
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+
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+_Sold by all booksellers, or mailed on receipt of price by_
+
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+
+
+
+
+A GENERAL SURVEY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE
+
+By MARY FISHER
+
+Gilt top, deckle edges, 12mo. $1.50
+
+
+In this volume Miss Fisher has treated a subject of vital interest and
+importance for all American lovers of literature, and she has
+accomplished her task with rare feminine appreciation and sympathy, with
+a clear and decisive interest, with a catholicity of judgment and a fine
+sense of discrimination and proportion and with a warmth and delicacy of
+treatment that transform these biographical sketches into little gems of
+portraiture.--_The Commercial Advertiser_, New York.
+
+The great value of the book lies in the fact that while Miss Fisher has
+a thorough familiarity with the subjects of her essays, she writes as
+she might if she were ignorant of the estimation in which they are held
+by the public or by the critics. She applies discriminating reason and
+sound principles of judgment to the work of the various writers, without
+the slightest reference to their personal dignity or their literary
+fame.--_The Book Buyer_, New York.
+
+The whole range of notable writers are dealt with in a style at once
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+throughout the book.--_The Living Age_, Boston.
+
+
+
+
+A GROUP OF FRENCH CRITICS
+
+By MARY FISHER
+
+12mo. $1.25.
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+in recent years.--_The Outlook_, New York.
+
+"A Group of French Critics" deserves a friendly welcome from everybody
+who desires to know something of the best in contemporary French
+letters.--_The Philadelphia Press_.
+
+_Sold by all booksellers, or mailed on receipt of price by_
+
+A. C. McCLURG & CO., Publishers,
+CHICAGO.
+
+
+
+
+TALES FROM FOREIGN LANDS.
+
+
+
+     MEMORIES. A Story of German Love. Translated from the German of MAX
+     MULLER by GEORGE P. UPTON.
+
+     GRAZIELLA. A Story of Italian Love. Translated from the French of
+     A. DE LAMARTINE, by JAMES B. RUNNION.
+
+     MARIE. A Story of Russian Love. From the Russian of ALEXANDER
+     PUSHKIN, by MARIE H. DE ZIELINSKA.
+
+     MADELEINE. A Story of French Love (crowned by the French Academy).
+     Translated from the French of JULES SANDEAU by FRANCIS CHARLOT.
+
+     MARIANELA. A Story of Spanish Love. Translated from the Spanish of
+     B. PEREZ GALDOS, by HELEN W. LESTER.
+
+     COUSIN PHILLIS. A Story of English Love. By Mrs. GASKELL.
+
+     KARINE. A Story of Swedish Love. Translated from the German of
+     WILHELM JENSEN, by EMMA A. ENDLICH.
+
+     MARIA FELICIA. A Story of Bohemian Love. Translated from the
+     Bohemian of CAROLINE SVETLA by ANTONIE KREJSA.
+
+     Handsomely printed on fine laid paper, 16mo, gilt tops, per volume,
+     $1.00. The six volumes in neat box, per set, $6.00; in half calf or
+     half morocco, gilt tops, $13.50; in half calf or half morocco, gilt
+     edges, $15.00; limp calf or morocco, gilt edges, $18.00.
+
+     This series of volumes forms perhaps the choicest addition to the
+     literature of the English language that has been made in recent
+     years.
+
+
+An attractive series of stories of love in different countries,--all
+gems of literature, full of local coloring.--_Journal of Education,
+Boston_.
+
+The stories are attractive for their purity, sweetness, and pathos.... A
+rare collection of representative national classics. _New York
+Telegram_.
+
+A series especially to be commended for the good taste displayed in the
+mechanical execution of the works. Type and paper are everything that
+could be desired, and the volumes are set off with a gilt top which adds
+to their general appearance of neatness.--_Herald, Rochester_.
+
+_Sold by all booksellers, or mailed, on receipt of price, by the
+publishers._
+
+A. C. McCLURG & CO., CHICAGO.
+
+
+
+
+THE BOOK-LOVER. A Guide to the Best Reading. By JAMES BALDWIN, Ph. D.
+Sixth edition, 16mo, cloth, gilt top, 201 pages. Price, $1.00.
+
+=In half calf or half morocco=, $2.50.
+
+
+Of this book, on the best in English Literature, which has already been
+declared of the highest value by the testimony of the best critics in
+this country, an edition of one thousand copies has just been ordered
+for London, the home of English Literature,--a compliment of which its
+scholarly western author may justly be proud.
+
+We know of no work of the kind which gives so much useful information in
+so small a space.--_Evening Telegram, New York_.
+
+Sound in theory and in a practical point of view. The courses of reading
+laid down are made of good books, and in general, of the
+best.--_Independent, New York_.
+
+Mr. Baldwin has written in this monograph a delightful eulogium of books
+and their manifold influence, and has gained therein two classes of
+readers,--the scholarly class, to which he belongs, and the receptive
+class, which he has benefited.--_Evening Mail and Express, New York_.
+
+If a man needs that the love of books be cultivated within him, such a
+gem of a book as Dr. Baldwin's ought to do the work. Perfect and
+inviting in all that a book ought outwardly to be, its contents are such
+as to instruct the mind at the same time that they answer the taste, and
+the reader who goes carefully through its two hundred pages ought not
+only to love books in general better than he ever did before, but to
+love them more wisely, more intelligently, more discriminatingly, and
+with more profit to his own soul.--_Literary Worlds, Boston_.
+
+
+_Sold by all booksellers, or mailed on receipt of price, by_
+
+A. C. McCLURG & CO., PUBLISHERS.
+
+
+
+
+LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN,
+
+By the Hon. ISAAC N. ARNOLD. With Steel Portrait. 8vo, cloth, 471 pages.
+Price, $1.50.
+
+In half calf or half morocco, $3.50.
+
+
+It is decidedly the best and most complete Life of Lincoln that has yet
+appeared.--_Contemporary Review, London_.
+
+Mr. Arnold succeeded to a singular extent in assuming the broad view and
+judicious voice of posterity and exhibiting the greatest figure of our
+time in its true perspective.--_The Tribune, New York_.
+
+It is the only Life of Lincoln thus far published that is likely to
+live,--the only one that has any serious pretensions to depict him with
+adequate veracity, completeness, and dignity.--_The Sun, New York_.
+
+The author knew Mr. Lincoln long and intimately, and no one was better
+fitted for the task of preparing his biography. He has written with
+tenderness and fidelity, with keen discrimination, and with graphic
+powers of description and analysis.--_The Interior, Chicago_.
+
+Mr. Arnold's "Life of President Lincoln" is excellent in almost every
+respect.... The author has painted a graphic and life-like portrait of
+the remarkable man who was called to decide on the destinies of his
+country at the crisis of its fate.--_The Times, London_.
+
+The book is particularly rich in incidents connected with the early
+career of Mr. Lincoln; and it is without exception the most satisfactory
+record of his life that has yet been written. Readers will also find
+that in its entirety it is a work of absorbing and enduring interest
+that will enchain the attention more effectually than any
+novel.--_Magazine of American History, New York_.
+
+
+_Sold by all booksellers, or mailed on receipt of price, by_
+
+A. C. McCLURG & CO., PUBLISHERS.
+
+
+
+
+LAUREL-CROWNED TALES.
+
+
+
+     ABDALLAH; OR, THE FOUR-LEAVED SHAMROCK. By EDOUARD LABOULAYE.
+     Translated by MARY L. BOOTH.
+
+     RASSELAS, PRINCE OF ABYSSINIA. By SAMUEL JOHNSON.
+
+     RAPHAEL; OR, PAGES OF THE BOOK OF LIFE AT TWENTY. From the French
+     of ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE.
+
+     THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD. By OLIVER GOLDSMITH.
+
+     THE EPICUREAN. By THOMAS MOORE.
+
+     PICCIOLA. By X. B. SAINTINE.
+
+     AN ICELAND FISHERMAN. By PIERRE LOTI.
+
+     PAUL AND VIRGINIA. By BERNARDIN DE ST. PIERRE.
+
+     Handsomely printed from new plates, on fine laid paper, 16mo,
+     cloth, with gilt tops, price per volume, $1.00.
+
+
+In half calf or half morocco, per volume, $2.50.
+
+In planning this series, the publishers have aimed at a form which
+should combine an unpretentious elegance suited to the fastidious
+book-lover with an inexpensiveness that must appeal to the most moderate
+buyer.
+
+It is the intent to admit to the series only such tales as have for
+years or for generations commended themselves not only to the fastidious
+and the critical, but also to the great multitude of the refined reading
+public,--tales, in short, which combine purity and classical beauty of
+style with perennial popularity.
+
+A contribution to current literature of quite unique value and interest.
+They are furnished with a tasteful outfit, with just the amount of
+matter one likes to find in books of this class, and are in all ways
+very attractive.--_Standard, Chicago_.
+
+
+_Sold by all booksellers, or mailed, on receipt of price, by_
+
+A. C. McCLURG & CO., PUBLISHERS.
+
+
+
+
+LAUREL-CROWNED VERSE
+
+Edited by FRANCIS F. BROWNE.
+
+
+
+     THE LADY OF THE LAKE. By SIR WALTER SCOTT.
+
+     CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE. A Romaunt. By LORD BYRON.
+
+     LALLA ROOKH. AN ORIENTAL ROMANCE. By THOMAS MOORE.
+
+     IDYLLS OF THE KING. By ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON.
+
+     PARADISE LOST. By JOHN MILTON.
+
+     THE ILIAD OF HOMER. Translated by ALEXANDER POPE. 2 Vols.
+
+     Each volume is finely printed and bound; 16mo, cloth, gilt tops,
+     price per volume, $1.00.
+
+
+In half calf or half morocco, per volume, $2.50.
+
+
+_All the volumes of this series are from a specially prepared and
+corrected text, based upon a careful collation of all the more authentic
+editions._
+
+The special merit of these editions, aside from the graceful form of the
+books, lies in the editor's reserve. Whenever the author has provided a
+preface or notes, this apparatus is given, and thus some interesting
+matter is revived, but the editor himself refrains from loading the
+books with his own writing.--_The Atlantic Monthly_.
+
+A series noted for their integral worth and typographical
+beauties.--_Public Ledger, Philadelphia_.
+
+The typography is quite faultless.--_Critic, New York_.
+
+For this series the publishers are entitled to the gratitude of lovers
+of classical English.--_School Journal, New York_.
+
+
+_Sold by all booksellers, or mailed, on receipt of price, by_
+
+A. C. McCLURG & CO., PUBLISHERS,
+CHICAGO.
+
+
+
+
+LAUREL-CROWNED LETTERS
+
+
+
+     BEST LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD. With an Introduction by EDWARD
+     GILPIN JOHNSON.
+
+     BEST LETTERS OF LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU. With an Introduction by
+     OCTAVE THANET.
+
+     BEST LETTERS OF HORACE WALPOLE. With an Introduction by ANNA B.
+     MCMAHAN.
+
+     BEST LETTERS OF MADAME DE SÉVIGNÉ. With an Introduction by EDWARD
+     PLAYFAIR ANDERSON.
+
+     BEST LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. With an Introduction by EDWARD GILPIN
+     JOHNSON.
+
+     BEST LETTERS OF PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. With an Introduction by
+     SHIRLEY C. HUGHSON.
+
+     BEST LETTERS OF WILLIAM COWPER. With an Introduction by ANNA B.
+     MCMAHAN.
+
+     Handsomely printed from new plates, on fine laid paper, 16mo,
+     cloth, with gilt tops, price per volume, $1.00.
+
+
+In half calf or half morocco, per volume, $2.50.
+
+
+Amid the great flood of ephemeral literature that pours from the press,
+it is well to be recalled by such publications as the "Laurel-Crowned
+Letters" to books that have won an abiding place in the classical
+literature of the world.--_The Independent, New York_.
+
+The "Laurel-Crowned Series" recommends itself to all lovers of good
+literature. The selection is beyond criticism, and puts before the
+reader the very best literature in most attractive and convenient form.
+The size of the volumes, the good paper, the clear type and the neat
+binding are certainly worthy of all praise.--_Public Opinion,
+Washington_.
+
+These "Laurel-Crowned" volumes are little gems in their way, and just
+the books to pick up at odd times and at intervals of waiting.--_Herald,
+Chicago_.
+
+
+_Sold by all booksellers, or mailed, on receipt of price, by_
+
+A. C. McCLURG & CO., PUBLISHERS.
+CHICAGO.
+
+
+THE STANDARD OPERAS. Their Plots, their Music, and their Composers. By
+GEORGE P. UPTON, author of "Woman in Music," etc., etc.
+
+12mo, flexible cloth, yellow edges $1.50
+
+The same, extra gilt, gilt edges 2.00
+
+"Mr. Upton has performed a service that can hardly be too highly
+appreciated, in collecting the plots, music, and the composers of the
+standard operas, to the number of sixty-four, and bringing them together
+in one perfectly arranged volume.... His work is one simply invaluable
+to the general reading public. Technicalities are avoided, the aim being
+to give to musically uneducated lovers of the opera a clear
+understanding of the works they hear. It is description, not criticism,
+and calculated to greatly increase the intelligent enjoyment of
+music."--_Boston Traveller_.
+
+"Among the multitude of handbooks which are published every year, and
+are described by easy-going writers of book-notices as supplying a
+long-felt want, we know of none which so completely carries out the
+intention of the writer as 'The Standard Operas,' by Mr. George P.
+Upton, whose object is to present to his readers a comprehensive sketch
+of each of the operas contained in the modern repertory.... There are
+thousands of music-loving people who will be glad to have the kind of
+knowledge which Mr. Upton has collected for their benefit, and has cast
+in a clear and compact form."--_R. H. Stoddard, in "Evening Mail and
+Express" (New York)_.
+
+"The summaries of the plots are so clear, logical, and well written,
+that one can read them with real pleasure, which cannot be said of the
+ordinary operatic synopses. But the most important circumstance is that
+Mr. Upton's book is fully abreast of the times."--_The Nation (New
+York)_.
+
+
+_Sold by all booksellers, or mailed, post-paid, on receipt of price, by_
+
+A. C. McCLURG & CO., PUBLISHERS.
+
+
+THE STANDARD ORATORIOS. Their Stories, their Music, and their Composers.
+A Handbook. By George P. Upton. 12mo, 335 pages, yellow edges, price,
+$1.50; extra gilt, gilt edges, $2.00.
+
+In half calf, gilt top $3.25
+
+In half morocco, gilt edges 3.75
+
+Music lovers are under a new obligation to Mr. Upton for this companion
+to his "Standard Operas,"--two books which deserve to be placed on the
+same shelf with Grove's and Riemann's musical dictionaries.--_The
+Nation, New York_.
+
+Mr. George P. Upton has followed in the lines that he laid down in his
+"Standard Operas," and has produced an admirable handwork, which answers
+every purpose that such a volume is designed to answer, and which is
+certain to be popular now and for years to come.--_The Mail and Express,
+New York_.
+
+Like the valuable art handbooks of Mrs. Jamison, these volumes contain
+a world of interesting information, indispensable to critics and art
+amateurs. The volume under review is elegantly and succinctly written,
+and the subjects are handled in a thoroughly comprehensive
+manner.--_Public Opinion, Washington_.
+
+The book is a masterpiece of skillful handling, charming the reader with
+its pure English style, and keeping his attention always awake in an
+arrangement of matter which makes each succeeding page and chapter fresh
+in interest and always full of instruction, while always
+entertaining.--_The Standard, Chicago_.
+
+The author of this book has done a real service to the vast number of
+people who, while they are lovers of music, have neither the leisure nor
+inclination to become deeply versed in its literature.... The
+information conveyed is of just the sort that the average of cultivated
+people will welcome as an aid to comprehending and talking about this
+species of musical composition.--_Church Magazine, Philadelphia_.
+
+
+_Sold by all booksellers, or mailed on receipt of price, by_
+
+A. C. McCLURG & CO., PUBLISHERS.
+
+
+
+
+THE STANDARD CANTATAS. Their Stories, their Music, and their Composers.
+A Handbook. By GEORGE P. UPTON. 12mo, 367 pages, yellow edges, price,
+$1.50; extra gilt, gilt edges, $2.00.
+
+In half calf, gilt top            $3.25
+In half morocco, gilt edges        3.75
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The "Standard Cantatas" forms the third volume in the uniform series
+which already includes the now well known "Standard Operas" and the
+"Standard Oratorios." This latest work deals with a class of musical
+compositions, midway between the opera and the oratorio, which is
+growing rapidly in favor both with composers and audiences.
+
+As in the two former works, the subject is treated, so far as possible,
+in an untechnical manner, so that it may satisfy the needs of musically
+uneducated music lovers, and add to their enjoyment by a plain statement
+of the story of the cantata and a popular analysis of its music, with
+brief pertinent selections from its poetical text.
+
+The book includes a comprehensive essay on the origin of the cantata,
+and its development from rude beginnings; biographical sketches of the
+composers; carefully prepared descriptions of the plots and the music;
+and an appendix containing the names and dates of composition of all the
+best known cantatas from the earliest times.
+
+This series of works on popular music has steadily grown in favor since
+the appearance of the first volume on the Operas. When the series is
+completed, as it will be next year by a volume on the Standard
+Symphonies, it will be, as the New York "Nation" has said, indispensable
+to every musical library.
+
+
+_Sold by all booksellers, or mailed on receipt of price, by_
+A. C. McCLURG & CO., PUBLISHERS.
+
+
+
+
+THE STANDARD SYMPHONIES.
+Their History, their Music, and their Composers.
+A Handbook. By GEORGE P. UPTON. 12mo, 321 pages, yellow edges, price
+$1.50; extra gilt, gilt edges, $2.00.
+
+In half calf, gilt top            $3.25
+In half morocco, gilt edges        3.75
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The usefulness of this handbook cannot be doubted. Its pages are packed
+full of these fascinating renderings. The accounts of each composer are
+succinct and yet sufficient. The author has done a genuine service to
+the world of music lovers. The comprehension of orchestral work of the
+highest character is aided efficiently by this volume. The mechanical
+execution of the volume is in harmony with its subject. No worthier
+volume can be found to put into the hands of an amateur or a friend of
+music.--_Public Opinion, Washington_.
+
+None who have seen the previous books of Mr. Upton will need assurance
+that this is as indispensable as the others to one who would listen
+intelligently to that better class of music which musicians congratulate
+themselves Americans are learning to appreciatively enjoy.--_Home
+Journal, New York_.
+
+There has never been, in this country at least, so thorough an attempt
+to collate the facts of programme music.... As a definite helper in some
+cases and as a refresher in others we believe Mr. Upton's book to have a
+lasting value.... The book, in brief, shows enthusiastic and honorable
+educational purpose, good taste, and sound scholarship.--_The American,
+Philadelphia_.
+
+Upton's books should be read and studied by all who desire to acquaint
+themselves with the facts and accomplishments in these interesting forms
+of musical composition.--_The Voice, New York_.
+
+It is written in a style that cannot fail to stimulate the reader, if
+also a student of music, to strive to find for himself the underlying
+meanings of the compositions of the great composers. It contains,
+besides, a vast amount of information about the symphony, its evolution
+and structure, with sketches of the composers, and a detailed technical
+description of a few symphonic models. It meets a recognized want of all
+concert goers.--_The Chautauquan_.
+
+
+_Sold by all booksellers, or mailed on receipt of price, by_
+A. C. McCLURG & CO., PUBLISHERS.
+
+
+
+
+GROUND ARMS!
+
+_The Story of a Life._
+
+BY BERTHA VON SUTTNER.
+
+12mo, 286 pages. Price, $1.00.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This story is one of the strongest works of fiction of the present
+decade. The author is a philosopher and a philanthropist. Her clear,
+incisive reasoning, her large sympathies, combined with rare power of
+description, enable her to give the world a story which will hold in its
+thrall even the most shallow novel-reader who can appreciate good
+literature.--_The Arena_, Boston.
+
+The author pierces to the marrow of the thing that has taken hold of
+her. By that thing she is verily possessed; it has made of her a
+seer.... The bare, bald outline of "Die Waffen nieder!" ("Ground
+Arms!"), which is all we have been able to attempt, can give but a
+faint, feeble idea of its power and pathos, and none at all of the many
+light and humorous touches, the well-drawn minor characters, the
+thrilling episodes, the piquant glimpses of the great world of Austria
+and France, which relieve the gloom of the tragic story.--_International
+Journal of Ethics_.
+
+We have here unquestionably a very remarkable work. As a plea for a
+general disarmament it stands unrivaled. For a familiarity with the
+details of the subject treated, for breadth of view, for logical acumen,
+for dramatic effect and literary excellence, it stands unequaled by any
+work written with a purpose.--_Literary Digest_.
+
+With a powerful pen the author tells of the horrors of war; not alone
+the desolation of battlefields, but the scourges of typhus and cholera
+that follow in their wake, and the wretchedness, misery, and poverty
+brought to countless homes. The story in itself is simple but
+pathetic.... The book, which is sound and calm in its logic and
+reasoning, has made a grand impression upon military circles of Europe,
+and its influence is destined to extend far into the future.--_Public
+Opinion_, New York.
+
+
+_Sold by all booksellers, or mailed, on receipt of price, by_
+A. C. McCLURG & CO., PUBLISHERS.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Education and the Higher Life, by J. L. Spalding
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+
+Project Gutenberg's Education and the Higher Life, by J. L. Spalding
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Education and the Higher Life
+
+Author: J. L. Spalding
+
+Release Date: April 12, 2007 [EBook #21045]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EDUCATION AND THE HIGHER LIFE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Sigal Alon, Marcia, Fox in the Stars and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+    <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span>
+    <h1>EDUCATION AND THE HIGHER LIFE</h1>
+    <div class="trans-note">
+      <h5>BY BISHOP SPALDING.</h5>
+      <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span> <span
+      class="smcap">Education and the Higher Life</span>. 12mo. $1.00.<br />
+      <span class="smcap">Things of the Mind</span>. 12mo. $1.00.<br />
+      <span class="smcap">Means and Ends of Education</span>. 12mo. $1.00.<br />
+      <span class="smcap">Thoughts and Theories of Life and Education</span>. 12mo.
+      $1.00.<br />
+      <span class="smcap">Opportunity and Other Essays and Addresses</span>. 12mo.
+      $1.00.<br />
+      <span class="smcap">Songs: Chiefly from the German</span>. 16mo, gilt top.
+      $1.25.<br />
+      <center>
+        A. C. McCLURG &amp; CO.<br />
+        <span class="smcap">Chicago</span>.
+      </center>
+    </div>
+    <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span>
+    <h2>EDUCATION</h2>
+    <h5>AND</h5>
+    <h2>THE HIGHER LIFE</h2>
+    <h5>BY</h5>
+    <h3>J. L. Spalding</h3>
+    <h4>Bishop of Peoria</h4>
+    <div class="blockquot">
+      <p>The business of education is not, as I think, to perfect the learner in any of
+      the sciences, but to give his mind that freedom and disposition, and those habits,
+      which may enable him to attain every part of knowledge himself.&mdash;<span
+      class="smcap">Locke</span></p>
+    </div>
+    <center>
+      SIXTH EDITION
+    </center>
+    <center>
+      CHICAGO
+    </center>
+    <center>
+      A. C. McCLURG &amp; CO.
+    </center>
+    <center>
+      1900
+    </center>
+    <br />
+    <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span>
+    <center>
+      <i>Copyright</i>,
+    </center>
+    <br />
+    <br />
+
+    <center>
+      <span class="smcap">By A. C. McClurg and Co</span>.,
+    </center>
+    <center>
+      A. D. 1890.
+    </center>
+    <hr style="width: 65%;" />
+    <h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS.</h2>
+    <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span>
+    <!-- Autogenerated TOC. Modify or delete as required. -->
+    <ul>
+      <li><a href="#CHAPTER_I"><b>CHAPTER I.</b></a><span
+      style="margin-left: 4.1em;"><span class="smcap">Ideals</span></span><span
+      class="ralign"><a href="#Page_7">7</a></span></li>
+      <li><a href="#CHAPTER_II"><b>CHAPTER II.</b></a><span
+      style="margin-left: 3.7em;"><span class="smcap">Exercise of Mind</span></span><span
+      class="ralign"><a href="#Page_30">30</a></span></li>
+      <li><a href="#CHAPTER_III"><b>CHAPTER III.</b></a><span
+      style="margin-left: 3.4em;"><span class="smcap">The Love of
+      Excellence</span></span><span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_51">51</a></span></li>
+      <li><a href="#CHAPTER_IV"><b>CHAPTER IV.</b></a><span
+      style="margin-left: 3.5em;"><span class="smcap">Culture and the Spirit of the
+      Age</span></span><span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_73">73</a></span></li>
+      <li><a href="#CHAPTER_V"><b>CHAPTER V.</b></a><span
+      style="margin-left: 3.9em;"><span class="smcap">Self-Culture</span></span><span
+      class="ralign"><a href="#Page_92">92</a></span></li>
+      <li><a href="#CHAPTER_VI"><b>CHAPTER VI.</b></a><span
+      style="margin-left: 3.5em;"><span class="smcap">Growth and Duty</span></span><span
+      class="ralign"><a href="#Page_117">117</a></span></li>
+      <li><a href="#CHAPTER_VII"><b>CHAPTER VII.</b></a><span
+      style="margin-left: 3.2em;"><span class="smcap">Right Human Life</span></span><span
+      class="ralign"><a href="#Page_144">144</a></span></li>
+      <li><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII"><b>CHAPTER VIII.</b></a><span
+      style="margin-left: 3em;"><span class="smcap">University
+      Education</span></span><span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_172">172</a></span></li>
+    </ul>
+    <!-- End Autogenerated TOC. -->
+    <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span><br />
+    <br />
+
+    <hr style="width: 35%;" />
+    <h2>EDUCATION AND THE HIGHER LIFE.</h2>
+    <hr style="width: 65%;" />
+    <h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I.</h2>
+    <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span>
+    <h4>IDEALS.</h4>
+    <span style="margin-left: 24em;">A noble aim,</span><br />
+    <span style="margin-left: 16em;">Faithfully kept, is as a noble deed.</span><br />
+    <span style="margin-left: 28em;"><span class="smcap">Wordsworth</span>.</span> <br />
+
+    <p>To few men does life bring a brighter day than that which places the crown upon
+    their scholastic labors, and bids them go forth from the halls of the Alma Mater to
+    the great world's battlefield. There is a freshness in these early triumphs which,
+    like the bloom and fragrance of the flower, is quickly lost, never to be found again
+    even by those for whom Fortune reserves her most choice gifts. Fame, though hymned by
+    myriad tongues, is not so sweet as the delight we drink from the tear-dimmed eyes of
+    our mothers and sisters, in the sacred hours when we can yet claim as our own
+    the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span> love of
+    higher things, the faith and hope which make this mortal life immortal, and fill a
+    moment with a wealth of memories which lasts through years. The highest joy is
+    serious, and in the midst of supreme delight there comes to the soul a stillness
+    which permits it to rise to the serene sphere where truth is most gladly heard and
+    most easily perceived; and in such exaltation, the young see that life is not what
+    they take it to be. They think it long; it is short. They think it happy; it is full
+    of cares and sorrows. This two-fold illusion widens the horizon of life and tinges it
+    with gold. It gives to youth its charm and makes of it a blessed time to which we
+    ever turn regretful eyes. But I am wrong to call illusion that which in truth is but
+    an omen of the divine possibilities of man's nature. To the young, life is not mean
+    or short, because the blessed freedom of youth may make it noble and immortal. The
+    young stand upon the threshold of the world. Of the many careers which are open to
+    human activity, they will choose one; and their fortunes will be various, even though
+    their merits should be equal. But if position, fame, and wealth are often denied to
+    the most persistent efforts and the best ability, it is consoling to know they are
+    not the highest; and as they are not the end of life, they should not be made its
+    aim. An<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span> aim,
+    nevertheless, we must have, if we hope to live to good purpose. All men, in fact,
+    whether or not they know it, have an ideal, base or lofty, which molds character and
+    shapes destiny. Whether it be pleasure or gain or renown or knowledge, or several of
+    these, or something else, we all associate life with some end, or ends, the
+    attainment of which seems to us most desirable.</p>
+    <p>This ideal, that which in our inmost souls we love and desire, which we lay to
+    heart and live by, is at once the truest expression of our nature and the most potent
+    agency in developing its powers. Now, in youth we form the ideals which we labor to
+    body forth in our lives. What in these growing days we yearn for with all our being,
+    is heaped upon us in old age. All important, therefore, is the choice of an ideal;
+    for this more than rules or precepts will determine what we are to become. The love
+    of the best is twin-born with the soul. What is the best? What is the worthiest
+    life-aim? It must be something which is within the reach of every one, as Nature's
+    best gifts&mdash;air and sunshine and water&mdash;belong to all. What only the few
+    can attain, cannot be life's real end or the highest good. The best is not far
+    removed from any one of us, but is alike near to the poor and the rich, to the
+    learned and the ignorant, to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10"
+    id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> shepherd and the king, and only the best can give to
+    the soul repose and contentment. What then is the true life-ideal? Recalling to mind
+    the thoughts and theories of many men, I can find nothing better than this, "Seek ye
+    first the kingdom of God." "Love not pleasure," says Carlyle, "love God. This is the
+    everlasting Yea, wherein all contradiction is solved; wherein whoso walks and works,
+    it is well with him."</p>
+    <p>To the high and aspiring heart of youth, fame, honor, glory, appeal with such
+    irresistible power, and appear clad in forms so beautiful, that at a time of life
+    when all of us are unreal in our sentiments and crude in our opinions, they are often
+    mistaken for the best. But fame is good only in so far as it gives power for good.
+    For the rest, it is nominal. They who have deserved it care not for it. A great soul
+    is above all praise and dispraise of men, which are ever given ignorantly and without
+    fine discernment. The popular breath, even when winnowed by the winds of centuries,
+    is hardly pure.</p>
+    <p>And then fame cannot be the good of which I speak, for only a very few can even
+    hope for it. To nearly all, the gifts which make it possible are denied; and to
+    others, the opportunities. Many, indeed, love and win notoriety, but such as they
+    need not detain us here. A lower race of youth, in whom the blood is warmer than
+    the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span> soul,
+    think pleasure life's best gift, and are content to let occasion die, while they
+    revel in the elysium of the senses. But to make pleasure an end is to thwart one's
+    purpose, for joy is good only when it comes unbidden. The pleasure we seek begins
+    already to pall. It is good, indeed, if it come as refreshment to the weary, solace
+    to the heavy-hearted, and rest to the careworn; but if sought for its own sake, it is
+    "the honey of poison flowers and all the measureless ill." Only the young, or the
+    depraved, can believe that to live for pleasure is not to be foreordained to misery.
+    Whoso loves God or freedom or growth of mind or strength of heart, feels that
+    pleasure is his foe.</p>
+    <div class="poem">
+      <div class="stanza">
+        <span class="i0">"A king of feasts and flowers, and wine and revel,<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">And love and mirth, was never King of glory."<br />
+        </span>
+      </div>
+    </div>
+    <p>Of money, as the end or ideal of life, it should not be necessary to speak. As a
+    fine contempt for life, a willingness to throw it away in defence of any just cause
+    or noble opinion, is one of the privileges of youth, so the generous heart of the
+    young holds cheap the material comforts which money procures. To be young is to be
+    free, to be able to live anywhere on land or sea, in the midst of deserts or among
+    strange people; is to be able to fit the mind and body to all circumstance, and to
+    rise almost above Nature's iron law. He who is impelled by this<span
+    class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> high and heavenly
+    spirit will dream of flying and not of hobbling through life on golden crutches. Let
+    the feeble and the old put their trust in money; but where there is strength and
+    youth, the soul should be our guide.</p>
+    <p>And yet the very law and movement of our whole social life seem to point to riches
+    as the chief good.</p>
+    <div class="poem">
+      <div class="stanza">
+        <span class="i0">"What is that which I should turn to, lighting upon days like
+        these?<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">Every door is barred with gold, and opens but to golden
+        keys."<br />
+        </span>
+      </div>
+    </div>
+    <p>Money is the god in whom we put our trust, to whom instinctively we pay homage. We
+    believe that the rich are fortunate, are happy, that the best of life has been given
+    to them. We have faith in the power of money, in its sovereign efficacy to save us
+    not only from beggary, from sneers and insults, but we believe that it can transform
+    us, and take away the poverty of mind, the narrowness of heart, the dullness of
+    imagination, which make us weak, hard, and common. Even our hatred of the rich is but
+    another form of the worship of money. The poor think they are wretched, because they
+    think money the chief good; and if they are right, then is it a holy work to strive
+    to overthrow society as it is now constituted. Buckle and Strauss find fault with the
+    Christian<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span>
+    religion because it does not inculcate the love of money. But in this, faith and
+    reason are in harmony. Wealth is not the best, and to make it the end of life is
+    idolatry, and as Saint Paul declares, the root of evil. Man is more than money, as
+    the workman is more than his tools. The soul craves quite other nourishment than that
+    which the whole material universe can supply. Man's chief good lies in the infinite
+    world of thought and righteousness. Fame and wealth and pleasure are good when they
+    are born of high thinking and right living, when they lead to purer faith and love;
+    but if they are sought as ends and loved for themselves, they blight and corrupt. The
+    value of culture is great, and the ideal it presents points in the right direction in
+    bidding us build up the being which we are. But since man is not the highest, he may
+    not rest in himself, and culture therefore is a means rather than an end. If we make
+    it the chief aim of life, it degenerates into a principle of exclusion, destroys
+    sympathy, and terminates in a sort of self-worship.</p>
+    <p>What remains, then, but the ideal which I have proposed?&mdash;"Seek ye first the
+    Kingdom of God." Unless the light of Heaven fall along our way, thick darkness
+    gathers about us, and in the end, whatever our success may have been, we fail, and
+    are without God and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg
+    14]</a></span> without hope. So long as any seriousness is left, religion is man's
+    first and deepest concern; to be indifferent is to be dull or depraved, and doubt is
+    disease. Difficulties assuredly there are, underlying not only faith, but all systems
+    of knowledge. How am I certain that I know anything? is a question, debated in all
+    past time, debatable in all future time; but we are none the less certain that we
+    know. The mind is governed by laws which neither science nor philosophy can change,
+    and while theories and systems rise and pass away, the eternal problems present
+    themselves ever anew clothed in the eternal mystery. But little discernment is needed
+    to enable us to perceive how poor and symbolic are the thoughts of the multitude.
+    Half in pity, half in contempt, we rise to higher regions only to discover that
+    wherever we may be there also are the laws and the limitations of our being; and that
+    in whatsoever sanctuaries we may take refuge, we are still of the crowd. We cannot
+    grasp the Infinite; language cannot express even what we know of the Divine Being,
+    and hence there remains a background of darkness, where it is possible to adore, or
+    to mock. But religion dispels more mystery than it involves. With it, there is
+    twilight in the world; without it, night. We are in the world to act, not to doubt.
+    Leaving quibbles to those who can find<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15"
+    id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> no better use for life, the wise, with firm faith in
+    God and man, strive to make themselves worthy to do brave and righteous work.
+    Distrust is the last wisdom a great heart learns; and noble natures feel that the
+    generous view is, in the end, the true view. For them life means good; they find
+    strength and joy in this wholesome and cheerful faith, and if they are in error, it
+    can never be known, for if death end all, with it knowledge ceases. Perceiving this,
+    they strive to gain spiritual insight, they look to God; toward him they turn the
+    current of their thought and love; the unseen world of truth and beauty becomes their
+    home; and while matter flows on and breaks and remakes itself to break again, they
+    dwell in the presence of the Eternal, and become co-workers with the Infinite Power
+    which makes goodness good, and justice right. They love knowledge, because God knows
+    all things; they love beauty, because he is its source; they love the soul, because
+    it brings man into conscious communion with him and his universe. If their ideal is
+    poetical, they catch in the finer spirit of truth which the poet breathes, the
+    fragrance of the breath of God; if it is scientific, they discover in the laws of
+    Nature the harmony of his attributes; if it is political and social, they trace the
+    principles of justice and liberty to him; if it is philan<span class='pagenum'><a
+    name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span>thropic, they understand that love
+    which is the basis, aim, and end of life is also God.</p>
+    <p>The root of their being is in him, and the illusory world of the senses cannot dim
+    their vision of the real world which is eternal. By self-analysis the mind is
+    sublimated until it becomes a shadow in a shadowy universe; and the criticism of the
+    reason drives us to doubt and inaction, from which we are redeemed by our necessary
+    faith in our own freedom, in our power to act, and in the duty of acting in obedience
+    to higher law. Knowledge comes of doing. Never to act is never to know. The world of
+    which we are conscious is the world against which we throw ourselves by the power of
+    the will; hence life is chiefly conduct, and its ideal is not merely religious, but
+    moral. The duty of obedience to our better self determines the purpose and end of
+    action, for the better self is under the impulse of God. Whether we look without or
+    within, we find things are as they should not be; and there awakens the desire, nay,
+    the demand that they be made other and better. The actual is a mockery unless it may
+    be looked upon as the means of a higher state. If all things come forth only to
+    perish and again come forth as they were before; if life is a monster which destroys
+    itself that it may again be born, again to destroy itself,&mdash;were it not bet<span
+    class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span>ter that the tragedy
+    should cease? For many centuries men have been struggling for richer and happier
+    life; and yet when we behold the sins, the miseries, the wrongs, the sorrows, of
+    which the world is full, we are tempted to think that progress means failure. The
+    multitude are still condemned to toil from youth to age to provide the food by which
+    life is kept in the body; immortal spirits are still driven by hard necessity to fix
+    their thoughts upon matter from which they with much labor dig forth what nourishes
+    the animal. Like the savage, we still tremble before the pitiless might of Nature.
+    Floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, untimely frosts, destroy in a moment what with long
+    and painful effort has been provided. Pestilence still stalks through the earth to
+    slay and make desolate. Each day a hundred thousand human beings die; and how many of
+    these perish as the victims of sins of ignorance, of selfishness, of sensuality.</p>
+    <p>To-day, as of old, it would seem man's worst enemy is man. What hordes still
+    wander through Asia and Africa, seeking opportunity for murder and rapine; what
+    multitudes are still hunted like beasts, caught and sold into slavery. In Europe
+    millions of men stand, arms in hand, waiting for the slaughter. They still believe,
+    because they were born on differ<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18"
+    id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span>ent sides of a river and speak different languages,
+    that they are natural enemies, made to destroy one another. And in our own country,
+    what other sufferings and wrongs,&mdash;greed, sensuality, injustice,
+    deceit,&mdash;make us enemies one of another! There is a general struggle in which
+    each one strives to get the most, heedless of the misery of others. We trade upon the
+    weaknesses, the vices, and the follies of our fellow-men; and every attempt at reform
+    is met by an army of upholders of abuse. When we consider the murders, the suicides,
+    the divorces, the adulteries, the prostitutions, the brawls, the drunkenness, the
+    dishonesties, the political and official corruptions, of which our life is full, it
+    is difficult to have complacent thoughts of ourselves. Consider, too, our prisons,
+    our insane asylums, our poor-houses; the multitudes of old men and women, who having
+    worn out strength and health in toil which barely gave them food and raiment, are
+    thrust aside, no longer now fit to be bought and sold; the countless young people,
+    who have, as we say, been educated, but who have not been taught the principles and
+    habits which lead to honorable living; the thousands in our great cities who are
+    driven into surroundings which pervert and undermine character. And worse still, the
+    good, instead of uniting to labor<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19"
+    id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> for a better state of things, misunderstand and
+    thwart one another. They divide into parties, are jealous and contentious, and waste
+    their time and exhaust their strength in foolish and futile controversies. They are
+    not anxious that good be done, nor asking nor caring by whom; but they seek credit
+    for themselves, and while they seem to be laboring for the general welfare, are
+    striving rather to satisfy their own selfish vanity.</p>
+    <p>But the knowledge of all this does not discourage him who, guided by the light of
+    true ideals, labors to make reason and the will of God prevail. If things are bad he
+    knows they have been worse. Never before have the faith and culture which make us
+    human, which make us strong and wise, been the possession of so large a portion of
+    the race. Religion and civilization have diffused themselves, from little
+    centres&mdash;from Athens and Jerusalem and Rome&mdash;until people after people,
+    whole continents, have been brought under their influence. And in our day this
+    diffusion is so rapid that it spreads farther in a decade than formerly in centuries.
+    For ages, mountains and rivers and oceans were barriers behind which tribes and
+    nations entrenched themselves against the human foe. But we have tunneled the
+    mountains; we have bridged the rivers; we have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20"
+    id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> tamed the oceans. We hitch steam and electricity to
+    our wagons, and in a few days make the circuit of the globe. All lands, all seas, are
+    open to us. The race is getting acquainted with itself. We make a comparative study
+    of all literatures, of all religions, of all philosophies, of all political systems.
+    We find some soul of goodness in whatever struggles and yearnings have tried man's
+    heart. As the products of every clime are carried everywhere, like gifts from other
+    worlds, so the highest science and the purest religion are communicated and taught
+    throughout the earth: and as a result, national prejudices and antagonisms are
+    beginning to disappear; wars are becoming less frequent and less cruel; established
+    wrongs are yielding to the pressure of opinion; privileged classes are losing their
+    hold upon the imagination; and opportunity offers itself to ever-increasing
+    numbers.</p>
+    <p>Now, in all this, what do we perceive but the purpose of God, urging mankind to
+    wider and nobler life? History is his many-chambered school. Here he has taught this
+    lesson, and there another, still leading his children out of the darkness of sin and
+    ignorance toward the light of righteousness and love, until his kingdom come, until
+    his will be done on earth as it is in heaven. To believe in God and in this<span
+    class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> divine education,
+    and to make co-operation with his providential guidance of the race a life-aim is to
+    have an ideal which is not only the highest, but which also blends all other true
+    ideals into harmony. And the lovers of culture should be the first to perceive that
+    intellectual good is empty, illusory, unless there be added to it the good of the
+    heart, the good of conscience. To live for the cultivation of one's mind, is, after
+    all, to live for one's self, and therefore out of harmony with the eternal law which
+    makes it impossible for us to find ourselves except in what is not ourselves. "It is
+    the capital fault of all cultivated men," says Goethe, "that they devote their whole
+    energies to the carrying out of a mere idea, and seldom or never to the realization
+    of practical good." Whatever may be said in praise of culture, of its power to make
+    its possessor at home in the world of the best thought, the purest sentiment, the
+    highest achievements of the race; of the freedom, the mildness, the reasonableness of
+    the temper it begets; of its aim at completeness and perfection,&mdash;it is
+    nevertheless true, that if it be sought apart from faith in God and devotion to man,
+    its tendency is to produce an artificial and unsympathetic character. The primal
+    impulse of our nature is to action; and unless we can make our thought a kind of
+    deed, it seems to be vain<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg
+    22]</a></span> and unreal; and unless the harmonious development of all the
+    endowments which make the beauty and dignity of human life, give us new strength and
+    will to work with God for the good of men, sadness and a sense of failure fall upon
+    us. To have a cultivated mind, to be able to see things on many sides, to have wide
+    sympathy and the power of generous appreciation,&mdash;is most desirable, and without
+    something of all this, not only is our life narrow and uninteresting, but our energy
+    is turned in wrong directions, and our very religion is in danger of losing its
+    catholicity.</p>
+    <p>Culture, then, is necessary. We need it as a corrective of the tendency to seek
+    the good of life in what is external, as a means of helping us to overcome our vulgar
+    self-complacency, our satisfaction with low aims and cheap accomplishments, our
+    belief in the sovereign potency of machines and measures. We need it to make our
+    lives less unlovely, less hard, less material; to help us to understand the idolatry
+    of the worship of steam and electricity, the utter insufficiency of the ideals of
+    industrialism. But if culture is to become a mighty transforming influence it must be
+    wedded to religious faith, without which, while it widens the intellectual view, it
+    weakens the will to act. To take us out of ourselves and to urge us on to labor
+    with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> God that
+    we may leave the world better because we have lived, religion alone has power. It
+    gives new vigor to the cultivated mind; it takes away the exclusive and fastidious
+    temper which a purely intellectual habit tends to produce; it enlarges sympathy; it
+    teaches reverence; it nourishes faith, inspires hope, exalts the imagination, and
+    keeps alive the fire of love. To lead a noble, a beautiful, and a useful life, we
+    should accept and follow the ideals both of religion and of culture. In the midst of
+    the transformations of many kinds which are taking place in the civilized world,
+    neither the uneducated nor the irreligious mind can be of help. Large and tolerant
+    views are necessary; but not less so is the enthusiasm, the earnestness, the charity
+    of Christian faith. They who are to be leaders in the great movements upon which we
+    have entered, must both know and believe. They must understand the age, must
+    sympathize with whatever is true and beneficent in its aspirations, must hail with
+    thankfulness whatever help science, and art, and culture can bring; but they must
+    also know and feel that man is of the race of God, and that his real and true life is
+    in the unseen, infinite, and eternal world of thought and love, with which the actual
+    world of the senses must be brought into ever-increasing harmony. Liberty and
+    equality are good,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg
+    24]</a></span> wealth is good, and with them we can do much, but not all that needs
+    to be done. The spirit of Christ is not merely the spirit of liberty and equality; it
+    is more essentially the spirit of love, of sympathy, of goodness; and this spirit
+    must breathe upon our social life until it becomes as different from what it is as is
+    fragrant spring from cheerless winter. Sympathy must become universal; not merely as
+    a sentiment prompting to deeds of helpfulness and mercy, but as the informing
+    principle of society until it attains such perfectness that whatever is loss or gain
+    for one, shall be felt as loss or gain for all. The narrow, exclusive self must lose
+    itself in wider aims, in generous deeds, in the comprehensive love of God and man.
+    The good must no longer thwart one another; the weak must be protected; the wicked
+    must be surrounded by influences which make for righteousness; and the forces of
+    Nature itself must more and more be brought under man's control. Pestilence and
+    famine must no longer bring death and desolation; men must no longer drink impure
+    water and adulterated liquors, no longer must they breathe the poisonous air of badly
+    constructed houses; dwellings which are now made warm in winter, must be made cool in
+    summer; miasmatic swamps must be drained; saloons, which stand like painted harlots
+    to lure men to sin and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg
+    25]</a></span> death, must be closed. Women must have the same rights and privileges
+    as men; children must no longer be made the victims of mammon and offered in
+    sacrifice in his temple, the factory; ignorance, which is the most fruitful cause of
+    misery, must give place to knowledge; war must be condemned as public murder, and our
+    present system of industrial competition must be considered worse than war; the
+    social organization, which makes the few rich, and dooms the many to the slavery of
+    poorly paid toil, must cease to exist; and if the political state is responsible for
+    this cruelty, it must find a remedy, or be overthrown; society must be made to rest
+    upon justice and love, without which it is but organized wrong. These principles must
+    so thoroughly pervade our public life that it can no more be the interest of any one
+    to wrong his fellow, to grow rich at the cost of the poverty and misery of another.
+    Life must be prolonged both by removing many of the physical causes of death, and by
+    making men more rational and religious, more willing and able to deny themselves
+    those indulgences which are but a kind of slow suicide.</p>
+    <p>Never before have questions so vast, so complex, so pregnant with meaning, so
+    fraught with the promise of good, presented themselves; and it can hardly be vanity
+    or conceit which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg
+    26]</a></span> prompts us to believe that in this mighty movement toward a social
+    life in harmony with our idea of God and with the aspirations of the soul, America is
+    the divinely appointed leader. But if this faith is not to be a mere delusion, it
+    must become for the best among us the impulse to strong and persevering effort. Not
+    by millionaires and not by politicians shall this salvation be wrought; but by men
+    who to pure religion add the best intellectual culture. The American youth must learn
+    patience; he must acquire that serene confidence in the power of labor, which makes
+    workers willing to wait. He must not, like a foolish child, rush forward to pluck the
+    fruit before it is ripe, lest this be his epitaph: The promise of his early life was
+    great, his performance insignificant.</p>
+    <p>Do not our young men lack noble ambition? Are they not satisfied with low aims? To
+    be a legislator; to be a governor; to be talked about; to live in a marble
+    house,&mdash;seems to them a thing to be desired. Unhappy youths from whom the power
+    and goodness of life are hidden, who, standing in the presence of the unseen,
+    infinite world of truth and beauty, can only dream some aldermanic nightmare. They
+    thrust themselves into the noisy crowd, and are thrown into contact with
+    disenchanting experience at a time of life when the mind and heart should draw
+    nour<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span>ishment
+    and wisdom from communion with God and with great thoughts. Amid the universal
+    clatter of tongues, and in the overflowing ceaseless stream of newspaper gossip, the
+    soul is bewildered and stifled. In a blatant land, the young should learn to be
+    silent. The noblest minds are fashioned in secrecy, through long travail
+    like,&mdash;</p>
+    <div class="poem">
+      <div class="stanza">
+        <span class="i0">"Wines that, Heaven knows where,<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">Have sucked the fire of some forgotten sun<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">And kept it thro' a hundred years of gloom<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">Yet glowing in a heart of ruby."<br />
+        </span>
+      </div>
+    </div>
+    <p>Is it not worth the labor and expectation of a life-time to be able to do, even
+    once, the right thing excellently well? The eager passion for display, the desire to
+    speak and act in the eyes of the world, is boyish. Will is concentration, and a great
+    purpose works in secrecy. Oh, the goodness and the seriousness of life, the
+    illimitable reach of achievement, which it opens to the young who have a great heart
+    and noble aims! With them is God's almighty power and love, and his very presence is
+    hidden from them by a film only. From this little islet they look out upon infinite
+    worlds; heaven bends over them, and earth bears them up as though it would have them
+    fly. How is it possible to remain inferior when we believe in God and know that this
+    age is the right moment for all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28"
+    id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> high and holy work? The yearning for guidance has
+    never been so great. We have reached heights where the brain swims, and thoughts are
+    confused, and it is held to be questionable whether we are to turn backward or to
+    move onward to the land of promise; whether we are to be overwhelmed by the material
+    world which we have so marvelously transformed, or with the aid of the secrets we
+    have learned, are to rise Godward to a purer and fairer life of knowledge, justice,
+    and love.</p>
+    <p>Is the material progress of the nineteenth century a cradle or a grave? Are we to
+    continue to dig and delve and peer into matter until God and the soul fade from our
+    view and we become like the things we work in? To put such questions to the multitude
+    were idle. There is here no affair of votes and majorities. Human nature has not
+    changed, and now, as in the past, crowds follow leaders. What the best minds and the
+    most energetic characters believe and teach and put in practice, the millions will
+    come to accept. The doubt is whether the leaders will be worthy,&mdash;the real
+    permanent leaders, for the noisy apparent leaders can never be so. And here we touch
+    the core of the problem which Americans have to solve. No other people has such
+    numbers who are ready to thrust themselves forward as leaders, no other<span
+    class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> has so few who are
+    really able to lead. In mitigation of this fact, it may be said with truth, that
+    nowhere else is it so difficult to lead; for nowhere else does force rule so little.
+    Every one has opinions; the whole nation is awakened; thousands are able to discuss
+    any subject with plausibility; and to be simply keen-witted and versatile is to be of
+    the crowd. We need men whose intellectual view embraces the history of the race, who
+    are familiar with all literature, who have studied all social movements, who are
+    acquainted with the development of philosophic thought, who are not blinded by
+    physical miracles and industrial wonders, but know how to appreciate all truth, all
+    beauty, all goodness. And to this wide culture they must join the earnestness, the
+    confidence, the charity, and the purity of motive which Christian faith inspires. We
+    need scholars who are saints, and saints who are scholars. We need men of genius who
+    live for God and their country; men of action who seek for light in the company of
+    those who know; men of religion who understand that God reveals himself in science,
+    and works in Nature as in the soul of man, for the good of those who love him. Let us
+    know the right moment, and let us know that it comes for those alone who are
+    prepared.</p>
+    <hr style="width: 65%;" />
+    <h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II.</h2>
+    <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span>
+    <h4>EXERCISE OF MIND.</h4>
+        <div class="poem">
+      <div class="stanza">
+        <span class="i0">O heavens! how awful is the might of souls<br /></span>
+      <span class="i0">And what they do within themselves while yet<br /></span>
+      <span class="i0">The yoke of earth is new to them, the world<br /></span>
+      <span class="i0">Nothing but a wild field where they were sown.<br /></span></div></div>
+      <p><span style="margin-left: 28em;"><span
+      class="smcap">Wordsworth</span>.</span></p>
+        <p>Learning is acquaintance with what others have felt, thought, and done; knowledge
+    is the result of what we ourselves have felt, thought, and done. Hence a man knows
+    best what he has taught himself; what personal contact with God, with man, and with
+    Nature has made his own. The important thing, then, is not so much to know the
+    thoughts and loves of others, as to be able ourselves to think truly, and to love
+    nobly. The aim should be to rouse, strengthen, and illumine the mind rather than to
+    store it with learning; and the great educational problem has been, and is, how to
+    give to the soul purity of intention, to the conscience steadfastness, and to the
+    mind force, pliability, and openness to light; or in other words, how to bring
+    philosophy and religion to the aid of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31"
+    id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> the will so that the better self shall prevail and
+    each generation introduce its successor to a higher plane of life.</p>
+    <p>To this end the efforts of all teachers have, with more or less consciousness,
+    tended; and in this direction too, along winding ways and with periods of arrest or
+    partial return, the race of man has for ages been moving; and he who aspires to gain
+    a place in the van of the mighty army on its heavenward march,&mdash;</p>
+    <div class="poem">
+      <div class="stanza">
+        <span class="i0">"And draw new furrows 'neath the healthy morn<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">And plant the great Hereafter in this Now,"&mdash;<br />
+        </span>
+      </div>
+    </div>
+    <p>may be rash, but his spirit is not ignoble. To him it may not be given "to fan and
+    winnow from the coming step of Time the chaff of custom;" but if he persevere he may
+    confidently hope that his thought and love shall at length rise to fairer and more
+    enduring worlds. He weds himself to things of light, seeks aids to true life within,
+    learns to live with the noble dead, and with the great souls of the present who have
+    uttered the truth whereby they live, in a way more intimate and higher than that
+    granted to those who are with them day by day; for minds are not separated by time
+    and space, but by quality of thought. But to be able to love this life, and with all
+    one's heart to seek this close communion with God, with noble souls, and with Nature
+    is not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> easy,
+    and it may be that it is impossible for those who are not drawn to it by irresistible
+    instincts. For the intellect, at least, attractions are proportional to destiny; and
+    the art of intellectual life is not most surely learned by those whom circumstances
+    favor, but by those whom will impels onward to exercise of mind; whom neither daily
+    wants, nor animal appetites, nor hope of gain, nor low ambition, nor sneers of
+    worldlings, nor prayers of friends, nor aught else can turn from the pursuit of
+    wisdom; who, with ceaseless labor and with patient thought, eat their way in silence,
+    like caterpillars, to the light, become their own companions, walk uplifted by their
+    own thoughts, and by slow and imperceptible processes are transformed and grow to be
+    the embodiment of the truth and beauty which they see and love.</p>
+    <p>The overmastering love of mental exercise, of the good of the intellect, is
+    probably never found in formal and prosaic minds; or if so, its first awakening is in
+    the early years when to think is to feel, when the soul, fresh from God, comes
+    trailing clouds of glory, and the sun and moon and stars, and the hills and flowing
+    waters seem but made to crown with joy hearts that love. It is in these dewy dawns
+    that the image of beauty is imprinted on the soul and the sense of mystery awakens.
+    We move about<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span>
+    and become a part of all we see, grow akin to stones and leaves and birds, and to all
+    young and happy things. We lose ourselves in life which is poured round us like an
+    unending sea; are natural, healthful, alive to all we see and touch; have no
+    misgivings, but walk as though the eternal God held us by the hand. These are the
+    fair spring days when we suck honey that shall nourish us in the winters of which we
+    do not dream; when sunsets interfuse themselves with all our being until we are dyed
+    in the many-tinted glory; when the miracle of the changing year is the soul's fair
+    seed-time; when lying in the grass, the head resting in clasped hands, while soft
+    white clouds float lazily through azure skies, and the birds warble, and the waters
+    murmur, and the flowers breathe fragrance, we feel a kind of unconscious
+    consciousness of a universal life in Nature. The very rocks seem to be listening to
+    what the leaves whisper; and through the silent eternities we almost see the dead
+    becoming the living, the living the dead, until both grow to be one, and whatever is,
+    is life.</p>
+    <p>He who has never had these visions; has never heard these airy voices; has never
+    seemed about to catch a glimpse of the inner heart of being, pulsing beneath the veil
+    of visible things; has never felt that he himself is a spirit looking<span
+    class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> blindly on a
+    universe, which if his eyes could but see and his ears hear, would be revealed as the
+    very heaven of the infinite God,&mdash;must forever lack something of the freshness,
+    of the eager delight, with which a poetic mind contemplates the world and follows
+    whither the divine intimations point. This early intercourse with Nature nourishes
+    the soul, deepens the intellect, exalts the imagination, and fills the memory with
+    fair and noble forms and images which abide with us, and as years pass on, gain in
+    softness and purity what they may lose in distinctness of outline and color. This is
+    the source of intellectual wealth, of tranquil moods, of patience in the midst of
+    opposition, of confidence in the fruitfulness of labor and the transforming power of
+    time. Here is given the material which must be molded into form; the rude blocks
+    which must be cut and dressed and fitted together until they become a spiritual
+    temple wherein the soul may rest at one with God and Nature, and with its own thought
+    and love. To run, to jump, to ride, to swim, to skate, to sit in the shade of trees
+    by flowing water, to watch reapers at their work, to look on orchards blossoming, to
+    dream in the silence that lies amid the hills, to feel the solemn loneliness of deep
+    woods, to follow cattle as they crop the sweet-scented clover,&mdash;to learn to
+    know, as one knows a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg
+    35]</a></span> mother's face, every change that comes over the heavens from the dewy
+    freshness of early dawn to the restful calm of evening, from the overpowering mystery
+    of the starlit sky to the tender human look with which the moon smiles upon the
+    earth,&mdash;all this is education of a higher and altogether more real kind than it
+    is possible to receive within the walls of a school; and lacking this, nothing shall
+    have power to develop the faculties of the soul in symmetry and completeness. Hence a
+    philosopher has said there are ten thousand chances to one that genius, talent, and
+    virtue shall issue from a farmhouse rather than from a palace. The daily intercourse
+    with Nature in childhood and youth intertwines with noble and enduring objects the
+    passions which form the mind and heart of man, whereas those who are shut out from
+    such communion are necessarily thrown into contact with what is mean and vulgar; and
+    since our early years, whatever our surroundings may have been, seem to us sweet and
+    fair because life itself is then a clear-flowing fountain, they cannot help blending
+    the memory of that innocent and happy time with thoughts of base and mechanical
+    objects, or, it may be, of low and ignoble associates.</p>
+    <p>He is fortunate who, during the first ten years of his life, escapes the
+    confinement and repres<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg
+    36]</a></span>sion of school, and lives at home in the country amid the fields and
+    the woods, day by day growing familiar with the look on Nature's face, with all her
+    moods, with every common object, with living things in the air and the water and on
+    the earth; who sees the corn sprout, and watches it grow week after week until the
+    yellow harvest waves in the sunlight; who looks with unawed eye on rising
+    thunder-clouds and shouts with glee amid the lightning's play; who learns to know
+    that whatever he looks upon is thereby humanized, and to feel that he is part of all
+    he sees and loves. He will carry with him to the study of the intellectual and
+    spiritual world of men's thoughts shut up in books, a strength of mind, a depth and
+    freshness of heart which only those can own who have drunk at Nature's deep flowing
+    fountain, and come up to life's training-course wet with her dews and with the
+    fragrance of her flowers on their breath. In the eyes of the old Greeks, who first
+    made education a science, the scholar was an idler,&mdash;one who had leisure to look
+    about him, to stroll amid the olive groves, to let his eye rest upon the purple hills
+    or the blue sea studded with green isles, to listen to the brooks and the
+    nightingales, to read the lesson the fair earth teaches more than that imprinted on
+    parchment; and the school must still preserve something of this freedom from<span
+    class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> constraint, must
+    encourage the play of body and of mind, the delight natural to the young in the
+    exercise of strength of whatever kind, and thus as far as possible lighten the labor
+    and drudgery of elementary studies with thoughts of liberty, of beauty, and of
+    excellence. Let the boy feel how good it is to be alive though life meant only the
+    narrow world and the mere surfaces of things with which alone it is possible for him
+    to be acquainted; and then when we ask him to believe that in high thinking and in
+    noble acting he will find a life infinitely more worthy, his eager soul will be
+    inflamed with a desire for knowledge and virtue, and bearing in his heart the
+    strength and wealth of imagination gained from his early experience, his thoughts
+    will turn to great and good men. Dim visions of mighty conquerors, of poets at whose
+    song the woods and waves grow calm, of orators whose words with storm-like force,
+    whatever way they take, sweep with them the wills of men,&mdash;will rise before his
+    mind. His young fancy will endow them with preternatural qualities; and he will yearn
+    to draw near, to mingle with them and to catch the secret of their divine power. The
+    germ of the godlike within his bosom bursts and springs. What they were, why may not
+    he also become? What bars are thrown athwart his path, what obstacles hem his way,
+    which,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> whoever
+    in any age has excelled, has not had to break down and surmount? Here the wise
+    teacher comes to cheer him, to tell him his faith is not wrong, his hope not without
+    promise of attainment if he but trust himself, and bend his whole mind to the task;
+    that whatever goal within the scope of human power, the will sets to itself, it may
+    reach.</p>
+    <p>In order to develop, strengthen, and confirm this high mood, this noble temper,
+    let him by all means be made acquainted with the language and genius of Greece. Here
+    he will be introduced to a world of thought and sentiment almost as fresh, as fair
+    and many-sided as Nature herself,&mdash;the fragrant blossoming in myriad hues and
+    forms of the life and mind of the most richly endowed portion of the human race. Not
+    only are the Greeks the most highly-gifted of all people, but in this classical age
+    they have also this special charm and power,&mdash;that the keenest intellectual
+    faculties are in them united with the feelings, hopes, and fancies of a noble and
+    great-hearted youth. Even Socrates and Plato talk like high-souled boys who can see
+    the world only in the light of ideals, for whom what the mind beholds and the heart
+    loves is alone real. How healthfully they look on life, with what delight they
+    breathe the air! What fine contempt have they not of<span class='pagenum'><a
+    name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> death, thinking no fortune so good as
+    that which comes to the hero who dies in a worthy cause! There is Athens, already the
+    world's university; but no books, no libraries, no lecture-halls, only great teachers
+    who walk about followed by a crowd of youths eager to drink in their words. Here is
+    the Acropolis, with its snow-white temples and propyl&aelig;um, fair and chaste as
+    though they had been built in heaven and gently lowered to this Attic mound by the
+    hands of angels. There in the Parthenon are the sculptures of Phidias, and yonder in
+    the temple of the Dioscuri, the paintings of Polygnotus,&mdash;ideal beauty bodied
+    forth to lure the souls of men to unseen and eternal worlds. If they turn to the
+    east, the isles of the &AElig;gean look up to them like virgins who welcome happy
+    lovers; to the west, Mount Pentelicus, from whose heart the architectural glory of
+    the city has been carved, bids them think what patience will enable man's genius to
+    accomplish; and to the north, Hymettus, fragrant with the breath of a thousand herbs
+    and musical with the hum of bees, stoops with gentle undulations to their feet. They
+    live in the air; their temples are open to the sunlight; their theatres are uncovered
+    to the heavens; and whithersoever they move, they are surrounded by what is fair,
+    noble, and inspiring. This free and happy life in the<span class='pagenum'><a
+    name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> company of great teachers becomes the
+    stimulus to the keenest exercise of mind. They are as eager to see things in a true
+    light as they are quick to sympathize with whatever is heroic or beautiful; and all
+    their talk is of truth and justice, the good, the fair, the excellent, of philosophy,
+    religion, poetry, and art, and of whatever else seems favorable to human life and to
+    the development of ideal manhood. Of the merely useful they have the scorn of young
+    and inexperienced minds; and Hippocrates proclaims himself ready to give Protagoras,
+    not only whatever he himself possesses, but also the property of his friends, if he
+    will but teach him wisdom. Superior knowledge was to them of all things the most
+    admirable and the most to be desired. What noble thoughts have they not concerning
+    education? "An intelligent man," says Plato, "will prize those studies which result
+    in his soul getting soberness, righteousness, and wisdom, and will less value the
+    others." The culture of the mind is made a kind of religion, in the spreading of
+    which the personal influence of the teacher is not less active than the truths he
+    sets forth. Bonds of affection bind the disciple to the master whose words have for
+    him the sacredness of wisdom and the charm of genius, power to confirm the will, and
+    warmth and color whereby the imagination is raised.<span class='pagenum'><a
+    name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span></p>
+    <p>This secret of making knowledge attractive, of clothing truth in chaste and
+    beautiful language, of associating it with whatever is fair and noble in Nature, and
+    of relating it to life and conduct, which is part of the genius of Greece, still
+    lives in her literature; and to read the words of her poets, orators, and
+    philosophers is to feel the presence of a high and active spirit, is to breathe in an
+    intellectual atmosphere of light and liberty, is of itself enlargement and
+    cultivation of mind. Hence, in the realms of thought, the Greeks are the civilizers
+    and emancipators of the world; and whoever thinks, is to some extent their debtor.
+    The music of their eloquence and poetry can never grow silent; the forms of beauty
+    their genius has created can never perish, and never cease to win the admiration and
+    love of noble minds and gentle hearts, or to be the inspiration, generation after
+    generation, to high thoughts and heroic moods. So long as glory, beauty, freedom,
+    light, and gladness shall seem good and fair, so long will the finer spirits of the
+    world feel the attraction and the charm of Greece, and know the sweet surprise which
+    thrilled the heart of Keats when first he read Homer:&mdash;</p>
+    <div class="poem">
+      <div class="stanza">
+        <span class="i0">"Then felt I like some watcher of the skies<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">When a new planet swims into his ken,<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes<br />
+        </span> <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg
+        42]</a></span><span class="i0">He stared at the Pacific, and all his men<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">Looked at each other with a wild surmise,<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">Silent, upon a peak in Darien."<br />
+        </span>
+      </div>
+    </div>
+    <p>In a less degree, Roman literature, which is the offspring of Greek culture, has
+    value as an intellectual stimulus and discipline. Here also the youthful mind is
+    brought into the presence of a great and noble people, who, if they have less genius
+    and a duller sense of beauty than the Greeks, excel them in steadiness of purpose, in
+    dignity of character, in reverence for law and religion, and above all in the art of
+    governing.</p>
+    <p>The educational value of the classics does not lie so much in the Greek and Latin
+    languages as in the type of mind, the sense of proportion and beauty, the heroic
+    temper, the philosophic mood, the keen relish for high enterprise, and the joyful
+    love of life which they make known to us. The world to which they introduce us is so
+    remote that the pre-occupations and vulgarities of the present, by which we all are
+    hemmed and warped, fall away from us; and it is at the same time so real and of such
+    absorbing interest that we are caught up in spirit and carried to the Attic Plain and
+    the hills of Latium. They are useful, not because they teach us anything that may not
+    be learned and learned more accurately from modern books, but because they move the
+    mind, fire the heart, ennoble and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43"
+    id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> refine the imagination in a way which nothing else
+    has power to do. They are sources of inspiration; they first roused the modern mind
+    to activity; and the potency of their influence can never cease to be felt by those
+    whose aptitudes lead them to the love of intellectual perfection, who delight in the
+    free play of the mind, who are attracted by what is symmetrical, who have the
+    instinct for beauty, who swim in a current of ideas as naturally as birds fly in the
+    air. They appeal to the mind as a whole, stimulate all its faculties, awaken a
+    many-sided sympathy both with Nature and with the world of men. They widen our view
+    of life, bring forth in us the consciousness of our kinship with the human race, and
+    of the application to ourselves, however common and uninspiring our surroundings may
+    be, of the best thoughts and noblest deeds which have ever sprung from the brain and
+    heart of man. They help to make one, again to quote Plato, "A lover, not of a part of
+    wisdom, but of the whole; who has a taste for every sort of knowledge, and is curious
+    to learn and is never satisfied; who has magnificence of mind, and is a spectator of
+    all time and all existence; who is harmoniously constituted, of a well-proportioned
+    and gracious mind, whose own nature will move spontaneously toward the true being of
+    everything; who has<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg
+    44]</a></span> a good memory, and is quick to learn, noble, gracious, the friend of
+    truth, justice, courage, temperance." The ideal presented is that of complete
+    harmonious culture, the aim of which is not to make an artisan, a physician, a
+    merchant, a lawyer, but a man alive in all his faculties, touching the world at many
+    points, for whom all knowledge is desirable, all beauty lovable, and for whom fine
+    bearing and noble acting are indispensable.</p>
+    <p>It is needless to point out in what, or why, the Greeks failed, since here there
+    is question only of intellectual life, and in this they did not fail. Nor is there
+    any thought, in what has here been said, of depreciating the worth of the study of
+    science, without a certain knowledge of which no one, in this age, can in any true
+    sense, be called educated. Whoever, indeed, learns a language properly, acquires
+    scientific knowledge; and the Greeks are not only the masters in poetry and
+    eloquence, they are also the guides to the right use of reason and to scientific
+    method, and the teachers of mathematics, logic, and physics. He who pursues culture,
+    in the Greek spirit, who desires to see things as they are, to know the best that has
+    been thought and done by men, will fear nothing so much as the exclusion of any
+    truth, and he will be anxious to acquaint himself not only with the<span
+    class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> method, but as far
+    as possible with the facts, of physical science. Still he perceives that however
+    great the value of natural knowledge may be, it is, as an instrument of culture,
+    inferior to literature. We are educated by what calls forth in us love and
+    admiration, by what creates the exalted mood and the steadfast purpose. In bowing
+    with reverence to what is above us, we are uplifted. When we are moved, we are more
+    alive; we are stronger, tenderer, nobler. Now to look upon Nature with the detective
+    eye of the man of science is to be cold and unsympathetic; to learn by methodic
+    experiment is to gain knowledge, which, since it is only remotely or indirectly
+    related to life, is but little interesting. Such knowledge is a fragment, and a
+    fragment extremely difficult to fit into the temple built by thought and love, by
+    hope and imagination; and hence when we have learned a great deal about chemical
+    elements, geologic epochs, correlation of forces, and sidereal spaces, we are rather
+    astonished than enlightened. We are brought into the presence of a world which is not
+    that of the senses, nor yet that which faith, hope, and love forebode; and the
+    bearing it may have upon human life is of more interest to us than the facts made
+    known. We are, indeed, curious to know whatever may, with any certainty, be told us
+    of atoms and biogenesis;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg
+    46]</a></span> but our real concern is to learn what significance such truth may have
+    in its relation to questions of God and the soul.</p>
+    <p>There is doubtless a disciplinary value in the study of physical science. It
+    trains the mind to habits of patient attention, of careful observation, teaches the
+    danger of hasty generalization, and diminishes intellectual conceit; but these
+    results may also be obtained by other means. The aim of education is not simply to
+    develop this or the other faculty, however indispensable, nor yet to make one
+    thoroughly conversant with a particular order of facts, but the aim is to bring about
+    a conscious participation in the life of the race, to evoke all the powers of man, so
+    that his whole being shall be quickened and made responsive to the touch of things
+    seen and unseen; and the study of science is less adapted to the attainment of this
+    end than the study of human letters. The scientific temper draws to specialties; and
+    specialists are narrow, are incomplete. They, each in his own line, do good work, and
+    are the chief agents for the increase of natural knowledge, and are, we may grant,
+    leaders in every kind of improvement; but like the operatives who provide our
+    comforts and luxuries, they are themselves warped and crippled by what they do. The
+    habit of looking at a single order of facts, coldly<span class='pagenum'><a
+    name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> and always from the same point of
+    view, takes from the mind flexibility, weakens the imagination, and puts fetters on
+    the soul; and hence though it is important that there be specialists, the kind of
+    education by which they are formed, while it is suited to make a geologist, a
+    chemist, a mathematician, or a botanist, is not suited to call forth the free and
+    harmonious play of all man's powers. We do not live on facts alone, much less on
+    facts of a single kind. Religion and poetry, love, hope, and imagination are as
+    essential to our well-being as science. Human life is knowledge, is faith, is
+    conduct, is beauty, is manners; it unfolds itself in many directions and shoots its
+    roots into infinitude; and for the general purposes of education, science is learned
+    to best advantage when it is embodied in literature, and its methods and results,
+    rather than the details of its work, are presented to us. Whatever it is able to do,
+    to improve the mind, to widen the range of thought, to give true notions of the
+    workings of Nature,&mdash;it will do for whoever learns accurately its general
+    conceptions and results; and these cannot remain unknown to him whose aim is culture,
+    for such an one is, as Plato says, "A lover not of a part of wisdom, but of the
+    whole, and has a taste for every sort of knowledge, and is curious to learn, and is
+    never satisfied; and though he will not know<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48"
+    id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> medicine like a physician, or the heavens like an
+    astronomer, or the vegetable kingdom like a botanist, his mind will play over all
+    these realms with freedom, and he will know how to relate the principles and facts of
+    all the sciences to our sense for beauty, for conduct, for life and religion in a way
+    which a mere specialist can never find." And his view will not only be wider and less
+    impeded, it will also be deeper than that of the man of science; for he who sees but
+    one order of things sees only their surfaces, just as he who sees but one thing sees
+    nothing at all.</p>
+    <p>It would be a mistake to imagine that the ideal here commended, means superficial
+    accomplishments, an excessive love of style and the ornaments of poetry and
+    eloquence, or preoccupation in favor of aught external or frivolous. It is the very
+    opposite of dilettantism, and if it mean anything, means thoroughness, and a
+    thoroughness which can come only of untiring labor carried on through many years; for
+    time and intercourse with men and varied experience are indispensable elements. It is
+    like the ideal of religion which makes the saint think himself a sinner; it is as
+    exacting as the miser's thought which makes millions seem to be beggary; like the
+    artist's vision, like the poet's dream, it allures and yet forbids hope of<span
+    class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> attainment. The
+    seeker after wisdom must have a high purpose, a strong soul, and the purest love of
+    truth. He cannot live in the senses alone, nor in the mind, nor in the heart alone,
+    but the spiritual being, which is himself, yearns for whatever is good, whatever is
+    true, whatever is fair, and so he finds himself akin to the infinite God and to all
+    that he has made. When his thought is carried out to atoms weaving the garment which
+    is our body, and molding the world we see and touch; when he beholds motion lighting,
+    warming, thrilling the universe,&mdash;he is filled with intellectual joy, but at the
+    same time he perceives that all this is but a phase of truth; that God and the
+    boundless facts are infinitely more than drilled atomics marshaled rank on rank until
+    they form the countless hosts of the heavens. When the men of science have labeled
+    the elements, and put tickets upon all natural compounds, and with complacency
+    declare that this is the whole truth, he looks on the flowers around him and the
+    blooming children, on the stars above his head, on the sun slow wheeling down the
+    western horizon, on the moon climbing some eastern hill, and his inmost soul is glad
+    because he feels the thrill of the infinite, living Spirit, and forebodes to what
+    fair countries we are bound.</p>
+    <p>And when they proclaim the wonders science<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50"
+    id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> has wrought,&mdash;increase of physical enjoyment and
+    social comfort; the yoking of lightning and steam to make them work for man; the
+    providing of more abundant food; the building of more wholesome dwellings; the
+    lengthening of life; temporal benefits of every kind,&mdash;he joins with those who
+    utter praise, but knows that infinitely more than all this goes to the making of
+    man's life. So he turns his mind in many directions, and while he looks on the truth
+    in science, does not grow blind to the truth in religion; while he knows the value of
+    what is practically useful, understands also the priceless worth of what is noble and
+    beautiful, and his acquaintance with many kinds of thought, with many shades of
+    opinion confirms him, as Joubert says, in the acceptance of the best.</p>
+    <hr style="width: 65%;" />
+    <h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III.</h2>
+    <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span>
+    <h4>THE LOVE OF EXCELLENCE.</h4>
+    <div class="blockquot">
+      <p>Why is this glorious creature to be found<br />
+       One only in ten thousand? what one is,<br />
+       Why may not millions be? what bars are thrown<br />
+       By Nature in the way of such a hope?</p>
+      <p><span style="margin-left: 20em;"><span
+      class="smcap">Wordsworth</span>.</span></p>
+    </div>
+    <p>He teaches to good purpose who inspires the love of excellence, and who sends his
+    pupils forth from the school's narrow walls with such desire for self-improvement
+    that the whole world becomes to them a God-appointed university. And why shall not
+    every youth hope to enter the narrow circle of those for whom to live, is to think,
+    who behold "the bright countenance of truth in the quiet and still air of delightful
+    studies." An enlightened mind is like a fair and pleasant friend who comes to cheer
+    us in every hour of loneliness and gloom; it is like noble birth which admits to all
+    best company; it is like wealth which surrounds us with whatever is rarest and most
+    precious; it is like virtue which lives in an atmosphere of light and serenity, and
+    is itself enough for itself. Whatever our labors, our cares, our disappointments, a
+    free<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> and open
+    mind, by holding us in communion with the highest and the fairest, will fill the soul
+    with strength and joy. The artist, day by day, year in and year out, hangs over his
+    work, and finds enough delight in the beauty he creates; and shall not the friend of
+    the soul be glad in striving ceaselessly to make his knowledge and his love less
+    unlike the knowledge and the love of God? Seldom is opportunity of victory offered to
+    great captains, the orator rarely finds fit theme and audience, hardly shall the hero
+    meet with occasions worthy of the sacrifice of life; but he who labors to shape his
+    mind to the heavenly forms of truth and beauty beholds them ever present and
+    appealing. Life without thought and love is worthless; and to the best men and women
+    belong only those who cultivate with earnestness and perseverance their spiritual
+    faculties, who strive daily to know more, to love more, to be more beautiful. They
+    are the chosen ones, and all others, even though they sit on thrones, are but the
+    crowd.</p>
+    <p>Without a free and open mind there is no high and glad human life. You may as well
+    point to the savage drowsing in his tent, or to cattle knee-deep in clover, and bid
+    me think them high, as to ask me to admire where I can behold neither intelligence
+    nor love. All that we possess is qualified by what we are. Gold<span
+    class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> makes not the miser
+    rich, nor its lack a true man poor; and he who has gained insight into the fair truth
+    that he is a part of all he sees and loves, is richer than kings, and lives like a
+    god in his universe. Possibilities for us are measured by the kind of work in which
+    we put our hearts. If a man's thoughts are wholly busy with carpentering do not
+    expect him to become anything else than a carpenter; but if his aim is to build up
+    his own being, to make his mind luminous, his heart tender and pure, his will
+    steadfast, who but God shall fix a limit beyond which he may not hope to go.
+    Education, indeed, cannot confer organic power; but it alone gives us the faculty to
+    perceive how infinitely wonderful and fair are man's endowments, how boundless his
+    inheritance, how full of deathless hope is that to which he may aspire. Religion,
+    philosophy, poetry, science,&mdash;all bring us into the presence of an ideal of
+    ceaseless growth toward an all-perfect Infinite, dimly discerned and unapproachable,
+    but which fascinates the soul and haunts the imagination with its deep mystery, until
+    what we long for becomes more real than all that we possess, and yearning is our
+    highest happiness. Ah! who would throw a veil over the vision on which young eyes
+    rest when young hearts feel that ideal things alone are real? Who would rob them of
+    this divine<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span>
+    principle of progress which makes growth the best of life?</p>
+    <div class="poem">
+      <div class="stanza">
+        <span class="i14">"Many are our joys<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">In youth; but oh, what happiness to live<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">When every hour brings palpable access<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">Of knowledge, when all knowledge is delight!"<br />
+        </span>
+      </div>
+    </div>
+    <p>In all ages, we know those made wise by experience, which teaches us to expect
+    little, whether of ourselves or others, have made the thoughts and hopes of youth a
+    jest, even as men have made religion a jest, having nothing to offer us in
+    compensation for its loss, but witticisms and despair. This is the fatal fault of
+    life, that when we have obtained what is good,&mdash;as wealth, position, wife, and
+    friends,&mdash;we lose all hope of the best, and with our mockery discourage those
+    who have ideal aims; who, remembering how the soul felt in life's dawn, retain a
+    sense of God's presence in the world, to whom with growing faculties they aspire,
+    feeling that whatsoever point they reach, they still have something to pursue. This
+    is the principle of the diviner mind in all high and heroic natures; this is the
+    spring-head of deeds that make laws, of "thoughts that enrich the blood of the
+    world;" this is the power which gives to resolve the force of destiny, and clothes
+    the soul with the heavenliest strength and beauty when it stands single and alone, of
+    men abandoned and almost of God.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55"
+    id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span></p>
+    <p>There is little danger that too many shall ever hearken to the invitation from the
+    fair worlds to which all souls belong, and where alone they can be luminous and free.
+    For centuries, now, what innumerable voices have pleaded with men to make themselves
+    worthy of heaven; while they have moved on heedless of the heaven that lies about us
+    here, placing their hopes and aims in material and perishable elements, athirst
+    neither for truth, nor beauty, nor aught that is divinely good! They sleep, they
+    wake, they eat, they drink; they tread the beaten path with ceaseless iteration, and
+    so they die. If one come appealing for culture of intellect, not because they who
+    know, are stronger than the ignorant and make them their servants, but because an
+    open, free, and flexible mind is good and fair, better than birth, position, and
+    wealth, they turn away as though he trifled with their common-sense. Life, they say,
+    is not for knowledge, but knowledge for life; and they neither truly know, nor live.
+    And if here and there some nobler soul stand forth, he degrades himself to an
+    aspirant to fame, forgetting truth and love.</p>
+    <div class="poem">
+      <div class="stanza">
+        <span class="i0">Enough there are on earth who reap and sow,<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">Enough who give their lives to common gain,<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">Enough who toil with spade and axe and plane,<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">Enough who sail the seas where rude winds blow;<br />
+        </span> <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg
+        56]</a></span><span class="i0">Enough who make their life unmeaning show,<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">Enough who plead in courts, who physic pain;<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">Enough who follow in the lover's train,<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">And taste of wedded hearts the bliss and woe.<br />
+        </span>
+      </div>
+      <div class="stanza">
+        <span class="i0">A few at least may love the poet's song,<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">May walk with him, their visionary guide,<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">Far from the crowd, nor do the world a wrong;<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">Or on his wings through deep blue skies may glide<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">And float, by light transfused, like clouds along<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">Above the earth and over oceans wide.<br />
+        </span>
+      </div>
+    </div>
+    <p>With unresting, wearing thought and labor we are striving to make earth more
+    habitable. We drag forth from its inner parts whatever treasures are hidden there;
+    with steam's mighty force we mold brute matter into every fair and serviceable form;
+    we build great cities, we spread the fabric of our trade; the engine's iron heart
+    goes throbbing through tunneled mountains and over storm-swept seas to bear us and
+    our wealth to all regions of the globe; we talk to one another from city to city, and
+    from continent to continent along ocean's oozy depths the lightning flashes our
+    words, spreading beneath our eyes each morning the whole world's gossip,&mdash;but in
+    the midst of this miraculous transformation, we ourselves remain small, hard, and
+    narrow, without great thoughts or great loves or immortal hopes. We are a crowd where
+    the highest and the best lose individuality, and are swept along as though
+    democracy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> were
+    a tyranny of the average man under which superiority of whatever kind is criminal.
+    Our population increases, our cities grow, our roads are lengthened, our machinery is
+    made more perfect, the number of our schools is multiplied, our newspapers are read
+    in ever-widening circles, the spirit of humanity and of freedom breathes through our
+    life; but the individual remains common-place and uninteresting. He lacks
+    intelligence, has no perception of what is excellent, no faith in ideals, no
+    reverence for genius, no belief in any highest sort of man who has not shown his
+    worth in winning wealth, position, or notoriety. We have a thousand poets and no
+    poetry, a thousand orators and no eloquence, a thousand philosophers and no
+    philosophy. Every city points to its successful men who have millions, but are
+    themselves poor and unintelligent; to its writers who, having sold their talent to
+    newspapers and magazines, sink to the level of those they address, dealing only with
+    what is of momentary interest, or if the question be deep, they move on the surface,
+    lest the many-eyed crowd lose sight of them. The preacher gets an audience and pay on
+    condition that he stoop to the gossip which centres around new theories, startling
+    events, and mechanical schemes for the improvement of the country. If to get money
+    be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> the end of
+    writing and preaching, then must we seek to please the multitude who are willing to
+    pay those who entertain and amuse them. Will not our friends, even, conceive a mean
+    opinion of our ability, if we fail to gain public recognition?</p>
+    <p>So we make ourselves "motleys to the view, and sell cheap what is most dear." We
+    must, perforce, show the endowment which can be brought to perfection only if it be
+    permitted to grow in secrecy and solitude. The worst foe of excellence is the desire
+    to appear; for when once we have made men talk of us, we seem to be doing nothing if
+    they are silent, and thus the love of notoriety becomes the bane of true work and
+    right living. To be one of a crowd is not to be at all; and if we are resolved to put
+    our thoughts and acts to the test of reason, and to live for what is permanently true
+    and great, we must consent, like the best of all ages, to be lonely in the world. All
+    life, except the life of thought and love, is dull and superficial. The young love
+    for a while, and are happy; a few think; and for the rest existence is but the
+    treadmill of monotonous sensation. There are but few, who, through work and
+    knowledge, through faith and hope and love, seek to escape from the narrowness and
+    misery of life to the summits of thought where the soul breathes a<span
+    class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> purer air, and
+    whence is seen the fairer world the multitude forebodes. There are but few whose life
+    is</p>
+    <div class="poem">
+      <div class="stanza">
+        <span class="i8">"Effort and expectation and desire,<br />
+        </span> <span class="i8">And something evermore about to be;"<br />
+        </span>
+      </div>
+    </div>
+    <p>but few who understand how much the destiny of Man hangs upon single persons; but
+    few who feel that what they love and teach, millions must know and love.</p>
+    <div class="poem">
+      <div class="stanza">
+        <span class="i6">"A people is but the attempt of many<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">To rise to the completer life of one;<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">And those who live as models for the mass<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">Are singly of more value than them all."<br />
+        </span>
+      </div>
+    </div>
+    <p>Only the noblest souls awaken within us divine aspirations. They are the music,
+    the poetry, which warms and illumines whole generations; they are the few who, born
+    with rich endowments, by ceaseless labor develop their powers until they become
+    capable of work which, were it not for them, could not be done at all. History is the
+    biography of aristocrats, of the chosen ones with whom all improvement originates,
+    who found States, establish civilizations, create literatures, and teach wisdom. They
+    work not for themselves; for in spite of human selfishness and the personal aims of
+    the ambitious, the poet, the scholar, and the statesman bless the world. They lead us
+    through happy isles; they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg
+    60]</a></span> clothe our thoughts and hopes with beauty and with strength; they
+    dissipate the general gloom; they widen the sphere of life; they bring the multitude
+    beneath the sway of law.</p>
+    <p>Now, here in America, once for all, whatever the thoughtless may imagine, we have
+    lost faith in the worth of artificial distinctions. Indeed plausible arguments may be
+    found to prove that the kind of man democracy tends to form, has no reverence for
+    distinctions of whatever kind, and is without ideals, and that as he is envious of
+    men made by money, so he looks with the contempt of unenlightened common-sense upon
+    those whom character and intellect raise above him. This is not truth. The higher you
+    lift the mass, the more will they acknowledge and appreciate worth, the clearer will
+    they see that what makes man human, beautiful, and beneficent is conduct and
+    intelligence; and so increasing enlightenment will turn thought and admiration from
+    position and wealth, from the pomp and show of life to what makes a man's self, his
+    character, his mind, his manners even,&mdash;for the source of manners lies within
+    us. In a society like ours, the chosen ones, the best, the models of life, and the
+    leaders of thought will be distinguished from the crowd not by accident or
+    circumstance, but by inner strength and beauty, by finer knowledge, by purer love,
+    by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> a deeper
+    faith in God, by a more steadfast trust that it must, and shall be, well with a world
+    which God makes and rules, and which to the fairest mind is fairest, and to the
+    holiest soul most sacred.</p>
+    <p>Here and now, if ever anywhere at any time, there is need of men, there is appeal
+    to what is godlike in man, calling upon us to rise above our prosperities, our
+    politics, our mechanical aims and implements, and to turn the courage, energy, and
+    practical sense which have wrought with miraculous power in developing the material
+    resources of America, to the cultivation of our spiritual faculties. We alone of the
+    great modern nations are without classical writers of our own, without a national
+    literature. The thought and love of this people, its philosophy, poetry, and art lies
+    yet in the bud; and our tens of thousands of books, even the better sort, must perish
+    to enrich the soil that nourishes a life of heavenly promise. Hitherto we have been
+    sad imitators of the English, but not the best the English have done will satisfy
+    America. Their language indeed will remain ours, and their men of genius, above all
+    their poets, will enrich our minds with great thoughts nobly expressed. But a
+    literature is a national growth; it is the expression of a people's life and
+    character, the more or less perfect utterance of what it loves,<span
+    class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> aims at, believes
+    in, hopes for; it has the qualities and the defects of the national spirit; it bears
+    the marks of the thousand influences that help to make that spirit what it
+    is,&mdash;and English literature cannot be American literature, for the simple reason
+    that Americans are not Englishmen, any more than they are Germans or Frenchmen. We
+    must be ourselves in our thinking and writing, as in our living, or be insignificant,
+    for it is a man's life that gives meaning to his thought; and to write as a disciple
+    is to write in an inferior way, since the mind at its best is illumined by truth
+    itself and not taught by the words of another. It is not to be believed that this
+    great, intelligent, yearning American world will content itself with the trick and
+    mannerism of foreign accent and style, or that those who build on any other than the
+    broad foundation of our own national life shall be accepted as teachers and guides.
+    There is, of course, no method known to man by which a great author may be formed; no
+    science which teaches how a literature may be created. The men who have written what
+    the world will not permit to die have written generally without any clear knowledge
+    of the worth of their work, just as great discoverers and inventors seem to stumble
+    on what they seek; nevertheless one may hope by right endeavor to make himself
+    capable of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span>
+    uttering true thoughts so that they shall become intelligible and attractive to
+    others; he may educate himself to know and love the best that has been spoken and
+    written by men of genius, and so become a power to lift the aims and enlarge the
+    views of his fellow-men. If many strive in this way to unfold their gifts and to
+    cultivate their faculties, their influence will finally pervade the life and thought
+    of thousands, and it may be of the whole people.</p>
+    <p>I do not at all forget Aristotle's saying that "life is practice and not theory;"
+    that men are born to do and suffer, and not to dream and weave systems; that conduct
+    and not culture is the basis of character and the source of strength; that a
+    knowledge of Nature is of vastly more importance to our material comfort and progress
+    than philosophy, poetry, and art. This is not to be called in question; but in this
+    country and age it seems hardly necessary that it be emphasized, for what is the
+    whole world insisting upon but the necessity of scientific instruction, the
+    importance of practical education, the cultivation of the money-getting faculty and
+    habit, and the futility of philosophy, poetry, and art? Who is there that denies the
+    worth of what is useful? Where is there one who does not approve and encourage
+    whatever brings increase of wealth? Are we not all ready to<span class='pagenum'><a
+    name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> applaud projects which give promise of
+    providing more abundant food, better clothing, and more healthful surrounding for the
+    poor? Does not our national genius seem to lie altogether in the line of what is
+    practically useful? Is it not our boast and our great achievement that we have in a
+    single century made the wilderness of a vast continent habitable, have so ploughed
+    and drained and planted and built that it can now easily maintain hundreds of
+    millions in gluttonous plenty? Is not our whole social and political organization of
+    a kind which fits us to deal with questions and affairs that concern our temporal and
+    material welfare? What innumerable individuals among us are congressmen, legislators,
+    supervisors, bank and school directors, presidents of boards and companies,
+    committee-men, councilmen, heads of lodges and societies, lawyers, professors,
+    teachers, editors, colonels, generals, judges, party-leaders, so that the sovereign
+    people seems to have life and being only in its titled representatives! What does
+    this universal reign of title and office mean but the practical education which
+    responsibility gives? If from the midst of this paradise of utility, materialism, and
+    business, a voice is raised to plead for culture, for intelligence, for beauty, for
+    philosophy, poetry, and art, why need any one take alarm? While<span
+    class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> human nature
+    remains what it is, can there be danger that the many will be drawn away from what
+    appeals to the senses, to what the soul loves and yearns for? If the Almighty God
+    does not win the multitude to the love of righteousness and wisdom, how shall the
+    words of man prevail?</p>
+    <p>It is a mistake to oppose use to beauty, the serviceable to the excellent, since
+    they belong together. Beauty is the blossom that makes the fruit-tree fair and
+    fragrant. Life means more than meat and drink, house and clothing. To live is also to
+    admire, to love, to lose one's self in the contemplation of the splendor with which
+    Nature is clothed. Human life is the marriage of souls with things of light. Its
+    basis, aim, and end is love, and love makes its object beautiful. Man may not even
+    consent to eat, except with decency and grace; he must have light and flowers and the
+    rippling music of kindly speech, that as far as possible he may forget that his act
+    is merely animal and useful. He will lose sight of the fact that clothing is intended
+    for protection and comfort, rather than not dress to make himself beautiful. To speak
+    merely to be understood, and not to speak also with ease and elegance, is not to be a
+    gentleman. How easily words find the way to the heart when uttered in melodious
+    cadence by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> the
+    lips of the fair and young. Home is the centre and seat of whatever is most useful to
+    us; and yet to think of home is to think of spring-time and flowers, of the songs of
+    birds and flowing waters, of the voices of children, of floating clouds and sunsets
+    that linger as though heaven were loath to bid adieu to earth. The warmth, the color,
+    and the light of their boyish days still glow in the hearts and imagination of noble
+    men, and redeem the busy trafficking world of their daily life from utter vulgarity.
+    What hues has not God painted on the air, the water, the fruit, and the grain that
+    are the very substance and nutriment of our bodies? Beauty is nobly useful. It
+    illumines the mind, raises the imagination, and warms the heart. It is not an added
+    quality, but grows from the inner nature of things; it is the thought of God working
+    outward. Only from drunken eyes can you with paint and tinsel hide inward deformity.
+    The beauty of hills and waves, of flowers and clouds, of children at play, of reapers
+    at work, of heroes in battle, of poets inspired, of saints rapt in
+    adoration,&mdash;rises from central depths of being, and is concealed from frivolous
+    minds. Even in the presence of death, the hallowing spirit of beauty is felt. The
+    full-ripe fruit that gently falls in the quiet air of long summer days, the yellow
+    sheaves glinting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg
+    67]</a></span> in the rays of autumn's sun, the leaf which the kiss of the hoar frost
+    has made blood-red and loosened from the parent stem,&mdash;are images of death but
+    they suggest only calm and pleasant thoughts. The Bedouin, who, sitting amid the
+    ruins of Ephesus, thinks but of his goats and pigs, heedless of Diana's temple,
+    Alexander's glory, and the words of Saint Paul, is the type of those who place the
+    useful above the excellent and the fair; and as men who in their boards of trade buy
+    and sell cattle and corn, dream not of green fields and of grain turning to gold in
+    the sun of June, so we all, in the business and worry of life, lose sight of beauty
+    which makes the heart glad and keeps it young.</p>
+    <p>The mind of man is the earthly home of beauty, and if any real thing were fair as
+    the tender thought of imaginative youth, heaven were not far. All we love is but our
+    thought of what only thought makes known and makes beautiful, and for what we know
+    love's thought may be the essence of all things.</p>
+    <div class="poem">
+      <div class="stanza">
+        <span class="i0">Fairer than waters where soft moonlight lies,<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">Than flowers that slumber on the breast of Spring,<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">Than leafy trees in June when glad birds sing,<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">Than a cool summer dawn, than sunset skies;<br />
+        </span>
+      </div>
+      <div class="stanza">
+        <span class="i0">Than love, gleaming through Beauty's deep blue eyes,<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">Than laughing child, than orchards blossoming;<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">Than girls whose voices make the woodland ring,<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">Than ruby lips that utter sweet replies,&mdash;<br />
+        </span> <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span>
+      </div>
+      <div class="stanza">
+        <span class="i0">Fairer than these, than all that may be seen,<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">Is the poetic mind, which sheds the light<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">Of heaven on earthly things, as Night's young
+        Queen<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">Forth-looking from some jagged mountain height<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">Clothes the whole earth with her soft silvery
+        sheen<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">And makes the beauty whereof eyes have sight.<br />
+        </span>
+      </div>
+    </div>
+    <p>Nature is neither sad nor joyful. We but see in her the reflection of our own
+    minds. Gay scenes depress the melancholy, and gloomy prospects have not the power to
+    rob the happy of their contentment. The spring may fill us with fresh and fragrant
+    thoughts, or may but remind us of all the hopes and joys we have lost; and autumn
+    will speak to one of decay and death, to another of sleep and rest, after toil, to
+    prepare for a new and brighter awakening. All the glory of dawn and sunset is but
+    etheric waves thrilling the vapory air and impinging on the optic nerve; but behind
+    it all is the magician who sees and knows, who thinks and loves. "It is the mind that
+    makes the body rich." Thoughts take shape and coloring from souls through which they
+    pass; and a free and open mind looks upon the world in the mood in which a fair woman
+    beholds herself in a mirror. The world is his as much as the face is hers. If we
+    could live in the fairest spot of earth, and in the company of those who are dear,
+    the source of our happiness would still be our own thought and love; and if they are
+    great<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> and
+    noble, we cannot be miserable however meanly surrounded. What is reality but a state
+    of soul, finite in man, infinite in God? Theory underlies fact, and to the divine
+    mind all things are godlike and beautiful. The chemical elements are as sweet and
+    pure in the buried corpse as in the blooming body of youth; and it is defective
+    intellect, the warp of ignorance and sin, which hides from human eyes the perfect
+    beauty of the world.</p>
+    <div class="poem">
+      <div class="stanza">
+        <span class="i8">"Earth's crammed with heaven,<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">And every common bush afire with God;<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">But only he who sees, takes off his shoes."<br />
+        </span>
+      </div>
+    </div>
+    <p>What we all need is not so much greater knowledge, as a luminous and symmetrical
+    mind which, whatsoever way it turn, shall reflect the things that are, not in
+    isolation and abstraction, but in the living unity and harmony wherein they have
+    their being.</p>
+    <p>The worth of religion is infinite, the value of conduct is paramount; but he who
+    lacks intellectual culture, whatever else he may be, is narrow, awkward,
+    unintelligent. The mirror of his soul is dim, the motions of his spirit are sluggish,
+    and the divine image which is himself is blurred.</p>
+    <p>But let no one imagine that this life of the soul in the mind is easy; for it is
+    only less difficult than the life of the soul in God. To learn<span
+    class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> many things; to
+    master this or that science; to have skill in law or medicine; to acquaint one's self
+    with the facts of history, with the opinions of philosophers or the teachings of
+    theologians,&mdash;is comparatively not a difficult task; and there are hundreds who
+    are learned, who are skillful, who are able, who have acuteness and depth and
+    information, for one who has an open, free, and flexible mind,&mdash;which is alive
+    and active in many directions, touching the world of God and Nature at many points,
+    and beholding truth and beauty from many sides; which is serious, sober, and
+    reasonable, but also fresh, gentle, and sympathetic; which enters with equal ease
+    into the philosopher's thought, the poet's vision, and the ecstasy of the saint;
+    which excludes no truth, is indifferent to no beauty, refuses homage to no goodness.
+    The ideal of culture indeed, like that of religion, like that of art, lies beyond our
+    reach, since the truth and beauty which lure us on, and flee the farther the longer
+    we pursue, are nothing less than the eternal and infinite God.</p>
+    <p>And culture, if it is not to end in mere frivolity and gloss, must be pursued,
+    like religion and art, with earnestness and reverence. If the spirit in which we work
+    is not deep and holy, we may become accomplished but we shall not gain wisdom, power,
+    and love. The beginner<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg
+    71]</a></span> seeks to convert his belief into knowledge; but the trained thinker
+    knows that knowledge ends in belief, since beyond our little islets of intellectual
+    vision, lies the boundless, fathomless expanse of unknown worlds where faith and hope
+    alone can be our guides. Once individual man was insignificant; but now the earth
+    itself is become so,&mdash;a mere dot in infinite space, where, for a moment, men
+    wriggle like animalcules in a drop of water. And if at times a flash of light
+    suddenly gleam athwart the mind, and it seem as though we were about to get a glimpse
+    into the inner heart of being, the brightness quickly dies, and only the surfaces of
+    things remain visible. Oh, the unimaginable length of ages when on the earth there
+    was no living thing! then life's ugly, slimy beginnings; then the conscious soul's
+    fitful dream stretching forth to endless time and space; then the final sleep in
+    abysmal night with its one star of hope twinkling before the all-hidden throne of
+    God, in the shadow of whose too great light faith kneels and waits!</p>
+    <p>Why shall he whose mind is free, symmetrical, and open, be tempted to vain glory,
+    to frivolous boasting? Shall not life be more solemn and sacred to him than to
+    another? Shall he indulge scorn for any being whom God has made, for any thought
+    which has strengthened and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg
+    72]</a></span> consoled the human heart? Shall he not perceive, more clearly than
+    others, that the unseen Power by whom all things are, is akin to thought and love,
+    and that they alone bring help to man who make him feel that faith and hope mean
+    good, and are fountains of larger and more enduring life? The highest mind, like the
+    purest heart, is a witness of the soul and of God.</p>
+    <hr style="width: 65%;" />
+    <h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV.</h2>
+    <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span>
+    <h4>CULTURE AND THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE.</h4>
+    <div class="blockquot">
+      <p>But try, I urge,&mdash;the trying shall suffice:<br />
+       The aim, if reached or not, makes great the life.</p>
+      <p><span style="margin-left: 18em;"><span class="smcap">Browning</span>.</span></p>
+    </div>
+    <p>The mass of mankind, if we pass the whole race in review, are sunk in gross
+    ignorance; and even in civilized nations, where education is free, the multitude have
+    but a rude acquaintance with the elements of knowledge. Their ability to read and
+    write hardly serves intellectual and moral ends; and such learning as they possess
+    seems only to weaken their power to admire and love what is best in life and
+    thought.</p>
+    <p>If we turn to the more cultivated, whose numbers even in the most enlightened
+    countries are not great, we find but here and there an individual who has anything
+    better than a sort of mechanical cleverness. Students, it has been said, on leaving
+    college, quickly divide into two classes,&mdash;those who have learned nothing, and
+    those who have forgotten everything. In the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74"
+    id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> professions, the lawyer tends to become an advocate,
+    the physician an empiric, the theologian a dogmatist; and these are but instances of
+    a general falling away from ideals. The student of physical science is subdued to
+    what he works in; the man of letters loses depth and earnestness; and the teacher,
+    whose business it is to rouse and illumine souls, shrivels until he becomes merely a
+    repeater of facts and doctrines in which there is no life, no power to exalt the
+    imagination or to give tone to the intellect. The teacher cannot create talent, and
+    his best work lies in stimulating and directing energy and impulse; but this he
+    seldom strives to do or to make himself capable of doing; and hence pupils very
+    generally leave school as men quit a prison, with a sense of emancipation, and with a
+    desire to forget both the place and the kind of life there encouraged. A talent is
+    like seed-corn,&mdash;it bears within itself the power to break the confining walls
+    and to spring upward to light, if only it be sown in proper soil, where the rain and
+    the sunshine fall; but this is a truth which those who make education a business are
+    slow to accept. They repress; they overawe; they are dictatorial; they prescribe
+    rules and methods for minds which can gain strength and wisdom only by following the
+    bent given by their endowments,&mdash;and thus the young,<span class='pagenum'><a
+    name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> who are most easily discouraged in
+    things which concern their highest gifts, lose heart, turn away from ideals, and
+    abandon the pursuit of excellence. The nobler the mind, the greater the danger of its
+    being wrongly dealt with. We seldom find a man whose thinking has helped to form
+    opinion and to create literature, who, if he care to say what he feels, will not
+    declare that his scholastic training was bad. Milton, Gray, Dryden, Wordsworth,
+    Byron, Cowley, Addison, Gibbon, Locke, Shelley, and Cowper had no love for the
+    schools to which they were sent; Swift and Goldsmith received no college honors; and
+    Pope, Thomson, Burns, and Shakespeare had little or nothing to do with institutions
+    of learning. A man educates himself; and the best work teachers can do, is to inspire
+    the love of mental exercise and a living faith in the power of labor to develop
+    faculty, and to open worlds of use and delight which are infinite, and which each
+    individual must rediscover for himself. It is the educator's business to cherish the
+    aspirations of the young, to inspire them with confidence in themselves, and to make
+    them feel and understand that no labor can be too great or too long, if its result be
+    cultivation and enlightenment of mind. For them ideals are real; their life is as yet
+    wrapped in the bud; and to encourage them to believe that if<span class='pagenum'><a
+    name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> they are but true to themselves, the
+    flower and the fruit will be fair and health-bringing, is to open for them the
+    fountain of hope and noble endeavor.</p>
+    <p>What men have done, men can still do. Nay, shall we not rather believe that the
+    best is yet to be done? The peoples whom we call ancient were but rude beginners. We
+    are the true ancients, the inheritors of all the wisdom and all the heroism of the
+    past. We stand in a wider world, and move forward with more conscious purpose along
+    more open ways. Of the past we see but the summits, illumined by the rays of genius
+    and glory. Could we look upon the plains where the multitudes lie in darkness,
+    wearing the triple chain of servitude, ignorance, and want, we should understand how
+    fair and beneficent our own age is. Enthusiasm for the past cannot inspire the best
+    intellectual work. The heart turns to the past; but the mind looks to the future, and
+    is forever untwisting the cords which bind us to the things that pleased a childlike
+    fancy. To grow is to outgrow; and whatever of the past survives, survives, as the
+    very word implies, because it is still living and applicable here and now. Let not
+    the young believe that the age of the heroic and godlike is gone. Good and the means
+    of good are not harder to reconcile to-day than they were a<span class='pagenum'><a
+    name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span> hundred or a thousand years ago, and
+    they who have a heart may now, as the best have done in the past, wring even from
+    despair the courage on which victory loves to smile. If we are weak and inferior the
+    fault lies in ourselves, not in the age. We are the age; and if we but will and work,
+    opportunities are offered us to become and to perform whatever may crown and glorify
+    a human soul. The time for doing best things, like eternity, is ever present. Let but
+    the man stand forth, and he will find and do his work.</p>
+    <p>We are too near our own age to discern its true glory, which shall best appear
+    from the vantage-ground of another century; but surely we can feel that it throbs
+    with life, with immortal yearnings, with ever-growing desire to give to all men
+    higher thoughts and purer loves. Society, the State, the Church, the individual, are
+    striving with conscious purpose to make life moral and intelligent. We have become
+    more humane than men have ever been, and accept more fully the duty and the task of
+    extending the domain of justice, of goodness, and of truth. The aim of our
+    civilization is not merely to instruct the ignorant, but to make ignorance
+    impossible; not merely to feed the hungry, but to do away with famine; not merely to
+    visit the captive, but to make captivity the means of his<span class='pagenum'><a
+    name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> regeneration. Already the chains of
+    the slave have been broken, and the earth has become the home of God's free children.
+    Disease has been tracked to its secret hiding-places, and barriers have been built
+    against pestilence and contagion. War has become less frequent and less barbarous;
+    persecution for opinion and belief has become rare; man's inhumanity to woman, which
+    is the deepest stain upon the history of the race, has yielded to the influence of
+    religion and knowledge; and with ever-increasing force the truth is borne in upon
+    those who think and observe, that the fate of the rich and high-placed cannot be
+    separated from that of the poor and lowly. While we earnestly strive to control and
+    repress every kind of moral evil, we feel that society itself is responsible for sin
+    and crime, and that social and political conditions and constitutions must change,
+    until the weak and the heavy-laden are protected from the heartlessness of the strong
+    and fortunate. Not only must those who labor with their hands have larger
+    opportunities than hitherto have ever been given them, but in the whole social life
+    of man there must be more justice, more love, more tenderness, more of the spirit of
+    Christ, than hitherto has ever been found there.</p>
+    <p>What marvelous, intellectual work are we not doing? What admirable expression of
+    the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> highest
+    truth do we not find in the best writers of our age! It is not all pure gold; but
+    whether we take a religious, a moral, or an intellectual point of view, we may not
+    affirm of the literature of any age or country that it is perfect. When man clothes
+    in words what he thinks and loves, what he knows and believes, his work bears the
+    marks of his defects not less than those of his qualities. Nay, if we turn to the
+    Bible itself, how much do we not find there which we either fail to comprehend or are
+    unable to apply! Has not the mind of Christendom been trained and illumined by the
+    literatures of Greece and Rome, which in moral purity, in elevation of sentiment, in
+    breadth and depth of thought, in the knowledge of the laws of Nature, in scientific
+    accuracy, in sympathy and tenderness, are altogether inferior to the best writings of
+    our own day? It is a mistake to suppose that this is a material age in which the love
+    of religion, of poetry, of art, of excellence of whatever kind, is dead. The love of
+    what is best has never at any time been alive save in the hearts of the chosen few;
+    and in such souls it burns now with as sweet and steady a glow as when Plato spoke,
+    and the blessed Saviour uttered words of divine wisdom. Here and now, in and around
+    us, there is the heavenly presence of budding life, of widening vision, of<span
+    class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> "new thoughts
+    urgent as the growth of wings." Let us turn the white forehead of hope to the fair
+    time, and deem no labor great by which we shall become less unfit to do the work of
+    God and man.</p>
+    <div class="poem">
+      <div class="stanza">
+        <span class="i0">"Nay, never falter; no great deed is done<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">By falterers who ask for certainty.<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">No good is certain but the steadfast mind,<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">The undivided will to seek the good:<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">'T is that compels the elements and wrings<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">A human music from the indifferent air.<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">The greatest gift the hero leaves his race<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">Is to have been a hero. Say we fail!<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">We feed the high tradition of the world<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">And leave our spirit in our children's breasts."<br />
+        </span>
+      </div>
+    </div>
+    <p>But to enter upon such a course of life with well-founded hope of success, we must
+    be reverent and devout. The thrill of awe is, as Goethe says, the best thing humanity
+    has. We must understand and feel that the visible is but the shadow of the invisible,
+    that the soul has its roots in God, whose kingdom is within us. We must perceive that
+    what we know, believe, admire, love, and yearn for makes our real life; that we are
+    worth what we <i>are</i>, and not what we possess and use. We must be lovers of
+    perfection, as the divine Saviour bids us become,&mdash;"Be ye perfect, even as your
+    Father in heaven is perfect." We must be conscious of the immortal spirit which is
+    ourself, and walk in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg
+    81]</a></span> company of God and of just men made perfect, striving after light and
+    purity and strength, which are of the soul. We must love the inward, the true, and
+    the eternal rather than the outward and transitory. We must believe that in very
+    truth we are akin to God, that God is in us, and we in him, and consequently that it
+    is our first duty to follow after perfection, completeness of life, in thought, in
+    love, and in conduct. As it is good to know, so is it good to be strong, to be
+    patient, to be humble, to be helpful; so is it good to do right, though the deed
+    should be our only reward.</p>
+    <p>But we are beset by all manner of temptations to turn aside from a high and noble
+    way of living. The line of least resistance for us is the common highway of
+    money-getters and place-winners; and the moment a man gives evidence of ability, the
+    whole world urges him to put it to immediate use. Our public opinion identifies the
+    good with the useful, all else is visionary and unreal. The average man controls us
+    not only in politics, but in religion, in art, and in literature. To turn away from
+    material good in order to gain spiritual and intellectual benefit is held to be
+    evidence of a feeble or perverted understanding. If a man is eloquent, let him become
+    a lawyer, a politician, or a preacher; if he have a talent for science, let<span
+    class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> him become a
+    physician, a practical chemist, or a civil engineer; if he have skill in writing, let
+    him become a journalist or a contributor to magazines. No one asks himself, What
+    shall I do to gain wisdom, strength, virtue, completeness of life; but the universal
+    question is, How shall I make a living, get money, position, notoriety? In our hearts
+    we should rather have the riches of a Rothschild than the mind of Plato, the
+    imagination of Shakespeare, or the soul of Saint Theresa. We believe the best is
+    outside of us, that the aids to the most desirable kind of life are to be found in
+    material and mechanical things. We talk with pride of our numbers, our institutions,
+    our machines; we love the display and noise of life, are eager to mingle in crowds,
+    to live in great cities, and to listen to exaggerated and declamatory speech. The
+    soberness of wisdom, the humility of religion, the plainness of worth, are
+    unattractive and unrecognized. We rush after material things, like hunters after
+    game; and in the excitement of the chase our pulse grows quick, and our vision
+    confused. We have lost the art of patient work and expectation. We are no more
+    capable of living in our work, of making it the means of our growth and happiness.
+    What we do, must be quickly done, must have immediate results. Our success in solving
+    the political and social<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg
+    83]</a></span> problems has spoiled us. When we hear of a man who has been prosperous
+    for years, whom no misfortune has sobered and softened, we expect him to be narrow
+    and supercilious; and in the same way, a prosperous people are exposed to the danger
+    of becoming self-complacent and superficial. We exaggerate the importance of our own
+    achievements and think that which we have accomplished is the best; whereas the wise
+    hold what they have done in slight esteem, and think only of becoming themselves
+    nobler and wiser. Instead of boasting of our civilization, because we have industrial
+    and commercial prosperity, wealth and liberty, churches, schools, and newspapers, we
+    ought to ask ourselves whether civilization does not imply something more and higher
+    than this,&mdash;what kind of soul lives and loves and thinks in this environment?
+    Instead of trying to persuade ourselves that we are the greatest and most enlightened
+    people, would it not be worth while to ask ourselves, in a dispassionate temper,
+    whether our best men and women are the most intellectual, the most interesting, and
+    the most Christian men and women to be found in the world? Do they not lack repose,
+    distinction, a sense for complete and harmonious living? Must we not still look to
+    Europe for our best religious and philosophic thought, our best<span
+    class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> poetry, painting,
+    music, and architecture? "Let the passion for America," says Emerson, "cast out the
+    passion for Europe." This is desirable, but numbers and wealth will not bring it
+    about. While the best is said and done in Europe, the better sort of Americans will
+    look thither,&mdash;just as Europe looks to us for corn and cotton, or mechanical
+    appliances. We have done much, and much that it was well to do. We have, as Matthew
+    Arnold says, solved the political and social problems better than any other people,
+    though we ourselves perceive that the solution is by no means final. The conditions
+    of our life are favorable to the many. It is easier for a man to assert himself here,
+    than it is or has ever been elsewhere. A little sense, a little energy, is all that
+    any one needs to make himself independent and comfortable; and because success of
+    this kind is so easy it threatens to absorb our whole life. They alone seem to be
+    living worthily who are doing practical work, who are developing the natural wealth
+    of the country, starting new enterprises and inventing new machines. The political
+    problems which interest us are financial; schools are maintained and fostered because
+    they protect and strengthen our institutions; religious beliefs are tolerated and
+    encouraged because they are aids to morality,&mdash;and morality means sobriety,
+    honesty,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span>
+    industry, which lead to thrift. Then there is an idea that religion is a conservative
+    power, useful as a bulwark against the assaults of anti-social fanatics. Philosophy,
+    poetry, and art are not considered seriously, because they are not seen to bear any
+    clear relation to our institutions and temporal well-being. Opinion rules the wide
+    world over; and in the face of this strong public opinion which lays stress chiefly
+    upon external things,&mdash;the environment, the machinery of life,&mdash;and not
+    upon spiritual and intellectual qualities, it is not easy to love knowledge and
+    virtue for themselves, for the strength and beauty they give to the soul, for their
+    power to build up the being which is a man's very self. It is rare that men have
+    faith in what but few believe in; they are gregarious, and need the encouragement
+    that comes of having aims and hopes of which the millions approve.</p>
+    <p>The predominance of the average man, of which our public opinion is the result,
+    puts other obstacles in the way of culture. It makes us self-complacent, easily
+    satisfied with what we perform. A representative man will become a lawyer, a soldier,
+    a merchant, a legislator, an author, in turns, as occasion offers, and he has no
+    doubt of his sufficiency; because average work is all that is expected of any one. To
+    be able to do anything fairly well seems to us a<span class='pagenum'><a
+    name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> more desirable accomplishment than to
+    be able to do some one thing better than anybody else. But this is a view which only
+    those may take who live in an imperfectly developed society. As men become more
+    cultivated, they more and more want only the best; and the noblest natures feel the
+    desire to do their best, not with their actual power, but with the skill which forty
+    or fifty years of discipline and effort might give them. They are laborious; they are
+    patient; they persevere in one direction; they believe that if they but continue to
+    observe, to think, to read, to compare, and to express in plain words what they know,
+    their power of seeing and of uttering will continue to grow. The charm of increasing
+    faculty in an infinite world sways and controls them. They never know enough; they
+    are never able to say well enough what they know; and so they grow old still learning
+    many things. They work in a spirit wholly different from that of the common man, who
+    if he get through with what he has in hand is satisfied. They have an artist's sense
+    of perfection; and like Virgil would burn the works which if they once escape their
+    own hands, the world will never permit to perish.</p>
+    <p>It is hard to resist when many invite to utterance; and with us whoever has
+    ability is urged to put himself forward, and consequently to<span class='pagenum'><a
+    name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> dissipate in crude performances
+    energies which if employed in self-culture might make of him a philosopher, a poet,
+    or a man of science. As it is easier to act than to think, the multitude of course
+    will be only talkers, writers, and performers; but a great and civilized people must
+    have at least a few men who take rank with the profound thinkers and finished
+    scholars of the world. No lover of America can help thinking it undesirable that any
+    one should be able to say of us with truth, what Locke has said, "The Americans are
+    not all born with worse understandings than the Europeans, though we see none of them
+    have such reaches in the arts and sciences." It is our aim to create the highest
+    civilization; but the highest civilization is favorable to the highest life, which
+    implies and requires more than the possession of material things. Conduct is
+    necessary, knowledge is necessary, beauty is necessary, manners are necessary, and a
+    civilized people must develop life in all these directions, and as far as such a
+    thing is possible, harmoniously. Whoever excels in conduct, or in knowledge, or in a
+    sense for the beautiful, or in manners, helps to raise the standard of
+    living,&mdash;helps to give worth, dignity, charm, and refinement to life. It is hard
+    to take interest in a people who have no profound thinkers, no great artists, no
+    accom<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span>plished
+    scholars, for only such men can lift a people above the provincial spirit, and bring
+    them into conscious relationship with former ages and the wide world. The rule of the
+    people looks to something higher than opportunity for every man to have food and a
+    home; to something more than putting a church, a school, and a newspaper at every
+    man's door. Saints and heroes, philosophers and poets, are a people's glory. They
+    give us nobler loves, higher thoughts, diviner aims. They show us how like a god man
+    may become; and political and social institutions which make saints and heroes,
+    philosophers and poets, impossible, can have but inferior value. And there is some
+    radical wrong where the noblest manhood and womanhood are not appreciated and
+    reverenced. Not to recognize genuine worth is the mark of a superficial and vulgar
+    character. The servile spirit has no conception of the heroic nature; and they who
+    measure life by material standards, do not perceive the infinite which is in man and
+    which makes him godlike. A few only in any age or nation love the best, follow after
+    ideal aims; but when these few are wanting, all life becomes common-place, and the
+    millions pass from the cradle to the grave and leave no lasting impression upon the
+    world.</p>
+    <p>The practical turn of mind which finds ex<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89"
+    id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span>pression in our commercial and industrial
+    achievements, makes itself felt also in our intellectual activity, and those among us
+    who have knowledge and power of utterance are expected, almost required, to throw
+    themselves into the breakers of controversy, to discuss the hundred political,
+    social, religious, financial, sanitary, and educational problems which are ever
+    waiting to be solved. Let them enter the lists, let them take sides, let them strive
+    to see clear in an atmosphere of smoke and fog; and not to do this is, in the
+    estimation of the many, to be a dreamer, a dilettante, a thinker to no purpose. But
+    this is precisely what those who seek to cultivate themselves, who seek to learn and
+    communicate the best that is known, ought not to do. They should live in a serene
+    air, in a world of tranquility and peace, where the soul is not troubled by
+    contention, where the view is not perturbed by passion. They should have leisure,
+    which is the original meaning of school and scholar; for the mind, like the soul, is
+    refreshed and strengthened by quiet meditation. Its improvement is slow, is
+    imperceptible often; its training is the result of delicate methods which require
+    patience and perseverance, faith in ideals, and a constant looking to the all-perfect
+    Infinite; and to throw it into the noise and confusion of the busy excited world
+    of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> practical
+    affairs is to stunt and warp its growth. We do not hitch a race-horse to the plough,
+    nor should we ask the best intellects to do the common work of which every man is
+    capable. They render the best service, when living in communion with the highest and
+    most cultivated minds of the past and present, they learn and teach the way of
+    looking and thinking, of behaving and doing, which has been followed by the greatest
+    and noblest of the race. Political and social questions are forever changing; views
+    which commend themselves to-day will in a few years seem absurd; measures which are
+    thought to be of vital importance will grow to be inapplicable. To talk and write
+    about such things is well,&mdash;may help to prevent stagnation and corruption in
+    public life; but they exercise altogether a higher office, who live in the presence
+    of what is permanently true and good and beautiful, who believe in ideal aims and
+    ends and prevent the masses from losing sight of what constitutes man's real worth.
+    They do what they alone can do, whereas the practical and the useful may be any one's
+    work. They may not, of course, isolate themselves; on the contrary they must live
+    closer than other men not only to God and Nature, but also to the past and present
+    history of their country and of mankind. They study the movements of the<span
+    class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> age, but they study
+    them in a philosophic and not in a partisan spirit. They seek to know, not what is
+    popular, but what is right and good; and they often see clearly where the view of
+    others is uncertain and confused. Encouragements and rewards are not necessary for
+    them, for they are drawn to the knowledge and love of the best by irresistible
+    attractions, and the more they learn and love the more beneficent and joy-giving does
+    their life become. Their aims and ends are in harmony with the highest reason and the
+    highest faith. The world they live in abides; and if they are neglected or forgotten
+    now, they can wait, for truth and goodness and beauty can never lose their power or
+    their charm.</p>
+    <div class="poem">
+      <div class="stanza">
+        <span class="i0">"The worthiest poets have remained uncrowned<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">Till death has bleached their foreheads to the
+        bone."<br />
+        </span>
+      </div>
+    </div>
+    <hr style="width: 65%;" />
+    <h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V.</h2>
+    <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span>
+    <h4>SELF-CULTURE.</h4>
+    <div class="poem">
+      <div class="stanza">
+        <span class="i14">There is<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">One great society alone on earth<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">The noble Living and the noble Dead.<br />
+        </span>
+      </div>
+      <div class="stanza">
+        <span class="i14"><span class="smcap">Wordsworth</span>.<br />
+        </span>
+      </div>
+    </div>
+    <p>The passion for truth and for the culture which makes its possession possible is
+    not rightly felt by the heart of boy or of youth; it is the man's passion, and its
+    power over him is most irresistibly asserted when outward restraint has been removed,
+    when escaping from the control of parents and teachers he is left to himself to shape
+    his course and seek his own ends. When his companions have finished their studies he
+    feels that his own are now properly only about to begin; when they are dreaming of
+    liberty and pleasure, of wealth and success, of the world and its honors, his mind is
+    haunted by the mystery of God and Nature, by visions of dimly discerned truth and
+    beauty which he must follow whithersoever they lead; and already he perceives that
+    wisdom comes to those alone who toil and cease not from labor, who suffer and are
+    patient. Hitherto he has learned<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93"
+    id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> the lessons given him by teachers appointed by
+    others; henceforth he is himself to choose his instructors. As once,
+    half-unconscious, he played in the smile or frown of Nature, and drank knowledge with
+    delight, so now in the world of man's thought, hope, and love, he is, with deliberate
+    purpose, to seek what is good for the nourishment of his soul. Happy is he, for
+    nearly all men toil and suffer that they may live; but he is also to have time to
+    labor, to make life intelligent and fair. He must know not only what the blind atoms
+    are doing, but what saints, sages, and heroes have loved, thought, and done. He will
+    still keep close to Nature who, though she utters myriad sounds, never speaks a human
+    word; but he will also lend his ear to the voice of wisdom which lies asleep in
+    books, and to sympathetic minds whispers from other worlds whatever high or holy
+    truth has consecrated the life of man. His guiding thought must be how to make the
+    work by which he maintains himself in the world subserve moral and intellectual ends;
+    for his aim is not merely or chiefly to have goods, but to be wise and good, and
+    therefore to build up within himself the power of conduct and the power of
+    intelligence which makes man human, and distinguishes him from whatever else on earth
+    has life.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span></p>
+    <p>It is our indolence and frivolity that make routine duties, however distracting or
+    importunate, incompatible with the serious application which the work of self-culture
+    demands; but we are by nature indolent and frivolous, and only education can make us
+    earnest and laborious. None but a cultivated mind can understand that if the whole
+    human race could be turned loose, to eat and drink and play like thoughtless
+    children, life would become meaningless; that a paradise in which work should not be
+    necessary would become wearisome. The progress of the race is the result of effort,
+    physical, religious, moral, and intellectual; and the advance of individuals is
+    proportional to their exertion. Nature herself pushes the young to bodily exercise;
+    but though activity is for them a kind of necessity, only the discipline of habit
+    will lead them to prefer labor to idleness; and they will not even use their senses
+    properly unless they are taught to look and to listen,&mdash;just as they are taught
+    to walk and to ride. The habit of manual labor, as it is directly related to the
+    animal existence to which man is prone, and supplies the physical wants whose urgency
+    is most keenly felt, is acquired with least difficulty, and it prepares the way for
+    moral and intellectual life; but it especially favors the life which has regard to
+    temporal ends and conduces<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg
+    95]</a></span> to comfort and well-being. They whose instrument is the brain rarely
+    aim at anything higher than wealth and position; and if they become rich and
+    prominent, they remain narrow and uninteresting. They talk of progress, of new
+    inventions and discoveries, and they neglect to improve themselves; they boast of the
+    greatness of their country, while their real world is one of vulgar thought and
+    desire; they take interest in what seems to concern the general welfare, but fail to
+    make themselves centres of light and love. What is worse they have the conceit of
+    wisdom,&mdash;they lack reverence; they are impatient, and must have at once what
+    they seek. But the better among us see the insufficiency of the popular aims, and
+    begin to yearn for something other than a life of politics, newspapers, and financial
+    enterprise. They desire to know and love the best that is known, and they are willing
+    to be poor and obscure, if they may but gain entrance into this higher world. "I
+    shall ever consider myself," says Descartes, "more obliged to those who leave me to
+    my leisure, than I should to any who might offer me the most honorable employments."
+    This is the thought of every true student and lover of wisdom; for he feels that
+    whatever a man's occupation may be, his business is to improve his mind and to form
+    his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> character.
+    He desires not to be known and appreciated, but to know and appreciate; not to
+    <i>have</i> more, but to <i>be</i> more; not to have friends, but to be the friend of
+    man,&mdash;which he is when he is the lover of truth. He turns from vulgar pleasures
+    as he turns from pain, because both pleasure and pain in fastening the soul to the
+    body deprive it of freedom and hinder the play of the mind.</p>
+    <div class="poem">
+      <div class="stanza">
+        <span class="i0">He loves the best with single heart<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">And without thought what gifts it bring.<br />
+        </span>
+      </div>
+    </div>
+    <p>Unless one have deep faith in the good of culture he will easily become
+    discouraged in the work which is here urged upon him. He must be drawn to the love of
+    intellectual excellence by an attraction such as a poet feels in the presence of
+    beauty; he must believe in it as a miser believes in gold; he must seek it as a lover
+    seeks the beloved. Our wants determine our pleasures, and they who have no
+    intellectual cravings feel not the need of exercise of mind. They are born and remain
+    inferior. They are content with the world which seems to be real, forgetting the
+    higher one, which alone is real; they are not urged to the intellectual life by
+    irresistible instincts. They are discouraged by difficulties, thwarted by obstacles
+    which lie in the path of all who strive to move forward and to gain higher planes. It
+    is not possible to ad<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg
+    97]</a></span>vance except along the road of toil, of struggle, and of suffering. We
+    cannot emerge even from childish ignorance and weakness without experiencing a sense
+    of loss. Mental work in the beginning and for a long time is weariness, is little
+    better than drudgery. We labor, and there seems to be no gain; we study and there
+    seems to be no increase of knowledge or power; and if we persevere, we are led by
+    faith and hope, not by any clear perception of the result of persistent application.
+    Genius itself is not exempt from this law. Poets and artists work with an intensity
+    unknown to others, and are distinguished by their faith in the power of labor. The
+    consummate musician must practice for hours, day by day, year in and year out. The
+    brain is the most delicate and the finest of instruments, and it is vain to imagine
+    that anything else than ceaseless, patient effort will enable us to use it with
+    perfect skill; indeed, it is only after long study that we become capable of
+    understanding what the perfection of the intellect is, that we become capable of
+    discerning what is excellent, beautiful, and true in style and thought.</p>
+    <p>Discouragement and weariness will, again and again, suggest doubts concerning the
+    wisdom of this ceaseless effort to improve one's self. Why persist in the pursuit of
+    what can never be com<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg
+    98]</a></span>pletely attained? Why toil to gain what the mass of men neither admire
+    nor love? Why wear out life in a course of action which leads neither to wealth nor
+    honors? Why turn away from pleasures which lie near us to follow after ideal things?
+    These are questions which force themselves upon us; and it requires faith and courage
+    not to be shaken by this sophistry. Visions of ideal life float before young eyes,
+    and if to be attracted by what is high and fair were enough, it were not difficult to
+    be saint, sage, or hero; but when we perceive that the way to the best is the road of
+    toil and drudgery, that we must labor long and accomplish little, wander far and
+    doubt our progress, must suffer much and feel misgivings whether it is not in
+    vain,&mdash;then only the noblest and the bravest still push forward in obedience to
+    inward law. The ideal of culture appeals to them with irresistible force. They
+    consent to lack wealth, and the approval of friends and the world's applause; they
+    are willing to turn away when fair hands hold out the cup of pleasure, when bright
+    eyes and smiling lips woo to indulgence. If, you ask, How long? They answer, Until we
+    die! They are lovers of wisdom and do not trust to hope of temporal reward. Their aim
+    is light and purity of mind and heart; these they would not barter for comfort and
+    position.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> As
+    saints, while doing the common work of men, walk uplifted to worlds invisible, so
+    they, amid the noise and distractions of life still hear the appealing voice of
+    truth; and as parted lovers dream only of the hour when they shall meet again, so
+    these chosen spirits, in the midst of whatever cares and labors, turn to the time
+    when thought shall people their solitude as with the presence of angels. They hear
+    heavenly voices asking, Why stay ye on the earth, unless to grow? Vanity, frivolity,
+    and fickleness die within them; and they grow to be humble and courageous,
+    disinterested and laborious, strong and persevering. The cultivation of their higher
+    nature becomes the law of their life; and the sense of duty, "stern daughter of the
+    voice of God," which of all motives that sway the heart, best stands the test of
+    reason, becomes their guide and support. Thus culture, which looks to the Infinite
+    and All-wise as to its ideal, rests upon the basis of morality and religion.</p>
+    <p>To think is difficult, and they who wish to grow in power of thought must hoard
+    their strength. Excess, of whatever kind, is a waste of intellectual force. The
+    weakness of men of genius has impoverished the world. Sensual indulgence diminishes
+    spiritual insight; it perverts reason, and deadens love; it enfeebles the physical
+    man, and weakens the organs of sense,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100"
+    id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> which are the avenues of the soul. The higher self
+    is developed harmoniously only when it springs from a healthful body. It is the lack
+    of moral balance which makes genius akin to madness. Nothing is so sane as reason,
+    and great minds fall from truth only when they fail in the strength which comes of
+    righteous conduct.</p>
+    <p>Let the lover of wisdom then strive to live in a healthy body that his senses may
+    report truly of the universe in which he dwells. But this is not easy; for mental
+    labor exhausts, and if the vital forces are still further diminished by dissipation,
+    disease and premature decay of the intellectual faculties will be the result. The
+    ideal of culture embraces the whole man, physical, moral, religious, and
+    intellectual; and the loss of health or morality or faith cannot but impede the
+    harmonious development of the mind itself. Passion is the foe of reason, and may
+    easily become strong enough to extinguish its light. He who wishes to educate himself
+    must learn to resist the desires of his lower nature, which if indulged deaden
+    sensibility, weaken the will, take from the imagination its freshness, and from the
+    heart the power of loving. The task he has set himself is arduous, and he cannot have
+    too much energy, too much warmth of soul, too much capacity for labor. Let him not
+    waste, like a mere animal, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101"
+    id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> strength which was given him that he might learn to
+    know and love infinite truth and beauty. The dwelling with one's self and with
+    thoughts of what is true and high, which is an essential condition of mental growth,
+    is impossible when the sanctuary of the soul is filled with unclean images.
+    Intellectual honesty, the disinterested love of truth, without which no progress can
+    be made, will hardly be found in those who are the slaves of unworthy passions. The
+    more religious a man is, the more does he believe in the worth and sacredness of
+    truth, and the more willing does he become to throw all his energies with persevering
+    diligence into the work of self-improvement. They who fail to see in the universe an
+    all-wise, all-holy, and all-powerful Being, from whom are all things and to whom all
+    things turn, easily come to doubt whether it holds anything of true worth. History
+    teaches this, and it requires little reflection to perceive that it must be so. Of
+    the Solitary, Wordsworth says,&mdash;</p>
+    <div class="poem">
+      <div class="stanza">
+        <span class="i14">"But in despite<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">Of all this outside bravery, within<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">He neither felt encouragement nor hope;<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">For moral dignity and strength of mind<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">Were wanting, and simplicity of life<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">And reverence for himself; and, last and best,<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">Confiding thoughts, through love and fear of Him<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">Before whose sight the troubles of this world<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">Are vain."<br />
+        </span> <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg
+        102]</a></span>
+      </div>
+    </div>
+    <p>The corrupt and the ignorant easily learn to feel contempt, but the scholar is
+    reverent. He moves in the midst of infinite worlds, and knows that the least is part
+    of the whole.</p>
+    <p>Now, how shall he who is resolved to educate himself set about his work? What
+    advice shall be given him? What rules shall be made for him that he may not waste
+    time and energy? He who yearns for the cultivation of mind which makes wisdom
+    possible must work his way to the light. All intellectual men strive to educate
+    themselves, but each one strives in a different way. They all aim at insight rather
+    than information, at the perfect use of their faculties rather than learning. The
+    power to see things as they are, is what they want; and therefore they look, observe,
+    examine, compare, analyze, meditate, read, and write. And they keep doing this day by
+    day; and the longer they work, the more attractive their work grows to be. Descartes,
+    who is a typical lover of the intellectual life, looked upon himself simply as a
+    thinking being, and gave all his thought to the cultivation of his higher faculties
+    in the hope that he might finally discover some truth which would bring blessings to
+    men. He had no thought of literary fame, published little, and sedulously avoided
+    whatever might bring him into notoriety. "Those," he says, "who<span
+    class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> wish to know how
+    to speak of everything and to acquire a reputation for learning, will succeed most
+    easily if they content themselves with the semblance of truth, which may readily be
+    found." The love of truth is the mark of the real student. What is, is; it is man's
+    business to know it. He is the foe of pretense; sham for him means shame. He will
+    have sound knowledge; he will do his work well; whether men shall applaud or reward
+    him for it, is a foreign consideration. He obeys an inward law, and the praise of
+    those who cannot understand him sounds to him like mockery. True thought, like right
+    conduct, is its own reward. To see truth and to love it is enough,&mdash;is more than
+    to have the worship of the world. The important thing is to be a man, to have a
+    serious purpose, to be in earnest, to yearn for what is good and holy; and without
+    this the culture of the intellect will not avail.</p>
+    <p>We must build upon the broad foundation of man's life, and not upon any special
+    faculty. The merely literary man is often the most pitiful of men,&mdash;able, it may
+    be, to do little else than complain that his merits are not recognized. Let it not be
+    imagined then that the lover of wisdom, the follower of intellectual good, should
+    propose to himself a literary career. He may of course be or become a man<span
+    class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> of letters, but
+    this is incidental to his life-purpose, which is to develop within himself the power
+    of knowing and loving. He will learn to think rightly and to act well, first of all;
+    for he knows that a man's writing cannot be worth more than he himself is worth. He
+    is a seeker after truth and perfection; and understanding at the price of what
+    countless labors these may be hoped for, he is slow to imagine that words of his may
+    be of help to others.</p>
+    <p>Observation, reading, and writing are the chief means by which thought is
+    stimulated, the mind developed, and the intellect cultivated. The habit of looking
+    and the habit of thinking are closely related. A man thinks as he sees; and for a
+    mind like Shakespeare's, for instance, observation is almost the only thing that is
+    necessary for its development. The boundless world breaks in upon him with creative
+    force. His sympathy is universal, and therefore so is his interest. He sees the like
+    in the unlike, the differences in things which are similar. Every little bird and
+    every little flower are known to him. He contemplates Falstaff and Poor Tom with as
+    much interest as though they were Hamlet and King Lear. In all original minds the
+    power of observation is great. It is the chief source of our earliest knowledge, of
+    that which touches us most nearly and most deeply<span class='pagenum'><a
+    name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span> colors the imagination. When the
+    boy is wandering through fields, sitting in the shade of trees, or lying on the banks
+    of murmuring streams, he is not only learning more delightful things than books will
+    ever teach him, but he is also acquiring the habit of attention, of looking at what
+    he sees, which nowhere else can be gotten in so natural and pleasant a way. Hence the
+    best minds have either been born in the country or have passed there some of their
+    early years. Unless we have first learned to look with the eye, we shall never learn
+    to look with the mind. They who walk unmoved beneath the starlit heavens, or by the
+    ever-moving ocean, or amid the silent mountains; who do not find, like Wordsworth,
+    that the meanest flower that blows gives thoughts which often lie too deep for tears,
+    will not derive great help from the world of books. But in the world of books the
+    intellectual must also make themselves at home and live, must thence draw
+    nourishment, light, wisdom, strength, for there as nowhere else the mind of man has
+    stamped its image; and there the thoughts of the master spirits still breathe, still
+    glow with truth and beauty. The best books are powers</p>
+    <div class="poem">
+      <div class="stanza">
+        <span class="i0">"Forever to be hallowed; only less,<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">For what we are and what we may become,<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">Than Nature's self, which is the breath of God,<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">Or his pure Word, by miracle revealed."<br />
+        </span> <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg
+        106]</a></span>
+      </div>
+    </div>
+    <p>But it is as difficult to know books as to know men. There are but few men who can
+    be of intellectual service to us; and there are but few books which stimulate and
+    nourish the mind. The best books are, as Milton says, "the precious life-blood of a
+    master spirit;" and it is absurd to suppose that they will reveal their secret to
+    every chance comer, to every heedless reader. As it takes a hero to know a hero, so
+    only an awakened mind can love and understand the great thinkers. The reading of the
+    ignorant is chiefly a mechanical proceeding; and, indeed, for men in general reading
+    is little better than waste of time. Their reading, like their conversation, leaves
+    them what they were, or worse. The mass of printed matter has no greater value from
+    an intellectual point of view at least than the wide ever-flowing stream of talk; and
+    for the multitude it is all the same whether they gossip and complain, or read and
+    nod. However much they read, they remain unintelligent; what knowledge they gain is
+    fragmentary, unreal; they learn merely enough to talk about what they do not
+    understand. We may of course read for entertainment, as we may talk for
+    entertainment; but this is merely a recreation of the mind, which is good only
+    because it rests and prepares us for work. The wise read books to be enlightened,
+    uplifted, and inspired.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg
+    107]</a></span> Their reading is a labor in which every faculty of the mind is awake
+    and active. They are attentive; they weigh, compare, judge. They re-create within
+    their own minds the images produced by the author; they seek to enter into his inmost
+    thought; they admire each well-turned phrase, each happy epithet; they walk with him,
+    and make themselves at home in the wonderland which his genius has called into being;
+    past centuries rise before them, and they almost forget that they did not hear Plato
+    discourse in the Academy, or stroll with Horace along the Sacred Way. As they are
+    brought thus intimately into the company of the noblest minds, they think as they
+    thought, feel as they felt, and so are enlightened and inspired. They drink the
+    spirit of the mighty dead, and gradually come to live in a higher and richer world.
+    The best in life and literature is seen to be such only by those who have made
+    themselves worthy of the heavenly vision; and once we have learned to love the few
+    real books of the world, or rather what in these few is eternally true and beautiful,
+    we breathe the atmosphere of the intellectual life. What is frivolous, or false, or
+    vulgar can no longer please us; having seen and loved what is high we may not sink to
+    the lower.</p>
+    <p>Knowledge may be useful, and yet have little<span class='pagenum'><a
+    name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> power to nourish, train, and
+    enlarge the mind, and it is its disciplinary and educational value which we are here
+    considering. Medicine for a physician, law for an attorney, theology for a clergyman,
+    is the most useful knowledge; but they are not therefore the best means of
+    intellectual culture. Natural science, though it is most useful, ministering as it
+    does in a thousand ways and with ever-increasing efficacy to our wants and comforts,
+    has but an inferior educational power. Acquaintance with the uniform co-existences
+    and sequences of phenomena is not a mental tonic. Such knowledge not only leaves us
+    unmoved,&mdash;it has a tendency even to fetter the free play of the mind and to
+    chill the imagination. It unweaves the rainbow, and leaves us the dead chemical
+    elements. The information we have gained is practical, but it does not exalt the soul
+    or render us more keenly alive to the divine beauty which rests on Nature's face. It
+    does not enable us, as does the knowledge of literature and history, to participate
+    in the conscious life of the race. It makes no appeal to our nobler human instincts.
+    There is no book on natural science, nor can there ever be one, which may take a
+    place among the few immortal works which men never cease to read and love. Physical
+    science has its own domain, and its study will continue to enrich the<span
+    class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> world, to make
+    specialists of a hundred kinds; but it never can take the place of literature and
+    history as a means of culture; and as an educational force its value is greatest when
+    it is studied not experimentally, but as literature,&mdash;though of course, every
+    cultivated man should be familiar with the inductive method, and should receive
+    consequently a certain scientific training.</p>
+    <p>History, in bringing us into the presence of the greatest men and in showing us
+    their mightiest achievements, rouses our whole being. It sets the mind aglow, awakens
+    enthusiasm, and fires the imagination. It makes us feel how blessed a thing it is "to
+    scorn delights and live laborious days;" how divine to perish in bringing truth and
+    holiness to men. We commingle with the makers of the world; we hear them speak and
+    see them act; we catch the spirit of their lofty purpose, their high courage, their
+    noble eloquence. When we drink deeply of the wisdom which history teaches, we come to
+    understand that truth and justice, heroism and religion, which are the virtues of the
+    greatest men, may be ours as easily as theirs; that opportunity for true men is ever
+    present, and that the task set for each one of us is as sacred and important as any
+    which has ever been entrusted to the human mind and will. Our thought is<span
+    class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> widened, our
+    hearts are strengthened, and we come to feel that it shall be well for others that we
+    too have lived. When we have learned to be at home with lofty and generous natures,
+    the heroic mood becomes natural to us.</p>
+    <p>There are of course but few histories which have this tonic effect upon the mind
+    and the will, but with these the lover of culture should make himself familiar. Each
+    one must find the book he needs; and though he should find no help in a volume which
+    time and the consent of the learned have consecrated, let him not be discouraged, but
+    continue to seek and to read until he meet with the author who fills his soul with
+    joy and opens to his wondering eyes visions of new worlds. To love any great book so
+    that we read it&mdash;or at least those portions of it which especially appeal to
+    us&mdash;many times, and always with new pleasure (as a mother never wearies of
+    looking upon her child), until the thought and style of the author become almost our
+    own, is to learn the secret of self-education; for he who understands and loves one
+    great book is sure to find his way to the love and knowledge of other works of
+    genius. He will not read chiefly to gain information, but he will read for exaltation
+    of spirit, for enlightenment, for strength of soul, for the help which springs from
+    contact with generous and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg
+    111]</a></span> awakened minds. He will mark his favorite passages and refer to them
+    often, as one loves to revisit places where he has been happy; and these very
+    pencil-marks will become dear to him as tokens of truth revealed, of wisdom gained,
+    of joy bestowed. The best reading is that which most profoundly stimulates thought,
+    which brings our own minds into active, conscious communion with the mind of the
+    author; and hence the best poetry is the most efficacious and the most delightful aid
+    to mental improvement.</p>
+    <p>Poetry is, as Aristotle says, the most philosophic of all writing. It is also the
+    writing which is most instinct with passion, with life. It springs from intense
+    thought and feeling, and bears within itself the power to call forth thought and
+    feeling. It is thought transfused with the glow of emotion, and consequently thought
+    made beautiful, attractive, contagious. It is, to quote Wordsworth, "the breath and
+    finer spirit of all knowledge; it is the impassioned expression which is in the
+    countenance of all science." The poet has more enthusiasm and tenderness than other
+    men, a more sensitive soul, a more comprehensive mind. His wider sympathy gives him
+    greater insight; and his power to see absent things as though they were present
+    enables him to bring the distant<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112"
+    id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span> and the past before our eyes, to make them live
+    again in a new and immortal world; he stimulates the whole mind and appeals to every
+    faculty of the soul. The greatest philosophers are, like Plato, poets too; and unless
+    the historian is also a poet, there is no inspiration, no life in what he writes. It
+    is as superficial and vulgar to sneer at poetry as to sneer at religion; and they
+    alone are mockers who have eyes but for some counterfeit. To be able to read a true
+    poet is not a gift of Nature; it is a faculty to be acquired. He creates, as
+    Wordsworth says, the taste by which he is appreciated. To imagine we may read him as
+    we read a frivolous novel is absurd; it may well happen we shall see no truth or
+    beauty in him until patient study has made it plain. It often takes the world a
+    hundred years or more to recognize a great poet; and a knowledge of his worth can be
+    had by the student only at the price of patient labor. Wordsworth will attract
+    scarcely any one at the first glance; the great number of readers will soon weary of
+    him and throw him aside; but those who learn to understand him find in his writings
+    treasures above all price. There are but a few great poems in the literatures of the
+    different nations, but he who wishes to have a cultivated mind must, at the cost of
+    whatever time and labor, make him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113"
+    id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span>self familiar with them; for there alone are found
+    the best thoughts clothed in fittest words; there alone are rightly portrayed the
+    noblest characters; there alone is the world of men and things transfigured by the
+    imagination and illumined by the pure light of the mind. True poets help us to see,
+    they teach us to admire, they lift our thoughts, they appeal to our higher nature;
+    they give us nobler loves, more exalted aims, more spiritual purposes; they make us
+    feel that to live for money or place is to lead a narrow and a slavish life; and to
+    men around whom the fetters of material and hardening cares are growing, they cry and
+    bid them&mdash;</p>
+    <div class="poem">
+      <div class="stanza">
+        <span class="i28">"Look abroad<br />
+        </span> <span class="i4">And see to what fair countries they are bound."<br />
+        </span>
+      </div>
+    </div>
+    <p>But even the greatest poets have weaknesses, and are great only by comparison.
+    There is not one who however he may enchant and strengthen, does not also disappoint
+    us. The perfect poet the future will bring; and to his coming we shall look with more
+    eager expectation than if we foresaw man dowered with wings. The elevation we
+    forebode is of the soul, not of the body. Progress we have already made. It is no
+    longer possible for a true poet to sing of sensual delights; the man he creates is
+    now no more the slave "of low am<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114"
+    id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span>bition or distempered love." His theme is
+    rather&mdash;</p>
+    <div class="poem">
+      <div class="stanza">
+        <span class="i0">"No other than the heart of man<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">As found among the best of those who live,<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">Not unexalted by religious faith,<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">Nor uninformed by books, good books, though few,<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">In Nature's presence."<br />
+        </span>
+      </div>
+    </div>
+    <p>Writing is as great an aid to the cultivation of the mind as reading. It is indeed
+    indispensable, and the accuracy of thought and expression of which Bacon speaks, is
+    but one of its good results. "By writing," says Saint Augustine, "I have learned many
+    things which nothing else had taught me." There is, of course, no question here of
+    writing for publication. To do this no one should be urged. The farther we are from
+    all thought of readers, the nearer are we to truth; and once an author has published,
+    a sort of madness comes over him, and he seems to be doing nothing unless he continue
+    to publish. The truly intellectual man leads an interior life; he dwells habitually
+    in the presence of God, of Nature, and of his own soul; he swims in a current of
+    ideas, looks out upon a world of truth and beauty; he would rather gain some new
+    vision of the eternal reality than to have a mountain of gold or the suffrages of a
+    whole people. The great hindrance is lack of the power of prolonged attention, of
+    sustained<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span>
+    thought; and this the habit of serious writing gives. But the habit itself is
+    difficult to acquire. At first in attempting to write we are discouraged to find how
+    crude, how unreal, how little within our control our knowledge is; and it will often
+    happen that we shall simply hold the pen in idleness, either because we find nothing
+    to write, or because the proper way to express what we think eludes our efforts. When
+    this happens day after day, the temptation will come to abandon our purpose, and to
+    seek easier and less effective means of developing mental strength, or else we shall
+    write carelessly and without thought, which is even a greater evil than not to write
+    at all. In the writing of which I am thinking there is no question of style, of what
+    critics and readers will say; all that is asked is that we apply our minds to things
+    as they appear to us, and put in plain words what we see. Thus our style will become
+    the expression of our thought and life. It will be the outgrowth of a natural method,
+    and consequently will have genuine worth. What is written in this way should be
+    preserved, not that others may see it, but that we ourselves by comparing our earlier
+    with our later essays may be encouraged by the evidence of improvement. It is not
+    necessary to make choice of a subject,&mdash;whatever interests us is<span
+    class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> a fit theme; and
+    if nothing should happen specially to interest us, by writing we shall gain interest
+    in many things.</p>
+    <p>The method here proposed requires serious application, perseverance, diligence: it
+    is difficult; but they who have the courage to continue to write, undeterred by
+    difficulties, will gain more than they hope for. They will grow in strength, in
+    accuracy, in pliancy, in openness of mind; they will become capable of profound and
+    just views, and will gradually rise to worlds of truth and beauty of which the common
+    man does not dream. And it will frequently happen that there will be permanent value
+    in what is written not to please the crowd or to flatter a capricious public opinion,
+    or to win gold or applause, but simply in the presence of God and one's own soul to
+    bear witness to truth. As the painter takes pallet and brush, the musician his
+    instrument, each to perfect himself in his art, so he who desires to learn how to
+    think should take the pen, and day by day write something of the truth and love, the
+    hope and faith, which make him a living man.</p>
+    <hr style="width: 65%;" />
+    <h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI.</h2>
+    <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span>
+    <h4>GROWTH AND DUTY.</h4>
+    <div class="blockquot">
+      <p>Why stay we on the earth unless to grow?</p>
+      <p><span style="margin-left: 18em;"><span class="smcap">Browning</span>.</span></p>
+    </div>
+    <p>What life is in itself we do not know, any more than we know what matter is in
+    itself; but we know something of the properties of matter, and we also have some
+    knowledge of the laws of life. Here it is sufficient to call attention to the law of
+    growth, through which the living receive the power of self-development,&mdash;of
+    bringing their endowments into act, of building up the being which they are. Whatever
+    living thing is strong or beautiful has been made so by growth, since life begins in
+    darkness and impotence. To grow is to be fresh and joyous. Hence the spring is the
+    glad time; for the earth itself then seems to renew its youth, and enter on a fairer
+    life. The growing grass, the budding leaves, the sprouting corn, coming as with
+    unheard shout from regions of the dead, fill us with happy thoughts, because in them
+    we behold the vigor of life, bringing promise of higher things.<span
+    class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span></p>
+    <p>Nature herself seems to rejoice in this vital energy; for the insects hum, the
+    birds sing, the lambs skip, and the very brooks give forth a merry sound. Growth
+    leads us through Wonderland. It touches the germs lying in darkness, and the myriad
+    forms of life spring to view; the mists are lifted from the valleys, and flowers
+    bloom and shed fragrance through the air. Only the growing&mdash;those who each
+    moment are becoming something more than they were&mdash;feel the worth and joyousness
+    of life. Upon the youth nothing palls, for he is himself day by day rising into
+    higher and wider worlds. To grow is to have faith, hope, courage.</p>
+    <p>The boy who has become able to do what a while ago was impossible to him, easily
+    believes that nothing is impossible; and as his powers unfold, his self-confidence is
+    nourished; he exults in the consciousness of increasing strength, and cannot in any
+    way be made to understand the doubts and faint-heartedness of men who have ceased to
+    grow. Each hour he puts off some impotence, and why shall he not have faith in his
+    destiny, and feel that he shall yet grow to be poet, orator, hero, or what you will
+    that is great and noble? And as he delights in life, we take delight in him.</p>
+    <p>In the same way a young race of people<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119"
+    id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> possesses a magic charm. Homer's heroes are
+    barbarians; but they are inspiring, because they belong to a growing race, and we see
+    in them the budding promise of the day when Alexander's sword shall conquer the
+    world; when Plato shall teach the philosophy which all men who think must know; and
+    when Pericles shall bid the arts blossom in a perfection which is the despair of
+    succeeding generations. And so in the Middle Ages there is barbarism enough, with its
+    lawlessness and ignorance; but there is also faith, courage, strength, which tell of
+    youth, and point to a time of mature faculty and high achievement. There is the rich
+    purple dawn which shall grow into the full day of our modern life.</p>
+    <p>Here in this New World we are the new people, in whose growth what highest hopes,
+    what heavenly promises lie! All the nations which are moving forward, are moving in
+    directions in which we have gone before them,&mdash;to larger political and religious
+    liberty; to wider and more general education; to the destroying of privilege and the
+    disestablishment of churches; to the recognition of the equal rights not only of all
+    men, but of all men and women.</p>
+    <p>We also lead the way in the revolution which has been set in motion by the
+    application of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg
+    120]</a></span> science to mechanical purposes, one of the results of which is seen
+    in the industrial and commercial miracles of the present century. It is our vigorous
+    growth which makes us the most interesting and attractive of the modern peoples. For
+    whether men love us, or whether they hate us, they find it impossible to ignore us,
+    unless they wish to argue themselves unknown; and the millions who yearn for freedom
+    and opportunity turn first of all to us.</p>
+    <p>But observant minds, however much they may love America, however great their faith
+    in popular government may be, cannot contemplate our actual condition without a sense
+    of disquietude; for there are aspects of our social evolution which sadden and
+    depress even the most patriotic and loyal hearts. It would seem, for instance, that
+    with us, while the multitude are made comfortable and keen-witted, the individual
+    remains common-place and weak; so that on all sides people are beginning to ask
+    themselves what is the good of all this money and machinery if the race of godlike
+    men is to die out, or indeed if the result is not to be some nobler and better sort
+    of man than the one with whom we have all along been familiar. Is not the yearning
+    for divine men inborn? In the heroic ages such men were worshiped as gods, and one of
+    the calamities of times of degeneracy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121"
+    id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> is the dying out of faith in the worth of true
+    manhood caused by the disappearance of superior men. Such men alone are memorable,
+    and give to history its inspiring and educating power. The ruins of Athens and Rome,
+    the cathedrals and castles of Europe, uplift and strengthen the heart, because they
+    bid us reflect what thoughts and hopes were theirs who thus could build.</p>
+    <p>How quickly kings and peasants, millionaires and paupers, become a common,
+    undistinguished crowd! But the hero, the poet, the saint, defy the ages and remain
+    luminous and separate like stars. They&mdash;</p>
+    <div class="poem">
+      <div class="stanza">
+        <span class="i0">"Waged contention with their time's decay,<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">And of the past are all that cannot pass away."<br />
+        </span>
+      </div>
+    </div>
+    <p>The soul, which makes man immortal, has alone the power to make him beneficent and
+    beautiful.</p>
+    <p>But in this highest kind of man, in whom soul&mdash;that is, faith, hope, love,
+    courage, intellect&mdash;is supreme, we Americans, who are on the crest of the
+    topmost waves of the stream of tendency, are not rich. We have our popular heroes;
+    but so has every petty people, every tribe its heroes. The dithyrambic prose in which
+    it is the fashion to celebrate our conspicuous men has a hollow sound, very like
+    cant. A marvelous development of wealth and numbers has<span class='pagenum'><a
+    name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> taken place in America; but what
+    American&mdash;poet, philosopher, scientist, warrior, ruler, saint&mdash;is there who
+    can take his place with the foremost men of all this world? The American people seem
+    still to be somewhat in the position of our new millionaires: their fortune is above
+    them, overshadows, and oppresses them. They live in fine houses, and have common
+    thoughts; they have costly libraries, and cheap culture; and their rich clothing
+    poorly hides their coarse breeding. Nor does the tendency seem to be toward a nobler
+    type of manhood.</p>
+    <p>The leaders of the Revolution, the framers of the Federal Constitution, the men
+    who contended for State-rights, and still more those who led in the great struggle
+    for human rights were of stronger and nobler mold than the politicians who now crowd
+    the halls of Congress. The promise of a literature which a generation ago budded
+    forth in New England was, it appears, delusive. What a sad book is not that recently
+    issued from the press on the poets of America! It is the chapter on snakes in Ireland
+    which we have all read,&mdash;there are none. And are not our literary men whom it is
+    possible to admire and love either dead or old enough to die?</p>
+    <p>All this, however, need not be cause for discouragement, if in the generations
+    which are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span>
+    springing up around us, and which are soon to enter upon the scene of active life, we
+    could discover the boundless confidence, the high courage, the noble sentiments,
+    which make the faults of youth more attractive than the formal virtues of a maturer
+    age. But youth seems about to disappear from our life, to leave only children and
+    men. For a true youth the age of chivalry has not passed, nor has the age of faith,
+    nor the age of poetry, nor the age of aught that is godlike and ideal. To our young
+    men, however, high thoughts and heroic sentiments are what they are to a railroad
+    president or a bank cashier,&mdash;mere nonsense. Life for them is wholly prosaic and
+    without illusions. They transform ideas into interests, faith into a speculation, and
+    love into a financial transaction. They have no vague yearnings for what cannot be;
+    hardly have they any passions. They are cold and calculating. They deny themselves,
+    and do not believe in self-denial; they are active, and do not love labor; they are
+    energetic, and have no enthusiasm; they approach life with the hard, mechanical
+    thoughts with which a scientist studies matter. Their one idea is success, and
+    success for them is money. Money means power, it means leisure, it means
+    self-indulgence, it means display; it means, in a word, the thousand comforts and
+    luxuries<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span>
+    which, in their opinion, constitute the good of life.</p>
+    <p>In aristocratic societies the young have had a passion for distinction. They have
+    held it to be an excellent thing to belong to a noble family, to occupy an elevated
+    position, to wear the glittering badges of birth and of office. In ages of religious
+    faith they have been smitten with the love of divine ideals; they have yearned for
+    God, and given all the strength of their hearts to make his will prevail. But to our
+    youth distinction of birth is fictitious, and God is problematic; and so they are
+    left face to face with material aims and ends; and of such aims and ends money is the
+    universal equivalent.</p>
+    <p>Now, it could not ever occur to me to think of denying that the basis of human
+    life, individual and social, is material. Matter is part of our nature; we are bedded
+    in it, and by it are nourished. It is the instrument we must use even when we think
+    and love, when we hope and pray. Upon this foundation our spiritual being is built;
+    upon this foundation our social welfare rests.</p>
+    <p>Concern for material interests is one of the chief causes of human progress; since
+    nothing else so stimulates to effort, and effort is the law of growth. The savage who
+    has no conception of money, but is satisfied with what Nature pro<span
+    class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span>vides, remains
+    forever a savage. Habits of industry, of order, of punctuality, of economy and
+    thrift, are, to a great extent, the result of our money-getting propensities. Our
+    material wants are more urgent, more irresistible; they press more constantly upon us
+    than any other; and those whom they fail to rouse to exertion are, as a rule,
+    hopelessly given over to indolence and sloth. In the stimulus of these lower needs,
+    then, is found the impulse which drives men to labor; and without labor welfare is
+    not possible.</p>
+    <div class="poem">
+      <div class="stanza">
+        <span class="i0">The poor must work, if they would drink and eat;<br />
+        </span> <span class="i2">The weak must work, if they in strength would
+        grow;<br />
+        </span> <span class="i2">The ignorant must work, if they would know;<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">The sad must work, if they sweet joy would meet.<br />
+        </span>
+      </div>
+      <div class="stanza">
+        <span class="i0">The strong must work, if they would shun defeat;<br />
+        </span> <span class="i2">The rich must work, if they would flee from woe;<br />
+        </span> <span class="i2">The proud must work, if they would upward go;<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">The brave must work, if they would not retreat.<br />
+        </span>
+      </div>
+      <div class="stanza">
+        <span class="i0">So for all men the law of work is plain;<br />
+        </span> <span class="i2">It gives them food, strength, knowledge, vict'ry,
+        peace;<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">It makes joy possible, and lessens pain;<br />
+        </span> <span class="i2">From passion's lawless power it wins release,<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">Confirms the heart, and widens reason's reign,<br />
+        </span> <span class="i2">Makes men like God, whose work can never cease.<br />
+        </span>
+      </div>
+    </div>
+    <p>Whatever enables man to overcome his inborn love of ease is, in so far, the source
+    of good. Now, money represents what more than anything else has this stimulating
+    power. It is the equivalent of what we eat and drink, of the<span class='pagenum'><a
+    name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span> homes we live in, of the comforts
+    with which we surround ourselves, of the independence which makes us free to go here
+    or there, to do this or that,&mdash;to spend the winter where orange blossoms perfume
+    the soft air, and the summer where ocean breezes quicken the pulse of life. It
+    unlocks for us the treasury of the world, opens to our gaze whatever is sublime or
+    beautiful; introduces us to the master-minds who live in their works; it leads us
+    where orators declaim, and singers thrill the soul with ecstasy. Nay, more, with it
+    we build churches, endow schools, and provide hospitals and asylums for the weak and
+    helpless. It is, indeed, like a god of this nether world, holding dominion over many
+    spheres of life and receiving the heart-worship of millions.</p>
+    <p>Yet, if we make money and its equivalents a life-purpose&mdash;the aim and end of
+    our earthly hopes&mdash;our service becomes idolatry, and a blight falls upon the
+    nobler self. Money is the equivalent of what is venal,&mdash;of all that may be
+    bought or sold; but the best, the godlike, the distinctively human, cannot be bought
+    or sold. A rich man can buy a wife, but not a woman's love; he can buy books, but not
+    an appreciative mind; he can buy a pew, but not a pure conscience; he can buy men's
+    votes and flattery, but not their respect. The money-<span class='pagenum'><a
+    name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span>world is visible, material,
+    mechanical, external; the world of the soul, of the better self, is invisible,
+    spiritual, vital. God's kingdom is within. What we have is not what we are; and the
+    all-important thing is to be, and not to have. Our possessions belong to us only in a
+    mechanical way. The poet's soul owns the stars and the moonlit heavens, the mountains
+    and rivers, the flowers and the birds, more truly than a millionaire owns his bonds.
+    What I know is mine, and what I love is mine; and as my knowledge widens and my love
+    deepens, my life is enlarged and intensified. But, since all human knowledge is
+    imperfect and narrow, the soul stretches forth the tendrils of faith and hope.
+    Looking upon shadows, we believe in realities; possessing what is vain and empty, we
+    trust to the future to bring what is full and complete.</p>
+    <p>All noble literature and life has its origin in regions where the mind sees but
+    darkly; where faith is more potent than knowledge; where hope is larger than
+    possession, and love mightier than sensation. The soul is dwarfed whenever it clings
+    to what is palpable and plain, fixed and bounded. Its home is in worlds which cannot
+    be measured and weighed. It has infinite hopes, and longings, and fears; lives in the
+    conflux of immensities; bathes on shores<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128"
+    id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> where waves of boundless yearning break. Borne on
+    the wings of time, it still feels that only what is eternal is real,&mdash;that what
+    death can destroy is even now but a shadow. To it all outward things are formal, and
+    what is less than God is hardly aught. In this mysterious, super-sensible world all
+    true ideals originate, and such ideals are to human life as rain and sunshine to the
+    corn by which it is nourished.</p>
+    <p>What hope for the future is there, then, when the young have no enthusiasm, no
+    heavenly illusions, no divine aspirations, no faith that man may become godlike, more
+    than poets have ever imagined, or philosophers dreamed?&mdash;when money, and what
+    money buys, is the highest they know, and therefore the highest they are able to
+    love?&mdash;when even the ambitious among them set out with the deliberate purpose of
+    becoming the beggars of men's votes; of winning an office the chief worth of which,
+    in their eyes, lies in its emoluments?&mdash;when even the glorious and far-sounding
+    voice of fame for them means only the gabble and cackle of notoriety?</p>
+    <p>The only example which I can call to mind of an historic people whose ideals are
+    altogether material and mechanical, is that of China. Are we, then, destined to
+    become a sort of Chinese Empire, with three hundred millions of human beings, and not
+    a divine man or woman?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg
+    129]</a></span></p>
+    <p>Is what Carlyle says is hitherto our sole achievement&mdash;the bringing into
+    existence of an almost incredible number of bores&mdash;is this to be the final
+    outcome of our national life? Is the commonest man the only type which in a
+    democratic society will in the end survive? Does universal equality mean universal
+    inferiority? Are republican institutions fatal to noble personality? Are the people
+    as little friendly to men of moral and intellectual superiority as they are to men of
+    great wealth! Is their dislike of the millionaires but a symptom of their aversion to
+    all who in any way are distinguished from the crowd? And is this the explanation of
+    the blight which falls upon the imagination and the hearts of the young?</p>
+    <p>Ah! surely, we who have faith in human nature, who believe in freedom and in
+    popular government, can never doubt what answer must be given to all these questions.
+    A society which inevitably represses what is highest in the best sort of men is an
+    evil society. A civilization which destroys faith in genius, in heroism, in sanctity,
+    is the forerunner of barbarism. Individuality is man's noblest triumph over fate, his
+    most heavenly assertion of the freedom of the soul; and a world in which
+    individuality is made impossible is a slavish world. There man dwindles, becomes one
+    of a multitude, the im<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg
+    130]</a></span>personal product of a general law; and all his godlike strength and
+    beauty are lost. Is not one true poet more precious than a whole generation of
+    millionaires; one philosopher of more worth than ten thousand members of Congress;
+    one man who sees and loves God dearer than an army of able editors?</p>
+    <p>The greater our control of Nature becomes, the more its treasures are explored and
+    utilized, the greater the need of strong personality to counteract the fatal force of
+    matter. Just as men in tropical countries are overwhelmed and dwarfed by Nature's
+    rich profusion, so in this age, in which industry and science have produced resources
+    far beyond the power of unassisted Nature, only strong characters, marked
+    individualities, can resist the influence of wealth and machinery, which tend to make
+    man of less importance than that which he eats and wears,&mdash;to make him
+    subordinate to the tools he uses.</p>
+    <p>From many sides personality, which is the fountain-head of worth, genius, and
+    power, is menaced. The spirit of the time would deny that God is a Person, and holds
+    man's personality in slight esteem, as not rooted in the soul, but in aggregated
+    atoms. The whole social network, in whose meshes we are all caught, cripples and
+    paralyzes individuality. We must<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131"
+    id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> belong to a party, to a society, to a ring, to a
+    clique, and deliver up our living thought to these soulless entities. Or, if we
+    remain aloof from such affiliation, we must have no honest conviction, no fixed
+    principles, but fit our words to business and professional interests, and conform to
+    the exigencies of the prevailing whim. The minister is hired to preach not what he
+    believes, but what the people wish to hear; the congressman is elected to vote not in
+    the light of his own mind, but in obedience to the dictates of those who send him;
+    the newspaper circulates not because it is filled with words of truth and wisdom, but
+    because it panders to the pruriency and prejudice of its patrons; and a book is
+    popular in inverse ratio to its individuality and worth. Our National Library is
+    filled with books which have copyright, but no other right, human or divine, to exist
+    at all; and when one of us does succeed in asserting his personality, he usually only
+    makes himself odd and ridiculous. He rushes into polygamous Mormonism, or buffoon
+    revivalism, or shallow-minded atheism; nay, he will even become an anarchist, because
+    a few men have too much money and too little soul. What we need is neither the
+    absence of individuality nor a morbid individuality, but high and strong
+    personalities.</p>
+    <p>If our country is to be great and forever<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132"
+    id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> memorable, something quite other than wealth and
+    numbers will make it so. Were there but question of countless millions of dollars and
+    people, then indeed the victory would already have been gained. If we are to serve
+    the highest interests of mankind, and to mark an advance in human history, we must do
+    more than establish universal suffrage, and teach every child to read and write. As
+    true criticism deals only with men of genius or of the best talent, and takes no
+    serious notice of mechanical writers and book-makers, so true history loses sight of
+    nations whose only distinction lies in their riches and populousness.</p>
+    <p>The noblest and most gifted men and women are alone supremely interesting and
+    abidingly memorable. We have already reached a point where we perceive the unreality
+    of the importance which the chronicles have sought to give to mere kings and
+    captains. If the king was a hero, we love him; but if he was a sot or a coward, his
+    jeweled crown and purple robes leave him as unconsidered by us as the beggar in his
+    rags. Whatever influence, favorable or unfavorable, democracy may exert to make easy
+    or difficult the advent of the noblest kind of man, an age in which the people think
+    and rule will strip from all sham greatness its trappings and tinsel. The parade hero
+    and windy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span>
+    orator will be gazed at and applauded, but they are all the while transparent and
+    contemptible. The scientific spirit, too, which now prevails, is the foe of all
+    pretense; it looks at things in their naked reality, is concerned to get a view of
+    the fact as it is, without a care whether it be a beautiful or an ugly, a sweet or a
+    bitter truth. The fact is what it is, and nothing can be gained by believing it to be
+    what it is not.</p>
+    <p>This is a most wise and human way of looking at things, if men will only not
+    forget that the mind sees farther than the eye, that the heart feels deeper than the
+    hand; and that where knowledge fails, faith is left; where possession is denied, hope
+    remains. The young must enter upon their life-work with the conviction that only what
+    is real is true, good, and beautiful; and that the unreal is altogether futile and
+    vain.</p>
+    <p>Now, the most real thing for every man, if he is a man, is his own soul. His
+    thought, his love, his faith, his hope, are but his soul thinking, loving, believing,
+    hoping. His joy and misery are but his soul glad or sad. Hence, so far as we are able
+    to see or argue, the essence of reality is spiritual; and since the soul is conscious
+    that it is not the supreme reality, but is dependent, illumined by a truth higher
+    than itself, nourished by a love larger than its own,<span class='pagenum'><a
+    name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> it has a dim vision of the Infinite
+    Being as essentially real and essentially spiritual. A living faith in this infinite
+    spiritual reality is the fountain-head not only of religion, but of noble life. All
+    wavering here is a symptom of psychic paralysis. When the infinite reality becomes
+    questionable, then all things become material and vile. The world becomes a world of
+    sight and sound, of taste and touch. The soul is poured through the senses and
+    dissipated; the current of life stagnates, and grows fetid in sloughs and marshes.
+    Minds for whom God is the Unknowable have no faith in knowledge at all, except as the
+    equivalent of weight and measure, of taste and touch and smell.</p>
+    <p>Now, if all that may be known and desired is reduced to this material expression,
+    how dull and beggarly does not life become,&mdash;mere atomic integration and
+    disintegration, the poor human pneumatic-machine purring along the dusty road of
+    matter, bound and helpless and soulless as a clanking engine! No high life, in
+    individuals or nations, is to be hoped for, unless it is enrooted in the infinite
+    spiritual reality,&mdash;in God. It is forever indubitable that the highest is not
+    material, and no argument is therefore needed to show that when spiritual ideals lose
+    their power of attraction, life sinks to lower beds.</p>
+    <p>Sight is the noblest sense, and the starlit<span class='pagenum'><a
+    name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> sky is the most sublime object we
+    can behold. But what do we in reality see there? Only a kind of large tent, dimly
+    lighted with gas jets. This is the noblest thing the noblest sense reveals. But let
+    the soul appear, and the tent flies into invisible shreds; the heavens break open
+    from abyss to abyss, still widening into limitless expanse, until imagination reels.
+    The gas jets grow into suns, blazing since innumerable ages with unendurable light,
+    and binding whole planetary systems into harmony and life. So infinitely does the
+    soul transcend the senses! The world it lives in is boundless, eternal, sublime. This
+    is its home; this the sphere in which it grows, and awakens to consciousness of
+    kinship with God. This is the fathomless, shoreless abyss of being wherein it is
+    plunged, from which it draws its life, its yearning for the absolute, its undying
+    hope, its love of the best, its craving for immortality, its instinct for eternal
+    things. To condemn it to work merely for money, for position, for applause, for
+    pleasure, is to degrade it to the condition of a slave. It is as though we should
+    take some supreme poet or hero and bid him break stones or grind corn,&mdash;he who
+    has the faculty to give to truth its divinest form, and to lift the hearts of nations
+    to the love of heavenly things.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136"
+    id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span></p>
+    <p>Whatever our lot on earth may be&mdash;whether we toil with the hand, with the
+    brain, or with the heart&mdash;we may not bind the soul to any slavish service. Let
+    us do our work like men,&mdash;till the soil, build homes, refine brute matter, be
+    learned in law, in medicine, in theology; but let us never chain our souls to what
+    they work in. No earthly work can lay claim to the whole life of man; for every man
+    is born for God, for the Universe, and may not narrow his mind. We must have some
+    practical thing to do in the world,&mdash;some way of living which will place us in
+    harmony with the requirements and needs of earthly life; and what this daily business
+    of ours shall be, each one, in view of his endowments and surroundings, must decide
+    for himself.</p>
+    <p>It is well to bear in mind that every kind of life has its advantages, except an
+    immoral life. Whatever we make of ourselves, then,&mdash;whether farmers, mechanics,
+    lawyers, doctors, or priests,&mdash;let us above all things first have a care that we
+    are men; and if we are to be men, our special business work must form only a part of
+    our life-work. The aim&mdash;at least in this way alone can I look at human
+    life&mdash;is not to make rich and successful bankers, merchants, farmers, lawyers,
+    and doctors, but to make noble and enlightened men. Hence the final thought<span
+    class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> in all work is
+    that we work not to have more, but to be more; not for higher place, but for greater
+    worth; not for fame, but for knowledge. In a word, the final thought is that we labor
+    to upbuild the being which we are, and not merely to build round our real self with
+    marble and gold and precious stones. This is but the Christian teaching which has
+    transformed the world; which declares that it is the business of slaves even, of
+    beggars and outcasts, to work first of all for God and the soul. The end is infinite,
+    the aim must be the highest. Not to know this, not to hear the heavenly invitation,
+    is to be shut out from communion with the best; is to be cut off from the source of
+    growth; is to be given over to modes of thought which fatally lead to mediocrity and
+    vulgarity of life.</p>
+    <div class="poem">
+      <div class="stanza">
+        <span class="i0">To live for common ends is to be common.<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">The highest faith makes still the highest man;<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">For we grow like the things our souls believe,<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">And rise or sink as we aim high or low.<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">No mirror shows such likeness of the face<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">As faith we live by of the heart and mind.<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">We are in very truth that which we love;<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">And love, like noblest deeds, is born of faith.<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">The lover and the hero reason not,<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">But they believe in what they love and do.<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">All else is accident,&mdash;this is the soul<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">Of life, and lifts the whole man to itself,<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">Like a key-note, which, running through all
+        sounds,<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">Upbears them all in perfect harmony.<br />
+        </span> <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg
+        138]</a></span>
+      </div>
+    </div>
+    <p>We cannot set a limit to the knowledge and love of man, because they spring from
+    God, and move forever toward him who is without limit. That we have been made capable
+    of this ceaseless approach to an infinite ideal is the radical fact in our nature.
+    Through this we are human; through this we are immortal; through this we are lifted
+    above matter, look through the rippling stream of time on the calm ocean of eternity,
+    and beyond the utmost bounds of space, see simple being,&mdash;life and thought and
+    love, deathless, imageless, absolute. This ideal creates the law of duty, for it
+    makes the distinction between right and wrong. Hence the first duty of man is to make
+    himself like God, through knowledge ever-widening, through love ever-deepening,
+    through life ever-growing.</p>
+    <p>So only can we serve God, so only can we love him. To be content with ignorance is
+    infidelity to his infinite truth. To rest in a lesser love is to deny the boundless
+    charity which holds the heavens together and makes them beautiful, which to every
+    creature gives its fellow, which for the young bird makes the nest, for the child the
+    mother's breast, and in the heart of man sows the seed of faith and hope and heavenly
+    pity.</p>
+    <p>Ceaseless growth toward God,&mdash;this is the ideal, this is the law of human
+    life, proposed and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg
+    139]</a></span> sanctioned alike by Religion, Philosophy, and Poetry. <i>Dulcissima
+    vita sentire in dies se fieri meliorem</i>.</p>
+    <div class="poem">
+      <div class="stanza">
+        <span class="i0">Upward to move along a Godward way,<br />
+        </span> <span class="i2">Where love and knowledge still increase,<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">And clouds and darkness yield to growing day,<br />
+        </span> <span class="i2">Is more than wealth or fame or peace.<br />
+        </span>
+      </div>
+      <div class="stanza">
+        <span class="i0">No other blessing shall I ever ask.<br />
+        </span> <span class="i2">This is the best that life can give;<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">This only is the soul's immortal task<br />
+        </span> <span class="i2">For which 't is worth the pain to live.<br />
+        </span>
+      </div>
+    </div>
+    <p>It is man's chief blessedness that there lie in his nature infinite possibilities
+    of growth. The growth of animals comes quickly to an end, and when they cease to grow
+    they cease to be joyful; but man, whose bodily development even is slow, is capable
+    of rising to wider knowledge and purer love through unending ages. Hence even when he
+    is old,&mdash;if he has lived for what is great and exalted,&mdash;his mind is clear,
+    his heart is tender, and his soul is glad. Only those races are noble, only those
+    individuals are worthy, who yield without reserve to the power of this impulse to
+    ceaseless progress. Behold how the race from which we have sprung&mdash;the
+    Aryan&mdash;breaks forth into ever new developments of strength and beauty in Greece,
+    in Italy, in France, in England, in Germany, in America; creating literature,
+    philosophy, sci<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg
+    140]</a></span>ence, art; receiving Christian truth, and through its aid rising to
+    diviner heights of wisdom, power, freedom, love, and knowledge.</p>
+    <p>And so there are individuals&mdash;and they are born to teach and to
+    rule&mdash;for whom to live is to grow; who, forgetting what they have been, and what
+    they are, think ever only of becoming more and more. Their education is never
+    finished; their development is never complete; their work is never done. From
+    victories won they look to other battlefields; from every height of knowledge they
+    peer into the widening nescience; from all achievements and possessions they turn
+    away toward the unapproachable Infinite, to whom they are drawn. Walking in the
+    shadow of the too great light of God, they are illumined, and they are darkened. This
+    makes Newton think his knowledge ignorance; this makes Saint Paul think his heroic
+    virtue naught. Oh, blessed men, who make us feel that we are of the race of God; who
+    measure and weigh the heavens; who love with boundless love; who toil and are
+    patient; who teach us that workers can wait! They are in love with life; they yearn
+    for fuller life. Life is good, and the highest life is God; and wherever man grows in
+    knowledge, wisdom, and strength, in faith, hope, and love, he walks in the way of
+    heaven.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span></p>
+    <p>To you, young gentlemen, who are about to quit these halls, to continue amid other
+    surroundings the work of education which here has but begun, what words shall I more
+    directly speak? If hitherto you have wrought to any purpose, you will go forth into
+    the world filled with resolute will and noble enthusiasm to labor even unto the end
+    in building up the being which is yourself, that you may unceasingly approach the
+    type of perfect manhood. This deep-glowing fervor of enthusiasm for what is highest
+    and best is worth more to you, and to any man, than all that may be learned in
+    colleges. If ambition is akin to pride, and therefore to folly, it is none the less a
+    mighty spur to noble action; and where it is not found in youth, budding and
+    blossoming like the leaves and flowers in spring, what promise is there of the ripe
+    fruit which nourishes life? The love of excellence bears us up on the swift wing and
+    plumes of high desire,&mdash;</p>
+    <div class="poem">
+      <div class="stanza">
+        <span class="i0">Without which whosoe'er consumes his days,<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">Leaveth such vestige of himself on earth<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">As smoke in air or foam upon the wave.<br />
+        </span>
+      </div>
+    </div>
+    <p>Do not place before your eyes the standard of vulgar success. Do not say, I will
+    study, labor, exercise myself, that I may become able to get wealth or office, for to
+    this kind of work the necessities of life and the tendency of the<span
+    class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> age will drive
+    you; whereas, if you hope to be true and high, it is your business to hold yourselves
+    above the spirit of the age. It is our worst misfortune that we have no ideals. Our
+    very religion, it would seem, is not able to give us a living faith in the reality of
+    ideals; for we are no longer wholly convinced that souls live in the atmosphere of
+    God as truly as lungs breathe the air of earth. We find it difficult even to think of
+    striving for what is eternal, all-holy, and perfect, so unreal, so delusive do such
+    thoughts seem.</p>
+    <p>Who will understand that to be is better than to have, and that in truth a man is
+    worth only what he is? Who will believe that the kingdom of this world, not less than
+    the kingdom of Heaven, lies within? Who, even in thinking of the worth of a pious and
+    righteous life, is not swayed by some sort of honesty-best-policy principle? We love
+    knowledge because we think it is power; and virtue, because we are told as a rule it
+    succeeds. Ah! do you love knowledge for itself?&mdash;for it is good, it is godlike
+    to know. Do you love virtue for its own sake?&mdash;for it is eternally and
+    absolutely right to be virtuous. Instead of giving your thoughts and desires to
+    wealth and position, learn to know how little of such things a true and wise man
+    needs; for the secret of a happy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143"
+    id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> life does not lie in the means and opportunities of
+    indulging our weaknesses, but in knowing how to be content with what is reasonable,
+    that time and strength may remain for the cultivation of our nobler nature. Ask God
+    to inspire you with some great thought, some abiding love of what is excellent, which
+    may fill you with gladness and courage, and in the midst of the labors, the trials,
+    and the disappointments of life, keep you still strong and serene.</p>
+    <hr style="width: 65%;" />
+    <h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII.</h2>
+    <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span>
+    <h4>RIGHT HUMAN LIFE.</h4>
+    <div class="poem">
+      <div class="stanza">
+        <span class="i0">What do we gather hence but firmer faith<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">That every gift of noble origin<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">Is breathed upon by Hope's perpetual breath;<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">That virtue and the faculties within<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">Are vital, and that riches are akin<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">To fear, to change, to cowardice, and death?<br />
+        </span>
+      </div>
+      <div class="stanza">
+        <span class="i0"><span style="margin-left: 12em;"><span
+        class="smcap">Wordsworth</span>.</span><br />
+        </span>
+      </div>
+    </div>
+    <p>What is so delightful as spring weather? To it, whatever mystery life can make
+    plain, it reveals. There is universal utterance. Water leaps from its winding sheet
+    of snow; the streams spring out to wander till they find their source; the corn
+    sprouts to receive the sun's warm kiss; the buds unfold, the blossoms send forth
+    fragrance, the heavens weep for joy; the birds sing, the children shout, and the
+    fuller pulse of life gives, even to the old, fresh thoughts and young desires. Now,
+    what is all this but a symbol of the soul, which feels the urgency of God calling
+    upon it to make itself alive in him and in his universe of truth and beauty?</p>
+    <p>But the season of growth is also the time of blight. A hundred germs perish for
+    one that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span>
+    ripens into wholesome fruit; a hundred young lives suffer physical or moral ruin for
+    one that develops into some likeness of true manhood. And upon what slight causes
+    success or failure seems to depend!</p>
+    <p>As a mere word, a glance, will bring the blood to a maiden's cheek, so may it sow
+    the germ of moral death in the heart of youth. How helpless and ignorant the young
+    are in their seeming strength and smartness: how self-sufficient in their unwisdom,
+    how little amenable to reason, how slow to perceive true ideals. What patient,
+    persevering effort is required to form character, and what a little thing will poison
+    life in its source! How easy it is to see and understand what is coarse and evil, how
+    difficult to appreciate what is pure and excellent. How quickly a boy learns to find
+    pleasure in what is animal or brutal; but what infinite pains must be taken before he
+    is won to the love of truth and goodness. Caricature delights him, and he has no eyes
+    for the chaste beauty of perfect art. The story of an outlaw fills him with
+    enthusiasm, and the heroic struggles of godlike souls are for him meaningless. He
+    gazes with envious awe upon some vulgar rich man, and finds a philosopher, or a
+    saint, only queer. He studies because he has been sent to school, where ignorance
+    will expose him to ridi<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg
+    146]</a></span>cule and humiliation, and possibly too, because he is told that
+    knowledge will help him to win money and influence. However great his proficiency, he
+    is in truth but a barbarian, without wisdom, without reverence, without gentleness.
+    He has been brought only in a vague way into communion with the conscious life of the
+    race; he has no true conception of the dignity of souls, no sense of the beauty of
+    modest and unselfish action. He mistakes rudeness for strength, boastfulness for
+    ability, disrespect for independence, profanity for manliness, brutality for
+    courage.</p>
+    <p>And to add to his misfortune, he is blind to his own weakness and ignorance. A
+    sneer or a jest is his reply to the voice of wisdom, as with a light heart he walks
+    in the road to ruin; and thus it happens that for one who becomes a true and noble
+    man, a hundred go astray or sink into an unintelligent and vulgar kind of life. This
+    fact is concealed from the eyes of the young, from the eyes of the multitude, indeed.
+    As we hide the dead in the earth that we may quickly forget our loss, so society
+    buries from sight and thought those who fail. Their number is so great that the
+    oblivion which soon overwhelms them is needful to save even the brave from
+    discouragement. Of a hundred college boys the lives of twenty-five will be
+    ruined<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> by
+    dissipation, by sensual indulgence; twenty-five others will be wrecked by unhappy
+    marriages, foolish financial schemes, dishonesty and indolence; of the remaining
+    fifty, forty, let us say, will manage to get on without loss of respectability, while
+    the ten (who are still left) will win a sort of notoriety by getting rich or by
+    getting elected to office. Of the hundred will one become a saint, a philosopher, a
+    poet, a statesman, or even a man of superior ability in natural knowledge or
+    literature? And if this estimate is rightly made they all fail; and the emergence of
+    a high and noble mind is so improbable that it may almost be looked upon, like the
+    birth of a genius, as an accident, so impossible is it, with our limited view, to
+    bring such cases within the domain of law. These hundred college boys have been taken
+    from a thousand youths. The nine hundred have remained outside the doors which open
+    into the halls of culture, away from the special influences which thought and
+    ingenuity have created to develop and perfect man's endowments. As they are less
+    favored, we demand less of them, and are content to have them reinforce the
+    unenlightened army of laborers and money-getters. But when we come among those to
+    whom leisure and opportunity are given that they may learn to think truly and to act
+    nobly, and find that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg
+    148]</a></span> they fail in this, as nearly all of them do fail, we are disappointed
+    and saddened. The thoughtless imagine that those who provide food and shelter do the
+    most important work; but such work is the most important only where there is no
+    intellectual, moral, or religious life. That is most necessary which nourishes the
+    highest faculty, and wherever civilization exists, enlightened minds and great
+    characters are indispensable. The animal and the savage, without much difficulty,
+    find what satisfies appetite; but God appoints that only living souls shall provide
+    what keeps souls alive. Now this soul-life, which manifests itself in thought, in
+    conduct, in hope, faith, and love, makes us human and lifts us above every other kind
+    of earthly existence. It is our distinctive attribute, the godlike side of our being,
+    which, under penalty of sinking to lower worlds, we must bring out and cultivate. The
+    plant is alive. By its own energy it springs from darkness, it grows, it waves its
+    green leaves beneath the blue heavens; but it is blind, deaf and dumb, senseless,
+    dead to the world of sight and sound, of taste and smell. The animal too is alive,
+    and in a higher way: for all the glories of Nature are painted upon its eye; all
+    sounds strike upon its ear; it moves about and has all the sensations of physical
+    pleasure of which man is capable; but it is without thought, without<span
+    class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> sense of right
+    and wrong, without imagination, without hope and faith. It is plain then that human
+    life, in its highest sense, is life of the soul,&mdash;a life of thought and love, of
+    faith and hope, of imagination and desire; and men are high or low as they partake
+    more or less of this true life. By this standard, and by no other, reason requires
+    that we form an estimate of human worth. To be a king, to have money, to live in
+    splendor, to meet with approval from few or many,&mdash;is accidental, is something
+    which may happen to an ignorant, a heartless, a depraved, a vulgar man. The most
+    vicious and brutal of men have, again and again, held the most exalted positions, and
+    as a rule cringing and lying, trickery and robbery, or speculation and gambling, have
+    been and are the means by which great fortunes are acquired. Position, then, and
+    money are distinguishable from worth; and they may be and often are found where the
+    life of thought and love, of faith and hope, of imagination and desire, is almost
+    wholly wanting. Now, it is this life&mdash;the only true human life&mdash;which
+    education should bring forth and strengthen; and the failure to lead this life, of
+    those who pass through our institutions of learning, is a subject of deep concern for
+    all who observe and reflect; for among them we look for the leaders who shall cause
+    wisdom and good<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg
+    150]</a></span>ness to prevail over ignorance and appetite. If those who receive the
+    best nurture and care remain on the low plains of a hardly more than animal
+    existence, what hope is there that the multitude shall rise to nobler ways of
+    living?</p>
+    <p>There is question here of the most vital interests; and if we discover the causes
+    of the evil, a remedy may be found. These causes of failure lie partly in our
+    environment and partly within ourselves. In the home, in which we receive the first
+    and the most enduring impressions, true views and noble aims are frequently wanting;
+    and thus false and low estimates of life are formed at a time when what we learn
+    sinks into the very substance of the mind, and colors and shapes all our future
+    seeing and loving. This primal experience accompanies us, and hangs about us like a
+    mist to shut out the view of fairer worlds. Enthusiasm for intellectual and moral
+    excellence is never roused, because our young souls were not made magnetic by the
+    words and deeds of those whom we looked up to as gods. Fortunate is he who bears with
+    him into the life-struggle pure memories of a happy home. When I think of the bees I
+    have seen coming back to the hive, honey-laden, in the golden light of setting suns,
+    when I was a boy at home, a feeling comes over me as though I had lived in paradise
+    and been<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span>
+    driven forth into a bleak world. When one is young, and one's father and mother are
+    full of health and joy; when the roses are blooming and the brooks are laughing to
+    themselves from simple gladness, and the floating clouds and the silent stars seem to
+    have human thoughts,&mdash;what more could we ask of God but to know that all this is
+    eternal, and is from him?</p>
+    <p>In such a mood, how easy it is to turn the childlike soul to the world of
+    spiritual and immortal things. With what efficacy then a mother's soft voice teaches
+    us that we were born upon this earth for no other purpose than to know truth, to love
+    goodness, to do right, that so, having made ourselves godlike, we may forever be with
+    God. And if these high lessons blend in our thought with memories which make home a
+    type of heaven, how shall they not through life be a spur to noble endeavor to
+    accomplish the task thus set us? When great-hearted, high-souled boys go forth to
+    college from homes of intelligence and love, then is there well-founded hope that
+    they shall grow to be wise and helpful men, who know and teach truth, who see and
+    create beauty, who do and make others do what becomes a man. Of hardly less
+    importance is the neighborhood in which our early years are passed, and next to the
+    companionship of the home fireside, a boy's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152"
+    id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span> best neighbor is Nature. Well for him shall it be,
+    if, like colts and calves, and all happy young things, he is permitted to breath the
+    wholesome air of woods and fields, to drink from flowing streams, to lie in the shade
+    of trees on the green sward, or to stand alone beneath the silent starlit heavens
+    until the thought and feeling of the infinite and eternal sink deep into his soul,
+    and make it impossible that he should ever look upon the universe of time and space,
+    or the universe of duty's law within his breast, in a shallow or irreverent spirit.
+    Little shall be said to him, and little shall he speak, and to the unobservant he
+    shall seem dull; but he is Nature's nursling, and she paints her colors on his brain
+    and infuses her strength into his heart. She hardens him and teaches him patience;
+    she shows him real things, fills him with the love of truth, and makes him understand
+    that sham is shame.</p>
+    <p>His progress may be slow; but he will persevere, he will have faith in the power
+    of labor and of time, and when in after years we shall look about for a man with some
+    Diogenes' lantern, there are a thousand chances to one that when we find him we shall
+    find him country-born, not city-bred. Too soon is the town-boy made self-conscious;
+    he is precocious; all the tricks and devices of civilization are known to<span
+    class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> him; all
+    artifices and contrivances he sees in shop-windows; the street, the theatre, the
+    newspaper are the rivals of the home, and they quickly teach him irreverence and
+    disobedience. He loses innocence, experience of evil gives him flippant views. He
+    becomes wise in his own conceit; having eyes only for the surfaces of things, he
+    easily persuades himself that he knows all. Of such a youth how shall any college
+    make an enlightened, a noble, and a reverent man? But the home and the neighborhood
+    are not our whole environment. As we are immersed in an atmospheric ocean, so do we
+    swim in the current of our national life. To praise this life is easy. We all see and
+    feel how vigorous it is, how confident, how eager. Here is a world of busy men and
+    women, active in many directions. They found States, they build cities, they create
+    wealth, they discuss all problems, they try all experiments, they hurry on to new
+    tasks, and think they have done nothing while aught remains to do.</p>
+    <p>They live in the midst of the excitement of ever-recurring elections, of
+    speculation, of financial schemes and commercial enterprises. It is an unrestful,
+    feverish, practical life, in which all the strong natures are thinking of doing
+    something, of gaining something,&mdash;a life in the market-place, where high thought
+    and noble conduct are all but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154"
+    id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> impossible, where the effort to make one's self a
+    man, instead of striving to get so many thousands of money, would seem ridiculous. It
+    is a life of inventions and manufactures, of getting and spending, in which we bring
+    forth and consume in a single century what it has taken Nature many thousand years to
+    hoard. Our aim is to have more rather than to be more; our ideal is that of material
+    progress; our praise is given to those who invent and discover the means of
+    augmenting wealth. Liberty is opportunity to get rich; education is the development
+    of the money-getting faculty. Our national life may, of course, be looked at from
+    many sides, but the general drift of opinion and effort is in the direction here
+    pointed out. Nine tenths of our thought and energy are given to material interests,
+    and these interests represent nine tenths of our achievements. This may be true of
+    men in general, it may be true also that material progress is a condition of moral
+    and intellectual growth; but none the less is it true that right human life is a life
+    of thought and love, of hope and faith, of imagination and desire. Consequently in a
+    well-ordered society, the chief aim&mdash;nine tenths of all effort, let us
+    say&mdash;will have for its object the creation of enlightened and loving men and
+    women, whom faith and hope shall make strong, whom imagination shall refresh,<span
+    class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span> and the desire
+    of perfection shall keep active. The aims which the ideals of democracy suggest are
+    not wholly or chiefly material. We strive, indeed, to create a social condition in
+    which comfort and plenty shall be within the reach of all; but the better among us
+    understand that this is but an inferior part of our work, and they take no delight
+    whatever in our great fortunes and great cities. If democracy is the best government,
+    it follows that it is the kind of government which is most favorable to virtue,
+    intelligence, and religion. It is faint praise to say that in America there is more
+    enterprise, more wealth, than elsewhere. What we should strive to make ourselves able
+    to say, is, that there is here a more truly human life, more public and private
+    honesty, purity, sympathy, and helpfulness; more love of knowledge, more perfect
+    openness to light, greater desire to learn, and greater willingness to accept truth
+    than is to be found elsewhere. It should be our endeavor to create a world of which
+    it may be said, there life is more pleasant, beauty more highly prized, goodness held
+    in greater reverence, the sense of honor finer, the recognition of talent and worth
+    completer than elsewhere.</p>
+    <p>Wealth and population should be considered merely as means, which, if we ourselves
+    do not sink beneath our fortune, we shall use to help<span class='pagenum'><a
+    name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> us to develop on a vast scale, a
+    nobler, freer, and fairer life than hitherto has ever existed. We Americans have a
+    great capacity for seeing things as they are. A thousand shams and glittering
+    vanities have gone down before our straight-looking eyes; and because such things
+    fail to impress us, we seem to be irreverent. We must look more steadfastly, deeper
+    still, until we clearly perceive and understand that to live for money is to lead a
+    false and vulgar life, to rest with complacency in mere numbers is to have a
+    superficial and unreal mind. To form a right judgment of a people, as of individuals,
+    we must consider what they are; not what they have, except in so far as their
+    possessions are the result of work which at once forms and reveals character. And we
+    must know that work is good only in as much as it helps to make life
+    human,&mdash;that is, intelligent, moral and religious. And what we have the right to
+    demand of those to whom we give a higher education is, that they shall body forth
+    these principles in their lives and become leaders in the task of spreading them
+    among the multitude. We demand, first of all, that they become men whose hearts are
+    pure and loving, whose minds are open and enlightened, whose motives are benevolent
+    and generous, whose purposes are high and religious; and if they<span
+    class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span> are such men, it
+    shall matter little to what special pursuits they turn, for whatever their
+    occupation, honor, truth, and intelligence shall go with them, bearing, like mercy, a
+    blessing for those who give and a blessing for those who receive. The spirit in which
+    they work shall be more than what they do, as they themselves shall be more than what
+    they accomplish.</p>
+    <p>A right spirit transforms the whole man, and the first and highest aim of the
+    educator should be to impart a new heart, a new purpose, which shall bring into play
+    forces that may oppose and overcome those faults of the young of which I have spoken,
+    and which, if not corrected, lead to failure.</p>
+    <p>And here we come to the causes of ill success which lie within ourselves. We have
+    our individual qualities and defects, and we have also the qualities and defects of
+    the people whence we are sprung, and of the time-spirit into which we are born. It is
+    the aim of education, as it is the aim of religion, to lift us above the spirit of
+    the age; but in attempting to do this, they who lose sight of what is true and
+    beneficent in that spirit, commit a serious blunder. A national spirit, too, is a
+    narrow, and often a harsh and selfish spirit; but when culture and religion strive to
+    make us citizens of the world and universally benevolent, a care must be had
+    that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> we
+    retain what is strong and noble in the character we inherit from our ancestors.</p>
+    <p>The lover of intellectual excellence, however, is little inclined to dwell with
+    complacency either upon his own qualities, or upon the greatness of his country or
+    his age. The untaught optimism which leads the crowd to exaggerate the worth of
+    whatever they in any way identify with themselves, he looks upon with suspicion, if
+    not with aversion. Self-complacency is pleasant; but truth alone is good, and they
+    who think least are best content with themselves and with their world. He who seeks
+    to improve his mind, neither boasts of his age and country, nor rails at them; but
+    tries to understand them as he tries to know himself. The important knowledge here is
+    of obstacles and defects; for when these are removed, to advance is easy. The first
+    lesson which we must learn is that in the work of mental culture, time and patience
+    are necessary elements. The young, who are eager and restless, find it difficult to
+    work with patience and perseverance, especially when the reward of labor is remote,
+    and in the excitement and hurry of American life, such work often seems to be
+    impossible. But by this kind of work alone can true culture be acquired. It is this
+    Buffoon means when he calls genius a great capacity for taking pains. When Albert
+    D&uuml;rer<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span>
+    said, "Sir, it cannot be better done;" he simply meant that he had bestowed infinite
+    pains upon his work. Now, they who are in a hurry cannot take pains; and they who
+    work for money will take pains only in so far as it is profitable to do so. We must
+    live in our work and love it for its own sake. To do work we love makes us happy,
+    makes us free, and according to its kind educates us; and whatever its kind, it will
+    at least teach us the sovereign virtue of patience, and give us something of the
+    spirit of the old masters who in dingy shops ceased not from labor, and kept their
+    cheerful serenity to the end, though the outcome was only the most perfect fiddle, or
+    a deathless head. But they themselves had the souls of artists, and were honest men,
+    who in their work found joy and freedom, and therefore what they did remains as a
+    source of delight and inspiration. If we find it impossible to put our hearts into
+    our work and consequently impossible to take infinite pains with it, then this is
+    work for which we were not born. The impatient cannot love the labor by which the
+    mind is cultivated, because impatience implies a sense of restraint, a lack of
+    freedom. They are restless, easily grow weary or despondent, find fault with
+    themselves and their task, and either throw off the yoke or bear it in a spirit of
+    disappointment and bitter<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg
+    160]</a></span>ness. As they fail to make themselves strong and serene, their work
+    bears the marks of haste and feebleness, for work reveals character; it is the
+    likeness of the doer, as style shows the man. Then the young are blinded by the
+    glitter and glare of life, by the splendors of position and wealth; they are drawn to
+    what is external; they would be here and there; they love the unchartered liberty of
+    chance desires, and are easily brought to look upon the task of self-improvement as a
+    slavish work. They would have done with study that they may be free, may enter into
+    what they suppose to be a fair and rich heritage. They cannot understand that so long
+    as they are narrow, sensual, and unenlightened, the possession of a world could not
+    make them high or happy. They do not know that to have liberty, without the power of
+    using it for worthy ends, is a curse not a blessing. They imagine that experience of
+    the world's ways and wickedness will make them wise, whereas it will make them
+    depraved.</p>
+    <p>How can they realize that the good of life consists in being, and not in having?
+    that we are worth what our knowledge, love, admiration, hope, faith, and desire make
+    us worth? They will not perceive that happiness and unhappiness are conditions of
+    soul, and consequently that the wise, the loving, and the strong, what<span
+    class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span>ever their
+    outward fortune, are happy, while the ignorant, the heartless, and the weak are
+    miserable. To know ourselves, we should seek to discover the kind of life our
+    influence tends to create. Consider the kind of world college boys make for
+    themselves, the things they admire, the companions they find pleasant, the subjects
+    in which they take interest, the books that delight them,&mdash;and one great cause
+    of the failure of education will be made plain; for though they are sent to school to
+    be taught by professors, their influence upon one another is paramount. Instead of
+    helping one another to see that their real business is to educate themselves, they
+    persuade one another that life is given for common ends and vulgar pleasures. Hence
+    they look with envy upon their companions who are the sons of rich men, as they have
+    not lived long enough to learn that the fate of four fifths of the sons of rich men
+    in this country, is moral and physical ruin. If such is the public opinion of the
+    world in which they live; and if even strong men are feeble in the presence of public
+    opinion,&mdash;how shall we find fault with them for not being attracted by the
+    ideals of intellectual and moral excellence. For the trained mind even to think is
+    difficult, and for them independent thought is almost impossible. They do not know
+    the little less than creative power of right<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162"
+    id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span> education, or that as we are changed by action, we
+    are transformed by thought. What patient labor may do to exalt and refine the mental
+    faculties, until we become capable of entering into the life of every age and every
+    people, has not been shown to them; and hence they are not inspired by the high hope
+    of dwelling, in very truth, with all the noble and heroic souls who have passed
+    through this world and left record of themselves. We bid the youth learn many things
+    which he cannot but find both useless and uninteresting. And yet unless we discover
+    the secret of winning him to the love of study, the educational value of what he
+    learns is lost; for what leaves him unmoved, leaves him unimproved. His information
+    and accomplishments are comparatively unimportant. What he himself is, and what his
+    real self gives us grounds for hoping he shall become, is the true concern. To be
+    able to translate &AElig;schylus or Plato is not a great thing; but it is a great
+    thing to have the Greek's sense of what is fair, noble and intellectual. To be able
+    to solve a complex mathematical problem may be unimportant; but to have the mental
+    habit of accurate, close, patient thinking is important. It is easy to forget one's
+    Greek or the higher mathematics; but an intellectual or a moral habit is not easily
+    lost.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span></p>
+    <p>He who has right habits will go farther and rise higher than he who has only
+    brilliant attainments. It is an error, and a very common one, to suppose that
+    education is merely, or chiefly, a mental process, and consequently that the best
+    school is that in which the various kinds of knowledge are best taught. Our whole
+    being, physical, intellectual, and moral, is subject to the law of education. We may
+    educate the eye, the ear, the hand, the foot; and each member of the body may be
+    trained in many ways. The eye of the microscopist has received a training different
+    from that of the painter; the sculptor's hand has been taught a cunning unlike that
+    of the surgeon; the voice of the orator is developed in one way, that of the singer
+    in another. And so the faculties of the mind may be drawn forth, and each one in
+    various ways. The powers of observation, of reflection, of intuition, of imagination,
+    are all educable. One of the most important and most difficult lessons to learn is
+    that of attention. We know only what we are conscious of, and we are conscious only
+    of that to which we give heed. If we but hold the mind to any subject with
+    perseverance, it will deliver its secret. The little knowledge we have is often vague
+    and unreal, because we are heedless, because we have never taught ourselves to dwell
+    in conscious communion with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg
+    164]</a></span> the objects of thought. The trained eye sees innumerable beauties
+    which are hidden from others, and so the mind which is taught to look right sees
+    truths the uneducated can never know. We may be taught to judge as well as to look.
+    Indeed, once we have learned to see things as they are, correct opinions and
+    judgments naturally follow. All faculty is the result of education. Poets, orators,
+    philosophers, and saints bring not their gifts into the world with them; but by
+    looking and thinking, doing and striving, they rise from the poor elements of
+    half-conscious life to the clear vision of truth and beauty. Natural endowments are
+    not equal; but the chief cause of inequality lies in the unequal efforts which men
+    make to develop their endowments. The lack of imagination in the multitude makes
+    their life dull, uninteresting, and material, and it is assumed that we are born
+    with, or without, imagination, and that there is no remedy for this misery. And those
+    who admit that imagination is subject to the law of development, frequently hold that
+    it should be repressed rather than strengthened. Doubtless the imagination can be
+    cultivated, just as the eye or the ear, the judgment or the reason, can be
+    cultivated; and since imagination, like faith, hope, and love, helps us to live in
+    higher and fairer worlds, an educator is false to his calling<span class='pagenum'><a
+    name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> when he leaves it unimproved. The
+    classics, and especially poetry, are the great means of intellectual culture, because
+    more than anything else they have power to exalt and ennoble the imagination. To
+    suppose that this faculty is one which only poets and artists need, is to take a
+    shallow and partial view. The historian, the student of Nature, the statesman, the
+    minister of religion, the teacher, the mechanic even, if they are to do good work,
+    must possess imagination, which is at once an intellectual, a moral, and a religious
+    faculty. It is the mother and mistress of faith, hope, and love. It is the source of
+    great thoughts, of high aspirations, and of heavenly dreams. Without it the
+    illimitable starlit expanse loses its sublimity, oceans and mountains their awfulness
+    and majesty, flowers their beauty, home its sacred charm, youth its halo, and the
+    grave its solemn mystery.</p>
+    <p>Those powers within us which are directly related to conduct, the impulses to
+    self-preservation, and to the propagation of the race, are subject to the law of
+    education, not less than our physical and intellectual endowments. And the importance
+    of dealing rightly with these powers is readily perceived if we reflect that conduct
+    is the greater part of human life, which is a life of thought and love, of hope and
+    faith, of imagination and desire.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166"
+    id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span></p>
+    <p>As we can educate the faculties of thought and imagination, so can we develop the
+    power to love, to hope, to believe, and to desire. When there is question of the
+    intellect, teachers seek to impart information rather than to strengthen the mind,
+    and when there is question of the moral nature, they have recourse to precepts and
+    maxims instead of striving to confirm the will and to direct impulse. It is generally
+    held, in fact, that will is a gift, not a growth, and the same view is taken of all
+    our moral dispositions. We are supposed to receive from Nature a warm or a cold
+    heart, a hopeful or a despondent temper, a believing or a skeptical turn of mind, a
+    spiritual or a sensual bent. Now as I have already admitted, endowments are unlike;
+    but what has this to do with the drift of the argument? Minds, though by nature
+    unequal, may all be educated; and so wills may be educated, and so that which makes
+    us capable of faith, hope, and desire, may be drawn forth, strengthened, and refined.
+    Emerson, whose thought is predominantly spiritual, takes a low and material view of
+    the moral faculties, confusing strength of will with health. "Courage," he says, "is
+    the degree of circulation of the blood in the arteries.... When one has a plus of
+    health, all difficulties vanish before it." But will is a moral rather than a<span
+    class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span> constitutional
+    power; and in so far as it is moral, it may be cultivated and directed to noble aims
+    and ends. And if the teacher perform this work with fine knowledge and tact, he
+    becomes an educator; for upon the will, more than upon the intellectual faculties,
+    success or failure depends. Whatever we are able to will, we are able to learn to do;
+    and the best service we can render another is to rouse and confirm within him the
+    will to live and to work, that he may make himself a complete man, that thus he may
+    become a benefactor of men and a co-worker with God. The rational will, which is the
+    educated will, should give impulse and guidance to all our thinking, loving, and
+    doing. It should control appetite; it should nourish faith and hope; it should lead
+    us on through the illusory world of sensual delights, through the hardly less
+    illusory world of wealth and power, still bidding us look and see that the world to
+    which the conscious self really belongs, is infinite and eternal, and that to seek to
+    rest in aught else is to apostatize from reason and conscience. Thus it would awaken
+    in us a divine discontent, a sacred unrest, which might urge us on through the
+    darkness of appetite and the unwholesome air of avarice and ambition, whispering to
+    us that our life-work is to know truth, to love beauty, to do righteousness. To
+    none<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> is the
+    education of the will so necessary as to the lovers of intellectual excellence, for
+    they who live in the world of ideas are easily content to let the world of deeds take
+    care of itself. As the astronomer sees the earth lost like a grain of sand in
+    infinite space, so to the wide and deep view of one who is familiar with the course
+    of human thought and action, what any man, what the whole race of man, may do, can
+    seem but insignificant. From the vanity and noise of actors who fret and storm for
+    their brief hour, and then pass forever from life's stage, he flies to ideal worlds
+    where truth never changes, where beauty never grows old, and lives more richly blest
+    than lovers in Tempe or the dales of Arcady. And then the habit of looking at things
+    from many sides leads to doubt, hesitation, and inaction. While the wise deliberate,
+    the young and inexperienced have won or lost the battle. Thus the purely intellectual
+    life tends to weaken faith, hope, and desire, which are the sources whence conduct
+    springs, the drying up of which leaves us amid barren wastes, where high thinking, if
+    it be not impossible, brings neither strength nor joy; for the secret of strength and
+    joy lies in doing and not in thinking. It is a law of our nature that conduct brings
+    the most certain and the most permanent satisfaction, and hence whatever our
+    ideals,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span> the
+    pursuit should be inspired by the sense of duty.</p>
+    <div class="poem">
+      <div class="stanza">
+        <span class="i0">"Stern law-giver! yet thou dost wear<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">The Godhead's most benignant grace;<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">Nor know we anything so fair<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">As is the smile upon thy face.<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">Flowers laugh before thee on their beds<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">And fragrance in thy footing treads."<br />
+        </span>
+      </div>
+    </div>
+    <p>Then only do we move with certain step when we hear God's voice bidding us go
+    forward, as he commands the starry host to fly onward, and all living things to
+    spring upward to light and warmth. When we understand that he has made progress the
+    law of life, we learn to feel that not to grow is not to live. Then our view is
+    enlarged; we become lovers of perfection; we cherish every gift, and in many ways we
+    strive to cultivate the many powers which go to the making of a man. They all are
+    from him, and from him is the effort by which they are improved. We were born to make
+    ourselves alive in him and in his universe, and like the setter in the field, we
+    stretch eye and ear and nose to catch whatever message may be borne to us from his
+    boundless game park. We observe, reflect, compare; we read best books; we listen to
+    whoever speaks what he knows and feels to be truth. We take delight in whatever in
+    Nature is sublime or beautiful, and fresh thoughts and innocent hearts make<span
+    class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> us glad.
+    Wherever an atom thrills, there too is God, and in him we feel the thrill and are at
+    home. Our faith grows pure; our hope is confirmed; and our love and sympathy identify
+    us with an ever-widening sphere of life beyond us. The exclusive self passes into the
+    larger movement of the social and religious world around us, which, as we now
+    realize, is also within us, giving aims and motives to our love and self-devotion. We
+    understand that what hurts another can never help us, and that our private good must
+    tend to become a general blessing. Thus we find and love ourselves in the
+    intellectual, moral, and religious life of the race, which is a type and symbol of
+    the infinite life of God, the omen and promise of the soul's survival. As we become
+    conscious of ourselves only through communion with what is not ourselves, so we truly
+    live only when we live for God and the world he creates,&mdash;losing life that we
+    may find it; dying, like seed-corn, that we may rise to a new and richer life. Not
+    what gratifies our selfish or sensual nature will help us to lead this right human
+    life; but that which illumines and deepens thought and love, which gives to faith a
+    boundless scope, to hope an everlasting foundation, to desire the infinite beauty
+    which, though unseen, is felt, like memory of music fled. The unseen world ceases to
+    be a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span> future
+    world; and is recognized as the very world in which we now think and love, and so
+    intellectual and moral life passes into the sphere of religion. We no longer pursue
+    ideals which forever elude us, but we become partakers of the divine life; for in
+    giving ourselves to the Eternal and Infinite we find God in our souls. The ideal is
+    made real; God is with us, and through faith, hope, and love we are one with him, and
+    all is well. Henceforth in seeking to know more, to become more, we are animated by a
+    divine spirit. Now we may grow old, still learning many things, still smitten with
+    the love of beauty, still finding delight in fresh thoughts and innocent pleasures,
+    and it may be that we shall be found to be teachers of wisdom and of holiness. Then,
+    indeed, shall we be happy, for it is better to teach truth than to win battles. A
+    war-hero supposes a barbarous condition of the race, and when all shall be civilized,
+    they who know and love the most shall be held to be the greatest and the best.</p>
+    <hr style="width: 65%;" />
+    <h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII.</h2>
+    <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span>
+    <h4>UNIVERSITY EDUCATION.</h4>
+    <p>As they who look on the ocean think of its vastness; of the many shores in many
+    climes visited by its waves to ply "their priest-like task of clean ablution;" of
+    cities and empires that rose beside its waters, flourished, decayed, and became a
+    memory; of others that shall rise and also pass away, while the moving element
+    remains,&mdash;so we to-day beholding ancient Faith, laying, in the New World, the
+    cornerstone of an institution which better than anything else symbolizes the aim and
+    tendency of modern life, find ourselves dwelling in thought upon what has been and
+    what will be.</p>
+    <p>On the one hand rises the venerable form of that religion whose voice re-echoed in
+    the hearts of Abraham, Moses, David, and Isaiah; whose lips, when the Saviour spoke,
+    uttered diviner truth and thrilled the hearts of men with purer love, living with
+    them in deserts and catacombs, leading them along bloodstained ways to victory and
+    peace, until at length the Church gleamed forth from amid the parting <span
+    class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span>storm-clouds and
+    shone like a mountain-built city bathed in sunlight. On the other stands the Genius
+    of the Republic, the embodied spirit of the sovereign people, who, accepting as
+    literal truth the Christian principles that God is a Father, and men brothers and
+    therefore equal, strive to take from political society the blindness and fatality of
+    natural law, and to endow it with the divine and human attributes of justice, mercy,
+    and intelligence. From the very beginning our American history is full of religious
+    zeal, of high courage and strong endeavor. When Columbus, saddened by the
+    frivolousness or the perfidy of courts, but unshaken in his purpose, walked the
+    streets of the Spanish capital, lonely and forsaken, the children, as he passed
+    along, would point to their foreheads and smile, for was not his mind unhinged, and
+    did he not believe the world was round and on the other side men walked like flies
+    upon a ceiling? But a woman's heart understood that his folly was of the kind which
+    is the wisdom of God, and with her help he set sail, not timidly or doubting like the
+    Portuguese who for fifty years hugged the African coast, advancing and then receding,
+    but facing the awful and untraveled ocean with a heart stronger than its storm-swept
+    billows, he steered due west. In his journal, day after day, he wrote these simple
+    but sublime words,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg
+    174]</a></span> "That day he sailed westward, which was his course." And still, as
+    hope rose and fell, as misgivings and terrors seized on his men, as the compass
+    varied in inexplicable ways as though they were entering regions where the very laws
+    of Nature change, the soul of the great admiral stood firm and each evening he wrote
+    again the self-same words, "that day he sailed westward which was his course," until
+    at length seeing what he foresaw, he gave to Christendom another world and enlarged
+    the boundaries and scope of earthly life. What hearts had not the men who in New
+    England, in Virginia, in Maryland, and elsewhere, settled in little bands on the edge
+    of vast and unexplored regions, covered by interminable forests, where savages lay in
+    wait, athirst for blood. We hear without surprise that wise and prudent men looked
+    upon the early attempts to take possession of America as not less wild and visionary
+    than the legendary exploits of Amadis de Gaul; but what Utopian dreamer, what poet
+    soaring in the high regions of his fancy, could have imagined two centuries and a
+    half ago the beauty, the power, the free and majestic sweep of the stream of human
+    life which has poured across this continent? Who could have dared to hope that the
+    religious exiles who sought here a home for the Christian conscience were a
+    seed,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span> the
+    least of all, which was destined to grow into a tree whose boughs should shelter the
+    land, and bring refreshment to the weary and heavy-laden from every part of the
+    earth?</p>
+    <p>Who could have thought that these fugitives from the tyrant's power would, in
+    little more than a century, grow like the tribes of Israel into a people able to
+    withstand the onslaughts of the oppressor, and to abolish forever within their
+    borders despotic rule? Who could have had faith that men of different creeds,
+    speaking various tongues, bred in unlike social conditions, would here coalesce and
+    co-operate for the general purposes of free government? Above all, who could have
+    believed that a form of government rarely tried, even in small States, and when tried
+    found practicable only for brief periods, would here become so stable, so strong,
+    that every hamlet, every village, is self-poised and manages its own affairs? The
+    achievement is greater than we are able to know; nor does it lie chiefly in the
+    millions who coming from many lands have here made homes and found themselves free;
+    nor in the building of cities, the clearing of forests, the draining of swamps, the
+    binding of two oceans, and the opening of lines of rapid communication in every
+    direction. Not to numbers or wealth do we owe our significance among the<span
+    class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span> nations; but to
+    the fact that we have shown that respect for law is compatible with civil and
+    religious liberty; that a free people can become prosperous and strong, and preserve
+    order without king or standing army; that the State and the Church can move in
+    separate orbits and still co-operate for the common welfare; that men of different
+    races and beliefs may live together in peace; that in spite of an abnormally rapid
+    increase of population and of wealth, and of the many evils thence resulting, the
+    prevailing tendency is to sanity of thought and sentiment, thus plainly manifesting
+    the vigor of our life and institutions; that the government of the majority, where
+    men put their trust in God and in knowledge, is in the end the government of the good
+    and the wise. We have thus helped to establish confidence in human nature; to prove
+    that man's instincts, like the laws of Nature, are conservative; to show that the
+    enthusiasts who would overturn everything, destroy everything, have no abiding place
+    or influence in the affairs of a free people, as volcanic and cyclonic forces are but
+    transitory and superficial in their action upon the earth. We have shown in a word
+    that under a popular government, where men are faithful and intelligent, it is as
+    impossible that society should become chaotic as that the planets should dissolve
+    into star dust.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg
+    177]</a></span></p>
+    <p>It is difficult to realize what an advance this is on all previous views of
+    political life; how full it is of promise, how accordant with the sentiments of the
+    noblest minds in every part of the world. It gives us the leading place among the
+    nations which are moving along rising ways to higher and freer life. To turn to the
+    Catholic Church in America; all observers remark its great development here, the
+    rapid increase in the number of its adherents, its growth in wealth and influence,
+    the firm yet gentle hand with which it brings heterogeneous populations under the
+    control of a common faith and discipline, the ease with which it adapts itself to new
+    conditions and organizes itself in every part of the country. It is not a little
+    thing, in spite of unfriendly public opinion and of great and numerous obstacles, in
+    spite of the burden which high achievements impose and of the lack of easy and supple
+    movement which gathering years imply, to enter new fields, to bend one's self to
+    unaccustomed work, and to struggle for the right to live in the midst of a generation
+    heedless of the good, and mindful only of the evil which has been associated with
+    one's life. This is what the Catholic Church in America has had to do, and has done
+    with a success which recalls the memory of the spread of Christianity through the
+    Roman Em<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg
+    178]</a></span>pire. It counts its members here by millions, while a hundred years
+    ago it counted them by thousands; and its priests, churches, schools, and
+    institutions of charity it reckons by the thousand, while then they could be counted
+    hardly by tens. Public opinion which was then hostile is no longer so in the same
+    degree. Prejudice has not indeed ceased to exist; for where there is question of
+    religion, of society, of politics, even the fairest minds fail to see things as they
+    are, and the multitude, it may be supposed, will never become impartial; but the
+    tendency of our life and of the age is opposed to bigotry, and as we lose faith in
+    the justice and efficacy of persecution, we perceive more clearly that true religion
+    can neither be defended nor propagated by violence and intolerance, by appeals to
+    sectarian bitterness and national hatred. By none is this more sincerely
+    acknowledged, or more deeply felt, than by the Catholics of the United States.</p>
+    <p>The special significance of our American Catholic history is not found in the
+    phases of our life which attract attention, and are a common theme for declamation;
+    but it lies in the fact that our example proves that the Church can thrive where it
+    is neither protected nor persecuted, but is simply left to itself to manage its own
+    affairs and to do its work. Such an ex<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179"
+    id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span>periment had never been made when we became an
+    independent people, and its success is of world-wide import, because this is the
+    modern tendency and the position toward the Church which all the nations will sooner
+    or later assume; just as they all will be forced finally to accept popular rule. The
+    great underlying principle of democracy,&mdash;that men are brothers and have equal
+    rights, and that God clothes the soul with freedom,&mdash;is a truth taught by
+    Christ, is a truth proclaimed by the Church; and the faith of Christians in this
+    principle, in spite of hesitations and misgivings, of oppositions and obstacles and
+    inconceivable difficulties, has finally given to it its modern vigor and beneficent
+    power. The spirit of love and mercy, which is the spirit of Christ, breathes like a
+    heavenly zephyr through the whole earth, and under its influence the age is moved to
+    attempt greater things than hitherto have seemed possible. Never before has sympathy
+    among men been so widespread; never has the desire to come to the relief of all who
+    suffer pain or wrong been so general or so intelligent. To feed the hungry, to clothe
+    the naked, to visit the sick, seems now comparatively a little thing. Our purpose is
+    to create a social condition in which none shall lack food or clothing or shelter;
+    following the divine command: "O Israel, thou shalt not suffer that<span
+    class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span> there be a
+    beggar or a pauper within thy borders." Kindness to slaves ceased to be a virtue for
+    us when we abolished slavery; and we look forward to the day when nor man nor woman
+    nor child shall work and still be condemned to a life of misery. That great blot upon
+    the page of history, woman's fate, has partly been erased, and we are drawing near to
+    the time when in the world as in Christ there shall be made no distinction between
+    slave and freeman, between man and woman. If we compare modern with ancient and
+    medieval epochs, wars have become less frequent, and in war men have become more
+    humane and merciful.</p>
+    <p>Increasing knowledge of human life as it is found in the savage, in the barbarian,
+    and in the civilized man, fixes us more unalterably in our belief in the worth of
+    progress. The savage and the barbarian are hopelessly ignorant, and therefore weak
+    and wretched, since ignorance is the chief source of man's misery. "My people," says
+    the prophet, "are destroyed for lack of knowledge." From ignorance rather than from
+    depravity have sprung the most appalling crimes, the most pernicious vices. In
+    darkness of mind men have worshiped senseless material things, have deified every
+    cruel and carnal passion; at the dictate of unenlightened conscience they have
+    oppressed, laid waste,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg
+    181]</a></span> and murdered; for lack of knowledge they have perished in the snows
+    of winter, been wasted by miasmatic air, have fallen victims to famine and
+    pestilence, and have bowed for centuries beneath the degrading yoke of tyranny.
+    Science is a ministering angel. The Jesuits by bringing quinine to the knowledge of
+    civilized man have done more to relieve suffering than all the builders of hospitals.
+    Vaccine has wrought more potently than the all-forgetful love of mothers; more than
+    all the patriots gunpowder has won victories over tyrants; and the printing-press is
+    a greater teacher than philosophers, writers, poets, schools, and universities. Like
+    a heavenly messenger the compass guides man whithersoever he will go, still turning
+    to the one fixed point, as turn the hearts of the children of men to God. The nations
+    intermingle and lose their jealousies and hatreds, borne everywhere by the power of
+    steam; and the thoughts of men are carried by lightning round the whole earth.
+    Commerce has become a world-wide interchange of good offices; and while it adds to
+    the comfort of all, it enlarges thought and strengthens sympathy. Our greater
+    knowledge has enabled us to lengthen human life; to extinguish some of the most
+    virulent diseases; to perform surgical operations without pain; to increase the
+    fertility of the soil; to make pestilential regions habita<span class='pagenum'><a
+    name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span>ble; to illumine our cities and
+    homes at night with the brilliancy of day; to give to laborers better clothing and
+    dwellings than princes in other ages have had. It has opened to our vision the
+    limitless sidereal expanse, and revealed to us a heavenly glory which transcends the
+    imagination of inspired poets. Before this new light the earth has dwindled away and
+    become an atom, as the stars hide when the great sun wheels upward from out the
+    night. We have looked into the very heart of the sun itself, and know of what it is
+    made; and with the microscope we have caught sight of the marvelous world of the
+    infinitesimally small, have seen what human eye had never beheld, and have watched
+    unseen life building up and breaking down all living organisms. We have learned how
+    to walk secure in the depths of ocean, to soar in mid-air, to rush on our way
+    unimpeded through the stony hearts of mountains. We see the earth grow from a
+    fire-ball to be the home of man; we know its anatomy; we read its history; and we
+    behold races of animals which passed away ages before the eye of man looked forth
+    upon the boundless mystery and saw the shadow of the presence of the infinite God.
+    Better than the Greeks we know the history of Greece; than the Romans that of Rome.
+    Words that were never written have whispered<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183"
+    id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> to us the dreams and hopes of people that perished
+    and left no record; and the more we have learned of the past the more clearly do we
+    perceive how far the present age surpasses all others in knowledge and in power.</p>
+    <p>The mighty movement by which this development has been caused, has not slackened,
+    but seems each day to gain new force; and the marvelous changes, political, social,
+    moral, intellectual, and physical, which give character to the nineteenth century are
+    but the prelude to a drama which shall make all past achievements of our race appear
+    weak and contemptible. To imagine that our superiority is merely mechanical and
+    material is to fail to see things as they are. Greater individuals may have lived
+    than now are living, but never before has the world been governed with so much wisdom
+    and so much justice; and the power back of our progress is intellectual, moral, and
+    religious. Science is not material. It is the product of intellect and will; and the
+    great founders of modern science, Copernicus, Kepler, Bacon, Descartes, Galileo,
+    Newton, Leibnitz, Amp&egrave;re, Liebig, Fresnel, Faraday, and Mayer, were
+    Christians. "However paradoxical it may sound," says DuBois-Reymond, "modern science
+    owes its origin to Christianity."</p>
+    <p>Since the course of events is left chiefly to<span class='pagenum'><a
+    name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> the direction of natural causes,
+    and since science enables man to bend the stars, the lightning, the winds, and the
+    waves to his purposes, what shall resist the onward march of those who are armed with
+    such power? Since life is a warfare, a struggle, how shall the ignorant and the
+    thoughtless survive in a conflict in which natural knowledge has placed in the hands
+    of the wise forces which the angels may not wield? Since the prosperity of the Church
+    is left subject to human influence, shall the Son of Man find faith on earth when he
+    comes if the most potent instrument God has given to man is abandoned to those who
+    know not Christ? Why should we who reckon it a part of the glory of the Church in the
+    past that she labored to civilize barbarians, to emancipate slaves, to elevate woman,
+    to preserve the classical writings, to foster music, painting, sculpture,
+    architecture, poetry, and eloquence, think it no part of her mission now to encourage
+    scientific research? To be Catholic is to be drawn not only to the love of whatever
+    is good and beautiful, but also to the love of whatever is true; and to do the best
+    work the Catholic Church must fit herself to a constantly changing environment, to
+    the character of every people, and to the wants of each age. Has not Christ declared
+    that whoever is not against us is for us; and may we<span class='pagenum'><a
+    name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> not therefore find friends in all
+    who work for worthy ends,&mdash;for liberty and knowledge, for increase of power and
+    love? This large sympathy, which true religion and the best culture promote, is
+    Catholic, and it is also American; for here with us, I think, the whole world is for
+    men of good-will who are not fools. We who are the children of ancient Faith, who
+    inherit the boon from fathers who held it to be above all price, are saved, where
+    there is question of former times, from irreverent thoughts and shallow views.</p>
+    <div class="poem">
+      <div class="stanza">
+        <span class="i0">For us the long past ages have not flown;<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">Like our own deeds they travel with us still;<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">Reviling them, we but ourselves disown;<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">We are the stream their many currents fill.<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">From their rich youth our manhood has upgrown,<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">And in our blood their hopes and loves yet thrill.<br />
+        </span>
+      </div>
+    </div>
+    <p>But if like the old, the Church can look to the past, like the young, she can look
+    to the future. If there are Catholics who linger regretful amid glories that have
+    vanished, there are also Catholics who in the midst of their work feel a confidence
+    which leaves no place for regret; who well understand that the earthly environment in
+    which the Church lives is subject to change and decay, and that new surroundings
+    imply new tasks and impose new duties. The splendor of the medieval Church,<span
+    class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> its worldly
+    power, the pomp of its ceremonial, the glittering pageantry in which its pontiffs and
+    prelates vied with kings and emperors in gorgeous display, are gone, or going; and
+    were it given to man to recall the past, the spirit whereby it lived would still be
+    wanting. But it is the mark of youthful and barbarous natures to have eyes chiefly
+    for the garb and circumstance of religion, to see the body only and not the soul. At
+    all events the course of life is onward, and enthusiasm for the past cannot become
+    the source of great and far reaching action. The present alone gives opportunity; and
+    the face of hope turns to the future, and the wise are busy with what lies at hand,
+    with immediate duty, and not with schemes for bringing back the things that have
+    passed away. Leaving their dead with the dead, they work for life and for the
+    living.</p>
+    <p>As in each individual there is a better and a worse self, so in each age there are
+    conflicting tendencies; but it is the part of enlightened minds and generous hearts
+    to see what is true, and to love what is good. The fault-finder is hateful both in
+    life and in literature; and it is Iago, the most despicable of characters, whom
+    Shakespeare makes say, "I am nothing if not critical." A Christian of all men is
+    without excuse for being fretful and sour, for thinking<span class='pagenum'><a
+    name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> and acting as though this were a
+    devil's world, and not the eternal God's, as though there were danger lest the
+    Almighty should not prevail. We know that God is, and therefore that all will be
+    well; and if it were conceivable that God is not, it would still be the part of a
+    true man to labor to make knowledge and virtue prevail. The criticism of the age
+    which gives a better understanding of its needs is good; all other is baneful.</p>
+    <p>Opinion rules the world, and a right appreciation of the influences by which
+    opinion is molded is the surest guide to a knowledge of the time. In ignorant and
+    barbarous ages the notions and beliefs of men are crude, and are controlled by a few,
+    for only a few possess knowledge and influence; and even in the age of Pericles and
+    Augustus, the thought of mankind means the thoughts of some dozens of men. A few
+    vigorous minds founded schools of opinion and style, became intellectual dictators,
+    and asserted their authority for centuries. As the art of printing was yet unknown,
+    and books were rare, the teacher was the speaker; orators held sway over the destiny
+    of nations; and the Christian pulpit became the world's university. But the
+    printing-press in giving to thought a permanent form which is placed under the eyes
+    of the whole world has made the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188"
+    id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> passion, the splendor, the majestic phrase of
+    oratory seem unreal as an actor's speech, evanescent as a singer's tones; and hence
+    the pulpit and the rostrum, though they still have influence, can never again
+    exercise the control over opinion which belonged to them when all men had not become
+    readers.</p>
+    <p>What is true of eloquence may be affirmed of all art. In spite of ourselves, even
+    the best of us find it difficult to make art a serious business; and unless taken
+    seriously, it is vain, loses its soul, and falls into the hands of pretenders and
+    sentimentalists. Once painting, sculpture, architecture, and song were the expression
+    of thoughts and moods which irresistibly appealed for utterance; but with us they are
+    a fashion, like cosmetics and laces. Poetry, the highest of arts, has lost its
+    original character of song, and the poet now deals, in an imaginative way, with
+    problems which puzzle metaphysicians and theologians. The causes that have robbed art
+    of so much of its charm and power have necessarily diminished the influence of
+    ceremonial worship, which is the artistic expression of the soul's faith and love, of
+    its hopes and yearnings. We are, indeed, still subdued by the majesty of dimly
+    lighted cathedrals, by solemn music, and the various symbolism of the ritual, but we
+    feel not the deep awe of our fathers<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189"
+    id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> whose knees furrowed the pavement stones, and whose
+    burning lips kissed them smooth; and to blame ourselves for this would serve no
+    purpose. To those who find no pleasure in sweet sounds, we pipe in vain, and argument
+    to show that one ought to be moved by what leaves him cold, is meaningless. Emotion
+    is spontaneous, and adorers, like lovers, neither ask nor care for reasons. There is
+    in fact an element of illusion in feeling; passion is non-rational; and when the
+    spirit of the time is intellectual, men are seldom devout, however religious they may
+    be. The scientific habit of mind is not favorable to childlike and unreasoning faith;
+    and the new views of the physical universe which the modern mind is forced to take,
+    bring us face to face with new problems in religion and morals, in politics and
+    society.</p>
+    <p>Whatever we may think of the past, whatever we may fear or hope for the future, if
+    we would make an impression on the world around us, we must understand the thoughts,
+    the purposes, and the methods of those with whom we live; and we must at the same
+    time recognize that though the truth of religion be unchangeable, the mind of man is
+    not so, and that the point of view varies not only from people to people, and from
+    age to age, but from year to year in the growing thought of<span class='pagenum'><a
+    name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> the individual and of the world. As
+    in travelling round the earth, time changes, and when it is morning here, it is
+    evening there, so with difference of latitude and longitude, of civilization and
+    barbarism, the opinions and manners of men grow different. They who observe from
+    positions widely separate do not see the same things, or do not see them in the same
+    light. Proof for a peasant is not proof for a philosopher; and arguments which in one
+    age are held to be unanswerable, in another lose power to convince, or become
+    altogether meaningless. It is not to be imagined that the hearts of Christians should
+    again burn with the devotional enthusiasm and the warlike ardor of the Crusaders; and
+    just as little is it conceivable that men should again become passionately interested
+    in the questions which in the fourth and fifth centuries filled the world with the
+    noise of theological disputation. It were mere loss of time to beat now the waste
+    fields of the Protestant controversy. Wiseman's book on science and revealed
+    religion, which fifty years ago attracted attention, lies like a stranded ship on a
+    deserted shore, and attempts of the kind are held in slight esteem. The immature mind
+    is eager to reduce faith to knowledge; but the accomplished thinker understands that
+    knowledge begins and ends in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191"
+    id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> faith. There is oppugnancy between belief in an
+    all-wise, all-good, and all-powerful God, and belief in the divine origin of Nature,
+    whose face is smeared with filth and blood; but we hold that the conflicting faiths
+    and increasing knowledge cannot add to the difficulty. On the contrary, the higher
+    the intelligence, the purer Nature seems to grow. The chemical elements are as fair
+    and sweet in the corpse as in the living body, and the earthquake and the cyclone
+    obey the same laws which make the waters flow and the zephyrs breathe perfume. It is
+    the imagination and not the reason that is overwhelmed by the idea of unending space
+    and time. To the intellect, eternity is not more mysterious than the present moment,
+    and the distance which separates us from the remotest stars is not more
+    incomprehensible than a hand's breadth. Science is the widening thought of man,
+    working on the hypothesis of universal intelligibility toward universal intelligence;
+    and religion is the soul, escaping from the labyrinth of matter to the light and love
+    of the Infinite; and on the heights they meet and are at peace.</p>
+    <p>Meanwhile they who seek natural knowledge must admit that faith, hope, and love
+    are the everlasting foundations of human life, and that a philosophic creed is as
+    sterile as Platonic love; and they who uphold religion must confess that<span
+    class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> faith which
+    ignorance alone can keep alive is little better than superstition. To strive to
+    attain truth under whatever form is to seek to know God; and yet no ideal can be true
+    for man, unless it can be made to minister to faith, hope, and love; for by them we
+    live. Let us then teach ourselves to see things as they are, without preoccupation or
+    misgivings lest what is should ever make it impossible, for us to believe and hope in
+    the better yet to be. Science and morality need religion as much as thought and
+    action require emotion; and beyond the utmost reach of the human mind lie the
+    boundless worlds of mystery where the soul must believe and adore what it can but
+    dimly discern. The Copernican theory of the heavens startled believers at first; but
+    we have long since grown accustomed to the new view which reveals to us a universe
+    infinitely more glorious than aught the ancients ever imagined. We do not rightly see
+    either the things which are always around us, or those which for the first time are
+    presented to our eyes; and when novel theories of the visible world, which in some
+    sense is part of our very being, profoundly alter our traditional notions, the mind
+    is disturbed and overclouded, and the lapse of time alone can make plain the real
+    bearing of the new learning upon life, upon religion, and upon society. There<span
+    class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span> can be no doubt
+    but increase of knowledge involves incidental evils, just as the progress of
+    civilization multiplies our wants; but the wise are not therefore driven to seek help
+    from ignorance and barbarism. Whatever the loss, all knowledge is gain. The evils
+    that spring from enlightenment of mind will find their remedy in greater
+    enlightenment. Such at least is the faith of an age whose striking characteristic is
+    confidence in education. Men have ceased to care for the bliss there may be in
+    ignorance, and those who dread knowledge, if such there still be, are as far away
+    from the life of this century as the dead whose bones crumbled to dust a thousand
+    years ago.</p>
+    <p>The aim the best now propose to themselves is to provide not wealth or pleasure,
+    or better machinery or more leisure, but a higher and more effective kind of
+    education; and hence whatever one's preoccupation, whether social, political,
+    religious, or industrial, the question of education forces itself upon his attention.
+    Pedagogy has grown to be a science, and chairs are founded in universities to expound
+    the theory and art of teaching. The learning of former times has become the ignorance
+    of our own; and the classical writings have ceased to be the treasure-house of
+    knowledge, and in consequence their educational value has diminished.<span
+    class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span></p>
+    <p>Whoever three hundred years ago wished to acquaint himself with philosophic,
+    poetic, or eloquent expression of the best that was known, was compelled to seek for
+    it in the Greek and Latin authors; but now Greek and Latin are accomplishments
+    chiefly, and a classical scholar, if unacquainted with modern science and literature,
+    is hopelessly ignorant. "If any one," said Hegius, the teacher of Erasmus, "wishes to
+    learn grammar, rhetoric, mathematics, history, or holy scripture, let him read
+    Greek;" and in his day this was as true as it is false and absurd in our own. In the
+    Middle Ages, Latin was made the groundwork of the educational system, not on account
+    of any special value it may have been supposed to possess as a mental discipline, but
+    because it was the language of the learned, of all who spoke or wrote on questions of
+    religion, philosophy, literature, and science; but now, who that is able to think
+    dreams of burying his thought in a Greek or Roman urn? The Germans in philosophy, the
+    English in poetry, have surpassed the Greeks; and French prose is not inferior in
+    qualities of style to the ancient classics, and in wealth of thought and knowledge so
+    far excels them as to preclude comparison.</p>
+    <p>The life of Greece and Rome, compared with ours, was narrow and superficial; their
+    ideas of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span>
+    Nature were crude and often grotesque; they lacked sympathy; the Greek had no sense
+    of sin; the Roman none of the mercy which tempers justice. In their eyes the child
+    was not holy, woman was not sacred, the slave was not man. Their notion of liberty
+    was political and patriotic merely; the human soul, standing forth alone, and
+    appealing from States and emperors to the living God, was to them a scandal. Now
+    literature is the outgrowth of a people's life and thought, and the nobler the life,
+    the more enlightened the thought, the more valuable will the expression be; and since
+    there is greater knowledge, wisdom, freedom, justice, mercy, goodness, power, in
+    Christendom now than ever existed in the pagan world, it would certainly be an
+    anomaly if modern literature were inferior to the classical. The ancients, indeed,
+    excel us in the sense for form and symmetry. There is also a freshness in their
+    words, a joyousness in their life, a certain heroic temper in their thinking and
+    acting, which give them power to engage the emotions; and hence to deny them
+    exceptional educational value is to take a partial view. But even though we grant
+    that the study of their literatures is in certain respects the best intellectual
+    discipline, education, it must be admitted, means knowledge as well as training; and
+    thorough training is something more than<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196"
+    id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> refined taste. It is strength as well, and ability
+    to think in many directions and on many subjects. Nothing known to men should escape
+    the attention of the wise; for the knowledge of the age determines what is demanded
+    of the scholar. And since it is our privilege to live at a time when knowledge is
+    increasing more rapidly even than population and wealth, we must, if we hope to stand
+    in the front ranks of those who know, keep pace with the onward movement of mind. To
+    turn away from this outburst of splendor and power; to look back to pagan
+    civilization or Christian barbarism,&mdash;is to love darkness more than light.
+    Aristotle is a great mind, but his learning is crude and his ideas of Nature are
+    frequently grotesque. Saint Thomas is a powerful intellect; but his point of view in
+    all that concerns natural knowledge has long since vanished from sight. What poverty
+    of learning does not the early medieval scheme of education reveal; and when in the
+    twelfth century the idea of a university rises in the best minds, how incomplete and
+    vague it is! Amid the ruins of castles and cathedrals we grow humble, and think
+    ourselves inferior to men who thus could build. But they were not as strong as we,
+    and they led a more ignorant and a blinder life; and so when we read of great names
+    of the past, the mists of illusion fill the skies, and our eyes are<span
+    class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span> dimmed by the
+    glory of clouds tinged with the splendors of a sun that has set.</p>
+    <p>Certainly a true university will be the home both of ancient wisdom and of new
+    learning; it will teach the best that is known, and encourage research; it will
+    stimulate thought, refine taste, and awaken the love of excellence; it will be at
+    once a scientific institute, a school of culture, and a training ground for the
+    business of life; it will educate the minds that give direction to the age; it will
+    be a nursery of ideas, a centre of influence. The good we do men is quickly lost, the
+    truth we leave them remains forever; and therefore the aim of the best education is
+    to enable students to see what is true, and to inspire them with the love of all
+    truth. Professional knowledge brings most profit to the individual; but philosophy
+    and literature, science and art, elevate and refine the spirit of the whole people,
+    and hence the university will make culture its first aim, and its scope will widen as
+    the thoughts and attainments of men are enlarged and multiplied. Here if anywhere
+    shall be found teachers whose one passion is the love of truth, which is the love of
+    God and of man; who look on all things with a serene eye; who bring to every question
+    a calm, unbiased mind; who, where the light of the intellect fails, walk by faith and
+    accept the omen of hope;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg
+    198]</a></span> who understand that to be distrustful of science is to lack culture,
+    to doubt the good of progress is to lack knowledge, and to question the necessity of
+    religion is to want wisdom; who know that in a God-made and God-governed world it
+    must lie in the nature of things that reason and virtue should tend to prevail, in
+    spite of the fact that in every age the majority of men think foolishly and act
+    unwisely. How divine is not man's apprehensive endowment! When we see beauty fade,
+    the singer lose her charm, the performer his skill, we feel no commiseration; but
+    when we behold a noble mind falling to decay, we are saddened, for we cannot believe
+    that the godlike and immortal faculty should be subject to death's power. It is a
+    reflection of the light that never yet was seen on sea or land; it is the magician
+    who shapes and colors the universe, as a drop of water mirrors the boundless sky. Is
+    not this the first word the Eternal speaks?&mdash;"Let there be light." And does not
+    the blessed Saviour come talking of life, of light, of truth, of joy, and peace? Have
+    not the Christian nations moved forward following after liberty and knowledge? Is not
+    our religion the worship of God in spirit and in truth? Is not its motive Love,
+    divine and human, and is not knowledge Love's guide and minister?</p>
+    <p>The future prevails over the present, the un<span class='pagenum'><a
+    name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span>seen over what touches the senses
+    only in high and cultivated natures; and it is held to be the supreme triumph of God
+    over souls when the young, to whom the earth seems to be heaven revealed and made
+    palpable, turn from all the beauty and contagious joy to seek, to serve, to love Him
+    who is the infinite and only real good. Yet this is what we ask of the lovers of
+    intellectual excellence, who work without hope of temporal reward and without the
+    strength of heart which is found in obeying the Divine Will; for mental improvement
+    is seldom urged as a religious duty, although it is plain that to seek to know truth
+    is to seek to know God, in whom and through whom and by whom all things are, and
+    whose infinite nature and most awful power may best be seen by the largest and most
+    enlightened mind. Mind is Heaven's pioneer making way for faith, hope, and love, for
+    higher aims and nobler life; and to doubt its worth and excellence is to deny the
+    reasonableness of religion, since belief, if not wholly blind, must rest on
+    knowledge. The best culture serves spiritual and moral ends. Its aim and purpose is
+    to make reason prevail over sense and appetite; to raise man not only to a perception
+    of the harmonies of truth, but also to the love of whatever is good and fair. Not in
+    a darkened mind does the white ray of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200"
+    id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> heavenly light break into prismatic glory; not
+    through the mists of ignorance is the sweet countenance of the divine Saviour best
+    discerned. If some have pursued a sublime art frivolously; have soiled a fair mind by
+    ignoble life,&mdash;this leaves the good of the intellect untouched. Some who have
+    made strongest profession of religion, who have held high and the highest places in
+    the Church, have been unworthy, but we do not thence infer that the tendency of
+    religion is to make men so. They who praise the bliss and worth of ignorance are
+    sophists. Stupidity is more to be dreaded than malignity; for ignorance, and not
+    malice, is the most fruitful cause of human misery. Let knowledge grow, let truth
+    prevail. Since God is God, the universe is good, and the more we know of its laws,
+    the plainer will the right way become. The investigator and the thinker, the man of
+    culture and the man of genius, cannot free themselves from bias and limitation; but
+    the work they do will help me and all men.</p>
+    <p>Indifference or opposition to the intellectual life is but a survival of the
+    general anti-educational prejudices of former ages. It is also a kind of envy,
+    prompting us to find fault with whatever excellence is a reproach to our
+    unworthiness. The disinterested love of truth is<span class='pagenum'><a
+    name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> a rare virtue, most difficult to
+    acquire and most difficult to preserve. If knowledge bring power and wealth, if it
+    give fame and pleasure, it is dear to us; but how many are able to love it for its
+    own sake? Do not nearly all men strive to convince themselves of the truth of those
+    opinions which they are interested in holding? What is true, good, or fair is rarely
+    at once admitted to be so; but what is practically useful men quickly accept, because
+    they live chiefly in the world of external things, and care little for the spiritual
+    realms of truth and beauty. The ignorant do not even believe that knowledge gives
+    power and pleasure, and the educated, except the chosen few, value it only for the
+    power and pleasure it gives. As the disinterested love of truth is rare, so is
+    perfect sincerity. Indeed, insincerity is here the radical vice. Good faith is
+    essential to faith; and a sophistical mind is as immoral and irreligious as a
+    depraved heart. Let a man be true, seek and speak truth, and all good things are
+    possible; but when he persuades himself that a lie may be useful and ought to be
+    propagated, he becomes the enemy of his own soul and the foe of all that makes life
+    high and godlike.</p>
+    <p>Now, to be able to desire to see things as they are, whatever their relations to
+    ourselves<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span>
+    may be, and to speak of them simply as they appear to us, is one result of the best
+    training of the intellect, which in the world of thought and opinion gives us that
+    sweet indifference which is the rule of saints when they submit the conduct of their
+    lives wholly to divine guidance. Why should he whose mind is strong, and rests on
+    God, be disturbed? It is with opinion as with life. We cannot tell what moment truth
+    will overthrow the one and death the other; but thought cannot change the nature of
+    things. The clouds dissolve, but the eternal heavens remain. Over the bloodiest
+    battlefields they bend calm and serene, and trees drink the sunlight and flowers
+    exhale perfume. The moonbeam kisses the crater's lip. Over buried cities the yellow
+    harvest waves, and all the catastrophes of endless time are present to God, who
+    dwells in infinite peace. He sees the universe and is not troubled, and shall not we
+    who are akin to him learn to look upon our little meteorite without losing repose of
+    mind and heart? Were it not a sweeter piety to trust that he who made all things will
+    know how to make all things right; and therefore not to grow anxious lest some
+    investigator should find him at fault or thwart his plans? As living bodies are
+    immersed in an invisible substance which feeds the flame<span class='pagenum'><a
+    name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> of life, so souls breathe and think
+    and love in the atmosphere of God, and the higher their thought and love the more do
+    they partake of the divine nature. Many things, in this age of transition, are
+    passing away; but true thoughts and pure love are immortal, and whatever opinions as
+    to other things a man may hold, all know that to be human is to be intelligent and
+    moral, and therefore religious. A hundred years hence our present machinery may seem
+    to be as rude as the implements of the middle age look to us, and our political and
+    social organization may appear barbarous,&mdash;so rapid has the movement of life
+    become. But we do not envy those who shall then be living, partly it may be because
+    we can have but dim visions of the greater blessings they shall enjoy, but chiefly
+    because we feel that after all the true worth of life lies in nothing of this kind,
+    but in knowing and doing, in believing and loving; and that it would not be easier to
+    live for truth and righteousness were electricity applied to aerial navigation and
+    all the heavens filled with argosies of magic sail. It is not possible to love
+    sincerely the best thoughts, as it is not possible to love God when our aim is
+    something external, or when we believe that what is mechanical merely has power to
+    regenerate and exalt mankind.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204"
+    id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span></p>
+    <div class="poem">
+      <div class="stanza">
+        <span class="i16">"It takes a soul<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">To move a body; it takes a high-souled man<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">To move the masses ... even to a cleaner sty;<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">It takes the ideal to blow a hair's-breadth off<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">The dust of the actual&mdash;Ah, your Fouriers
+        failed,<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">Because not poets enough to understand<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">That life develops from within."<br />
+        </span>
+      </div>
+    </div>
+    <p>He who believes in culture must believe in God; for what but God do we mean when
+    we talk of loving the best thoughts and the highest beauty? No God, no best; but at
+    most better and worse. And how shall a man's delight in his growing knowledge not be
+    blighted by a hidden taint, if he is persuaded that at the core of the universe there
+    is only blind unconscious force? But if he believe that God is infinite power working
+    for truth and love, then can he also feel that in seeking to prepare his mind for the
+    perception of truth and his heart for the love of what is good and fair, he is
+    working with God, and moves along the way in which his omnipotent hand guides
+    heavenly spirits and all the countless worlds. He desires that all men should be
+    wiser and stronger and more loving, even though he should be doomed to remain as he
+    is, for then they would have power to help him. He is certain of himself, and feels
+    no fear nor anger when his opinions are opposed. He learns to bear what he cannot
+    prevent, knowing that courage and patience make tolerable im<span class='pagenum'><a
+    name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span>medicable ills. He feels no
+    self-complacency, but rather the self-dissatisfaction which comes of the
+    consciousness of possessing faculties which he can but imperfectly use. And this
+    discontent he believes to be the infinite God stirring within the soul. As the
+    earthquake which swallows some island in another hemisphere disturbs not the even
+    tenor of our way, so the passions of men whose world is other than his, who dwell
+    remote from what he contemplates and loves, shake not his tranquil mind. While they
+    threaten and pursue, his thought moves in spheres unknown to them. He knows how
+    little life at the best can give, and is not hard to console for the loss of
+    anything. There is no true thought which he would not gladly make his own, even
+    though it should be the watchword of his enemies. Since morality is practical truth,
+    he understands that increasing knowledge will make it at once more evident and more
+    attractive. Hatred between races and nations he holds to be not less unchristian than
+    the hatred which arms the individual against his fellow-man. It is impossible for him
+    to be a scoffer; for whatever has strengthened or consoled a human soul is sacred in
+    his eyes; and wherever there is question of what is socially complex, as of a
+    religion or a civilization, there is question of many human<span class='pagenum'><a
+    name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span> lives, their hopes, their joys,
+    their strivings, their yearnings, disappointments, agonies, and deaths; and he is
+    able to perceive that in the ports of levity there is no refuge for hearts that
+    mourn. Does not love itself, in its heaven of bliss, turn away from him who mocks?
+    The lover of the intellectual life knows neither contempt nor indignation, is not
+    elated by success or cast down by failure; money cannot make him rich, and poverty
+    helps to make him free. His own experience teaches him that men in becoming wiser
+    will become nobler and happier; and this sweet truth has in his eyes almost the
+    elements of a religion. With growing knowledge his power of sympathy is enlarged;
+    until like Saint Francis, he can call the sun his brother and the moon his sister;
+    can grieve with homeless winds, and feel a kinship with the clod. The very agonies by
+    which his soul has been wrung open to his gaze visions of truth which else he had
+    never caught, and so he finds even in things evil some touch of goodness. Praise and
+    blame are for children, but to him impertinent. He is tolerant of absurdity because
+    it is so all-pervading that he whom it fills with indignation can have no repose.
+    While he labors like other men to keep his place in the world, he strives to make the
+    work whereby he maintains himself, and those who cling to him, serve intellectual and
+    moral<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> ends.
+    He has a meek and lowly heart, and he has also a free and illumined mind, and a soul
+    without fear. He knows that no gift or accomplishment is incompatible with true
+    religion; for has not the Church intellects as many-sided and as high as Augustine
+    and Chrysostom, Dante and Calderon, Descartes and Da Vinci, De Vega and Cervantes,
+    Bossuet and Pascal, Saint Bernard and Gregory the Seventh, Aquinas and Michael
+    Angelo, Mozart and F&eacute;nelon? Ah! I behold the youthful throng, happier than we,
+    who here, in their own sweet country,&mdash;in this city of government and of law
+    with its wide streets, its open spaces, its air of freedom and of
+    light,&mdash;undisturbed by the soul-depressing hum of commerce and the
+    unintellectual din of machinery, shall hearken to the voice of wisdom and walk in the
+    pleasant ways of knowledge, alive, in every sense, to catch whatever message may come
+    to them from God's universe; who, as they are drawn to what is higher than
+    themselves, shall be drawn together, like planets to a sun; whose minds, aglow with
+    high thinking, shall taste joy and delight fresher and purer than merriest laughter
+    ever tells. Who has not seen, when leaden clouds fill the sky and throw gloomy
+    shadows on the earth, some little meadow amid the hills, with its trees and flowers,
+    its grazing kine and running brook, all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208"
+    id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span> bathed in sunlight, and smiling as though a mother
+    said, Come hither, darling?</p>
+    <p>Such to my fancy is this favored spot, whose invitation is to the fortunate few
+    who believe that "the noblest mind the best contentment has," and that the fairest
+    land is that which brings forth and nurtures the fairest souls. When youthful friends
+    drift apart, and meet again after years, they find they have been living not only in
+    different cities, but in different worlds. Those who shall come up to the university
+    must turn away from much the world holds dear; and while the companions they leave
+    behind shall linger in pleasant places or shall get money, position, and applause,
+    they must move on amid ever-increasing loneliness of life and thought. Xanthippe
+    would have had altogether a better opinion of Socrates had he not been a philosopher,
+    and the best we do is often that for which our age and our friends care the least;
+    but they who have once tasted the delights of a cultivated mind would not exchange
+    them for the gifts of fortune, and to have beheld the fair face of wisdom is to be
+    forever her votary. Words spoken for the masses grow obsolete; but what is fit to be
+    heard by the chosen few shall be true and beautiful while such minds are found on
+    earth. In the end, it is this little band&mdash;this intellectual aristoc<span
+    class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span>racy&mdash;who
+    move and guide the world. They see what is possible, outline projects, and give
+    impulse, while the people do the work. That which is strongest in man is mind; and
+    when a mind truly vigorous, open, supple, and illumined reveals itself, we follow in
+    its path of light. How it may be I do not know; but the very brain and heart of
+    genius throbs forever in the words on which its spirit has breathed. Let this seed,
+    though hidden like the grain in mummy pits for thousands of years, but fall on proper
+    soil, and soon the golden harvest shall wave beneath the dome of azure skies; let but
+    some generous youth bend over the electric page, and lo! all his being shall thrill
+    and flame with new-born life and light. Genius is a gift. But whoever keeps on doing
+    in all earnestness something which he need not do, and for which the world cares
+    hardly at all, if he have not genius, has at least one of its chief marks; and it is,
+    I think, an important function of a university to create an intellectual atmosphere
+    in which the love of excellence shall become contagious, which whosoever breathes
+    shall, like the Sibyl, feel the inspiration of divine thoughts.</p>
+    <p>Sweet home! where Wisdom, like a mother, shall lead her children in pleasant ways,
+    and to their thoughts a touch of heaven lend! From<span class='pagenum'><a
+    name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> thee I claim for my faith and my
+    country more blessings than I can speak,&mdash;</p>
+    <div class="poem">
+      <div class="stanza">
+        <span class="i0">Our scattered knowledges together bind;<br />
+        </span> <span class="i2">Our freedom consecrate to noble aims.<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">To music set the visions of the mind;<br />
+        </span> <span class="i2">Give utterance to the truth pure faith proclaims.<br />
+        </span> <span class="i0">Lead where the perfect beauty lies enshrined,<br />
+        </span> <span class="i2">Whose sight the blood of low-born passion tames.<br />
+        </span>
+      </div>
+    </div>
+    <p>And now, how shall I more fittingly conclude than with the name of her whose
+    generous heart and enlightened mind were the impulse which has given to what had long
+    been hope deferred and a dreamlike vision, existence and a dwelling-place,&mdash;Mary
+    Gwendolen Caldwell.</p>
+    <h4>THE END.</h4>
+    <hr style="width: 65%;" />
+    <h3>By RT. REV. J. L. SPALDING.</h3>
+    <p><b>Thoughts and Theories of Life and Education</b>. 12mo, 235 pages, $1.00.</p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>The bishop writes out of the fullness of his heart, and with abundant love and
+      charity. His works make the world wiser, happier, and better. These "Thoughts and
+      Theories" are couched in polished English, in sentences terse and full of meaning;
+      few living writers command a more charming style.</p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p><b>Education and the Higher Life</b>. 12mo, 210 pages, $1.00.</p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>Bishop Spalding has struck a note which must vibrate in every heart which loves
+      the glory of Christianity and the progress of humanity.... The book is a stimulant,
+      a tonic, a trumpet-call to higher things, a beacon light for better
+      days.&mdash;<i>The Catholic Union and Times</i>.</p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p><b>Things of the Mind</b>. 12mo, 237 pages, $1.00.</p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>Out of a disciplined and fertile mind he pours forth epigrammatic sentences and
+      suggestions in a fashion which recalls Emerson. He is always and everywhere
+      American, and the last chapter is at once wisely critical and soundly laudatory of
+      our country.&mdash;<i>The Sunday School Times, Philadelphia</i>.</p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p><b>Means and Ends of Education</b>. 12mo, 232 pages, $1.00.</p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>Bishop Spalding comes nearer being an essayist in education than any other
+      American. He has that rarest of educational gifts,&mdash;the ability to throw light
+      brilliantly, and yet softly, making his paragraphs both bright and mellow, all
+      without "preaching," without pedantry, and without being cranky.&mdash;<i>Journal
+      of Education</i>, Boston.</p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p><b>Opportunity, and Other Essays and Addresses</b>. 12mo, 228 pages, $1.00.</p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>In this volume, as in his other books, Bishop Spalding is occupied with the
+      larger problems of education. In addition to the specifically educational subjects
+      there are themes of the widest possible interest, to the treatment of which the
+      ripe experience of the writer gives high value.</p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p><b>Songs, chiefly from the German</b>. 16mo, gilt top, $1.25.</p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>He has gathered the flowers from the German garden of song and translated them,
+      giving a literal rendering, but still preserving the melody,&mdash;an art which was
+      thought to have been lost with Longfellow.&mdash;<i>The Chicago Record</i>.</p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <center>
+      <i>Sold by all booksellers, or mailed, on receipt of price, by</i>
+    </center>
+    <center>
+      <b>A. C. McCLURG &amp; CO., <span class="smcap">Publishers</span>,<br />
+      CHICAGO.</b>
+    </center>
+    <hr style="width: 25%;" />
+    <h3>By Mrs. Elizabeth Wormeley Latimer.</h3>
+    <p><b>JUDEA: From Cyrus to Titus, 537 B. C.&mdash;70 A. D</b>. Handsomely
+    illustrated. 8vo. $2.50.</p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>This is a book for the people rather than for scholars, but written with the
+      resources of scholarship at command. Not entering into the mooted questions of
+      criticism, it is a well written narrative of the eventful period it covers,
+      presenting the story of Judea in its connection with the general movement of the
+      world, as well as with the career of illustrious men.&mdash;<i>The Outlook</i>, New
+      York.</p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <hr style="width: 15%;" />
+    <h4>Mrs. Latimer's Former Works.</h4>
+    <div style="margin-left: 2em;">
+      <p><b>My Scrap Book of the French Revolution</b>. Illustrated. 8vo. $2.50.</p>
+      <p><b>Spain in the 19th Century</b>. Illustrated. 8vo. $2.50.</p>
+      <p><b>Italy in the 19th Century</b>. Illustrated. 8vo. $2.50.</p>
+      <p><b>Europe in Africa in the 19th Century</b>. Illustrated. 8vo. $2.50.</p>
+      <p><b>England in the 19th Century</b>. Illustrated. 8vo. $2.50.</p>
+      <p><b>Russia and Turkey in the 19th Century</b>. Illustrated. 8vo. $2.50.</p>
+      <p><b>France in the 19th Century</b>. Illustrated. 8vo. $2.50.</p>
+    </div>
+    <center>
+      <i>Sold by all booksellers, or mailed, on receipt of price, by</i>
+    </center>
+    <center>
+      <b>A. C. McCLURG &amp; CO., <span class="smcap">Publishers</span>,<br />
+      CHICAGO.</b>
+    </center>
+    <hr style="width: 25%;" />
+    <h3>A GENERAL SURVEY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE</h3>
+    <h4>By MARY FISHER</h4>
+    <center>
+      Gilt top, deckle edges, 12mo. $1.50
+    </center>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>In this volume Miss Fisher has treated a subject of vital interest and
+      importance for all American lovers of literature, and she has accomplished her task
+      with rare feminine appreciation and sympathy, with a clear and decisive interest,
+      with a catholicity of judgment and a fine sense of discrimination and proportion
+      and with a warmth and delicacy of treatment that transform these biographical
+      sketches into little gems of portraiture.&mdash;<i>The Commercial Advertiser</i>,
+      New York.</p>
+      <p>The great value of the book lies in the fact that while Miss Fisher has a
+      thorough familiarity with the subjects of her essays, she writes as she might if
+      she were ignorant of the estimation in which they are held by the public or by the
+      critics. She applies discriminating reason and sound principles of judgment to the
+      work of the various writers, without the slightest reference to their personal
+      dignity or their literary fame.&mdash;<i>The Book Buyer</i>, New York.</p>
+      <p>The whole range of notable writers are dealt with in a style at once
+      discriminating and attractive. The "human touch" is pleasingly apparent throughout
+      the book.&mdash;<i>The Living Age</i>, Boston.</p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <hr style="width: 15%;" />
+    <h3>A GROUP OF FRENCH CRITICS</h3>
+    <h4>By MARY FISHER</h4>
+    <center>
+      12mo. $1.25.
+    </center>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>Those who are in the habit of associating modern French writing with the
+      materialistic view of life and the realistic method, will find themselves refreshed
+      and encouraged by the vigorous protest of men like Scherer and other French critics
+      against the dominance of these elements in recent years.&mdash;<i>The Outlook</i>,
+      New York.</p>
+      <p>"A Group of French Critics" deserves a friendly welcome from everybody who
+      desires to know something of the best in contemporary French letters.&mdash;<i>The
+      Philadelphia Press</i>.</p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <center>
+      <i>Sold by all booksellers, or mailed, on receipt of price, by</i>
+    </center>
+    <center>
+      <b>A. C. McCLURG &amp; CO., <span class="smcap">Publishers</span>,<br />
+      CHICAGO.</b>
+    </center>
+    <hr style="width: 25%;" />
+    <h3>TALES FROM FOREIGN LANDS.</h3>
+    <div class="blockquot">
+      <p><span class="smcap">Memories</span>. A Story of German Love. Translated from the
+      German of <span class="smcap">Max Muller</span> by <span class="smcap">George P.
+      Upton</span>.</p>
+      <p><span class="smcap">Graziella</span>. A Story of Italian Love. Translated from
+      the French of <span class="smcap">A. de Lamartine</span>, by <span
+      class="smcap">James B. Runnion</span>.</p>
+      <p><span class="smcap">Marie</span>. A Story of Russian Love. From the Russian of
+      <span class="smcap">Alexander Pushkin</span>, by <span class="smcap">Marie H. De
+      Zielinska</span>.</p>
+      <p><span class="smcap">Madeleine</span>. A Story of French Love (crowned by the
+      French Academy). Translated from the French of <span class="smcap">Jules
+      Sandeau</span> by <span class="smcap">Francis Charlot</span>.</p>
+      <p><span class="smcap">Marianela</span>. A Story of Spanish Love. Translated from
+      the Spanish of <span class="smcap">B. Perez Galdos</span>, by <span
+      class="smcap">Helen W. Lester</span>.</p>
+      <p><span class="smcap">Cousin Phillis</span>. A Story of English Love. By Mrs.
+      <span class="smcap">Gaskell</span>.</p>
+      <p><span class="smcap">Karine</span>. A Story of Swedish Love. Translated from the
+      German of <span class="smcap">Wilhelm Jensen</span>, by <span class="smcap">Emma A.
+      Endlich</span>.</p>
+      <p><span class="smcap">Maria Felicia</span>. A Story of Bohemian Love. Translated
+      from the Bohemian of <span class="smcap">Caroline Svetla</span> by <span
+      class="smcap">Antonie Krejsa</span>.</p>
+      <p>Handsomely printed on fine laid paper, 16mo, gilt tops, per volume, $1.00. The
+      six volumes in neat box, per set, $6.00; in half calf or half morocco, gilt tops,
+      $13.50; in half calf or half morocco, gilt edges, $15.00; limp calf or morocco,
+      gilt edges, $18.00.</p>
+      <p>This series of volumes forms perhaps the choicest addition to the literature of
+      the English language that has been made in recent years.</p>
+    </div>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>An attractive series of stories of love in different countries,&mdash;all gems
+      of literature, full of local coloring.&mdash;<i>Journal of Education</i>,
+      <i>Boston</i>.</p>
+      <p>The stories are attractive for their purity, sweetness, and pathos.... A rare
+      collection of representative national classics. <i>New York Telegram</i>.</p>
+      <p>A series especially to be commended for the good taste displayed in the
+      mechanical execution of the works. Type and paper are everything that could be
+      desired, and the volumes are set off with a gilt top which adds to their general
+      appearance of neatness.&mdash;<i>Herald</i>, <i>Rochester</i>.</p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <center>
+      <i>Sold by all booksellers, or mailed, on receipt of price, by</i>
+    </center>
+    <center>
+      <b>A. C. McCLURG &amp; CO., CHICAGO.</b>
+    </center>
+    <hr style="width: 25%;" />
+    <div style="margin-left: 5em;">
+      <b>THE BOOK-LOVER. A Guide to the Best Reading.</b> By <span class="smcap">James
+      Baldwin</span>, Ph. D. Sixth edition, 16mo, cloth, gilt top, 201 pages. Price,
+      $1.00.
+    </div>
+    <br />
+    <center>
+      <b>In half calf or half morocco</b>, $2.50.
+    </center>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>Of this book, on the best in English Literature, which has already been declared
+      of the highest value by the testimony of the best critics in this country, an
+      edition of one thousand copies has just been ordered for London, the home of
+      English Literature,&mdash;a compliment of which its scholarly western author may
+      justly be proud.</p>
+      <p>We know of no work of the kind which gives so much useful information in so
+      small a space.&mdash;<i>Evening Telegram, New York</i>.</p>
+      <p>Sound in theory and in a practical point of view. The courses of reading laid
+      down are made of good books, and in general, of the best.&mdash;<i>Independent, New
+      York</i>.</p>
+      <p>Mr. Baldwin has written in this monograph a delightful eulogium of books and
+      their manifold influence, and has gained therein two classes of readers,&mdash;the
+      scholarly class, to which he belongs, and the receptive class, which he has
+      benefited.&mdash;<i>Evening Mail and Express, New York</i>.</p>
+      <p>If a man needs that the love of books be cultivated within him, such a gem of a
+      book as Dr. Baldwin's ought to do the work. Perfect and inviting in all that a book
+      ought outwardly to be, its contents are such as to instruct the mind at the same
+      time that they answer the taste, and the reader who goes carefully through its two
+      hundred pages ought not only to love books in general better than he ever did
+      before, but to love them more wisely, more intelligently, more discriminatingly,
+      and with more profit to his own soul.&mdash;<i>Literary Worlds, Boston</i>.</p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <center>
+      <i>Sold by all booksellers, or mailed, on receipt of price, by</i>
+    </center>
+    <center>
+      <b>A. C. McCLURG &amp; CO., <span class="smcap">Publishers</span></b>
+    </center>
+    <hr style="width: 25%;" />
+    <h3>LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN,</h3>
+    <div style="margin-left: 4em;">
+      <p>By the Hon. <span class="smcap">Isaac N. Arnold</span>. With Steel Portrait.
+      8vo, cloth, 471 pages. Price, $1.50.</p>
+    </div>
+    <center>
+      In half calf or half morocco, $3.50.
+    </center>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>It is decidedly the best and most complete Life of Lincoln that has yet
+      appeared.&mdash;<i>Contemporary Review, London</i>.</p>
+      <p>Mr. Arnold succeeded to a singular extent in assuming the broad view and
+      judicious voice of posterity and exhibiting the greatest figure of our time in its
+      true perspective.&mdash;<i>The Tribune, New York</i>.</p>
+      <p>It is the only Life of Lincoln thus far published that is likely to
+      live,&mdash;the only one that has any serious pretensions to depict him with
+      adequate veracity, completeness, and dignity.&mdash;<i>The Sun, New York</i>.</p>
+      <p>The author knew Mr. Lincoln long and intimately, and no one was better fitted
+      for the task of preparing his biography. He has written with tenderness and
+      fidelity, with keen discrimination, and with graphic powers of description and
+      analysis.&mdash;<i>The Interior, Chicago</i>.</p>
+      <p>Mr. Arnold's "Life of President Lincoln" is excellent in almost every
+      respect.... The author has painted a graphic and life-like portrait of the
+      remarkable man who was called to decide on the destinies of his country at the
+      crisis of its fate.&mdash;<i>The Times, London</i>.</p>
+      <p>The book is particularly rich in incidents connected with the early career of
+      Mr. Lincoln; and it is without exception the most satisfactory record of his life
+      that has yet been written. Readers will also find that in its entirety it is a work
+      of absorbing and enduring interest that will enchain the attention more effectually
+      than any novel.&mdash;<i>Magazine of American History, New York</i>.</p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <center>
+      <i>Sold by all booksellers, or mailed, on receipt of price, by</i>
+    </center>
+    <center>
+      <b>A. C. McCLURG &amp; CO., <span class="smcap">Publishers</span></b>,
+    </center>
+    <hr style="width: 25%;" />
+    <h3>LAUREL-CROWNED TALES.</h3>
+    <div class="blockquot">
+      <p><span class="smcap">Abdallah; Or, the Four-leaved Shamrock</span>. By <span
+      class="smcap">Edouard Laboulaye</span>. Translated by <span class="smcap">Mary L.
+      Booth</span>.</p>
+      <p><span class="smcap">Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia</span>. By <span
+      class="smcap">Samuel Johnson</span>.</p>
+      <p><span class="smcap">Raphael; or, Pages of the Book of Life at Twenty</span>.
+      From the French of <span class="smcap">Alphonse de Lamartine</span>.</p>
+      <p><span class="smcap">The Vicar of Wakefield</span>. By <span class="smcap">Oliver
+      Goldsmith</span>.</p>
+      <p><span class="smcap">The Epicurean</span>. By <span class="smcap">Thomas
+      Moore</span>.</p>
+      <p><span class="smcap">Picciola</span>. By <span class="smcap">X. B.
+      Saintine</span>.</p>
+      <p><span class="smcap">An Iceland Fisherman</span>. By <span class="smcap">Pierre
+      Loti</span>.</p>
+      <p><span class="smcap">Paul and Virginia</span>. By <span class="smcap">Bernardin
+      de St. Pierre</span>.</p>
+      <p>Handsomely printed from new plates, on fine laid paper, 16mo, cloth, with gilt
+      tops, price per volume, $1.00.</p>
+    </div>
+    <center>
+      In half calf or half morocco, per volume, $2.50.
+    </center>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>In planning this series, the publishers have aimed at a form which should
+      combine an unpretentious elegance suited to the fastidious book-lover with an
+      inexpensiveness that must appeal to the most moderate buyer.</p>
+      <p>It is the intent to admit to the series only such tales as have for years or for
+      generations commended themselves not only to the fastidious and the critical, but
+      also to the great multitude of the refined reading public,&mdash;tales, in short,
+      which combine purity and classical beauty of style with perennial popularity.</p>
+      <br />
+      <p>A contribution to current literature of quite unique value and interest. They
+      are furnished with a tasteful outfit, with just the amount of matter one likes to
+      find in books of this class, and are in all ways very
+      attractive.&mdash;<i>Standard, Chicago</i>.</p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <center>
+      <i>Sold by all booksellers, or mailed, on receipt of price, by</i>
+    </center>
+    <center>
+      <b>A. C. McCLURG &amp; CO., <span class="smcap">Publishers</span></b>,
+    </center>
+    <hr style="width: 25%;" />
+    <h3>LAUREL-CROWNED VERSE</h3>
+    <center>
+      Edited by FRANCIS F. BROWNE.
+    </center>
+    <div class="blockquot">
+      <p><span class="smcap">The Lady of the Lake</span>. By <span class="smcap">Sir
+      Walter Scott</span>.</p>
+      <p><span class="smcap">Childe Harold's Pilgrimage</span>. A Romaunt. By <span
+      class="smcap">Lord Byron</span>.</p>
+      <p><span class="smcap">Lalla Rookh. An Oriental Romance. By <span
+      class="smcap">Thomas Moore</span>.</span></p>
+      <p><span class="smcap">Idylls of the King. By Alfred, Lord Tennyson</span>.</p>
+      <p><span class="smcap">Paradise Lost. By John Milton</span>.</p>
+      <p><span class="smcap">The Iliad of Homer</span>. Translated by <span
+      class="smcap">Alexander Pope</span>. 2 Vols.</p>
+      <p>Each volume is finely printed and bound; 16mo, cloth, gilt tops, price per
+      volume, $1.00.</p>
+    </div>
+    <center>
+      In half calf or half morocco, per volume, $2.50.
+    </center>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p><i>All the volumes of this series are from a specially prepared and corrected
+      text, based upon a careful collation of all the more authentic editions</i>.</p>
+      <p>The special merit of these editions, aside from the graceful form of the books,
+      lies in the editor's reserve. Whenever the author has provided a preface or notes,
+      this apparatus is given, and thus some interesting matter is revived, but the
+      editor himself refrains from loading the books with his own writing.&mdash;<i>The
+      Atlantic Monthly</i>.</p>
+      <p>A series noted for their integral worth and typographical
+      beauties.&mdash;<i>Public Ledger, Philadelphia</i>.</p>
+      <p>The typography is quite faultless.&mdash;<i>Critic, New York</i>.</p>
+      <p>For this series the publishers are entitled to the gratitude of lovers of
+      classical English.&mdash;<i>School Journal, New York</i>.</p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <center>
+      <i>Sold by all booksellers, or mailed, on receipt of price, by</i>
+    </center>
+    <center>
+      <b>A. C. McCLURG &amp; CO., <span class="smcap">Publishers</span></b>,<br />
+      <b>CHICAGO</b>.
+    </center>
+    <hr style="width: 25%;" />
+    <h3>LAUREL-CROWNED LETTERS</h3>
+    <p><span class="smcap">Best Letters of Lord Chesterfield</span>. With an Introduction
+    by <span class="smcap">Edward Gilpin Johnson</span>.</p>
+    <p><span class="smcap">Best Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu</span>. With an
+    Introduction by <span class="smcap">Octave Thanet</span>.</p>
+    <p><span class="smcap">Best Letters of Horace Walpole</span>. With an Introduction by
+    <span class="smcap">Anna B. McMahan</span>.</p>
+    <p><span class="smcap">Best Letters of Madame de S&eacute;vign&eacute;</span>. With
+    an Introduction by <span class="smcap">Edward Playfair Anderson</span>.</p>
+    <p><span class="smcap">Best Letters of Charles Lamb</span>. With an Introduction by
+    <span class="smcap">Edward Gilpin Johnson</span>.</p>
+    <p><span class="smcap">Best Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley</span>. With an
+    Introduction by <span class="smcap">Shirley C. Hughson</span>.</p>
+    <p><span class="smcap">Best Letters of William Cowper</span>. With an Introduction by
+    <span class="smcap">Anna B. McMahan</span>.</p>
+    <p>Handsomely printed from new plates, on fine laid paper, 16mo, cloth, with gilt
+    tops, price per volume, $1.00.</p>
+    <center>
+      In half calf or half morocco, per volume, $2.50.
+    </center>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>Amid the great flood of ephemeral literature that pours from the press, it is
+      well to be recalled by such publications as the "Laurel-Crowned Letters" to books
+      that have won an abiding place in the classical literature of the
+      world.&mdash;<i>The Independent, New York</i>.</p>
+      <p>The "Laurel-Crowned Series" recommends itself to all lovers of good literature.
+      The selection is beyond criticism, and puts before the reader the very best
+      literature in most attractive and convenient form. The size of the volumes, the
+      good paper, the clear type and the neat binding are certainly worthy of all
+      praise.&mdash;<i>Public Opinion, Washington</i>.</p>
+      <p>These "Laurel-Crowned" volumes are little gems in their way, and just the books
+      to pick up at odd times and at intervals of waiting.&mdash;<i>Herald,
+      Chicago</i>.</p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <center>
+      <i>Sold by all booksellers, or mailed, on receipt of price, by</i>
+    </center>
+    <center>
+      <b>A. C. McCLURG &amp; CO., <span class="smcap">Publishers</span></b>,<br />
+      <b>CHICAGO</b>.
+    </center>
+    <hr style="width: 25%;" />
+    <p><big><b>THE STANDARD OPERAS</b></big>. Their Plots, their Music, and their
+    Composers. By <span class="smcap">George P. Upton</span>, author of "Woman in Music,"
+    etc., etc.</p>
+    <div style="margin-left: 6em;">
+      <p>12mo, flexible cloth, yellow edges <span
+      style="margin-left: 2em;">$1.50</span></p>
+      <p>The same, extra gilt, gilt edges <span
+      style="margin-left: 4.2em;">2.00</span></p>
+    </div>
+    <br />
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>"Mr. Upton has performed a service that can hardly be too highly appreciated, in
+      collecting the plots, music, and the composers of the standard operas, to the
+      number of sixty-four, and bringing them together in one perfectly arranged
+      volume.... His work is one simply invaluable to the general reading public.
+      Technicalities are avoided, the aim being to give to musically uneducated lovers of
+      the opera a clear understanding of the works they hear. It is description, not
+      criticism, and calculated to greatly increase the intelligent enjoyment of
+      music."&mdash;<i>Boston Traveller</i>.</p>
+      <p>"Among the multitude of handbooks which are published every year, and are
+      described by easy-going writers of book-notices as supplying a long-felt want, we
+      know of none which so completely carries out the intention of the writer as 'The
+      Standard Operas,' by Mr. George P. Upton, whose object is to present to his readers
+      a comprehensive sketch of each of the operas contained in the modern repertory....
+      There are thousands of music-loving people who will be glad to have the kind of
+      knowledge which Mr. Upton has collected for their benefit, and has cast in a clear
+      and compact form."&mdash;<i>R. H. Stoddard, in "Evening Mail and Express" (New
+      York)</i>.</p>
+      <p>"The summaries of the plots are so clear, logical, and well written, that one
+      can read them with real pleasure, which cannot be said of the ordinary operatic
+      synopses. But the most important circumstance is that Mr. Upton's book is fully
+      abreast of the times."&mdash;<i>The Nation (New York</i>).</p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <center>
+      <i>Sold by all booksellers, or mailed, on receipt of price, by</i>
+    </center>
+    <center>
+      <b>A. C. McCLURG &amp; CO., <span class="smcap">Publishers</span></b>,
+    </center>
+    <hr style="width: 25%;" />
+    <p><big><b>THE STANDARD ORATORIOS</b></big>. Their Stories, their Music, and their
+    Composers. A Handbook. By George P. Upton. 12mo, 335 pages, yellow edges, price,
+    $1.50; extra gilt, gilt edges, $2.00.</p>
+    <div style="margin-left: 6em;">
+      <p>In half calf, gilt top <span style="margin-left: 6.9em;">$3.25</span></p>
+      <p>In half morocco, gilt edges <span style="margin-left: 4em;">3.75</span></p>
+    </div>
+    <br />
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>Music lovers are under a new obligation to Mr. Upton for this companion to his
+      "Standard Operas,"&mdash;two books which deserve to be placed on the same shelf
+      with Grove's and Riemann's musical dictionaries.&mdash;<i>The Nation, New
+      York</i>.</p>
+      <p>Mr. George P. Upton has followed in the lines that he laid down in his "Standard
+      Operas," and has produced an admirable handwork, which answers every purpose that
+      such a volume is designed to answer, and which is certain to be popular now and for
+      years to come.&mdash;<i>The Mail and Express, New York</i>.</p>
+      <p>Like the valuable art handbooks of Mrs. Jamison, these volumes contain a world
+      of interesting information, indispensable to critics and art amateurs. The volume
+      under review is elegantly and succinctly written, and the subjects are handled in a
+      thoroughly comprehensive manner.&mdash;<i>Public Opinion, Washington</i>.</p>
+      <p>The book is a masterpiece of skillful handling, charming the reader with its
+      pure English style, and keeping his attention always awake in an arrangement of
+      matter which makes each succeeding page and chapter fresh in interest and always
+      full of instruction, while always entertaining.&mdash;<i>The Standard,
+      Chicago</i>.</p>
+      <p>The author of this book has done a real service to the vast number of people
+      who, while they are lovers of music, have neither the leisure nor inclination to
+      become deeply versed in its literature.... The information conveyed is of just the
+      sort that the average of cultivated people will welcome as an aid to comprehending
+      and talking about this species of musical composition.&mdash;<i>Church Magazine,
+      Philadelphia</i>.</p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <center>
+      <i>Sold by all booksellers, or mailed, on receipt of price, by</i>
+    </center>
+    <center>
+      <b>A. C. McCLURG &amp; CO., <span class="smcap">Publishers</span></b>,
+    </center>
+    <hr style="width: 25%;" />
+    <p><big><b>THE STANDARD CANTATAS</b></big>. Their Stories, their Music, and their
+    Composers. A Handbook. By <span class="smcap">George P. Upton</span>. 12mo, 367
+    pages, yellow edges, price, $1.50; extra gilt, gilt edges, $2.00.</p>
+    <div style="margin-left: 6em;">
+      <p>In half calf, gilt top <span style="margin-left: 6.9em;">$3.25</span></p>
+      <p>In half morocco, gilt edges <span style="margin-left: 4em;">3.75</span></p>
+    </div>
+    <br />
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>The "Standard Cantatas" forms the third volume in the uniform series which
+      already includes the now well known "Standard Operas" and the "Standard Oratorios."
+      This latest work deals with a class of musical compositions, midway between the
+      opera and the oratorio, which is growing rapidly in favor both with composers and
+      audiences.</p>
+      <p>As in the two former works, the subject is treated, so far as possible, in an
+      untechnical manner, so that it may satisfy the needs of musically uneducated music
+      lovers, and add to their enjoyment by a plain statement of the story of the cantata
+      and a popular analysis of its music, with brief pertinent selections from its
+      poetical text.</p>
+      <p>The book includes a comprehensive essay on the origin of the cantata, and its
+      development from rude beginnings; biographical sketches of the composers; carefully
+      prepared descriptions of the plots and the music; and an appendix containing the
+      names and dates of composition of all the best known cantatas from the earliest
+      times.</p>
+      <p>This series of works on popular music has steadily grown in favor since the
+      appearance of the first volume on the Operas. When the series is completed, as it
+      will be next year by a volume on the Standard Symphonies, it will be, as the New
+      York "Nation" has said, indispensable to every musical library.</p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <center>
+      <i>Sold by all booksellers, or mailed, on receipt of price, by</i>
+    </center>
+    <center>
+      <b>A. C. McCLURG &amp; CO., <span class="smcap">Publishers</span></b>,
+    </center>
+    <hr style="width: 25%;" />
+    <p><big><b>THE STANDARD SYMPHONIES</b></big>. Their History, their Music, and their
+    Composers. A Handbook. By <span class="smcap">George P. Upton</span>. 12mo, 321
+    pages, yellow edges, price $1.50; extra gilt, gilt edges, $2.00.</p>
+    <div style="margin-left: 6em;">
+      <p>In half calf, gilt top <span style="margin-left: 6.9em;">$3.25</span></p>
+      <p>In half morocco, gilt edges <span style="margin-left: 4em;">3.75</span></p>
+    </div>
+    <br />
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>The usefulness of this handbook cannot be doubted. Its pages are packed full of
+      these fascinating renderings. The accounts of each composer are succinct and yet
+      sufficient. The author has done a genuine service to the world of music lovers. The
+      comprehension of orchestral work of the highest character is aided efficiently by
+      this volume. The mechanical execution of the volume is in harmony with its subject.
+      No worthier volume can be found to put into the hands of an amateur or a friend of
+      music.&mdash;<i>Public Opinion, Washington</i>.</p>
+      <p>None who have seen the previous books of Mr. Upton will need assurance that this
+      is as indispensable as the others to one who would listen intelligently to that
+      better class of music which musicians congratulate themselves Americans are
+      learning to appreciatively enjoy.&mdash;<i>Home Journal, New York</i>.</p>
+      <p>There has never been, in this country at least, so thorough an attempt to
+      collate the facts of programme music.... As a definite helper in some cases and as
+      a refresher in others we believe Mr. Upton's book to have a lasting value.... The
+      book, in brief, shows enthusiastic and honorable educational purpose, good taste,
+      and sound scholarship.&mdash;<i>The American, Philadelphia</i>.</p>
+      <p>Upton's books should be read and studied by all who desire to acquaint
+      themselves with the facts and accomplishments in these interesting forms of musical
+      composition.&mdash;<i>The Voice, New York</i>.</p>
+      <p>It is written in a style that cannot fail to stimulate the reader, if also a
+      student of music, to strive to find for himself the underlying meanings of the
+      compositions of the great composers. It contains, besides, a vast amount of
+      information about the symphony, its evolution and structure, with sketches of the
+      composers, and a detailed technical description of a few symphonic models. It meets
+      a recognized want of all concert goers.&mdash;<i>The Chautauquan</i>.</p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <center>
+      <i>Sold by all booksellers, or mailed, on receipt of price, by</i>
+    </center>
+    <center>
+      <b>A. C. McCLURG &amp; CO., <span class="smcap">Publishers</span></b>,
+    </center>
+    <hr style="width: 25%;" />
+    <h3>GROUND ARMS!</h3>
+    <h5><i>The Story of a Life</i>.</h5>
+    <h4>BY BERTHA VON SUTTNER.</h4>
+    <center>
+      12mo, 286 pages. Price, $1.00.
+    </center>
+    <hr style='width: 15%;' />
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>This story is one of the strongest works of fiction of the present decade. The
+      author is a philosopher and a philanthropist. Her clear, incisive reasoning, her
+      large sympathies, combined with rare power of description, enable her to give the
+      world a story which will hold in its thrall even the most shallow novel-reader who
+      can appreciate good literature.&mdash;<i>The Arena</i>, Boston.</p>
+      <p>The author pierces to the marrow of the thing that has taken hold of her. By
+      that thing she is verily possessed; it has made of her a seer.... The bare, bald
+      outline of "Die Waffen nieder!" ("Ground Arms!"), which is all we have been able to
+      attempt, can give but a faint, feeble idea of its power and pathos, and none at all
+      of the many light and humorous touches, the well-drawn minor characters, the
+      thrilling episodes, the piquant glimpses of the great world of Austria and France,
+      which relieve the gloom of the tragic story.&mdash;<i>International Journal of
+      Ethics</i>.</p>
+      <p>We have here unquestionably a very remarkable work. As a plea for a general
+      disarmament it stands unrivaled. For a familiarity with the details of the subject
+      treated, for breadth of view, for logical acumen, for dramatic effect and literary
+      excellence, it stands unequaled by any work written with a
+      purpose.&mdash;<i>Literary Digest</i>.</p>
+      <p>With a powerful pen the author tells of the horrors of war; not alone the
+      desolation of battlefields, but the scourges of typhus and cholera that follow in
+      their wake, and the wretchedness, misery, and poverty brought to countless homes.
+      The story in itself is simple but pathetic.... The book, which is sound and calm in
+      its logic and reasoning, has made a grand impression upon military circles of
+      Europe, and its influence is destined to extend far into the
+      future.&mdash;<i>Public Opinion</i>, New York.</p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <center>
+      <i>Sold by all booksellers, or mailed, on receipt of price, by</i>
+    </center>
+    <center>
+      <b>A. C. McCLURG &amp; CO., <span class="smcap">Publishers</span></b>,
+    </center>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
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+  </body>
+</html>
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+Project Gutenberg's Education and the Higher Life, by J. L. Spalding
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Education and the Higher Life
+
+Author: J. L. Spalding
+
+Release Date: April 12, 2007 [EBook #21045]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EDUCATION AND THE HIGHER LIFE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Sigal Alon, Marcia, Fox in the Stars and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+EDUCATION AND THE HIGHER LIFE
+
+
+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.
+
+THOUGHTS AND THEORIES OF LIFE AND EDUCATION. 12mo. $1.00.
+
+OPPORTUNITY AND OTHER ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES. 12mo. $1.00.
+
+SONGS: CHIEFLY FROM THE GERMAN. 16mo, gilt top. $1.25.
+
+A. C. McCLURG & CO.
+
+CHICAGO.
+
+
+
+EDUCATION
+AND
+THE HIGHER LIFE
+
+BY
+
+J. L. Spalding
+
+Bishop of Peoria
+
+
+    The business of education is not, as I think, to perfect the learner
+    in any of the sciences, but to give his mind that freedom and
+    disposition, and those habits, which may enable him to attain every
+    part of knowledge himself.--LOCKE
+
+
+SIXTH EDITION
+
+CHICAGO
+
+A. C. McCLURG & CO.
+
+1900
+
+_Copyright_,
+
+BY A. C. MCCLURG AND CO.,
+
+A. D. 1890.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+      CHAPTER                                  PAGE
+
+   I. IDEALS                                          7
+
+  II. EXERCISE OF MIND                               30
+
+ III. THE LOVE OF EXCELLENCE                         51
+
+  IV. CULTURE AND THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE              73
+
+   V. SELF-CULTURE                                   92
+
+  VI. GROWTH AND DUTY                               117
+
+ VII. RIGHT HUMAN LIFE                              144
+
+VIII. UNIVERSITY EDUCATION                          172
+
+
+
+
+EDUCATION
+AND
+THE HIGHER LIFE.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+IDEALS.
+
+
+                                A noble aim,
+    Faithfully kept, is as a noble deed.
+
+WORDSWORTH.
+
+
+To few men does life bring a brighter day than that which places the
+crown upon their scholastic labors, and bids them go forth from the
+halls of the Alma Mater to the great world's battlefield. There is a
+freshness in these early triumphs which, like the bloom and fragrance of
+the flower, is quickly lost, never to be found again even by those for
+whom Fortune reserves her most choice gifts. Fame, though hymned by
+myriad tongues, is not so sweet as the delight we drink from the
+tear-dimmed eyes of our mothers and sisters, in the sacred hours when we
+can yet claim as our own the love of higher things, the faith and hope
+which make this mortal life immortal, and fill a moment with a wealth of
+memories which lasts through years. The highest joy is serious, and in
+the midst of supreme delight there comes to the soul a stillness which
+permits it to rise to the serene sphere where truth is most gladly heard
+and most easily perceived; and in such exaltation, the young see that
+life is not what they take it to be. They think it long; it is short.
+They think it happy; it is full of cares and sorrows. This two-fold
+illusion widens the horizon of life and tinges it with gold. It gives to
+youth its charm and makes of it a blessed time to which we ever turn
+regretful eyes. But I am wrong to call illusion that which in truth is
+but an omen of the divine possibilities of man's nature. To the young,
+life is not mean or short, because the blessed freedom of youth may make
+it noble and immortal. The young stand upon the threshold of the world.
+Of the many careers which are open to human activity, they will choose
+one; and their fortunes will be various, even though their merits should
+be equal. But if position, fame, and wealth are often denied to the most
+persistent efforts and the best ability, it is consoling to know they
+are not the highest; and as they are not the end of life, they should
+not be made its aim. An aim, nevertheless, we must have, if we hope to
+live to good purpose. All men, in fact, whether or not they know it,
+have an ideal, base or lofty, which molds character and shapes destiny.
+Whether it be pleasure or gain or renown or knowledge, or several of
+these, or something else, we all associate life with some end, or ends,
+the attainment of which seems to us most desirable.
+
+This ideal, that which in our inmost souls we love and desire, which we
+lay to heart and live by, is at once the truest expression of our nature
+and the most potent agency in developing its powers. Now, in youth we
+form the ideals which we labor to body forth in our lives. What in these
+growing days we yearn for with all our being, is heaped upon us in old
+age. All important, therefore, is the choice of an ideal; for this more
+than rules or precepts will determine what we are to become. The love of
+the best is twin-born with the soul. What is the best? What is the
+worthiest life-aim? It must be something which is within the reach of
+every one, as Nature's best gifts--air and sunshine and water--belong to
+all. What only the few can attain, cannot be life's real end or the
+highest good. The best is not far removed from any one of us, but is
+alike near to the poor and the rich, to the learned and the ignorant, to
+the shepherd and the king, and only the best can give to the soul
+repose and contentment. What then is the true life-ideal? Recalling to
+mind the thoughts and theories of many men, I can find nothing better
+than this, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God." "Love not pleasure," says
+Carlyle, "love God. This is the everlasting Yea, wherein all
+contradiction is solved; wherein whoso walks and works, it is well with
+him."
+
+To the high and aspiring heart of youth, fame, honor, glory, appeal with
+such irresistible power, and appear clad in forms so beautiful, that at
+a time of life when all of us are unreal in our sentiments and crude in
+our opinions, they are often mistaken for the best. But fame is good
+only in so far as it gives power for good. For the rest, it is nominal.
+They who have deserved it care not for it. A great soul is above all
+praise and dispraise of men, which are ever given ignorantly and without
+fine discernment. The popular breath, even when winnowed by the winds of
+centuries, is hardly pure.
+
+And then fame cannot be the good of which I speak, for only a very few
+can even hope for it. To nearly all, the gifts which make it possible
+are denied; and to others, the opportunities. Many, indeed, love and win
+notoriety, but such as they need not detain us here. A lower race of
+youth, in whom the blood is warmer than the soul, think pleasure life's
+best gift, and are content to let occasion die, while they revel in the
+elysium of the senses. But to make pleasure an end is to thwart one's
+purpose, for joy is good only when it comes unbidden. The pleasure we
+seek begins already to pall. It is good, indeed, if it come as
+refreshment to the weary, solace to the heavy-hearted, and rest to the
+careworn; but if sought for its own sake, it is "the honey of poison
+flowers and all the measureless ill." Only the young, or the depraved,
+can believe that to live for pleasure is not to be foreordained to
+misery. Whoso loves God or freedom or growth of mind or strength of
+heart, feels that pleasure is his foe.
+
+
+    "A king of feasts and flowers, and wine and revel,
+    And love and mirth, was never King of glory."
+
+
+Of money, as the end or ideal of life, it should not be necessary to
+speak. As a fine contempt for life, a willingness to throw it away in
+defence of any just cause or noble opinion, is one of the privileges of
+youth, so the generous heart of the young holds cheap the material
+comforts which money procures. To be young is to be free, to be able to
+live anywhere on land or sea, in the midst of deserts or among strange
+people; is to be able to fit the mind and body to all circumstance, and
+to rise almost above Nature's iron law. He who is impelled by this high
+and heavenly spirit will dream of flying and not of hobbling through
+life on golden crutches. Let the feeble and the old put their trust in
+money; but where there is strength and youth, the soul should be our
+guide.
+
+And yet the very law and movement of our whole social life seem to point
+to riches as the chief good.
+
+
+    "What is that which I should turn to, lighting upon days like these?
+    Every door is barred with gold, and opens but to golden keys."
+
+
+Money is the god in whom we put our trust, to whom instinctively we pay
+homage. We believe that the rich are fortunate, are happy, that the best
+of life has been given to them. We have faith in the power of money, in
+its sovereign efficacy to save us not only from beggary, from sneers and
+insults, but we believe that it can transform us, and take away the
+poverty of mind, the narrowness of heart, the dullness of imagination,
+which make us weak, hard, and common. Even our hatred of the rich is but
+another form of the worship of money. The poor think they are wretched,
+because they think money the chief good; and if they are right, then is
+it a holy work to strive to overthrow society as it is now constituted.
+Buckle and Strauss find fault with the Christian religion because it
+does not inculcate the love of money. But in this, faith and reason are
+in harmony. Wealth is not the best, and to make it the end of life is
+idolatry, and as Saint Paul declares, the root of evil. Man is more than
+money, as the workman is more than his tools. The soul craves quite
+other nourishment than that which the whole material universe can
+supply. Man's chief good lies in the infinite world of thought and
+righteousness. Fame and wealth and pleasure are good when they are born
+of high thinking and right living, when they lead to purer faith and
+love; but if they are sought as ends and loved for themselves, they
+blight and corrupt. The value of culture is great, and the ideal it
+presents points in the right direction in bidding us build up the being
+which we are. But since man is not the highest, he may not rest in
+himself, and culture therefore is a means rather than an end. If we make
+it the chief aim of life, it degenerates into a principle of exclusion,
+destroys sympathy, and terminates in a sort of self-worship.
+
+What remains, then, but the ideal which I have proposed?--"Seek ye first
+the Kingdom of God." Unless the light of Heaven fall along our way,
+thick darkness gathers about us, and in the end, whatever our success
+may have been, we fail, and are without God and without hope. So long
+as any seriousness is left, religion is man's first and deepest concern;
+to be indifferent is to be dull or depraved, and doubt is disease.
+Difficulties assuredly there are, underlying not only faith, but all
+systems of knowledge. How am I certain that I know anything? is a
+question, debated in all past time, debatable in all future time; but we
+are none the less certain that we know. The mind is governed by laws
+which neither science nor philosophy can change, and while theories and
+systems rise and pass away, the eternal problems present themselves ever
+anew clothed in the eternal mystery. But little discernment is needed to
+enable us to perceive how poor and symbolic are the thoughts of the
+multitude. Half in pity, half in contempt, we rise to higher regions
+only to discover that wherever we may be there also are the laws and the
+limitations of our being; and that in whatsoever sanctuaries we may take
+refuge, we are still of the crowd. We cannot grasp the Infinite;
+language cannot express even what we know of the Divine Being, and hence
+there remains a background of darkness, where it is possible to adore,
+or to mock. But religion dispels more mystery than it involves. With it,
+there is twilight in the world; without it, night. We are in the world
+to act, not to doubt. Leaving quibbles to those who can find no better
+use for life, the wise, with firm faith in God and man, strive to make
+themselves worthy to do brave and righteous work. Distrust is the last
+wisdom a great heart learns; and noble natures feel that the generous
+view is, in the end, the true view. For them life means good; they find
+strength and joy in this wholesome and cheerful faith, and if they are
+in error, it can never be known, for if death end all, with it knowledge
+ceases. Perceiving this, they strive to gain spiritual insight, they
+look to God; toward him they turn the current of their thought and love;
+the unseen world of truth and beauty becomes their home; and while
+matter flows on and breaks and remakes itself to break again, they dwell
+in the presence of the Eternal, and become co-workers with the Infinite
+Power which makes goodness good, and justice right. They love knowledge,
+because God knows all things; they love beauty, because he is its
+source; they love the soul, because it brings man into conscious
+communion with him and his universe. If their ideal is poetical, they
+catch in the finer spirit of truth which the poet breathes, the
+fragrance of the breath of God; if it is scientific, they discover in
+the laws of Nature the harmony of his attributes; if it is political and
+social, they trace the principles of justice and liberty to him; if it
+is philanthropic, they understand that love which is the basis, aim,
+and end of life is also God.
+
+The root of their being is in him, and the illusory world of the senses
+cannot dim their vision of the real world which is eternal. By
+self-analysis the mind is sublimated until it becomes a shadow in a
+shadowy universe; and the criticism of the reason drives us to doubt and
+inaction, from which we are redeemed by our necessary faith in our own
+freedom, in our power to act, and in the duty of acting in obedience to
+higher law. Knowledge comes of doing. Never to act is never to know. The
+world of which we are conscious is the world against which we throw
+ourselves by the power of the will; hence life is chiefly conduct, and
+its ideal is not merely religious, but moral. The duty of obedience to
+our better self determines the purpose and end of action, for the better
+self is under the impulse of God. Whether we look without or within, we
+find things are as they should not be; and there awakens the desire,
+nay, the demand that they be made other and better. The actual is a
+mockery unless it may be looked upon as the means of a higher state. If
+all things come forth only to perish and again come forth as they were
+before; if life is a monster which destroys itself that it may again be
+born, again to destroy itself,--were it not better that the tragedy
+should cease? For many centuries men have been struggling for richer and
+happier life; and yet when we behold the sins, the miseries, the wrongs,
+the sorrows, of which the world is full, we are tempted to think that
+progress means failure. The multitude are still condemned to toil from
+youth to age to provide the food by which life is kept in the body;
+immortal spirits are still driven by hard necessity to fix their
+thoughts upon matter from which they with much labor dig forth what
+nourishes the animal. Like the savage, we still tremble before the
+pitiless might of Nature. Floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, untimely
+frosts, destroy in a moment what with long and painful effort has been
+provided. Pestilence still stalks through the earth to slay and make
+desolate. Each day a hundred thousand human beings die; and how many of
+these perish as the victims of sins of ignorance, of selfishness, of
+sensuality.
+
+To-day, as of old, it would seem man's worst enemy is man. What hordes
+still wander through Asia and Africa, seeking opportunity for murder and
+rapine; what multitudes are still hunted like beasts, caught and sold
+into slavery. In Europe millions of men stand, arms in hand, waiting for
+the slaughter. They still believe, because they were born on different
+sides of a river and speak different languages, that they are natural
+enemies, made to destroy one another. And in our own country, what other
+sufferings and wrongs,--greed, sensuality, injustice, deceit,--make us
+enemies one of another! There is a general struggle in which each one
+strives to get the most, heedless of the misery of others. We trade upon
+the weaknesses, the vices, and the follies of our fellow-men; and every
+attempt at reform is met by an army of upholders of abuse. When we
+consider the murders, the suicides, the divorces, the adulteries, the
+prostitutions, the brawls, the drunkenness, the dishonesties, the
+political and official corruptions, of which our life is full, it is
+difficult to have complacent thoughts of ourselves. Consider, too, our
+prisons, our insane asylums, our poor-houses; the multitudes of old men
+and women, who having worn out strength and health in toil which barely
+gave them food and raiment, are thrust aside, no longer now fit to be
+bought and sold; the countless young people, who have, as we say, been
+educated, but who have not been taught the principles and habits which
+lead to honorable living; the thousands in our great cities who are
+driven into surroundings which pervert and undermine character. And
+worse still, the good, instead of uniting to labor for a better state
+of things, misunderstand and thwart one another. They divide into
+parties, are jealous and contentious, and waste their time and exhaust
+their strength in foolish and futile controversies. They are not anxious
+that good be done, nor asking nor caring by whom; but they seek credit
+for themselves, and while they seem to be laboring for the general
+welfare, are striving rather to satisfy their own selfish vanity.
+
+But the knowledge of all this does not discourage him who, guided by the
+light of true ideals, labors to make reason and the will of God prevail.
+If things are bad he knows they have been worse. Never before have the
+faith and culture which make us human, which make us strong and wise,
+been the possession of so large a portion of the race. Religion and
+civilization have diffused themselves, from little centres--from Athens
+and Jerusalem and Rome--until people after people, whole continents,
+have been brought under their influence. And in our day this diffusion
+is so rapid that it spreads farther in a decade than formerly in
+centuries. For ages, mountains and rivers and oceans were barriers
+behind which tribes and nations entrenched themselves against the human
+foe. But we have tunneled the mountains; we have bridged the rivers; we
+have tamed the oceans. We hitch steam and electricity to our wagons,
+and in a few days make the circuit of the globe. All lands, all seas,
+are open to us. The race is getting acquainted with itself. We make a
+comparative study of all literatures, of all religions, of all
+philosophies, of all political systems. We find some soul of goodness in
+whatever struggles and yearnings have tried man's heart. As the products
+of every clime are carried everywhere, like gifts from other worlds, so
+the highest science and the purest religion are communicated and taught
+throughout the earth: and as a result, national prejudices and
+antagonisms are beginning to disappear; wars are becoming less frequent
+and less cruel; established wrongs are yielding to the pressure of
+opinion; privileged classes are losing their hold upon the imagination;
+and opportunity offers itself to ever-increasing numbers.
+
+Now, in all this, what do we perceive but the purpose of God, urging
+mankind to wider and nobler life? History is his many-chambered school.
+Here he has taught this lesson, and there another, still leading his
+children out of the darkness of sin and ignorance toward the light of
+righteousness and love, until his kingdom come, until his will be done
+on earth as it is in heaven. To believe in God and in this divine
+education, and to make co-operation with his providential guidance of
+the race a life-aim is to have an ideal which is not only the highest,
+but which also blends all other true ideals into harmony. And the lovers
+of culture should be the first to perceive that intellectual good is
+empty, illusory, unless there be added to it the good of the heart, the
+good of conscience. To live for the cultivation of one's mind, is, after
+all, to live for one's self, and therefore out of harmony with the
+eternal law which makes it impossible for us to find ourselves except in
+what is not ourselves. "It is the capital fault of all cultivated men,"
+says Goethe, "that they devote their whole energies to the carrying out
+of a mere idea, and seldom or never to the realization of practical
+good." Whatever may be said in praise of culture, of its power to make
+its possessor at home in the world of the best thought, the purest
+sentiment, the highest achievements of the race; of the freedom, the
+mildness, the reasonableness of the temper it begets; of its aim at
+completeness and perfection,--it is nevertheless true, that if it be
+sought apart from faith in God and devotion to man, its tendency is to
+produce an artificial and unsympathetic character. The primal impulse of
+our nature is to action; and unless we can make our thought a kind of
+deed, it seems to be vain and unreal; and unless the harmonious
+development of all the endowments which make the beauty and dignity of
+human life, give us new strength and will to work with God for the good
+of men, sadness and a sense of failure fall upon us. To have a
+cultivated mind, to be able to see things on many sides, to have wide
+sympathy and the power of generous appreciation,--is most desirable, and
+without something of all this, not only is our life narrow and
+uninteresting, but our energy is turned in wrong directions, and our
+very religion is in danger of losing its catholicity.
+
+Culture, then, is necessary. We need it as a corrective of the tendency
+to seek the good of life in what is external, as a means of helping us
+to overcome our vulgar self-complacency, our satisfaction with low aims
+and cheap accomplishments, our belief in the sovereign potency of
+machines and measures. We need it to make our lives less unlovely, less
+hard, less material; to help us to understand the idolatry of the
+worship of steam and electricity, the utter insufficiency of the ideals
+of industrialism. But if culture is to become a mighty transforming
+influence it must be wedded to religious faith, without which, while it
+widens the intellectual view, it weakens the will to act. To take us out
+of ourselves and to urge us on to labor with God that we may leave the
+world better because we have lived, religion alone has power. It gives
+new vigor to the cultivated mind; it takes away the exclusive and
+fastidious temper which a purely intellectual habit tends to produce; it
+enlarges sympathy; it teaches reverence; it nourishes faith, inspires
+hope, exalts the imagination, and keeps alive the fire of love. To lead
+a noble, a beautiful, and a useful life, we should accept and follow the
+ideals both of religion and of culture. In the midst of the
+transformations of many kinds which are taking place in the civilized
+world, neither the uneducated nor the irreligious mind can be of help.
+Large and tolerant views are necessary; but not less so is the
+enthusiasm, the earnestness, the charity of Christian faith. They who
+are to be leaders in the great movements upon which we have entered,
+must both know and believe. They must understand the age, must
+sympathize with whatever is true and beneficent in its aspirations, must
+hail with thankfulness whatever help science, and art, and culture can
+bring; but they must also know and feel that man is of the race of God,
+and that his real and true life is in the unseen, infinite, and eternal
+world of thought and love, with which the actual world of the senses
+must be brought into ever-increasing harmony. Liberty and equality are
+good, wealth is good, and with them we can do much, but not all that
+needs to be done. The spirit of Christ is not merely the spirit of
+liberty and equality; it is more essentially the spirit of love, of
+sympathy, of goodness; and this spirit must breathe upon our social life
+until it becomes as different from what it is as is fragrant spring from
+cheerless winter. Sympathy must become universal; not merely as a
+sentiment prompting to deeds of helpfulness and mercy, but as the
+informing principle of society until it attains such perfectness that
+whatever is loss or gain for one, shall be felt as loss or gain for all.
+The narrow, exclusive self must lose itself in wider aims, in generous
+deeds, in the comprehensive love of God and man. The good must no longer
+thwart one another; the weak must be protected; the wicked must be
+surrounded by influences which make for righteousness; and the forces of
+Nature itself must more and more be brought under man's control.
+Pestilence and famine must no longer bring death and desolation; men
+must no longer drink impure water and adulterated liquors, no longer
+must they breathe the poisonous air of badly constructed houses;
+dwellings which are now made warm in winter, must be made cool in
+summer; miasmatic swamps must be drained; saloons, which stand like
+painted harlots to lure men to sin and death, must be closed. Women
+must have the same rights and privileges as men; children must no longer
+be made the victims of mammon and offered in sacrifice in his temple,
+the factory; ignorance, which is the most fruitful cause of misery, must
+give place to knowledge; war must be condemned as public murder, and our
+present system of industrial competition must be considered worse than
+war; the social organization, which makes the few rich, and dooms the
+many to the slavery of poorly paid toil, must cease to exist; and if the
+political state is responsible for this cruelty, it must find a remedy,
+or be overthrown; society must be made to rest upon justice and love,
+without which it is but organized wrong. These principles must so
+thoroughly pervade our public life that it can no more be the interest
+of any one to wrong his fellow, to grow rich at the cost of the poverty
+and misery of another. Life must be prolonged both by removing many of
+the physical causes of death, and by making men more rational and
+religious, more willing and able to deny themselves those indulgences
+which are but a kind of slow suicide.
+
+Never before have questions so vast, so complex, so pregnant with
+meaning, so fraught with the promise of good, presented themselves; and
+it can hardly be vanity or conceit which prompts us to believe that in
+this mighty movement toward a social life in harmony with our idea of
+God and with the aspirations of the soul, America is the divinely
+appointed leader. But if this faith is not to be a mere delusion, it
+must become for the best among us the impulse to strong and persevering
+effort. Not by millionaires and not by politicians shall this salvation
+be wrought; but by men who to pure religion add the best intellectual
+culture. The American youth must learn patience; he must acquire that
+serene confidence in the power of labor, which makes workers willing to
+wait. He must not, like a foolish child, rush forward to pluck the fruit
+before it is ripe, lest this be his epitaph: The promise of his early
+life was great, his performance insignificant.
+
+Do not our young men lack noble ambition? Are they not satisfied with
+low aims? To be a legislator; to be a governor; to be talked about; to
+live in a marble house,--seems to them a thing to be desired. Unhappy
+youths from whom the power and goodness of life are hidden, who,
+standing in the presence of the unseen, infinite world of truth and
+beauty, can only dream some aldermanic nightmare. They thrust themselves
+into the noisy crowd, and are thrown into contact with disenchanting
+experience at a time of life when the mind and heart should draw
+nourishment and wisdom from communion with God and with great thoughts.
+Amid the universal clatter of tongues, and in the overflowing ceaseless
+stream of newspaper gossip, the soul is bewildered and stifled. In a
+blatant land, the young should learn to be silent. The noblest minds are
+fashioned in secrecy, through long travail like,--
+
+
+    "Wines that, Heaven knows where,
+    Have sucked the fire of some forgotten sun
+    And kept it thro' a hundred years of gloom
+    Yet glowing in a heart of ruby."
+
+
+Is it not worth the labor and expectation of a life-time to be able to
+do, even once, the right thing excellently well? The eager passion for
+display, the desire to speak and act in the eyes of the world, is
+boyish. Will is concentration, and a great purpose works in secrecy. Oh,
+the goodness and the seriousness of life, the illimitable reach of
+achievement, which it opens to the young who have a great heart and
+noble aims! With them is God's almighty power and love, and his very
+presence is hidden from them by a film only. From this little islet they
+look out upon infinite worlds; heaven bends over them, and earth bears
+them up as though it would have them fly. How is it possible to remain
+inferior when we believe in God and know that this age is the right
+moment for all high and holy work? The yearning for guidance has never
+been so great. We have reached heights where the brain swims, and
+thoughts are confused, and it is held to be questionable whether we are
+to turn backward or to move onward to the land of promise; whether we
+are to be overwhelmed by the material world which we have so
+marvelously transformed, or with the aid of the secrets we have
+learned, are to rise Godward to a purer and fairer life of knowledge,
+justice, and love.
+
+Is the material progress of the nineteenth century a cradle or a grave?
+Are we to continue to dig and delve and peer into matter until God and
+the soul fade from our view and we become like the things we work in? To
+put such questions to the multitude were idle. There is here no affair
+of votes and majorities. Human nature has not changed, and now, as in
+the past, crowds follow leaders. What the best minds and the most
+energetic characters believe and teach and put in practice, the millions
+will come to accept. The doubt is whether the leaders will be
+worthy,--the real permanent leaders, for the noisy apparent leaders can
+never be so. And here we touch the core of the problem which Americans
+have to solve. No other people has such numbers who are ready to thrust
+themselves forward as leaders, no other has so few who are really able
+to lead. In mitigation of this fact, it may be said with truth, that
+nowhere else is it so difficult to lead; for nowhere else does force
+rule so little. Every one has opinions; the whole nation is awakened;
+thousands are able to discuss any subject with plausibility; and to be
+simply keen-witted and versatile is to be of the crowd. We need men
+whose intellectual view embraces the history of the race, who are
+familiar with all literature, who have studied all social movements, who
+are acquainted with the development of philosophic thought, who are not
+blinded by physical miracles and industrial wonders, but know how to
+appreciate all truth, all beauty, all goodness. And to this wide culture
+they must join the earnestness, the confidence, the charity, and the
+purity of motive which Christian faith inspires. We need scholars who
+are saints, and saints who are scholars. We need men of genius who live
+for God and their country; men of action who seek for light in the
+company of those who know; men of religion who understand that God
+reveals himself in science, and works in Nature as in the soul of man,
+for the good of those who love him. Let us know the right moment, and
+let us know that it comes for those alone who are prepared.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+EXERCISE OF MIND.
+
+
+     O heavens! how awful is the might of souls
+     And what they do within themselves while yet
+     The yoke of earth is new to them, the world
+     Nothing but a wild field where they were sown.
+
+     WORDSWORTH.
+
+
+
+Learning is acquaintance with what others have felt, thought, and done;
+knowledge is the result of what we ourselves have felt, thought, and
+done. Hence a man knows best what he has taught himself; what personal
+contact with God, with man, and with Nature has made his own. The
+important thing, then, is not so much to know the thoughts and loves of
+others, as to be able ourselves to think truly, and to love nobly. The
+aim should be to rouse, strengthen, and illumine the mind rather than to
+store it with learning; and the great educational problem has been, and
+is, how to give to the soul purity of intention, to the conscience
+steadfastness, and to the mind force, pliability, and openness to light;
+or in other words, how to bring philosophy and religion to the aid of
+the will so that the better self shall prevail and each generation
+introduce its successor to a higher plane of life.
+
+To this end the efforts of all teachers have, with more or less
+consciousness, tended; and in this direction too, along winding ways and
+with periods of arrest or partial return, the race of man has for ages
+been moving; and he who aspires to gain a place in the van of the mighty
+army on its heavenward march,--
+
+
+    "And draw new furrows 'neath the healthy morn
+    And plant the great Hereafter in this Now,"--
+
+
+may be rash, but his spirit is not ignoble. To him it may not be given
+"to fan and winnow from the coming step of Time the chaff of custom;"
+but if he persevere he may confidently hope that his thought and love
+shall at length rise to fairer and more enduring worlds. He weds himself
+to things of light, seeks aids to true life within, learns to live with
+the noble dead, and with the great souls of the present who have uttered
+the truth whereby they live, in a way more intimate and higher than that
+granted to those who are with them day by day; for minds are not
+separated by time and space, but by quality of thought. But to be able
+to love this life, and with all one's heart to seek this close communion
+with God, with noble souls, and with Nature is not easy, and it may be
+that it is impossible for those who are not drawn to it by irresistible
+instincts. For the intellect, at least, attractions are proportional to
+destiny; and the art of intellectual life is not most surely learned by
+those whom circumstances favor, but by those whom will impels onward to
+exercise of mind; whom neither daily wants, nor animal appetites, nor
+hope of gain, nor low ambition, nor sneers of worldlings, nor prayers of
+friends, nor aught else can turn from the pursuit of wisdom; who, with
+ceaseless labor and with patient thought, eat their way in silence, like
+caterpillars, to the light, become their own companions, walk uplifted
+by their own thoughts, and by slow and imperceptible processes are
+transformed and grow to be the embodiment of the truth and beauty which
+they see and love.
+
+The overmastering love of mental exercise, of the good of the intellect,
+is probably never found in formal and prosaic minds; or if so, its first
+awakening is in the early years when to think is to feel, when the soul,
+fresh from God, comes trailing clouds of glory, and the sun and moon and
+stars, and the hills and flowing waters seem but made to crown with joy
+hearts that love. It is in these dewy dawns that the image of beauty is
+imprinted on the soul and the sense of mystery awakens. We move about
+and become a part of all we see, grow akin to stones and leaves and
+birds, and to all young and happy things. We lose ourselves in life
+which is poured round us like an unending sea; are natural, healthful,
+alive to all we see and touch; have no misgivings, but walk as though
+the eternal God held us by the hand. These are the fair spring days when
+we suck honey that shall nourish us in the winters of which we do not
+dream; when sunsets interfuse themselves with all our being until we are
+dyed in the many-tinted glory; when the miracle of the changing year is
+the soul's fair seed-time; when lying in the grass, the head resting in
+clasped hands, while soft white clouds float lazily through azure skies,
+and the birds warble, and the waters murmur, and the flowers breathe
+fragrance, we feel a kind of unconscious consciousness of a universal
+life in Nature. The very rocks seem to be listening to what the leaves
+whisper; and through the silent eternities we almost see the dead
+becoming the living, the living the dead, until both grow to be one, and
+whatever is, is life.
+
+He who has never had these visions; has never heard these airy voices;
+has never seemed about to catch a glimpse of the inner heart of being,
+pulsing beneath the veil of visible things; has never felt that he
+himself is a spirit looking blindly on a universe, which if his eyes
+could but see and his ears hear, would be revealed as the very heaven of
+the infinite God,--must forever lack something of the freshness, of the
+eager delight, with which a poetic mind contemplates the world and
+follows whither the divine intimations point. This early intercourse
+with Nature nourishes the soul, deepens the intellect, exalts the
+imagination, and fills the memory with fair and noble forms and images
+which abide with us, and as years pass on, gain in softness and purity
+what they may lose in distinctness of outline and color. This is the
+source of intellectual wealth, of tranquil moods, of patience in the
+midst of opposition, of confidence in the fruitfulness of labor and the
+transforming power of time. Here is given the material which must be
+molded into form; the rude blocks which must be cut and dressed and
+fitted together until they become a spiritual temple wherein the soul
+may rest at one with God and Nature, and with its own thought and love.
+To run, to jump, to ride, to swim, to skate, to sit in the shade of
+trees by flowing water, to watch reapers at their work, to look on
+orchards blossoming, to dream in the silence that lies amid the hills,
+to feel the solemn loneliness of deep woods, to follow cattle as they
+crop the sweet-scented clover,--to learn to know, as one knows a
+mother's face, every change that comes over the heavens from the dewy
+freshness of early dawn to the restful calm of evening, from the
+overpowering mystery of the starlit sky to the tender human look with
+which the moon smiles upon the earth,--all this is education of a higher
+and altogether more real kind than it is possible to receive within the
+walls of a school; and lacking this, nothing shall have power to develop
+the faculties of the soul in symmetry and completeness. Hence a
+philosopher has said there are ten thousand chances to one that genius,
+talent, and virtue shall issue from a farmhouse rather than from a
+palace. The daily intercourse with Nature in childhood and youth
+intertwines with noble and enduring objects the passions which form the
+mind and heart of man, whereas those who are shut out from such
+communion are necessarily thrown into contact with what is mean and
+vulgar; and since our early years, whatever our surroundings may have
+been, seem to us sweet and fair because life itself is then a
+clear-flowing fountain, they cannot help blending the memory of that
+innocent and happy time with thoughts of base and mechanical objects,
+or, it may be, of low and ignoble associates.
+
+He is fortunate who, during the first ten years of his life, escapes the
+confinement and repression of school, and lives at home in the country
+amid the fields and the woods, day by day growing familiar with the look
+on Nature's face, with all her moods, with every common object, with
+living things in the air and the water and on the earth; who sees the
+corn sprout, and watches it grow week after week until the yellow
+harvest waves in the sunlight; who looks with unawed eye on rising
+thunder-clouds and shouts with glee amid the lightning's play; who
+learns to know that whatever he looks upon is thereby humanized, and to
+feel that he is part of all he sees and loves. He will carry with him to
+the study of the intellectual and spiritual world of men's thoughts shut
+up in books, a strength of mind, a depth and freshness of heart which
+only those can own who have drunk at Nature's deep flowing fountain, and
+come up to life's training-course wet with her dews and with the
+fragrance of her flowers on their breath. In the eyes of the old Greeks,
+who first made education a science, the scholar was an idler,--one who
+had leisure to look about him, to stroll amid the olive groves, to let
+his eye rest upon the purple hills or the blue sea studded with green
+isles, to listen to the brooks and the nightingales, to read the lesson
+the fair earth teaches more than that imprinted on parchment; and the
+school must still preserve something of this freedom from constraint,
+must encourage the play of body and of mind, the delight natural to the
+young in the exercise of strength of whatever kind, and thus as far as
+possible lighten the labor and drudgery of elementary studies with
+thoughts of liberty, of beauty, and of excellence. Let the boy feel how
+good it is to be alive though life meant only the narrow world and the
+mere surfaces of things with which alone it is possible for him to be
+acquainted; and then when we ask him to believe that in high thinking
+and in noble acting he will find a life infinitely more worthy, his
+eager soul will be inflamed with a desire for knowledge and virtue, and
+bearing in his heart the strength and wealth of imagination gained from
+his early experience, his thoughts will turn to great and good men. Dim
+visions of mighty conquerors, of poets at whose song the woods and waves
+grow calm, of orators whose words with storm-like force, whatever way
+they take, sweep with them the wills of men,--will rise before his mind.
+His young fancy will endow them with preternatural qualities; and he
+will yearn to draw near, to mingle with them and to catch the secret of
+their divine power. The germ of the godlike within his bosom bursts and
+springs. What they were, why may not he also become? What bars are
+thrown athwart his path, what obstacles hem his way, which, whoever in
+any age has excelled, has not had to break down and surmount? Here the
+wise teacher comes to cheer him, to tell him his faith is not wrong, his
+hope not without promise of attainment if he but trust himself, and bend
+his whole mind to the task; that whatever goal within the scope of human
+power, the will sets to itself, it may reach.
+
+In order to develop, strengthen, and confirm this high mood, this noble
+temper, let him by all means be made acquainted with the language and
+genius of Greece. Here he will be introduced to a world of thought and
+sentiment almost as fresh, as fair and many-sided as Nature
+herself,--the fragrant blossoming in myriad hues and forms of the life
+and mind of the most richly endowed portion of the human race. Not only
+are the Greeks the most highly-gifted of all people, but in this
+classical age they have also this special charm and power,--that the
+keenest intellectual faculties are in them united with the feelings,
+hopes, and fancies of a noble and great-hearted youth. Even Socrates and
+Plato talk like high-souled boys who can see the world only in the light
+of ideals, for whom what the mind beholds and the heart loves is alone
+real. How healthfully they look on life, with what delight they breathe
+the air! What fine contempt have they not of death, thinking no fortune
+so good as that which comes to the hero who dies in a worthy cause!
+There is Athens, already the world's university; but no books, no
+libraries, no lecture-halls, only great teachers who walk about followed
+by a crowd of youths eager to drink in their words. Here is the
+Acropolis, with its snow-white temples and propylaeum, fair and chaste as
+though they had been built in heaven and gently lowered to this Attic
+mound by the hands of angels. There in the Parthenon are the sculptures
+of Phidias, and yonder in the temple of the Dioscuri, the paintings of
+Polygnotus,--ideal beauty bodied forth to lure the souls of men to
+unseen and eternal worlds. If they turn to the east, the isles of the
+AEgean look up to them like virgins who welcome happy lovers; to the
+west, Mount Pentelicus, from whose heart the architectural glory of the
+city has been carved, bids them think what patience will enable man's
+genius to accomplish; and to the north, Hymettus, fragrant with the
+breath of a thousand herbs and musical with the hum of bees, stoops with
+gentle undulations to their feet. They live in the air; their temples
+are open to the sunlight; their theatres are uncovered to the heavens;
+and whithersoever they move, they are surrounded by what is fair, noble,
+and inspiring. This free and happy life in the company of great
+teachers becomes the stimulus to the keenest exercise of mind. They are
+as eager to see things in a true light as they are quick to sympathize
+with whatever is heroic or beautiful; and all their talk is of truth and
+justice, the good, the fair, the excellent, of philosophy, religion,
+poetry, and art, and of whatever else seems favorable to human life and
+to the development of ideal manhood. Of the merely useful they have the
+scorn of young and inexperienced minds; and Hippocrates proclaims
+himself ready to give Protagoras, not only whatever he himself
+possesses, but also the property of his friends, if he will but teach
+him wisdom. Superior knowledge was to them of all things the most
+admirable and the most to be desired. What noble thoughts have they not
+concerning education? "An intelligent man," says Plato, "will prize
+those studies which result in his soul getting soberness, righteousness,
+and wisdom, and will less value the others." The culture of the mind is
+made a kind of religion, in the spreading of which the personal
+influence of the teacher is not less active than the truths he sets
+forth. Bonds of affection bind the disciple to the master whose words
+have for him the sacredness of wisdom and the charm of genius, power to
+confirm the will, and warmth and color whereby the imagination is
+raised.
+
+This secret of making knowledge attractive, of clothing truth in chaste
+and beautiful language, of associating it with whatever is fair and
+noble in Nature, and of relating it to life and conduct, which is part
+of the genius of Greece, still lives in her literature; and to read the
+words of her poets, orators, and philosophers is to feel the presence of
+a high and active spirit, is to breathe in an intellectual atmosphere of
+light and liberty, is of itself enlargement and cultivation of mind.
+Hence, in the realms of thought, the Greeks are the civilizers and
+emancipators of the world; and whoever thinks, is to some extent their
+debtor. The music of their eloquence and poetry can never grow silent;
+the forms of beauty their genius has created can never perish, and never
+cease to win the admiration and love of noble minds and gentle hearts,
+or to be the inspiration, generation after generation, to high thoughts
+and heroic moods. So long as glory, beauty, freedom, light, and gladness
+shall seem good and fair, so long will the finer spirits of the world
+feel the attraction and the charm of Greece, and know the sweet surprise
+which thrilled the heart of Keats when first he read Homer:--
+
+
+    "Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
+    When a new planet swims into his ken,
+    Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
+    He stared at the Pacific, and all his men
+    Looked at each other with a wild surmise,
+    Silent, upon a peak in Darien."
+
+
+In a less degree, Roman literature, which is the offspring of Greek
+culture, has value as an intellectual stimulus and discipline. Here also
+the youthful mind is brought into the presence of a great and noble
+people, who, if they have less genius and a duller sense of beauty than
+the Greeks, excel them in steadiness of purpose, in dignity of
+character, in reverence for law and religion, and above all in the art
+of governing.
+
+The educational value of the classics does not lie so much in the Greek
+and Latin languages as in the type of mind, the sense of proportion and
+beauty, the heroic temper, the philosophic mood, the keen relish for
+high enterprise, and the joyful love of life which they make known to
+us. The world to which they introduce us is so remote that the
+pre-occupations and vulgarities of the present, by which we all are
+hemmed and warped, fall away from us; and it is at the same time so real
+and of such absorbing interest that we are caught up in spirit and
+carried to the Attic Plain and the hills of Latium. They are useful, not
+because they teach us anything that may not be learned and learned more
+accurately from modern books, but because they move the mind, fire the
+heart, ennoble and refine the imagination in a way which nothing else
+has power to do. They are sources of inspiration; they first roused the
+modern mind to activity; and the potency of their influence can never
+cease to be felt by those whose aptitudes lead them to the love of
+intellectual perfection, who delight in the free play of the mind, who
+are attracted by what is symmetrical, who have the instinct for beauty,
+who swim in a current of ideas as naturally as birds fly in the air.
+They appeal to the mind as a whole, stimulate all its faculties, awaken
+a many-sided sympathy both with Nature and with the world of men. They
+widen our view of life, bring forth in us the consciousness of our
+kinship with the human race, and of the application to ourselves,
+however common and uninspiring our surroundings may be, of the best
+thoughts and noblest deeds which have ever sprung from the brain and
+heart of man. They help to make one, again to quote Plato, "A lover, not
+of a part of wisdom, but of the whole; who has a taste for every sort of
+knowledge, and is curious to learn and is never satisfied; who has
+magnificence of mind, and is a spectator of all time and all existence;
+who is harmoniously constituted, of a well-proportioned and gracious
+mind, whose own nature will move spontaneously toward the true being of
+everything; who has a good memory, and is quick to learn, noble,
+gracious, the friend of truth, justice, courage, temperance." The ideal
+presented is that of complete harmonious culture, the aim of which is
+not to make an artisan, a physician, a merchant, a lawyer, but a man
+alive in all his faculties, touching the world at many points, for whom
+all knowledge is desirable, all beauty lovable, and for whom fine
+bearing and noble acting are indispensable.
+
+It is needless to point out in what, or why, the Greeks failed, since
+here there is question only of intellectual life, and in this they did
+not fail. Nor is there any thought, in what has here been said, of
+depreciating the worth of the study of science, without a certain
+knowledge of which no one, in this age, can in any true sense, be called
+educated. Whoever, indeed, learns a language properly, acquires
+scientific knowledge; and the Greeks are not only the masters in poetry
+and eloquence, they are also the guides to the right use of reason and
+to scientific method, and the teachers of mathematics, logic, and
+physics. He who pursues culture, in the Greek spirit, who desires to see
+things as they are, to know the best that has been thought and done by
+men, will fear nothing so much as the exclusion of any truth, and he
+will be anxious to acquaint himself not only with the method, but as
+far as possible with the facts, of physical science. Still he perceives
+that however great the value of natural knowledge may be, it is, as an
+instrument of culture, inferior to literature. We are educated by what
+calls forth in us love and admiration, by what creates the exalted mood
+and the steadfast purpose. In bowing with reverence to what is above us,
+we are uplifted. When we are moved, we are more alive; we are stronger,
+tenderer, nobler. Now to look upon Nature with the detective eye of the
+man of science is to be cold and unsympathetic; to learn by methodic
+experiment is to gain knowledge, which, since it is only remotely or
+indirectly related to life, is but little interesting. Such knowledge is
+a fragment, and a fragment extremely difficult to fit into the temple
+built by thought and love, by hope and imagination; and hence when we
+have learned a great deal about chemical elements, geologic epochs,
+correlation of forces, and sidereal spaces, we are rather astonished
+than enlightened. We are brought into the presence of a world which is
+not that of the senses, nor yet that which faith, hope, and love
+forebode; and the bearing it may have upon human life is of more
+interest to us than the facts made known. We are, indeed, curious to
+know whatever may, with any certainty, be told us of atoms and
+biogenesis; but our real concern is to learn what significance such
+truth may have in its relation to questions of God and the soul.
+
+There is doubtless a disciplinary value in the study of physical
+science. It trains the mind to habits of patient attention, of careful
+observation, teaches the danger of hasty generalization, and diminishes
+intellectual conceit; but these results may also be obtained by other
+means. The aim of education is not simply to develop this or the other
+faculty, however indispensable, nor yet to make one thoroughly
+conversant with a particular order of facts, but the aim is to bring
+about a conscious participation in the life of the race, to evoke all
+the powers of man, so that his whole being shall be quickened and made
+responsive to the touch of things seen and unseen; and the study of
+science is less adapted to the attainment of this end than the study of
+human letters. The scientific temper draws to specialties; and
+specialists are narrow, are incomplete. They, each in his own line, do
+good work, and are the chief agents for the increase of natural
+knowledge, and are, we may grant, leaders in every kind of improvement;
+but like the operatives who provide our comforts and luxuries, they are
+themselves warped and crippled by what they do. The habit of looking at
+a single order of facts, coldly and always from the same point of view,
+takes from the mind flexibility, weakens the imagination, and puts
+fetters on the soul; and hence though it is important that there be
+specialists, the kind of education by which they are formed, while it is
+suited to make a geologist, a chemist, a mathematician, or a botanist,
+is not suited to call forth the free and harmonious play of all man's
+powers. We do not live on facts alone, much less on facts of a single
+kind. Religion and poetry, love, hope, and imagination are as essential
+to our well-being as science. Human life is knowledge, is faith, is
+conduct, is beauty, is manners; it unfolds itself in many directions and
+shoots its roots into infinitude; and for the general purposes of
+education, science is learned to best advantage when it is embodied in
+literature, and its methods and results, rather than the details of its
+work, are presented to us. Whatever it is able to do, to improve the
+mind, to widen the range of thought, to give true notions of the
+workings of Nature,--it will do for whoever learns accurately its
+general conceptions and results; and these cannot remain unknown to him
+whose aim is culture, for such an one is, as Plato says, "A lover not of
+a part of wisdom, but of the whole, and has a taste for every sort of
+knowledge, and is curious to learn, and is never satisfied; and though
+he will not know medicine like a physician, or the heavens like an
+astronomer, or the vegetable kingdom like a botanist, his mind will play
+over all these realms with freedom, and he will know how to relate the
+principles and facts of all the sciences to our sense for beauty, for
+conduct, for life and religion in a way which a mere specialist can
+never find." And his view will not only be wider and less impeded, it
+will also be deeper than that of the man of science; for he who sees but
+one order of things sees only their surfaces, just as he who sees but
+one thing sees nothing at all.
+
+It would be a mistake to imagine that the ideal here commended, means
+superficial accomplishments, an excessive love of style and the
+ornaments of poetry and eloquence, or preoccupation in favor of aught
+external or frivolous. It is the very opposite of dilettantism, and if
+it mean anything, means thoroughness, and a thoroughness which can come
+only of untiring labor carried on through many years; for time and
+intercourse with men and varied experience are indispensable elements.
+It is like the ideal of religion which makes the saint think himself a
+sinner; it is as exacting as the miser's thought which makes millions
+seem to be beggary; like the artist's vision, like the poet's dream, it
+allures and yet forbids hope of attainment. The seeker after wisdom
+must have a high purpose, a strong soul, and the purest love of truth.
+He cannot live in the senses alone, nor in the mind, nor in the heart
+alone, but the spiritual being, which is himself, yearns for whatever is
+good, whatever is true, whatever is fair, and so he finds himself akin
+to the infinite God and to all that he has made. When his thought is
+carried out to atoms weaving the garment which is our body, and molding
+the world we see and touch; when he beholds motion lighting, warming,
+thrilling the universe,--he is filled with intellectual joy, but at the
+same time he perceives that all this is but a phase of truth; that God
+and the boundless facts are infinitely more than drilled atomics
+marshaled rank on rank until they form the countless hosts of the
+heavens. When the men of science have labeled the elements, and put
+tickets upon all natural compounds, and with complacency declare that
+this is the whole truth, he looks on the flowers around him and the
+blooming children, on the stars above his head, on the sun slow wheeling
+down the western horizon, on the moon climbing some eastern hill, and
+his inmost soul is glad because he feels the thrill of the infinite,
+living Spirit, and forebodes to what fair countries we are bound.
+
+And when they proclaim the wonders science has wrought,--increase of
+physical enjoyment and social comfort; the yoking of lightning and steam
+to make them work for man; the providing of more abundant food; the
+building of more wholesome dwellings; the lengthening of life; temporal
+benefits of every kind,--he joins with those who utter praise, but knows
+that infinitely more than all this goes to the making of man's life. So
+he turns his mind in many directions, and while he looks on the truth in
+science, does not grow blind to the truth in religion; while he knows
+the value of what is practically useful, understands also the priceless
+worth of what is noble and beautiful, and his acquaintance with many
+kinds of thought, with many shades of opinion confirms him, as Joubert
+says, in the acceptance of the best.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE LOVE OF EXCELLENCE.
+
+
+     Why is this glorious creature to be found One only in ten thousand?
+     what one is, Why may not millions be? what bars are thrown By
+     Nature in the way of such a hope?
+
+     WORDSWORTH.
+
+
+
+He teaches to good purpose who inspires the love of excellence, and who
+sends his pupils forth from the school's narrow walls with such desire
+for self-improvement that the whole world becomes to them a
+God-appointed university. And why shall not every youth hope to enter
+the narrow circle of those for whom to live, is to think, who behold
+"the bright countenance of truth in the quiet and still air of
+delightful studies." An enlightened mind is like a fair and pleasant
+friend who comes to cheer us in every hour of loneliness and gloom; it
+is like noble birth which admits to all best company; it is like wealth
+which surrounds us with whatever is rarest and most precious; it is like
+virtue which lives in an atmosphere of light and serenity, and is itself
+enough for itself. Whatever our labors, our cares, our disappointments,
+a free and open mind, by holding us in communion with the highest and
+the fairest, will fill the soul with strength and joy. The artist, day
+by day, year in and year out, hangs over his work, and finds enough
+delight in the beauty he creates; and shall not the friend of the soul
+be glad in striving ceaselessly to make his knowledge and his love less
+unlike the knowledge and the love of God? Seldom is opportunity of
+victory offered to great captains, the orator rarely finds fit theme and
+audience, hardly shall the hero meet with occasions worthy of the
+sacrifice of life; but he who labors to shape his mind to the heavenly
+forms of truth and beauty beholds them ever present and appealing. Life
+without thought and love is worthless; and to the best men and women
+belong only those who cultivate with earnestness and perseverance their
+spiritual faculties, who strive daily to know more, to love more, to be
+more beautiful. They are the chosen ones, and all others, even though
+they sit on thrones, are but the crowd.
+
+Without a free and open mind there is no high and glad human life. You
+may as well point to the savage drowsing in his tent, or to cattle
+knee-deep in clover, and bid me think them high, as to ask me to admire
+where I can behold neither intelligence nor love. All that we possess is
+qualified by what we are. Gold makes not the miser rich, nor its lack a
+true man poor; and he who has gained insight into the fair truth that he
+is a part of all he sees and loves, is richer than kings, and lives like
+a god in his universe. Possibilities for us are measured by the kind of
+work in which we put our hearts. If a man's thoughts are wholly busy
+with carpentering do not expect him to become anything else than a
+carpenter; but if his aim is to build up his own being, to make his mind
+luminous, his heart tender and pure, his will steadfast, who but God
+shall fix a limit beyond which he may not hope to go. Education, indeed,
+cannot confer organic power; but it alone gives us the faculty to
+perceive how infinitely wonderful and fair are man's endowments, how
+boundless his inheritance, how full of deathless hope is that to which
+he may aspire. Religion, philosophy, poetry, science,--all bring us into
+the presence of an ideal of ceaseless growth toward an all-perfect
+Infinite, dimly discerned and unapproachable, but which fascinates the
+soul and haunts the imagination with its deep mystery, until what we
+long for becomes more real than all that we possess, and yearning is our
+highest happiness. Ah! who would throw a veil over the vision on which
+young eyes rest when young hearts feel that ideal things alone are real?
+Who would rob them of this divine principle of progress which makes
+growth the best of life?
+
+
+                        "Many are our joys
+    In youth; but oh, what happiness to live
+    When every hour brings palpable access
+    Of knowledge, when all knowledge is delight!"
+
+
+In all ages, we know those made wise by experience, which teaches us to
+expect little, whether of ourselves or others, have made the thoughts
+and hopes of youth a jest, even as men have made religion a jest, having
+nothing to offer us in compensation for its loss, but witticisms and
+despair. This is the fatal fault of life, that when we have obtained
+what is good,--as wealth, position, wife, and friends,--we lose all hope
+of the best, and with our mockery discourage those who have ideal aims;
+who, remembering how the soul felt in life's dawn, retain a sense of
+God's presence in the world, to whom with growing faculties they aspire,
+feeling that whatsoever point they reach, they still have something to
+pursue. This is the principle of the diviner mind in all high and heroic
+natures; this is the spring-head of deeds that make laws, of "thoughts
+that enrich the blood of the world;" this is the power which gives to
+resolve the force of destiny, and clothes the soul with the heavenliest
+strength and beauty when it stands single and alone, of men abandoned
+and almost of God.
+
+There is little danger that too many shall ever hearken to the
+invitation from the fair worlds to which all souls belong, and where
+alone they can be luminous and free. For centuries, now, what
+innumerable voices have pleaded with men to make themselves worthy of
+heaven; while they have moved on heedless of the heaven that lies about
+us here, placing their hopes and aims in material and perishable
+elements, athirst neither for truth, nor beauty, nor aught that is
+divinely good! They sleep, they wake, they eat, they drink; they tread
+the beaten path with ceaseless iteration, and so they die. If one come
+appealing for culture of intellect, not because they who know, are
+stronger than the ignorant and make them their servants, but because an
+open, free, and flexible mind is good and fair, better than birth,
+position, and wealth, they turn away as though he trifled with their
+common-sense. Life, they say, is not for knowledge, but knowledge for
+life; and they neither truly know, nor live. And if here and there some
+nobler soul stand forth, he degrades himself to an aspirant to fame,
+forgetting truth and love.
+
+
+    Enough there are on earth who reap and sow,
+    Enough who give their lives to common gain,
+    Enough who toil with spade and axe and plane,
+    Enough who sail the seas where rude winds blow;
+    Enough who make their life unmeaning show,
+    Enough who plead in courts, who physic pain;
+    Enough who follow in the lover's train,
+    And taste of wedded hearts the bliss and woe.
+
+    A few at least may love the poet's song,
+    May walk with him, their visionary guide,
+    Far from the crowd, nor do the world a wrong;
+    Or on his wings through deep blue skies may glide
+    And float, by light transfused, like clouds along
+    Above the earth and over oceans wide.
+
+
+With unresting, wearing thought and labor we are striving to make earth
+more habitable. We drag forth from its inner parts whatever treasures
+are hidden there; with steam's mighty force we mold brute matter into
+every fair and serviceable form; we build great cities, we spread the
+fabric of our trade; the engine's iron heart goes throbbing through
+tunneled mountains and over storm-swept seas to bear us and our wealth
+to all regions of the globe; we talk to one another from city to city,
+and from continent to continent along ocean's oozy depths the lightning
+flashes our words, spreading beneath our eyes each morning the whole
+world's gossip,--but in the midst of this miraculous transformation, we
+ourselves remain small, hard, and narrow, without great thoughts or
+great loves or immortal hopes. We are a crowd where the highest and the
+best lose individuality, and are swept along as though democracy were a
+tyranny of the average man under which superiority of whatever kind is
+criminal. Our population increases, our cities grow, our roads are
+lengthened, our machinery is made more perfect, the number of our
+schools is multiplied, our newspapers are read in ever-widening circles,
+the spirit of humanity and of freedom breathes through our life; but the
+individual remains common-place and uninteresting. He lacks
+intelligence, has no perception of what is excellent, no faith in
+ideals, no reverence for genius, no belief in any highest sort of man
+who has not shown his worth in winning wealth, position, or notoriety.
+We have a thousand poets and no poetry, a thousand orators and no
+eloquence, a thousand philosophers and no philosophy. Every city points
+to its successful men who have millions, but are themselves poor and
+unintelligent; to its writers who, having sold their talent to
+newspapers and magazines, sink to the level of those they address,
+dealing only with what is of momentary interest, or if the question be
+deep, they move on the surface, lest the many-eyed crowd lose sight of
+them. The preacher gets an audience and pay on condition that he stoop
+to the gossip which centres around new theories, startling events, and
+mechanical schemes for the improvement of the country. If to get money
+be the end of writing and preaching, then must we seek to please the
+multitude who are willing to pay those who entertain and amuse them.
+Will not our friends, even, conceive a mean opinion of our ability, if
+we fail to gain public recognition?
+
+So we make ourselves "motleys to the view, and sell cheap what is most
+dear." We must, perforce, show the endowment which can be brought to
+perfection only if it be permitted to grow in secrecy and solitude. The
+worst foe of excellence is the desire to appear; for when once we have
+made men talk of us, we seem to be doing nothing if they are silent, and
+thus the love of notoriety becomes the bane of true work and right
+living. To be one of a crowd is not to be at all; and if we are resolved
+to put our thoughts and acts to the test of reason, and to live for what
+is permanently true and great, we must consent, like the best of all
+ages, to be lonely in the world. All life, except the life of thought
+and love, is dull and superficial. The young love for a while, and are
+happy; a few think; and for the rest existence is but the treadmill of
+monotonous sensation. There are but few, who, through work and
+knowledge, through faith and hope and love, seek to escape from the
+narrowness and misery of life to the summits of thought where the soul
+breathes a purer air, and whence is seen the fairer world the multitude
+forebodes. There are but few whose life is
+
+
+    "Effort and expectation and desire,
+    And something evermore about to be;"
+
+
+but few who understand how much the destiny of Man hangs upon single
+persons; but few who feel that what they love and teach, millions must
+know and love.
+
+
+    "A people is but the attempt of many
+    To rise to the completer life of one;
+    And those who live as models for the mass
+    Are singly of more value than them all."
+
+
+Only the noblest souls awaken within us divine aspirations. They are the
+music, the poetry, which warms and illumines whole generations; they are
+the few who, born with rich endowments, by ceaseless labor develop their
+powers until they become capable of work which, were it not for them,
+could not be done at all. History is the biography of aristocrats, of
+the chosen ones with whom all improvement originates, who found States,
+establish civilizations, create literatures, and teach wisdom. They work
+not for themselves; for in spite of human selfishness and the personal
+aims of the ambitious, the poet, the scholar, and the statesman bless
+the world. They lead us through happy isles; they clothe our thoughts
+and hopes with beauty and with strength; they dissipate the general
+gloom; they widen the sphere of life; they bring the multitude beneath
+the sway of law.
+
+Now, here in America, once for all, whatever the thoughtless may
+imagine, we have lost faith in the worth of artificial distinctions.
+Indeed plausible arguments may be found to prove that the kind of man
+democracy tends to form, has no reverence for distinctions of whatever
+kind, and is without ideals, and that as he is envious of men made by
+money, so he looks with the contempt of unenlightened common-sense upon
+those whom character and intellect raise above him. This is not truth.
+The higher you lift the mass, the more will they acknowledge and
+appreciate worth, the clearer will they see that what makes man human,
+beautiful, and beneficent is conduct and intelligence; and so increasing
+enlightenment will turn thought and admiration from position and wealth,
+from the pomp and show of life to what makes a man's self, his
+character, his mind, his manners even,--for the source of manners lies
+within us. In a society like ours, the chosen ones, the best, the models
+of life, and the leaders of thought will be distinguished from the crowd
+not by accident or circumstance, but by inner strength and beauty, by
+finer knowledge, by purer love, by a deeper faith in God, by a more
+steadfast trust that it must, and shall be, well with a world which God
+makes and rules, and which to the fairest mind is fairest, and to the
+holiest soul most sacred.
+
+Here and now, if ever anywhere at any time, there is need of men, there
+is appeal to what is godlike in man, calling upon us to rise above our
+prosperities, our politics, our mechanical aims and implements, and to
+turn the courage, energy, and practical sense which have wrought with
+miraculous power in developing the material resources of America, to the
+cultivation of our spiritual faculties. We alone of the great modern
+nations are without classical writers of our own, without a national
+literature. The thought and love of this people, its philosophy, poetry,
+and art lies yet in the bud; and our tens of thousands of books, even
+the better sort, must perish to enrich the soil that nourishes a life of
+heavenly promise. Hitherto we have been sad imitators of the English,
+but not the best the English have done will satisfy America. Their
+language indeed will remain ours, and their men of genius, above all
+their poets, will enrich our minds with great thoughts nobly expressed.
+But a literature is a national growth; it is the expression of a
+people's life and character, the more or less perfect utterance of what
+it loves, aims at, believes in, hopes for; it has the qualities and the
+defects of the national spirit; it bears the marks of the thousand
+influences that help to make that spirit what it is,--and English
+literature cannot be American literature, for the simple reason that
+Americans are not Englishmen, any more than they are Germans or
+Frenchmen. We must be ourselves in our thinking and writing, as in our
+living, or be insignificant, for it is a man's life that gives meaning
+to his thought; and to write as a disciple is to write in an inferior
+way, since the mind at its best is illumined by truth itself and not
+taught by the words of another. It is not to be believed that this
+great, intelligent, yearning American world will content itself with the
+trick and mannerism of foreign accent and style, or that those who build
+on any other than the broad foundation of our own national life shall be
+accepted as teachers and guides. There is, of course, no method known to
+man by which a great author may be formed; no science which teaches how
+a literature may be created. The men who have written what the world
+will not permit to die have written generally without any clear
+knowledge of the worth of their work, just as great discoverers and
+inventors seem to stumble on what they seek; nevertheless one may hope
+by right endeavor to make himself capable of uttering true thoughts so
+that they shall become intelligible and attractive to others; he may
+educate himself to know and love the best that has been spoken and
+written by men of genius, and so become a power to lift the aims and
+enlarge the views of his fellow-men. If many strive in this way to
+unfold their gifts and to cultivate their faculties, their influence
+will finally pervade the life and thought of thousands, and it may be of
+the whole people.
+
+I do not at all forget Aristotle's saying that "life is practice and not
+theory;" that men are born to do and suffer, and not to dream and weave
+systems; that conduct and not culture is the basis of character and the
+source of strength; that a knowledge of Nature is of vastly more
+importance to our material comfort and progress than philosophy, poetry,
+and art. This is not to be called in question; but in this country and
+age it seems hardly necessary that it be emphasized, for what is the
+whole world insisting upon but the necessity of scientific instruction,
+the importance of practical education, the cultivation of the
+money-getting faculty and habit, and the futility of philosophy, poetry,
+and art? Who is there that denies the worth of what is useful? Where is
+there one who does not approve and encourage whatever brings increase of
+wealth? Are we not all ready to applaud projects which give promise of
+providing more abundant food, better clothing, and more healthful
+surrounding for the poor? Does not our national genius seem to lie
+altogether in the line of what is practically useful? Is it not our
+boast and our great achievement that we have in a single century made
+the wilderness of a vast continent habitable, have so ploughed and
+drained and planted and built that it can now easily maintain hundreds
+of millions in gluttonous plenty? Is not our whole social and political
+organization of a kind which fits us to deal with questions and affairs
+that concern our temporal and material welfare? What innumerable
+individuals among us are congressmen, legislators, supervisors, bank and
+school directors, presidents of boards and companies, committee-men,
+councilmen, heads of lodges and societies, lawyers, professors,
+teachers, editors, colonels, generals, judges, party-leaders, so that
+the sovereign people seems to have life and being only in its titled
+representatives! What does this universal reign of title and office mean
+but the practical education which responsibility gives? If from the
+midst of this paradise of utility, materialism, and business, a voice is
+raised to plead for culture, for intelligence, for beauty, for
+philosophy, poetry, and art, why need any one take alarm? While human
+nature remains what it is, can there be danger that the many will be
+drawn away from what appeals to the senses, to what the soul loves and
+yearns for? If the Almighty God does not win the multitude to the love
+of righteousness and wisdom, how shall the words of man prevail?
+
+It is a mistake to oppose use to beauty, the serviceable to the
+excellent, since they belong together. Beauty is the blossom that makes
+the fruit-tree fair and fragrant. Life means more than meat and drink,
+house and clothing. To live is also to admire, to love, to lose one's
+self in the contemplation of the splendor with which Nature is clothed.
+Human life is the marriage of souls with things of light. Its basis,
+aim, and end is love, and love makes its object beautiful. Man may not
+even consent to eat, except with decency and grace; he must have light
+and flowers and the rippling music of kindly speech, that as far as
+possible he may forget that his act is merely animal and useful. He will
+lose sight of the fact that clothing is intended for protection and
+comfort, rather than not dress to make himself beautiful. To speak
+merely to be understood, and not to speak also with ease and elegance,
+is not to be a gentleman. How easily words find the way to the heart
+when uttered in melodious cadence by the lips of the fair and young.
+Home is the centre and seat of whatever is most useful to us; and yet to
+think of home is to think of spring-time and flowers, of the songs of
+birds and flowing waters, of the voices of children, of floating clouds
+and sunsets that linger as though heaven were loath to bid adieu to
+earth. The warmth, the color, and the light of their boyish days still
+glow in the hearts and imagination of noble men, and redeem the busy
+trafficking world of their daily life from utter vulgarity. What hues
+has not God painted on the air, the water, the fruit, and the grain that
+are the very substance and nutriment of our bodies? Beauty is nobly
+useful. It illumines the mind, raises the imagination, and warms the
+heart. It is not an added quality, but grows from the inner nature of
+things; it is the thought of God working outward. Only from drunken eyes
+can you with paint and tinsel hide inward deformity. The beauty of hills
+and waves, of flowers and clouds, of children at play, of reapers at
+work, of heroes in battle, of poets inspired, of saints rapt in
+adoration,--rises from central depths of being, and is concealed from
+frivolous minds. Even in the presence of death, the hallowing spirit of
+beauty is felt. The full-ripe fruit that gently falls in the quiet air
+of long summer days, the yellow sheaves glinting in the rays of
+autumn's sun, the leaf which the kiss of the hoar frost has made
+blood-red and loosened from the parent stem,--are images of death but
+they suggest only calm and pleasant thoughts. The Bedouin, who, sitting
+amid the ruins of Ephesus, thinks but of his goats and pigs, heedless of
+Diana's temple, Alexander's glory, and the words of Saint Paul, is the
+type of those who place the useful above the excellent and the fair; and
+as men who in their boards of trade buy and sell cattle and corn, dream
+not of green fields and of grain turning to gold in the sun of June, so
+we all, in the business and worry of life, lose sight of beauty which
+makes the heart glad and keeps it young.
+
+The mind of man is the earthly home of beauty, and if any real thing
+were fair as the tender thought of imaginative youth, heaven were not
+far. All we love is but our thought of what only thought makes known and
+makes beautiful, and for what we know love's thought may be the essence
+of all things.
+
+
+    Fairer than waters where soft moonlight lies,
+    Than flowers that slumber on the breast of Spring,
+    Than leafy trees in June when glad birds sing,
+    Than a cool summer dawn, than sunset skies;
+
+    Than love, gleaming through Beauty's deep blue eyes,
+    Than laughing child, than orchards blossoming;
+    Than girls whose voices make the woodland ring,
+    Than ruby lips that utter sweet replies,--
+
+    Fairer than these, than all that may be seen,
+    Is the poetic mind, which sheds the light
+    Of heaven on earthly things, as Night's young Queen
+    Forth-looking from some jagged mountain height
+    Clothes the whole earth with her soft silvery sheen
+    And makes the beauty whereof eyes have sight.
+
+
+Nature is neither sad nor joyful. We but see in her the reflection of
+our own minds. Gay scenes depress the melancholy, and gloomy prospects
+have not the power to rob the happy of their contentment. The spring may
+fill us with fresh and fragrant thoughts, or may but remind us of all
+the hopes and joys we have lost; and autumn will speak to one of decay
+and death, to another of sleep and rest, after toil, to prepare for a
+new and brighter awakening. All the glory of dawn and sunset is but
+etheric waves thrilling the vapory air and impinging on the optic nerve;
+but behind it all is the magician who sees and knows, who thinks and
+loves. "It is the mind that makes the body rich." Thoughts take shape
+and coloring from souls through which they pass; and a free and open
+mind looks upon the world in the mood in which a fair woman beholds
+herself in a mirror. The world is his as much as the face is hers. If we
+could live in the fairest spot of earth, and in the company of those who
+are dear, the source of our happiness would still be our own thought and
+love; and if they are great and noble, we cannot be miserable however
+meanly surrounded. What is reality but a state of soul, finite in man,
+infinite in God? Theory underlies fact, and to the divine mind all
+things are godlike and beautiful. The chemical elements are as sweet and
+pure in the buried corpse as in the blooming body of youth; and it is
+defective intellect, the warp of ignorance and sin, which hides from
+human eyes the perfect beauty of the world.
+
+
+            "Earth's crammed with heaven,
+    And every common bush afire with God;
+    But only he who sees, takes off his shoes."
+
+
+What we all need is not so much greater knowledge, as a luminous and
+symmetrical mind which, whatsoever way it turn, shall reflect the things
+that are, not in isolation and abstraction, but in the living unity and
+harmony wherein they have their being.
+
+The worth of religion is infinite, the value of conduct is paramount;
+but he who lacks intellectual culture, whatever else he may be, is
+narrow, awkward, unintelligent. The mirror of his soul is dim, the
+motions of his spirit are sluggish, and the divine image which is
+himself is blurred.
+
+But let no one imagine that this life of the soul in the mind is easy;
+for it is only less difficult than the life of the soul in God. To
+learn many things; to master this or that science; to have skill in law
+or medicine; to acquaint one's self with the facts of history, with the
+opinions of philosophers or the teachings of theologians,--is
+comparatively not a difficult task; and there are hundreds who are
+learned, who are skillful, who are able, who have acuteness and depth and
+information, for one who has an open, free, and flexible mind,--which is
+alive and active in many directions, touching the world of God and
+Nature at many points, and beholding truth and beauty from many sides;
+which is serious, sober, and reasonable, but also fresh, gentle, and
+sympathetic; which enters with equal ease into the philosopher's
+thought, the poet's vision, and the ecstasy of the saint; which excludes
+no truth, is indifferent to no beauty, refuses homage to no goodness.
+The ideal of culture indeed, like that of religion, like that of art,
+lies beyond our reach, since the truth and beauty which lure us on, and
+flee the farther the longer we pursue, are nothing less than the eternal
+and infinite God.
+
+And culture, if it is not to end in mere frivolity and gloss, must be
+pursued, like religion and art, with earnestness and reverence. If the
+spirit in which we work is not deep and holy, we may become accomplished
+but we shall not gain wisdom, power, and love. The beginner seeks to
+convert his belief into knowledge; but the trained thinker knows that
+knowledge ends in belief, since beyond our little islets of intellectual
+vision, lies the boundless, fathomless expanse of unknown worlds where
+faith and hope alone can be our guides. Once individual man was
+insignificant; but now the earth itself is become so,--a mere dot in
+infinite space, where, for a moment, men wriggle like animalcules in a
+drop of water. And if at times a flash of light suddenly gleam athwart
+the mind, and it seem as though we were about to get a glimpse into the
+inner heart of being, the brightness quickly dies, and only the surfaces
+of things remain visible. Oh, the unimaginable length of ages when on
+the earth there was no living thing! then life's ugly, slimy beginnings;
+then the conscious soul's fitful dream stretching forth to endless time
+and space; then the final sleep in abysmal night with its one star of
+hope twinkling before the all-hidden throne of God, in the shadow of
+whose too great light faith kneels and waits!
+
+Why shall he whose mind is free, symmetrical, and open, be tempted to
+vain glory, to frivolous boasting? Shall not life be more solemn and
+sacred to him than to another? Shall he indulge scorn for any being whom
+God has made, for any thought which has strengthened and consoled the
+human heart? Shall he not perceive, more clearly than others, that the
+unseen Power by whom all things are, is akin to thought and love, and
+that they alone bring help to man who make him feel that faith and hope
+mean good, and are fountains of larger and more enduring life? The
+highest mind, like the purest heart, is a witness of the soul and of
+God.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+CULTURE AND THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE.
+
+
+     But try, I urge,--the trying shall suffice: The aim, if reached or
+     not, makes great the life.
+
+     BROWNING.
+
+
+
+The mass of mankind, if we pass the whole race in review, are sunk in
+gross ignorance; and even in civilized nations, where education is free,
+the multitude have but a rude acquaintance with the elements of
+knowledge. Their ability to read and write hardly serves intellectual
+and moral ends; and such learning as they possess seems only to weaken
+their power to admire and love what is best in life and thought.
+
+If we turn to the more cultivated, whose numbers even in the most
+enlightened countries are not great, we find but here and there an
+individual who has anything better than a sort of mechanical cleverness.
+Students, it has been said, on leaving college, quickly divide into two
+classes,--those who have learned nothing, and those who have forgotten
+everything. In the professions, the lawyer tends to become an advocate,
+the physician an empiric, the theologian a dogmatist; and these are but
+instances of a general falling away from ideals. The student of physical
+science is subdued to what he works in; the man of letters loses depth
+and earnestness; and the teacher, whose business it is to rouse and
+illumine souls, shrivels until he becomes merely a repeater of facts and
+doctrines in which there is no life, no power to exalt the imagination
+or to give tone to the intellect. The teacher cannot create talent, and
+his best work lies in stimulating and directing energy and impulse; but
+this he seldom strives to do or to make himself capable of doing; and
+hence pupils very generally leave school as men quit a prison, with a
+sense of emancipation, and with a desire to forget both the place and
+the kind of life there encouraged. A talent is like seed-corn,--it bears
+within itself the power to break the confining walls and to spring
+upward to light, if only it be sown in proper soil, where the rain and
+the sunshine fall; but this is a truth which those who make education a
+business are slow to accept. They repress; they overawe; they are
+dictatorial; they prescribe rules and methods for minds which can gain
+strength and wisdom only by following the bent given by their
+endowments,--and thus the young, who are most easily discouraged in
+things which concern their highest gifts, lose heart, turn away from
+ideals, and abandon the pursuit of excellence. The nobler the mind, the
+greater the danger of its being wrongly dealt with. We seldom find a man
+whose thinking has helped to form opinion and to create literature, who,
+if he care to say what he feels, will not declare that his scholastic
+training was bad. Milton, Gray, Dryden, Wordsworth, Byron, Cowley,
+Addison, Gibbon, Locke, Shelley, and Cowper had no love for the schools
+to which they were sent; Swift and Goldsmith received no college honors;
+and Pope, Thomson, Burns, and Shakespeare had little or nothing to do
+with institutions of learning. A man educates himself; and the best work
+teachers can do, is to inspire the love of mental exercise and a living
+faith in the power of labor to develop faculty, and to open worlds of
+use and delight which are infinite, and which each individual must
+rediscover for himself. It is the educator's business to cherish the
+aspirations of the young, to inspire them with confidence in themselves,
+and to make them feel and understand that no labor can be too great or
+too long, if its result be cultivation and enlightenment of mind. For
+them ideals are real; their life is as yet wrapped in the bud; and to
+encourage them to believe that if they are but true to themselves, the
+flower and the fruit will be fair and health-bringing, is to open for
+them the fountain of hope and noble endeavor.
+
+What men have done, men can still do. Nay, shall we not rather believe
+that the best is yet to be done? The peoples whom we call ancient were
+but rude beginners. We are the true ancients, the inheritors of all the
+wisdom and all the heroism of the past. We stand in a wider world, and
+move forward with more conscious purpose along more open ways. Of the
+past we see but the summits, illumined by the rays of genius and glory.
+Could we look upon the plains where the multitudes lie in darkness,
+wearing the triple chain of servitude, ignorance, and want, we should
+understand how fair and beneficent our own age is. Enthusiasm for the
+past cannot inspire the best intellectual work. The heart turns to the
+past; but the mind looks to the future, and is forever untwisting the
+cords which bind us to the things that pleased a childlike fancy. To
+grow is to outgrow; and whatever of the past survives, survives, as the
+very word implies, because it is still living and applicable here and
+now. Let not the young believe that the age of the heroic and godlike is
+gone. Good and the means of good are not harder to reconcile to-day than
+they were a hundred or a thousand years ago, and they who have a heart
+may now, as the best have done in the past, wring even from despair the
+courage on which victory loves to smile. If we are weak and inferior the
+fault lies in ourselves, not in the age. We are the age; and if we but
+will and work, opportunities are offered us to become and to perform
+whatever may crown and glorify a human soul. The time for doing best
+things, like eternity, is ever present. Let but the man stand forth, and
+he will find and do his work.
+
+We are too near our own age to discern its true glory, which shall best
+appear from the vantage-ground of another century; but surely we can
+feel that it throbs with life, with immortal yearnings, with
+ever-growing desire to give to all men higher thoughts and purer loves.
+Society, the State, the Church, the individual, are striving with
+conscious purpose to make life moral and intelligent. We have become
+more humane than men have ever been, and accept more fully the duty and
+the task of extending the domain of justice, of goodness, and of truth.
+The aim of our civilization is not merely to instruct the ignorant, but
+to make ignorance impossible; not merely to feed the hungry, but to do
+away with famine; not merely to visit the captive, but to make captivity
+the means of his regeneration. Already the chains of the slave have
+been broken, and the earth has become the home of God's free children.
+Disease has been tracked to its secret hiding-places, and barriers have
+been built against pestilence and contagion. War has become less
+frequent and less barbarous; persecution for opinion and belief has
+become rare; man's inhumanity to woman, which is the deepest stain upon
+the history of the race, has yielded to the influence of religion and
+knowledge; and with ever-increasing force the truth is borne in upon
+those who think and observe, that the fate of the rich and high-placed
+cannot be separated from that of the poor and lowly. While we earnestly
+strive to control and repress every kind of moral evil, we feel that
+society itself is responsible for sin and crime, and that social and
+political conditions and constitutions must change, until the weak and
+the heavy-laden are protected from the heartlessness of the strong and
+fortunate. Not only must those who labor with their hands have larger
+opportunities than hitherto have ever been given them, but in the whole
+social life of man there must be more justice, more love, more
+tenderness, more of the spirit of Christ, than hitherto has ever been
+found there.
+
+What marvelous, intellectual work are we not doing? What admirable
+expression of the highest truth do we not find in the best writers of
+our age! It is not all pure gold; but whether we take a religious, a
+moral, or an intellectual point of view, we may not affirm of the
+literature of any age or country that it is perfect. When man clothes in
+words what he thinks and loves, what he knows and believes, his work
+bears the marks of his defects not less than those of his qualities.
+Nay, if we turn to the Bible itself, how much do we not find there which
+we either fail to comprehend or are unable to apply! Has not the mind of
+Christendom been trained and illumined by the literatures of Greece and
+Rome, which in moral purity, in elevation of sentiment, in breadth and
+depth of thought, in the knowledge of the laws of Nature, in scientific
+accuracy, in sympathy and tenderness, are altogether inferior to the
+best writings of our own day? It is a mistake to suppose that this is a
+material age in which the love of religion, of poetry, of art, of
+excellence of whatever kind, is dead. The love of what is best has never
+at any time been alive save in the hearts of the chosen few; and in such
+souls it burns now with as sweet and steady a glow as when Plato spoke,
+and the blessed Saviour uttered words of divine wisdom. Here and now, in
+and around us, there is the heavenly presence of budding life, of
+widening vision, of "new thoughts urgent as the growth of wings." Let
+us turn the white forehead of hope to the fair time, and deem no labor
+great by which we shall become less unfit to do the work of God and man.
+
+
+    "Nay, never falter; no great deed is done
+    By falterers who ask for certainty.
+    No good is certain but the steadfast mind,
+    The undivided will to seek the good:
+    'T is that compels the elements and wrings
+    A human music from the indifferent air.
+    The greatest gift the hero leaves his race
+    Is to have been a hero. Say we fail!
+    We feed the high tradition of the world
+    And leave our spirit in our children's breasts."
+
+
+But to enter upon such a course of life with well-founded hope of
+success, we must be reverent and devout. The thrill of awe is, as Goethe
+says, the best thing humanity has. We must understand and feel that the
+visible is but the shadow of the invisible, that the soul has its roots
+in God, whose kingdom is within us. We must perceive that what we know,
+believe, admire, love, and yearn for makes our real life; that we are
+worth what we _are_, and not what we possess and use. We must be lovers
+of perfection, as the divine Saviour bids us become,--"Be ye perfect,
+even as your Father in heaven is perfect." We must be conscious of the
+immortal spirit which is ourself, and walk in the company of God and of
+just men made perfect, striving after light and purity and strength,
+which are of the soul. We must love the inward, the true, and the
+eternal rather than the outward and transitory. We must believe that in
+very truth we are akin to God, that God is in us, and we in him, and
+consequently that it is our first duty to follow after perfection,
+completeness of life, in thought, in love, and in conduct. As it is good
+to know, so is it good to be strong, to be patient, to be humble, to be
+helpful; so is it good to do right, though the deed should be our only
+reward.
+
+But we are beset by all manner of temptations to turn aside from a high
+and noble way of living. The line of least resistance for us is the
+common highway of money-getters and place-winners; and the moment a man
+gives evidence of ability, the whole world urges him to put it to
+immediate use. Our public opinion identifies the good with the useful,
+all else is visionary and unreal. The average man controls us not only
+in politics, but in religion, in art, and in literature. To turn away
+from material good in order to gain spiritual and intellectual benefit
+is held to be evidence of a feeble or perverted understanding. If a man
+is eloquent, let him become a lawyer, a politician, or a preacher; if he
+have a talent for science, let him become a physician, a practical
+chemist, or a civil engineer; if he have skill in writing, let him
+become a journalist or a contributor to magazines. No one asks himself,
+What shall I do to gain wisdom, strength, virtue, completeness of life;
+but the universal question is, How shall I make a living, get money,
+position, notoriety? In our hearts we should rather have the riches of a
+Rothschild than the mind of Plato, the imagination of Shakespeare, or
+the soul of Saint Theresa. We believe the best is outside of us, that
+the aids to the most desirable kind of life are to be found in material
+and mechanical things. We talk with pride of our numbers, our
+institutions, our machines; we love the display and noise of life, are
+eager to mingle in crowds, to live in great cities, and to listen to
+exaggerated and declamatory speech. The soberness of wisdom, the
+humility of religion, the plainness of worth, are unattractive and
+unrecognized. We rush after material things, like hunters after game;
+and in the excitement of the chase our pulse grows quick, and our vision
+confused. We have lost the art of patient work and expectation. We are
+no more capable of living in our work, of making it the means of our
+growth and happiness. What we do, must be quickly done, must have
+immediate results. Our success in solving the political and social
+problems has spoiled us. When we hear of a man who has been prosperous
+for years, whom no misfortune has sobered and softened, we expect him to
+be narrow and supercilious; and in the same way, a prosperous people are
+exposed to the danger of becoming self-complacent and superficial. We
+exaggerate the importance of our own achievements and think that which
+we have accomplished is the best; whereas the wise hold what they have
+done in slight esteem, and think only of becoming themselves nobler and
+wiser. Instead of boasting of our civilization, because we have
+industrial and commercial prosperity, wealth and liberty, churches,
+schools, and newspapers, we ought to ask ourselves whether civilization
+does not imply something more and higher than this,--what kind of soul
+lives and loves and thinks in this environment? Instead of trying to
+persuade ourselves that we are the greatest and most enlightened people,
+would it not be worth while to ask ourselves, in a dispassionate temper,
+whether our best men and women are the most intellectual, the most
+interesting, and the most Christian men and women to be found in the
+world? Do they not lack repose, distinction, a sense for complete and
+harmonious living? Must we not still look to Europe for our best
+religious and philosophic thought, our best poetry, painting, music,
+and architecture? "Let the passion for America," says Emerson, "cast out
+the passion for Europe." This is desirable, but numbers and wealth will
+not bring it about. While the best is said and done in Europe, the
+better sort of Americans will look thither,--just as Europe looks to us
+for corn and cotton, or mechanical appliances. We have done much, and
+much that it was well to do. We have, as Matthew Arnold says, solved the
+political and social problems better than any other people, though we
+ourselves perceive that the solution is by no means final. The
+conditions of our life are favorable to the many. It is easier for a man
+to assert himself here, than it is or has ever been elsewhere. A little
+sense, a little energy, is all that any one needs to make himself
+independent and comfortable; and because success of this kind is so easy
+it threatens to absorb our whole life. They alone seem to be living
+worthily who are doing practical work, who are developing the natural
+wealth of the country, starting new enterprises and inventing new
+machines. The political problems which interest us are financial;
+schools are maintained and fostered because they protect and strengthen
+our institutions; religious beliefs are tolerated and encouraged because
+they are aids to morality,--and morality means sobriety, honesty,
+industry, which lead to thrift. Then there is an idea that religion is a
+conservative power, useful as a bulwark against the assaults of
+anti-social fanatics. Philosophy, poetry, and art are not considered
+seriously, because they are not seen to bear any clear relation to our
+institutions and temporal well-being. Opinion rules the wide world over;
+and in the face of this strong public opinion which lays stress chiefly
+upon external things,--the environment, the machinery of life,--and not
+upon spiritual and intellectual qualities, it is not easy to love
+knowledge and virtue for themselves, for the strength and beauty they
+give to the soul, for their power to build up the being which is a man's
+very self. It is rare that men have faith in what but few believe in;
+they are gregarious, and need the encouragement that comes of having
+aims and hopes of which the millions approve.
+
+The predominance of the average man, of which our public opinion is the
+result, puts other obstacles in the way of culture. It makes us
+self-complacent, easily satisfied with what we perform. A representative
+man will become a lawyer, a soldier, a merchant, a legislator, an
+author, in turns, as occasion offers, and he has no doubt of his
+sufficiency; because average work is all that is expected of any one. To
+be able to do anything fairly well seems to us a more desirable
+accomplishment than to be able to do some one thing better than anybody
+else. But this is a view which only those may take who live in an
+imperfectly developed society. As men become more cultivated, they more
+and more want only the best; and the noblest natures feel the desire to
+do their best, not with their actual power, but with the skill which
+forty or fifty years of discipline and effort might give them. They are
+laborious; they are patient; they persevere in one direction; they
+believe that if they but continue to observe, to think, to read, to
+compare, and to express in plain words what they know, their power of
+seeing and of uttering will continue to grow. The charm of increasing
+faculty in an infinite world sways and controls them. They never know
+enough; they are never able to say well enough what they know; and so
+they grow old still learning many things. They work in a spirit wholly
+different from that of the common man, who if he get through with what
+he has in hand is satisfied. They have an artist's sense of perfection;
+and like Virgil would burn the works which if they once escape their own
+hands, the world will never permit to perish.
+
+It is hard to resist when many invite to utterance; and with us whoever
+has ability is urged to put himself forward, and consequently to
+dissipate in crude performances energies which if employed in
+self-culture might make of him a philosopher, a poet, or a man of
+science. As it is easier to act than to think, the multitude of course
+will be only talkers, writers, and performers; but a great and civilized
+people must have at least a few men who take rank with the profound
+thinkers and finished scholars of the world. No lover of America can
+help thinking it undesirable that any one should be able to say of us
+with truth, what Locke has said, "The Americans are not all born with
+worse understandings than the Europeans, though we see none of them have
+such reaches in the arts and sciences." It is our aim to create the
+highest civilization; but the highest civilization is favorable to the
+highest life, which implies and requires more than the possession of
+material things. Conduct is necessary, knowledge is necessary, beauty is
+necessary, manners are necessary, and a civilized people must develop
+life in all these directions, and as far as such a thing is possible,
+harmoniously. Whoever excels in conduct, or in knowledge, or in a sense
+for the beautiful, or in manners, helps to raise the standard of
+living,--helps to give worth, dignity, charm, and refinement to life. It
+is hard to take interest in a people who have no profound thinkers, no
+great artists, no accomplished scholars, for only such men can lift a
+people above the provincial spirit, and bring them into conscious
+relationship with former ages and the wide world. The rule of the people
+looks to something higher than opportunity for every man to have food
+and a home; to something more than putting a church, a school, and a
+newspaper at every man's door. Saints and heroes, philosophers and
+poets, are a people's glory. They give us nobler loves, higher thoughts,
+diviner aims. They show us how like a god man may become; and political
+and social institutions which make saints and heroes, philosophers and
+poets, impossible, can have but inferior value. And there is some
+radical wrong where the noblest manhood and womanhood are not
+appreciated and reverenced. Not to recognize genuine worth is the mark
+of a superficial and vulgar character. The servile spirit has no
+conception of the heroic nature; and they who measure life by material
+standards, do not perceive the infinite which is in man and which makes
+him godlike. A few only in any age or nation love the best, follow after
+ideal aims; but when these few are wanting, all life becomes
+common-place, and the millions pass from the cradle to the grave and
+leave no lasting impression upon the world.
+
+The practical turn of mind which finds expression in our commercial and
+industrial achievements, makes itself felt also in our intellectual
+activity, and those among us who have knowledge and power of utterance
+are expected, almost required, to throw themselves into the breakers of
+controversy, to discuss the hundred political, social, religious,
+financial, sanitary, and educational problems which are ever waiting to
+be solved. Let them enter the lists, let them take sides, let them
+strive to see clear in an atmosphere of smoke and fog; and not to do
+this is, in the estimation of the many, to be a dreamer, a dilettante, a
+thinker to no purpose. But this is precisely what those who seek to
+cultivate themselves, who seek to learn and communicate the best that is
+known, ought not to do. They should live in a serene air, in a world of
+tranquility and peace, where the soul is not troubled by contention,
+where the view is not perturbed by passion. They should have leisure,
+which is the original meaning of school and scholar; for the mind, like
+the soul, is refreshed and strengthened by quiet meditation. Its
+improvement is slow, is imperceptible often; its training is the result
+of delicate methods which require patience and perseverance, faith in
+ideals, and a constant looking to the all-perfect Infinite; and to throw
+it into the noise and confusion of the busy excited world of practical
+affairs is to stunt and warp its growth. We do not hitch a race-horse to
+the plough, nor should we ask the best intellects to do the common work
+of which every man is capable. They render the best service, when living
+in communion with the highest and most cultivated minds of the past and
+present, they learn and teach the way of looking and thinking, of
+behaving and doing, which has been followed by the greatest and noblest
+of the race. Political and social questions are forever changing; views
+which commend themselves to-day will in a few years seem absurd;
+measures which are thought to be of vital importance will grow to be
+inapplicable. To talk and write about such things is well,--may help to
+prevent stagnation and corruption in public life; but they exercise
+altogether a higher office, who live in the presence of what is
+permanently true and good and beautiful, who believe in ideal aims and
+ends and prevent the masses from losing sight of what constitutes man's
+real worth. They do what they alone can do, whereas the practical and
+the useful may be any one's work. They may not, of course, isolate
+themselves; on the contrary they must live closer than other men not
+only to God and Nature, but also to the past and present history of
+their country and of mankind. They study the movements of the age, but
+they study them in a philosophic and not in a partisan spirit. They seek
+to know, not what is popular, but what is right and good; and they often
+see clearly where the view of others is uncertain and confused.
+Encouragements and rewards are not necessary for them, for they are
+drawn to the knowledge and love of the best by irresistible attractions,
+and the more they learn and love the more beneficent and joy-giving does
+their life become. Their aims and ends are in harmony with the highest
+reason and the highest faith. The world they live in abides; and if they
+are neglected or forgotten now, they can wait, for truth and goodness
+and beauty can never lose their power or their charm.
+
+
+    "The worthiest poets have remained uncrowned
+    Till death has bleached their foreheads to the bone."
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+SELF-CULTURE.
+
+
+                  There is
+    One great society alone on earth
+    The noble Living and the noble Dead.
+
+    WORDSWORTH.
+
+
+
+The passion for truth and for the culture which makes its possession
+possible is not rightly felt by the heart of boy or of youth; it is the
+man's passion, and its power over him is most irresistibly asserted when
+outward restraint has been removed, when escaping from the control of
+parents and teachers he is left to himself to shape his course and seek
+his own ends. When his companions have finished their studies he feels
+that his own are now properly only about to begin; when they are
+dreaming of liberty and pleasure, of wealth and success, of the world
+and its honors, his mind is haunted by the mystery of God and Nature, by
+visions of dimly discerned truth and beauty which he must follow
+whithersoever they lead; and already he perceives that wisdom comes to
+those alone who toil and cease not from labor, who suffer and are
+patient. Hitherto he has learned the lessons given him by teachers
+appointed by others; henceforth he is himself to choose his instructors.
+As once, half-unconscious, he played in the smile or frown of Nature,
+and drank knowledge with delight, so now in the world of man's thought,
+hope, and love, he is, with deliberate purpose, to seek what is good for
+the nourishment of his soul. Happy is he, for nearly all men toil and
+suffer that they may live; but he is also to have time to labor, to make
+life intelligent and fair. He must know not only what the blind atoms
+are doing, but what saints, sages, and heroes have loved, thought, and
+done. He will still keep close to Nature who, though she utters myriad
+sounds, never speaks a human word; but he will also lend his ear to the
+voice of wisdom which lies asleep in books, and to sympathetic minds
+whispers from other worlds whatever high or holy truth has consecrated
+the life of man. His guiding thought must be how to make the work by
+which he maintains himself in the world subserve moral and intellectual
+ends; for his aim is not merely or chiefly to have goods, but to be wise
+and good, and therefore to build up within himself the power of conduct
+and the power of intelligence which makes man human, and distinguishes
+him from whatever else on earth has life.
+
+It is our indolence and frivolity that make routine duties, however
+distracting or importunate, incompatible with the serious application
+which the work of self-culture demands; but we are by nature indolent
+and frivolous, and only education can make us earnest and laborious.
+None but a cultivated mind can understand that if the whole human race
+could be turned loose, to eat and drink and play like thoughtless
+children, life would become meaningless; that a paradise in which work
+should not be necessary would become wearisome. The progress of the race
+is the result of effort, physical, religious, moral, and intellectual;
+and the advance of individuals is proportional to their exertion. Nature
+herself pushes the young to bodily exercise; but though activity is for
+them a kind of necessity, only the discipline of habit will lead them to
+prefer labor to idleness; and they will not even use their senses
+properly unless they are taught to look and to listen,--just as they are
+taught to walk and to ride. The habit of manual labor, as it is directly
+related to the animal existence to which man is prone, and supplies the
+physical wants whose urgency is most keenly felt, is acquired with least
+difficulty, and it prepares the way for moral and intellectual life; but
+it especially favors the life which has regard to temporal ends and
+conduces to comfort and well-being. They whose instrument is the brain
+rarely aim at anything higher than wealth and position; and if they
+become rich and prominent, they remain narrow and uninteresting. They
+talk of progress, of new inventions and discoveries, and they neglect to
+improve themselves; they boast of the greatness of their country, while
+their real world is one of vulgar thought and desire; they take interest
+in what seems to concern the general welfare, but fail to make
+themselves centres of light and love. What is worse they have the
+conceit of wisdom,--they lack reverence; they are impatient, and must
+have at once what they seek. But the better among us see the
+insufficiency of the popular aims, and begin to yearn for something
+other than a life of politics, newspapers, and financial enterprise.
+They desire to know and love the best that is known, and they are
+willing to be poor and obscure, if they may but gain entrance into this
+higher world. "I shall ever consider myself," says Descartes, "more
+obliged to those who leave me to my leisure, than I should to any who
+might offer me the most honorable employments." This is the thought of
+every true student and lover of wisdom; for he feels that whatever a
+man's occupation may be, his business is to improve his mind and to form
+his character. He desires not to be known and appreciated, but to know
+and appreciate; not to _have_ more, but to _be_ more; not to have
+friends, but to be the friend of man,--which he is when he is the lover
+of truth. He turns from vulgar pleasures as he turns from pain, because
+both pleasure and pain in fastening the soul to the body deprive it of
+freedom and hinder the play of the mind.
+
+
+    He loves the best with single heart
+    And without thought what gifts it bring.
+
+
+Unless one have deep faith in the good of culture he will easily become
+discouraged in the work which is here urged upon him. He must be drawn
+to the love of intellectual excellence by an attraction such as a poet
+feels in the presence of beauty; he must believe in it as a miser
+believes in gold; he must seek it as a lover seeks the beloved. Our
+wants determine our pleasures, and they who have no intellectual
+cravings feel not the need of exercise of mind. They are born and remain
+inferior. They are content with the world which seems to be real,
+forgetting the higher one, which alone is real; they are not urged to
+the intellectual life by irresistible instincts. They are discouraged by
+difficulties, thwarted by obstacles which lie in the path of all who
+strive to move forward and to gain higher planes. It is not possible to
+advance except along the road of toil, of struggle, and of suffering.
+We cannot emerge even from childish ignorance and weakness without
+experiencing a sense of loss. Mental work in the beginning and for a
+long time is weariness, is little better than drudgery. We labor, and
+there seems to be no gain; we study and there seems to be no increase of
+knowledge or power; and if we persevere, we are led by faith and hope,
+not by any clear perception of the result of persistent application.
+Genius itself is not exempt from this law. Poets and artists work with
+an intensity unknown to others, and are distinguished by their faith in
+the power of labor. The consummate musician must practice for hours, day
+by day, year in and year out. The brain is the most delicate and the
+finest of instruments, and it is vain to imagine that anything else than
+ceaseless, patient effort will enable us to use it with perfect skill;
+indeed, it is only after long study that we become capable of
+understanding what the perfection of the intellect is, that we become
+capable of discerning what is excellent, beautiful, and true in style
+and thought.
+
+Discouragement and weariness will, again and again, suggest doubts
+concerning the wisdom of this ceaseless effort to improve one's self.
+Why persist in the pursuit of what can never be completely attained?
+Why toil to gain what the mass of men neither admire nor love? Why wear
+out life in a course of action which leads neither to wealth nor honors?
+Why turn away from pleasures which lie near us to follow after ideal
+things? These are questions which force themselves upon us; and it
+requires faith and courage not to be shaken by this sophistry. Visions
+of ideal life float before young eyes, and if to be attracted by what is
+high and fair were enough, it were not difficult to be saint, sage, or
+hero; but when we perceive that the way to the best is the road of toil
+and drudgery, that we must labor long and accomplish little, wander far
+and doubt our progress, must suffer much and feel misgivings whether it
+is not in vain,--then only the noblest and the bravest still push
+forward in obedience to inward law. The ideal of culture appeals to them
+with irresistible force. They consent to lack wealth, and the approval
+of friends and the world's applause; they are willing to turn away when
+fair hands hold out the cup of pleasure, when bright eyes and smiling
+lips woo to indulgence. If, you ask, How long? They answer, Until we
+die! They are lovers of wisdom and do not trust to hope of temporal
+reward. Their aim is light and purity of mind and heart; these they
+would not barter for comfort and position. As saints, while doing the
+common work of men, walk uplifted to worlds invisible, so they, amid the
+noise and distractions of life still hear the appealing voice of truth;
+and as parted lovers dream only of the hour when they shall meet again,
+so these chosen spirits, in the midst of whatever cares and labors, turn
+to the time when thought shall people their solitude as with the
+presence of angels. They hear heavenly voices asking, Why stay ye on the
+earth, unless to grow? Vanity, frivolity, and fickleness die within
+them; and they grow to be humble and courageous, disinterested and
+laborious, strong and persevering. The cultivation of their higher
+nature becomes the law of their life; and the sense of duty, "stern
+daughter of the voice of God," which of all motives that sway the heart,
+best stands the test of reason, becomes their guide and support. Thus
+culture, which looks to the Infinite and All-wise as to its ideal, rests
+upon the basis of morality and religion.
+
+To think is difficult, and they who wish to grow in power of thought
+must hoard their strength. Excess, of whatever kind, is a waste of
+intellectual force. The weakness of men of genius has impoverished the
+world. Sensual indulgence diminishes spiritual insight; it perverts
+reason, and deadens love; it enfeebles the physical man, and weakens the
+organs of sense, which are the avenues of the soul. The higher self is
+developed harmoniously only when it springs from a healthful body. It is
+the lack of moral balance which makes genius akin to madness. Nothing is
+so sane as reason, and great minds fall from truth only when they fail
+in the strength which comes of righteous conduct.
+
+Let the lover of wisdom then strive to live in a healthy body that his
+senses may report truly of the universe in which he dwells. But this is
+not easy; for mental labor exhausts, and if the vital forces are still
+further diminished by dissipation, disease and premature decay of the
+intellectual faculties will be the result. The ideal of culture embraces
+the whole man, physical, moral, religious, and intellectual; and the
+loss of health or morality or faith cannot but impede the harmonious
+development of the mind itself. Passion is the foe of reason, and may
+easily become strong enough to extinguish its light. He who wishes to
+educate himself must learn to resist the desires of his lower nature,
+which if indulged deaden sensibility, weaken the will, take from the
+imagination its freshness, and from the heart the power of loving. The
+task he has set himself is arduous, and he cannot have too much energy,
+too much warmth of soul, too much capacity for labor. Let him not waste,
+like a mere animal, the strength which was given him that he might
+learn to know and love infinite truth and beauty. The dwelling with
+one's self and with thoughts of what is true and high, which is an
+essential condition of mental growth, is impossible when the sanctuary
+of the soul is filled with unclean images. Intellectual honesty, the
+disinterested love of truth, without which no progress can be made, will
+hardly be found in those who are the slaves of unworthy passions. The
+more religious a man is, the more does he believe in the worth and
+sacredness of truth, and the more willing does he become to throw all
+his energies with persevering diligence into the work of
+self-improvement. They who fail to see in the universe an all-wise,
+all-holy, and all-powerful Being, from whom are all things and to whom
+all things turn, easily come to doubt whether it holds anything of true
+worth. History teaches this, and it requires little reflection to
+perceive that it must be so. Of the Solitary, Wordsworth says,--
+
+
+                      "But in despite
+    Of all this outside bravery, within
+    He neither felt encouragement nor hope;
+    For moral dignity and strength of mind
+    Were wanting, and simplicity of life
+    And reverence for himself; and, last and best,
+    Confiding thoughts, through love and fear of Him
+    Before whose sight the troubles of this world
+    Are vain."
+
+
+The corrupt and the ignorant easily learn to feel contempt, but the
+scholar is reverent. He moves in the midst of infinite worlds, and knows
+that the least is part of the whole.
+
+Now, how shall he who is resolved to educate himself set about his work?
+What advice shall be given him? What rules shall be made for him that he
+may not waste time and energy? He who yearns for the cultivation of mind
+which makes wisdom possible must work his way to the light. All
+intellectual men strive to educate themselves, but each one strives in a
+different way. They all aim at insight rather than information, at the
+perfect use of their faculties rather than learning. The power to see
+things as they are, is what they want; and therefore they look, observe,
+examine, compare, analyze, meditate, read, and write. And they keep
+doing this day by day; and the longer they work, the more attractive
+their work grows to be. Descartes, who is a typical lover of the
+intellectual life, looked upon himself simply as a thinking being, and
+gave all his thought to the cultivation of his higher faculties in the
+hope that he might finally discover some truth which would bring
+blessings to men. He had no thought of literary fame, published little,
+and sedulously avoided whatever might bring him into notoriety. "Those,"
+he says, "who wish to know how to speak of everything and to acquire a
+reputation for learning, will succeed most easily if they content
+themselves with the semblance of truth, which may readily be found." The
+love of truth is the mark of the real student. What is, is; it is man's
+business to know it. He is the foe of pretense; sham for him means
+shame. He will have sound knowledge; he will do his work well; whether
+men shall applaud or reward him for it, is a foreign consideration. He
+obeys an inward law, and the praise of those who cannot understand him
+sounds to him like mockery. True thought, like right conduct, is its own
+reward. To see truth and to love it is enough,--is more than to have the
+worship of the world. The important thing is to be a man, to have a
+serious purpose, to be in earnest, to yearn for what is good and holy;
+and without this the culture of the intellect will not avail.
+
+We must build upon the broad foundation of man's life, and not upon any
+special faculty. The merely literary man is often the most pitiful of
+men,--able, it may be, to do little else than complain that his merits
+are not recognized. Let it not be imagined then that the lover of
+wisdom, the follower of intellectual good, should propose to himself a
+literary career. He may of course be or become a man of letters, but
+this is incidental to his life-purpose, which is to develop within
+himself the power of knowing and loving. He will learn to think rightly
+and to act well, first of all; for he knows that a man's writing cannot
+be worth more than he himself is worth. He is a seeker after truth and
+perfection; and understanding at the price of what countless labors
+these may be hoped for, he is slow to imagine that words of his may be
+of help to others.
+
+Observation, reading, and writing are the chief means by which thought
+is stimulated, the mind developed, and the intellect cultivated. The
+habit of looking and the habit of thinking are closely related. A man
+thinks as he sees; and for a mind like Shakespeare's, for instance,
+observation is almost the only thing that is necessary for its
+development. The boundless world breaks in upon him with creative force.
+His sympathy is universal, and therefore so is his interest. He sees the
+like in the unlike, the differences in things which are similar. Every
+little bird and every little flower are known to him. He contemplates
+Falstaff and Poor Tom with as much interest as though they were Hamlet
+and King Lear. In all original minds the power of observation is great.
+It is the chief source of our earliest knowledge, of that which touches
+us most nearly and most deeply colors the imagination. When the boy is
+wandering through fields, sitting in the shade of trees, or lying on the
+banks of murmuring streams, he is not only learning more delightful
+things than books will ever teach him, but he is also acquiring the
+habit of attention, of looking at what he sees, which nowhere else can
+be gotten in so natural and pleasant a way. Hence the best minds have
+either been born in the country or have passed there some of their early
+years. Unless we have first learned to look with the eye, we shall never
+learn to look with the mind. They who walk unmoved beneath the starlit
+heavens, or by the ever-moving ocean, or amid the silent mountains; who
+do not find, like Wordsworth, that the meanest flower that blows gives
+thoughts which often lie too deep for tears, will not derive great help
+from the world of books. But in the world of books the intellectual must
+also make themselves at home and live, must thence draw nourishment,
+light, wisdom, strength, for there as nowhere else the mind of man has
+stamped its image; and there the thoughts of the master spirits still
+breathe, still glow with truth and beauty. The best books are powers
+
+
+    "Forever to be hallowed; only less,
+    For what we are and what we may become,
+    Than Nature's self, which is the breath of God,
+    Or his pure Word, by miracle revealed."
+
+
+But it is as difficult to know books as to know men. There are but few
+men who can be of intellectual service to us; and there are but few
+books which stimulate and nourish the mind. The best books are, as
+Milton says, "the precious life-blood of a master spirit;" and it is
+absurd to suppose that they will reveal their secret to every chance
+comer, to every heedless reader. As it takes a hero to know a hero, so
+only an awakened mind can love and understand the great thinkers. The
+reading of the ignorant is chiefly a mechanical proceeding; and, indeed,
+for men in general reading is little better than waste of time. Their
+reading, like their conversation, leaves them what they were, or worse.
+The mass of printed matter has no greater value from an intellectual
+point of view at least than the wide ever-flowing stream of talk; and
+for the multitude it is all the same whether they gossip and complain,
+or read and nod. However much they read, they remain unintelligent; what
+knowledge they gain is fragmentary, unreal; they learn merely enough to
+talk about what they do not understand. We may of course read for
+entertainment, as we may talk for entertainment; but this is merely a
+recreation of the mind, which is good only because it rests and prepares
+us for work. The wise read books to be enlightened, uplifted, and
+inspired. Their reading is a labor in which every faculty of the mind
+is awake and active. They are attentive; they weigh, compare, judge.
+They re-create within their own minds the images produced by the author;
+they seek to enter into his inmost thought; they admire each well-turned
+phrase, each happy epithet; they walk with him, and make themselves at
+home in the wonderland which his genius has called into being; past
+centuries rise before them, and they almost forget that they did not
+hear Plato discourse in the Academy, or stroll with Horace along the
+Sacred Way. As they are brought thus intimately into the company of the
+noblest minds, they think as they thought, feel as they felt, and so are
+enlightened and inspired. They drink the spirit of the mighty dead, and
+gradually come to live in a higher and richer world. The best in life
+and literature is seen to be such only by those who have made themselves
+worthy of the heavenly vision; and once we have learned to love the few
+real books of the world, or rather what in these few is eternally true
+and beautiful, we breathe the atmosphere of the intellectual life. What
+is frivolous, or false, or vulgar can no longer please us; having seen
+and loved what is high we may not sink to the lower.
+
+Knowledge may be useful, and yet have little power to nourish, train,
+and enlarge the mind, and it is its disciplinary and educational value
+which we are here considering. Medicine for a physician, law for an
+attorney, theology for a clergyman, is the most useful knowledge; but
+they are not therefore the best means of intellectual culture. Natural
+science, though it is most useful, ministering as it does in a thousand
+ways and with ever-increasing efficacy to our wants and comforts, has
+but an inferior educational power. Acquaintance with the uniform
+co-existences and sequences of phenomena is not a mental tonic. Such
+knowledge not only leaves us unmoved,--it has a tendency even to fetter
+the free play of the mind and to chill the imagination. It unweaves the
+rainbow, and leaves us the dead chemical elements. The information we
+have gained is practical, but it does not exalt the soul or render us
+more keenly alive to the divine beauty which rests on Nature's face. It
+does not enable us, as does the knowledge of literature and history, to
+participate in the conscious life of the race. It makes no appeal to our
+nobler human instincts. There is no book on natural science, nor can
+there ever be one, which may take a place among the few immortal works
+which men never cease to read and love. Physical science has its own
+domain, and its study will continue to enrich the world, to make
+specialists of a hundred kinds; but it never can take the place of
+literature and history as a means of culture; and as an educational
+force its value is greatest when it is studied not experimentally, but
+as literature,--though of course, every cultivated man should be
+familiar with the inductive method, and should receive consequently a
+certain scientific training.
+
+History, in bringing us into the presence of the greatest men and in
+showing us their mightiest achievements, rouses our whole being. It sets
+the mind aglow, awakens enthusiasm, and fires the imagination. It makes
+us feel how blessed a thing it is "to scorn delights and live laborious
+days;" how divine to perish in bringing truth and holiness to men. We
+commingle with the makers of the world; we hear them speak and see them
+act; we catch the spirit of their lofty purpose, their high courage,
+their noble eloquence. When we drink deeply of the wisdom which history
+teaches, we come to understand that truth and justice, heroism and
+religion, which are the virtues of the greatest men, may be ours as
+easily as theirs; that opportunity for true men is ever present, and
+that the task set for each one of us is as sacred and important as any
+which has ever been entrusted to the human mind and will. Our thought
+is widened, our hearts are strengthened, and we come to feel that it
+shall be well for others that we too have lived. When we have learned to
+be at home with lofty and generous natures, the heroic mood becomes
+natural to us.
+
+There are of course but few histories which have this tonic effect upon
+the mind and the will, but with these the lover of culture should make
+himself familiar. Each one must find the book he needs; and though he
+should find no help in a volume which time and the consent of the
+learned have consecrated, let him not be discouraged, but continue to
+seek and to read until he meet with the author who fills his soul with
+joy and opens to his wondering eyes visions of new worlds. To love any
+great book so that we read it--or at least those portions of it which
+especially appeal to us--many times, and always with new pleasure (as a
+mother never wearies of looking upon her child), until the thought and
+style of the author become almost our own, is to learn the secret of
+self-education; for he who understands and loves one great book is sure
+to find his way to the love and knowledge of other works of genius. He
+will not read chiefly to gain information, but he will read for
+exaltation of spirit, for enlightenment, for strength of soul, for the
+help which springs from contact with generous and awakened minds. He
+will mark his favorite passages and refer to them often, as one loves to
+revisit places where he has been happy; and these very pencil-marks will
+become dear to him as tokens of truth revealed, of wisdom gained, of joy
+bestowed. The best reading is that which most profoundly stimulates
+thought, which brings our own minds into active, conscious communion
+with the mind of the author; and hence the best poetry is the most
+efficacious and the most delightful aid to mental improvement.
+
+Poetry is, as Aristotle says, the most philosophic of all writing. It is
+also the writing which is most instinct with passion, with life. It
+springs from intense thought and feeling, and bears within itself the
+power to call forth thought and feeling. It is thought transfused with
+the glow of emotion, and consequently thought made beautiful,
+attractive, contagious. It is, to quote Wordsworth, "the breath and
+finer spirit of all knowledge; it is the impassioned expression which is
+in the countenance of all science." The poet has more enthusiasm and
+tenderness than other men, a more sensitive soul, a more comprehensive
+mind. His wider sympathy gives him greater insight; and his power to see
+absent things as though they were present enables him to bring the
+distant and the past before our eyes, to make them live again in a new
+and immortal world; he stimulates the whole mind and appeals to every
+faculty of the soul. The greatest philosophers are, like Plato, poets
+too; and unless the historian is also a poet, there is no inspiration,
+no life in what he writes. It is as superficial and vulgar to sneer at
+poetry as to sneer at religion; and they alone are mockers who have eyes
+but for some counterfeit. To be able to read a true poet is not a gift
+of Nature; it is a faculty to be acquired. He creates, as Wordsworth
+says, the taste by which he is appreciated. To imagine we may read him
+as we read a frivolous novel is absurd; it may well happen we shall see
+no truth or beauty in him until patient study has made it plain. It
+often takes the world a hundred years or more to recognize a great poet;
+and a knowledge of his worth can be had by the student only at the price
+of patient labor. Wordsworth will attract scarcely any one at the first
+glance; the great number of readers will soon weary of him and throw him
+aside; but those who learn to understand him find in his writings
+treasures above all price. There are but a few great poems in the
+literatures of the different nations, but he who wishes to have a
+cultivated mind must, at the cost of whatever time and labor, make
+himself familiar with them; for there alone are found the best thoughts
+clothed in fittest words; there alone are rightly portrayed the noblest
+characters; there alone is the world of men and things transfigured by
+the imagination and illumined by the pure light of the mind. True poets
+help us to see, they teach us to admire, they lift our thoughts, they
+appeal to our higher nature; they give us nobler loves, more exalted
+aims, more spiritual purposes; they make us feel that to live for money
+or place is to lead a narrow and a slavish life; and to men around whom
+the fetters of material and hardening cares are growing, they cry and
+bid them--
+
+
+                                     "Look abroad
+    And see to what fair countries they are bound."
+
+
+But even the greatest poets have weaknesses, and are great only by
+comparison. There is not one who however he may enchant and strengthen,
+does not also disappoint us. The perfect poet the future will bring; and
+to his coming we shall look with more eager expectation than if we
+foresaw man dowered with wings. The elevation we forebode is of the
+soul, not of the body. Progress we have already made. It is no longer
+possible for a true poet to sing of sensual delights; the man he creates
+is now no more the slave "of low ambition or distempered love." His
+theme is rather--
+
+
+    "No other than the heart of man
+    As found among the best of those who live,
+    Not unexalted by religious faith,
+    Nor uninformed by books, good books, though few,
+    In Nature's presence."
+
+
+Writing is as great an aid to the cultivation of the mind as reading. It
+is indeed indispensable, and the accuracy of thought and expression of
+which Bacon speaks, is but one of its good results. "By writing," says
+Saint Augustine, "I have learned many things which nothing else had
+taught me." There is, of course, no question here of writing for
+publication. To do this no one should be urged. The farther we are from
+all thought of readers, the nearer are we to truth; and once an author
+has published, a sort of madness comes over him, and he seems to be
+doing nothing unless he continue to publish. The truly intellectual man
+leads an interior life; he dwells habitually in the presence of God, of
+Nature, and of his own soul; he swims in a current of ideas, looks out
+upon a world of truth and beauty; he would rather gain some new vision
+of the eternal reality than to have a mountain of gold or the suffrages
+of a whole people. The great hindrance is lack of the power of
+prolonged attention, of sustained thought; and this the habit of
+serious writing gives. But the habit itself is difficult to acquire. At
+first in attempting to write we are discouraged to find how crude, how
+unreal, how little within our control our knowledge is; and it will
+often happen that we shall simply hold the pen in idleness, either
+because we find nothing to write, or because the proper way to express
+what we think eludes our efforts. When this happens day after day, the
+temptation will come to abandon our purpose, and to seek easier and less
+effective means of developing mental strength, or else we shall write
+carelessly and without thought, which is even a greater evil than not to
+write at all. In the writing of which I am thinking there is no question
+of style, of what critics and readers will say; all that is asked is
+that we apply our minds to things as they appear to us, and put in plain
+words what we see. Thus our style will become the expression of our
+thought and life. It will be the outgrowth of a natural method, and
+consequently will have genuine worth. What is written in this way should
+be preserved, not that others may see it, but that we ourselves by
+comparing our earlier with our later essays may be encouraged by the
+evidence of improvement. It is not necessary to make choice of a
+subject,--whatever interests us is a fit theme; and if nothing should
+happen specially to interest us, by writing we shall gain interest in
+many things.
+
+The method here proposed requires serious application, perseverance,
+diligence: it is difficult; but they who have the courage to continue to
+write, undeterred by difficulties, will gain more than they hope for.
+They will grow in strength, in accuracy, in pliancy, in openness of
+mind; they will become capable of profound and just views, and will
+gradually rise to worlds of truth and beauty of which the common man
+does not dream. And it will frequently happen that there will be
+permanent value in what is written not to please the crowd or to flatter
+a capricious public opinion, or to win gold or applause, but simply in
+the presence of God and one's own soul to bear witness to truth. As the
+painter takes pallet and brush, the musician his instrument, each to
+perfect himself in his art, so he who desires to learn how to think
+should take the pen, and day by day write something of the truth and
+love, the hope and faith, which make him a living man.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+GROWTH AND DUTY.
+
+
+     Why stay we on the earth unless to grow?
+
+     BROWNING.
+
+
+
+What life is in itself we do not know, any more than we know what matter
+is in itself; but we know something of the properties of matter, and we
+also have some knowledge of the laws of life. Here it is sufficient to
+call attention to the law of growth, through which the living receive
+the power of self-development,--of bringing their endowments into act,
+of building up the being which they are. Whatever living thing is strong
+or beautiful has been made so by growth, since life begins in darkness
+and impotence. To grow is to be fresh and joyous. Hence the spring is
+the glad time; for the earth itself then seems to renew its youth, and
+enter on a fairer life. The growing grass, the budding leaves, the
+sprouting corn, coming as with unheard shout from regions of the dead,
+fill us with happy thoughts, because in them we behold the vigor of
+life, bringing promise of higher things.
+
+Nature herself seems to rejoice in this vital energy; for the insects
+hum, the birds sing, the lambs skip, and the very brooks give forth a
+merry sound. Growth leads us through Wonderland. It touches the germs
+lying in darkness, and the myriad forms of life spring to view; the
+mists are lifted from the valleys, and flowers bloom and shed fragrance
+through the air. Only the growing--those who each moment are becoming
+something more than they were--feel the worth and joyousness of life.
+Upon the youth nothing palls, for he is himself day by day rising into
+higher and wider worlds. To grow is to have faith, hope, courage.
+
+The boy who has become able to do what a while ago was impossible to
+him, easily believes that nothing is impossible; and as his powers
+unfold, his self-confidence is nourished; he exults in the consciousness
+of increasing strength, and cannot in any way be made to understand the
+doubts and faint-heartedness of men who have ceased to grow. Each hour
+he puts off some impotence, and why shall he not have faith in his
+destiny, and feel that he shall yet grow to be poet, orator, hero, or
+what you will that is great and noble? And as he delights in life, we
+take delight in him.
+
+In the same way a young race of people possesses a magic charm. Homer's
+heroes are barbarians; but they are inspiring, because they belong to a
+growing race, and we see in them the budding promise of the day when
+Alexander's sword shall conquer the world; when Plato shall teach the
+philosophy which all men who think must know; and when Pericles shall
+bid the arts blossom in a perfection which is the despair of succeeding
+generations. And so in the Middle Ages there is barbarism enough, with
+its lawlessness and ignorance; but there is also faith, courage,
+strength, which tell of youth, and point to a time of mature faculty and
+high achievement. There is the rich purple dawn which shall grow into
+the full day of our modern life.
+
+Here in this New World we are the new people, in whose growth what
+highest hopes, what heavenly promises lie! All the nations which are
+moving forward, are moving in directions in which we have gone before
+them,--to larger political and religious liberty; to wider and more
+general education; to the destroying of privilege and the
+disestablishment of churches; to the recognition of the equal rights not
+only of all men, but of all men and women.
+
+We also lead the way in the revolution which has been set in motion by
+the application of science to mechanical purposes, one of the results
+of which is seen in the industrial and commercial miracles of the
+present century. It is our vigorous growth which makes us the most
+interesting and attractive of the modern peoples. For whether men love
+us, or whether they hate us, they find it impossible to ignore us,
+unless they wish to argue themselves unknown; and the millions who yearn
+for freedom and opportunity turn first of all to us.
+
+But observant minds, however much they may love America, however great
+their faith in popular government may be, cannot contemplate our actual
+condition without a sense of disquietude; for there are aspects of our
+social evolution which sadden and depress even the most patriotic and
+loyal hearts. It would seem, for instance, that with us, while the
+multitude are made comfortable and keen-witted, the individual remains
+common-place and weak; so that on all sides people are beginning to ask
+themselves what is the good of all this money and machinery if the race
+of godlike men is to die out, or indeed if the result is not to be some
+nobler and better sort of man than the one with whom we have all along
+been familiar. Is not the yearning for divine men inborn? In the heroic
+ages such men were worshiped as gods, and one of the calamities of
+times of degeneracy is the dying out of faith in the worth of true
+manhood caused by the disappearance of superior men. Such men alone are
+memorable, and give to history its inspiring and educating power. The
+ruins of Athens and Rome, the cathedrals and castles of Europe, uplift
+and strengthen the heart, because they bid us reflect what thoughts and
+hopes were theirs who thus could build.
+
+How quickly kings and peasants, millionaires and paupers, become a
+common, undistinguished crowd! But the hero, the poet, the saint, defy
+the ages and remain luminous and separate like stars. They--
+
+
+    "Waged contention with their time's decay,
+    And of the past are all that cannot pass away."
+
+
+The soul, which makes man immortal, has alone the power to make him
+beneficent and beautiful.
+
+But in this highest kind of man, in whom soul--that is, faith, hope,
+love, courage, intellect--is supreme, we Americans, who are on the crest
+of the topmost waves of the stream of tendency, are not rich. We have
+our popular heroes; but so has every petty people, every tribe its
+heroes. The dithyrambic prose in which it is the fashion to celebrate
+our conspicuous men has a hollow sound, very like cant. A marvelous
+development of wealth and numbers has taken place in America; but what
+American--poet, philosopher, scientist, warrior, ruler, saint--is there
+who can take his place with the foremost men of all this world? The
+American people seem still to be somewhat in the position of our new
+millionaires: their fortune is above them, overshadows, and oppresses
+them. They live in fine houses, and have common thoughts; they have
+costly libraries, and cheap culture; and their rich clothing poorly
+hides their coarse breeding. Nor does the tendency seem to be toward a
+nobler type of manhood.
+
+The leaders of the Revolution, the framers of the Federal Constitution,
+the men who contended for State-rights, and still more those who led in
+the great struggle for human rights were of stronger and nobler mold
+than the politicians who now crowd the halls of Congress. The promise of
+a literature which a generation ago budded forth in New England was, it
+appears, delusive. What a sad book is not that recently issued from the
+press on the poets of America! It is the chapter on snakes in Ireland
+which we have all read,--there are none. And are not our literary men
+whom it is possible to admire and love either dead or old enough to die?
+
+All this, however, need not be cause for discouragement, if in the
+generations which are springing up around us, and which are soon to
+enter upon the scene of active life, we could discover the boundless
+confidence, the high courage, the noble sentiments, which make the
+faults of youth more attractive than the formal virtues of a maturer
+age. But youth seems about to disappear from our life, to leave only
+children and men. For a true youth the age of chivalry has not passed,
+nor has the age of faith, nor the age of poetry, nor the age of aught
+that is godlike and ideal. To our young men, however, high thoughts and
+heroic sentiments are what they are to a railroad president or a bank
+cashier,--mere nonsense. Life for them is wholly prosaic and without
+illusions. They transform ideas into interests, faith into a
+speculation, and love into a financial transaction. They have no vague
+yearnings for what cannot be; hardly have they any passions. They are
+cold and calculating. They deny themselves, and do not believe in
+self-denial; they are active, and do not love labor; they are energetic,
+and have no enthusiasm; they approach life with the hard, mechanical
+thoughts with which a scientist studies matter. Their one idea is
+success, and success for them is money. Money means power, it means
+leisure, it means self-indulgence, it means display; it means, in a
+word, the thousand comforts and luxuries which, in their opinion,
+constitute the good of life.
+
+In aristocratic societies the young have had a passion for distinction.
+They have held it to be an excellent thing to belong to a noble family,
+to occupy an elevated position, to wear the glittering badges of birth
+and of office. In ages of religious faith they have been smitten with
+the love of divine ideals; they have yearned for God, and given all the
+strength of their hearts to make his will prevail. But to our youth
+distinction of birth is fictitious, and God is problematic; and so they
+are left face to face with material aims and ends; and of such aims and
+ends money is the universal equivalent.
+
+Now, it could not ever occur to me to think of denying that the basis of
+human life, individual and social, is material. Matter is part of our
+nature; we are bedded in it, and by it are nourished. It is the
+instrument we must use even when we think and love, when we hope and
+pray. Upon this foundation our spiritual being is built; upon this
+foundation our social welfare rests.
+
+Concern for material interests is one of the chief causes of human
+progress; since nothing else so stimulates to effort, and effort is the
+law of growth. The savage who has no conception of money, but is
+satisfied with what Nature provides, remains forever a savage. Habits
+of industry, of order, of punctuality, of economy and thrift, are, to a
+great extent, the result of our money-getting propensities. Our material
+wants are more urgent, more irresistible; they press more constantly
+upon us than any other; and those whom they fail to rouse to exertion
+are, as a rule, hopelessly given over to indolence and sloth. In the
+stimulus of these lower needs, then, is found the impulse which drives
+men to labor; and without labor welfare is not possible.
+
+
+    The poor must work, if they would drink and eat;
+      The weak must work, if they in strength would grow;
+      The ignorant must work, if they would know;
+    The sad must work, if they sweet joy would meet.
+
+    The strong must work, if they would shun defeat;
+      The rich must work, if they would flee from woe;
+      The proud must work, if they would upward go;
+    The brave must work, if they would not retreat.
+
+    So for all men the law of work is plain;
+      It gives them food, strength, knowledge, vict'ry, peace;
+    It makes joy possible, and lessens pain;
+      From passion's lawless power it wins release,
+    Confirms the heart, and widens reason's reign,
+      Makes men like God, whose work can never cease.
+
+
+Whatever enables man to overcome his inborn love of ease is, in so far,
+the source of good. Now, money represents what more than anything else
+has this stimulating power. It is the equivalent of what we eat and
+drink, of the homes we live in, of the comforts with which we surround
+ourselves, of the independence which makes us free to go here or there,
+to do this or that,--to spend the winter where orange blossoms perfume
+the soft air, and the summer where ocean breezes quicken the pulse of
+life. It unlocks for us the treasury of the world, opens to our gaze
+whatever is sublime or beautiful; introduces us to the master-minds who
+live in their works; it leads us where orators declaim, and singers
+thrill the soul with ecstasy. Nay, more, with it we build churches,
+endow schools, and provide hospitals and asylums for the weak and
+helpless. It is, indeed, like a god of this nether world, holding
+dominion over many spheres of life and receiving the heart-worship of
+millions.
+
+Yet, if we make money and its equivalents a life-purpose--the aim and
+end of our earthly hopes--our service becomes idolatry, and a blight
+falls upon the nobler self. Money is the equivalent of what is
+venal,--of all that may be bought or sold; but the best, the godlike,
+the distinctively human, cannot be bought or sold. A rich man can buy a
+wife, but not a woman's love; he can buy books, but not an appreciative
+mind; he can buy a pew, but not a pure conscience; he can buy men's
+votes and flattery, but not their respect. The money-world is visible,
+material, mechanical, external; the world of the soul, of the better
+self, is invisible, spiritual, vital. God's kingdom is within. What we
+have is not what we are; and the all-important thing is to be, and not
+to have. Our possessions belong to us only in a mechanical way. The
+poet's soul owns the stars and the moonlit heavens, the mountains and
+rivers, the flowers and the birds, more truly than a millionaire owns
+his bonds. What I know is mine, and what I love is mine; and as my
+knowledge widens and my love deepens, my life is enlarged and
+intensified. But, since all human knowledge is imperfect and narrow, the
+soul stretches forth the tendrils of faith and hope. Looking upon
+shadows, we believe in realities; possessing what is vain and empty, we
+trust to the future to bring what is full and complete.
+
+All noble literature and life has its origin in regions where the mind
+sees but darkly; where faith is more potent than knowledge; where hope
+is larger than possession, and love mightier than sensation. The soul is
+dwarfed whenever it clings to what is palpable and plain, fixed and
+bounded. Its home is in worlds which cannot be measured and weighed. It
+has infinite hopes, and longings, and fears; lives in the conflux of
+immensities; bathes on shores where waves of boundless yearning break.
+Borne on the wings of time, it still feels that only what is eternal is
+real,--that what death can destroy is even now but a shadow. To it all
+outward things are formal, and what is less than God is hardly aught. In
+this mysterious, super-sensible world all true ideals originate, and such
+ideals are to human life as rain and sunshine to the corn by which it is
+nourished.
+
+What hope for the future is there, then, when the young have no
+enthusiasm, no heavenly illusions, no divine aspirations, no faith that
+man may become godlike, more than poets have ever imagined, or
+philosophers dreamed?--when money, and what money buys, is the highest
+they know, and therefore the highest they are able to love?--when even
+the ambitious among them set out with the deliberate purpose of becoming
+the beggars of men's votes; of winning an office the chief worth of
+which, in their eyes, lies in its emoluments?--when even the glorious
+and far-sounding voice of fame for them means only the gabble and cackle
+of notoriety?
+
+The only example which I can call to mind of an historic people whose
+ideals are altogether material and mechanical, is that of China. Are we,
+then, destined to become a sort of Chinese Empire, with three hundred
+millions of human beings, and not a divine man or woman?
+
+Is what Carlyle says is hitherto our sole achievement--the bringing into
+existence of an almost incredible number of bores--is this to be the
+final outcome of our national life? Is the commonest man the only type
+which in a democratic society will in the end survive? Does universal
+equality mean universal inferiority? Are republican institutions fatal
+to noble personality? Are the people as little friendly to men of moral
+and intellectual superiority as they are to men of great wealth! Is
+their dislike of the millionaires but a symptom of their aversion to
+all who in any way are distinguished from the crowd? And is this the
+explanation of the blight which falls upon the imagination and the
+hearts of the young?
+
+Ah! surely, we who have faith in human nature, who believe in freedom
+and in popular government, can never doubt what answer must be given to
+all these questions. A society which inevitably represses what is
+highest in the best sort of men is an evil society. A civilization which
+destroys faith in genius, in heroism, in sanctity, is the forerunner of
+barbarism. Individuality is man's noblest triumph over fate, his most
+heavenly assertion of the freedom of the soul; and a world in which
+individuality is made impossible is a slavish world. There man dwindles,
+becomes one of a multitude, the impersonal product of a general law;
+and all his godlike strength and beauty are lost. Is not one true poet
+more precious than a whole generation of millionaires; one philosopher
+of more worth than ten thousand members of Congress; one man who sees
+and loves God dearer than an army of able editors?
+
+The greater our control of Nature becomes, the more its treasures are
+explored and utilized, the greater the need of strong personality to
+counteract the fatal force of matter. Just as men in tropical countries
+are overwhelmed and dwarfed by Nature's rich profusion, so in this age,
+in which industry and science have produced resources far beyond the
+power of unassisted Nature, only strong characters, marked
+individualities, can resist the influence of wealth and machinery, which
+tend to make man of less importance than that which he eats and
+wears,--to make him subordinate to the tools he uses.
+
+From many sides personality, which is the fountain-head of worth,
+genius, and power, is menaced. The spirit of the time would deny that
+God is a Person, and holds man's personality in slight esteem, as not
+rooted in the soul, but in aggregated atoms. The whole social network,
+in whose meshes we are all caught, cripples and paralyzes individuality.
+We must belong to a party, to a society, to a ring, to a clique, and
+deliver up our living thought to these soulless entities. Or, if we
+remain aloof from such affiliation, we must have no honest conviction,
+no fixed principles, but fit our words to business and professional
+interests, and conform to the exigencies of the prevailing whim. The
+minister is hired to preach not what he believes, but what the people
+wish to hear; the congressman is elected to vote not in the light of his
+own mind, but in obedience to the dictates of those who send him; the
+newspaper circulates not because it is filled with words of truth and
+wisdom, but because it panders to the pruriency and prejudice of its
+patrons; and a book is popular in inverse ratio to its individuality and
+worth. Our National Library is filled with books which have copyright,
+but no other right, human or divine, to exist at all; and when one of us
+does succeed in asserting his personality, he usually only makes himself
+odd and ridiculous. He rushes into polygamous Mormonism, or buffoon
+revivalism, or shallow-minded atheism; nay, he will even become an
+anarchist, because a few men have too much money and too little soul.
+What we need is neither the absence of individuality nor a morbid
+individuality, but high and strong personalities.
+
+If our country is to be great and forever memorable, something quite
+other than wealth and numbers will make it so. Were there but question
+of countless millions of dollars and people, then indeed the victory
+would already have been gained. If we are to serve the highest interests
+of mankind, and to mark an advance in human history, we must do more
+than establish universal suffrage, and teach every child to read and
+write. As true criticism deals only with men of genius or of the best
+talent, and takes no serious notice of mechanical writers and
+book-makers, so true history loses sight of nations whose only
+distinction lies in their riches and populousness.
+
+The noblest and most gifted men and women are alone supremely
+interesting and abidingly memorable. We have already reached a point
+where we perceive the unreality of the importance which the chronicles
+have sought to give to mere kings and captains. If the king was a hero,
+we love him; but if he was a sot or a coward, his jeweled crown and
+purple robes leave him as unconsidered by us as the beggar in his rags.
+Whatever influence, favorable or unfavorable, democracy may exert to
+make easy or difficult the advent of the noblest kind of man, an age in
+which the people think and rule will strip from all sham greatness its
+trappings and tinsel. The parade hero and windy orator will be gazed at
+and applauded, but they are all the while transparent and contemptible.
+The scientific spirit, too, which now prevails, is the foe of all
+pretense; it looks at things in their naked reality, is concerned to get
+a view of the fact as it is, without a care whether it be a beautiful or
+an ugly, a sweet or a bitter truth. The fact is what it is, and nothing
+can be gained by believing it to be what it is not.
+
+This is a most wise and human way of looking at things, if men will only
+not forget that the mind sees farther than the eye, that the heart feels
+deeper than the hand; and that where knowledge fails, faith is left;
+where possession is denied, hope remains. The young must enter upon
+their life-work with the conviction that only what is real is true,
+good, and beautiful; and that the unreal is altogether futile and vain.
+
+Now, the most real thing for every man, if he is a man, is his own soul.
+His thought, his love, his faith, his hope, are but his soul thinking,
+loving, believing, hoping. His joy and misery are but his soul glad or
+sad. Hence, so far as we are able to see or argue, the essence of
+reality is spiritual; and since the soul is conscious that it is not the
+supreme reality, but is dependent, illumined by a truth higher than
+itself, nourished by a love larger than its own, it has a dim vision of
+the Infinite Being as essentially real and essentially spiritual. A
+living faith in this infinite spiritual reality is the fountain-head not
+only of religion, but of noble life. All wavering here is a symptom of
+psychic paralysis. When the infinite reality becomes questionable, then
+all things become material and vile. The world becomes a world of sight
+and sound, of taste and touch. The soul is poured through the senses and
+dissipated; the current of life stagnates, and grows fetid in sloughs
+and marshes. Minds for whom God is the Unknowable have no faith in
+knowledge at all, except as the equivalent of weight and measure, of
+taste and touch and smell.
+
+Now, if all that may be known and desired is reduced to this material
+expression, how dull and beggarly does not life become,--mere atomic
+integration and disintegration, the poor human pneumatic-machine purring
+along the dusty road of matter, bound and helpless and soulless as a
+clanking engine! No high life, in individuals or nations, is to be hoped
+for, unless it is enrooted in the infinite spiritual reality,--in God.
+It is forever indubitable that the highest is not material, and no
+argument is therefore needed to show that when spiritual ideals lose
+their power of attraction, life sinks to lower beds.
+
+Sight is the noblest sense, and the starlit sky is the most sublime
+object we can behold. But what do we in reality see there? Only a kind
+of large tent, dimly lighted with gas jets. This is the noblest thing
+the noblest sense reveals. But let the soul appear, and the tent flies
+into invisible shreds; the heavens break open from abyss to abyss, still
+widening into limitless expanse, until imagination reels. The gas jets
+grow into suns, blazing since innumerable ages with unendurable light,
+and binding whole planetary systems into harmony and life. So infinitely
+does the soul transcend the senses! The world it lives in is boundless,
+eternal, sublime. This is its home; this the sphere in which it grows,
+and awakens to consciousness of kinship with God. This is the
+fathomless, shoreless abyss of being wherein it is plunged, from which
+it draws its life, its yearning for the absolute, its undying hope, its
+love of the best, its craving for immortality, its instinct for eternal
+things. To condemn it to work merely for money, for position, for
+applause, for pleasure, is to degrade it to the condition of a slave. It
+is as though we should take some supreme poet or hero and bid him break
+stones or grind corn,--he who has the faculty to give to truth its
+divinest form, and to lift the hearts of nations to the love of heavenly
+things.
+
+Whatever our lot on earth may be--whether we toil with the hand, with
+the brain, or with the heart--we may not bind the soul to any slavish
+service. Let us do our work like men,--till the soil, build homes,
+refine brute matter, be learned in law, in medicine, in theology; but
+let us never chain our souls to what they work in. No earthly work can
+lay claim to the whole life of man; for every man is born for God, for
+the Universe, and may not narrow his mind. We must have some practical
+thing to do in the world,--some way of living which will place us in
+harmony with the requirements and needs of earthly life; and what this
+daily business of ours shall be, each one, in view of his endowments and
+surroundings, must decide for himself.
+
+It is well to bear in mind that every kind of life has its advantages,
+except an immoral life. Whatever we make of ourselves, then,--whether
+farmers, mechanics, lawyers, doctors, or priests,--let us above all
+things first have a care that we are men; and if we are to be men, our
+special business work must form only a part of our life-work. The
+aim--at least in this way alone can I look at human life--is not to make
+rich and successful bankers, merchants, farmers, lawyers, and doctors,
+but to make noble and enlightened men. Hence the final thought in all
+work is that we work not to have more, but to be more; not for higher
+place, but for greater worth; not for fame, but for knowledge. In a
+word, the final thought is that we labor to upbuild the being which we
+are, and not merely to build round our real self with marble and gold
+and precious stones. This is but the Christian teaching which has
+transformed the world; which declares that it is the business of slaves
+even, of beggars and outcasts, to work first of all for God and the
+soul. The end is infinite, the aim must be the highest. Not to know
+this, not to hear the heavenly invitation, is to be shut out from
+communion with the best; is to be cut off from the source of growth; is
+to be given over to modes of thought which fatally lead to mediocrity
+and vulgarity of life.
+
+
+    To live for common ends is to be common.
+    The highest faith makes still the highest man;
+    For we grow like the things our souls believe,
+    And rise or sink as we aim high or low.
+    No mirror shows such likeness of the face
+    As faith we live by of the heart and mind.
+    We are in very truth that which we love;
+    And love, like noblest deeds, is born of faith.
+    The lover and the hero reason not,
+    But they believe in what they love and do.
+    All else is accident,--this is the soul
+    Of life, and lifts the whole man to itself,
+    Like a key-note, which, running through all sounds,
+    Upbears them all in perfect harmony.
+
+
+We cannot set a limit to the knowledge and love of man, because they
+spring from God, and move forever toward him who is without limit. That
+we have been made capable of this ceaseless approach to an infinite
+ideal is the radical fact in our nature. Through this we are human;
+through this we are immortal; through this we are lifted above matter,
+look through the rippling stream of time on the calm ocean of eternity,
+and beyond the utmost bounds of space, see simple being,--life and
+thought and love, deathless, imageless, absolute. This ideal creates the
+law of duty, for it makes the distinction between right and wrong. Hence
+the first duty of man is to make himself like God, through knowledge
+ever-widening, through love ever-deepening, through life ever-growing.
+
+So only can we serve God, so only can we love him. To be content with
+ignorance is infidelity to his infinite truth. To rest in a lesser love
+is to deny the boundless charity which holds the heavens together and
+makes them beautiful, which to every creature gives its fellow, which
+for the young bird makes the nest, for the child the mother's breast,
+and in the heart of man sows the seed of faith and hope and heavenly
+pity.
+
+Ceaseless growth toward God,--this is the ideal, this is the law of
+human life, proposed and sanctioned alike by Religion, Philosophy, and
+Poetry. _Dulcissima vita sentire in dies se fieri meliorem._
+
+
+    Upward to move along a Godward way,
+      Where love and knowledge still increase,
+    And clouds and darkness yield to growing day,
+      Is more than wealth or fame or peace.
+
+    No other blessing shall I ever ask.
+      This is the best that life can give;
+    This only is the soul's immortal task
+      For which 't is worth the pain to live.
+
+
+It is man's chief blessedness that there lie in his nature infinite
+possibilities of growth. The growth of animals comes quickly to an end,
+and when they cease to grow they cease to be joyful; but man, whose
+bodily development even is slow, is capable of rising to wider knowledge
+and purer love through unending ages. Hence even when he is old,--if he
+has lived for what is great and exalted,--his mind is clear, his heart
+is tender, and his soul is glad. Only those races are noble, only those
+individuals are worthy, who yield without reserve to the power of this
+impulse to ceaseless progress. Behold how the race from which we have
+sprung--the Aryan--breaks forth into ever new developments of strength
+and beauty in Greece, in Italy, in France, in England, in Germany, in
+America; creating literature, philosophy, science, art; receiving
+Christian truth, and through its aid rising to diviner heights of
+wisdom, power, freedom, love, and knowledge.
+
+And so there are individuals--and they are born to teach and to
+rule--for whom to live is to grow; who, forgetting what they have been,
+and what they are, think ever only of becoming more and more. Their
+education is never finished; their development is never complete; their
+work is never done. From victories won they look to other battlefields;
+from every height of knowledge they peer into the widening nescience;
+from all achievements and possessions they turn away toward the
+unapproachable Infinite, to whom they are drawn. Walking in the shadow
+of the too great light of God, they are illumined, and they are
+darkened. This makes Newton think his knowledge ignorance; this makes
+Saint Paul think his heroic virtue naught. Oh, blessed men, who make us
+feel that we are of the race of God; who measure and weigh the heavens;
+who love with boundless love; who toil and are patient; who teach us
+that workers can wait! They are in love with life; they yearn for fuller
+life. Life is good, and the highest life is God; and wherever man grows
+in knowledge, wisdom, and strength, in faith, hope, and love, he walks
+in the way of heaven.
+
+To you, young gentlemen, who are about to quit these halls, to continue
+amid other surroundings the work of education which here has but begun,
+what words shall I more directly speak? If hitherto you have wrought to
+any purpose, you will go forth into the world filled with resolute will
+and noble enthusiasm to labor even unto the end in building up the being
+which is yourself, that you may unceasingly approach the type of perfect
+manhood. This deep-glowing fervor of enthusiasm for what is highest and
+best is worth more to you, and to any man, than all that may be learned
+in colleges. If ambition is akin to pride, and therefore to folly, it is
+none the less a mighty spur to noble action; and where it is not found
+in youth, budding and blossoming like the leaves and flowers in spring,
+what promise is there of the ripe fruit which nourishes life? The love
+of excellence bears us up on the swift wing and plumes of high desire,--
+
+
+    Without which whosoe'er consumes his days,
+    Leaveth such vestige of himself on earth
+    As smoke in air or foam upon the wave.
+
+
+Do not place before your eyes the standard of vulgar success. Do not
+say, I will study, labor, exercise myself, that I may become able to get
+wealth or office, for to this kind of work the necessities of life and
+the tendency of the age will drive you; whereas, if you hope to be true
+and high, it is your business to hold yourselves above the spirit of the
+age. It is our worst misfortune that we have no ideals. Our very
+religion, it would seem, is not able to give us a living faith in the
+reality of ideals; for we are no longer wholly convinced that souls live
+in the atmosphere of God as truly as lungs breathe the air of earth. We
+find it difficult even to think of striving for what is eternal,
+all-holy, and perfect, so unreal, so delusive do such thoughts seem.
+
+Who will understand that to be is better than to have, and that in truth
+a man is worth only what he is? Who will believe that the kingdom of
+this world, not less than the kingdom of Heaven, lies within? Who, even
+in thinking of the worth of a pious and righteous life, is not swayed by
+some sort of honesty-best-policy principle? We love knowledge because we
+think it is power; and virtue, because we are told as a rule it
+succeeds. Ah! do you love knowledge for itself?--for it is good, it is
+godlike to know. Do you love virtue for its own sake?--for it is
+eternally and absolutely right to be virtuous. Instead of giving your
+thoughts and desires to wealth and position, learn to know how little of
+such things a true and wise man needs; for the secret of a happy life
+does not lie in the means and opportunities of indulging our weaknesses,
+but in knowing how to be content with what is reasonable, that time and
+strength may remain for the cultivation of our nobler nature. Ask God to
+inspire you with some great thought, some abiding love of what is
+excellent, which may fill you with gladness and courage, and in the
+midst of the labors, the trials, and the disappointments of life, keep
+you still strong and serene.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+RIGHT HUMAN LIFE.
+
+
+    What do we gather hence but firmer faith
+    That every gift of noble origin
+    Is breathed upon by Hope's perpetual breath;
+    That virtue and the faculties within
+    Are vital, and that riches are akin
+    To fear, to change, to cowardice, and death?
+
+    WORDSWORTH.
+
+
+
+What is so delightful as spring weather? To it, whatever mystery life
+can make plain, it reveals. There is universal utterance. Water leaps
+from its winding sheet of snow; the streams spring out to wander till
+they find their source; the corn sprouts to receive the sun's warm kiss;
+the buds unfold, the blossoms send forth fragrance, the heavens weep for
+joy; the birds sing, the children shout, and the fuller pulse of life
+gives, even to the old, fresh thoughts and young desires. Now, what is
+all this but a symbol of the soul, which feels the urgency of God
+calling upon it to make itself alive in him and in his universe of truth
+and beauty?
+
+But the season of growth is also the time of blight. A hundred germs
+perish for one that ripens into wholesome fruit; a hundred young lives
+suffer physical or moral ruin for one that develops into some likeness
+of true manhood. And upon what slight causes success or failure seems to
+depend!
+
+As a mere word, a glance, will bring the blood to a maiden's cheek, so
+may it sow the germ of moral death in the heart of youth. How helpless
+and ignorant the young are in their seeming strength and smartness: how
+self-sufficient in their unwisdom, how little amenable to reason, how
+slow to perceive true ideals. What patient, persevering effort is
+required to form character, and what a little thing will poison life in
+its source! How easy it is to see and understand what is coarse and
+evil, how difficult to appreciate what is pure and excellent. How
+quickly a boy learns to find pleasure in what is animal or brutal; but
+what infinite pains must be taken before he is won to the love of truth
+and goodness. Caricature delights him, and he has no eyes for the chaste
+beauty of perfect art. The story of an outlaw fills him with enthusiasm,
+and the heroic struggles of godlike souls are for him meaningless. He
+gazes with envious awe upon some vulgar rich man, and finds a
+philosopher, or a saint, only queer. He studies because he has been sent
+to school, where ignorance will expose him to ridicule and humiliation,
+and possibly too, because he is told that knowledge will help him to win
+money and influence. However great his proficiency, he is in truth but a
+barbarian, without wisdom, without reverence, without gentleness. He has
+been brought only in a vague way into communion with the conscious life
+of the race; he has no true conception of the dignity of souls, no sense
+of the beauty of modest and unselfish action. He mistakes rudeness for
+strength, boastfulness for ability, disrespect for independence,
+profanity for manliness, brutality for courage.
+
+And to add to his misfortune, he is blind to his own weakness and
+ignorance. A sneer or a jest is his reply to the voice of wisdom, as
+with a light heart he walks in the road to ruin; and thus it happens
+that for one who becomes a true and noble man, a hundred go astray or
+sink into an unintelligent and vulgar kind of life. This fact is
+concealed from the eyes of the young, from the eyes of the multitude,
+indeed. As we hide the dead in the earth that we may quickly forget our
+loss, so society buries from sight and thought those who fail. Their
+number is so great that the oblivion which soon overwhelms them is
+needful to save even the brave from discouragement. Of a hundred college
+boys the lives of twenty-five will be ruined by dissipation, by sensual
+indulgence; twenty-five others will be wrecked by unhappy marriages,
+foolish financial schemes, dishonesty and indolence; of the remaining
+fifty, forty, let us say, will manage to get on without loss of
+respectability, while the ten (who are still left) will win a sort of
+notoriety by getting rich or by getting elected to office. Of the
+hundred will one become a saint, a philosopher, a poet, a statesman, or
+even a man of superior ability in natural knowledge or literature? And
+if this estimate is rightly made they all fail; and the emergence of a
+high and noble mind is so improbable that it may almost be looked upon,
+like the birth of a genius, as an accident, so impossible is it, with
+our limited view, to bring such cases within the domain of law. These
+hundred college boys have been taken from a thousand youths. The nine
+hundred have remained outside the doors which open into the halls of
+culture, away from the special influences which thought and ingenuity
+have created to develop and perfect man's endowments. As they are less
+favored, we demand less of them, and are content to have them reinforce
+the unenlightened army of laborers and money-getters. But when we come
+among those to whom leisure and opportunity are given that they may
+learn to think truly and to act nobly, and find that they fail in this,
+as nearly all of them do fail, we are disappointed and saddened. The
+thoughtless imagine that those who provide food and shelter do the most
+important work; but such work is the most important only where there is
+no intellectual, moral, or religious life. That is most necessary which
+nourishes the highest faculty, and wherever civilization exists,
+enlightened minds and great characters are indispensable. The animal and
+the savage, without much difficulty, find what satisfies appetite; but
+God appoints that only living souls shall provide what keeps souls
+alive. Now this soul-life, which manifests itself in thought, in
+conduct, in hope, faith, and love, makes us human and lifts us above
+every other kind of earthly existence. It is our distinctive attribute,
+the godlike side of our being, which, under penalty of sinking to lower
+worlds, we must bring out and cultivate. The plant is alive. By its own
+energy it springs from darkness, it grows, it waves its green leaves
+beneath the blue heavens; but it is blind, deaf and dumb, senseless,
+dead to the world of sight and sound, of taste and smell. The animal too
+is alive, and in a higher way: for all the glories of Nature are painted
+upon its eye; all sounds strike upon its ear; it moves about and has all
+the sensations of physical pleasure of which man is capable; but it is
+without thought, without sense of right and wrong, without imagination,
+without hope and faith. It is plain then that human life, in its highest
+sense, is life of the soul,--a life of thought and love, of faith and
+hope, of imagination and desire; and men are high or low as they partake
+more or less of this true life. By this standard, and by no other,
+reason requires that we form an estimate of human worth. To be a king,
+to have money, to live in splendor, to meet with approval from few or
+many,--is accidental, is something which may happen to an ignorant, a
+heartless, a depraved, a vulgar man. The most vicious and brutal of men
+have, again and again, held the most exalted positions, and as a rule
+cringing and lying, trickery and robbery, or speculation and gambling,
+have been and are the means by which great fortunes are acquired.
+Position, then, and money are distinguishable from worth; and they may
+be and often are found where the life of thought and love, of faith and
+hope, of imagination and desire, is almost wholly wanting. Now, it is
+this life--the only true human life--which education should bring forth
+and strengthen; and the failure to lead this life, of those who pass
+through our institutions of learning, is a subject of deep concern for
+all who observe and reflect; for among them we look for the leaders who
+shall cause wisdom and goodness to prevail over ignorance and appetite.
+If those who receive the best nurture and care remain on the low plains
+of a hardly more than animal existence, what hope is there that the
+multitude shall rise to nobler ways of living?
+
+There is question here of the most vital interests; and if we discover
+the causes of the evil, a remedy may be found. These causes of failure
+lie partly in our environment and partly within ourselves. In the home,
+in which we receive the first and the most enduring impressions, true
+views and noble aims are frequently wanting; and thus false and low
+estimates of life are formed at a time when what we learn sinks into the
+very substance of the mind, and colors and shapes all our future seeing
+and loving. This primal experience accompanies us, and hangs about us
+like a mist to shut out the view of fairer worlds. Enthusiasm for
+intellectual and moral excellence is never roused, because our young
+souls were not made magnetic by the words and deeds of those whom we
+looked up to as gods. Fortunate is he who bears with him into the
+life-struggle pure memories of a happy home. When I think of the bees I
+have seen coming back to the hive, honey-laden, in the golden light of
+setting suns, when I was a boy at home, a feeling comes over me as
+though I had lived in paradise and been driven forth into a bleak
+world. When one is young, and one's father and mother are full of health
+and joy; when the roses are blooming and the brooks are laughing to
+themselves from simple gladness, and the floating clouds and the silent
+stars seem to have human thoughts,--what more could we ask of God but to
+know that all this is eternal, and is from him?
+
+In such a mood, how easy it is to turn the childlike soul to the world
+of spiritual and immortal things. With what efficacy then a mother's
+soft voice teaches us that we were born upon this earth for no other
+purpose than to know truth, to love goodness, to do right, that so,
+having made ourselves godlike, we may forever be with God. And if these
+high lessons blend in our thought with memories which make home a type
+of heaven, how shall they not through life be a spur to noble endeavor
+to accomplish the task thus set us? When great-hearted, high-souled boys
+go forth to college from homes of intelligence and love, then is there
+well-founded hope that they shall grow to be wise and helpful men, who
+know and teach truth, who see and create beauty, who do and make others
+do what becomes a man. Of hardly less importance is the neighborhood in
+which our early years are passed, and next to the companionship of the
+home fireside, a boy's best neighbor is Nature. Well for him shall it
+be, if, like colts and calves, and all happy young things, he is
+permitted to breath the wholesome air of woods and fields, to drink from
+flowing streams, to lie in the shade of trees on the green sward, or to
+stand alone beneath the silent starlit heavens until the thought and
+feeling of the infinite and eternal sink deep into his soul, and make it
+impossible that he should ever look upon the universe of time and space,
+or the universe of duty's law within his breast, in a shallow or
+irreverent spirit. Little shall be said to him, and little shall he
+speak, and to the unobservant he shall seem dull; but he is Nature's
+nursling, and she paints her colors on his brain and infuses her
+strength into his heart. She hardens him and teaches him patience; she
+shows him real things, fills him with the love of truth, and makes him
+understand that sham is shame.
+
+His progress may be slow; but he will persevere, he will have faith in
+the power of labor and of time, and when in after years we shall look
+about for a man with some Diogenes' lantern, there are a thousand
+chances to one that when we find him we shall find him country-born, not
+city-bred. Too soon is the town-boy made self-conscious; he is
+precocious; all the tricks and devices of civilization are known to
+him; all artifices and contrivances he sees in shop-windows; the street,
+the theatre, the newspaper are the rivals of the home, and they quickly
+teach him irreverence and disobedience. He loses innocence, experience
+of evil gives him flippant views. He becomes wise in his own conceit;
+having eyes only for the surfaces of things, he easily persuades himself
+that he knows all. Of such a youth how shall any college make an
+enlightened, a noble, and a reverent man? But the home and the
+neighborhood are not our whole environment. As we are immersed in an
+atmospheric ocean, so do we swim in the current of our national life. To
+praise this life is easy. We all see and feel how vigorous it is, how
+confident, how eager. Here is a world of busy men and women, active in
+many directions. They found States, they build cities, they create
+wealth, they discuss all problems, they try all experiments, they hurry
+on to new tasks, and think they have done nothing while aught remains to
+do.
+
+They live in the midst of the excitement of ever-recurring elections, of
+speculation, of financial schemes and commercial enterprises. It is an
+unrestful, feverish, practical life, in which all the strong natures are
+thinking of doing something, of gaining something,--a life in the
+market-place, where high thought and noble conduct are all but
+impossible, where the effort to make one's self a man, instead of
+striving to get so many thousands of money, would seem ridiculous. It is
+a life of inventions and manufactures, of getting and spending, in which
+we bring forth and consume in a single century what it has taken Nature
+many thousand years to hoard. Our aim is to have more rather than to be
+more; our ideal is that of material progress; our praise is given to
+those who invent and discover the means of augmenting wealth. Liberty is
+opportunity to get rich; education is the development of the
+money-getting faculty. Our national life may, of course, be looked at
+from many sides, but the general drift of opinion and effort is in the
+direction here pointed out. Nine tenths of our thought and energy are
+given to material interests, and these interests represent nine tenths
+of our achievements. This may be true of men in general, it may be true
+also that material progress is a condition of moral and intellectual
+growth; but none the less is it true that right human life is a life of
+thought and love, of hope and faith, of imagination and desire.
+Consequently in a well-ordered society, the chief aim--nine tenths of
+all effort, let us say--will have for its object the creation of
+enlightened and loving men and women, whom faith and hope shall make
+strong, whom imagination shall refresh, and the desire of perfection
+shall keep active. The aims which the ideals of democracy suggest are
+not wholly or chiefly material. We strive, indeed, to create a social
+condition in which comfort and plenty shall be within the reach of all;
+but the better among us understand that this is but an inferior part of
+our work, and they take no delight whatever in our great fortunes and
+great cities. If democracy is the best government, it follows that it is
+the kind of government which is most favorable to virtue, intelligence,
+and religion. It is faint praise to say that in America there is more
+enterprise, more wealth, than elsewhere. What we should strive to make
+ourselves able to say, is, that there is here a more truly human life,
+more public and private honesty, purity, sympathy, and helpfulness; more
+love of knowledge, more perfect openness to light, greater desire to
+learn, and greater willingness to accept truth than is to be found
+elsewhere. It should be our endeavor to create a world of which it may
+be said, there life is more pleasant, beauty more highly prized,
+goodness held in greater reverence, the sense of honor finer, the
+recognition of talent and worth completer than elsewhere.
+
+Wealth and population should be considered merely as means, which, if we
+ourselves do not sink beneath our fortune, we shall use to help us to
+develop on a vast scale, a nobler, freer, and fairer life than hitherto
+has ever existed. We Americans have a great capacity for seeing things
+as they are. A thousand shams and glittering vanities have gone down
+before our straight-looking eyes; and because such things fail to
+impress us, we seem to be irreverent. We must look more steadfastly,
+deeper still, until we clearly perceive and understand that to live for
+money is to lead a false and vulgar life, to rest with complacency in
+mere numbers is to have a superficial and unreal mind. To form a right
+judgment of a people, as of individuals, we must consider what they are;
+not what they have, except in so far as their possessions are the result
+of work which at once forms and reveals character. And we must know that
+work is good only in as much as it helps to make life human,--that is,
+intelligent, moral and religious. And what we have the right to demand
+of those to whom we give a higher education is, that they shall body
+forth these principles in their lives and become leaders in the task of
+spreading them among the multitude. We demand, first of all, that they
+become men whose hearts are pure and loving, whose minds are open and
+enlightened, whose motives are benevolent and generous, whose purposes
+are high and religious; and if they are such men, it shall matter
+little to what special pursuits they turn, for whatever their
+occupation, honor, truth, and intelligence shall go with them, bearing,
+like mercy, a blessing for those who give and a blessing for those who
+receive. The spirit in which they work shall be more than what they do,
+as they themselves shall be more than what they accomplish.
+
+A right spirit transforms the whole man, and the first and highest aim
+of the educator should be to impart a new heart, a new purpose, which
+shall bring into play forces that may oppose and overcome those faults
+of the young of which I have spoken, and which, if not corrected, lead
+to failure.
+
+And here we come to the causes of ill success which lie within
+ourselves. We have our individual qualities and defects, and we have
+also the qualities and defects of the people whence we are sprung, and
+of the time-spirit into which we are born. It is the aim of education,
+as it is the aim of religion, to lift us above the spirit of the age;
+but in attempting to do this, they who lose sight of what is true and
+beneficent in that spirit, commit a serious blunder. A national spirit,
+too, is a narrow, and often a harsh and selfish spirit; but when culture
+and religion strive to make us citizens of the world and universally
+benevolent, a care must be had that we retain what is strong and noble
+in the character we inherit from our ancestors.
+
+The lover of intellectual excellence, however, is little inclined to
+dwell with complacency either upon his own qualities, or upon the
+greatness of his country or his age. The untaught optimism which leads
+the crowd to exaggerate the worth of whatever they in any way identify
+with themselves, he looks upon with suspicion, if not with aversion.
+Self-complacency is pleasant; but truth alone is good, and they who
+think least are best content with themselves and with their world. He
+who seeks to improve his mind, neither boasts of his age and country,
+nor rails at them; but tries to understand them as he tries to know
+himself. The important knowledge here is of obstacles and defects; for
+when these are removed, to advance is easy. The first lesson which we
+must learn is that in the work of mental culture, time and patience are
+necessary elements. The young, who are eager and restless, find it
+difficult to work with patience and perseverance, especially when the
+reward of labor is remote, and in the excitement and hurry of American
+life, such work often seems to be impossible. But by this kind of work
+alone can true culture be acquired. It is this Buffoon means when he
+calls genius a great capacity for taking pains. When Albert Duerer said,
+"Sir, it cannot be better done;" he simply meant that he had bestowed
+infinite pains upon his work. Now, they who are in a hurry cannot take
+pains; and they who work for money will take pains only in so far as it
+is profitable to do so. We must live in our work and love it for its own
+sake. To do work we love makes us happy, makes us free, and according to
+its kind educates us; and whatever its kind, it will at least teach us
+the sovereign virtue of patience, and give us something of the spirit of
+the old masters who in dingy shops ceased not from labor, and kept their
+cheerful serenity to the end, though the outcome was only the most
+perfect fiddle, or a deathless head. But they themselves had the souls
+of artists, and were honest men, who in their work found joy and
+freedom, and therefore what they did remains as a source of delight and
+inspiration. If we find it impossible to put our hearts into our work
+and consequently impossible to take infinite pains with it, then this is
+work for which we were not born. The impatient cannot love the labor by
+which the mind is cultivated, because impatience implies a sense of
+restraint, a lack of freedom. They are restless, easily grow weary or
+despondent, find fault with themselves and their task, and either throw
+off the yoke or bear it in a spirit of disappointment and bitterness.
+As they fail to make themselves strong and serene, their work bears the
+marks of haste and feebleness, for work reveals character; it is the
+likeness of the doer, as style shows the man. Then the young are blinded
+by the glitter and glare of life, by the splendors of position and
+wealth; they are drawn to what is external; they would be here and
+there; they love the unchartered liberty of chance desires, and are
+easily brought to look upon the task of self-improvement as a slavish
+work. They would have done with study that they may be free, may enter
+into what they suppose to be a fair and rich heritage. They cannot
+understand that so long as they are narrow, sensual, and unenlightened,
+the possession of a world could not make them high or happy. They do not
+know that to have liberty, without the power of using it for worthy
+ends, is a curse not a blessing. They imagine that experience of the
+world's ways and wickedness will make them wise, whereas it will make
+them depraved.
+
+How can they realize that the good of life consists in being, and not in
+having? that we are worth what our knowledge, love, admiration, hope,
+faith, and desire make us worth? They will not perceive that happiness
+and unhappiness are conditions of soul, and consequently that the wise,
+the loving, and the strong, whatever their outward fortune, are happy,
+while the ignorant, the heartless, and the weak are miserable. To know
+ourselves, we should seek to discover the kind of life our influence
+tends to create. Consider the kind of world college boys make for
+themselves, the things they admire, the companions they find pleasant,
+the subjects in which they take interest, the books that delight
+them,--and one great cause of the failure of education will be made
+plain; for though they are sent to school to be taught by professors,
+their influence upon one another is paramount. Instead of helping one
+another to see that their real business is to educate themselves, they
+persuade one another that life is given for common ends and vulgar
+pleasures. Hence they look with envy upon their companions who are the
+sons of rich men, as they have not lived long enough to learn that the
+fate of four fifths of the sons of rich men in this country, is moral
+and physical ruin. If such is the public opinion of the world in which
+they live; and if even strong men are feeble in the presence of public
+opinion,--how shall we find fault with them for not being attracted by
+the ideals of intellectual and moral excellence. For the trained mind
+even to think is difficult, and for them independent thought is almost
+impossible. They do not know the little less than creative power of
+right education, or that as we are changed by action, we are
+transformed by thought. What patient labor may do to exalt and refine
+the mental faculties, until we become capable of entering into the life
+of every age and every people, has not been shown to them; and hence
+they are not inspired by the high hope of dwelling, in very truth, with
+all the noble and heroic souls who have passed through this world and
+left record of themselves. We bid the youth learn many things which he
+cannot but find both useless and uninteresting. And yet unless we
+discover the secret of winning him to the love of study, the educational
+value of what he learns is lost; for what leaves him unmoved, leaves him
+unimproved. His information and accomplishments are comparatively
+unimportant. What he himself is, and what his real self gives us grounds
+for hoping he shall become, is the true concern. To be able to translate
+AEschylus or Plato is not a great thing; but it is a great thing to have
+the Greek's sense of what is fair, noble and intellectual. To be able to
+solve a complex mathematical problem may be unimportant; but to have the
+mental habit of accurate, close, patient thinking is important. It is
+easy to forget one's Greek or the higher mathematics; but an
+intellectual or a moral habit is not easily lost.
+
+He who has right habits will go farther and rise higher than he who has
+only brilliant attainments. It is an error, and a very common one, to
+suppose that education is merely, or chiefly, a mental process, and
+consequently that the best school is that in which the various kinds of
+knowledge are best taught. Our whole being, physical, intellectual, and
+moral, is subject to the law of education. We may educate the eye, the
+ear, the hand, the foot; and each member of the body may be trained in
+many ways. The eye of the microscopist has received a training different
+from that of the painter; the sculptor's hand has been taught a cunning
+unlike that of the surgeon; the voice of the orator is developed in one
+way, that of the singer in another. And so the faculties of the mind may
+be drawn forth, and each one in various ways. The powers of observation,
+of reflection, of intuition, of imagination, are all educable. One of
+the most important and most difficult lessons to learn is that of
+attention. We know only what we are conscious of, and we are conscious
+only of that to which we give heed. If we but hold the mind to any
+subject with perseverance, it will deliver its secret. The little
+knowledge we have is often vague and unreal, because we are heedless,
+because we have never taught ourselves to dwell in conscious communion
+with the objects of thought. The trained eye sees innumerable beauties
+which are hidden from others, and so the mind which is taught to look
+right sees truths the uneducated can never know. We may be taught to
+judge as well as to look. Indeed, once we have learned to see things as
+they are, correct opinions and judgments naturally follow. All faculty
+is the result of education. Poets, orators, philosophers, and saints
+bring not their gifts into the world with them; but by looking and
+thinking, doing and striving, they rise from the poor elements of
+half-conscious life to the clear vision of truth and beauty. Natural
+endowments are not equal; but the chief cause of inequality lies in the
+unequal efforts which men make to develop their endowments. The lack of
+imagination in the multitude makes their life dull, uninteresting, and
+material, and it is assumed that we are born with, or without,
+imagination, and that there is no remedy for this misery. And those who
+admit that imagination is subject to the law of development, frequently
+hold that it should be repressed rather than strengthened. Doubtless the
+imagination can be cultivated, just as the eye or the ear, the judgment
+or the reason, can be cultivated; and since imagination, like faith,
+hope, and love, helps us to live in higher and fairer worlds, an
+educator is false to his calling when he leaves it unimproved. The
+classics, and especially poetry, are the great means of intellectual
+culture, because more than anything else they have power to exalt and
+ennoble the imagination. To suppose that this faculty is one which only
+poets and artists need, is to take a shallow and partial view. The
+historian, the student of Nature, the statesman, the minister of
+religion, the teacher, the mechanic even, if they are to do good work,
+must possess imagination, which is at once an intellectual, a moral, and
+a religious faculty. It is the mother and mistress of faith, hope, and
+love. It is the source of great thoughts, of high aspirations, and of
+heavenly dreams. Without it the illimitable starlit expanse loses its
+sublimity, oceans and mountains their awfulness and majesty, flowers
+their beauty, home its sacred charm, youth its halo, and the grave its
+solemn mystery.
+
+Those powers within us which are directly related to conduct, the
+impulses to self-preservation, and to the propagation of the race, are
+subject to the law of education, not less than our physical and
+intellectual endowments. And the importance of dealing rightly with
+these powers is readily perceived if we reflect that conduct is the
+greater part of human life, which is a life of thought and love, of hope
+and faith, of imagination and desire.
+
+As we can educate the faculties of thought and imagination, so can we
+develop the power to love, to hope, to believe, and to desire. When
+there is question of the intellect, teachers seek to impart information
+rather than to strengthen the mind, and when there is question of the
+moral nature, they have recourse to precepts and maxims instead of
+striving to confirm the will and to direct impulse. It is generally
+held, in fact, that will is a gift, not a growth, and the same view is
+taken of all our moral dispositions. We are supposed to receive from
+Nature a warm or a cold heart, a hopeful or a despondent temper, a
+believing or a skeptical turn of mind, a spiritual or a sensual bent.
+Now as I have already admitted, endowments are unlike; but what has this
+to do with the drift of the argument? Minds, though by nature unequal,
+may all be educated; and so wills may be educated, and so that which
+makes us capable of faith, hope, and desire, may be drawn forth,
+strengthened, and refined. Emerson, whose thought is predominantly
+spiritual, takes a low and material view of the moral faculties,
+confusing strength of will with health. "Courage," he says, "is the
+degree of circulation of the blood in the arteries.... When one has a
+plus of health, all difficulties vanish before it." But will is a moral
+rather than a constitutional power; and in so far as it is moral, it
+may be cultivated and directed to noble aims and ends. And if the
+teacher perform this work with fine knowledge and tact, he becomes an
+educator; for upon the will, more than upon the intellectual faculties,
+success or failure depends. Whatever we are able to will, we are able to
+learn to do; and the best service we can render another is to rouse and
+confirm within him the will to live and to work, that he may make
+himself a complete man, that thus he may become a benefactor of men and
+a co-worker with God. The rational will, which is the educated will,
+should give impulse and guidance to all our thinking, loving, and doing.
+It should control appetite; it should nourish faith and hope; it should
+lead us on through the illusory world of sensual delights, through the
+hardly less illusory world of wealth and power, still bidding us look
+and see that the world to which the conscious self really belongs, is
+infinite and eternal, and that to seek to rest in aught else is to
+apostatize from reason and conscience. Thus it would awaken in us a
+divine discontent, a sacred unrest, which might urge us on through the
+darkness of appetite and the unwholesome air of avarice and ambition,
+whispering to us that our life-work is to know truth, to love beauty, to
+do righteousness. To none is the education of the will so necessary as
+to the lovers of intellectual excellence, for they who live in the world
+of ideas are easily content to let the world of deeds take care of
+itself. As the astronomer sees the earth lost like a grain of sand in
+infinite space, so to the wide and deep view of one who is familiar with
+the course of human thought and action, what any man, what the whole
+race of man, may do, can seem but insignificant. From the vanity and
+noise of actors who fret and storm for their brief hour, and then pass
+forever from life's stage, he flies to ideal worlds where truth never
+changes, where beauty never grows old, and lives more richly blest than
+lovers in Tempe or the dales of Arcady. And then the habit of looking at
+things from many sides leads to doubt, hesitation, and inaction. While
+the wise deliberate, the young and inexperienced have won or lost the
+battle. Thus the purely intellectual life tends to weaken faith, hope,
+and desire, which are the sources whence conduct springs, the drying up
+of which leaves us amid barren wastes, where high thinking, if it be not
+impossible, brings neither strength nor joy; for the secret of strength
+and joy lies in doing and not in thinking. It is a law of our nature
+that conduct brings the most certain and the most permanent
+satisfaction, and hence whatever our ideals, the pursuit should be
+inspired by the sense of duty.
+
+
+    "Stern law-giver! yet thou dost wear
+    The Godhead's most benignant grace;
+    Nor know we anything so fair
+    As is the smile upon thy face.
+    Flowers laugh before thee on their beds
+    And fragrance in thy footing treads."
+
+
+Then only do we move with certain step when we hear God's voice bidding
+us go forward, as he commands the starry host to fly onward, and all
+living things to spring upward to light and warmth. When we understand
+that he has made progress the law of life, we learn to feel that not to
+grow is not to live. Then our view is enlarged; we become lovers of
+perfection; we cherish every gift, and in many ways we strive to
+cultivate the many powers which go to the making of a man. They all are
+from him, and from him is the effort by which they are improved. We were
+born to make ourselves alive in him and in his universe, and like the
+setter in the field, we stretch eye and ear and nose to catch whatever
+message may be borne to us from his boundless game park. We observe,
+reflect, compare; we read best books; we listen to whoever speaks what
+he knows and feels to be truth. We take delight in whatever in Nature is
+sublime or beautiful, and fresh thoughts and innocent hearts make us
+glad. Wherever an atom thrills, there too is God, and in him we feel the
+thrill and are at home. Our faith grows pure; our hope is confirmed; and
+our love and sympathy identify us with an ever-widening sphere of life
+beyond us. The exclusive self passes into the larger movement of the
+social and religious world around us, which, as we now realize, is also
+within us, giving aims and motives to our love and self-devotion. We
+understand that what hurts another can never help us, and that our
+private good must tend to become a general blessing. Thus we find and
+love ourselves in the intellectual, moral, and religious life of the
+race, which is a type and symbol of the infinite life of God, the omen
+and promise of the soul's survival. As we become conscious of ourselves
+only through communion with what is not ourselves, so we truly live only
+when we live for God and the world he creates,--losing life that we may
+find it; dying, like seed-corn, that we may rise to a new and richer
+life. Not what gratifies our selfish or sensual nature will help us to
+lead this right human life; but that which illumines and deepens thought
+and love, which gives to faith a boundless scope, to hope an everlasting
+foundation, to desire the infinite beauty which, though unseen, is felt,
+like memory of music fled. The unseen world ceases to be a future
+world; and is recognized as the very world in which we now think and
+love, and so intellectual and moral life passes into the sphere of
+religion. We no longer pursue ideals which forever elude us, but we
+become partakers of the divine life; for in giving ourselves to the
+Eternal and Infinite we find God in our souls. The ideal is made real;
+God is with us, and through faith, hope, and love we are one with him,
+and all is well. Henceforth in seeking to know more, to become more, we
+are animated by a divine spirit. Now we may grow old, still learning
+many things, still smitten with the love of beauty, still finding
+delight in fresh thoughts and innocent pleasures, and it may be that we
+shall be found to be teachers of wisdom and of holiness. Then, indeed,
+shall we be happy, for it is better to teach truth than to win battles.
+A war-hero supposes a barbarous condition of the race, and when all
+shall be civilized, they who know and love the most shall be held to be
+the greatest and the best.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+UNIVERSITY EDUCATION.
+
+
+As they who look on the ocean think of its vastness; of the many shores
+in many climes visited by its waves to ply "their priest-like task of
+clean ablution;" of cities and empires that rose beside its waters,
+flourished, decayed, and became a memory; of others that shall rise and
+also pass away, while the moving element remains,--so we to-day
+beholding ancient Faith, laying, in the New World, the cornerstone of an
+institution which better than anything else symbolizes the aim and
+tendency of modern life, find ourselves dwelling in thought upon what
+has been and what will be.
+
+On the one hand rises the venerable form of that religion whose voice
+re-echoed in the hearts of Abraham, Moses, David, and Isaiah; whose
+lips, when the Saviour spoke, uttered diviner truth and thrilled the
+hearts of men with purer love, living with them in deserts and
+catacombs, leading them along bloodstained ways to victory and peace,
+until at length the Church gleamed forth from amid the parting
+storm-clouds and shone like a mountain-built city bathed in sunlight. On
+the other stands the Genius of the Republic, the embodied spirit of the
+sovereign people, who, accepting as literal truth the Christian
+principles that God is a Father, and men brothers and therefore equal,
+strive to take from political society the blindness and fatality of
+natural law, and to endow it with the divine and human attributes of
+justice, mercy, and intelligence. From the very beginning our American
+history is full of religious zeal, of high courage and strong endeavor.
+When Columbus, saddened by the frivolousness or the perfidy of courts,
+but unshaken in his purpose, walked the streets of the Spanish capital,
+lonely and forsaken, the children, as he passed along, would point to
+their foreheads and smile, for was not his mind unhinged, and did he not
+believe the world was round and on the other side men walked like flies
+upon a ceiling? But a woman's heart understood that his folly was of the
+kind which is the wisdom of God, and with her help he set sail, not
+timidly or doubting like the Portuguese who for fifty years hugged the
+African coast, advancing and then receding, but facing the awful and
+untraveled ocean with a heart stronger than its storm-swept billows, he
+steered due west. In his journal, day after day, he wrote these simple
+but sublime words, "That day he sailed westward, which was his course."
+And still, as hope rose and fell, as misgivings and terrors seized on
+his men, as the compass varied in inexplicable ways as though they were
+entering regions where the very laws of Nature change, the soul of the
+great admiral stood firm and each evening he wrote again the self-same
+words, "that day he sailed westward which was his course," until at
+length seeing what he foresaw, he gave to Christendom another world and
+enlarged the boundaries and scope of earthly life. What hearts had not
+the men who in New England, in Virginia, in Maryland, and elsewhere,
+settled in little bands on the edge of vast and unexplored regions,
+covered by interminable forests, where savages lay in wait, athirst for
+blood. We hear without surprise that wise and prudent men looked upon
+the early attempts to take possession of America as not less wild and
+visionary than the legendary exploits of Amadis de Gaul; but what
+Utopian dreamer, what poet soaring in the high regions of his fancy,
+could have imagined two centuries and a half ago the beauty, the power,
+the free and majestic sweep of the stream of human life which has poured
+across this continent? Who could have dared to hope that the religious
+exiles who sought here a home for the Christian conscience were a seed,
+the least of all, which was destined to grow into a tree whose boughs
+should shelter the land, and bring refreshment to the weary and
+heavy-laden from every part of the earth?
+
+Who could have thought that these fugitives from the tyrant's power
+would, in little more than a century, grow like the tribes of Israel
+into a people able to withstand the onslaughts of the oppressor, and to
+abolish forever within their borders despotic rule? Who could have had
+faith that men of different creeds, speaking various tongues, bred in
+unlike social conditions, would here coalesce and co-operate for the
+general purposes of free government? Above all, who could have believed
+that a form of government rarely tried, even in small States, and when
+tried found practicable only for brief periods, would here become so
+stable, so strong, that every hamlet, every village, is self-poised and
+manages its own affairs? The achievement is greater than we are able to
+know; nor does it lie chiefly in the millions who coming from many lands
+have here made homes and found themselves free; nor in the building of
+cities, the clearing of forests, the draining of swamps, the binding of
+two oceans, and the opening of lines of rapid communication in every
+direction. Not to numbers or wealth do we owe our significance among
+the nations; but to the fact that we have shown that respect for law is
+compatible with civil and religious liberty; that a free people can
+become prosperous and strong, and preserve order without king or
+standing army; that the State and the Church can move in separate orbits
+and still co-operate for the common welfare; that men of different races
+and beliefs may live together in peace; that in spite of an abnormally
+rapid increase of population and of wealth, and of the many evils thence
+resulting, the prevailing tendency is to sanity of thought and
+sentiment, thus plainly manifesting the vigor of our life and
+institutions; that the government of the majority, where men put their
+trust in God and in knowledge, is in the end the government of the good
+and the wise. We have thus helped to establish confidence in human
+nature; to prove that man's instincts, like the laws of Nature, are
+conservative; to show that the enthusiasts who would overturn
+everything, destroy everything, have no abiding place or influence in
+the affairs of a free people, as volcanic and cyclonic forces are but
+transitory and superficial in their action upon the earth. We have shown
+in a word that under a popular government, where men are faithful and
+intelligent, it is as impossible that society should become chaotic as
+that the planets should dissolve into star dust.
+
+It is difficult to realize what an advance this is on all previous views
+of political life; how full it is of promise, how accordant with the
+sentiments of the noblest minds in every part of the world. It gives us
+the leading place among the nations which are moving along rising ways
+to higher and freer life. To turn to the Catholic Church in America; all
+observers remark its great development here, the rapid increase in the
+number of its adherents, its growth in wealth and influence, the firm
+yet gentle hand with which it brings heterogeneous populations under the
+control of a common faith and discipline, the ease with which it adapts
+itself to new conditions and organizes itself in every part of the
+country. It is not a little thing, in spite of unfriendly public opinion
+and of great and numerous obstacles, in spite of the burden which high
+achievements impose and of the lack of easy and supple movement which
+gathering years imply, to enter new fields, to bend one's self to
+unaccustomed work, and to struggle for the right to live in the midst of
+a generation heedless of the good, and mindful only of the evil which
+has been associated with one's life. This is what the Catholic Church in
+America has had to do, and has done with a success which recalls the
+memory of the spread of Christianity through the Roman Empire. It
+counts its members here by millions, while a hundred years ago it
+counted them by thousands; and its priests, churches, schools, and
+institutions of charity it reckons by the thousand, while then they
+could be counted hardly by tens. Public opinion which was then hostile
+is no longer so in the same degree. Prejudice has not indeed ceased to
+exist; for where there is question of religion, of society, of politics,
+even the fairest minds fail to see things as they are, and the
+multitude, it may be supposed, will never become impartial; but the
+tendency of our life and of the age is opposed to bigotry, and as we
+lose faith in the justice and efficacy of persecution, we perceive more
+clearly that true religion can neither be defended nor propagated by
+violence and intolerance, by appeals to sectarian bitterness and
+national hatred. By none is this more sincerely acknowledged, or more
+deeply felt, than by the Catholics of the United States.
+
+The special significance of our American Catholic history is not found
+in the phases of our life which attract attention, and are a common
+theme for declamation; but it lies in the fact that our example proves
+that the Church can thrive where it is neither protected nor persecuted,
+but is simply left to itself to manage its own affairs and to do its
+work. Such an experiment had never been made when we became an
+independent people, and its success is of world-wide import, because
+this is the modern tendency and the position toward the Church which all
+the nations will sooner or later assume; just as they all will be forced
+finally to accept popular rule. The great underlying principle of
+democracy,--that men are brothers and have equal rights, and that God
+clothes the soul with freedom,--is a truth taught by Christ, is a truth
+proclaimed by the Church; and the faith of Christians in this principle,
+in spite of hesitations and misgivings, of oppositions and obstacles and
+inconceivable difficulties, has finally given to it its modern vigor and
+beneficent power. The spirit of love and mercy, which is the spirit of
+Christ, breathes like a heavenly zephyr through the whole earth, and
+under its influence the age is moved to attempt greater things than
+hitherto have seemed possible. Never before has sympathy among men been
+so widespread; never has the desire to come to the relief of all who
+suffer pain or wrong been so general or so intelligent. To feed the
+hungry, to clothe the naked, to visit the sick, seems now comparatively
+a little thing. Our purpose is to create a social condition in which
+none shall lack food or clothing or shelter; following the divine
+command: "O Israel, thou shalt not suffer that there be a beggar or a
+pauper within thy borders." Kindness to slaves ceased to be a virtue for
+us when we abolished slavery; and we look forward to the day when nor
+man nor woman nor child shall work and still be condemned to a life of
+misery. That great blot upon the page of history, woman's fate, has
+partly been erased, and we are drawing near to the time when in the
+world as in Christ there shall be made no distinction between slave and
+freeman, between man and woman. If we compare modern with ancient and
+medieval epochs, wars have become less frequent, and in war men have
+become more humane and merciful.
+
+Increasing knowledge of human life as it is found in the savage, in the
+barbarian, and in the civilized man, fixes us more unalterably in our
+belief in the worth of progress. The savage and the barbarian are
+hopelessly ignorant, and therefore weak and wretched, since ignorance is
+the chief source of man's misery. "My people," says the prophet, "are
+destroyed for lack of knowledge." From ignorance rather than from
+depravity have sprung the most appalling crimes, the most pernicious
+vices. In darkness of mind men have worshiped senseless material
+things, have deified every cruel and carnal passion; at the dictate of
+unenlightened conscience they have oppressed, laid waste, and murdered;
+for lack of knowledge they have perished in the snows of winter, been
+wasted by miasmatic air, have fallen victims to famine and pestilence,
+and have bowed for centuries beneath the degrading yoke of tyranny.
+Science is a ministering angel. The Jesuits by bringing quinine to the
+knowledge of civilized man have done more to relieve suffering than all
+the builders of hospitals. Vaccine has wrought more potently than the
+all-forgetful love of mothers; more than all the patriots gunpowder has
+won victories over tyrants; and the printing-press is a greater teacher
+than philosophers, writers, poets, schools, and universities. Like a
+heavenly messenger the compass guides man whithersoever he will go,
+still turning to the one fixed point, as turn the hearts of the children
+of men to God. The nations intermingle and lose their jealousies and
+hatreds, borne everywhere by the power of steam; and the thoughts of men
+are carried by lightning round the whole earth. Commerce has become a
+world-wide interchange of good offices; and while it adds to the comfort
+of all, it enlarges thought and strengthens sympathy. Our greater
+knowledge has enabled us to lengthen human life; to extinguish some of
+the most virulent diseases; to perform surgical operations without pain;
+to increase the fertility of the soil; to make pestilential regions
+habitable; to illumine our cities and homes at night with the
+brilliancy of day; to give to laborers better clothing and dwellings
+than princes in other ages have had. It has opened to our vision the
+limitless sidereal expanse, and revealed to us a heavenly glory which
+transcends the imagination of inspired poets. Before this new light the
+earth has dwindled away and become an atom, as the stars hide when the
+great sun wheels upward from out the night. We have looked into the very
+heart of the sun itself, and know of what it is made; and with the
+microscope we have caught sight of the marvelous world of the
+infinitesimally small, have seen what human eye had never beheld, and
+have watched unseen life building up and breaking down all living
+organisms. We have learned how to walk secure in the depths of ocean, to
+soar in mid-air, to rush on our way unimpeded through the stony hearts
+of mountains. We see the earth grow from a fire-ball to be the home of
+man; we know its anatomy; we read its history; and we behold races of
+animals which passed away ages before the eye of man looked forth upon
+the boundless mystery and saw the shadow of the presence of the infinite
+God. Better than the Greeks we know the history of Greece; than the
+Romans that of Rome. Words that were never written have whispered to us
+the dreams and hopes of people that perished and left no record; and the
+more we have learned of the past the more clearly do we perceive how far
+the present age surpasses all others in knowledge and in power.
+
+The mighty movement by which this development has been caused, has not
+slackened, but seems each day to gain new force; and the marvelous
+changes, political, social, moral, intellectual, and physical, which
+give character to the nineteenth century are but the prelude to a drama
+which shall make all past achievements of our race appear weak and
+contemptible. To imagine that our superiority is merely mechanical and
+material is to fail to see things as they are. Greater individuals may
+have lived than now are living, but never before has the world been
+governed with so much wisdom and so much justice; and the power back of
+our progress is intellectual, moral, and religious. Science is not
+material. It is the product of intellect and will; and the great
+founders of modern science, Copernicus, Kepler, Bacon, Descartes,
+Galileo, Newton, Leibnitz, Ampere, Liebig, Fresnel, Faraday, and Mayer,
+were Christians. "However paradoxical it may sound," says
+DuBois-Reymond, "modern science owes its origin to Christianity."
+
+Since the course of events is left chiefly to the direction of natural
+causes, and since science enables man to bend the stars, the lightning,
+the winds, and the waves to his purposes, what shall resist the onward
+march of those who are armed with such power? Since life is a warfare, a
+struggle, how shall the ignorant and the thoughtless survive in a
+conflict in which natural knowledge has placed in the hands of the wise
+forces which the angels may not wield? Since the prosperity of the
+Church is left subject to human influence, shall the Son of Man find
+faith on earth when he comes if the most potent instrument God has given
+to man is abandoned to those who know not Christ? Why should we who
+reckon it a part of the glory of the Church in the past that she labored
+to civilize barbarians, to emancipate slaves, to elevate woman, to
+preserve the classical writings, to foster music, painting, sculpture,
+architecture, poetry, and eloquence, think it no part of her mission now
+to encourage scientific research? To be Catholic is to be drawn not only
+to the love of whatever is good and beautiful, but also to the love of
+whatever is true; and to do the best work the Catholic Church must fit
+herself to a constantly changing environment, to the character of every
+people, and to the wants of each age. Has not Christ declared that
+whoever is not against us is for us; and may we not therefore find
+friends in all who work for worthy ends,--for liberty and knowledge, for
+increase of power and love? This large sympathy, which true religion and
+the best culture promote, is Catholic, and it is also American; for here
+with us, I think, the whole world is for men of good-will who are not
+fools. We who are the children of ancient Faith, who inherit the boon
+from fathers who held it to be above all price, are saved, where there
+is question of former times, from irreverent thoughts and shallow views.
+
+
+    For us the long past ages have not flown;
+    Like our own deeds they travel with us still;
+    Reviling them, we but ourselves disown;
+    We are the stream their many currents fill.
+    From their rich youth our manhood has upgrown,
+    And in our blood their hopes and loves yet thrill.
+
+
+But if like the old, the Church can look to the past, like the young,
+she can look to the future. If there are Catholics who linger regretful
+amid glories that have vanished, there are also Catholics who in the
+midst of their work feel a confidence which leaves no place for regret;
+who well understand that the earthly environment in which the Church
+lives is subject to change and decay, and that new surroundings imply
+new tasks and impose new duties. The splendor of the medieval Church,
+its worldly power, the pomp of its ceremonial, the glittering pageantry
+in which its pontiffs and prelates vied with kings and emperors in
+gorgeous display, are gone, or going; and were it given to man to recall
+the past, the spirit whereby it lived would still be wanting. But it is
+the mark of youthful and barbarous natures to have eyes chiefly for the
+garb and circumstance of religion, to see the body only and not the
+soul. At all events the course of life is onward, and enthusiasm for the
+past cannot become the source of great and far reaching action. The
+present alone gives opportunity; and the face of hope turns to the
+future, and the wise are busy with what lies at hand, with immediate
+duty, and not with schemes for bringing back the things that have passed
+away. Leaving their dead with the dead, they work for life and for the
+living.
+
+As in each individual there is a better and a worse self, so in each age
+there are conflicting tendencies; but it is the part of enlightened
+minds and generous hearts to see what is true, and to love what is good.
+The fault-finder is hateful both in life and in literature; and it is
+Iago, the most despicable of characters, whom Shakespeare makes say, "I
+am nothing if not critical." A Christian of all men is without excuse
+for being fretful and sour, for thinking and acting as though this were
+a devil's world, and not the eternal God's, as though there were danger
+lest the Almighty should not prevail. We know that God is, and therefore
+that all will be well; and if it were conceivable that God is not, it
+would still be the part of a true man to labor to make knowledge and
+virtue prevail. The criticism of the age which gives a better
+understanding of its needs is good; all other is baneful.
+
+Opinion rules the world, and a right appreciation of the influences by
+which opinion is molded is the surest guide to a knowledge of the time.
+In ignorant and barbarous ages the notions and beliefs of men are crude,
+and are controlled by a few, for only a few possess knowledge and
+influence; and even in the age of Pericles and Augustus, the thought of
+mankind means the thoughts of some dozens of men. A few vigorous minds
+founded schools of opinion and style, became intellectual dictators, and
+asserted their authority for centuries. As the art of printing was yet
+unknown, and books were rare, the teacher was the speaker; orators held
+sway over the destiny of nations; and the Christian pulpit became the
+world's university. But the printing-press in giving to thought a
+permanent form which is placed under the eyes of the whole world has
+made the passion, the splendor, the majestic phrase of oratory seem
+unreal as an actor's speech, evanescent as a singer's tones; and hence
+the pulpit and the rostrum, though they still have influence, can never
+again exercise the control over opinion which belonged to them when all
+men had not become readers.
+
+What is true of eloquence may be affirmed of all art. In spite of
+ourselves, even the best of us find it difficult to make art a serious
+business; and unless taken seriously, it is vain, loses its soul, and
+falls into the hands of pretenders and sentimentalists. Once painting,
+sculpture, architecture, and song were the expression of thoughts and
+moods which irresistibly appealed for utterance; but with us they are a
+fashion, like cosmetics and laces. Poetry, the highest of arts, has lost
+its original character of song, and the poet now deals, in an
+imaginative way, with problems which puzzle metaphysicians and
+theologians. The causes that have robbed art of so much of its charm and
+power have necessarily diminished the influence of ceremonial worship,
+which is the artistic expression of the soul's faith and love, of its
+hopes and yearnings. We are, indeed, still subdued by the majesty of
+dimly lighted cathedrals, by solemn music, and the various symbolism of
+the ritual, but we feel not the deep awe of our fathers whose knees
+furrowed the pavement stones, and whose burning lips kissed them smooth;
+and to blame ourselves for this would serve no purpose. To those who
+find no pleasure in sweet sounds, we pipe in vain, and argument to show
+that one ought to be moved by what leaves him cold, is meaningless.
+Emotion is spontaneous, and adorers, like lovers, neither ask nor care
+for reasons. There is in fact an element of illusion in feeling; passion
+is non-rational; and when the spirit of the time is intellectual, men
+are seldom devout, however religious they may be. The scientific habit
+of mind is not favorable to childlike and unreasoning faith; and the new
+views of the physical universe which the modern mind is forced to take,
+bring us face to face with new problems in religion and morals, in
+politics and society.
+
+Whatever we may think of the past, whatever we may fear or hope for the
+future, if we would make an impression on the world around us, we must
+understand the thoughts, the purposes, and the methods of those with
+whom we live; and we must at the same time recognize that though the
+truth of religion be unchangeable, the mind of man is not so, and that
+the point of view varies not only from people to people, and from age to
+age, but from year to year in the growing thought of the individual and
+of the world. As in travelling round the earth, time changes, and when
+it is morning here, it is evening there, so with difference of latitude
+and longitude, of civilization and barbarism, the opinions and manners
+of men grow different. They who observe from positions widely separate
+do not see the same things, or do not see them in the same light. Proof
+for a peasant is not proof for a philosopher; and arguments which in one
+age are held to be unanswerable, in another lose power to convince, or
+become altogether meaningless. It is not to be imagined that the hearts
+of Christians should again burn with the devotional enthusiasm and the
+warlike ardor of the Crusaders; and just as little is it conceivable
+that men should again become passionately interested in the questions
+which in the fourth and fifth centuries filled the world with the noise
+of theological disputation. It were mere loss of time to beat now the
+waste fields of the Protestant controversy. Wiseman's book on science
+and revealed religion, which fifty years ago attracted attention, lies
+like a stranded ship on a deserted shore, and attempts of the kind are
+held in slight esteem. The immature mind is eager to reduce faith to
+knowledge; but the accomplished thinker understands that knowledge
+begins and ends in faith. There is oppugnancy between belief in an
+all-wise, all-good, and all-powerful God, and belief in the divine
+origin of Nature, whose face is smeared with filth and blood; but we
+hold that the conflicting faiths and increasing knowledge cannot add to
+the difficulty. On the contrary, the higher the intelligence, the purer
+Nature seems to grow. The chemical elements are as fair and sweet in the
+corpse as in the living body, and the earthquake and the cyclone obey
+the same laws which make the waters flow and the zephyrs breathe
+perfume. It is the imagination and not the reason that is overwhelmed by
+the idea of unending space and time. To the intellect, eternity is not
+more mysterious than the present moment, and the distance which
+separates us from the remotest stars is not more incomprehensible than a
+hand's breadth. Science is the widening thought of man, working on the
+hypothesis of universal intelligibility toward universal intelligence;
+and religion is the soul, escaping from the labyrinth of matter to the
+light and love of the Infinite; and on the heights they meet and are at
+peace.
+
+Meanwhile they who seek natural knowledge must admit that faith, hope,
+and love are the everlasting foundations of human life, and that a
+philosophic creed is as sterile as Platonic love; and they who uphold
+religion must confess that faith which ignorance alone can keep alive
+is little better than superstition. To strive to attain truth under
+whatever form is to seek to know God; and yet no ideal can be true for
+man, unless it can be made to minister to faith, hope, and love; for by
+them we live. Let us then teach ourselves to see things as they are,
+without preoccupation or misgivings lest what is should ever make it
+impossible, for us to believe and hope in the better yet to be. Science
+and morality need religion as much as thought and action require
+emotion; and beyond the utmost reach of the human mind lie the boundless
+worlds of mystery where the soul must believe and adore what it can but
+dimly discern. The Copernican theory of the heavens startled believers
+at first; but we have long since grown accustomed to the new view which
+reveals to us a universe infinitely more glorious than aught the
+ancients ever imagined. We do not rightly see either the things which
+are always around us, or those which for the first time are presented to
+our eyes; and when novel theories of the visible world, which in some
+sense is part of our very being, profoundly alter our traditional
+notions, the mind is disturbed and overclouded, and the lapse of time
+alone can make plain the real bearing of the new learning upon life,
+upon religion, and upon society. There can be no doubt but increase of
+knowledge involves incidental evils, just as the progress of
+civilization multiplies our wants; but the wise are not therefore driven
+to seek help from ignorance and barbarism. Whatever the loss, all
+knowledge is gain. The evils that spring from enlightenment of mind will
+find their remedy in greater enlightenment. Such at least is the faith
+of an age whose striking characteristic is confidence in education. Men
+have ceased to care for the bliss there may be in ignorance, and those
+who dread knowledge, if such there still be, are as far away from the
+life of this century as the dead whose bones crumbled to dust a thousand
+years ago.
+
+The aim the best now propose to themselves is to provide not wealth or
+pleasure, or better machinery or more leisure, but a higher and more
+effective kind of education; and hence whatever one's preoccupation,
+whether social, political, religious, or industrial, the question of
+education forces itself upon his attention. Pedagogy has grown to be a
+science, and chairs are founded in universities to expound the theory
+and art of teaching. The learning of former times has become the
+ignorance of our own; and the classical writings have ceased to be the
+treasure-house of knowledge, and in consequence their educational value
+has diminished.
+
+Whoever three hundred years ago wished to acquaint himself with
+philosophic, poetic, or eloquent expression of the best that was known,
+was compelled to seek for it in the Greek and Latin authors; but now
+Greek and Latin are accomplishments chiefly, and a classical scholar, if
+unacquainted with modern science and literature, is hopelessly ignorant.
+"If any one," said Hegius, the teacher of Erasmus, "wishes to learn
+grammar, rhetoric, mathematics, history, or holy scripture, let him read
+Greek;" and in his day this was as true as it is false and absurd in our
+own. In the Middle Ages, Latin was made the groundwork of the
+educational system, not on account of any special value it may have been
+supposed to possess as a mental discipline, but because it was the
+language of the learned, of all who spoke or wrote on questions of
+religion, philosophy, literature, and science; but now, who that is able
+to think dreams of burying his thought in a Greek or Roman urn? The
+Germans in philosophy, the English in poetry, have surpassed the Greeks;
+and French prose is not inferior in qualities of style to the ancient
+classics, and in wealth of thought and knowledge so far excels them as
+to preclude comparison.
+
+The life of Greece and Rome, compared with ours, was narrow and
+superficial; their ideas of Nature were crude and often grotesque; they
+lacked sympathy; the Greek had no sense of sin; the Roman none of the
+mercy which tempers justice. In their eyes the child was not holy, woman
+was not sacred, the slave was not man. Their notion of liberty was
+political and patriotic merely; the human soul, standing forth alone,
+and appealing from States and emperors to the living God, was to them a
+scandal. Now literature is the outgrowth of a people's life and thought,
+and the nobler the life, the more enlightened the thought, the more
+valuable will the expression be; and since there is greater knowledge,
+wisdom, freedom, justice, mercy, goodness, power, in Christendom now
+than ever existed in the pagan world, it would certainly be an anomaly
+if modern literature were inferior to the classical. The ancients,
+indeed, excel us in the sense for form and symmetry. There is also a
+freshness in their words, a joyousness in their life, a certain heroic
+temper in their thinking and acting, which give them power to engage the
+emotions; and hence to deny them exceptional educational value is to
+take a partial view. But even though we grant that the study of their
+literatures is in certain respects the best intellectual discipline,
+education, it must be admitted, means knowledge as well as training; and
+thorough training is something more than refined taste. It is strength
+as well, and ability to think in many directions and on many subjects.
+Nothing known to men should escape the attention of the wise; for the
+knowledge of the age determines what is demanded of the scholar. And
+since it is our privilege to live at a time when knowledge is increasing
+more rapidly even than population and wealth, we must, if we hope to
+stand in the front ranks of those who know, keep pace with the onward
+movement of mind. To turn away from this outburst of splendor and power;
+to look back to pagan civilization or Christian barbarism,--is to love
+darkness more than light. Aristotle is a great mind, but his learning is
+crude and his ideas of Nature are frequently grotesque. Saint Thomas is
+a powerful intellect; but his point of view in all that concerns natural
+knowledge has long since vanished from sight. What poverty of learning
+does not the early medieval scheme of education reveal; and when in the
+twelfth century the idea of a university rises in the best minds, how
+incomplete and vague it is! Amid the ruins of castles and cathedrals we
+grow humble, and think ourselves inferior to men who thus could build.
+But they were not as strong as we, and they led a more ignorant and a
+blinder life; and so when we read of great names of the past, the mists
+of illusion fill the skies, and our eyes are dimmed by the glory of
+clouds tinged with the splendors of a sun that has set.
+
+Certainly a true university will be the home both of ancient wisdom and
+of new learning; it will teach the best that is known, and encourage
+research; it will stimulate thought, refine taste, and awaken the love
+of excellence; it will be at once a scientific institute, a school of
+culture, and a training ground for the business of life; it will educate
+the minds that give direction to the age; it will be a nursery of ideas,
+a centre of influence. The good we do men is quickly lost, the truth we
+leave them remains forever; and therefore the aim of the best education
+is to enable students to see what is true, and to inspire them with the
+love of all truth. Professional knowledge brings most profit to the
+individual; but philosophy and literature, science and art, elevate and
+refine the spirit of the whole people, and hence the university will
+make culture its first aim, and its scope will widen as the thoughts and
+attainments of men are enlarged and multiplied. Here if anywhere shall
+be found teachers whose one passion is the love of truth, which is the
+love of God and of man; who look on all things with a serene eye; who
+bring to every question a calm, unbiased mind; who, where the light of
+the intellect fails, walk by faith and accept the omen of hope; who
+understand that to be distrustful of science is to lack culture, to
+doubt the good of progress is to lack knowledge, and to question the
+necessity of religion is to want wisdom; who know that in a God-made and
+God-governed world it must lie in the nature of things that reason and
+virtue should tend to prevail, in spite of the fact that in every age
+the majority of men think foolishly and act unwisely. How divine is not
+man's apprehensive endowment! When we see beauty fade, the singer lose
+her charm, the performer his skill, we feel no commiseration; but when
+we behold a noble mind falling to decay, we are saddened, for we cannot
+believe that the godlike and immortal faculty should be subject to
+death's power. It is a reflection of the light that never yet was seen
+on sea or land; it is the magician who shapes and colors the universe,
+as a drop of water mirrors the boundless sky. Is not this the first word
+the Eternal speaks?--"Let there be light." And does not the blessed
+Saviour come talking of life, of light, of truth, of joy, and peace?
+Have not the Christian nations moved forward following after liberty and
+knowledge? Is not our religion the worship of God in spirit and in
+truth? Is not its motive Love, divine and human, and is not knowledge
+Love's guide and minister?
+
+The future prevails over the present, the unseen over what touches the
+senses only in high and cultivated natures; and it is held to be the
+supreme triumph of God over souls when the young, to whom the earth
+seems to be heaven revealed and made palpable, turn from all the beauty
+and contagious joy to seek, to serve, to love Him who is the infinite
+and only real good. Yet this is what we ask of the lovers of
+intellectual excellence, who work without hope of temporal reward and
+without the strength of heart which is found in obeying the Divine Will;
+for mental improvement is seldom urged as a religious duty, although it
+is plain that to seek to know truth is to seek to know God, in whom and
+through whom and by whom all things are, and whose infinite nature and
+most awful power may best be seen by the largest and most enlightened
+mind. Mind is Heaven's pioneer making way for faith, hope, and love, for
+higher aims and nobler life; and to doubt its worth and excellence is to
+deny the reasonableness of religion, since belief, if not wholly blind,
+must rest on knowledge. The best culture serves spiritual and moral
+ends. Its aim and purpose is to make reason prevail over sense and
+appetite; to raise man not only to a perception of the harmonies of
+truth, but also to the love of whatever is good and fair. Not in a
+darkened mind does the white ray of heavenly light break into prismatic
+glory; not through the mists of ignorance is the sweet countenance of
+the divine Saviour best discerned. If some have pursued a sublime art
+frivolously; have soiled a fair mind by ignoble life,--this leaves the
+good of the intellect untouched. Some who have made strongest profession
+of religion, who have held high and the highest places in the Church,
+have been unworthy, but we do not thence infer that the tendency of
+religion is to make men so. They who praise the bliss and worth of
+ignorance are sophists. Stupidity is more to be dreaded than malignity;
+for ignorance, and not malice, is the most fruitful cause of human
+misery. Let knowledge grow, let truth prevail. Since God is God, the
+universe is good, and the more we know of its laws, the plainer will the
+right way become. The investigator and the thinker, the man of culture
+and the man of genius, cannot free themselves from bias and limitation;
+but the work they do will help me and all men.
+
+Indifference or opposition to the intellectual life is but a survival of
+the general anti-educational prejudices of former ages. It is also a
+kind of envy, prompting us to find fault with whatever excellence is a
+reproach to our unworthiness. The disinterested love of truth is a rare
+virtue, most difficult to acquire and most difficult to preserve. If
+knowledge bring power and wealth, if it give fame and pleasure, it is
+dear to us; but how many are able to love it for its own sake? Do not
+nearly all men strive to convince themselves of the truth of those
+opinions which they are interested in holding? What is true, good, or
+fair is rarely at once admitted to be so; but what is practically useful
+men quickly accept, because they live chiefly in the world of external
+things, and care little for the spiritual realms of truth and beauty.
+The ignorant do not even believe that knowledge gives power and
+pleasure, and the educated, except the chosen few, value it only for the
+power and pleasure it gives. As the disinterested love of truth is rare,
+so is perfect sincerity. Indeed, insincerity is here the radical vice.
+Good faith is essential to faith; and a sophistical mind is as immoral
+and irreligious as a depraved heart. Let a man be true, seek and speak
+truth, and all good things are possible; but when he persuades himself
+that a lie may be useful and ought to be propagated, he becomes the
+enemy of his own soul and the foe of all that makes life high and
+godlike.
+
+Now, to be able to desire to see things as they are, whatever their
+relations to ourselves may be, and to speak of them simply as they
+appear to us, is one result of the best training of the intellect, which
+in the world of thought and opinion gives us that sweet indifference
+which is the rule of saints when they submit the conduct of their lives
+wholly to divine guidance. Why should he whose mind is strong, and rests
+on God, be disturbed? It is with opinion as with life. We cannot tell
+what moment truth will overthrow the one and death the other; but
+thought cannot change the nature of things. The clouds dissolve, but the
+eternal heavens remain. Over the bloodiest battlefields they bend calm
+and serene, and trees drink the sunlight and flowers exhale perfume. The
+moonbeam kisses the crater's lip. Over buried cities the yellow harvest
+waves, and all the catastrophes of endless time are present to God, who
+dwells in infinite peace. He sees the universe and is not troubled, and
+shall not we who are akin to him learn to look upon our little meteorite
+without losing repose of mind and heart? Were it not a sweeter piety to
+trust that he who made all things will know how to make all things
+right; and therefore not to grow anxious lest some investigator should
+find him at fault or thwart his plans? As living bodies are immersed in
+an invisible substance which feeds the flame of life, so souls breathe
+and think and love in the atmosphere of God, and the higher their
+thought and love the more do they partake of the divine nature. Many
+things, in this age of transition, are passing away; but true thoughts
+and pure love are immortal, and whatever opinions as to other things a
+man may hold, all know that to be human is to be intelligent and moral,
+and therefore religious. A hundred years hence our present machinery may
+seem to be as rude as the implements of the middle age look to us, and
+our political and social organization may appear barbarous,--so rapid
+has the movement of life become. But we do not envy those who shall then
+be living, partly it may be because we can have but dim visions of the
+greater blessings they shall enjoy, but chiefly because we feel that
+after all the true worth of life lies in nothing of this kind, but in
+knowing and doing, in believing and loving; and that it would not be
+easier to live for truth and righteousness were electricity applied to
+aerial navigation and all the heavens filled with argosies of magic
+sail. It is not possible to love sincerely the best thoughts, as it is
+not possible to love God when our aim is something external, or when we
+believe that what is mechanical merely has power to regenerate and exalt
+mankind.
+
+
+                    "It takes a soul
+    To move a body; it takes a high-souled man
+    To move the masses ... even to a cleaner sty;
+    It takes the ideal to blow a hair's-breadth off
+    The dust of the actual--Ah, your Fouriers failed,
+    Because not poets enough to understand
+    That life develops from within."
+
+
+He who believes in culture must believe in God; for what but God do we
+mean when we talk of loving the best thoughts and the highest beauty? No
+God, no best; but at most better and worse. And how shall a man's
+delight in his growing knowledge not be blighted by a hidden taint, if
+he is persuaded that at the core of the universe there is only blind
+unconscious force? But if he believe that God is infinite power working
+for truth and love, then can he also feel that in seeking to prepare his
+mind for the perception of truth and his heart for the love of what is
+good and fair, he is working with God, and moves along the way in which
+his omnipotent hand guides heavenly spirits and all the countless
+worlds. He desires that all men should be wiser and stronger and more
+loving, even though he should be doomed to remain as he is, for then
+they would have power to help him. He is certain of himself, and feels
+no fear nor anger when his opinions are opposed. He learns to bear what
+he cannot prevent, knowing that courage and patience make tolerable
+immedicable ills. He feels no self-complacency, but rather the
+self-dissatisfaction which comes of the consciousness of possessing
+faculties which he can but imperfectly use. And this discontent he
+believes to be the infinite God stirring within the soul. As the
+earthquake which swallows some island in another hemisphere disturbs not
+the even tenor of our way, so the passions of men whose world is other
+than his, who dwell remote from what he contemplates and loves, shake
+not his tranquil mind. While they threaten and pursue, his thought moves
+in spheres unknown to them. He knows how little life at the best can
+give, and is not hard to console for the loss of anything. There is no
+true thought which he would not gladly make his own, even though it
+should be the watchword of his enemies. Since morality is practical
+truth, he understands that increasing knowledge will make it at once
+more evident and more attractive. Hatred between races and nations he
+holds to be not less unchristian than the hatred which arms the
+individual against his fellow-man. It is impossible for him to be a
+scoffer; for whatever has strengthened or consoled a human soul is
+sacred in his eyes; and wherever there is question of what is socially
+complex, as of a religion or a civilization, there is question of many
+human lives, their hopes, their joys, their strivings, their yearnings,
+disappointments, agonies, and deaths; and he is able to perceive that in
+the ports of levity there is no refuge for hearts that mourn. Does not
+love itself, in its heaven of bliss, turn away from him who mocks? The
+lover of the intellectual life knows neither contempt nor indignation,
+is not elated by success or cast down by failure; money cannot make him
+rich, and poverty helps to make him free. His own experience teaches him
+that men in becoming wiser will become nobler and happier; and this
+sweet truth has in his eyes almost the elements of a religion. With
+growing knowledge his power of sympathy is enlarged; until like Saint
+Francis, he can call the sun his brother and the moon his sister; can
+grieve with homeless winds, and feel a kinship with the clod. The very
+agonies by which his soul has been wrung open to his gaze visions of
+truth which else he had never caught, and so he finds even in things
+evil some touch of goodness. Praise and blame are for children, but to
+him impertinent. He is tolerant of absurdity because it is so
+all-pervading that he whom it fills with indignation can have no repose.
+While he labors like other men to keep his place in the world, he
+strives to make the work whereby he maintains himself, and those who
+cling to him, serve intellectual and moral ends. He has a meek and
+lowly heart, and he has also a free and illumined mind, and a soul
+without fear. He knows that no gift or accomplishment is incompatible
+with true religion; for has not the Church intellects as many-sided and
+as high as Augustine and Chrysostom, Dante and Calderon, Descartes and
+Da Vinci, De Vega and Cervantes, Bossuet and Pascal, Saint Bernard and
+Gregory the Seventh, Aquinas and Michael Angelo, Mozart and Fenelon? Ah!
+I behold the youthful throng, happier than we, who here, in their own
+sweet country,--in this city of government and of law with its wide
+streets, its open spaces, its air of freedom and of light,--undisturbed
+by the soul-depressing hum of commerce and the unintellectual din of
+machinery, shall hearken to the voice of wisdom and walk in the pleasant
+ways of knowledge, alive, in every sense, to catch whatever message may
+come to them from God's universe; who, as they are drawn to what is
+higher than themselves, shall be drawn together, like planets to a sun;
+whose minds, aglow with high thinking, shall taste joy and delight
+fresher and purer than merriest laughter ever tells. Who has not seen,
+when leaden clouds fill the sky and throw gloomy shadows on the earth,
+some little meadow amid the hills, with its trees and flowers, its
+grazing kine and running brook, all bathed in sunlight, and smiling as
+though a mother said, Come hither, darling?
+
+Such to my fancy is this favored spot, whose invitation is to the
+fortunate few who believe that "the noblest mind the best contentment
+has," and that the fairest land is that which brings forth and nurtures
+the fairest souls. When youthful friends drift apart, and meet again
+after years, they find they have been living not only in different
+cities, but in different worlds. Those who shall come up to the
+university must turn away from much the world holds dear; and while the
+companions they leave behind shall linger in pleasant places or shall
+get money, position, and applause, they must move on amid
+ever-increasing loneliness of life and thought. Xanthippe would have had
+altogether a better opinion of Socrates had he not been a philosopher,
+and the best we do is often that for which our age and our friends care
+the least; but they who have once tasted the delights of a cultivated
+mind would not exchange them for the gifts of fortune, and to have
+beheld the fair face of wisdom is to be forever her votary. Words spoken
+for the masses grow obsolete; but what is fit to be heard by the chosen
+few shall be true and beautiful while such minds are found on earth. In
+the end, it is this little band--this intellectual aristocracy--who
+move and guide the world. They see what is possible, outline projects,
+and give impulse, while the people do the work. That which is strongest
+in man is mind; and when a mind truly vigorous, open, supple, and
+illumined reveals itself, we follow in its path of light. How it may be
+I do not know; but the very brain and heart of genius throbs forever in
+the words on which its spirit has breathed. Let this seed, though hidden
+like the grain in mummy pits for thousands of years, but fall on proper
+soil, and soon the golden harvest shall wave beneath the dome of azure
+skies; let but some generous youth bend over the electric page, and lo!
+all his being shall thrill and flame with new-born life and light.
+Genius is a gift. But whoever keeps on doing in all earnestness
+something which he need not do, and for which the world cares hardly at
+all, if he have not genius, has at least one of its chief marks; and it
+is, I think, an important function of a university to create an
+intellectual atmosphere in which the love of excellence shall become
+contagious, which whosoever breathes shall, like the Sibyl, feel the
+inspiration of divine thoughts.
+
+Sweet home! where Wisdom, like a mother, shall lead her children in
+pleasant ways, and to their thoughts a touch of heaven lend! From thee
+I claim for my faith and my country more blessings than I can speak,--
+
+
+    Our scattered knowledges together bind;
+      Our freedom consecrate to noble aims.
+    To music set the visions of the mind;
+      Give utterance to the truth pure faith proclaims.
+    Lead where the perfect beauty lies enshrined,
+      Whose sight the blood of low-born passion tames.
+
+
+And now, how shall I more fittingly conclude than with the name of her
+whose generous heart and enlightened mind were the impulse which has
+given to what had long been hope deferred and a dreamlike vision,
+existence and a dwelling-place,--Mary Gwendolen Caldwell.
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+By RT. REV. J. L. SPALDING.
+
+
+=Thoughts and Theories of Life and Education=. 12mo, 235 pages, $1.00.
+
+The bishop writes out of the fullness of his heart, and with abundant
+love and charity. His works make the world wiser, happier, and better.
+These "Thoughts and Theories" are couched in polished English, in
+sentences terse and full of meaning; few living writers command a more
+charming style.
+
+
+=Education and the Higher Life=. 12mo, 210 pages, $1.00.
+
+Bishop Spalding has struck a note which must vibrate in every heart
+which loves the glory of Christianity and the progress of humanity....
+The book is a stimulant, a tonic, a trumpet-call to higher things, a
+beacon light for better days.--_The Catholic Union and Times_.
+
+
+=Things of the Mind=. 12mo, 237 pages, $1.00.
+
+Out of a disciplined and fertile mind he pours forth epigrammatic
+sentences and suggestions in a fashion which recalls Emerson. He is
+always and everywhere American, and the last chapter is at once wisely
+critical and soundly laudatory of our country.--_The Sunday School
+Times, Philadelphia_.
+
+
+=Means and Ends of Education=. 12mo, 232 pages, $1.00.
+
+Bishop Spalding comes nearer being an essayist in education than any
+other American. He has that rarest of educational gifts,--the ability to
+throw light brilliantly, and yet softly, making his paragraphs both
+bright and mellow, all without "preaching," without pedantry, and
+without being cranky.--_Journal of Education_, Boston.
+
+
+=Opportunity, and Other Essays and Addresses=. 12mo, 228 pages, $1.00.
+
+In this volume, as in his other books, Bishop Spalding is occupied with
+the larger problems of education. In addition to the specifically
+educational subjects there are themes of the widest possible interest,
+to the treatment of which the ripe experience of the writer gives high
+value.
+
+
+=Songs, chiefly from the German=. 16mo, gilt top, $1.25.
+
+He has gathered the flowers from the German garden of song and
+translated them, giving a literal rendering, but still preserving the
+melody,--an art which was thought to have been lost with
+Longfellow.--_The Chicago Record_.
+
+
+_Sold by all booksellers, or mailed, on receipt of price, by_
+
+A. C. McCLURG & CO., PUBLISHERS,
+CHICAGO.
+
+
+
+
+By Mrs. Elizabeth Wormeley Latimer.
+
+
+_JUDEA: From Cyrus to Titus, 537 B. C.--70 A. D._ Handsomely illustrated.
+8vo. $2.50.
+
+This is a book for the people rather than for scholars, but written with
+the resources of scholarship at command. Not entering into the mooted
+questions of criticism, it is a well written narrative of the eventful
+period it covers, presenting the story of Judea in its connection with
+the general movement of the world, as well as with the career of
+illustrious men.--_The Outlook_, New York.
+
+
+
+
+Mrs. Latimer's Former Works.
+
+
+_My Scrap Book of the French Revolution._ Illustrated. 8vo. $2.50.
+
+_Spain in the 19th Century._ Illustrated. 8vo. $2.50.
+
+_Italy in the 19th Century._ Illustrated. 8vo. $2.50.
+
+_Europe in Africa in the 19th Century._ Illustrated. 8vo. $2.50.
+
+_England in the 19th Century._ Illustrated. 8vo. $2.50.
+
+_Russia and Turkey in the 19th Century._ Illustrated. 8vo. $2.50.
+
+_France in the 19th Century._ Illustrated. 8vo. $2.50.
+
+
+_Sold by all booksellers, or mailed on receipt of price by_
+
+A. C. McCLURG & CO., Publishers,
+CHICAGO.
+
+
+
+
+A GENERAL SURVEY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE
+
+By MARY FISHER
+
+Gilt top, deckle edges, 12mo. $1.50
+
+
+In this volume Miss Fisher has treated a subject of vital interest and
+importance for all American lovers of literature, and she has
+accomplished her task with rare feminine appreciation and sympathy, with
+a clear and decisive interest, with a catholicity of judgment and a fine
+sense of discrimination and proportion and with a warmth and delicacy of
+treatment that transform these biographical sketches into little gems of
+portraiture.--_The Commercial Advertiser_, New York.
+
+The great value of the book lies in the fact that while Miss Fisher has
+a thorough familiarity with the subjects of her essays, she writes as
+she might if she were ignorant of the estimation in which they are held
+by the public or by the critics. She applies discriminating reason and
+sound principles of judgment to the work of the various writers, without
+the slightest reference to their personal dignity or their literary
+fame.--_The Book Buyer_, New York.
+
+The whole range of notable writers are dealt with in a style at once
+discriminating and attractive. The "human touch" is pleasingly apparent
+throughout the book.--_The Living Age_, Boston.
+
+
+
+
+A GROUP OF FRENCH CRITICS
+
+By MARY FISHER
+
+12mo. $1.25.
+
+
+Those who are in the habit of associating modern French writing with the
+materialistic view of life and the realistic method, will find
+themselves refreshed and encouraged by the vigorous protest of men like
+Scherer and other French critics against the dominance of these elements
+in recent years.--_The Outlook_, New York.
+
+"A Group of French Critics" deserves a friendly welcome from everybody
+who desires to know something of the best in contemporary French
+letters.--_The Philadelphia Press_.
+
+_Sold by all booksellers, or mailed on receipt of price by_
+
+A. C. McCLURG & CO., Publishers,
+CHICAGO.
+
+
+
+
+TALES FROM FOREIGN LANDS.
+
+
+
+     MEMORIES. A Story of German Love. Translated from the German of MAX
+     MULLER by GEORGE P. UPTON.
+
+     GRAZIELLA. A Story of Italian Love. Translated from the French of
+     A. DE LAMARTINE, by JAMES B. RUNNION.
+
+     MARIE. A Story of Russian Love. From the Russian of ALEXANDER
+     PUSHKIN, by MARIE H. DE ZIELINSKA.
+
+     MADELEINE. A Story of French Love (crowned by the French Academy).
+     Translated from the French of JULES SANDEAU by FRANCIS CHARLOT.
+
+     MARIANELA. A Story of Spanish Love. Translated from the Spanish of
+     B. PEREZ GALDOS, by HELEN W. LESTER.
+
+     COUSIN PHILLIS. A Story of English Love. By Mrs. GASKELL.
+
+     KARINE. A Story of Swedish Love. Translated from the German of
+     WILHELM JENSEN, by EMMA A. ENDLICH.
+
+     MARIA FELICIA. A Story of Bohemian Love. Translated from the
+     Bohemian of CAROLINE SVETLA by ANTONIE KREJSA.
+
+     Handsomely printed on fine laid paper, 16mo, gilt tops, per volume,
+     $1.00. The six volumes in neat box, per set, $6.00; in half calf or
+     half morocco, gilt tops, $13.50; in half calf or half morocco, gilt
+     edges, $15.00; limp calf or morocco, gilt edges, $18.00.
+
+     This series of volumes forms perhaps the choicest addition to the
+     literature of the English language that has been made in recent
+     years.
+
+
+An attractive series of stories of love in different countries,--all
+gems of literature, full of local coloring.--_Journal of Education,
+Boston_.
+
+The stories are attractive for their purity, sweetness, and pathos.... A
+rare collection of representative national classics. _New York
+Telegram_.
+
+A series especially to be commended for the good taste displayed in the
+mechanical execution of the works. Type and paper are everything that
+could be desired, and the volumes are set off with a gilt top which adds
+to their general appearance of neatness.--_Herald, Rochester_.
+
+_Sold by all booksellers, or mailed, on receipt of price, by the
+publishers._
+
+A. C. McCLURG & CO., CHICAGO.
+
+
+
+
+THE BOOK-LOVER. A Guide to the Best Reading. By JAMES BALDWIN, Ph. D.
+Sixth edition, 16mo, cloth, gilt top, 201 pages. Price, $1.00.
+
+=In half calf or half morocco=, $2.50.
+
+
+Of this book, on the best in English Literature, which has already been
+declared of the highest value by the testimony of the best critics in
+this country, an edition of one thousand copies has just been ordered
+for London, the home of English Literature,--a compliment of which its
+scholarly western author may justly be proud.
+
+We know of no work of the kind which gives so much useful information in
+so small a space.--_Evening Telegram, New York_.
+
+Sound in theory and in a practical point of view. The courses of reading
+laid down are made of good books, and in general, of the
+best.--_Independent, New York_.
+
+Mr. Baldwin has written in this monograph a delightful eulogium of books
+and their manifold influence, and has gained therein two classes of
+readers,--the scholarly class, to which he belongs, and the receptive
+class, which he has benefited.--_Evening Mail and Express, New York_.
+
+If a man needs that the love of books be cultivated within him, such a
+gem of a book as Dr. Baldwin's ought to do the work. Perfect and
+inviting in all that a book ought outwardly to be, its contents are such
+as to instruct the mind at the same time that they answer the taste, and
+the reader who goes carefully through its two hundred pages ought not
+only to love books in general better than he ever did before, but to
+love them more wisely, more intelligently, more discriminatingly, and
+with more profit to his own soul.--_Literary Worlds, Boston_.
+
+
+_Sold by all booksellers, or mailed on receipt of price, by_
+
+A. C. McCLURG & CO., PUBLISHERS.
+
+
+
+
+LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN,
+
+By the Hon. ISAAC N. ARNOLD. With Steel Portrait. 8vo, cloth, 471 pages.
+Price, $1.50.
+
+In half calf or half morocco, $3.50.
+
+
+It is decidedly the best and most complete Life of Lincoln that has yet
+appeared.--_Contemporary Review, London_.
+
+Mr. Arnold succeeded to a singular extent in assuming the broad view and
+judicious voice of posterity and exhibiting the greatest figure of our
+time in its true perspective.--_The Tribune, New York_.
+
+It is the only Life of Lincoln thus far published that is likely to
+live,--the only one that has any serious pretensions to depict him with
+adequate veracity, completeness, and dignity.--_The Sun, New York_.
+
+The author knew Mr. Lincoln long and intimately, and no one was better
+fitted for the task of preparing his biography. He has written with
+tenderness and fidelity, with keen discrimination, and with graphic
+powers of description and analysis.--_The Interior, Chicago_.
+
+Mr. Arnold's "Life of President Lincoln" is excellent in almost every
+respect.... The author has painted a graphic and life-like portrait of
+the remarkable man who was called to decide on the destinies of his
+country at the crisis of its fate.--_The Times, London_.
+
+The book is particularly rich in incidents connected with the early
+career of Mr. Lincoln; and it is without exception the most satisfactory
+record of his life that has yet been written. Readers will also find
+that in its entirety it is a work of absorbing and enduring interest
+that will enchain the attention more effectually than any
+novel.--_Magazine of American History, New York_.
+
+
+_Sold by all booksellers, or mailed on receipt of price, by_
+
+A. C. McCLURG & CO., PUBLISHERS.
+
+
+
+
+LAUREL-CROWNED TALES.
+
+
+
+     ABDALLAH; OR, THE FOUR-LEAVED SHAMROCK. By EDOUARD LABOULAYE.
+     Translated by MARY L. BOOTH.
+
+     RASSELAS, PRINCE OF ABYSSINIA. By SAMUEL JOHNSON.
+
+     RAPHAEL; OR, PAGES OF THE BOOK OF LIFE AT TWENTY. From the French
+     of ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE.
+
+     THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD. By OLIVER GOLDSMITH.
+
+     THE EPICUREAN. By THOMAS MOORE.
+
+     PICCIOLA. By X. B. SAINTINE.
+
+     AN ICELAND FISHERMAN. By PIERRE LOTI.
+
+     PAUL AND VIRGINIA. By BERNARDIN DE ST. PIERRE.
+
+     Handsomely printed from new plates, on fine laid paper, 16mo,
+     cloth, with gilt tops, price per volume, $1.00.
+
+
+In half calf or half morocco, per volume, $2.50.
+
+In planning this series, the publishers have aimed at a form which
+should combine an unpretentious elegance suited to the fastidious
+book-lover with an inexpensiveness that must appeal to the most moderate
+buyer.
+
+It is the intent to admit to the series only such tales as have for
+years or for generations commended themselves not only to the fastidious
+and the critical, but also to the great multitude of the refined reading
+public,--tales, in short, which combine purity and classical beauty of
+style with perennial popularity.
+
+A contribution to current literature of quite unique value and interest.
+They are furnished with a tasteful outfit, with just the amount of
+matter one likes to find in books of this class, and are in all ways
+very attractive.--_Standard, Chicago_.
+
+
+_Sold by all booksellers, or mailed, on receipt of price, by_
+
+A. C. McCLURG & CO., PUBLISHERS.
+
+
+
+
+LAUREL-CROWNED VERSE
+
+Edited by FRANCIS F. BROWNE.
+
+
+
+     THE LADY OF THE LAKE. By SIR WALTER SCOTT.
+
+     CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE. A Romaunt. By LORD BYRON.
+
+     LALLA ROOKH. AN ORIENTAL ROMANCE. By THOMAS MOORE.
+
+     IDYLLS OF THE KING. By ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON.
+
+     PARADISE LOST. By JOHN MILTON.
+
+     THE ILIAD OF HOMER. Translated by ALEXANDER POPE. 2 Vols.
+
+     Each volume is finely printed and bound; 16mo, cloth, gilt tops,
+     price per volume, $1.00.
+
+
+In half calf or half morocco, per volume, $2.50.
+
+
+_All the volumes of this series are from a specially prepared and
+corrected text, based upon a careful collation of all the more authentic
+editions._
+
+The special merit of these editions, aside from the graceful form of the
+books, lies in the editor's reserve. Whenever the author has provided a
+preface or notes, this apparatus is given, and thus some interesting
+matter is revived, but the editor himself refrains from loading the
+books with his own writing.--_The Atlantic Monthly_.
+
+A series noted for their integral worth and typographical
+beauties.--_Public Ledger, Philadelphia_.
+
+The typography is quite faultless.--_Critic, New York_.
+
+For this series the publishers are entitled to the gratitude of lovers
+of classical English.--_School Journal, New York_.
+
+
+_Sold by all booksellers, or mailed, on receipt of price, by_
+
+A. C. McCLURG & CO., PUBLISHERS,
+CHICAGO.
+
+
+
+
+LAUREL-CROWNED LETTERS
+
+
+
+     BEST LETTERS OF LORD CHESTERFIELD. With an Introduction by EDWARD
+     GILPIN JOHNSON.
+
+     BEST LETTERS OF LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU. With an Introduction by
+     OCTAVE THANET.
+
+     BEST LETTERS OF HORACE WALPOLE. With an Introduction by ANNA B.
+     MCMAHAN.
+
+     BEST LETTERS OF MADAME DE SEVIGNE. With an Introduction by EDWARD
+     PLAYFAIR ANDERSON.
+
+     BEST LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. With an Introduction by EDWARD GILPIN
+     JOHNSON.
+
+     BEST LETTERS OF PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. With an Introduction by
+     SHIRLEY C. HUGHSON.
+
+     BEST LETTERS OF WILLIAM COWPER. With an Introduction by ANNA B.
+     MCMAHAN.
+
+     Handsomely printed from new plates, on fine laid paper, 16mo,
+     cloth, with gilt tops, price per volume, $1.00.
+
+
+In half calf or half morocco, per volume, $2.50.
+
+
+Amid the great flood of ephemeral literature that pours from the press,
+it is well to be recalled by such publications as the "Laurel-Crowned
+Letters" to books that have won an abiding place in the classical
+literature of the world.--_The Independent, New York_.
+
+The "Laurel-Crowned Series" recommends itself to all lovers of good
+literature. The selection is beyond criticism, and puts before the
+reader the very best literature in most attractive and convenient form.
+The size of the volumes, the good paper, the clear type and the neat
+binding are certainly worthy of all praise.--_Public Opinion,
+Washington_.
+
+These "Laurel-Crowned" volumes are little gems in their way, and just
+the books to pick up at odd times and at intervals of waiting.--_Herald,
+Chicago_.
+
+
+_Sold by all booksellers, or mailed, on receipt of price, by_
+
+A. C. McCLURG & CO., PUBLISHERS.
+CHICAGO.
+
+
+THE STANDARD OPERAS. Their Plots, their Music, and their Composers. By
+GEORGE P. UPTON, author of "Woman in Music," etc., etc.
+
+12mo, flexible cloth, yellow edges $1.50
+
+The same, extra gilt, gilt edges 2.00
+
+"Mr. Upton has performed a service that can hardly be too highly
+appreciated, in collecting the plots, music, and the composers of the
+standard operas, to the number of sixty-four, and bringing them together
+in one perfectly arranged volume.... His work is one simply invaluable
+to the general reading public. Technicalities are avoided, the aim being
+to give to musically uneducated lovers of the opera a clear
+understanding of the works they hear. It is description, not criticism,
+and calculated to greatly increase the intelligent enjoyment of
+music."--_Boston Traveller_.
+
+"Among the multitude of handbooks which are published every year, and
+are described by easy-going writers of book-notices as supplying a
+long-felt want, we know of none which so completely carries out the
+intention of the writer as 'The Standard Operas,' by Mr. George P.
+Upton, whose object is to present to his readers a comprehensive sketch
+of each of the operas contained in the modern repertory.... There are
+thousands of music-loving people who will be glad to have the kind of
+knowledge which Mr. Upton has collected for their benefit, and has cast
+in a clear and compact form."--_R. H. Stoddard, in "Evening Mail and
+Express" (New York)_.
+
+"The summaries of the plots are so clear, logical, and well written,
+that one can read them with real pleasure, which cannot be said of the
+ordinary operatic synopses. But the most important circumstance is that
+Mr. Upton's book is fully abreast of the times."--_The Nation (New
+York)_.
+
+
+_Sold by all booksellers, or mailed, post-paid, on receipt of price, by_
+
+A. C. McCLURG & CO., PUBLISHERS.
+
+
+THE STANDARD ORATORIOS. Their Stories, their Music, and their Composers.
+A Handbook. By George P. Upton. 12mo, 335 pages, yellow edges, price,
+$1.50; extra gilt, gilt edges, $2.00.
+
+In half calf, gilt top $3.25
+
+In half morocco, gilt edges 3.75
+
+Music lovers are under a new obligation to Mr. Upton for this companion
+to his "Standard Operas,"--two books which deserve to be placed on the
+same shelf with Grove's and Riemann's musical dictionaries.--_The
+Nation, New York_.
+
+Mr. George P. Upton has followed in the lines that he laid down in his
+"Standard Operas," and has produced an admirable handwork, which answers
+every purpose that such a volume is designed to answer, and which is
+certain to be popular now and for years to come.--_The Mail and Express,
+New York_.
+
+Like the valuable art handbooks of Mrs. Jamison, these volumes contain
+a world of interesting information, indispensable to critics and art
+amateurs. The volume under review is elegantly and succinctly written,
+and the subjects are handled in a thoroughly comprehensive
+manner.--_Public Opinion, Washington_.
+
+The book is a masterpiece of skillful handling, charming the reader with
+its pure English style, and keeping his attention always awake in an
+arrangement of matter which makes each succeeding page and chapter fresh
+in interest and always full of instruction, while always
+entertaining.--_The Standard, Chicago_.
+
+The author of this book has done a real service to the vast number of
+people who, while they are lovers of music, have neither the leisure nor
+inclination to become deeply versed in its literature.... The
+information conveyed is of just the sort that the average of cultivated
+people will welcome as an aid to comprehending and talking about this
+species of musical composition.--_Church Magazine, Philadelphia_.
+
+
+_Sold by all booksellers, or mailed on receipt of price, by_
+
+A. C. McCLURG & CO., PUBLISHERS.
+
+
+
+
+THE STANDARD CANTATAS. Their Stories, their Music, and their Composers.
+A Handbook. By GEORGE P. UPTON. 12mo, 367 pages, yellow edges, price,
+$1.50; extra gilt, gilt edges, $2.00.
+
+In half calf, gilt top            $3.25
+In half morocco, gilt edges        3.75
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The "Standard Cantatas" forms the third volume in the uniform series
+which already includes the now well known "Standard Operas" and the
+"Standard Oratorios." This latest work deals with a class of musical
+compositions, midway between the opera and the oratorio, which is
+growing rapidly in favor both with composers and audiences.
+
+As in the two former works, the subject is treated, so far as possible,
+in an untechnical manner, so that it may satisfy the needs of musically
+uneducated music lovers, and add to their enjoyment by a plain statement
+of the story of the cantata and a popular analysis of its music, with
+brief pertinent selections from its poetical text.
+
+The book includes a comprehensive essay on the origin of the cantata,
+and its development from rude beginnings; biographical sketches of the
+composers; carefully prepared descriptions of the plots and the music;
+and an appendix containing the names and dates of composition of all the
+best known cantatas from the earliest times.
+
+This series of works on popular music has steadily grown in favor since
+the appearance of the first volume on the Operas. When the series is
+completed, as it will be next year by a volume on the Standard
+Symphonies, it will be, as the New York "Nation" has said, indispensable
+to every musical library.
+
+
+_Sold by all booksellers, or mailed on receipt of price, by_
+A. C. McCLURG & CO., PUBLISHERS.
+
+
+
+
+THE STANDARD SYMPHONIES.
+Their History, their Music, and their Composers.
+A Handbook. By GEORGE P. UPTON. 12mo, 321 pages, yellow edges, price
+$1.50; extra gilt, gilt edges, $2.00.
+
+In half calf, gilt top            $3.25
+In half morocco, gilt edges        3.75
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The usefulness of this handbook cannot be doubted. Its pages are packed
+full of these fascinating renderings. The accounts of each composer are
+succinct and yet sufficient. The author has done a genuine service to
+the world of music lovers. The comprehension of orchestral work of the
+highest character is aided efficiently by this volume. The mechanical
+execution of the volume is in harmony with its subject. No worthier
+volume can be found to put into the hands of an amateur or a friend of
+music.--_Public Opinion, Washington_.
+
+None who have seen the previous books of Mr. Upton will need assurance
+that this is as indispensable as the others to one who would listen
+intelligently to that better class of music which musicians congratulate
+themselves Americans are learning to appreciatively enjoy.--_Home
+Journal, New York_.
+
+There has never been, in this country at least, so thorough an attempt
+to collate the facts of programme music.... As a definite helper in some
+cases and as a refresher in others we believe Mr. Upton's book to have a
+lasting value.... The book, in brief, shows enthusiastic and honorable
+educational purpose, good taste, and sound scholarship.--_The American,
+Philadelphia_.
+
+Upton's books should be read and studied by all who desire to acquaint
+themselves with the facts and accomplishments in these interesting forms
+of musical composition.--_The Voice, New York_.
+
+It is written in a style that cannot fail to stimulate the reader, if
+also a student of music, to strive to find for himself the underlying
+meanings of the compositions of the great composers. It contains,
+besides, a vast amount of information about the symphony, its evolution
+and structure, with sketches of the composers, and a detailed technical
+description of a few symphonic models. It meets a recognized want of all
+concert goers.--_The Chautauquan_.
+
+
+_Sold by all booksellers, or mailed on receipt of price, by_
+A. C. McCLURG & CO., PUBLISHERS.
+
+
+
+
+GROUND ARMS!
+
+_The Story of a Life._
+
+BY BERTHA VON SUTTNER.
+
+12mo, 286 pages. Price, $1.00.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This story is one of the strongest works of fiction of the present
+decade. The author is a philosopher and a philanthropist. Her clear,
+incisive reasoning, her large sympathies, combined with rare power of
+description, enable her to give the world a story which will hold in its
+thrall even the most shallow novel-reader who can appreciate good
+literature.--_The Arena_, Boston.
+
+The author pierces to the marrow of the thing that has taken hold of
+her. By that thing she is verily possessed; it has made of her a
+seer.... The bare, bald outline of "Die Waffen nieder!" ("Ground
+Arms!"), which is all we have been able to attempt, can give but a
+faint, feeble idea of its power and pathos, and none at all of the many
+light and humorous touches, the well-drawn minor characters, the
+thrilling episodes, the piquant glimpses of the great world of Austria
+and France, which relieve the gloom of the tragic story.--_International
+Journal of Ethics_.
+
+We have here unquestionably a very remarkable work. As a plea for a
+general disarmament it stands unrivaled. For a familiarity with the
+details of the subject treated, for breadth of view, for logical acumen,
+for dramatic effect and literary excellence, it stands unequaled by any
+work written with a purpose.--_Literary Digest_.
+
+With a powerful pen the author tells of the horrors of war; not alone
+the desolation of battlefields, but the scourges of typhus and cholera
+that follow in their wake, and the wretchedness, misery, and poverty
+brought to countless homes. The story in itself is simple but
+pathetic.... The book, which is sound and calm in its logic and
+reasoning, has made a grand impression upon military circles of Europe,
+and its influence is destined to extend far into the future.--_Public
+Opinion_, New York.
+
+
+_Sold by all booksellers, or mailed, on receipt of price, by_
+A. C. McCLURG & CO., PUBLISHERS.
+
+
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