Among the maxims, called triads, which have come down to us from the Celtic bards, we find this: "The three primary requisites of genius,--an eye that can see nature; a heart that can feel nature; and boldness that dares follow nature." He who has no philosophy and no religion, no theory of life and the world, has nothing which he finds it greatly important to say or do. He lacks the impulse of genius, the educator"s energy and enthusiasm. Having no ideal, he has no end to which he may point and lead. To do well it is necessary to believe in the worth of what we do. The power which upholds and leads us on is faith,--faith in G.o.d, in ourselves, in life, in education.
Forever to be blessed and cherished is the love-inspired mother or the teacher whose generous heart and luminous mind first leads us to believe in the priceless worth of wisdom and virtue, thus kindling within the soul a quenchless fire which warms and irradiates our whole being.
To be G.o.d"s workman, to strive, to endure, to labor, even to the end, for truth and righteousness, this is life.
"My desire," says Dante, "and my will rolled onward, like a wheel in even motion, swayed by the love which moves the sun and all the stars."
If there are any who shrink from wrong more than from disgrace they best deserve to be called religious.
Strive not to be original or profound, but to think justly and to express clearly what thou seest; and so it may happen that thy view shall pierce deeper than thou knowest.
The words and deeds which are most certain to escape oblivion are those which nourish the higher life of the soul. Self-love, the love of one"s real self, of one"s soul, is the indispensable virtue. It is this we seek when we strive to know and love truth and justice; it is this we seek, when we love G.o.d and our fellow-men. In turning from ourselves to find them, we still seek ourselves; in abandoning life we seek richer and fuller life.
Truth separate from love is but half truth. Think of that which unites thee with thy fellows rather than of what divides thee from them.
Religion is the bond of love, and not a subject for a debating club.
If thou wouldst refute thy adversaries, commit the task to thy life more than to thy words. Read the history of controversy and ask thyself whether there is in it the spirit of Christ, the meek and lowly One? Its champions belong to the schools of the sophists rather than to the worshippers of G.o.d in spirit and in truth. And what has been the issue of all their disputes but hatreds and sects, persecutions and wars? If it is my duty to be polite and helpful to my neighbor, it is plainly also my duty to treat his opinions and beliefs with consideration and fairness.
There is a place in South America where the whole population have the goitre, and if a stranger who is free from the deformity chances to pa.s.s among them, they jeer and cry, "There goes one who has no goitre."
What could be more delightfully human? We think it a holy thing to put down duelling, the battle of one with one; but we are full of enthusiasm over battles of a hundred thousand with a hundred thousand.
Thus the Southern slave-owners were sworn advocates of the rights of man and of popular liberty.
The explanation of many provoking things is to be found in Dr.
Johnson"s words,--"Ignorance, simple ignorance;" but of many more probably in these other words,--Greed, simple greed.
"In science," says Bulwer, "read by preference the newest books; in literature, the oldest." This is wiser than Emerson"s saying: "Never read a book which is not a year old."
The facility with which it is now possible to get at whatever is known on any subject has a tendency to create the opinion that reading up in this or that direction is education, whereas such reading as is generally done, is unfavorable to discipline of mind. Shall our Chautauquas and summer schools help to foster this superst.i.tion?
What pa.s.sion can be more innocent than the pa.s.sion for knowledge? And what pa.s.sion gives better promise of blessings to one"s self and to one"s fellow-men? Why desire to have force and numbers on thy side?
Is it not enough that thou hast truth and justice?
The loss of the good opinion of one"s friends is to be regretted, but the loss of self-respect is the only true beggary.
Zeal for a party or a sect is more certain of earthly reward than zeal for truth and religion.
As it is unfortunate for the young to have abundance of money, fine clothes, and social success, so popularity is hurtful to the prosperity of the best gifts. It draws the mind away from the silence and strength of eternal truth and love into a world of clamor and noise.
Patience is the student"s great virtue; it is the mark of the best quality of mind. It takes an eternity to unfold a universe; man is the sum of the achievements of innumerable ages, and whatever endures is slow in acquiring the virtues which make for permanence.
The will to know, manifesting itself in persistent impulse, in never-satisfied yearning, is the power which urges to mental effort and enables us to attain culture.
"If a thing is good," says Landor, "it may be repeated. The repet.i.tion shows no want of invention; it shows only what is uppermost in the mind, and by what the writer is most agitated and inflamed." What hast thou learned to admire, to long for, to love, genuinely to hope for and believe? The answer tells thy worth and that of the education thou hast received.
When we have said a thousand things in praise of education, we must, at last, come back to the fundamental fact that nearly everything depends on the kind of people of whom we are descended, and on the kind of family in which our young years have pa.s.sed. Nearly everything, but not everything; and it is this little which makes liberty possible, which inspires hope and courage, which, like the indefinable something that gives the work of genius its worth and stamp, makes us children of G.o.d and masters of ourselves. "Wisdom is the princ.i.p.al thing," says Solomon; "therefore get wisdom, and with all thy getting, get understanding."
He who makes himself the best man is the most successful one, while he who gains most money or notoriety may fail utterly as man.
With the advance of civilization our wants increase; and yet it is the business of religion and culture to raise us above the things money buys, and consequently to diminish our wants. They who are nearest to G.o.d have fewest wants; and they who know and follow truth need not place or t.i.tle or wealth.
To every one the tempter comes, with a thousand pretexts drawn both from the intellect and the emotional nature, promising to lull conscience to sleep that he may lead the lower life in peace; but he who hearkens becomes a victim as helpless and as wretched as the victims of alcohol and opium.
In deliberate persevering action for high ends, all the subconscious forces within us, the many currents, which, like hidden water-veins, go to make our being, are taken up and turned in a deep-flowing stream into the ocean of our life. In such course of conduct the baser self is swallowed, and we learn to feel that we are part of the divine energy which moves the universe to finer issues. As life is only by moments and in narrow s.p.a.ce, a little thing may disturb us and a little thing may take away the cause of our trouble. We are petty beings in a world of petty concerns. A little food, a little sleep, a little joy is enough to make us happy. A word can fill us with dismay, a breath can blow out the flickering flame of our self-consciousness. I often ride among graves, and think how easy it is for the fretful children of men to grow quiet. There they lie, having become weary of their toys and plays, on the breast of the great mother from whom they sprang, about whose face they frolicked and fought and cried for a day, and then fell back into her all-receiving arms, as raindrops fall into the water and mingle with it and are lost. No sight is so pathetic as that of a vast throng seeking to enjoy themselves. The hopelessness of the task is visible on all their thousand faces, athwart which, while they talk or listen or look, the shadow of care flits as if thrown from dark wings wheeling in circuits above them. The sorrow and toil and worry they have thought to put away, still lie close to them, like a burden which, having been set down, waits to be taken up again. G.o.d surely sees with love and pity His all-enduring and all-hoping children; it is His voice we hear in the words of Christ, "Misereor super turbam." I cannot but wish to be myself, and therefore to be happy; but when I think of G.o.d as essential to my happiness, I feel it is enough for me to know and love Him; for to imagine I might be of service to Him would be the fondest conceit. But He makes it possible for me to help my fellows, and in doing this, I fulfil the will of Him who is the father of all. The divine reveals itself in the human; and that religion alone is true which, striking its roots deep into humanity, exerts all its power to make men more G.o.dlike by making them more human.
They who in good faith inflicted the tortures of the Inquisition were led not by the light of reason, or that which springs from the contemplation of the life of Christ, but by the notion that the rack and f.a.got are instruments of mercy, if employed to save men from eternal torments; and tyrants, who are always cruel, gave encouragement and aid to the victims of fanaticism. Why should the sorrow or the sin or the loss of any human being give me pleasure? Is it not always the same story? In the fall of one we all are degraded, since, whoever fails, it is our common nature which suffers hurt.
Whether or not we have come forth from a merely animal condition, let us thank G.o.d we are human, and bend all our energies to remove the race farther and farther from the life over which thought and love and conscience have no dominion.
In the presence of the mighty machine, whose wheels and arms are everywhere, whose power is drawn from the exhaustless oceans and the boundless heavens, the importance of the individual dwindles and seems threatened with extinction. At such a time it is good to know that a right human soul is greater than a universe of machinery.
We feel that we are higher than all the suns and planets, because we know and love, and they do not; but when, in the light of this superiority, we turn to the thought of our own littleness, being scarcely more than nothing, such trouble rises in the soul that we throw ourselves upon G.o.d to escape doubt of the reality of life. If we believe that man is what he eats, his education is simply a question of alimentation; but if we hold that he is what he knows, and loves, and yearns, and strives for, his education is a problem of soul-nutrition.
The child is made educable by its faith in the father and mother, which is nothing else than faith in their truth and love; and the educableness of the man is in proportion to his faith in the sovereign and infinite nature of truth and love, which is faith in G.o.d.
It is in youth that we are most susceptible of education, because it is the privilege of youth to be free from tyrannic cares, and to be sensitive to the charm of n.o.ble and disinterested pa.s.sions. If we show the young soul the way to higher worlds, he will not ask us to strew it with flowers, or pave it with gold, but he will be content to walk with bruised feet along mountain wastes, if at the summit is illumination and joy and peace.
As in religion many are called but few chosen, as in the race for wealth and place many start but few win the prize, so in the pursuit of intellectual and moral excellence, of the few who begin, the most soon weary, while of the remnant, many grow infirm in purpose or in body before the goal is reached.
Time and s.p.a.ce, which hold all things, separate all things; but religion and culture bind them into unity through faith in G.o.d and through knowledge, thus forming a communion of holy souls and n.o.ble minds, for whom discord and division disappear in the harmony of the divine order in which temporal and spatial conditions of separateness yield to the eternal presence of truth and love. New ideas seem at first to remain upon the surface of the soul, and generations sometimes pa.s.s before they enter into its substance and become motives of conduct; and, in the same way, sentiments may influence conduct, when the notions from which they sprang have long been rejected. The old truth must renew itself as the race renews itself; it must be re-interpreted and re-applied to the life of each individual and of each generation, if its liberating and regenerating power is to have free scope. Reason and conscience are G.o.d"s most precious gifts; and what does He ask but that we make use of them?
Right thinking, like right doing, is the result of innumerable efforts, innumerable failures, the final outcome of which is a habit of right thought and conduct.
Whoever believes in truth, freedom, and love, and follows after them with his whole heart, walks in G.o.d"s highway, which leads to peace and blessedness.
A thing may be obscure from defect of light or defect of sight; and in the same way an author may be found dull either because he is so, or because his readers are dull. The n.o.blest book even is but dead matter until a mind akin to its creator"s awakens it to life again.
The appeal to the imagination has infinitely more charm than the appeal to the senses.
"But when evening falls," says Machiavelli, "I go home and enter my study. On the threshold I lay aside my country garments, soiled with mire, and array myself in courtly garb. Thus attired, I make my entrance into the ancient courts of the men of old, where they receive me with love, and where I feed upon that food which only is my own, and for which I was born. For four hours" s.p.a.ce I feel no annoyance, forget all care; poverty cannot frighten nor death appall me." A man of genius works for all, for he compels all to think. An enlightened mind and a generous heart make the world good and fair.
Where there is perfect confidence, conversation does not drag; while for those who love it is enough that they be together: if they are silent, it is well; if they speak, mere nothings suffice.
The world of knowledge, all that men know, is, in truth, little and simple enough. It seems vast and intricate because we are imperfectly educated.
The soul, like the body, has its atmosphere, out of which it cannot live.
When opinions take the place of convictions, ideas that of beliefs, great characters become rare.
The pith of virtue lies not in thinking, but in doing. A real man strives to a.s.sert himself; for whether he seeks wealth, or power, or fame, or truth, or virtue, or the good of his fellows, he knows that he can succeed only through self-a.s.sertion, through the prevalence of his own thought and life.
They who abdicate the rights G.o.d gives the individual, seek in vain to preserve by const.i.tutional enactments a semblance of liberty.
If it is human to hate whom we have injured, it is not less so to despise whom we have deceived; and yet those who are easily deceived are the most innocent or the most high-minded and generous. It seems hardly a human and must therefore be a divine thing, to live and deal with men without in any way giving them trouble and annoyance. Truth loves not contention, and when men fight for it, it vanishes in the noise and smoke of the combat.
The controversies of the schools, whether of philosophy, theology, literature, or natural science, have been among the saddest exhibitions of inept.i.tude. Is it conceivable that a thinker, or a believer, or a scholar, or an investigator should wrangle in the spirit of a pothouse politician? The more certain we are of ourselves and of the truth of what we hold, the easier it is for us to be patient and tolerant.
Wicked is whoever finds pleasure in another"s pain. We can know more than we can love. Hence communion with the world is wider through the mind than through the heart, though less intimate and less satisfying.
It is, however, longer active, for we continue to be delighted by new truth when we have ceased to care to make new friends. Learn to bear the faults of men as thou sufferest the changes of weather,--with equanimity; for impatience and anger will no more improve thy neighbors than they will prevent its being hot or cold. What men think or say of thee is unimportant--give heed to what thou thyself thinkest and sayst.
If thou art ignored or reviled, remember such has been the fate of the best, while the world"s favorites are often men of blood or l.u.s.t or mere time-servers. He who does genuine work is conscious of the worth of what he does, and is not troubled with misgivings or discouraged by lack of recognition. If G.o.d looked away from His universe it would cease to be; and He sees him. The more we detach ourselves from crude realism, from the naive views of uneducated minds, the easier it becomes for us to lead an intellectual and religious life, for such detachment enables us to realize that the material world has meaning and beauty only when it has pa.s.sed through the alembic of the spirit and become purified, fit object for the contemplation of G.o.d and of souls. They are true students who are drawn to seek knowledge by mental curiosity, by affinity with the intelligible, like that which binds and holds lover to lover, making their love all-sufficient and above all price. All that is of value in thy opinions is the truth they contain--to hold them dearer than truth is to be irrational and perverse. Thy faith is what thou believest, not what thou knowest.
The crowd loves to hear those who treat the tenets of their opponents with scorn, who overwhelm their adversaries with abuse, who make a mockery of what their foes hold sacred; but to vulgarity of this kind a cultivated mind cannot stoop. To do so is a mark of ignorance and inferiority; is to confuse judgment, to cloud intellect, and to strengthen prejudice. If there are any who are so absurd or so perverse as to be unworthy of fair and rational treatment, to refute them is loss of time, to occupy one"s self with them is to keep bad company. With the contentious, who are always dominated by narrow and petty views and motives, enter not into dispute, but look beyond to the wide domain of reason and to the patience and charity of Christ. When minds are alive and active, opposing currents of thought necessarily arise. Contradiction is the salt which keeps truth from corruption.