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Do* not cUfUe books tty marks and writinsr. Cornell University Library BJ1581 .S79 Essential life, by Stephen Berrien Slant 3 1924 029 202 334 olln The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029202334 THE ESSENTIAL LIFE THE ESSENTIAL LIFE BY Stephen Berrien Stanton NEW YORK Charles Scribner's Sons 1908 Copyright, 1908, hy Charles Scribner's Sons Published April, 1908 A.z^sto'^ u CONTENTS PAQB I. The Spirit in Man .... 1 II. Time 9 III. Individuality 24 IV. Imagination . . . , . 35 V. Happiness 45 VI. Morality 53 VII. Environment 72 VIII. Spiritual Companionship . . 81 IX. Expression 88 X. Action 96 XI. Spiritual Capacities . . . 115 XII. Attitude 122 XIII. Eternal Yoidh 141 XIV. The Centrality of the Soul . 149 XV. The Obscuration of the Present 157 XVI. Travel 171 [v] CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE XVII. Realities 181 XVIII. Instrumental Hands and Or- chestral Hearts .... 200 XIX. Wayside Healing .... 211 XX. Beauty 218 XXI. Life's New Lands . ... 232. [vi] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE THE SPIRIT IN MAN ALL great events happen in the ^_ mind. If we did nothing but think beautiful thoughts, the world's reform would at once be ac- complished. Evil would then be so disliked as to be undoable. The walls of Jericho still fall at the blast of the spiritual trumpets. The recesses of the soul are dis- closed by the echoes of the heart. We are vaster than we know and repay exploration. Down into the mind's depths we must delve for our jewels. Somewhere within the soul there is a mood which, if found, means wealth to us. We are a land of limitless natural resources and must sink shafts every- where. Yet like the earth we yield our [1] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE treasure only in minutest particles and after sore trouble. The rich strikes are rare. Nor are the veins continuous; they fault and we go long in search of ourselves. Introspection is the largest outlook. Within ourselves we see furthest into nature and nearest to God. What we took for the mere inland sea of our soul, opens out on exploration and stretches away into the great spiritual ocean itself. Our brain backs upon infinity. We become each moment only what God already is. Originality is a transcription; the highest flights of genius are a divine plagiarism. We are simply the successive realization of the ever-waiting divinity upon the thresh- old. God seems to exist by becoming — by developing and unfolding himself. His spirit enters everything in order that it may regard all things from every- [2] THE SPIRIT IN MAN where and so take up into itself the experience of each — living each that it may contain all. Spiritual man is nature's best ref- erence. The waters of the soul cannot rise above their source. Religion is its own best proof of the divinity of the universe. The mere existence of Christ constitutes a guarantee of God. From what antiquity and by how long a line has this soul been passed down to me! And history and evolu- tion teach that it has risen ever higher in its course. What an inmate, what a guide! Genius is a visitation, not a posses- sion. We do not think but are thought. The mind is wielded by an outside en- ergy from which self-consciousness cuts it off. If it is to be pounced upon, the mouse. Meditation, will not peep. Self-criticism too easily quenches the [3] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE welling up and gushing out of the spirit. For thought, like all perform- ance, consists of unconscious synthesis. Under the knife of analysis we suffer vivisection. Objectivity holds us to- gether; but self-contemplation reduces us into our mere bricks and mortar. In every product the differentiating and distinguishing element proves the most elusive to the analytical search. We are forever precluded from any reliable dissection of ourselves by the synthetic necessities of the case. How can we judge of the mind's action unless we let it run .'' Sanity is un-self -conscious. When we are lost in thought is the one time that we find ourselves. Greatness is always ignorant of its modus oper- andi. The muse is shy but not fickle. Though she responds to no invitation or summons, yet visit us she surely will. [4] THE SPIRIT IN MAN The high tide of self always rises within the soul and lifts us easily off the bar where we have so long lain stranded. We receive such visitors as we have made ourselves fit for. Potent are the forces available to the capacity to use them. Only let us provide the ton- nage and the cargo will oflfer. To the leading idea the thoughts flock. If we are attentive to its first breath, inspi- ration comes with all its airy follow- ing. The wealth of the mind may not be seized by a greedy hand but presents itself as a free gift to the God-spent moment. Thought crystallizes around axes of its own choosing and is found in finished forms of wondrous transpar- ence and sparkle. Beauty springs like the goddess full-grown from the crest of our waves. Truth meets us on the quiet road. When we cease pursuing, we find her at [5] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE our side. Only what proceeds from our calmness has value. Singleness of thought is the virtue of intellect as singleness of heart is the intelligence of virtue. It is the mind's condition that tells, rather than its attainments. Even a puddle, if quiet, better reflects the sky than the excited ocean. We must liberate our every self if we would enjoy our whole variety. Like the fields we are rested and en- riched by a succession of crops. All our faculties are tentacles with which to grasp the truth. Sentiment holds it fast until reason can apprehend it. Let us not be known as this or that kind of man, but rather as one in whom nothing is so disproportionately conspicuous as to characterize. Size that keeps pro- portion is not noticeable. Specialism makes us linear, but life wants and makes us spacious. [6] THE SPIRIT m MAN We are a new being every time we look within. Our pieces do not fit on to each other and we have difficulty in identifying ourselves. Yet around the crevasses of the mind flows a continu- ous glacier of being. All great unities show surface discrepancies. Coherence is always incompatible with progress; and logic has ever been on the side of the stationary. The universe itself is our great exemplar of seeming incon- sistency. Its blocks lie scattered about in apparent confusion ; and we play out our life in putting them together. But the unity of our own mind gives rise to the fundamental and immutable con- viction that they form a design, our individual failure to find which in no wise disturbs our faith. To every philosophy consciousness is a transcendent fact. Man absorbs the material world and transforms it into [7] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE spirit. He takes in earth and gives out heaven. Through an internal alchemy a successive miracle is performed. The food of the body becomes the strength of the soul; the blood of the brain nourishes the thought of the mind. Matter is spiritualized by a migration through man. Materialism does not admit its own corollaries. How can there be conservation of energy and indestructibility of matter without im- mortality of spirit? [8] TIME TIME is imaginable only as a vis- ta of events. The sequence of changes that manifest it seems to us a sort of space in which they are contained. Often we confuse it with the cause of those changes. But our sole data concerning it are the changes themselves. Apart from its incidents, time is not only immeasurable but un- noticeable and unthinkable. What is fullest of time is timeless. The time- sense swoons in the presence of the permanent. In the dungeon of Chil- lon a lifetime was but a never-ending night. Though any change indicates time, only a steady one measures it. But the equivajence of its units is a mere [9] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE mechanical equation and has no correl- ative in consciousness. To the mind the moments are of uneven tempo. We are of a piece with Him in whose sight a thousand years are but as yesterday; and who yet imports eternity into the passing moment. The day mistakes its feverish pulse for the throb of time. But in the stillness of the night when life appears a thing of thought and far dis- tant, an eternal moment seems reached. We learn the essence of time only when we forget its measurements. Conven- ience has led us to choose for chro- nometers such changes as are cyclic. And these by their repetition rob us of the sense of time's unrecurringness, which is its salient characteristic. But the universe knows no clock nor cal- endar. The dial of God records only unmeasured sequence. We are ever incredulous of change; [10] TIME evfery pause seems permanent. The mind is stricken with the inertia of the actual. A mediaeval mood of stagna- tion and apparent finislr always pre- cedes the discovery of our new worlds. Correct forecast of the future is so rare because it must be founded upon a dis- belief in the stability of things as they are. The young and the speculative are always taken by surprise; but the experienced no longer count upon con- tinuity. The apparently so enduring structure into which we are born soon tumbles about our ears. And we, who at first seemed to be moving forward through a fixed world, finally come to regard ourselves as the only fixed thing in it. Life overleaps every bound that is set it; and we have to keep ad- vancing our landmarks. The moment is the one weak spot in time's armor. Yet at no point does [11] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE time seem less vulnerable. Nowhere else does our action appear so negligible as at the very place where alone it can be controlled. We abandon the min- utes to the enemy, yet expect to retain command of life. There would be few irksome tasks if we undertook them opportunely. The mood and the moment are always the precisely right ones for something. In the humble disguise of the here and now, august visitors enter our presence. The universal exists only in local form ; the eternal, only in temporal form. To know them in these forms and con- stantly to recognize the absolute within the relative, is to be philosopher and poet. We should live as the artists paint, coloring the canvas so as to produce the right effect when we stand off from it. But it is difficult to fix the retrospective [12] TIME lens upon the present. We are at the loom of time and our hands are weaving the patterns of the past. Yet for the most part we do not see the design till finished. Glory rims the horizon of time. Though we live the present, we do not live in it. Our thoughts are ever in the future and the past. Happiness de- pends not upon present conditions as much as upon prospective ones. Even in agony hope can still make us hap- py; while fear for the future spoils the veriest paradise. Ever we look for some- thing to appear above the round of the beyond. The actual, however event- ful or glorious, cannot long hold our attention. The gaze overshoots it. We are focused upon infinity and our soul has no close range. We die with the wistful look still unquenched in our eyes. The Golden Age is always ahead [13] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE until it is behind us; it is a time that knows no to-day. Life is a gradual transition from a morning world of anticipation into an afternoon of length- ening recollections. We stretch out our hands to life only where we see it beyond our reach. The whirligig of time flings all val- ues toward its periphery. The present must pass before we possess it; for only the future can make it fully ours. Ret- rospect is requisite for revealing the hidden relationships of the present. Nothing in itself is noticeable : we must await comparisons. But the context of time makes all clear. Developments are along curved lines and pass their zenith and nadir without recognition. Only afterward is the climax known. Little does the moment dream how its memory will go echoing down the years. [14] TIME The future will be different but we shall not feel toward it differently. Ex- pectancy Js the mirage of time. The glorious future becomes, after all, but the plain present. Now, if ever, is heaven, as truly as ' Here, if anywhere, is Amer- ica.' Through the portal of the present all time must pass. Nor can any yesterday compensate us for the loss of to-day. We are born for the future and the past concerns us only secondarily. All is haled before the bar of the immediate. We our- selves become worth only our realiza- ble value — what we can bring under the hammer of the moment. No by- gone grandeur adds a farthing to our price and we command our cost only to the extent that we show it. At the frontiers of the lands that lent it, ro- mance remains behind. Home-come heroism soon finds itself reduced to the [15] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE civic ranks and measured by the stand- ards of the humdrum. History holds the conch-shell of time to the ear and gives back the past with a reverberating blur of greatness. But to-day is a fair sample of its reality and afiPords a better assay than the rec- ords. Rome, Greece, Assyria— these are found not by excavation but in the pulse of the present. Wherever and whenever life is at its flood, the great days of history relive. The latest seat of empire is always the city of the Caesars; and Homer is annotated by this morning's heroism. The past is not dead, but dwells wheresoever life courses fullest. Only in a present mind has it any existence at all. ' Before the world was, I am.' Youth is the time of hope because hope is easiest of things so remote that we cannot even perceive the abyss [16] TIME which lies between them and us. Our subsequent loss of hopefulness is in reality due to our nearer approach. The young discover all things anew; but only experience acquires the origi- nality to discover the new. The mere possibilities of fresh strength fill us with a feeling of efficiency far greater than that which accompanies the fatigue of actual achievement. To our early years the inrush of increasing powers gives a sense of supremacy beyond any pro- duced by their full possession. We come into our intellectual inheritances suddenly, like a millionaire at majority; and think the supply inexhaustible and the world ours. Genius lets itself down all at once and we culminate with a rush. But we soon see that we are not possessed of the talisman. Youth at most promises; it is maturity that ful- fils. The afternoon's dull plodding [17] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE many a time proves more productive than the morning's inspiration. For how small an actuality are we not finally fain to cash the great hope! Years do not measure life, but the use we make of them. The gauge is a qualitative one — not a quantitative. Age is width of experience rather than lapse of time. Most men wither with- out maturing. A divine moment may repay a life- time. Upon one single short-lived flower there is a plant that spends a century. 'One day in thy courts is better than a thousand.' The hand is trained through the blunting of the tools; and the fetters laid upon the flesh purchase the manumission of the mind. Old age and youth are not successive periods but daily alternates. They are conditions of being which correspond to [18] TIME the continual ebb and flow of life and as time goes on vary merely in relative intensity. Strength is always young; but fatigue is already ageing. We are old whenever fatigue has become chron- ic and disrepair irreparable. It is not the calendar but a few hard storms that bring down our leaves. Life carries us beyond the reach of our unconquerable conditions. We overcome few obstacles and advance largely by avoiding them. The disap- pearance of our follies is to a great extent coincident with the passing of the occasion. Patience is not so much an accession of docility as the faculty of turning to something else while we are waiting. Much of the hold our former environment had upon us returns whenever we revisit it. The intervening years are elided by any re- newal of the past. Among the scenes [19] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE of childhood the accretions of age vanish. A resumption of our former tasks confronts us frequently with our old infirmities. Time extinguishes most of our ques- tions and desires by way of answering them. Age seldom cares for the solu- tion of its youthful problems ; we laugh at the queries of antiquity. By becom- ing impersonal ourselves, we cease to insist on an individualistic God. And to such an extent do we learn to dis- associate ourselves from our bodies that we finally care little for a bodily resur- rection — if, indeed, we do not almost come to hope for a bodiless one. Time is the touchstone of all things. To the suflFrage of the seasons all things appeal. Our thought is not matured till it receives the sanction of the whole mind and of every mood. Morning and evening, winter and summer, must [20] TIME pass upon it before approval. Wisdom acknowledges no critic but the years. And religion calls the ages to witness — qiLod semper, quod ubique. Life becomes everlasting to the ex- tent that it attaches itself to what en- dures. Particulars have no interest beyond establishing the principle under- lying them; and pass, in order that we may be forced on to those principles. Our grasp is loosened from the ephem- eral so as to make us seize hold of life farther in where it is permanent. To generalize is to raise the particu- lar to its nthpower. Men are impres- sive to whom the most amazing event means only as much as its fundamental causes and ultimate effects. We catch the ear of mankind only as we voice the universal; and hold it only as we deal with the permanent. • The special and local have no wide currency and soon [21] THE ESSENTIAL LITE carry all connected with them into oblivion. The engulfing waters of life close quickly over incidents the most im- pressive, persons the most important, spirits the most precious. By the very ruthlessness of its destruction time seems anxious only to tear our attention away from the past and fix it upon the future. The record of its events resem- bles memory in looking back upon no continuous landscape but only over a succession of peaks; both history and art depict the past in its isolated mo- ments and acts. How small is the ark by which antiquity has survived the flood of time; and how pitifully high and dry on their Mount Ararats seem the petty details lifted by the rising waters so severingly from out of the surrounding annihilation ! But time buries only the body of the [22] TIME past, and forever houses its perennial spirit in a new future. The years seem utterly gone; yet in their rich mould are still growing the roots of to-day. Life bubbles from the bird-throats over- head, the while I tread underfoot the death of last year's leaves. Like all natural conclusions timely death comes only when sufficiency has made cessation welcome. So are we spared the discomforts of surfeit. Already the palate of our first weari- ness tastes the sweetness of death. It is not possible for death to seem dreadful unless taken from its proper context. For no normal end can be other than agreeable. [23] INDIVIDUALITY EVERY one by the very fact of his existence renders a second of his kind superfluous. We are the special being we are, once for all; life needs and permits no repetition. Plato excluded the possibility of all later Platos and would himself not be recognized were he to reappear. We think to acquire greatness by imitating the great. But this is to disregard their veriest example, because their es- sential characteristic is their individu- ality. We resemble least those whom we imitate; and merely deform our- selves without acquiring their likeness. For we are only shaped from without; but are formed from within. We are finally ourselves and can be no one else. [24] INDIVroUALITY And just therein is our excellence. The press of experience condenses in each soul a precious essence which is the unique contribution of the individual to the sum of being. All persons are peculiar; the suc- cessful are those courageous in their peculiarity. Nothing discloses its es- sential character until pushed to ex- tremes. If we go far enough, we create our own jurisdiction and people accord us our standard (and even adopt it themselves) ; but if we go only half- way, they hold us still amenable to theirs. O cautious man, does not your love of precedent lead you to make one yourself.? The dangers of life as of the sea are chiefly those of the shore and shoal. On the deep, wide sea the ship sails safest. We are not ferries across a mere bay of being, but are built to stand boldly out into the ocean [25] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE and sail grandly to ports beyond. The voyage prospers when we hold to our course despite the cross-winds of other lives and the trade-winds of conven- tion. Special natures cannot sail by general charts. Those who make new ways are seldom successful in the old. Among orthodox affairs, originality is under a handicap of preoccupation. There is little to be learned from the early work of the creative; it is mediocre because still conventional. The master diverges only as he matures. Though instruc- tion gives us others' powers, only ex- perience can give us our own. Not until the old winds die down does the storm of our nature break. Efficiency follows the cleavage of in- dividuality. We are most easily our best. Too strong a moral nature men- aces our usefulness, because it overlooks [26] INDIVIDUALITY the superiority of the facile to the diffi- cult. Strenuousness is always the striv- ing of a soul to which, or in a direction in which, greatness is not natural. We are proverbially proudest of what we do least well just because it is done with the greatest effort and is therefore a moral achievement. But supremacy and ease are invariable concomitants. Genius is the happy child that picks up on the shore of its life the beautiful shells it finds there without looking for them. He who stirs the highest in me to confidence and self-assertion — he is to me the prophet and divine leader. In- dividuality lays us under bonds to self- discrimination. The self -accentuation of life sublimates our exaggerations into flagrant faults as well as into resounding virtues. Only in high natures do high needs become conscious; and only in [27] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE noble ones do they become imperative. We must beware lest self-realization de- generate into the deification of mere whim. Evolution warns us that varia- tion from the type results in extinction instead of survival when not in corre- spondence with the wider environment. Man catches the rhythm of the uni- verse only when he revolves around his own right axis. To help others most and at the same time make himself happiest, he must do the things most individual to him. It is a mistake to think the way of helpfulness lies in complying with the world's demands and in supplying its conscious needs. Better to turn the unbroken sod than to linger along the furrows. To create and at the same time supply a new de- mand is the highest usefulness. The world wants us, yet never knows it; and we usually have to insist upon our [28] INDIVIDUALITY acceptance. Mankind needs of us noth- ing so much as what only we have; yet precisely this does it take least willingly. Always the most precious gift is one of whose value the recipient is still igno- rant. Conditions try to hold us in their service. But the special service for which our individuality is fitted calls us to forsake them. Christ him- self had to chide even his parents: 'Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business ? ' Without protected individuality there can be no real altruism. We cannot be a stay to the woes of others until a sheet-anchor of satisfaction holds our own lives fast. Too great sympathy de- feats itself. We must stand apart to help. We must give ourselves, not take others. The ozone of a sturdy selfhood breathes out refreshment into the stifled lives about it. [29] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE Each learns at the knee of experience a special lesson — so has a special lesson to teach. The more we are ourselves, the more others have in us. We are supplementary to every one else. To our overflow the empty pitchers come trooping. Always when men 'come down from the mountain' of their re- inforcement, 'great crowds follow.' For them in their fulness the world finds what it lacks. The diffusion of a lofty spirit exceeds the largesse of any prince. He is wealthier who can inspire by a word than he who by a stroke of the pen can confer merely a fortune. The resoluteness of our truth rather than its quality moves the world. Prophets do not foretell but speak out. Our influence comes of being unbal- ancedly ourselves. As we become dis- tinct we become distinguished. In the vocabulary of even the most eloquent [30] INDIVIDUALITY there is but one word, one thought. His apparent variety is after all but a reiter- ation. The idea has fastened upon and chosen him — not he, it. He has no option. He is the bearer of a standard that has been thrust into his hand. To him the whole battle is centred in his own fight. Every one by an act of special bravery breaks through into his land of joy. We may hazard much in boldly committing ourselves to our swift current; yet to re- frain is to forego freedom altogether. Safety is assured only at the cost of cap- tivity. It is better to risk regret than, by precluding it, to preclude all other pos- sibilities as well. If we would reach our- selves we must strike cross country. For none of the roads leads thither. The very variety of the examples set us makes them impossible to follow and at the same time shows us what a right we [31] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE have to be ourselves. The self-faithless fear the indefinite pursuit and the un- charted career. But always the way of courage lies among the uncertainties and gropings and experiments. Here is the fore-front of the battle and the very firing-line of progress. Conquest comes to those who can calmly confront des- pair. In the days of our discourage- ment the masterpiece is born. Only the waste-basket knows the pedigree of the classic. Classification clashes with the exact truth. The differences of individuality are stifled by the generality of our terms. There is less correspondence of ideas behind our words than language assumes. Rarely the same meaning enters the ear as left the mouth. All speak the same phrases but all mean diflFerently by them ; we hear ' every man in our own tongue wherein we were [321 INDIVIDUALITY born.' Nothing impresses us as it does any one else and no common sign can express it. We find we have conversed all our lives in a dialect. Men are color-blind as to most things and dis- cover radical differences in matters of supposedly universal agreement. There really is no consensus of opinion. Uni- formity is on our merest surface; while within we belong to as many spiritual genera as the census totals. We are not yet sure enough of the normal to insist upon it. Since there is doubt of the way, let us scatter and search separately. So perchance shall we most safely keep the direction. It is well that all roads lead to truth or we should never arrive. Each is an amazing bridge over some new chasm of character. Where one saunters carelessly on safe path, another sees a brink beside which he grows [33] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE giddy. Our confidences disclose won- derful spiritual scenery among our fel- low-men. We come to regard our neighbor as another land in which dif- ferent customs and ideas prevail, and to exempt him from the comparisons that obtain within our own borders. We perceive that life is transposed for every one to suit the register of his soul. [34] IMAGINATION IMAGINATION is the rolling prai- rie that still bounds our West. The scouts of the soul range far. For habitation presses life hard every- where and the area of romance is built over. We are driven further afield for all things and only in the spirit's illim- itable territory is there still ample pre- serve. Even the largest physical freedom is a cage ; and to the soul, the whole world seems nothing but jail liberties. We are poor prisoners to our flesh and seek spiritual air in the far-away. The moth of the imagination flutters round the remote. Windows of art shops and tourist offices stay our steps; and everywhere wistful eyes are tell-tale of [35] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE longing hearts. But the spirit's dream finds fulfilment only in a region of the fourth dimension. No lands of life, however distant, afford asylum ; we are everywhere extradited to the bondage of fact. Statistics and information have made travel impossible. Europe van- ishes from before our advent. The mind if distressed stays at home, though the body travel; but if happy, it travels though the body stay at home. In journeying we are fugitives yet find no escape. Let us however join our- selves to the pilgrims. We saw the true lands before we set forth, and have since been trying to remember them. Little is seen if we go after it; but the morning breeze of the imagination brings the world to our eyes. Any trifle is an India Dock to the soul; we embark on fancy's voyage where we will. Our absence is un- [36] IMAGINATION known to the clock. To travel is the privilege not of the rich but of the imaginative. We have seen too many things but not enough in them. Life when a-sightseeing flows wide but shal- low. We early perceive that poetry is not geographical. The travelled eyes are those that have looked inward. The speech of the wide-minded rather than of the alien comes to us from abroad, and gives us to feel the charm of the foreign. We observe its essential remoteness. A new hemisphere of life is discovered to us. Where knowledge ends imagination begins. It roams a region which is ever being encroached upon ; and retires be- yond ever remoter borders. It dwells in the twilight of ignorance. As half- lights are the most beautiful, so are half -thoughts. The poet speaks by in- definite suggestion. Distinctness is lim- [37] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE itation to the fancy; the charm of the vista is its vagueness. Nature's sounds are full of meaning to us because of their inarticulateness. We have but to string a wire to the wind to make the air vocal with the very voice of poetry and with stray strains from Apollo's lute. But in- formation blinds us ; the tree of knowl- edge looms larger to the eye than the spiritual landscape and blots it out. We have roused the intellect and our paradise has faded. Only when the mind drowses, can we coax back the colors to our soul. Imagination dwells not in the eye or ear, but in their default; not in noon- day or middle age or in the traveller's gaze. But it flushes dawn and opening life, and colors deep the West of wis- dom. It peers from behind prison bars; and perches beside the home-stayer's hearth. Through its haze the sun is seen [38] IMAGINATION golden; and the prism of its spiritual spectrum splits the white horizontal rays of truth into iridescence. Its mirage lifts the invisible into sight and gives us water in the desert. Amid deprivations the imagination finds its strongest stimulus. Prosaic lives are the Artesian well of poetry. Not from the luxuriant south but out of the stoic soil of New England have come America's reverie and romance. What earth denies, the spirit seeks tran- scendently. The greatest reverence for antiquity is found not in the old world but in the new. With transatlantic gold the preservation of historic Europe goes on apace. The spiritual globe is still to be cir- cumnavigated. Each freshly awakened mind and new day are a first mariner on an unknown sea which stretches mayhap to undiscovered coasts. If im- [39] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE agination wings our hopes too high, ex- perience nevertheless cUps them too short. Events as far exceed the calcu- lations of age as they disappoint the expectations of youth. Imagination builds for the soul its only fit abiding- place. The imagery of religion at least reveals the Walhalla of man himself. Companionship with the Soul Beautiful is the only Paradise. Beauty is the country and imagination is the way. The senses arouse within us that which dispenses with their further service. They create an upward draught in the soul whereon we are carried out to far distances and into contact with new tangibilities. Imagination is our sixth sense by which we perceive the beyond. Those who hear the world-music must be earless; who see the world- vision, eyeless. It is in vain that we revisit the home surroundings of great men. [40] IMAGINATION These afford no clew to their temporary tenant; for they are no more than the round-house to the speeding engine or the anchorage to the soaring air-ship. By material proximity we get no nearer; but afar off we make our spiritual ap- proach. Our dreams are greater than we are conscious of. How often do we not ad- mire imaginative conceptions expressed by another which are far inferior to those lying unexpressed in ourselves. ' Exactly my idea ! ' is an exclamation of praise betokening our equal possibili- ties. We paint too little with our own colors; and neglect the waiting canvas of opportunity. Works of art affect us solely by setting free the imaginative wings within us. All originals are in ourselves. What we would adequately judge we must first potentially be. Our measure has only like extent with our [41] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE spiritual capacity. Full appreciation implies in the critic a commensurate soul. All frames are empty until insight fills them: the gallery is in us, if for us it exist at all. For we see by think- ing and not by looking. Hence the essential impressionism of all Art. An age of photography forces Art in self- justification to be more than realistic. Philistinism gets no further with its syllogisms than the minor premise, though everywhere imagination's major premise stands ready to cap it with conclusion. The expansiveness of imagination makes me a multiple of myself and enables me to lead a legion lives while living one. I am saved the school of experience and am early wise. The im- aginative learn sympathy without an apprenticeship of suffering and gather [42] IMAGINATION a crop of virtue not sown with wild oats. Selfishness is a string that never lets the kite get far; but generosity and sympathy are wings on which the thought flies earth-free. All things yield their meaning to a wide imagination. Its promptings put one in possession of etiquette and finesse. Good tast^ itself is only sympathetic imagination. No man in a seaport can be alto- gether provincial. The most squalid of metropolitan streets is not hopeless if it see at its end a sail. Imagination is distance to the house-bound and green grass among bricks. From out of life's every dinginess we may fly our mind into a cloud-land fairer than that the aeronauts know. The furlough of im- agination furnishes an ever-ready holi- day. No spot is so beautiful as where we have caught glimpses of our soul; there is no garden like the dalliance [43] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE among our dreams. ^Mierever the moon shines is Arcadia and poetry. All our faculties are equipped for flight. We are too much domiciled by gravitation, too much bound by the chains of rigidity. The heights also were meant for habitation. The out- bound currents of the soul encircle and fill the world. We may view the earth as it were a speck, or form an intimacy with the atom; walk with league boots among the stars or move impalpably among the mysteries. We become as winged mercuries, free of the external heights and of the internal depths. [44] HAPPINESS PLEASURE is the surface dance of our deeps ; but happiness is their ground-swell. How little differ- ence what makes us happy as long as we are truly so. It is the same thing after all that every one gets out of life, though in such different ways. Joy is found at last where at first we passed it by — in a new attitude toward the old conditions. Had you your veriest de- sire, the world in its essential relations to you would still be the same and hap- piness still have to be sought in the things which are even now at your elbow. Contentment is success. It consists in finding that we already have what we wanted and in being happy from [45] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE the outset instead of only at the end. If we exchange Hfe for the mere means of life, we never live. A poor bargain it is to buy happiness at the price of our capacity for it. In the stampede of affairs, we throw away the jewels of existence; and from time to time re- turn sorrowfully along the road, if so be that we may still find them. But if I enjoy life, there is none wealthier: the spiritual fee is in him who per- ceives and appreciates rather than in him who possesses. With the scales of possession one can- not compute the contents of the heart. We make life what it is by our attitude toward it. Joy is our own contribution ; and happiness springs only from within. The world rates wealth in a way that bears no relation to real values. For our goods are not roof, bed, food — but health, sleep, appetite. Our plutocrats [46] HAPPINESS are those who come vigorous to work, hungry to table, sleepy to bed. The spacious soul is the only capacious mansion and pleasant thoughts are the cushion of the mind's comfort. Pleasure, though the product of noth- ing, is the by-product of everything. Only the happy can be good. And the absoluteness of morality's demand is met by the all-profusion of pleasure's supply. Feasibility is given to the pre- cept, every one must be good, by its cor- relative truth, every one may be happy. The world teems with joy to him who has the full register of perception. Beauty lies in the soul's eyes as the atmosphere is the secret of the south. Between us and our environment there is an ever-ready correspondence. We are surrounded by a store-house which honors our requisitions. Need is the sole necessary qualification and [47] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE itself constitutes worthiness. An inevi- table fulfilment waits upon all self- assertion. Special providence is but the individual response of the general providence which is always about us. The gate is opened to sorrow when we go abroad for joy. Happiness that is outwardly conditioned is put at haz- ard. At best it can then escape disap- pointment. If our circumstances are better than those of others, sympathy and a sense of justice make us unhappy; if worse, envy; if the same, ambition. Even in the realization of our de- sires we feel a certain loss of ourselves ; and are rendered unhappy by the very excitement of our pleasure. The pos- session of nothing but of ourselves brings us the repose and complacency of centrality. Youth seeks satisfaction by rushing at its own objectification ; but by a subtle subjective change wisdom [48] HAPPINESS achieves it. Only the serene are thor- oughly happy. For serenity is the mood of the whole soul at rest — the constant climate of the temperate self. The good things of life eventually exact their full price ; so that if we lack any of them, instead of regret we may as reasonably feel glad that we still have in hand their unpaid price. We do not realize how many amputations life may suffer and yet remain essentially the same and essentially enjoyable. It is so precious that men hesitate to throw away even its dregs. The wounds of fate are not fatal. Disappointment reconciles us to contentment. A few stitches of forgetfulness and we are healed without scar. Fortune is seldom as tragic as we think it. For either we make condi- tions conform to us or else conform ourselves to them. Upon either adjust- [49] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE ment happiness ensues. So that noth- ing is sad save its non-acceptance. Not among its pains so much as among its pleasures lurks the poison of life. God's gadflies leave no virus in their sting. It is the laughter of life that turns sour. The ancients imagined the entrance of hell to be amid the dreariness of Avernus, back of Baise; but behold it leapt out at them from the loveliness of Vesuvius across the bay. Our greatest gladness is a growth from our grief. The golden glow of the sunshine is due to the very heaviness of the air through which it strains. There is no endurance in a happiness that cannot keep company with sorrow. To be real it must be coextensive with our troubles and act as their associate and physician. From every hollow of life flows forth some tiny rill of happiness; [501 HAPPINESS earth's rivers of joy are but her collec- tive tears. Life is sensitive only on its edges of contrast. Even pleasure soon wearies; and ennui is no happier than house- broken suffering. 'Roughing it' ap- peals chiefly to the refined; the satiate seek their holiday in hardship. Of all pleasures relief is the most keenly felt. If life hurts, we have only to change our position. Good fortune consists not so much in what we have as in what we are spared. Nothing is so good as the thing which is better than we feared; nothing so disappointing as the thing which is not so good as we had hoped. Discouragement is always followed by a fresh appreciation of ourselves and of our lot. The security of our happiness rests with our comparisons : there is no extremity where to compare ourselves aptly is not to feel ourselves the favored [51] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE of the gods. Life, like music, can by a new setting turn all its discords into harmonies. To merit life's reward is the reward of life; we can be happy without the prize. In the struggle lies the whole glory. Washington's hour of triumph was not at Yorktown but beside the ice- floes of the Delaware. The true prize may be won by all competitors; the real wreath of victory is woven with the flowers we have picked by the way. It is enough to be lovable and admirable; and happier to be beautiful ourselves than to have beautiful things. [52] MORALITY CONSCIENCE is the particular and personal word of universal wisdom. Being the majority vote of our nature, it is our vox populi, hence vox Dei. Oligarchic factions of passion gain at times the upper hand but never succeed in overriding the law. Though obedience is optional, there is never immunity from penalty. For sin is our little rebellion against the universe and an attempt to block the way of the irresistible. Infraction of the universal brings extinction upon the particular. The transgressor goes down into silence; and the race of the retro- grade meets annihilation. In the at- tainment of her ends nature dwells not over-long on correction; her possibili- [63] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE ties are not limited to the capacities of the existent. Where she cannot easily repair, she replaces. Always to the on- crowding new humanity she looks for the mending of man's ways. Her hope is ever in her latest. All opposition to the will of the world's ministry is over- borne by an act of fresh creation. Every new expression of life is a nearer approach to the purpose underlying it. The sovereignty of conscience will not vanish on investigation, for it is not es- tablished by our homage nor is it at the mercy of our speculative opinions concerning it. The natural values and supremacies within us are beyond the disturbance of any self-analysis. Our inner rule rests upon fact not theory; its authority is that of the synthetic desire of the soul. Evolution is contin- uous into the emotional life. Among the tendencies of the heart the struggle [54] MORALITY for existence and the survival of the fittest still operate. Fundamentally, might does make right. Conscience is but another of those inevitable adjust- ments of forces produced by their free interaction, which on all sides are the will of Him who rideth the heavens. The source and safety of goodness is openness. We must not exclude but let in. Goodness is not a hot-house growth, but requires wide windows. It is for us to allow the ocean of truth to beat upon our shores; so that we may feel its low tides, high tides, tidal waves, and all. We are too distrustful of life and do not give God a chance. A lais- sez-faire attitude toward the universe is safest. The forces of nature are against evil and will sweep us clean of it if we but let them enter. 'The stars in their courses fought against Sisera.' The cure of life is more life ; by self-comple- [55] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE tion we make ourselves morally whole. To call back the excluded view and restore full vision, is the function of prayer; conscience controls because it is our composite self. The recuperative powers of mind and body are an ever- ready rescue. Ours, also, at need are the ' more than twelve legions of angels ' which the Father will 'presently give' us. Our strength lies in the might of our allies. Evil is a mere negative — a lack of good, as cold is a lack of heat. The philosopher's last word for it coincides with the child's first, 'naughtiness.' Evil is not intrinsic but by contrast and in exclusion. The severest penalty for sin, though its least deterrent, lies in its usurpation of the place of goodness. Every hell is the sight of an inaccessible Heaven. This, therefore, it is to be for- given: to be no longer debarred from [56] MORALITY gazing into the brightness above; to feel that God feels the same toward us as before; and that we are again en- titled to the beauty and inspiration of the world. The sphere of duty is limited by the imagination. We are conscious of no ethical obligation to things with which we have not entered into relationship. Sympathy marks the range of sight; and selfishness is a visual defect. Dis- tant catastrophes do not much affect us. The plight and need of far peoples ap- peal only to the few with specially awakened interest. We withdraw our sympathy from recipients of our assist- ance who prove unworthy of it; yet God knows that it is then they most need it. To love up the scale is hu- man; but to love down it, divine. We do not become lenient to others till our own faults force us to be lenient to [57] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE ourselves. Tolerance begins only with the first perception of another's point of view. As we come to realize the un- changeableness of things, the tendency to criticise gives place to a desire to ex- cuse or defend. We are driven to for- givingness in very extenuation of our optimism. All systems of ethics are at best a spiritual pathology. The heart's high health knows and needs none. If we spread our sails to the airs above, we shall not drift with the waters below. We live instinctively, and conscientious- ness is an after-thought. The highest duty is to feel none. We are not con- scious of a current unless we go counter to it. Goodness is the natural act and the best pleasure of the normal soul; and constitutes the spirit's unconscious hygiene. Right wears the guise of obli- gation only to the morally deficient. [58] MORALITY The spiritually full-grown do not speak of self-sacrifice; for they identify self only with their higher nature. Duty like a quartz-stone is dull and ugly only on the surface ; within it is radiant with glowing jewels of joy. No ethics can supply the positive morality of life. Of what avail is the regulating rudder without the breeze of the God-given impulse.'' Ethics is but moral statics. Though it enables us to understand ourselves, yet it adds no impetus which we did not already possess. The attempt to substitute eth- ical culture for religion is an attempt to dispense with an executive and to govern by legislature only. But this es- tablishes a government exclusively for the good — who need none. In the face of sin's onslaught, is it not vain to invoke the law ? We do not repulse a cavalry charge by reading the riot act. [59] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE Ordnance, not ordinance, is requisite. It is exactly from ourselves that we need the rescue; and from self none but another power can save us. No moral warfare can be waged without at least a psychological equivalent of prayer. For prayer obtains its answer none the less by doing so through its retroactive effect upon us. And, though we should pray only for the possible, yet we need not pray only for what seems possible. No one is sure of himself before the test. The control of violent passions is a more trustworthy certificate than nat- ural moderation which is yet untried; for where there has been no attack there is no certain tenure. We float ever be- tween Heaven and hell in our soul, with no firm foothold between; and these remain alternative possibilities to the end. Character represents merely the [60] MORALITY extent to which we can for the time being count on ourselves. Propriety requires that the language of morality be phrased in the future tense, not in the past. Don't blame; only resolve. The past could not have been different; but the future still may be. We cannot say of the past that it should be otherwise without impugning God; but may say it of the future be- cause we still can make it so. Right is not put at risk but is a sure fulfilment. The goal of the world is the culmination of its natural tendencies. And although for the purposes of our future conduct we may find fault with the part we played in the past, yet should we realize that we are speaking only relatively and avoid absolute terminology in its characterization. Every one of any spiritual resource comes early to an understanding with [61] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE the universe and with God. This is the fundamental faith which remains firm and unshaken through all super- ficial changes of mere creed and upon the basis of which all live religion rests. The very variations in its philosophic statement from time to time attest its vitality and prove its continued partici- pation in our changing experiences. How, if we grow, shall we not outgrow ? The spirit 'sings unto the Lord a new song.' Art lives by ceaseless succes- sion, and retains its hold only by changing its form. Even the fire, if it be not stirred, sleeps; and water without circulation, rots. Spiritual con- stancy calls for material variety. Fickle- ness is frequently but a misnomer for constancy to the underlying idea rather than to its superficial and therefore ephemeral form. Only by the expan- sion of our outlook can a fixed attitude [62] MOEALITY toward life be maintained. Changing circumstances keep us essentially con- stant. Youth sets each scene in a frame of infinitude. It idolizes because it ideal- izes. Under the influence of its ardor the ideal rises up out of the actual as water is etherialized by the sun into the imagery of cloudland. We are reared in a paradise; but go forth into a desert, and retire to an oasis. Man goes about with a little sample of ideality in his hand, vainly trying to match it with reality; forgetting that the ideal, being a composite of the mind, can have no earthly counterpart. We are not seasoned until disil- lusioned. Then it is that the flower of us fall; for precisely to the noblest is this crisis fullest of peril. The very brightness of their ideal blinds them to the beauty of the real. Yet the icono- [63] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE clasm of experience leaves the pedestals standing; and the niches of the heart remain for nobler images. Ruined al- tars have always been rebuilt to worthier gods. Every razing of an erstwhile truth brings into view some larger truth which it had hidden; the debris of life is the margin of a fair ocean. God is more beautiful than his most beautiful manifestation. Disappointment in even the greatest and best of men soon con- vinces us that Christ was more. The sordidness of humanity affords a fuller revelation of Christ's divinity. The eclipse of man leaves God clearly shining. Each act sends out a ripple of causa- tion that reaches the coasts of Time. The ill-spent moment prepares a pen- sion of penitence for itself; but a good deed is an annuity of happiness. We are cumulatively ourselves; for we are [64] MORALITY what we have been and shall be what we are. Yet repentance so disclaims and disowns the act as to dissolve the doer's identification with it. A wrong re- pented of is a weed uprooted before its seed has scattered. To the penitent the moment still remains a forked road; for with watchfulness the signal for sin becomes the alarm to holiness. Con- trition makes of the present an isthmus between a settled past and a yet un- appropriated future. Our acts are not conclusive of our character— but our attitude toward them. We characterize them, not they us ; just as, though we judge a stranger by his words, we judge a friend's words by himself. Man belongs in the com- pany of his aflBnities and sympathies; he is eligible to the club of those whom he appreciates. Not the technique, but the love, makes the artist. That to [65] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE which we most constantly return con- stitutes our truest self. The soul's place of residence, like the citizen's, is determined by the animus revertendi. Though to man we are what we have been, yet to God we are what we would be. The heart is full, not of what it has, but of what it consciously lacks. This is 'the abundance' out of which 'the mouth speaketh.' Spirituality is the ex- quisite moth that emerges only from the chrysalis of material sufl&ciency. For satisfaction stills the senses and leaves the finer perceptions clamorous. But asceticism is of unstable moral equilib- rium, and is gross in its reaction. What discrimination in taste can be ex- pected of starvation ? The mediaeval monks by mortifying their human wants brought on the materialization of their religious imagery. They endowed Heav- [66] MORALITY en with what earth lacked for them. Had they been less spiritual, their re- ligious imagination would have been more so. Thwarted human nature rep- resented divine things to their vision in anthropomorphic form. Thence re- sulted sensual metaphor, sacrilegious familiarity of phrase, Mariolatry, and kindred terms of devotion, that shock the finer ear of to-day's spirituality. What co-tenants, O God, hast Thou lodged in the brain! The seraph and the devil within us are involved in a perpetual partition-suit. The drama of life is the history of their conflict. Virtues and vices are twin growths of character and apparently condition each other so that we cannot have one without the other. If therefore others lack your merits, ask yourself whether they do not also lack your faults. For oft-times our excellences live on the [67] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE savings of our sin's economy. Who shall say that our acts could dispense with our defaults ? Incapacity is most- ly other-capacity; when concentration flags, the wandering thought is usually treeing the captured truth. If men would not seek to justify and confirm themselves by the observation of faults in others, they would more often improve themselves by the eradication of their own. But they find it easier to idealize themselves than to make them- selves ideal. The reason our criticisms of others are so good is that we deserve them ourselves. These are matters of which all the data are within. We find true bills of indictment, yet neglect to insert our own name. The zeal of prosecution makes us forget that it is all the time we who should be standing in the dock. Most of the rewards and punishments [68] MORALITY that come to us in life are deserved, though not often precisely wherein they are meted out to us. A rough justice is thus done us; and on the whole most agreeably to our sensibilities. For un- deserved censure sustains us with a sense of innocence; while undeserved favor seems to us like gratuitous good-will. Nothing is so distasteful as to be taken for what we really are. We laugh at the exaggeration of caricature; but from a true portrait we all flinch. Concern for opinion is an indication of one's disappointment in himself. Man cannot abide his littleness and thinks to enlarge himself by casting gigantic shadows. Appearance comes to seem the cure for being; and reputa- tion to assume greater importance than character. So that we often shrink more from losing caste with the good, than from losing goodness itself. We [69] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE are careful to beautify our lives like our buildings on the side men see them ; yet leave them unsightly where they show toward heaven. But concealment proclaims. Affecta- tion on its inevitable detection detracts, more than its possible deception can ever enhance. For the sake of our own safety then, as well as of those we meet on life's sea, let us hang out the lights of honesty to show who we are and whither bound. We are not called upon however to appear what we are, so much as to be what we would appear. Sincerity does not require a disclosure of our ugliness, but rather that we should live up to that ideal of ourselves which we have led others to believe in. By increasing our value we may make good our over- capitalization. It is better to enlarge our shrunken selves so as to fill out the [70] MORALITY forms of perfection than to cut these to our skeleton; we are truer to our- selves in feeling our polite phrases than in eschewing them. When the pulse of arterial kindness beats, the red blood will return through the veins of cour- tesy. The least act is sufficient to betray our spiritual lineage; the first word, to disclose our intellectual associates. Per- sonality speaks without introduction. We cannot help telling who we are. Our pennies come from the same mint of character as our pounds and bear the image and superscription of the same Caesar of the soul. [71] ENVIRONMENT THE world contracts and expands to our vitality. Susceptibility touches the heavens ; but sleepi- ness has no finger-tips. There is no contiguity to man save in his soul; he has no neighbor but his own spirit. The scope of the senses is limited to the scope of the soul. We are sur- rounded by as much as we are conscious of; beyond that is mere physical con- tact. The attendant will yawn his life away at the very Mecca of the world's pilgrimage. Environment is as wide only as we are. Through lack of insight we miss life's ecstasy; and earth's tragedy is nothing to those who pass by. The sum of a man and his environ- ment is a constant. Surroundings as- [72] ENVIRONMENT sess him with their deficiency, and levy a contribution upon character. By our alternate endurance and resistance the norm is restored to nature. Were humanity itself all beautiful, environ- ment would bring a message of beauty to us in every touch and draw from us some beautiful act in return. Nature acquits herself of all con- nivance with our provincialism. The sky is an omnipresent and therefore per- petual witness to the illimitable; and earth's minutest particle leads micro- scopy into the inmost mystery. Matter seems as far-reaching inward as out- ward ; as infinite in its divisibility as in its distances. On all sides the spacious- ness of man's housing shames the petti- ness of his pursuits. Of all external influences, climate is the most variegated, yet constant. The heavens deck themselves out in the [73] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE drapery of the air and surprise us with ever fresh effects. The sprightUness of the sky offsets the lethargy of earth and covers the very face of monotony with the complexion of change. Most staple experiences of life have their origin in the times and moods of the day. The very staleness of the weather as a topic of conversation is the best evidence of its common importance. However it accost us, we are sure of some accruing pleasure or profit. With equal hand it extends now an invitation, now a challenge. And though we bask in its friendliness, perhaps the pleasure of combating it transcends the delight of any favor it bestows. What such keen enjoyment as the avoidance of its ex- tremes! The hearth affords a heat exceeding any tropic; and no north knows the delicious coolness that fans the shade of an equatorial sun. [74] ENVIRONMENT Storm involves us in the jBurries of our shallow earth-atmosphere ; but fair weather bathes us in the serenity of the vast universe. The closed sky drives man into the interstices of life and pro- duces the embroideries of humanity. While an open heaven makes him com- panion of the spheres. But the mood of the soul is the true weather of the mind. No meteorology concerns us that does not correspond to our own. What needs the happy soul of fair sky! 'Tis enough if itself be cloudless. The day is as the power with which we come to it. We create the conditions which in turn create us. The world smiles back with our smile and frowns back with our frown. Life fluctuates to our philosophy. The dul- ness of life is our own deadness of soul. We are optimists or pessimists at will. I may measure time as well by the sun- [75] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE beam that travels on my wall as by the shadow of the sundial. Things are open to any construction we put upon them. It is not the world but our eyes that change. Into the old eyes comes new sight. Always we catch the mir- aculous draught of fishes exactly where, before hearing the voice, we had fished all night in vain. We do not need a special environ- ment for our growth ; but are adaptable and thrive in any latitude. The soul feeds widely and obtains its special diet out of every soil. The mind like a magnet draws to itself its afiinities. In- fluences affect us less in proportion to their power than to our own receptivity at the time; we respond to nothing to which we are not already attuned. What reaches us in our most sensitive moments, makes most impression. We are moved not by the great but by the opportune. [76] ENVIRONMENT To have the choice of one's surround- ings is accounted worldly good fortune. But in reality, an accommodating en- vironment, by reflecting back upon us our accentuated traits, burdens us with our individuality. An overdose of our- selves is administered, and we grow tired of our own exaggeration and repe- tition. On the other hand, by conform- ing to a super-imposed environment, we come into touch with ever new phases of existence and feel in ourselves all the freshness of new personality. The world's destiny is worked out not more by sovereign than by subject. When ' strange hands lay hold on us and lead us whither we would not,' they are nevertheless bearing us along God's highway. The world is no walled enclosure from whose sides we bound and re- bound at random in some game of [77] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE universal pastime ; but rather a place of converging slopes, every impact against which drives us gradually nearer and nearer to the point of the universal purpose. The totality of our contacts with environment conduces irresistibly to creation's end. Nature does not leave her wishes unknown nor run any risk of their non-attainment. She is prodigal of device and is ready with a thousand where one fails. She punctu- ates her perils with pain but spreads pleasure along her paths. The ills of life are the buoys by which God has marked out the channel. We commonly attribute our difficul- ties to the peculiar circumstances in which we are placed; but these influ- ence us far less than we imagine. It is astonishing how much the same we should be under any others. The trouble is not in our lot but in life itself. [78] ENVIRONMENT The conditions it imposes are universal. We are chagrined to find no escape on a holiday. Liberation only lets us learn the ubiquitousness of bonds. Freedom is to feel the higher neces- sities; to feel none is thraldom. Re- lease from limitations makes us for the first time conscious of wider ones. But the withdrawal of all restraint sells us into slavery. For no servitude so low as to ourselves. Wealth grants the free- dom that shackles ; poverty, the shackles that free. Liberty is not to have no master, but a good one ; and emancipa- tion can do no more for us than ex- change the compulsion of the relative for that of the absolute. Obstacles are the promontories around which the stream of our life flows — most beautifully where the cir- cumvention is most difficult. The river has no choice of channel, yet it could [79] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE not choose better for itself than what rocks and gravity impose ; and earth is the fairer in beauty. Surroundings that suit us are dispensable ; already we have their shape and virtue. We must not overstay conditions; their very ease and comfort are a warning that they have done for us their utmost. Life should not flow off straight to sea, leaving the land unmoistened — but slowly, tortuously, sweetening the soil. [80] SPIRITUAL COMPANIONSHIP SOCIETY upholds but solitude up- lifts. If your soul beckon, for- sake all company to attend. Its invitation, like the king's, is a summons. No society is so august as that of our sovereign thoughts. It is better to for- feit the friendships of the great than to forego the visits of our own greatness. We fit ourselves for society by seek- ing ourselves. The wilds of our nature are an escape and refreshment from which we return steady and strong. By living simply we reduce our obliga- tion to -the world, yet discharge it more fully. The formalism of society keeps us from knowing either ourselves or others. But solitude ushers us into the intimacy of all. Those who come least [81] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE in contact with the world most move it. The more men, the less man. 'People who know everybody ' are not the people whom everybody knows. The wells of the soul refresh only when they are fed from far -distant sources. We need the influences of a wider environment than our own. The salon of literature and science ofifers a never-denied hospitality. Admission is to the meanest, yet association is only with the great. There we converse on the best with the best at their best. It is universal society; we acquire the thoughts, the manners of the ages. We become cosmopolitans of time; men moved by the past, the present, the future; normal men. Cities are careful to keep the water- shed of their reservoirs wide and pure in order to prevent contamination. But the area of the mind's inspiration [82] SPIRITUAL COMPANIONSHIP goes unprotected. Everywhere an in- sistent materialism has access. All things freshen themselves in still- ness. The air, though it receives into itself the poison from a trillion nostrils, yet returns ever fresh to the lungs. A tranquil soul clarifies its most troubled waters; and the chemistry of a quiet heart restores its wounded dignity. Into the vacant moment rush the forces of gravitation; but into the calm mo- ment streams a spiritual fulness. We know ourselves chiefly from hear- say and do not stop to verify the re- ports. Yet the original documents of life are lodged in the archives of every soul. We have only to resort thither for the sources and authorities. Yet few consult them. Most men are con- tent to read mere copies and compila- tions. The return to nature is restorative [83] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE because it reintroduces us to ourselves. We now apply spiritual ternas to nature ; but primitive man derived them from nature. The phenomena of the exter- nal world now seem to us full of moral meaning and metaphor by reason of the same resemblances to our spiritual life that led us originally to see in it analo- gies to them. In nature we go back to the mother-land of speech ; its facts are the Sanscrit of the soul. To walk in the woods is to revisit the haunts of intel- lectual childhood. The uplands and lowlands of the heart respond to those of the scene. In the moralities of the meadows we find a reminiscence and therefore a reinforcement of man's. The spirit's own sacredness comes out to meet it again from all things. What such sanctuary as the trees .' They roof an abode of perpetual reverence in which worship is voiced by the silence of truth. [84] SPIRITUAL COMPANIONSHIP There a spiritual coolness touches the brow. Only those who are bidden, stay. Solitude affords no company but such as we take with us. Let us avoid if we cannot fill it; for no man can endure the emptiness of his soul. Spiritual vacuity is more awful than the void of outer space. Nature preserves a ter- rible silence toward us and requires us to make all the advances. The wel- comeness of withdrawal from the world is a measure of our resources. We must go apart only for our more com- plete company. It is not the loneliness but the seclusion that ripens the prophet. More of life has its root in our social entourage than we are aware of. We had thought that retirement merely pruned us ; but are amazed to find yel- low leaves appearing upon our healthy branches. Solitude is freedom for self; but society is freedom from self. [85] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE The young are gregarious and find much in common. But age differenti- ates us and therefore sends apart; and being apart differentiates us still more. Peculiarity brings solitariness ; and pre- eminence not only isolates but exiles. The world becomes depopulated as we grow older. We are essentially different beings and are fulfilled only by a separate existence. No one remains individual in company. Convention blurs us. The edges of our idiosyncrasy run and we merge some- what into every character we meet. Few companies leave us free to be our real selves; some strange pretence is imposed upon us. The mere physical presence of others is a disturbance to our equipoise; we are susceptible to their imagined opinions. Sensitiveness finds in all personal environment a mirror on whose surface its image suf- [86] SPIRITUAL COMPANIONSHIP fers some slight distortion — seeing itself now dwarfed, now enlarged, according to the curvature. Only where nothing happens but ourselves, are we wholly free from an undue influence. Privacy needs no far retreat; we are as distant as our thoughts are. Ab- straction is more remote than any country-side. The strength of our in- ner life frees us from the tyranny of near trifles. We get away from what we forget. Whenever our own voice speaks, the multitudinous tongues of circumstance cease to overwhelm us with their babel. Around the garden of our meditation are high hedges of seclusion. [87] EXPRESSION THE words bubble up fresh only once. Only once is the phrase at freshet. The twice-used text becomes to us a sea-shore shell, beauti- ful but untenanted. All true expression is integral and in- evitable — never additional or arbitrary. Words are fused only in the crucible of life. Vital experiences make us act heroically and speak classically. When an irrepressible sentiment bursts natu- rally into utterance, language flowers. To aim directly at full truth perfects our style, ourselves and the world. The classics are the great words which could not keep silent or be spoken otherwise. Truth is an ink that flows on few pens. We have the vocabulary our [88] EXPRESSION thought deserves. It were better to correct and interline our character than our manuscript. Life yields thin copy to the interviewer; but imparts rich confidences to its intimates. Only by living in the same flux as truth can we find it. We must make ourselves mobile and formless like the sea if we would partake of its expanse and fresh- ness. Precision is of little consequence ex- cept for petty purposes. Facts are but points along the trail of transitory truth. Only the relations and propor- tions of life have permanence and im- portance; and these are revealed not to the exact but to the sensitive. The great historians have ever been poets, because these alone can reconstruct life from the record. Art is the only real- ism. Statistics assemble the facts but sunder the truth. In every pursuit the [89] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE technical belittle its high purpose and expose it to irreverence. Truth dwells in entirety; and division falsifies its parts. Herein lies the necessity of union in the presentation of the arts, corresponding to their unity of essence. The comprehensive spirit of man seeks its satisfaction not seriatim but col- lectively. To create, we must first go forth into chaos. In the void and darkness new worlds come into being. Originality ever deals with the data of the un- known. To produce the new requires a rearrangement of the elements. They must be seen in the unaccustomed as- pect in which they appear to the search- ing spirit. A new order is introduced among them and they are grouped around new meanings. Seldom we say unswerved the thing we think. Accustomed phrases divert [901 EXPRESSION US from the precise intention of our thought. We start out for the true but put up with the well-turned. Our thought flows up the pen, not down it. We mistrust our very inventiveness and feel safe only when we strike into the well-worn ways of words. The trite seems at the time more brilliant than the true ; and so our fresh streams of genius are dammed up and drawn off into a mere mill-race to turn the old wheels of language. None but our own words can have the peculiar color and accent of our thought. Every new burst of life over- flows the banks of all former expression. Yet we constantly clothe our ideas and sentiments in the misfit phraseology we find. The kindred words of others seem an equivalent of our own ; and we adopt what we read as our full self- expression. Slang, proverbs, quota- [91] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE tion, become the vehicles of our individ- uahty. We no longer speak but assent. Our highest conversation is limited to citations from our library shelves. Lit- erateness results in reticence. Into the utterances of those who hold the world's ear we read our own thoughts. Litera- ture becomes surcharged with the wis- dom of its readers; the wealth of meaning we extract from the words of the famous is often simply an affair of our own superior perception of mean- ings to which they themselves were not alive. We attribute to them an insight that is really ours and think they in- tended all that we derive. Interpreta- tion ends too often in making the text a mere repository of our mute ideas. Argument has little convincing force ; but poetry is self-evident. Man takes judicial notice of his own beauty. Truth speaks for itself, and prefers that [92] EXPRESSION method. We shall have praise for our acts if we do not publish our reasons. What most rests on reason gives none; the universe contents itself with state- ment. Argument is met by argument and decision reserved. But sincere as- sertion sways the soul. The world hears its own voice when we beautifully speak the truth. It is at once the sign and penalty of a progressive mind that value ap- pears to vanish from all things on pos- session. Life bears a fruit that per- ishes in the handling. We cannot catch our winged self with our words. Fan- cies and dreamings elude expression. We go about with an empty net and a pursuing thought. We ever remain boys to our spiritual butterflies. The most vital thoughts are those that experience gives but the desk takes away. The best must remain unsaid. [93] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE No thought will sit for a portrait; and we can but put together such of its characteristic poses and acts as we re- call. It is no ground for dishearten- ment that what we see exceeds what we have yet been able to say — that what we have tidings of is greater than what we have yet been able to report. To reach out with words after the inex- pressible is man's highest definiteness. Great souls are in danger of being dammed up by too little expression; little souls, of running dry by too much. The half truth is ever voluble; but wisdom sits silent. Yet an apt word is a speech. The excellence of ex- pression lies in its suppressions. Con- ciseness is the refuge of the eloquent. Those who see most, say least, but best. Emphasis lives by infrequency. Re- serve implies no lack of frankness but simply tact. Our silence is a tribute to [94] EXPRESSION our company. It establishes a stand- ard by which our words must qualify. All speech distorts the absolute truth ; for it is an undue emphasis upon one thing and upsets the equipoise of all. There really is nothing to say. Only our exaggerated idea of the importance of things, due to ignorance, makes us think there is. To the absolute intelli- gence everything is a matter of course; and nothing is of sufficient discrimina- tive consequence to be worth talking about. Silence is the spiritual common upon whose expansiveness our souls front, and upon whose uninterrupted sward are held the meetings of the mind. Speech creates dissension; but in si- lence community returns. The truths that are unspoken are the generally accepted ones. Where words cease the common creeds of mankind begin. [95] ACTION CHRIST'S first word of correction or cure was always 'Arise.' We must climb if we would pluck the Edelweiss of the soul. The stream of inspiration gushes out only where hard work smites the rock. Action is the potent wishing-stone. We achieve with our hands, not with our hopes. Strength comes of daily doing the utmost with the muscles of our soul. It is not the weights we carry that crush us, but those we do not. We grow straight under our well-poised burdens. The ship sails steadiest when laden. While we dawdle over trifles the uni- verse waits. We do not realize our skulking until some sudden blow of ex- [96] ACTION perience like a petty oflBcer drives us forward into the fighting-line. When high water rises, the refractions eddying of our life is over. A hill ahead is higher than a moun- tain behind. Things deferred gather into a cloud and blot out the sun. They spread a shadow over all interim occupations and seem to put life under a moral ban. But our first act clears the air. The great door to our develop- ment may be held shut by a small lock; yet the key that opens it is still smaller. Diligence awaits only the rousing of interest. Objects remain in- ert upon us until they appear im- portant; let but the first step toward them attract and we attain them. All things, even in the moral world, will come into the range of mutual attrac- tion if only brought close enough to- gether. Any road leads anywhere if we [97] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE only follow it up ; the sequel to any book is all literature. The circle of our inter- est is described by the radius of our in- sight; we are interested to the extent that we see the connection with our own life. The importance for us of anything depends entirely on the way we react upon it; even the littlest affair within our control is of far more conse- quence than the greatest that is beyond it. So that the needs of action are a justification of narrowness. No man is defeated until he himself thinks so. One's standards are his only boundary; there is no limit to him who sets none. It is not night until we draw the shades. Self-confidence and self-mistrust produce hypnotically the results which they suggest. Success is much more a matter of moral equip- ment than of mental. To the capri- ciousness of genius is due its frequent [98] ACTION ineflfectiveness. Patience imposes no handicap upon ability. So far as we rely on our gifts we are dependents ; but character repnesents our command. Life cleaves us to the core. No ve- neer deceives fate. The supreme mo- ment does not wait until we are in full dress and sturdy strength; but it catches us suddenly as we are and in the nakedness of our personality. We go into battle starving; and upon our unpreparedness the world serves its demand for high performance. We de- fer the great effort to a time when we shall feel its equal — only to find it ex- acted from us at the moment of our greatest inefficiency. Each is forced to attack life where it confronts him and to fight it out grimly with fate on the field where it overtakes him. Let us face what we fear. Things frighten only when they are not fronted ; [99] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE the wind howls only when we take shel- ter. Recklessness of the blood often passes for courage; and indifference is sometimes as serviceable. But real courage consists in steadfastness of mind, and depends for its quality and degree upon the fear it overcomes. To be afraid lest we be not brave is the best guarantee of our bravery. The in- experienced and the unimaginative are always bold; but heroism is reserved for the sensitive. Fear is in propor- tion to the power of our imagination rather than to the fearfulness of the object itself. Few ills survive their recognition. No dread is so great as the undefined one; the poignancy of our grief is be- fore we can name it. For we limit by definition and put away from us what we objectify. From so much as we can detach and look at, we are freed. [100] ACTION When we can say 'how dreadful!' it is so no longer. Not what we have but what we do with it, counts. Those who distance us do so not by having a better chance but by making better use of it. We all touch tide-water and may put forth to any port. Talent is simply the fac- ulty to get at powers within one's self which all possess. We are ourselves the chief material of our architecture. The fibre of life's fabric is spun out of our own soul. Opportunities that avail are those of our making. We are not fortuitous but self-initiatory; sel- dom do the external opportunity and the internal ability to use it coincide. Our own readiness rather than the readiness of events brings to pass; we do not wait for an outlet but make it. Men are great as their circumstances become irrelevant to them. [101] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE The one insurmountable barrier to advance is self-satisfaction ; it alone de- bars us from divinity. Praise discour- ages. Success converts itself into a cause of future failure; its conse- quences seem to conspire to compass its downfall. How often does not our re- puted triumph turn into the Moscow of our retreat! It is when we have the ichor of success in our veins and feel like the gods that we behave like fools. But a life that shows up deficiencies least conduces to them. Inferiors en- courage but hinder us; superiors dis- courage but forward us. Failure in the beginning furthers us on the way and leads to a larger though later success; but early prosperity blights us. The very monument of genius becomes too often its tomb ; a mere mile-stone be- comes a gravestone. We are courtiers and flatterers at the [102] ACTION court of ourselves and give everything a complimentary turn to our ear. When others see our good qualities, we say they have insight; when they see our bad qualities, we think them short- sighted. If they love us, conceit takes the credit to ourselves ; if they despise us, we resent it. Even the most fair- minded of men unconsciously finds ar- guments for himself in all things. Our thought and our speech continually carry on a species of self-defence. In the long run we compare ourselves only with those with whom the comparison is not too uncomfortable. We may de- ride the legal fiction, 'The king can do no wrong,' and reject as an absurd- ity the infallibility of the Pope; yet no man can altogether rid himself of a like prepossession in his own favor. Protect your compass from personal deflection. True self-knowledge acts [103] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE as a stay equally against conceit and discouragement. Praise and blame are both partial to us. Let us therefore attend to neither partial judgment but only to our own whole judgment of ourselves. The small net result of attempting perfection is to do well. Unless we at- tempt the impossible we shall not even approach the confines of the possible. For we arrive nowhere and reach places only en route. A destination sets bounds to our journey far short of it. No man can both be and think himself successful; for success is attained only by him to whom it does not seem such. The high and low points in life would never be reached if they were recog- nized. A sense of failure will therefore al- ways modestly temper great achieve- ment. A growing dissatisfaction with [104] ACTION one's self is a surer mark of a rising standard than of a falling performance. For the realization of our own little- ness is the true badge of largeness ; and to know the extent of our own igno- rance the maximum of wisdom. To us it seems mere climbing, though to those below we appear to stand on pinnacles. The fire of old ideals is put out by the sun of the new; our earlier work is superseded and forgotten in the excel- lence of the later. Revision results in repeal. We recall all former editions of ourselves. Men of achievement differ from oth- ers chiefly in enduring their discour- agements and retrieving their mistakes. Success surrenders only at the last gasp. At a point just beyond where most suc- cumb, the genius prevails. How much of our superiority is due simply to the inferiority of our competitors ! We win [105] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE by a small majority. Many a captain has admitted that his enemy quitted the field just before he was about to do so himself. Events establish them- selves by a slender margin; the world trembles ever on tke verge of what it almost is. We hold our breath as we see how barely at its critical moments history has accomplished itself. All things have hung in the balance. Life withholds from us its distances and discloses its prospect only gradually. We live in instalments; and cannot travel without breaking the journey. We should recoil from our destinies if we were consulted about them before- hand ; but in easy stages we accomplish them unwittingly. By daily approaches we take the impregnable in due time. No way seems so long as the straight one. Man cowers before the illimitable prairies of life, and needs the near hills [106] ACTION of happiness. He enjoys excursions into the absolute; but, as freed prisoners oft-times of choice go back to their cells, so he returns to the relative for his home. Life wants framing to bring out its beauty. The canvases of our joy are bordered by oblivion and igno- rance. Blessed be the bends of the road that hide from our view the end! Routine is a conduit that brings down the refreshing waters from high moments to irrigate the arid days. Original acts are rare and we have to live long on the leavings of their surfeit. Through the heritage of our habits, the benefit of our fitful bravery is handed on to us. The very rigidness of the outward life furnishes protection to the inward and provides it with opportu- nity. The sap flows freely when the bark grows thick. Safe within the cloister-walls of form moves the free- [107] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE dom of the spirit. Under discipline habits are no longer weights but wings. The world is a compromise. Nothing in nature goes an absolute way; but everything acts under treaty with every other it encounters. On orbits of adaptation the unending forces move onward. Even in petty affairs the di- rection of our life is a resultant of energies with which it would be anni- hilation for us to clash. We start cen- trifugally on tangential lines; but are swerved into our elhpse by the tethering strings of necessity. Only the untried and inexperienced revolt; those who know, acquiesce. The inevitable is the hand of God. God does not will about things but in them; having impressed his purpose upon them, his will is their will — hence it is always done. We are efficient as we conform, and happy as we obey. It is not for us to be glad or [108] ACTION sorry about things, so much as ready to do what they call for from us. The point is to change not the event but ourselves to suit it. This is to regard the world as an affair of God's will, not ours. Nature cooperates but never submits. Everywhere concession wins. To overdo is to undo. Life will not flower for him who overplants the soil. Our labor should be in such wise that we have ourselves left. Nothing is worth doing unless it leaves us the better able to do it or able to do bet- ter. Work little, work well; we speed swiftly only under the spur of freshness. Greatness lies not in what we do but in what we are; not in our accomplish- ment but in our capacity. We may still be masters though we produce no mas- terpiece but ourselves. Nature's refreshment consists in be- ing natural. There is no such recrea- [109] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE tion as so to live that we require none. The normal needs no vacation. Better work as well as less work rests us. We lose most of the time we save by the way in which we save it. Life must leave room in the mind for the thoughts to come up to breathe. Laziness is nature's self -protection. The fields are not idle because they lie all winter with- out visible crop. We waste time by a sure instinct. The seers have ever been men of copious inaction. Leisure is not time in which we do nothing, but time for which we plan nothing. By the re- lease from the relative which it affords we are brought once more into associa- tion with the absolute values of life. The wisdom of the Orient was a richer importation than its stuffs and spices. To seat itself beside the flowing Ganges of its soul is an attitude which the West- ern world must still learn. [110] ACTION What comes to its own conclusion is best; in vain are we impatient for our consummation. The fruit of time has a flavor that no sudden growth can give. The seasons are not the same to all. Until our own summer comes we shall seem flowerless; and until the harvest our fruit will remain inchoate. The everlasting can afford temporarily not to be triumphant. But in due time and in unexpected ways we turn all experi- ence to use. In the large economy of things, no refuse but yields value at the touch of God's august chemistry. Sooner or later the moment surely comes which converts the inert into the active. There is no failure except the failure to attempt. The attempt that fails is only a postponed success; it garners a strength that is stored for unexpected achievement. Not what we gain but [111] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE what we give makes moral wealth. Ours is the reversion of all we bestow. Labor is no less remunerative if, in- stead of immediate return, it yield us only an increase of our intrinsic value. In life the plants do not come up always where we have strewn the seed ; so that we may not recognize our own harvest. Most objects are of indirect attain- ment. The mind catches everything on the bound. Inspiration comes when we have ceased to strive for it. Out of our preparedness comes not the speech we intended but an eloquence beyond our notes. The days seem without vista and the multiplication of them to promise no result. Yet ever a morning arrives when we awake to find a great moral wind blowing and all the face of the landscape changed. Suddenness is merely the emergence of a hidden con- [112] ACTION tinuity. Our triumphs are a surprise only to those who did not know of our long preparation; our downfall comes as a shock only to those who could not read our character. The heart of the smouldering coal expects the flame which startles us ; and not until all has germinated, does spring burst into leaf- age. Small lesson do we derive from the examples of the great if we attribute their career to aught of luck or good fortune, and do not the rather read in them the inevitable operation of their lofty qualities. The unhappy like and the happy dislike work for the same reason — that it takes them out of themselves. Into the objective world, our mind finds the sole escape from itself. Too drastic a self-contemplation feeds on its own juices: the mental hypochondriac con- demns himself to solitary confinement. [113] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE But action is the turnkey that opens the cell of our subjectivity. Any right action gives a true philosophy. Life itself is Christ's best witness. All vital experiences verify Him and speak his words. Everything is its own true reason and reward. It is better to do a thing for its own sake than from any ulterior motive. If we feel the world's needs we shall be the right man at the right moment. But if we feel only our own, we shall at most be mental valetudina- rians. Many look, one sees; many ought, one does. He is the great man. [114] SPIRITUAL CAPACITIES THE hurricanes and the calms are encountered in the same moral latitudes. Only those who have gone through great sorrows can know the great joys; only those once torn by fierce anxiety can taste the full flavor of tranquillity. The departure of the devil always signals the angels to come and minister. Peace is a stormy pe- trel whose power of wing is bred by the fury of the gale it braves. Character unlike the sundial counts not the serene hours but those of stress. Man's supreme voices come in ex- tremis; but satisfaction has no cry. All literature is the music of man's quivering strings. We must go to the confines of life to learn its contents. [115] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE Every one is Dante to his own In- ferno and Paradiso. The commonplace merely talks; but the supreme emo- tions gift humanity with the singing- voice of Art. Without its vicissitudes we should fail to realize existence, as air is felt only when it moves. Assurance kills consciousness; we go to sleep if pos- sessed of a competence. It is the pre- cariousness of life that makes us prize it. Deprivations qualify us for bless- ings. The desolate thrill to the slightest touch of kindness ; and only the thronged life tastes the true sweetness of seclu- sion. Routine underestimates the capaci- ties of life. The moment is explosive. Beneath its placid surface lie unim- agined potentialities of dreadfulness and delight. The pleasant murmur of the breeze turns at the smallest orifice [116] SPIRITUAL CAPACITIES of opportunity into a moan; and dull- ness sits dejected at the very door of beatific experience. The sad violin of life is not its full orchestra. Let no man think to have fully appraised him- self; much less give faith to his ap- praisal by others. We develop sud- denly unexpected powers; and turn at bay to an utmost of which we had not thought ourselves capable. Any ap- proval that makes us put up with less than our best, robs us of Parnassus. The possibilities of to-day become the probabilities of to-morrow; the ceiling of our sky is but the floor of Heaven. We cannot foretell the possible infla- tion of our nostrils to the divine air. Where skies are fairest, storms are fiercest. To be capable of moods is to be capable of genius ; and to be a genius is to be subject to moods. The more delicate the machinery, the more easily [117] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE deranged. The lake of despair is as deep as the mountain of aspiration at its side is high. Stagnation the most pro- found borders the track of the favoring Trades. Ever will come the sad days when we are becalmed and the passing of time is marked by no progress but that of the clock. The soul sits in the seat of its erewhile inspiration and wonders at its own degeneracy. Our plains look up to our Pisgah peaks and sigh for the clouds that refresh the lofty moments. No number of failures can make us a failure. It is not the outcome but the income that counts. Life is athletics and not played for championship or gate-money. Most of our years are consumed in mere search and in rid- ding ourselves of obstacles. The dis- tance is quickly travelled when the way is once clear. In an attempt at [118] SPIRITUAL CAPACITIES ofFset and compensation, mistakes and accidents and sins bring experiences into our ken and incorporate qualities into our character of which we should otherwise be devoid. Evolution, gen- ius, experience, are alike in the neces- sity of having to run through and throw aside a thousand possibilities before being suited. It implies greater strength to acquire strength than to possess it. To stay is easy; only to enter, hard. The attaining of power or position taxes us more than any later exaction it imposes. The inward change does not come with success but on the way thither. To ride the spirit's high seas is to lose sight of all familiar shores. We desire only the rewards which we do not deserve ; when we do, we are in- diflferent to them. Humanity's foliage is of a kind that yields its full fragrance only when [119] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE crushed; its flowers are such as grow fastest the most frequently plucked. The senses afford no pleasure equal to that of their denial. Gratification bears a Dead Sea fruit; but struggle, the fruit of high flavor. We fall back upon God when life disappoints us. It is our loneliness that gives us to feel his companionship. Not till our wings fail do we realize our weight. Health and life often produce a beautiful union of flesh and spirit ; but suffering and death separate them and make the spirit inde- pendent. The rack of life tortures but does not distort. We rise from it not mutilated, but lengthened and broadened and shaped. Its agony soon goes over into the exultation of possessing divine pro- portions. Exacting conditions support us, like clothes that fit us only when we stand straight. Excruciating experi- [120] SPIRITUAL CAPACITIES- ences whose repetition we straightway vow nevermore to permit, prove of such surpassing issue that we dedicate our remaining days to them. Even the tuning of Kfe's strings is enjoyable if we listen for the gradual emergence of the tone's melodious purity. The for- tunate event is one which, whatever its outcome, stirs within us the depths. [121] ATTITUDE LIFE is merely a littoral and de- j rives all its beauty from its man- ner of fronting the sea. It is our attitude that determines the sce- nery of existence. Wherever we may perceive beauty and feel love, life is a delight. There is no coal of character so dead that it will not glow and flame if but slightly turned. Adaptation equals the heart's desire. When we cannot have what we like, we can al- ways like what we have ; the happiness is not only equal but more permanent. The right mood or motive for any occupation is the one that makes it seem most agreeable. Creation is al- ways loving. Many a mediocre mo- ment by restoring our sense of import- [122] ATTITUDE ance enables us to complete the high task from which our more critical mo- ments discouraged us. Existence would be insupportable without conceit and perseverance impossible without fa- naticism. It takes the egotist and the zealot to achieve. We are such fools that we are clever enough to deceive our own selves; hence it is no wonder that we deceive others. We live so much in a fool's paradise, that men sometimes come to admit our divinity. The field of the inevitable extends itself both consciously and actually as life proceeds. What activity thought to take by assault, acquiescence later lays siege to. As the ideal fades, the beauty of the actual becomes more apparent. Experience lessens our enthusiasm, but removes our fears. While the positive pleasures grow less the negative grow greater. [123] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE The frontiers of life acquire a ficti- tious importance and are too tena- ciously defended. What we fight for is inexpressibly precious but becomes a matter of indifference after either acqui- sition or loss. A later age fails to under- stand the casus belli of its fathers. When we abandon some outpost and retreat upon the vast territory that is left us, we rarely feel regret or even have a consciousness of loss. Patience and contentment are merely the prudent calling in of our too advanced lines and the massing upon our inner and closer self. The solvency of happiness is maintained by periodically reducing expectations so as to balance with our marked-down assets. Forbearance and submission are the tools we least like to use and the last we think of; yet the safest and most effective withal. The detours that ATTITUDE make us so impatient turn out to be short-cuts. Let us not enter the lists with the natural ' lest haply we be found fighting against God.' Things are in almighty alliance and we do well first to ascertain what forces are ar- rayed against us. It is vain to barri- cade the beaten tracks of life. The rather do landscape gardeners and statesmen see in every well-worn way the place where there should have been plotted a path. The infinities of soul which childhood awakened nowhere find a counterpart. Things at their best are so much below our hopes that we take them as a mat- ter of course. All surroundings are a disappointment and must be risen above. Yet any suffice that leave space for ourselves to unfold. Every experi- ence fashions the creative spirit. Cir- cumstances after all are but a fringe of [125] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE foreground against the illimitable back- ground of God. No matter what the medium so long as we work with it our design. The same materials with which the mason can build only prose, are reared by the architect into lofty poetry. Every con- tact with our fellows leaves upon them an imprint of good or ill. Any act that expresses our typical trait exercises our maximum of influence. The mere pref- erence of the sunlight to Alexander's favor was suflBcient to stamp Diogenes' character unforgettably upon the world as well as upon Alexander himself. Heaven helps most when it is not too gracious. Men thrive best where nature is neutral. The lands of easy food and shelter afford little more. Let us not hope from the hand when the heart is worn on the sleeve. We do not learn best when every reply is assent. The [126] ATTITUDE tropics of plenty pauperize us. We are called on to supply nothing. Men misuse everything that is provided for them. The excessive florescence of life is at the cost of structural growth. There must be intermittence of fruit- fulness to permit inner development and expanse. Strength comes of reac- tion as well as of advance, from the re- laxation as well as from the tension of experience. Though loveliness lures us away from our purpose, rudenesses and de- faults distract us as well. Only the passiveness of conditions promotes the indigenous in man. In the bleakness of life's barren north, the external denials and negations permeate his philosophy. It is the heart's own empty skies that suggest an untenanted heaven. Atheism is but the arctic circle of the soul. [127] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE Life is always fair weather if the sun of self is strong enough to burn through the mists. We can track most condi- tions to our own temperament. Even health is more often a matter of morals than an affair for the physician. The overclouding of the day is generally only the blowing to of our shutter. Under the oppressed skies of ma- terialism the thoughts fly low; but contemplation is the high cerulean vault into which they soar. Man can- not abide himself. He chokes in his own atmosphere and must get beyond his own breath. We are meant to ra- diate out into the universe and not to frequent the social streets. Some fut- ure star may await even our faint gleam. We are as heirs-apparent, born to high tasks which we cannot shirk. Things forced upon us by a sordid [128] ATTITUDE necessity may nevertheless be per- formed from a high motive. When once we feel the noblesse that obliges we are no longer slaves. Let us volun- teer whither we would not be sent. Necessity cheerfully complied with is the equivalent of any choice. We are relieved of a burden quite as much as of a benefit when we are offered no alternative. The difficulties devolved upon us by the little latitude which life allows makes one wonder at philosophy's concern for the cause of free will. Ex- cept in important matters indecision is more harmful than a wrong decision. And in the even balance of equal goods we oft-times fall victim to some sudden dark horse of impulse. Though life is a veritable succession of alternative invitations, yet fortunately the choice is limited as in politics to mere ratification or rejection of a predetermined selec- [129] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE tion, and rejection itself is but the ratification of some single alternative. Early life is current value and readily convertible. Because we may be any- thing we think we may be everything. But in fact we are concluded by our election and are committed to our in- vestment. The acts and objects we se- lect are exclusive of all others and are answerable for them. Everything is at the cost of everything else. We must see to it that we sell our lives dear; for we fix our own rate of exchange. Imagination and therefore expecta- tion can project only what experience has first taught. To be sure is to be igno- rant of possibilities. The young mis- take all promise for certainty; but the old cease to expect even the probable. Sureness does not ensure; it merely shows that we think there is no alter- native, which is seldom true. Truth is [130] ATTITUDE inconclusive; it says: yes and no; sometimes but not always; somewhat but not too much; this but also that. Security begins when we feel none. We adopt precautions first when we per- ceive others' lack of caution. Confi- dence in ourselves is finally forced upon us by our loss of confidence in others. We can seldom put our whole force in the field. ^^^lat expenditure of muscle, nerve, brain, merely to keep life going! To attend to the sick and wounded and to drill recruits, halves our forces. What enginery of educa- tion merely to pass on the present; the drudgery of how many frees how few! All this attention upon the roots below that we may flower on top; yet for the most part we only vegetate. The body is a node of natural and spiritual forces. In our dual capacity we touch both the heights we despair [131] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE of and the depths we dread. The spirit through its occupancy of flesh is torn away from its true aflinities; and the mind by its partnership with the brain is chained to a keeper. Our bodies inter- change physical and chemical useful- ness with the material world in which they move and make us subject to its laws and processes. Though the mind itself does not tire, it must wait each night while its tired companion sleeps. We are capable of flight only for so long as the body is independent of renewed sustenance. The thought throbs as the blood beats, and expands and contracts with the breathing of the lungs. Con- sciousness contains a pulse. We live in abbreviated bits and are incapable of sustained effort. The day is so sub- divided that it can contain nothing large. The most fluent of styles is nevertheless a patchwork of successive [ 132 ] ATTITUDE periods and moods, so skilfully joined that the seams are concealed. Failing strength joins failing light to separate the days. And these series are what we call continuity and life and finally history. Life frays only at the edges; its sub- stance is secure enough. Most things are as they must be and our efforts are restricted to its small flexibilities. In the competitions of life we, like certain in- dustries, often succeed simply by finding some profitable use for our waste. To miss a train by the fraction of a minute is the unsurpassable sermon on the im- portance of the small. Even the last minute is a minute. Character needs guarding only at its exposed points: guidance is superfluous except at the corners and cross-roads. It is astonish- ing how far we run, after the steam is turned o£f. Social opinion and the law [133] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE safeguard the grosser moralities; it is only in the finesse of life that spirituality counts. The real differences among men are imperceptible to the vulgar. The world is given over to the cultiva- tion of the larger crops; but the most perfect is always produced in least abundance. Excellence still has to be hall-marked and requires certain out- ward and obvious distinctions for its protection against the unperceiving. Knighthood and patents of nobility may yet be put to high purpose. Moral greatness requires vestment in some palpable embodiment of grandeur so as to impress the spiritually blunt. Upon the robe of authority is a border of coercion and splendor. The gentle face of reason wears the stern mask of force to the unreasonable. The palace sentinel struts in uniform, and overawes with his bayonet ; while within the ruler [134] ATTITUDE sits in plain clothes at a desk. Power places its insignia upon those who do its bidding; but itself remains inconspic- uous. Genius runs smoothly. It is the baser metals that make the noise of the world. All things are enjoyable in due sea- son; but the season is not often due unless we accept things in the order in which life brings them to us and not in the order in which we would wish them. Enjoyment is assured only by making its receptivity coincide with life's gen- erosity. As a rule preference amounts merely to preoccupation and is there- fore arbitrary. Interruption often gives us our cue. The absolutely better is sometimes the relatively worse. Nor is the perfect surely the most desirable. Fair fruit has not the flavor of the blemished; but what is spotted and bird-pecked is, the rather, certified of [135] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE sweetness. Difficulty is seldom more than unf amiliarity or untimeliness ; and warns us that we are paying too high a price. The impossible may be but the inopportune. Sin itself is often some mere anachronism of spirit rather than inherent evil. Most failure and unhap- piness are due simply to our unseason- ableness. The auguries of circumstance are still to be consulted. Even in the careers of fortune's favorites, the fulness of time has always been a factor. Anticipation upsets the natural or- der and buys the present at the cost of what is to come; just as bad hand- writing really saves no trouble but only devolves it upon some future moment or other person. Hope has no gravita- tion and therefore spans every chasm. When we were young, we discounted expectation at the bank of inexperience and have since been trying to pay ofiF the [136] ATTITUDE obligation. Every one is serving sen- tence for some previous miscalculation of hopefulness. Every one is wearing out some early-acquired misfit of en- vironment. The poor heart must long entertain the guest whom the senses in- considerately introduce. To take a future for granted or to taste our ac- complishment in advance, is not to put ourselves in the way of gaining it but the reverse. All premature enthusi- asm pays the penalty of discourage- ment; overexcitement is always fol- lowed by collapse. Whatever makes acquisition seem easy deposes work. While we travel through air, our tracks rust. Anticipation covers the live coals of our endeavor with the ashes of the paper fires which it builds. To have castles in Spain is finally to have no roof over one's head. What is eagerly wished for, drags; [137] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE what is dreaded, comes ' before we know it' — because imaginatively we elide or interpose intervening events. Things are at the inverse distance of de- sire. A point near the journey's end going, seems well on our way returning. The sense of having too much to do comes from thinking disproportion- ately into details; the overwhelming- ness of our work is due usually to our overwhelming view of it. Even trifles become burdensome when we itemize them beforehand. The busy accom- plish much without fatigue because they let things take care of themselves, and always appear to have time at their dis- posal. For simplicity is not reciprocal between idea and action; and much is easier done than said. Every detail of conduct is an infinite and insoluble problem to the active imagination and thorough philosophy; yet the most com- [138] ATTITUDE plex situation can be cleared in a twin- kling by some small act. In modern life the left hand of fatigue takes back all that the right hand of opportunity offers. Not the means of enjoyment so much as the capacity for it is lacking. We bolt our experiences as we do our food and get no nourishment or pleasure from them. The revels of life are over by the time we decide to join them, and everywhere we encoun- ter empty chambers. Exhaustion goes on a mere vacation; for only exuber- ance can take a holiday. The world has forgotten its functions; its outings are no longer a sign of health but a symptom of sickness. The living God of the soul is not re- vealed to us until we are revealed to ourselves and know our need. Vital experiences therefore invest God with ever new meaning and continually [139] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE identify him with the divinity that ap- pears to them in the burning bush. To retain its hold the church must see to it that the rehgious conceptions which it preaches keep pace with the growth of our ideals; and should jeal- ously annex to itself all lands where men find God. There cannot be duality in Heaven. If life contains spiritual in- fluences higher than those emanating from its faiths, religion becomes dis- credited. ' He who by fire from heaven shall answer, let him be God.' [140] ETERNAL YOUTH THERE are days in spring when earth seems to requite the love we bear it. Life comes up every- where in color and in song. Now do all things instinctively follow the canons of beauty. Nature flings her gay rugs under our feet, and out of the sky streams the diffuse music of Ariel. The trees give their green banners to the breeze and expand their lungs to the enlarged air. Some massive emo- tional voice is a-murmur and addresses my many senses with words of soft im- pact, warm brightness and sweet odor. It is the first green that gives the joy. We are exhilarated by a little; but are burdened by more. The suggestive fascinates us. Spring is a delight; but [141] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE summer itself, a surfeit. Luxuriance outgrows the delicate verdure of re- straint. The tropics exhaust them- selves in excess of fruitage, and the finer effects are lacking. Imagination needs exercise. It is stimulated by penury; , but is powerless against plenty. We thrive on bread and water better than on any gluttony. The season is fullest when it is most to come. From its mere promise I de- rive more than it can ever fulfil. All things are at their height when most potential. Already I have felt the se- cret of their summer. The new year adds nature's opti- mism to the heroism of the heart. This triumph of her free forces and the glori- ous outcome of their interaction con- firm our hopes for humanity. Now is the ubiquitous Hellas and all waters are of ^Egean blue. The soul is wide- [142] ETERNAL YOUTH eyed and focused only upon its own far horizon line. In the undulating air shimmers the magic of the South Sea. Some unseen wand transforms each sullen pine into glistening palm. The rustling of the breeze turns into the soughing of the Trades. Painted coral reefs lie submerged under the limpid surface of every pond and in the merest dry twitter of the sparrow we suspect the music of the mocking-bird. Earth and air are engaged upon poetry ; man- kind alone is preoccupied with prose. Before the very eyes of a civilization which materializes man, matter itself blossoms and blooms into spirituality. Nature is incapable of aesthetic error. Her perfection bears the impress of in- finite correction and adjustment. The amplitude of her heart is eased by the plenitude of her variety. In her every manifestation she is served by some [143] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE appropriately clad acolyte. Upon the twigs of the trees, with what graceful dips and playful teeters minister the wrens ! The clod of a toad busies him- self with affairs of the ground and wears its livery. Poising over the blossoms, the visitant bee fills his capacious ton- nage. And through subterranean inter- stices wriggle invertebrate worms. The kindly earth tends ever to make its surface soft. Hard rock resolves it- self by attrition into soil, which in turn covers itself with the velvet of verdure. Yet from this gracious ground how firm is the fibre which the tree extracts! Strength is the product of gentleness as surely as gentleness is the product of strength. The search of Ponce de Leon is re- warded every spring. The fountain of eternal youth bubbles up at large. Age drops its crutch and sorrow its burden [144] ETERNAL YOUTH at the healing shrine of the universal iEsculapius. If old earth with her wrinkled skin and furrowed brow and faded locks can again feel young, who shall despair? With complexion of sparkling delight and with blue laugh- ing eyes and flashing teeth of white water, immortal May dissipates the moral decrepitude of old mortality. The Lethe of time covers the leaves of all former years. Life everywhere lays it- self in strata and never feels older than the particular stratum in which it is con- sciously alive. No age or position seems advanced when we reach it. Resurrec- tion is not a revival of the old but an on-coming of the new. We cannot enliven the past; but we emerge re- juvenated from the chrysalis of its cast- off death. Nature never breaks off. All transi- tion is continuous and a hiatus is only [145] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE the chimera of inattention or inexperi- ence. To the eyes of youth age seems sharply separated; but the slow se- quence of time's surface reaches it without chasm. The elder season is but a veil of change drawn across the scenes of the earlier. We continue to live in the same house, and only the fur- nishings are different. Everything is ansesthetically gradual. Death begins young and youth lasts forever. The seed of decay is coeval with birth; yet even the late fall fields are resown with life. Strength lingers long on the hill-tops of morning after it has set for the lower-lying afternoon. Already in April the sombre sky and the gusty squall send the sobering chill of autumn through our hearts ; yet out of the bare- ness of November still blossom days of youthful promise. Life marches in close column. Ev- [146] ETERNAL YOUTH erywhere we press upon predecessors and are crowded upon from behind. Over its scenes of tragedy the world quickly goes its wonted way; and fills even the chamber of death with a new tenant. Battlefields soon yield their usual crops again. The quarters we occupy have just been vacated and are already reserved for those who make the next voyage. Yet our tenancy though only a leasehold gives us all the feelings of full ownership. Each grad- uating class holds the college sacred to its special memories. And no matter how short our stay, imagination never suffers a former home to seem other than exclusively ours. The generations of mankind are a figment. Life is never mustered out. The veteran and the recruit stand side by side and preserve the regimental continuity. Whoever falls, the ranks [147] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE close up and go forward unbroken. The house of history abides, however much through repair it finally come to be rebuilt. The waterfall of life is constant though its waters are ever changing. [148] THE CENTRALITY OF THE SOUL CALMNESS is the mind's unity. The soul comes to itself in quiet, as music is remembered in the morning. By locking up the jury of our thoughts we force it to unanimity. Self- communion is always followed by fresh strength. All insight requires us to go into committee of the whole. Space within permits clearness of vision and speech. The country-seat of the soul surrounds itself by a park of repose and protects itself by a gateway of discriminate entry and approach. Thoughts are trees that will not attain to full size unless sufficiently thinned out. Around every centre of activity some fringe of idleness forms. The [149] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE lounging of the longshoreman is a badge of brisk commerce; and knots of gos- sip and groups of hangers-on gather about the doors of the busy. An am- plitude of leisure does the bidding of genius. The spirit is man's bond of union within and without. The senses scatter but the mind centres and binds. Sym- pathy and education are a transmigra- tion of soul and testify to its essential oneness. We are united with our fel- lows radically; it is the external world that brings division. The warfare is civil, not foreign; we have but to close our ports to be at peace. Most men agree on a principle; few on its ap- plication. The disagreement always comes over the details. A definite pro- gramme alienates from a cause. In the winning of allies and collaborators, therefore, advocacy confines itself as [150] THE CENTRALITY OF THE SOUL far as possible to the abstract. Specific measures never erabody the principle more than imperfectly ; hence they less readily convince and more easily create discord among adherents who are fun- damentally agreed. For this reason opponents wait until a policy is formu- lated into definite proposals before at- tacking it. The contacts of life are too concrete. We meet like Jamaica negroes chiefly on the highway to market. The com- merce of the world causes its wars ; but its scholarship promotes the universal brotherhood. Most foregathering is on the material plains of life and affords little spiritual participation; but the soul's kinship is upon the peaks and therefore physically solitary. Our pref- erence of books to people is not unsocial but simply a sign that our socialness is spiritual. There is no real companion- [151] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE ship but with a spirit similarly afield and kindred of quest. Only the very good or bad can be pre- eminently successful. Others are too much wasted upon inner conflict for great achievement. Strong action re- quires a determined mind, which alone belongs to the single-hearted. Sim- plicity is the characteristic of greatness because also the cause. The mind like the Administration, unless it have a de- cided majority, is too much taken up with its own procedure and safety to for- mulate and enact important measures. Man is mentally pivotal; life is teth- ered to a spiritual centre. Early stand- ards prevail through all subsequent changes of conditions to which they come to be applied. We see everything in the same frame. The variety in our activities is mostly superficial. We do not get far from our moorings but swing [152] THE CENTRALITY OF THE SOUL around on the anchor chain of neces- sity into the old riding-place again. What we discard for one reason we re- sume for another. It is needless to cud- gel our memory; we return also by going forward. Life washes all things ashore upon the coasts of recollection. Progress is spiral and brings us back on a higher plane to where we were. The mind's lead brooks no guidance. To live from inner compulsion and pro- pulsion is the straightforward way. The feminine instinct is right — our tastes are determinative. More things are a mere matter of taste than men admit. The emotions which give color and contour to our life are a trustworthy index to our capacities. The heart makes room where the head finds none. Eventually we do what we like; because we do it best and we must. To put forth leaves and flowers is the sure token of de- [153] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE velopment. Our inner urgence is a prophecy of our best and the surface outcropping of great wealth beneath. Life lays up large stores in our subcon- sciousness, which become available as we draw upon them. The soul is filled with the tangled accumulations of ex- perience out of which it may spin and spin indefinitely when it has once found the beginning of the thread. Genius is an affair of supererogation. We give gratuitously what no demand or obligation could have exacted, but are mute under expectation and sterile under supervision. The soul is a bird that sings only when free; the mind flowers only when it dreams. In the day's work are mere crannies of out- look; but the repose and enjoyment of evening open wide windows of vista. The perfectly natural is the rarest of achievements because only the rarest of [154] THE CENTRALITY OF THE SOUL men know enough not to interfere in the divine process by trying to help it out. Superimposition "extinguishes us. To have to do and yet not to have to do it, is the only right relationship with life. Leisure makes easy what haste makes hard. Necessity sticks the pins of detail through our wings, and flight is over. Well-spent time employs no accountant and scorns the book-keeping of the Philistine. The only helpful routine and time-schedule is to do everything when we feel like it. Time is enriched by its own waste. Only by disregard- ing it can we get its entire use. The busy days are empty; but the idle ones are full and go forward. Most truth comes inopportunely and has to be noted down in pencil. The true and the beautiful do not prepare themselves for the press but publish themselves [155] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE only when they appear. Genius is the disposition to attend to the generally neglected motions of the soul. We must stalk the big game of life. [156] THE OBSCURATION OF THE PRESENT WE celebrate the beginning and the end of every thing ; itself we leave unsung. When the sun slants, the color comes. 'Thou makest the outgoings of the morning and evening to rejoice.' Poets serenade the bridal months of spring and senti- mentalize the declining days of autumn ; but the midsummer months are ac- cepted as a matter of course, like a spouse after long marriage. The festi- vals of time are those of the fruit and of the blossom; the ripening mid-days go ungarlanded. Of most lives birth and death en- tries are the sole record. We set aside for commemoration the birthday of [157] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE the great rather than the day of their great achievement. The church in her overemphasis upon the miraculous in- cidents connected with Christ's nativ- ity and resurrection overlooks the more miraculous beauties of the life itself. Everywhere attention is riveted upon the demarcating limits, and apprecia- tion cleaves to the furthermost confines. The wings of the soul seek the ends of the earth. And though the poles be sealed with ice, they shall be opened up. Prospect and retrospect are life's avenues of beauty. There is a vista either way. Life looks in both direc- tions down a boulevard of magnifi- cence, and at both ends there are inti- mations of immortality. Only the eyes that are engrossed in the near-by are apostate to the vision. It is when we look down at our feet that we fail to walk the waves. [158] THE OBSCURATION OF THE PRESENT The muse, though soraetimes myopic, has usually to hold beauty ofl at arm's length to see it. Glorious clouds are mere mist when we are immersed in them ; and how quickly does their glow become grayness when the sun of po- etry is set. Relaxing the eyes brings infinitude to the thoughts ; which partly accounts for the enchantment of dis- tance. Truths seem parallel if sight does not follow them far; but perspec- tive brings all lines to a point of union. The soul's country has ever been 'a land which is very far oflf.' The moment is a blur. The smoke of battle hangs over the present. We cannot dispose our forces as we would; and our reserves fail to arrive in time. Apposite acts or remarks, afterward so obvious, never occur to us oppor- tunely. Proximity prevents the full extent of any triumph or disaster from [159] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE being appreciated while in progress. We see the enemy give way only at one point or learn that our line has been driven in at some single place of weak- ness. Every heroic moment extends our boundaries; but we do not realize till later the value of our new domain nor exploit its wealth. The present is always sailed under dead reckoning, and we know our position only on the chart of good intentions. It is reserved for the sextant of a later noon to calculate our true course and position. The day is disqualified by its preju- dices. We must empanel a jury from afar. The only correct weights and measures are the universal ones. The abnormal is a relative matter and will not be settled till the close of the record. Time has few unchallenged talesmen. Current standards of value are always amiss because outlived. One must look [160] THE OBSCURATION OF THE PRESENT below the surface of actuality to see aright. It is because independence generally implies insight that it is usu- ally accompanied by success. Men with such eyes are the spiritual aristo- crats, and in the business world found fortunes. Worth does not wear its robes of oflBce. Quiet acts seem ineffective. Our profound moments are always those of our speechlessness. Only with diflBculty can the lonely student or thinker realize that he so much moves the world. One would suppose that importance required some projection into space; what so illustrious as an embassy! A monument appears to the crowd to fix fame forever. But men of enduring impress are so interwoven into the thought of their times that any special commemoration insults their universality. In the hall of the world's [161] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE memory there is no pedestal but that of an imperishable name. Things of real significance in our lives are always those over which we once reproached ourselves for waste of time. Penitence reverts to the occasions when confi- dence in ourselves was complete; and penance spends its days in undoing our well-favored deeds. How great is our value when we have stripped it of self-consciousness. All men appear to look at us till we look at them. The young feel their own faces. At first the eyes of the world, like those of certain portraits, seem fixed upon us wherever we may move. But soon we see others' unconcern for us; we forget what we look like. Experience more and more loses personal reference. The sweep of the soul enlarges as we learn our unimportance. Humility is the alma mater of all great deeds and confers [162] THE OBSCURATION OF THE PRESENT the only recognized diploma of quali- fication. The newspaper file of any historic period shows the obtuseness of the age to its vital events and its utter engross- ment in trifling occurrences. Contem- porary chronicle always employs an emphasis and observes a proportion which are in disagreement with the ver- dicts of time. History expunges the headlines of sensationalism and seeks its data among inconspicuous para- graphs and journalistic small type. Experience rejects the award of the immediate and looks beyond the origi- nal jurisdiction of to-day. The calen- dar of eternity is congested with the ap- peals of time. Judgment abides ever in adjournment; to look later is to see as others see now. Only that is our true self to which we have been both creator and critic. The morning is wiser than [163] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE any night of study. We do not advance our business by the length of time we devote to it but by the number of times we come to it fresh and apply the sharp edge of our energy upon it. The march of time holds drum-head courts. We are subjected to the sum- mary procedure of the moment; and judged by a code of instant success or failure. Acquittal is obtained only by seeming affectation. The artificial manner we assume toward strangers is in reality only an attempt at greater truth; we feel the need of epitomizing ourselves because the completions and corrections of long acquaintance are lacking. But association with intimates is spread over so protracted a period that the impressions of any one occa- sion do not count. Alas ! that we avail ourselves of the privilege which this af- fords of giving offence with impunity. [164] THE OBSCURATION OF THE PRESENT Life never recognizes its own drama. It turns unaffected from its last meet- ings and passes its critical points un- awares. History repeats itself but never to its knowledge — because never in the guise expected. Appreciation needs comparison; while we are looking for the best stopping-place we have passed it. Time spends its heyday in inveter- ate bankruptcy and looks to the future to restore the deficit of the past. We cannot brand the moments and so do not make them ours. The majority of lost opportunities never really belonged to us. The present is a pig-in-a-poke till we have parted with it. If we were better judges of relative importance we should be less surprised at memory's amazing choice. Incidents we had thought trifling stand out forever after- ward in the high relief of recollection and live on unforgotten and unforget- [165] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE table; because we, like history, reach climaxes suddenly and in unexpected places, and so drag their hitherto ob- scure environment into the lime-light of prominence. We are poor prophets as to perma- nency. What happens from without breeds change; what happens from within, repetition. But our momentary belief is always under an illusion to the contrary. The event, the occasion, we always think will recur; but it does not. Of our own act we always say 'Just this once'; but it habituates itself. Change is prevalent everywhere except in ourselves where we most expect and wish it. The special value of the moment lies in its immediacy. Like the last edition of a newspaper it loses its speciousness while the eyes are still upon it and is wholly superseded by the next. Our [166] THE OBSCURATION OF THE PRESENT crowning successes or crushing fail- ures of the past are easily pushed aside by the importunity of the latest pecca- dillo or happy turn. The crest of time's wave is forever falling forward. Our honors and our disgraces do not accompany us beyond a day's journey, and we are continually exposed to new ratings. The remoteness of the past is due to the accumulation of subsequent inci- dent. Joys and griefs that we nurse do not fade ; but life showers the ashes of its events over the vividness of mem- ory and buries the by-gone under an ever-deepening oblivion. Former time is not far but deep. The excavations of memory reveal a veritable Pompeii. Any detachment from to-day is a pro- longation of all yesterdays. It is aloof- ness that enables old age to find the years of its youth still fresh. [167] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE The near-sight of the senses is curable only by the lens of the soul. In the ab- sence of large relationships we are pin- ioned by the near. The affairs of the household loom larger than the whole field of life. For the littlest near noise is relatively louder than the loudest far one: a leaf crinkled at the ear drowns the boom of cannon. Unless we silence our machinery we shall never hear the blast of the last trump. Things do not fall into their right relative posi- tion and importance until we have wide interests. We do not disregard ap- pearances until we are so great as to be unconscious of them. The mind over- looks only when it looks over; and produces order only by lending itself to the larger laws. We do not relieve the congested mind by emptying it, but by making it more capacious. Worry re- mains though we rid ourselves of wor- [168] THE OBSCURATION OF THE PRESENT Ties. The little things of life always expand and fill the space formerly oc- cupied by the greater ones. Let us not vacate till a suitable tenant offers; for all emptiness is haunted. We may be as sensual over a crust as Lucullus at a banquet. The business of an empire is not inherently more burdensome than that of a parish. When we close our ears the pulse thunders. Death does not separate us, but life. A miasma of pettinesses and peculiari- ties envelops all who are near us; but any delocalization by distance or death lifts them out of it and enables us to see them as they essentially are. The influence that others have over us comes not from their propinquity but from the connection in which we think of them. Freed from their misleading mannerisms, their personality seems to shed a gentle glow as stars shine softly. [169] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE Circumstances bewilder us. When we look from the hill-top the ship seems to follow unwaveringly a demarcated course; yet from her deck the waves make a broken horizon and blur the view. How steady seems the stream of life as we stand on the bank looking on; once caught in its current and swirls, however, and we can do little but strike out for the nearest shore. Even the meteor that goes its path of glory is soon consumed if it enters the earth atmosphere. The duties of other people appear to us so clear and their progress so inevitable. But our own life cannot see out from behind its piled-up papers. [170] TRAVEL THE world is always afar. Though we were at its very centre, we should still think ourselves re- mote. We seek ever for some other place than where we are, forever un- found and forever unfindable, because its very essence is its otherness. The situation of all ideal spots is geographi- cally elsewhere. There are no Islands of the Blessed save in the archipelago of the heart. The longing to escape is inextin- guishable. The eye turns to the ex- panses of life as the soul faces the East of its aspiration. Wherever plain or sea lets down the bars of the horizon, the mind breaks bounds. All extent is a challenge to the imagination. The [171] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE vanishing-point of sight is the starting- point of the spirit. Discontent is the ignis fatuus of fate, but the ideal is its beacon light. The spiritualization of life is the only real expansion. There are shores within which margin vast oceans of out- look. We do not see till we get the inward eyes; must close the senses if we would open the soul. Insight ex- ceeds all horizons and brings to view things from beyond the round of vision. Travel takes life inessentially and puts emphasis upon the purely inci- dental. We are introduced to all and meet none. The world is shown us in its width but not in its depth. We re- ceive an exposition of it rather than a revelation; are impressed rather than expressed. Attention is diverted from the inherent to the superficial. Trav- [172] TRAVEL ellers' talk usually degenerates into mere itinerary tittle-tattle. The ob- servation of the eyes brings the obser- vation of the soul to an end. Nevertheless the foreign by its fresh accent, and journeying by its frequent change of scene, repoint the truths which our too-accustomed conditions have blunted. It requires newness to notice and therefore to know; and we see anew every time we physically or mentally move. By witnessing cir- cumstances without subordination to them we obtain a more unbiassed sense of their importance. Any Sunday ramble through life's business -section makes us think differently of the week-day world. We are surprised at our wider view of wonted surroundings when we return from abroad. Every traveller treads life with the winged step of Mercury. He goes [173] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE transiently and foot-free where others are enmeshed. The flavor of locality is just sufficient to heighten the relish of departure; the prose of the proxi- mate glows already with the poetry of the distance into which it is forever fading. Appreciation is whetted by the short- ness of possession; and the regret of the last look is quickly quenched in the zest of the next. For once the world seems subservient to our wishes and to recreate itself to our command. Lan- guage, nation, race, history, become what we bid them. No wish of the morn- ing but may be gratified by the Alad- din day. We are no longer girt about by the ringed fixity of fact. All things apparently come to him who travels as they actually do to him who waits. The possibilities of life partake of our geo- graphical fluency. Our mind and our movements share a common nimble- [174] TRAVEL ness. The rigidity of environment is relegated to a mere memory. First sight is fullest. Susceptibility and memory live in a diminishing scale of freshness. All first things retain their hold. In vividness of impression and hence in accuracy of description, no criticism can equal the new-comer's. His notes contribute something of which the resident is incapable; and his ap- parent assumption of quicker insight does not always merit the derision it meets. Fast travel is the most graphic, for it does not suffer the loss of the total view. A longer stay brings out de- tails and blurs the perception of the whole. The foreigner is always more sensitive to national or racial character- istics than the native. It is only through modulation that we feel the full thrill of tone values. At home the infinite va- riety of man obscures the prominence [175] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE of general traits. But abroad where everything is alien, the common strange- ness of all overwhelms any intervaria- tion; and the type stands out. Travel is always a more complete and violent change than we had anticipated. We are as if torn up by the roots, and life seems a region without landmarks. We had thought the world more of a piece; and man, a more universally constant. The educated go a-travelling not for a tour but to dramatize history on its own stage and to relive literature in its own land. They would walk amid the very pages of their books. Who that visits Torcello with his Ruskin but strains his eyes westward if so be that he may still see the lurid glow of burning Altinum ? Who that stands in Flor- entine streets but pricks his ears for some faint echo of the long-silenced [176] TRAVEL Guelph and Ghibelline clangor? Yet the eye and the ear will not meet the imaginative response they expected. A silence and a blindness blight all sacred spots. The mind sees blank. In the presence of the hallowed scene, it suf- fers a revulsion of feeling in favor of the birthplace of its own hallowing sentiment. It harks back to where it had the dream. Ruins help the imag- ination to reconstruct the past as little as a skeleton suggests the body that once enveloped it. To-day's setting impedes the action of former times. The historic spot, the site of old haunts, have as a rule nothing but a geodetical identity with the original. All that there was of contiguity and general re- lationship to surroundings has van- ished. The moral latitudes of life have shifted and longitude is no longer reck- oned from the Greenwich of the earlier [177] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE age. To seek the past locally is to visit only its grave. The place may retain historical interest, but when its spirit has fled its power of visualization is gone. 'Why seek ye the living among the dead ? ' We go unnecessarily far for our re- freshment. Any new observingness is enough. All change is radical; it requires a readjustment of everything else to suit it. The foreign is summa- rized in the first thing we meet on land- ing: more is repetitious and therefore meaningless. For the flavor is not found in the thing we enjoy but in our relation to it. Western civilization goes to its gratifications circuitously, be- cause outwardly and objectively; but the Orient extracts them from within. The epicure will discharge his chef if he once tries the menu of a quickened palate. A changed point of view, a [178] TRAVEL fresh experience, is a journey ; and mere outing transforms the inner life beyond belief. We are generally our own jailers. The prison doors that we thought closed are ajar. A new round for a day or a visit on the next street effects an entire change of scene. Even the same work done differently or from a different mo- tive opens a new outlook. It is aston- ishing how ready to return any escape makes us. Travel is a flight that is borne up by the breeze of its own motion. When it stops, it falls. The city that rises so beautifully from the sea, is nevertheless squalid and tiresome of street. To experienced eyes all life resolves itself into its details and reveals itself to be alike and alike commonplace. Con- ditions evade customs and break quar- antine; and when we unpack our trunks, behold what we had thought [179] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE left behind ! ' Lord B left Charing Cross yesterday for Italy,' says the Times. Ah, that we could do likewise ! We start, but never arrive. We find ourselves in Bologna or Florence, in Reggio or Lucca, in Turin or Genoa. It is nowhere the land for which we set out. Petty considerations of time and place spring up in every soil. We had not counted on the weather of detail that besets us. The destination which the dream saw in its sum, the feet find only in its parts. We long geo- graphically for what irks us locally. The erstwhile glamour of our where- abouts can be restored only by looking at the map. Barring a few idiosyncra- sies of leaf and some varied exuberance of flower, life changes little with its latitude. For it is deeper than it is wide; and though distances diminish, the depths become ever more profound. [180] REALITIES NOTHING discloses so little of it- self as a mirror. Opaqueness merely refuses information but a reflecting surface misleads. Things seldom correspond with the impression they produce. Their appearance con- sists of what they reject; while they are essentially what they retain. Objects are intrinsically of the opposite color to that they seem, for the eye receives only their refuse light. Man paints the material world in such shades of the spectrum as it does not itself absorb. Characteristics are ordinarily the con- verse of character. Petulance pre- serves the inner peace; and happiness is oft-times comfortably housed behind a sour face. On all sides reality belies [181] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE its garments. We cannot tell to what extent it is the complement or corre- spondence of our conception of it. The report of the senses is but the re- turn of the same message we have sent out over their wires. So far as we can ever know, the universe is only what we put into it. As the world in general is the creation of the mind, so each one's world in particular is the objectification of his special spirit. Every one's philosophy is the trigonometric curve that connects the projections of one's own particular experiences. Life is a child that al- ways responds to a smile. Optimism and pessimism reveal the degree of our courage; trust and suspicion measure our own trustworthiness. We extract virtue or contract disease according to our touch. It is the breaks in the soul as in the skin that catch the sur- [182] REALITIES rounding dirt. The heart's estimates proclaim itself. The height of its he- ros and the depth of its devils are only the readings of its own aneroid and plummet. Portraiture holds the glass before the portrayer and, like the fabled mirror of the black art, discovers the unseen imp of darkness or spirit of light which stands behind him. How blank is the screen of life when the stereoscope of the mind ceases to picture upon it. The persons and places of our inspiration prove barren when we go back to them for it. The glory was in our eyes and not in their faces. The wisdom was not in their words but in our understanding. Our alternate idealizing and fault-finding, elation and depression, record only our own fluctuations and are not in keeping with the calm level of truth. By avoid- ing both extremes we save disappoint- [1831 THE ESSENTIAL LIFE ment and attain complacency. Life is less uneven to the long stride. Experience takes back everything it first teaches. Philosophy undoes the materialism of the senses; the body soon seems more incredible than the soul. The far-sighted see into infinity everywhere and are never faithless. Sober second thought puts appear- ances to rout. All fundamental percep- tion convinces us that we were need- lessly shamed out of the fairy-tales of childhood. Mythology becomes a bet- ter working hypothesis than that of the closed heavens. The woods are deso- late without dryads and the waters cold without nymphs. We reject an inani- mate nature; the vacated haunts of the gods still remain social with their spiritual presences. The angels have not gone, however much we may have relegated to art [184] REALITIES and infancy their erstwhile wings. Essential angeli, mental messengers, commune with every one of any soul- sensitiveness and are not denied by any far-reaching psychology. Our real con- tact is with those whom we think of and not whom we touch. Subjectively man is 'compassed about by a cloud of witnesses.' To them is his reference of all things; and theirs, the approving smile that he seeks. The spirit of man is the lieutenant of God. To sway the heart is to wield a world-wide supremacy and to control destinies. Hence the almightiness of prayer, which invokes the maximum of power upon the most potent of causes. What is planted in the mind overruns the earth. 'Commit thy way unto the Lord and he shall bring it to pass.' The established order deceives in its semblance of stability. Nothing is so [185] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE foredoomed to disappointment as a belief in the ultimateness of things as they are. Whatever is, is surely differ- ent from what is to be. Things create their own causes of change and check their own continuance. The greatest possibilities of change are generally co- incident with its greatest probabilities. Phenomena are pendulums, which are fullest of reaction at the point of their momentary stop. The conservative fights a losing battle. Everywhere un- seen forces are active, subverting these iron and granite of to-day's regime which seem so brutally secure. The state stands on piles that are fast rot- ting in the corrosive waters of criticism. Material solidity is the least durable of establishments. Permanence is deter- mined not by physical strength but by enduringness of idea. We are sceptical of schemes that have as yet had no ex- [186] REALITIES ternal verification. Yet objectification is only an ephemeral phase of reality and lit- tle proof of either truth or continuance. Governments and constitutions are but the prevalence of pre-established opinions and are ever ready to crumble at the breath of any prevailing new ones. No institution can be endowed beyond the life of its purpose. How impotent against life's stolid structures and still more unyielding facts seem our theories, discussions, resolutions, memorials! Yet all the steel, all the battalions, all the marble and cere- monial that make the existing status appear akin to the eternal order of the universe, are mere phantasms to the eye of intelligence. The might of nations goes down before the moving spirit of man, and the earthquake of the heart brings all unstable constructions to the ground. [187] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE Things are only what they suggest. Their substance is not self-contained, but swims in the circumambient neb- ula of their associations. Everything is a centre of spiritual radio-activity. The spiritually vital men are still known by their halo — albeit an invisible one. Around every star of external reality there is an enveloping atmosphere of ideas which the mind breathes. The world is empty indeed if it contain nothing but its objects. Photography falls into the error of thinking that the uncomposite moment can typify; and philosophy, into that of omitting as mere irrelevancies incidents which in fact give essential character and color. All places rebound to their natural large- ness when rid of some cramping per- sonal presence; or contract to their small meaninglessness when shorn of some ex- pansive companionship. Words have [188] REALITIES not the meaning of their definition but of their perspective. There are no me- mentos of travel but memory itself. Our delight in them lay in some secret and subtle correspondence they had with their surroundings. Only to the dreamer do dreams preserve their iri- descence. The exquisiteness of the exotic cannot be exported. The deli- cate shells of poetry lose their translu- cence when taken out of the medium in which we first saw them. How wilted is the picturesqueness of the immi- grants! There is no dreariness which romance may not illumine; and it is always paradise where the beloved dwells. The soul of man can dignify any calling. We derive too exclusively the particular and personal meaning of life and so forego the universal powers and beauties with which it is sur- charged. Always within the thicket of [189] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE thought some faun of the soul starts up and leads us following into the far depths of being. Nothing shows itself to the direct gaze nor gives itself to the studied atten- tion. Enjoyment like life must be un- self-eonscious to be deep. The beauty of scenery burns itself in only when it forms a background to some occupa- tion other than mere sight-seeing. Na- ture affects us only when associated with some spiritual experience. Not in the place but in the life it permits lies the fascination. The day's perfection glorifies all we do, yet disappoints us if we give ourselves up to its admiration with purpose aforethought. It is the moonlight not the moon that be- witches. No man equals his fame when we see him. The influence of our friends is felt most in their ab- sence. All great spiritualities have over- [190] REALITIES spread the earth after the death of their dispenser. The hedonistic paradox arises from a failure to concede the cause of pleas- ure to its own incidental and subsidiary reactions. To obtain merely the thing is not to obtain it at all. Life therefore has small donation for the ulterior mo- tive, but its meaning and blessing are reserved for those whose search is sin- cere. The subjective consequences of our acts are their true reward and are withheld from the self-seeker. Responsiveness makes all things rel- evant; and discursiveness is the strict- est logic. Correlative words and parti- cles can never express the untrammelled sequences of the mind; but the only natural consecutiveness follows an in- tegral connection. The similes and tropes of language are more clarifying than a whole disquisition. Thought [191] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE keeps itself spherical only on the unsympathetic surfaces of life; but spreads out over any inviting expanse. For concentration, though the mind's continence, is also its check. Reason like a homing- pigeon returns to its starting-point; but the free flight of the imagination is the lark of the soul. The acuteness of perception shows itself in the sparingness of its require- ments. Readers of few books are those greatly impressed by them. As beau- tiful as a bouquet is the one rose. Strength takes little food. Words rarely mean anything, but sometimes a word does. Everything is a microcosm and gives all to infer. A detail tells the whole story — as well as makes it inter- esting. The merest whiff of any great personality puts us at once in touch with the standards of which it is the product. How those sudden clear [192] REALITIES glimpses of reminiscence recall the whole environment of the vanished past! and what con jury in some trifling odor! The very traditions of Oxford and the glories of Westminster seem to accost us in the scholastic accents of England. We have but to set foot on a country's soil to feel already the thrill or the shudder with which its institu- tions inspire us. In solitude the world seems far to the young ; but to the mature, never so near. Inexperience cannot conceive the inner expansiveness of life. Asso- ciation provides for our thoughts an ever- widening park to wander in; and down the lengthening avenues of mem- ory the view becomes more and more replete. The by-paths of the soul increase in suggestiveness as we ap- proach its remoter regions. All life is a door and opens further. [193] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE Truth has no terminals. Things that do not lead on are obstacles. There is nothing gained by being recluses to the within unless we are devotees to the be- yond. How often do we find on attain- ing the coveted leisure, that we have re- duced life to a standstill and that our soul is dead within us! For man is neither subjective nor objective, but perspective. Life is but the conscious link in a chain of connection that stretches from creation into eternity. All termini touch whatever distance separate them ; they are nearer to each other than any contiguous unrelated things. Be the success or failure of our act what it will to us, in the future and final success of all things it is a factor. The moment is an ancestor as well as a descendant — the founder in ourselves and others of a lineage of its like. Nothing is for our use except as we are [194] REALITIES of further use. Generosity is the true communism. What good reason can any man give why others should not have what he has except his better use of it ? There is no indefeasible title to property but its proper employment. We who have inherited competences are as those paid in advance; honor re- quires us to earn our forestalled fee. One would not wonder at any wick- edness if he knew its excuses or be sur- prised at any merit if he knew its inducements. There is no such thing as fixing responsibility; for it is as manifold as the contributary causes of the act are numerous. Hence the im- possibility of a panacea. Our sympa- thies expand in breadth and variety with our experiences. To have run their gamut would be to end all misunder- standing and intolerance and misjudg- ment. Then would we recognize in [195] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE every one a prior or possible phase of ourselves and would show him the like charity. Love is coextensive with in- sight and insight with love. A pedestal makes weakness contemptible to itself; we reform others easiest by reverencing them. For respect puts respectability to the proof; and love, loveableness. We are truly helpful to others only if we enlarge their limits. Merely to contribute to the world's maintenance or perpetuation is of little use. The real almsgiving is the revelation of life. Philanthropy that does nothing more than make persons comfortable is without vista. Conditions are curtains across the windows of life and when drawn aside extend the view. Nothing that we understand aright speaks concern- ing itself. Through the coals of the hearth we look into infinity ; and every [196] REALITIES bookcase is a secret door into some corridor of being beyond it. Illusion is of the essence of truth. Art that treats itself as such has no vitality. Music opens in the mind long-closed galleries of association; and its modu- lations of key are accompanied by a like transit in our emotional existence. We are little moved by artistic effects if we can discuss the technique. We forget the entrance when we enter in. Let me not know what it is that charms me, lest I be bereft of the spell. While we are under its power the magic will not be referred to. The outward course of life often ap- pears to give rise to our conduct when in fact it is determined from within. Incidents simply touch the button to some pent-up force of character or light the fuse to some long-laid mine of the heart. The event which seems to [197] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE cause, only occasions. Trifles that pierce some flaw in the sheathing of our repression will precipitate wholly incommensurate outbursts of emotion. Those who then come in contact with us catch the tail-end of our storms and encounter a violence which has arisen in other quarters. The ill -humor or good-humor, the anger or kindness, that greets us has perhaps little reference to ourselves, but is rather an outlet for the soreness or exuberance of an al- ready overflowing heart. We are every- where met with the smile or frown left over from our predecessor. All reasons reduce themselves in the last analysis to ultimate fact — for which there is no reason but the will of God. Explanations can by their very nature never be more than the answering of questions by the suggesting of new ones. Causation in no way explains [198] REALITIES creation; the causative chain merely states the creative sequence, not its se- cret. Though morality finds a sanc- tion in the fundamental make-up of man, yet this in turn has no sanction but the fiat of God. The rationale of everything resides wholly in being ex- pressive and in furtherance of the divine plan. The eternal verities and moral- ities march ponderously and irresistibly on, regardless of any crackling criti- cism of the times — as if imbued with the calm consciousness that they are founded on unsubvertible fact. [199] INSTRUMENTAL HANDS AND ORCHESTRAL HEARTS THE universality of the soul tunes itself at the ear of the particu- lar. Principles derive their force from their generality but effectuate and reform themselves through their appli- cation. No general statement has any meaning to us until it has been in- stanced in our own experience. It is only when we do God's will that we 'know of the doctrine.' Theories are fitted to facts rather than facts to theo- ries: we trust no chart but one of our own tracing. All proverbs and princi- ples must be re-proved in our own lives before appreciation. They re- ceive their individual sanction through rediscovery and repromulgation. [200] INSTRUMENTAL HANDS The abstract concerns us chiefly where it touches earth. The world's interest in its laboratories is confined to the applied sciences. Men mis- trust the creeds that are without deeds. The street services of the Salvation Army win toleration for its fanaticism. Propaganda always seems admissible in proof of the truth. The molten metal of our enthusiasm is of little ser- viceableness till run into shapes. Well do we urge carefulness upon others by enjoining them to *be particular.' The clouds encounter the cooler air of reality before they drop their refresh- ing rain; and dew condenses only at the touch of the actual. It is the nat- ural law of life's geology to stiffen the poetry of feeling and the thrills of ec- stasy into the beautiful stalactites of deeds. Ideas do not bless unless they descend from Heaven and take [201] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE flesh. Incarnation is the only realiza- tion. In their application the Ten Com- mandments usually reduce themselves to only one. Effort makes itself effec- tive by concentration upon some pin- point of activity. After all is said and done, whatever the praise or glory, we still have to drag ourselves back to the desk of our particularity. The stuff of life is woven only by infinite taking of the same stitch. We won- der at being remembered by the great, forgetting that it is just this attention to detail that made them what they are. Limitation is the charter of our effi- ciency. We steady the mind by con- fining it. Life is forceful in proportion to the narrowness of its outlet. Many a man owes his success to some mis- fortune which blocked all other paths and kept him of necessity to one. It [202] INSTRUMENTAL HANDS is proverbial that universal genius ac- complishes nothing. To specialize is to focus the mind. We see sharply only by such an adjustment of the eyes as permits us to see only one thing. A general view is not synthetic but suc- cessive. The finite can behold all things only by regarding everything in turn. Wisdom is the sum of our ex- periences. Our only collective self is our accumulated self. Man is the particularization of God. The greatness of divinity is intelligible and expressible to us solely in terms of great humanity. God gave us the translation of Himself most suitable to our understanding. Yet do men ever seek to re-translate it and think thereby to read Him in the original. In the fer- vor of its adoration ecclesiasticism burns the incense of obscurity before our faith, and insists on reformulating [208] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE its human simplicity into a theology of extrahuman ideas and phraseology. Bethlehem is still too lowly for any but the large-minded. The divisions of life alone save our sanity and preserve our peace of mind. Without physical and mental sepa- rations from our fellows, we could not go about the day's vocation but should all be engaged upon rescue work. Selfishness is simply to be divided off from others by walls of peculiar thick- ness. The indulgence of events often permits contradictions to go on living side by side within us because of some partition between them which it has spared. Time overlooks certain cita- dels of our nature and leaves them de- fiantly standing long after all around them has fallen, seemingly impreg- nable by any change. There are ele- mental propensities in men that persist [204] INSTRUMENTAL HANDS despite all otherwise transforming experiences, like ice which in some cavern survives the summer sun. Civili- zation itself is but a slight remove from the savagery of nature and is confined to little reservations of life. The lands of education are settled raggedly and leave long, wasteful gaps between habi- tations. Outside of the friendly circles and associations, the contacts of men are mostly hostile and brutal. The city of our refinement lays out streets far into the adjoining fields, although its centre is still studded with vacant lots of hide- ous ugliness. Entirely other codes of courtesy are current toward strangers and inferiors than toward intimates and equals; entirely other ethical codes prevail among nations than among citizens. In our boudoirs and libraries, order and beauty reign; but in public places and among the purlieus of com- [205] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE petitive business, every sensibility is assaulted. The relative is a hedge that protects us against the illimitableness of the ab- solute. We live superficially for fear of the depths; and clutch at any little er- rand or other task of definiteness to fill the time and so save us from the ab- stract. Ennui is the scourge of the shallow day. The dinner-hour, a ci- gar, anything will serve that puts a barrier between us and the dread confrontation. Impersonality is the grimmest foe we have to face and we dare not meet it in the open. The chili of its cold emptiness pierces to the bone. We need other persons about us not so much to give us their warmth as, like clothing, to keep in our own. The abyss of the un- measured soul terrifies us, and we seek companionship less for any sup- [206] INSTRUMENTAL HANDS port it aflFords than merely to break the view. Yet the mind needs the notation of the manifold relationships of life, how- ever much the hands may be assigned to any one of them. Men may be melo- dic but mankind is symphonic. We are most effective when our thought is wide and our hands specific. Though the process be special, the spirit it- self must never become specialized. Only the common consciousness holds life in its orbit. Whatever frees me from my littleness sets me at large. To think of self and of circumstances in general terms, is to make one's self a universal man and to go forth free of all restraint of locality or con- dition. We do not breathe the open air of heaven till we get beyond the spell of our little coterie. Men become too partial to the facts they patronize. [207] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE The wheels of bureaucracy only deepen the ruts. Specialists are rarely the best qualified to reform their own depart- ment of life and are slightly disquali- fied even from administering it. The eye of the worker cannot like that of poet or statesman contemplate a cross- section of existence, but follows at most a few of the cable's strands. Life wearies at last of mere melody and craves its harmonies. A specialistic age demands orchestral unification. The parallel careers of men would lack coordination but for the philo- sophic and regulative avocations that cross and connect them, as tally-strokes cannot be counted unless grouped into fives by diagonal lines. Men who in- cur the opprobrium of doing 'nothing in particular' are of peculiar usefulness. Merely to stand on life's corners hold- ing one's self out as ready to render any [208] INSTRUMENTAL HANDS service needed, is a high calling. In union is beauty as well as strength. The whole heart pins a flower on its coat and sticks a feather in its cap ; and noble words are written in the study which the children and the affairs of the household are allowed to enter. The combined workshop and living-room which poverty forced in early life upon many men of creative note, played a part in the mellowing of their thought. The days when men wore velvet and laces about the serious business of life were the days when the humanities were catholic and ' business is business ' yet unknown. All moralization and beautification await the era when the lion and the lamb of life's extremes shall lie down together. The little child, simplicity, alone leads strength and wisdom The technical or scho- lastic can never be the universal or en- [209] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE during form of truth. It pains us to be accused of a professional manner. Men are greatest whose genius contains the largest admixture of the human. [210] WAY-SIDE HEALING LIFE extracts its necessary quick- j enings from chance words and incidents; and finds its medi- cine in the road-side flowers. It does not draw supplies from the recognized en- trepots but requisitions them along the line of march and as it goes. Its de- mands are military in their peremptori- ness and confiscate what they encounter. The miseries of life are chronic only if wilful ; for earth is full of healing and every turn of time is a tonic. Our daily bread aflFords interchangeably a ban- quet or a diet. The world is not a home for incurables but a ward of con- valescence. From nature's pharmacy we may always fetch the daybreak to bring us joy and the energetic air to [211] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE give us zest; starvation to whet our appetite and fatigue to ensure our rest. Horizons of distance and truth and darkness relieve the strain of life and never-failingly cure the crippled eyes. And in the incomparable cathedral en- closed between the stained window of the waning west and the moonlit altar of the crescent east, the day says ves- pers. Indispositions of mood are due sim- ply to our indiflFerence toward life's manifold inspiration. Our souls are dead only through failure to feel the waiting touch. No insensibility could close our sky if we but kept in constant contact with some soul-filling beauty. If we practised our virtues there would be no need to correct our faults. The comforts of life are found in its commonplaces. We derive from middle-class experiences a restful sat- [212] WAY-SroE HEALING isfaction not to be had from the aristo- cratic exceptions. Sickness and mis- fortune often restore our happiness by making ordinary life seem attractive again. Birth and death and all the in- tervening events of the common lot do not lose their impressiveness by their prevalence. They mean not less to us than to our fathers, but more. Though the papers may be filled with fatalities and the carnage of war, nevertheless, we bury our beloved ones with the same reverence and awe. Everywhere some outer reef protects our life. We owe much of our happi- ness to barriers. Though in a small place we are disconcerted by our con- spicuousness and lack of privacy, yet the city overwhelms us with our insig- nificance. The curiosity and gossip of the village are irritating, yet we benefit by the concern and kindliness of which [213] THE ESSENTIAL LITE they are symptomatic. Aristocracy en- joys the advantage of silencing the mediocre, however much democracy may surpass it in assuring to even obscure merit a voice. The natural limits of the senses once afforded to attention and sympathy their needful limitation. And although the modern extension of the senses by long-distance communication and microscopical re- porting leaves us at the mercy of the universe, yet the metropolitan inde- pendence of life and the preoccupa- tions of specialism make new provision against exposure and set us again within a circle of our own description. The dykes of indifference save us from inundation by the sea of distraction. No ills trouble us which we forget; no standards trammel us to which we cease to submit ourselves. Home- staying eyes do not envy. We may [214] WAY-SroE HEALING always shut out the world that jostles and pushes, and so feel only our own propulsions within. The mind goes an areaded way and is unaffected by the elements. How unobtrusive and si- lent is the life which we exclude! The continuity of places or persons during our long absence gives us a strange surprise. We had come to think of them as possessing only a shadowy and hold-over existence after they had once passed out of our notice. Insensibility cushions the hardness of experience; and there are always ledges in life to break the fall. Mem- ory extracts all sting and softens all sharpness. What is insupportable, un- consciousness withholds; we swoon be- fore the worst. Suffering reaches its maximum, far short of the injury's cli- max. The bluster of pain is only on the surface; but itself enters the cham- [215] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE ber of the heart with soft-shod def- erence. Life hardens the lacerated flesh of our souls so that they do not bleed to death. We are not destroyed by the consuming fire but purified. The ha- bituation that dulls our pleasures also deadens our pains. Nature recoups her forfeited rest and docks against the day what the night denies. Energy lives down to its diminished income. The nerves assume the obligations of the body so that it shall not feel the entire deficit. Sleepless nights, the burden of years, an overwhelming blow of fort- une, all administer an anaesthesia to their ills. We look awe-struck upon men whom some tragedy has befallen. But we forget that the Winkelried of the heart gathers all the shafts of fate into one point and is pierced once for all. Sympathy often exceeds in degree [216] WAY-SIDE HEALING the sorrow it commiserates; but sel- dom likens it in kind. Men are tuned to the key in which their life is played ; and once its dominant chord is sounded, the scale is to them like any other. [ml BEAUTY BEAUTY sets the stamp of au- thenticity upon all things and truth coins it till it rings. The rafters of Heaven vibrate to the voice of eloquence ; and the skies curve them- selves acoustically to the tones of truth. Beauty is primordial and structural; and finds in the rhythm of the universe a response to its appeal. All life is a resonant sounding-board to its noble utterances. The heart of humanity accompanies itself ever upon some Homeric lyre of music. The poet, the musician, sets free the souls of men and adds to the bird-song of the world. In its efflorescence thought is not didactic but artistic. Man, until he finds the arts in which to utter himself, is mute. [218] BEAUTY Nature's first provision is for the soul; it hastens to satisfy our aesthetic requirements. Earth gives us fruit and flowers to begin with; the breads of life are of humanity's own and later finding out. By what fastidious eco- nomics does nature consume its own smoke and reincorporate its refuse in- to the body of its beauty! The breath of its life remains ever sweet. The distribution of the universal supplies is conducted by a commerce in which there is no disfigurement of retail or advertisement. But materialistic man defaces the landscape. In the city he lives four-square and hides his squal- idness; but in the open his ugliness is garish and stalks the land. The mis- take of materialism is in its practi- cal eschatology. It sets our hands to work upon activities that have no con- nection with those of the soul; and [219] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE satisfies the bodily needs without ref- erence to the spiritual, leaving us to starve in a land of plenty. For a pot- tage of industrial output, we have bar- tered our birthright of beauty. God joined joy to work; but man has put them asunder. Specialism places us where we cannot see out and deprives us of the enthusiasm of attainment. We are become mere stokers on the ship of fate and know port only by the signal to stop. Men apply too single a standard to life, and measure themselves as if they were susceptible of some monometal- ism of value. But nature loves all her children alike and implants in each a special interest and beauty. Cliques and hierarchies and superiorities of all sorts are man-made and are true only for their petty purposes. But omni- science sees an equal though varied [220] BEAUTY value in all things. Everybody registers zero on the scale of his deficiency but one hundred on the scale of his unique merit. Our variance, one from another, is not so much in degree as in kind; we are not better or worse so much as different. Art is ever extending the jurisdiction of the beautiful. Health and wealth are not the only colors in life; and the worship of success is the craze of the moment. Are then wrecks and ruins so picturesque and not also our failed and fallen humankind "^ Na- poleon at the height of his power pre- sents no such striking a figure as when he stands on the sea-encircled rock of St. Helena, his exiled eyes fixed upon the northern horizon. Lear is loved by the world for his very misfortunes. What memory would there be of Job but for his afiiictions .? And upon the head of Him who suffered life's supreme [221] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE denial, mankind has placed for all time the halo of its adoration. We walked once along the lovely Bay, entranced by its beauty, and scorned the turgid sea of humanity that flowed by on the other hand. The sordid and ugly rabble seemed like nature's degenerate; the material world appeared more admirable than the hu- man. Yet when we appealed to its loveliness for sympathy, for help, we encountered insensateness and heart- lessness and cruelty. While from the unpromising creatures of our kind we met response, and found in them a spir- it akin to ours and to nature's Crea- tor. Then saw we that man is a prince in beggar's rags and that the toad's head contains a jewel. Perfection is found in the world, yet shattered into myriad pieces and scattered broadcast among the millions [222] BEAUTY of men. The attempt to restore the composite is art, is religion. Experi- ence fills us with the sense of a collective sympathy and companionship which we invariably fail to find in any one from whom we thought we had derived them. We go a-search among men and their ways for Man and his ways; we are compelled to God for the realization of the ideals with which mankind has inspired us. Only imag- ination can restore the Eden from which experience has driven us out. Through the rose-window of rever- ence the past reaches us in beautiful design and color. In the times of high- souled antiquity the race was not handicapped by a criminal record ; nor was its portrait hung in the rogues' gallery. But the age cherished fables of heroic fathers and knew its di- vine ancestry. So history is idealized [223] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE by the mind's own consecration. Man seeks asylum in the cloisters of the sa- cred and cannot be torn from the chan- cel of his soul. Memory demands a record of his highest, not of his low- est ; a standard below which To-day will fear to fall rather than one by which it will justify its failings. To be abiding, beauty must be from the bottom up. Only beauty of soul bestows upon the face beauty of ex- pression, which no perfection of feat- ure can give and no defect take away. Dignity indicates that we hear the larger music of life and move to the tempo of its deeper meaning; but van- ity is to be pleased by mere pettiness. Embellishment that is not fundament- ally justified halts progress; for deco- ration tends to make permanent and is therefore a tribute that should be paid only to the perfect. Where the pro- [224] BEAUTY portions are amiss, architecture only enables ugliness the longer to monop- olize the site. By ornamenting the mediocre we perpetuate the imperfect. The misapplications of sentiment and art have fastened upon the world its an- achronisms of injustice and immorality, which without them would have been swept away. Indiscriminate adornment is the ally of reaction. Nature beautifies and man sanctifies all accomplished fact. The very hours acquire their conventional use by a consecration or desecration, of which we have first to free them before we can dedicate them to our own high purposes. Patriotism upholds and perpetuates political blun- ders. The motives of those who bring on a war are seldom the motives of those who fight its battles. There is no conflict so ignoble but that heroism illumines it. [225] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE Few things are of suflBcient intrinsic beauty for aesthetic canonization. Life is still too tentative for veneer. Noth- ing renders a manner or an education so hopeless as 'finish.' When we begin to round oflf our thought its creative- ness is at an end; because the very essentials of growth are formlessness and expansiveness. Man's grandeur lies in his incompleteness. ' It doth not yet appear what we shall be.' We build but the foundation; the roofing we leave to a later age. The majestic cathedrals of the Continent were erected by men who could refrain from too speedy a superstructure. Far greater is it to lay the corner-stone of the future than to complete any cottage of to-day. The natural is always the beautiful — and ultimately the conventional. Fads, formulas, meaningless ceremonies, are in derogation of the whole truth and [226] BEAUTY to that extent exclude life from the full sunshine of beauty. Hatred of the arti- ficialities of conduct is a sign of original force and inherent sincerity. Those who cling to them are always men of empti- ness who do so for concealment. The mechanical in religion, in politics, in so- ciety, hide themselves behind the skirts of 'regularity.' But the world exposes the grain of its wood when it thinks it will take a polish. We are in favor of openness when we know we can stand the test; and admit ignorance willingly of such things as we do not think it important to know. Individuals as well as nations, when sure of the abundance of their resources, may abandon a policy of pretence or of preparation. Diplo- macy is fearless when it possesses an alternative. Art is only the wider expression of a fundamental wish to do everything [227] THE ESSENTIAL LITE with gracefulness and truth. Unless it be the natural outpouring of a living idea, it is powerless. All artistic utter- ance is a psean of our personality. We proclaim from the house-tops what we have been telling our own soul. None can be a poet to whom the poetic life is not a necessity; no philosophy can be preached effectively except one with which we have disciplined our- selves. For such things are in the text- ure and not stencilled. Beauty is not a special plant but the blossom of all that grows. The way-side pleasure de- lights more than any product of the conservatory. Only incidental beauty pleases. Let us be the man behind the books. iVIen who write telling words do so with the pen of their character and the ink of their blood. Hence the peculiar in- terest in the personality and biography [228] BEAUTY of great thinkers. They have them- selves become part of their context. Words are influential only from men who far outweigh them. The casual remarks of the great are received with a deference which we cannot feel toward even the more deliberate utterance of those whose worth life has not other- wise certified. For the effectiveness of all outflow is dependent upon its head. What we give is acceptable only when we greatly exceed it. The poetic thought gets at the pith of beauty. All beautiful expression comes of a pent-up joy that distributes itself generally and gradually through chosen words and acts. Esthetic in- sight is the Magna Charta of spiritual liberty. These are the only inalienable rights: To live where no importunity of specialism prevails but where with equal claim and voice all waits; to get [229] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE from each moment its full present do- nation and future hint; to gather to- gether within one's self all rays of all truth and focus them into burning- points of efficacy and power. Beauty is from the beginning; only its language is late. The heavens opened for us in infancy: a music sounded in our ear then that is since silent; visions were seen then that have since vanished. The chords of the spirit which first-life stirred, respond to no later touch. There were possibilities of beauty in those days that no paint- er's or poet's imagination compasses. Life's far-views always burst upon us suddenly and quickly cloud over. The methods of the muse make men in- credulous of any natural development of the divine and have traditionally predisposed them to beliefs in its birth full-grown. A flash of sight — and all [230] BEAUTY the rest of time is consumed in the tell- ing. A moment of inspiration to a thousand of toil, is the recipe of all lives. The workmanship of experience spent upon the enthusiasm of youth — it is this that produces the classics. The terraced gardens of life descend by degrees to the sea, and what they lose in outlook they gain in approach. [231] LIFE'S NEW LANDS OFOR the freedom of the prime, when man could feel the flesh of things and see the truth through transparent waters! Experi- ences are all inventoried and the joy of discovery is gone. Everything is hand- ed to us labelled and with the price- mark on. We are inoculated with edu- cation and convention has stiflFened our movements. Thought is encrusted in the words of its own former fluency. And though classic idioms are but the second generation of slang, we are not permitted our own vernacular. Origi- nal sensations and appraisements have become mere traditions. The waters of life are no longer thought fit to drink unless boiled or bottled. [232] LIFE'S NEW LANDS - The soul rises and falls with the standards about it; and morality is less an index of character than a reflex of experience. Life, even death, is con- ducted in accordance with ideas which we think the world holds concerning it. Conversation indicates not so much the mental plane of the speaker as of the listener. Our bearing conforms to what we conceive to be expected of us. The assertive or the receptive manner sel- dom betokens a like disposition, but is simply the covert in which some timidity or indirection of our nature seeks to hide. Often we give bat- tle from sheer nervousness of attack. For fear of disclosing our real reluct- ance we assume an aggressiveness which we do not feel; and give offence where we meant merely to hide our embarrassment. If we are afraid of being asked questions, we are profuse [233] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE in asking them. Our passiveness and silence are frequently due to the very wealth of our mental comment or pro- test. Life can never be found in any state- ment of it. It is useless to expect the listener to get from books and lectures what the speaker himself got from con- tact with the actualities. Only by swimming up-stream and leaping the dams, can we reach the refreshing head-waters. Books at best shine but a short distance into the future; and usually sum up merely what has been. Even the classics are a former setting of life. To-day's point of view can be had only in to-day's words. Even events that do not change nevertheless change their meaning ; for this consists in their reference to the rest of life — which is ever new. All lexicons must be re-edited for every age; and if their [234] LIFE'S NEW LANDS text is to be preserved at all, new defi- nitions must be inserted. We must be more than our fathers to equal their fame. No education fulfils its function that does not obliterate itself and leave life the one unforgettable thing learned. The technicalities in its curriculum must disappear from sight, having merely fitted us for a wider discern- ment. No university dispenses truth that does not reduce all text-books and parchments to irrelevancy and quicken life anew in the persons and places and particular conditions where it now ex- ists. All chronicle should admit itself to be the mere hap-hazard of history and to have no importance beyond showing that things happened after this fashion, a little more or less or dif- ferent in no way affecting their value. History misses its meaning that does [235] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE not teach us to live more entirely in the present. Travel fails to bring us its benefit that does not root us more firmly where we are. All new Romes are Vandal to the old. Each generation dwells upon the debris of its predecessors' ruins and builds with the fragments of its fathers' struct- ures. Over the earth nature spreads periodically a fresh surface and bids man make a new impress upon it. Likewise the reticence of history for- ever gives the race another chance. The sacrilege and ugliness of transition are soon succeeded by a new beauty and poetry. Life greens around every well-spring. Each day opens as a clean- washed tablet before us. Nightly we dip the soul into the sea of oblivion and in the morning receive it back lucid. Differentiation is the enlargement of [236] LIFE'S NEW LANDS life. All by going their own way find room. Water that rises in the hills and flows to the sea, takes — each stream — a separate course. Men are ships that cross the same ocean yet because of their divergence of route are seldom within hailing-distance of one another. We are hull-down to even our nearest friend soon after leaving port. Char- acter is chemical and is determined by the proportion of constituent traits rather than by their mere presence. Analysis tells composition but not qual- ities. In the make-up of men, no an- alytic similarity ensures synthetic like- ness. There can be no more monotony of character than of countenance; for despite any resemblance of features the least difference is suflBcient for distinc- tion from everybody else, and produces a wholly different effect. Every one is a new emphasis upon [237] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE life. Not even our two eyes see alike or from exactly the same point of view ; much less do any two men. We differ so much from others that to be in- wardly like them we must be out- wardly otherwise; we cannot share both their conditions and their feelings. Great men are flattered with satellites ; but they remember that they found the marshal's baton in their own knapsack and therefore court the favor of those who do not run after them. A prece- dent may prove us not wrong; but it also proves us not wholly right. The moral bugles are always calling; yet the ear of every man is pricked only to the one that calls him, and we see that he is acting under special orders. Hap- piness is an affair of personal negotia- tion between me and my lot; and though others may enter into like treaty, few obtain the same peculiar privileges. [238] LIFE'S NEW LANDS All are fed at the same spoon, yet nourished to what different purpose! Man perpetuates the penalties im- posed by evolution upon variations from the type. Society like nature hurls its anathemas against all aberra- tions from the normal except the better- adapted one. Though eccentricity is interesting, conformity is more pleasing. Lesser men are not excused for the same peculiarities as are pardoned in the great. Nor do the unconvention- alities of the boor meet the same toler- ation as do those of the genius, though both violate only the same proprieties. Yet always the non-variant is doomed. There is safety only in the exceptional. The slums are the sham- bles of the human race. It is every- where impossible to maintain the status quo of life. We must flee from the City of Destruction. To hold on to the old [239] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE is to dwindle and dry-rot; the past con- tains little to which we could return. The flood of extraction overwhelms all but the Noah of the new. Immortality rescues only that part of us which de- serves it. Let us secede to the Mons Sacer of ourselves. The avenues of life do over -duty; for traflSc refuses to divert itself into the side streets. Its congestion is solely an affair of men's unwillingness to leave the crowd. Competition is met in the common; but when we seek our special things, we find life undis- puted. We are surprised at the empti- ness of our favorite places, forgetting how singular any variance makes us and how easily we shake off the pur- suing throng. All superiority reserves its own seats. Individuality becomes amazed at the sparseness of the popu- lation. Life swarms only at the East [240] LIFE'S NEW LANDS End of the undifferentiated ; but in the palace or on the house-top, it is lonely. Divergence brings us into new cate- gories and makes us incomparable. Value that is different is doubled. Some special qualification exalts us into the company of men who along the old lines, outclassed us. Our perfection is found only on those sides of us where we are most alive. To how limited a domain is any one superiority confined. The successful business man may not be socially acceptable in the circle of his employee; and the scholar feels abashed in the company of men of action and affairs. The spiritual world is never over- populated, but increases in area faster than souls multiply. Each new birth lifts the sky. We need only outlook, not elbow-room. So long as the heav- ens are high, there is no crowding. [241] THE ESSENTIAL LIFE Primitive man wanted large domain for the chase ; pastoral man, wide acres for tillage; but the spiritual man gets his sustenance where life is thickest. The physical concentration of the race brings spiritual spaciousness to the in- dividual. The intensive mind needs little acreage and raises its choicest fruits in the soil of its own sequestra- tion. Though the wide grazing-lands of life afford pasturage to the body, they are emptiness to the mind. But cities seek within, and create beautiful in- teriors of home and spirit. We attain intellectual emancipation only by for- feiting our ancestral estates. Indi- vidual opulence must be sought in an ever-increasing communal welfare and beauty. Columbus added a new hemi- sphere to the earth and enlarged the material globe; but everybody brings with him into life an entirely new spir- [242] LIFE'S NEW LANDS itual sphere for himself. Each inhab- its a planet of his own and extends the limits of the known world. Men are not born where they be- long. All life that is vitally astir must migrate. No one can win his spiritual fortune at home but must seek it afar. We become immigrants into life's new lands even though we never change our house -number; and there be many emigrants on east-bound ships. We have to forswear the scenes of our up- bringing and our early circle of affini- ties in order to find those that suit us. It is a pure geographical accident that has determined the course of em- pire westward. Wherever immensities bound man's movements and extend his view, thither is he destined. Mi- gration knows no compass but the di- rection of its dreams. [243]