Class Book , THE DURABLE SATISFACTIONS OF LIFE THE Durable Satisfactions OF Life BY CHARLES W. ELIOT New York THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO. PUBLISHERS -*p<3 \ <£ COPYRIGHT, I 9IO, BY THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO. Fifth Edition v JZS yv/ o ) J J CONTENTS fAGE THE DURABLE SATISFACTIONS OF LIFS I THE HAPPY LIFE II JOHN GILLEY 57 GREAT RICHES f07 THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE I55 THE DURABLE SATISFACTIONS OF LIFE An address given to the new students at Harvard University, on October j, I poj THE DURABLE SATISFACTIONS OF LIFE FOR educated men what are the sources of the solid and durable satisfactions of life ? I hope you are all aiming at the solid, durable satisfactions of life, not primarily the gratifications of this moment or of to-morrow, but the satisfactions that are going to last and grow. So far as I have seen, there is one indispensable foundation for the satisfactions of life — health. A young man ought to be a clean, wholesome, vigorous animal. That is the foundation for everything else, and I hope you will all be that, if you are nothing more. We have to build everything in this world of domestic joy and professional success, everything of a useful, honorable career, on bodily whole- someness and vitality. [3] THE DURABLE SATISFACTIONS OF LIFE This being a clean, wholesome, vigor- ous animal involves a good deal. It in- volves not condescending to the ordinary barbaric vices. One must avoid drunk- enness, gluttony, licentiousness, and get- ting into dirt of any kind, in order to be a clean, wholesome, vigorous animal. Still, none of you would be content with this achievement as the total outcome of your lives. It is a happy thing to have in youth what are called animal spirits — a very descriptive phrase ; but animal spirits do not last even in animals; they belong to the kitten or puppy stage. It is a wholesome thing to enjoy for a time, or for a time each day all through life, sports and active bodily exercise. These are legitimate enjoyments, but, if made the main object of life, they tire. They cease to be a source of durable satisfaction. Play must be incidental in a satisfactory life. What is the next thing, then, that we want in order to make sure of durable satisfactions in life? We need a strong mental grip, a wholesome capacity for [4] THE DURABLE SATISFACTIONS OF LIFE hard work. It is intellectual power and aims that we need. In all the professions — learned, scientific, or industrial — large mental enjoyments should come to edu- cated men. The great distinction between the privileged class to which you belong, the class that has opportunity for pro- longed education, and the much larger class that has not that opportunity, is that the educated class lives mainly by the ex- ercise of intellectual powers and gets there- fore much greater enjoyment out of life than the much larger class that earns a livelihood chiefly by the exercise of bodily powers. You ought to obtain here, there- fore, the trained capacity for mental labor, rapid, intense, and sustained. That is the great thing to get in college, long before the professional school is entered. Get it now. Get it in the years of college life. It is the main achievement of college life to win this mental force, this capacity for keen observation, just inference, and sus- tained thought, for everything that we mean by the reasoning power of man. That capacity will be the main source of [5] THE DURABLE SATISFACTIONS OF LIFE intellectual joys and of happiness and con- tent throughout a long and busy life. But there is something more, some- thing beyond this acquired power of intel- lectual labor. As Shakespeare puts it, " the purest treasure mortal times afford is spotless reputation." How is that treasure won ? It comes by living with honor, on honor. Most of you have begun already to live honorably and honored, for the life of honor begins early. Some things the honorable man cannot do, never does. He never wrongs or degrades a woman. He never oppresses or cheats a person weaker or poorer than himself. He never betrays a trust. He is honest, sincere, candid, and generous. It is not enough to be honest. An honorable man must be generous, and I do not mean generous with money only. I mean generous in his judgments of men and women, and of the nature and prospects of mankind. Such generosity is a beautiful attribute of the man of honor. How does honor come to a man ? What is the evidence of the honorable [6] THE DURABLE SATISFACTIONS OF LIFE life ? What is the tribunal which declares at last, " This was an honorable man " ? You look now for the favorable judgment of your elders, — of parents and teachers and older students ; but these elders will not be your final judges, and you had better get ready now in college to appear before the ultimate tribunal, the tribunal of your contemporaries and the younger genera- tions. It is the judgment of your con- temporaries that is most important to you ; and you will find that the judgment of your contemporaries is made up alarm- ingly early, — it may be made up this year in a way that sometimes lasts for life and beyond. It is made up in part by persons to whom you have never spoken, by per- sons who in your view do not know you, and who get only a general impression of you ; but always it is contemporaries whose judgment is formidable and unavoidable. Live now in the fear of that tribunal, — not an abject fear, because independence is an indispensable quality in the honorable man. There is an admirable phrase in the Declaration of Independence, a document [7] THE DURABLE SATISFACTIONS OF LIFE which it was the good fashion of my time for boys to commit to memory. I doubt if that fashion still obtains. Some of our public action looks as if it did not. " When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation." That phrase — " a decent respect " — is a very happy one. Cherish " a decent respect to the opinions of mankind," but never let that interfere with your personal declaration of independ- ence. Begin now to prepare for the judg- ment of the ultimate human tribunal. Look forward to the important crises of your life. They are nearer than you are apt to imagine. It is a very safe protective rule to live to-day as if you were going to marry a pure woman within a month. That rule you will find a safeguard for worthy [8] THE DURABLE SATISFACTIONS OF LIFE living. It is a good rule to endeavor hour by hour and week after week to learn to work hard. It is not well to take four minutes to do what you can accomplish in three. It is not well to take four years to do what you can perfectly accomplish in three. It is well to learn to work in- tensely. You will hear a good deal of advice about letting your soul grow and breathing in without effort the atmosphere of a learned society or place of learning. Well, you cannot help breathing and you cannot help growing; those processes will take care of themselves. The question for you from day to day is how to learn to work to advantage, and college is the place and now is the time to win mental power. And, lastly, live to-day and every day like a man of honor. [9] THE HAPPY LIFE First read before Phillips Academy, Exeter, N". H. y but later rewritten THE HAPPY LIFE THE MORAL PURPOSE OF THE UNIVERSE MY subject is " The Happy Life." I address here especially young peo- ple who have passed the period of child- hood, with its unreflecting gayety, fleeting shadows, gusty griefs, and brief despairs, and have entered, under conditions of sin- gular privilege, upon rational and respon- sible living. For you happiness must be conscious, considerate, and consistent with habits of observing, reading, and reflecting. Now, reflecting has always been a grave business, " Where but to think is to be full of sorrow And leaden-eyed despairs " ; and it must be confessed that our times present some new obstacles to a life of thoughtful happiness. Until this century the masses of mankind were almost dumb ; 1 13] THE HAPPY LIFE but now their moans and complaints have become audible through telephone, tele- graph, and rotary press. The millions are now saying what the moody poets have always said : " The flower that smiles to-day To-morrow dies, All that we wish to stay Tempts, and then flies. What is this world's delight ? Lightning that mocks the night, Brief even as bright/' The gloomy moralist is still repeating : " I have seen all the works that are done under the sun, and behold! all is vanity and vexation of spirit." The manual laborers of to-day, who are much better off than the same classes of laborers have been in any earlier times, are saying just what Shelley said to the men of England in 1819: "The seed ye sow another reaps, The wealth ye find another keeps, The robes ye weave another wears, The arms ye forge another bears." [ 14] THE HAPPY LIFE They would adopt without change the words in which that eminent moralist, Robinson Crusoe, a century earlier, de- scribed the condition of the laboring classes : cc The men of labor spent their strength in daily struggling for bread to maintain the vital strength they labored with ; so living in a daily circulation of sorrow, living but to work, and working but to live, as if daily bread were the only end of wearisome life, and a wearisome life the only occasion of daily bread." Matthew Arnold calls his love to come to the window and listen to the "melan- choly, long-withdrawing roar" of the sea upon the moonlit beach at Dover; and these are his dismal words to her : "Ah, love, let us be true To one another ! for the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain ; And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night." [ 15] THE HAPPY LIFE The poets are by no means the only of- fenders ; the novelists and scientists take their turn. The fiction of this century deals much with the lives of the wretched, dissolute, and vicious, and with the most unjust and disastrous conditions of modern society. A fresh difficulty in the way of natural happiness is the highly speculative opinion, lately put forward by men of science and promptly popularized, to the effect that external nature offsets every good with an evil, and that the visible uni- verse is unmoral, or indifferent as regards right and wrong, revealing no high pur- pose or intelligent trend. This is, indeed, a melancholy notion ; but that it should find acceptance at this day, and really make people miserable, only illustrates the curious liability of the human intelligence to sudden collapse. The great solid con- viction which science, within the past three centuries, has enabled thinking men and women to settle down on is that all dis- covered and systematized knowledge is as nothing compared with the undiscovered, and that a boundless universe of un- [16] THE HAPPY LIFE imagined facts and forces interpenetrates and encompasses what seems the universe to us. In spite of this impregnable con- viction people distress themselves because, forsooth, they cannot discern the moral purpose or complete spiritual intent of this dimly seen, fractional universe which is all we know. Why should they dis- cern it ? LOWER AND HIGHER PLEASURES It is, then, in spite of many old and some new discouragements that we are all seeking the happy life. We know that education spreads, knowledge grows, and public liberty develops ; but can we be sure that public and private happiness increase ? What the means and sources of happiness are in this actual world, with our present surroundings and with no reference to joys or sorrows in any other world, is a natu- ral, timely, and wholesome inquiry. We may be sure that one principle will hold throughout the whole pursuit of thought- ful happiness, — the principle that the best 1 17] THE HAPPY LIFE way to secure future happiness is to be as happy as is rightfully possible to-day. To secure any desirable capacity for the future, near or remote, cultivate it to-day. What would be the use of immortality for a per- son who cannot use well half an hour? asks Emerson. In trying to enumerate the positive sat- isfactions which an average man may rea- sonably expect to enjoy in this world, I of course take no account of those too com- mon objects of human pursuit, — wealth, power, and fame, — first, because they do not as a rule contribute to happiness ; and, secondly, because they are unattainable by mankind in general. I invite you to con- sider only those means of happiness which the humble and obscure millions may possess. The rich and famous are too few to affect appreciably the sum of hu- man happiness. I begin with satisfactions of sense. Sensuous pleasures, like eating and drinking, are sometimes described as ani- mal, and therefore unworthy. It must be confessed, however, that men are in this life [ 18] THE HAPPY LIFE animals all through, — whatever else they may be, — and that they have a right to enjoy without reproach those pleasures of animal existence which maintain health, strength, and life itself. Familiar ascetic and pessimistic dogmas to the contrary notwithstanding, these pleasures, taken naturally and in moderation, are all pure, honorable, and wholesome. Moreover, all attempts to draw a line between bodily satisfactions on the one hand and mental or spiritual satisfactions on the other, and to distinguish the first as beastly indul- gences and the second as the only pleasures worthy of a rational being, have failed and must fail ; for it is manifestly impossible to draw a sharp line of division between pleasures, and to say that these are bodily and those intellectual or moral. Are the pleasures of sight and hearing bodily or mental ? Is delight in harmony or in color a pleasure of the sense or of the imagination P What sort of a joy is a thing of beauty ? Is it an animal or a spiritual joy? Is the delight of a mother in fondling her smiling baby a physical or [ 19] THE HAPPY LIFE a moral delight ? But though we cannot divide pleasures into animal and moral, unworthy and worthy, we can, neverthe- less, divide them into lower and higher pleasures, — the lower, those which, like eating and drinking, prompt to the mainte- nance and reproduction of life and which can be impaired or destroyed by prolon- gation or repetition ; the higher, those which, like the pleasures of the eye or ear, seem to be ends in themselves. In the lower there can be destructive excess in the higher excess is impossible. Recognizing, then, that there are higher pleasures than eating and drinking, let us clearly perceive that three meals a day all one's life not only give in themselves a constantly renewed innocent satisfaction, but provide the necessary foundation for all other satisfactions. Taking food and drink is a great enjoyment for healthy people, and those who do not enjoy eating seldom have much capacity for enjoyment or usefulness of any sort. Under ordinary circumstances it is by no means a purely bodily pleasure. We do not eat alone, [20 ] THE HAPPY LIFE but in families, or sets of friends and com- rades ; and the table is the best centre of friendships and of the domestic affections. When, therefore, a working-man says that he has worked all his life to procure a subsistence for himself and his family, he states that he has secured some fundamen- tal satisfactions, namely, food, productive employment, and family life. The satis- faction of eating is so completely a matter of appetite that such distinction as there is between the luxurious and the hardy in regard to this enjoyment is altogether in favor of the hardy. Who does not re- member some rough and perhaps scanty meal in camp, or on the march, or at sea, or in the woods, which was infinitely more delicious than the most luxurious dinner during indoor or sedentary life ? But that appetite depends on health. Take good care, then, of your teeth and your stomachs, and be ashamed not of enjoying your food, but of not enjoying it. There was a deal of sound human nature in the unexpected reply of the dying old woman to her min- ister's leading question : " Here at the [21 ] THE HAPPY LIFE end of a long life, which of the Lord's mercies are you most thankful for ? " Her eye brightened as she answered, "My victuals." Let us count next pleasures through the eye. Unlike the other senses, the eye is always at work except when we sleep, and may consequently be the ve- hicle of far more enjoyment than any other organ of sense. It has given our race its ideas of infinity, symmetry, grace, and splendor ; it is a chief source of child- hood's joys, and throughout life the guide to almost all pleasurable activities. The pleasure it gives us, however, depends largely upon the amount of attention we pay to the pictures which it incessantly sets before the brain. Two men walk along the same road : one notices the blue depths of the sky, the floating clouds, the opening leaves upon the trees, the green grass, the yellow buttercups, and the far stretch of the open fields ; the other has precisely the same pictures on his retina, but pays no attention to them. One sees, and the other does not see ; one enjoys an [ " ] THE HAPPY LIFE unspeakable pleasure, and the other loses that pleasure which is as free to him as the air. The beauties which the eye reveals are infinitely various in quality and scale : one mind prefers the minute, another the vast ; one the delicate and tender, another the coarse and rough ; one the inanimate things, another the animate creation. The whole outward world is the kingdom of the observant eye. He who enters into any part of that kingdom to possess it has a store of pure enjoyment in life which is literally inexhaustible and immeasurable. His eyes alone will give him a life worth living. Next comes the ear as a minister of enjoyment, but next at a great interval. The average man probably does not rec- ognize that he gets much pleasure through hearing. He thinks that his ears are to him chiefly a convenient means of human intercourse. But let him experience a temporary deafness, and he will learn that many a keen delight came to him through the ear. He will miss the beloved voice, the merry laugh, the hum of the city, the [23] THE HAPPY LIFE distant chime, the song of birds, the run- ning brook, the breeze in the trees, the lapping wavelets, and the thundering beach ; and he will learn that familiar sounds have been to him sources of pure delight, — an important element in his well-being. Old Izaak Walton found in the lovely sounds of earth a hint of heaven : " How joyed my heart in the rich melodies That overhead and round me did arise ! The moving leaves — the water's gentle flow — Delicious music hung on every bough. Then said I in my heart, If that the Lord Such lovely music on the earth accord ; If to weak, sinful man such sounds are given, Oh ! what must be the melody of heaven ! " A high degree of that fine pleasure which music gives is not within the reach of all, yet there are few to whom the pleasure is wholly denied. To take part in produc- ing harmony, as in part-singing, gives the singers an intense pleasure, which is doubt- less partly physical and partly mental. I [ 24] THE HAPPY LIFE am told that to play good music at sight, as one of several performers playing dif- ferent instruments, is as keen a sensuous and intellectual enjoyment as the world affords. These pleasures through the eye and ear are open in civilized society to all who have the will to seek them, and the intel- ligence to cultivate the faculties through which they are enjoyed. They are quite as likely to bless him who works with hand or brain all day for a living as him who lives inactive on his own savings or on those of other people. The outward world yields them spontaneously to every healthy body and alert mind ; but the ac- tive mind is as essential to the winning of them as the sound body. There is one great field of knowledge, too much neglected in our schools and colleges, which offers to the student end- less pleasures and occupations through the trained and quickened senses of sight, hearing, and touch. I mean the wide field called natural history, which com- prehends geography, meteorology, bot- [25] THE HAPPY LIFE any, zoology, mineralogy, and geology. Charles Darwin, the greatest naturalist of the past century, said that with natural history and the domestic affections a man might be truly happy. Not long ago I was urging a young naturalist of twenty- six to spend the next summer in Europe. He thought it was hardly right for him to allow himself that indulgence ; and when I urged that the journey would be very enjoyable as well as profitable, he replied : "Yes; but you know I can be happy anywhere in the months when things are growing." He meant that the pleasures of observation were enough for him when he could be out of doors. That young man was poor, delicate in health, and of a retiring and diffident disposition ; yet life was full of keenest interest to him. Our century is distinguished by an ardent return of civilized man to that love of nature from which books and urban life had temporarily diverted him. The po- etry and the science of our times alike fos- ter this love, and add to the delights which [26] THE HAPPY LIFE come to lovers of nature through the keen senses, the delights of the soaring imagi- nation and the far-reaching reason. In many of our mental moods the contem- plation of Nature brings peace and joy. Her patient ways shame hasty little man; her vastnesses calm and elevate his troubled mind ; her terrors fill him with awe ; her inexplicable and infinite beauties with de- light. Her equal care for the least things and the greatest corrects his scale of values. He cannot but believe that the vast ma- terial frame of things is informed and directed by an infinite Intelligence and Will, just as his little animal body is informed by his own conscious mind and will. It is apparent from what I have said of pleasures through the eye and ear, and from contact with nature, that a good measure of out-of-door life is desirable for him who would secure the elements of a happy life. The urban tendency of our population militates against free access to out-of-door delights. The farmer works all day in the fields, and his children wander at will in [27] THE HAPPY LIFE the open air ; the sailor can see at any moment the whole hemisphere of the heavens and the broad plain of the sea ; but the city resident may not see a tree or a shrub for weeks together, and can barely discern a narrow strip of sky, as he walks at the bottom of the deep ditches we call streets. The wise man whose work is in the city, and indoors at that, will take every possible opportunity to escape into the fresh air and the open country. Cer- tain good tendencies in this respect have appeared within recent years. Hundreds of thousands of people who must work daily in compact cities now live in open suburbs ; cities provide parks and decorated avenues of approach to parks ; out-of-door sports and exercises become popular ; safe country boarding-schools for city children are multiplied, and public holidays and half-holidays increase in number. These are appreciable compensations for the dis- advantages of city life. The urban popu- lation which really utilizes these facilities may win a keener enjoyment from nature than the rural population, to whom nat- [ 28 ] THE HAPPY LIFE ural beauty is at every moment accessible. The cultivation of mind and the increased sensibility which city life develops heighten the delight in natural beauty. Moreover, though man destroys much natural love- liness in occupying any territory for pur- poses of residence or business, he also creates much loveliness of grassy fields and banks, mirroring waters, perfectly devel- oped trees, graceful shrubs, and brilliant flowers. In these days no intelligent city population need lack the means and op- portunities of frequent out-of-door enjoy- ment. Our climate is indeed rough and changeable, but, on the whole, produces scenes of much more various beauty than any monotonous climate, while against the occasional severity of our weather artificial protection is more and more provided. What we may wisely ask of our tailors and our landscape architects is protection in the open air from the extremes of heat, cold, and wind. The provision of an equable climate indoors is by no means sufficient to secure either the health or the happiness of the people. [29] THE HAPPY LIFE FAMILY LOVE From the love of nature we turn to family love. The domestic affections are the principal source of human happiness and well-being. The mutual loves of hus- band and wife, of parents and children, of brothers and sisters, are not only the chief sources of happiness, but the chief springs of action, and the chief safeguards from evil. The young man and the young woman work and save in order that they may be married and have a home of their own ; once married, they work and save that they may bring up well a family. The supreme object of the struggling and striving of most men is the family. One might almost say that the security and elevation of the family and of family life are the prime objects of civilization, and the ultimate ends of all industry and trade. In respect to this principal source of hap- piness, the young mechanic, 1 operative, clerk, or laborer is generally better off than the young professional man, inasmuch as [30] THE HAPPY LIFE he can marry earlier. He goes from the parental roof to his own roof with only a short interval, if any, between. The working-man is often a grandfather before he is fifty years old ; the professional man but seldom. Love before marriage, being the most attractive theme of poetry and fiction, gets a very disproportionate amount of attention in literature, as com- pared with the domestic affections after marriage. Concerning these normal domestic joys, any discerning person who has experienced them, and has been intimate with four or five generations, will be likely to make three observations : In the first place, the realization of the natural and legitimate enjoyments in domestic life depends on the possession of physical and moral health. Whatever impairs bodily vigor, animal spirits, and good temper lessens the chance of attaining the natural domestic joys, — joys which by themselves, without any additions whatever except food and steady work, make earthly life worth living. In the second place, they endure, and in- [31 ] THE HAPPY LIFE crease with lapse of years ; the satisfactions of normal married life do not decline, but mount. Children are more and more in- teresting as they grow older ; at all stages, from babyhood to manhood and woman- hood, they are to be daily enjoyed. Peo- ple who think they shall enjoy their children to-morrow, or year after next, will never enjoy them. The greatest pleasure in them comes late ; for, as Hamerton mentions in his " Human Intercourse/* the most exquisite satisfaction of the parent is to come to respect and admire the powers and character of the child. Thirdly, the family affections and joys are the ultimate source of civilized man's idea of a loving God, — an idea which is a deep root of happiness when it becomes an abiding conviction. They have supplied all the conceptions of which this idea is the supreme essence, or infinite product. It deserves mention here that these supreme enjoyments of the normal, natural life — the domestic joys — are woman's more than man's ; because his function of bread-winning necessarily sepa- rates him from his home during a good [32] THE HAPPY LIFE part of his time, particularly since domes- tic or house industries have been super- seded by factory methods. PLEASURE IN BODILY EXERTION I turn now to the satisfaction which comes from physical exertion, including brain-work. Everybody knows some form of activity which gives him satisfaction. Perhaps it is riding a horse, or rowing a boat, or tramping all day through woods or along beaches with a gun on the shoulder, or climbing a mountain, or massing into a ball or bloom a paste of sticky iron in a puddling furnace (that heaviest of la- bor), or wrestling with the handles of the plunging, staggering plough, or tugging at a boat's tiller when the breeze is fresh, or getting in hay before the shower. There is real pleasure and exhilaration in bodily exertion, particularly with companionship (of men or animals) and competition. There is pleasure in the exertion even when it is pushed to the point of fatigue, as many a sportsman knows ; and this pleasure is in 3 [ 33 ] THE HAPPY LIFE good measure independent of the attain- ment of any practical end. There is pleasure in mere struggle, so it be not hope- less, and in overcoming resistance, obsta- cles, and hardships. When to the pleasure of exertion is added the satisfaction of pro- ducing a new value, and the further satis- faction of earning a livelihood through that new value, we have the common pleasur- able conditions of productive labor. Every working-man who is worth his salt (I care not whether he works with his hands and brains, or with his brains alone) takes satisfaction, first, in the working, secondly, in the product of his work, and, thirdly, in what that product yields to him. The carpenter who takes no pleasure in the mantel he has made, the farm laborer who does not care for the crops he has culti- vated, the weaver who takes no pride in the cloth he has woven, the engineer who takes no interest in the working of the engine he directs, is a monstrosity. It is an objection to many forms of intellectual labor that their immediate product is in- tangible and often imperceptible. The [34] THE HAPPY LIFE fruit of mental labor is often diffused, re- mote, or subtile. It eludes measurement, and even observation. On the other hand, mental labor is more enjoyable than manual labor in the process. The essence of the joy lies in the doing rather than in the result of the doing. There is a life- long and solid satisfaction in any productive labor, manual or mental, which is not pushed beyond the limit of strength. The difference between the various occupations of men in respect to yielding this satis- faction is much less than people suppose ; for occupations become habitual in time, and the daily work in every calling gets to be so familiar that it may fairly be called monotonous. My occupation, for instance, offers, I believe, more variety than that of most professional men ; yet I should say that nine-tenths of my work, from day to day, was routine work, presenting no more novelty or fresh interest to me than the work of a carpenter or blacksmith, who is always making new things on old types, presents to him. The Oriental, hot- climate figment that labor is a curse is [35] THE HAPPY LIFE contradicted by the experience of all the progressive nations. The Teutonic stock owes everything that is great and inspiring in its destiny to its faculty of overcoming difficulties by hard work, and of taking heartfelt satisfaction in this victorious work. It is not the dawdlers and triflerswho find life worth living ; it is the steady, strenu- ous, robust workers. THE PLEASURE OF READING Once when I was talking with Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes about the best pleasures in life, he mentioned, as one of the most precious, frequent contact with quick and well-stored minds in large variety ; he valued highly the number, frequency, and variety of quickening in- tellectual encounters. We were thinking of contact in conversation ; but this pleas- ure, if only to be procured by personal meetings, would obviously be within the reach, as a rule, of only a very limited number of persons. Fortunately for us and for posterity, the cheap printing-press [36] THE HAPPY LIFE has put within easy reach of every man who can read all the best minds both of the past and the present. For one-tenth part of a year's wages a young mechanic can buy, before he marries, a library of famous books which, if he masters it, will make him a well-read man. For half-a- day's wages a clerk can provide himself with a weekly paper which will keep him informed for a year of all impor- tant current events. Public libraries, cir- culating libraries, Sunday-school libraries, and book-clubs nowadays bring much reading to the door of every household and every solitary creature that wants to read. This is a new privilege for the mass of mankind ; and it is an inexhaustible source of intellectual and spiritual nutri- ment. It seems as if this new privilege alone must alter the whole aspect of society in a few generations. Books are the quiet- est and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counsellors, and the most patient of teachers. With his daily work and his books, many a man whom the world thought forlorn has found [37] THE HAPPY LIFE life worth living. It is a mistake to sup- pose that a great deal of leisure is neces- sary for this happy intercourse with books. Ten minutes a day devoted affectionately to good books — indeed to one book of the first order like the English Bible or Shake- speare, or to two or three books of the second order like Homer, Virgil, Milton, or Bacon — will in thirty years make all the difference between a cultivated and an uncultivated man, between a man mentally rich and a man mentally poor. The pleasures of reading are, of course, in good part pleasures of the imagination ; but they are just as natural and actual as pleasures of the sense, and are often more accessible and more lasting. MUTUAL SERVICE AND CO-OPERATION In the next place I ask your attention to the fact that man is a part of outward nature, and that the men and women among whom our lot is cast are an important part of our actual environment. In some rela- tion or other to these human beings we [38] THE HAPPY LIFE perforce must stand. The question in what relation we had better stand to them is a practical, this-world question, and not a sentimental or next-world question. Further, our sympathetic feelings, over which we have hardly more control than we have over the beating of our hearts, go out to our fellow-men more and more widely, as better means of communication bring home to us the joys and sorrows of widespread multitudes. In what relation is it for our satisfaction to stand in this world toward our fellow-men ? Shall we love or hate them, bless or curse them, help or hinder them ? These are not theoretical questions which arise out of religious speculation or some abstract phi- losophy. They are earthly, every-day, concrete questions, as intensely practical as the question how are we to get our daily bread, or where are we to find shelter from the snowstorm. Human beings are all about us ; we and they are mutually dependent in ways so cbmplex and intri- cate that no wisdom can unravel them. It is in vain for us or them to say, Let us [39] THE HAPPY LIFE alone ; for that is a downright impossibil- ity. To the question, How do reasonable men under these circumstances naturally and inevitably incline to act toward their fellow-beings ? there is but one common- sense, matter-of-fact answer, namely, they incline to serve and co-operate with them. That civilized society exists at all is a demonstration that this inclination in the main governs human relations. Every great city is dependent for food, drink, and fuel on a few bridges, dams, canals, or aqueducts which a dozen intelligent human devils, armed with suitable explosives and fire-bombs, could destroy in a night. If the doctrine of total depravity were any- thing but the invention of a morbid human imagination, the massing of people by hundreds of thousands would be too dan- gerous to be attempted. Civilized society assumes that the great majority of men will combine to procure advantages, resist evils, defend rights, and remedy wrongs. Following this general and inevitable in- clination, the individual finds that by serv- ing others he best serves himself; because [ 40 ] THE HAPPY LIFE he thus conforms to the promptings of his own and their best nature. The most satisfactory thing in all this earthly life is to be able to serve our fellow-beings, — first those who are bound to us by ties of love, then the wider circle of fellow- townsmen, fellow-countrymen, or fellow- men. To be of service is a solid foundation for contentment in this world. For our present purpose it does not matter where we got these ideas about our own better nature and its best satisfaction ; it is enough that our generation, as a matter of fact, has these ideas, and is ruled by them. The amount of the service is no meas- ure of the satisfaction or happiness which he who renders the service derives from it. One man founds an academy or a hospital ; another sends one boy to be educated at the academy, or one sick man to be treated at the hospital. The second is the smaller service, but may yield the greater satisfac- tion. Sir Samuel Romilly attacked the monstrous English laws which affixed the death penalty to a large number of petty [41 ] THE HAPPY LIFE offences against property, like poaching, sheep-stealing, and pocket-picking. In the dawn of a February morning, when the wind was blowing a gale and the ther- mometer was below zero, Captain Smith, of the Cuttyhunk Lighthouse, took three men off a wreck which the heavy sea was fast pounding to pieces on a reef close be- low the light. Sir Samuel Romilly's labors ultimately did an amount of good quite beyond computation ; but he lived to see accomplished only. a small part of the be- neficent changes he had advocated. The chances are that Captain Smith got more satisfaction for the rest of his life out of that rescue, done in an hour, than Sir Samuel out of his years of labor for a much-needed reform in the English penal code. There was another person who took satisfaction in that rescue ever after, and was entitled to. When day dawned on that wintry morning, Captain Smith's wife, who had been listening restlessly to the roar of the sea and the wind, could lie still no longer. She got up and looked out of the window. To her horror there was a small schooner [42] THE HAPPY LIFE on the reef in plain sight, one mast fallen over the side, and three men lashed to the other mast. Her husband was still fast asleep. Must she rouse him ? If she did, she knew he would go out there into that furious sea and freezing wind. If she waited only a little while, the men would be dead, and it would be of no use to go. Should she speak to him ? She did. Oh, it is not the amount of good done which measures the love or heroism which prompted the serviceable deed, or the happiness which the doer gets from it ! It is the spirit of service which creates both the merit and the satisfaction. One of the purest and most enduring of human pleasures is to be found in the possession of a good name among one's neighbors and acquaintances. As Shake- speare puts it : u The purest treasure mortal times afford Is spotless reputation. " This is not fame, or even distinction ; it is local reputation among the few scores or hundreds of persons who really know one. [43] THE HAPPY LIFE It is a satisfaction quite of this world, and one attained by large numbers of quiet men and women whose names are never mentioned beyond the limits of their re- spective sets of acquaintance. Such repu- tation regards, not mental power or manual skill, but character ; it is slowly built upon purity, integrity, courage, and sincerity. To possess it is a crowning satisfaction which is oftenest experienced to the full rather late in life, when some other pleas- ures begin to fade away. THE SELECTION OF BELIEFS Lastly, I shall venture to call your attention to the importance — with a view to a happy life — of making a judicious selection of beliefs. Here we are living on a little islet of sense and fact in the midst of a boundless ocean of the un- known and mysterious. From year to year and century to century the islet ex- pands, as new districts are successively lifted from out the encompassing sea of ignorance ; but it still remains encircled [44 ] THE HAPPY LIFE by this prodigious sea. In this state of things every inquisitive, truth-seeking hu- man being is solicited by innumerable be- liefs, old and new. The past generations, out of which we spring, have been believing many undemonstrated and undemonstrable things ; and we inherit their beliefs. Every year new beliefs appeal to us for accept- ance, some of them clashing with the old. Everybody holds numerous beliefs on subjects outside the realm of knowledge; and, moreover, everybody has to act on these beliefs from hour to hour. All men of science walk by faith and not by sight in exploring and experimenting, the pecu- liarity of their walk being that they gener- ally take but one step at a time, and that a short one. All business proceeds on beliefs, or judgments of probabilities, and not on certainties. The very essence of heroism is that it takes adverse chances ; so that full foreknowledge of the issue would subtract from the heroic quality. Beliefs, then, we must have and must act on ; and they are sure to affect profoundly our happiness in this world. How to [45] THE HAPPY LIFE treat our old beliefs and choose our new ones, with a view to happiness, is in these days a serious problem for every reflective person. The first steps toward making a calm choice are to observe strictly the line of demarcation between facts on the one hand and beliefs on the other, and to hold facts as facts and beliefs as nothing more than beliefs. Next we need a criterion or touch- stone for beliefs old and new. The sur- est touchstone is the. ethical standard which through inheritance, education, and the experience of daily life has, as a matter of fact, become our standard. It is not for our happiness to believe any proposition about the nature of man, the universe, or God, which is really at war with our funda- mental instincts of honor and justice, or with our ideals of gentleness and love, no matter how those instincts and ideals have been implanted or arrived at. The man or woman who hopes to attain reflective happiness, as he works his strenuous way through the world, must bring all beliefs, old and new, to this critical test, and must [46 ] THE HAPPY LIFE reject, or refuse to entertain, beliefs which do not stand the test. One obvious fact of observation seems to contradict this correlation of beliefs with ethical content and, therefore, with happi- ness. Millions of comfortable men and women do, as a matter of fact, believe various long-transmitted doctrines which are clearly repulsive to the moral sense of the entire present generation. How can this be ? Simply because these millions accept also antidotal doctrines which neu- tralize the natural effect of the first beliefs. This process may persist for generations without affecting much the happiness of mankind, but nevertheless it has its dangers; for if faith in the antidotes be lost first, a moral chaos may set in. Sudden and solitary changes of belief are seldom happy. A gentle, gradual transformation of beliefs, in company with kindred, neighbors, and friends, is the happiest. Men have always been gregari- ous in beliefs ; if they cannot remain with their own herd, it will be for their happi- [47 ] THE HAPPY LIFE ness to join a more congenial herd as quickly as possible. Of the two would-be despots in beliefs — the despot who authoritatively com- mands men to believe as he says, and the despot who forbids men to believe at all — the first is the more tolerable to the immense majority of mankind. Under the first despot millions of people have lived, and now live, in contented faith ; but nobody can live happily under the other. To curious, truth-seeking, pioneer- ing minds one seems as bad as the other, and neither in any way endurable. A certain deliberation in accepting new beliefs is conducive to happiness, particu- larly if the new ideas are destructive rather than constructive. Emerson recommends us, as a measure of intellectual economy, not to read a book until it is at least one year old — so many books disappear in a year. In like manner, of novel specu- lative opinions all but the best built and most buoyant will go under within ten years of their launching. We may be sure that cheerful beliefs [ 48 ] THE HAPPY LIFE about the unseen world; framed in full harmony with the beauty of the visible universe and with the sweetness of the domestic affections and joys, and held in company with kindred and friends, will illuminate the dark places on the pathway of earthly life, and brighten all the road. THE CONFLICT WITH EVIL Having thus surveyed the various joys and satisfactions which may make civilized life happy for multitudes upon multitudes of our race, I hasten to admit that there are physical and moral evils in this world which impair or interrupt earthly happi- ness. The worst of the physical evils are lingering diseases and untimely deaths. I admit, too, that not a few men do, as a matter of fact, lead lives not worth living. I admit, also, that there are dreadful, as well as pleasing, sights and sounds in this world, and that many seemingly cruel catastrophes and destructions mark the course of nature. Biological science has lately impressed many people with the prevalence of cruelty * [ 49 ] THE HAPPY LIFE and mutual destruction in the animal and vegetable world. From man down, the creatures live by preying on each other. Insidious parasites infest all kinds of plants and animals. Every living thing seems to have its mortal foe. The very ants go to war, for all the world like men, and Venus's flytrap (Dionaea) is as cruel as a spider. So human society is riddled with mischiefs and wrongs, some, like Armenian mas- sacres, due to surviving savagery, and some, like slums, to sickly civilization. It would seem impossible to wring satisfaction and thoughtful happiness from such evils ; yet that is just what men of noble natures are constantly doing. They fight evil, and from the contest win content and even joy. Nobody has any right to find life uninter- esting or unrewarding who sees within the sphere of his own activity a wrong he can help to remedy, or within himself an evil he can hope to overcome. It should be observed that the inanimate creation does not lend itself, like the animate creation, to the theory that for every good in nature there is an equivalent evil, and for every [50] THE HAPPY LIFE beautiful thing an ugly offset. There is no offset to the splendor of the heavens by night or to the glories of the sunset, no drawback on the beauty of perfect form and various hue in crystalline minerals, and no evil counterbalancing the serenity of the mountains or the sublimity of the ocean. Again, the existence of evils and mys- teries must not blind us to the abounding and intelligible good. We must remem- ber that the misfortunes hardest to bear are those which never come, as Lowell said. We must clear our minds, so far as possible, of cruel imaginings about the in- visible world and its rulers ; and, on the other hand, we must never allow imagined consolations, or compensatory delights, in some other world to reconcile us to the endurance of resistible evils in this. We must never distress ourselves because we cannot fully understand the moral princi- ples on which the universe is conducted. It would be vastly more reasonable in an ant to expect to understand the constitu- tion of the sun. [51 1 THE HAPPY LIFE We must be sure to give due weight in our minds to the good side of every event which has two sides. A fierce northeaster drives some vessels out of their course and others upon the ruthless rocks. Property and life are lost. But that same storm watered the crops upon ten thousand farms, or filled the springs which later will yield to millions of men and animals their necessary drink. A tiger springs upon an antelope, picks out the daintiest bits from the carcass, and leaves the rest to the jackals. We say, Poor little antelope ! We forget to say, Happy tiger ! Fortu- nate jackals ! who were seeking their meat from God, and found it. A house which stands in open ground must have a sunny side as well as a shady. Be sure to live on the sunny side, and even then do not expect the world to look bright if you habitually wear gray-brown glasses. We must assiduously cultivate a just sense of the proportion between right and wrong, good and evil, in this world. The modern newspaper press is a serious ob- stacle to habitual cheerfulness, because it [ 52] THE HAPPY LIFE draws constant attention to abnormal evils and crimes, and makes no account of the normal successes, joys, and well-doings. We read in the morning paper that five houses, two barns, three shops, and a fac- tory have burned up in the night ; and we do not say to ourselves that within the same territory five hundred thousand houses, three hundred thousand barns, as many shops, and a thousand factories have stood in safety. We observe that ten per- sons have been injured on railways within twenty-four hours, and we forget that two million have travelled in safety. Out of every thousand persons in the city of Cambridge twenty die in the course of a year, but the other nine hundred and eighty live ; and of the twenty who die some have filled out the natural span of life, and others are obviously unfit to live. Sometimes our individual lives seem to be full of troubles and miseries — our own or those of others. Then we must fall back on this abiding sense of the real propor- tion between the lives sorrowful and the lives glad at any one moment; and of the [53 1 THE HAPPY LIFE preponderance of gain over loss, health over sickness, joy over sorrow, good over evil, and life over death. CONCLUSION I shall not have succeeded in treating my subject clearly if I have not convinced you that earthly happiness is not dependent on the amount of one's possessions or the nature of one's employment. The enjoy- ments and satisfactions I have described are accessible to poor and rich, to humble and high alike, if only they cultivate the physical, mental, and moral faculties through which the natural joys are won. Any man may win them who by his daily labor can earn a wholesome living for him- self and his family. I have not mentioned a single pleasure which involves unusual expense, or the possession of any uncom- mon mental gifts. It follows that the happiness of the entire community is to be most surely promoted, not by increasing its total wealth, or even by distributing that wealth more evenly, but by improv- [54 ] THE HAPPY LIFE ing its physical and moral health. A poorer population may easily be happier than a richer, if it be of sounder health and morality. In conclusion, let me ask you to con- sider whether the rational conduct of life on the this-world principles here laid down would differ in any important respect from the right conduct of life on the principles of the Christian gospels. It does not seem to me that it would. [55] JOHN GILLEY MAINE FARMER AND FISHERMAN JOHN GILLEY 1 TO be absolutely forgotten in a few years is the common fate of man- kind. Isaac Watts did not exaggerate when he wrote : "Time, like an ever-rolling stream, Bears all its sons away : They fly forgotten, as a dream Dies at the opening day." With the rarest exceptions, the death of each human individual is followed in a short time by complete oblivion, so far as living human memories are con- cerned. Even family recollection or tradi- tion quickly becomes dim, and soon fades utterly away. Few of us have any clear transmitted impression of our great-grand- parents ; some of us could not describe our grandparents. Even men accounted 1 Copyright, 1899, by The Century Company. [59] JOHN GILLEY famous at their deaths slip from living memories and become mere shadows or word-pictures — shadows or pictures which too often distort or misrepresent the origi- nals. Not one human being in ten million is really long remembered. For the mass of mankind absolute oblivion, like death, is sure. But what if it is ? Should this indubitable fact affect injuriously the mortal life in this world of the ordinary human being? Not at all. For most men and women the enjoyments, interests, and duties of this world are just as real and absorbing, at the moment, as they would be if the enjoying, interested, and dutiful individuals could imagine that they were long to be remembered on this earthly stage. A few unusually imaginative and ambitious persons are doubtless stimulated and supported by the hope of undying fame — a hope which in the immense ma- jority of such cases proves to be a pure delusion. The fact is that forelooking is not a common occupation of the human mind. We all live, as a rule, in the pres- ent and the past, and take very little [60] JOHN GILLEY thought for the future. Now, in estimat- ing the aggregate well-being and happiness of a community or a nation, it is obviously the condition of the obscure millions, who are sure to be absolutely forgotten, that it is most important to see and weigh aright ; yet history and biography alike neglect these humble, speechless multitudes, and modern fiction finds it profitable to portray the most squalid and vicious sides of the life of these millions rather than the best and the commonest. Thus the facts about the life of the common multitude go un- observed, or at least unrecorded, while fiction paints that life in false colors. This little book describes with accuracy the actual life of one of the to-be-forgotten millions. Is this life a true American type ? If it is, there is good hope for our country. John Gilley was born February 22, 1822, at the Fish Point on Great Cran- berry Island, Maine, whither his mother, who lived on Baker's Island, had gone to be confined at the house of Mrs. Stanley, a midwife. Bakers Island lies nearly four [61 ] JOHN GILLEY miles from the island of Mount Desert. It is a roundish island, a little more than half a mile long from north to south, and a little less than half a mile wide from east to west. At low tide it is connected with another much larger island, called Little Cranberry, by a reef and bar about a mile long ; but by half-tide this bar is entirely covered. Almost all the coasting vessels which come from the westward, bound to the Bay of Fundy or to the coast of Maine east of Frenchman's Bay, pass just outside of Baker's Island ; and, as this island has some dangerous ledges near it, the United States built a lighthouse on its highest part in the year 1828. The island has no good harbor; but in the summer small vessels find a safe anchorage on the north side of it, except in easterly storms. The whole shore of the island is bare rock, and the vegetation does not approach the ordi- nary level of high water, the storm-waves keeping the rocks bare far above and be- hind the smooth-water level of high tide. There are many days in every year when it is impossible to land on the island or to [62 ] JOHN GILLEY launch a boat from it. In the milder half of the year the island is of course a con- venient stopping-place for offshore fisher- men, for it is several miles nearer the fishing-grounds than the harbors of Mount Desert proper. In the first years of this century the island was uninhabited, and was covered by a growth of good-sized trees, both evergreen and deciduous. About the year 1812, William Gilley of Norwood's Cove, at the foot of Somes Sound on its west side, and Hannah Lurvey, his wife, decided to move on to Baker's Island with their three little chil- dren and all their goods. Up to that time he had got his living chiefly on fishing or coasting vessels ; but, like most young men of the region, he was also something of a wood-cutter and farmer. He and his wife had already accumulated a little store of household goods and implements, and tools for fishing and farming. They needed no money wherewith to buy Baker's Island. There it lay in the sea, unoccupied and unclaimed ; and they simply took posses- sion of it. t6 3 ] JOHN GILLEY William Gilley was a large, strong man, six feet tall, and weighing over two hun- dred pounds. His father is said to have come from Great Britain at fourteen years of age. Hannah Gilley was a robust wo- man, who had lived in Newburyport and Byfield, Massachusetts, until she was thirteen years old, and had there had much better schooling than was to be had on the island of Mount Desert. She was able to teach all her children to read, write, and cipher ; and all her life she valued good reading, and encouraged it in her family. Her father, Jacob Lurvey, was born in Gloucester, Massachusetts, and married Hannah Boynton of Byfield. The name Lurvey is a good transliteration of the German Loewe, which is a common name among German Jews ; and there is a tra- dition in the Lurvey family that the first Lurvey, who emigrated to Massachusetts in the seventeenth century, was of Jewish descent and came from Archangel in Russia. It is noticeable that many of the Lurveys have Old Testament names, such as Reuben, Levi, Samuel, Isaac, and Jacob, [ 6 4 ] JOHN GILLEY and that their noses tend to be aquiline. This was the case with most of the children of William and Hannah Gilley. The father of Hannah served in the Revolutionary army as a boy. He lived to the age of ninety-two, and had ten children and seventy-seven grandchildren. The Lur- veys are therefore still numerous at South- West Harbor and the vicinity. For William Gilley the enterprise of taking possession of Baker's Island in- volved much heavy labor, but few unac- customed risks. For Hannah, his wife, it was different. She already had three little children, and she was going to face for herself and her family a formidable isolation which was absolute for consider- able periods in the year. Moreover, she was going to take her share in the severe labors of a pioneering family. Even to get a footing on this wooded island — to land lumber, live stock, provisions, and the implements of labor, and to build the first shelter — was no easy task. A small, rough beach of large stones was the only landing-place, and just above the bare 5 [65 ] JOHN GILLEY rocks of the shore was the forest. How- ever, health, strength, and fortitude were theirs ; and in a few years they had estab- lished themselves on the island in consid- erable comfort. Nine more children were born to them there ; so that they ulti- mately had a family of twelve children, of whom six were sons and six daughters. All these children grew to maturity. Fortu- nately, the eldest child was a girl, for it was the mother that most needed help. Three of the children are still (1899) liv- ing, two of them over eighty years of age and one over ninety. Nine of the twelve children married, and to them were born fifty-eight children, of whom forty-five are still living. John Gilley was the tenth child and also the youngest son, and when he was born the family had already been ten years on the island, and had transformed it into a tolerable farm. When he began to look about him, his father was keeping about six cows, a yoke of oxen, two or three young cattle, about fifty sheep, and three or four hogs. Several of the children [66 ] JOHN GILLEY were already contributing by their labor to the support of the family. The girls, by the time they were twelve years old, were real helpers for the mother. They tended the poultry, made butter, and spun wool. The boys naturally helped in the work of the father. He, unaided except by his boys, had cleared a considerable portion of the island, burning up in so doing a fine growth of trees — spruce, fir, birch, and beech. With his oxen he had broken up the cleared land, hauled off part of the stones and piled them on the protruding ledges, and gradually made fields for grass and other crops. In the earlier years, before flour began to be cheap at the Mount Desert "stores/' he had even raised a little wheat on the island ; but the main crops besides hay were potatoes and other vegetables for the use of the family and cattle. The son is still living who carried a boat-load of wheat to Somes- ville, had it ground and sifted into three grades, and carried all three back to the island for winter use. The potato-bug and potato-rot were then unknown, and [67] JOHN GILLEY the island yielded any wished-for amount of potatoes. The family often dug from two to three hundred bushels of potatoes in a season, and fed what they did not want to their cattle and hogs. Food at the island was habitually abun- dant. It was no trouble to get lobsters. No traps were needed; they could be picked up in the shallow water along the rocky shore. Fresh fish were always to be easily procured, except in stormy weather and in cold and windy February and March. A lamb could be killed at any time in the summer. In the fall, in sort- ing the flock of sheep, the family killed from ten to fifteen sheep ; and what they could not use as fresh mutton they salted. Later in the season, when the weather turned cold, they killed a " beef-critter," and sometimes two when the family grew large. Part of this beef was salted, but part was kept frozen throughout the winter to be used fresh. Sea-birds added to their store of food. Shooting them made sport for the boys. Ducks and other sea-fowl were so abundant in the fall that the gunners [68 ] JOHN GILLEY had to throw away the bodies of the birds, after picking off all the feathers. The fam- ily never bought any salt pork, but every winter made a year's supply. Although codfish were easily accessible, the family made no use of salt cod. They preferred mackerel, which were to be taken in the near waters in some month of every year. They had a few nets, but they also caught mackerel on the hook. During the sum- mer and early autumn the family had plenty of fresh vegetables. For clothing the family depended mostly on wool from their own sheep. They used very little cotton. There were spin- ning-wheels and looms in the house, and the mother both spun and wove. Flax they raised on the island, and from it made a coarse kind of linen, chiefly for towels. They did, however, buy a cotton warp, and filled it with wool, thus making a comfortable sort of sheet for winter use or light blanket for summer. The wool of at least fifty sheep was used every year in the household, when the family had grown large. The children all went barefoot the [6 9 1 JOHN GILLEY greater part of the year ; but in the win- ter they wore shoes or boots, the eldest brother having learned enough of the shoemaker's art to keep the family sup- plied with footwear in winter. At that time there were no such things as rubber boots, and the family did not expect to have dry feet. Their uses for money were few ; but some essentials to comfort they must pro- cure at the store, seven miles away, at South-West Harbor, in return for money or its equivalent. Their available re- sources for procuring money were very much like those of similar families to-day in the same neighborhood. They could sell or exchange butter and eggs at the store, and they could sell in Boston dried fish and feathers. One of John's elder brothers shot birds enough in a single year to yield over a hundredweight of feathers, worth fifty cents a pound in Boston. The family shipped their feathers to Boston every year by a coasting vessel ; and this product represented men's labor, whereas the butter and eggs represented chiefly the [ 70] JOHN GILLEY women's labor. The butter was far the best of the cash resources ; and so it remains to this day in these islands. It sold in the vicinity at twelve and a half cents a pound. There was one other source of money, namely, smoked herring. The herring which abound in these waters had at that time no value for bait; but smoked her- ring could be sold in New York, which was the best market for them, at from seventy-five cents to one dollar and ten cents a box, each box holding half a bushel. The herring were caught, for the most part, in gill-nets ; for there were then no weirs and no seines. The family had their own smoke-house, and made the boxes themselves from lumber which was sawed for them at the Somesville or the Duck Brook saw-mill. Each of these saw-mills was at least nine miles distant from Baker's Island ; so that it was a serious undertaking, requiring favorable weather, to boat the lumber from the mill and land it safely at the rough home beach. The family nailed the boxes together, out of the sawed lumber in the early fall, [71 ] JOHN GILLEY and packed them with the fragrant fish ; and then some coasting vessel, usually a schooner owned in a neighboring island, carried the finished product to distant New York, and brought back, after a month or two, clear cash to pay for the winter's stores. In this large and united family the boys stayed at home and worked for their par- ents until they were twenty-one years of age, and the girls stayed at home until they were married and had homes of their own or had come of age. All the boys and three of the girls were ultimately married. The three girls who did not marry went away from home to earn money by household labor, factory work, nursing, or sewing. It was not all work for the children on the island, or, indeed, for the father and mother. In the long winter evenings they played checkers and fox and geese ; and the mother read to the family until the children grew old enough to take their share in reading aloud. Out of doors they played ball, and in winter coasted on the snow. The boys, as soon 1 72 ] JOHN GILLEY as they were ten or twelve years of age, were in and out of boats much of the time, and so attained that quick, instinctive use of oar, sail, and tiller in which lies safety. When they grew older they had the sport of gunning, with the added interest of profit from the feathers. Their domestic animals were a great interest as well as a great care. Then, they always had before them some of the most splendid aspects of nature. From their sea-girt dwelling they could see the entire hemisphere of the sky ; and to the north lay the grand hills of Mount Desert, with outline clear and sharp when the northwest wind blew, but dim and soft when southerly winds prevailed. In every storm a magnificent surf dashed up on the rockbound isle. In winter the low sun made the sea toward the south a sheet of shimmering silver ; and all the year an endless variety of col- ors, shades, and textures played over the surfaces of hills and sea. The delight in such visions is often but half conscious in persons who have not the habit of reflec- tion ; but it is nevertheless a real source [73 ] JOHN GILLEY of happiness, which is soon missed when one brought up amid such pure and noble scenes is set down among the strait- ened, squalid, ugly sights of a city. On the whole, the survivors of that isolated family look back on their childhood as a happy one ; and they feel a strong sense of obligation to the father and mother — particularly to the mother, because she was a person of excellent faculties and an intellectual outlook. Like most of her people for two generations, she was a member of the Congregational Church ; and in the summer-time she took the eld- est children nearly every Sunday in mild weather to the church at South-West Harbor, going seven miles each way in an open boat. To be sure, the minister taught that hell was paved with infants' skulls, and descriptions of hell-fire and the undying worm formed an important part of every discourse. Some of the children supposed themselves to accept what they heard at church ; but the mother did not. She bought books and read for herself; and by the time she had borne [74] JOHN GILLEY half a dozen children she could no longer accept the old beliefs, and became a Uni- versalist, to which more cheerful faith she adhered till her death. It is obvious that this family on its island domain was much more self-con- tained and independent than any ordinary family is to-day, even under similar cir- cumstances. They got their fuel, food, and clothing as products of their own skill and labor, their supplies and resources being almost all derived from the sea and from their own fields and woods. In these days of one crop on a farm, one trade for a man, and factory labor for whole families, it is not probable that there exists a single American family which is so little dependent on exchange of prod- ucts, or on supplies resulting from the la- bor of others, as was the family of William and Hannah Gilley from 1812 to 1842. It should also be observed that sea-shore people have a considerable advantage in bringing up boys, because boys who be- come good boatmen must have had an admirable training in alertness, prompt [75] JOHN GILLEY decision, resource in emergencies, and courageous steadiness in difficulties and dangers. The shore fisherman or lobster- man on the coast of Maine, often going miles to sea alone in a half-decked boat, is liable to all sorts of vexatious or formida- ble weather changes — in summer to fog, calms, and squalls, in winter to low-lying icy vapor, blinding snow, and the sudden northwester at zero, against which he must beat homeward with the flying spray freez- ing fast to hull, sails, and rigging. The youth who learns to wring safety and success out of such adverse conditions has been taught by these struggles with nature to be vigilant, patient, self-reliant, and brave. In these temperate regions the adverse forces of nature are not, as they sometimes are in the tropics, irresistible and overwhelming. They can be resisted and overcome by man ; and so they de- velop in successive generations some of the best human qualities. It resulted from the principles in which the children had been brought up that no one of the boys began to save much of [76] JOHN GILLEY anything for himself until he was twenty- one years of age. It was therefore 1 843 before John Gilley began to earn money on his own account. Good health, a strong body, skill as a sailor, and some knowl- edge of farming, stock-raising, and fishing, he had acquired. In what way should he now begin to use these acquisitions for his own advantage ? A fortunate change in his father's occupation fifteen years before probably facilitated John's entrance on a career of his own. William Gilley had been appointed light-keeper in 1828, with a compensation of three hundred and fifty dollars a year in money, the free occupa- tion of a house, and all the sperm-oil he could use in his household. He held this place until the year 1849, wnen ) on tne coming into power of the Whig party, he was turned out and a Whig was appointed in his place. Perhaps in recognition of his long service, it was considerately sug- gested to him that he might retain his position if he should see fit to join the dominant party ; but to this overture he replied, with some expletives, that he [77] JOHN GILLEY would not change his political connection for all the lighthouses in the United States. Now, three hundred and fifty- dollars a year in cash, besides house and light, was a fortune to any coast-of- Maine family seventy years ago, — indeed, it still is, — and William Gilley undoubtedly was able to lay up some portion of it, besides improving his buildings, live stock, boats, tools, and household furniture. From these savings the father was able to furnish a little money to start his sons each in his own career. This father was himself an irrepressible pioneer, always ready for a new enterprise. In 1837, long before he was turned out of the lighthouse, he bought for three hundred dollars Great Duck Island, an uninhabited island about five miles southwest of Baker's Island, and even more difficult of access, his project being to raise live stock there. Shortly after he ceased to be light-keeper, when he was about sixty-three years old, and his youngest children were grown up, he went to live on Great Duck, and there remained almost alone until he was nearly [78] JOHN GILLEY eighty years of age. His wife Hannah had become somewhat infirm, and was un- able to do more than make him occasional visits on Duck Island. She died at sixty- nine, but he lived to be ninety-two. Each lived in their declining years with one of their married sons, Hannah on Little Cranberry and William on Baker's. Such is the natural mode of taking care of old parents in a community where savings are necessarily small and only the able-bodied can really earn their livelihood. John Gilley's first venture was the pur- chase of a part of a small coasting schooner called the Preference, which could carry about one hundred tons, and cost between eight and nine hundred dollars. He be- came responsible for one-third of her value, paying down one or two hundred dollars, which his father probably lent him. For the rest of the third he obtained credit for a short time from the seller of the vessel. The other two owners were men who be- longed on Great Cranberry Island. The owners proceeded to use their purchase during all the mild weather — perhaps six t.79] JOHN GILLEY months of each year — in carrying paving- stones to Boston. These stones, unlike the present rectangular granite blocks, were smooth cobblestones picked up on the outside beaches of the neighboring islands. They of course were not found on any inland or smooth-water beaches, but only where heavy waves rolled the beach-stones up and down. The crew of the Preference must therefore anchor her off an exposed beach, and then, with a large dory, boat off to her the stones which they picked up by hand. This work was possible only during moderate weather. The stones must be of tolerably uniform size, neither too large nor too small ; and each one had to be selected by the eye and picked up by the hand. When the dory was loaded, it had to be lifted off the beach by the men standing in the water, and rowed out to the vessel ; and there every single stone had to be picked up by hand and thrown on to the vessel. A hundred tons having been thus got aboard by sheer hard work of human muscle, the old craft, which was not too seaworthy, was [80 ] JOHN GILLEY sailed to Boston, to be discharged at what was then called the "Stone Wharf ' : in Charlestown. There the crew threw the stones out of her hold on to the wharf by- hand. They therefore lifted and threw these hundred tons of stone three times at least before they were deposited on the city's wharf. The cobblestones were the main freight of the vessel ; but she also carried dried fish to Boston, and fetched back goods to the island stores of the vicinity. Some of the island people bought their flour, sugar, dry-goods, and other family stores in Boston through the captain of the schooner. John Gilley soon began to go as captain, being sometimes accompanied by the other owners and sometimes by men on wages. He was noted among his neighbors for the care and good judgment with which he executed their various commissions, and he knew himself to be trusted by them. This business he followed for several years, paid off his debt to the seller of the schooner, and began to lay up money. It was an immense satisfaction to him to feel him- 6 [81 ] JOHN GILLEY self thus established in an honest busi- ness which he understood, and in which he was making his way. There are few solider satisfactions to be won in this world by anybody, in any condition of life. The scale of the business — large or small — makes little difference in the measure of content. At that time — about 1843 to l %5° — there were very few guides to navigation between Mount Desert and Boston com- pared with the numerous marks that the government now maintains. Charts were lacking, and the government had issued no coast-pilot. Blunt's " Coast-Pilot " was the only book in use among the coastwise navigators, and its description of the coast of Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts was very incomplete, though tolerably accurate in the few most important regions. It was often anxious business for the young owners of an old, uninsured vessel to encounter the various weather of the New England coast between the first of April and the first of Decem- ber. Their all and sometimes their lives [82] JOHN GILLEY were at stake on their own prudence, knowledge, and skill. None of them had knowledge of navigation in the technical sense ; they were coasting sailors only, who found their way from point to point along the shore by practice, keen observa- tion, and good memory for objects once seen and courses once safely steered. The young man who can do this work success- fully has some good grounds for self- respect. At this business John Gilley laid up several hundred dollars. In a few years he was able to sell the Preference and buy half of a much better vessel called the Express, She was larger, younger, and a better sailer, and cost her purchasers be- tween fifteen and sixteen hundred dollars. He followed the same business in the Ex- press for several years more, laying her up in the late autumn and fitting her out again every spring. The winters he gen- erally spent with his father and mother, or with one of his married brothers ; but even in such periods of comparative repose he kept busy, and was always trying to make a little money. He was fond of gunning, [83] JOHN GILLEY and liked it all the better because it yielded feathers for sale. In December, 1853, he was staying with his brother Samuel Gil- ley on Little Cranberry Island, and gun- ning as usual ; but his brother observed that he did not sell the feathers which he assiduously collected. That winter there was a schoolteacher from Sullivan on Little Cranberry, who seemed to be an intelligent and pleasing girl. He made no remarks on the subject to his brother ; but that brother decided that John was looking for a wife — or, as this brother expressed it at the age of eighty-two, " John was thinking of looking out for the woman ; he saved his feathers — and actions speak louder than words." Morever, he sold his ves- sel at Rockland, and found himself in pos- session of nine or ten hundred dollars in money, the product of patient industry, and not the result of drawing a prize or two in the fishing lottery. In the follow- ing spring he went with six or seven other men, in a low-priced fishing-vessel of about thirty-five tons which his brother Samuel and he had bought, up the Bay of Fundy [84] JOHN GILLEY and to the banks between Mount Desert and Cape Sable, fishing for cod and had- dock. Every fortnight or three weeks the brothers came home to land their fish and get supplies ; but the schoolmistress had gone home to Sullivan. During that spring John Gilley crossed more than once to Sutton's Island, an island about a mile long, which lies between the Cranberry Islands and the Island of Mount Desert, with its long axis lying nearly east and west. On this island he bought, that season, a rough, neglected farm of about fifty acres, on which stood a house and barn. It was a great undertaking to put the buildings into habitable condition and clear up and improve the few arable fields. But John Gilley looked forward to the task with keen interest and a good hope, and he had the definite purpose of providing here a per- manent home for himself and a wife. When cold weather put an end to the fishing season, John Gilley, having pro- vided all necessary articles for his house, sailed over to Sullivan, distant about eighteen miles, in his fishing-vessel and [8 5 1 JOHN GILLEY brought back to the home on Sutton's Island Harriet Bickford Wilkinson, the schoolmistress from Sullivan. The grand- father of Harriet Wilkinson came to Sulli- van from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in 1769, and her mother's family came from York, Maine. The marriage took place on December 25, 1854, when John was thirty-two and Harriet was twenty- five; and both entered with joy upon married life at their own island farm. She was a pretty woman, but delicate, belong- ing to a family which was thought to have a tendency to consumption. In the sum- mer of 1855 he spent about half his time on this same vessel which had brought home his wife, and made a fair profit on the fishing ; and the next year he some- times went on short trips of shore fishing ; but that was the last of his going away from the farm. Whatever fishing he did afterward he did in an open boat not far from home, and he went coasting no more. A son was born to them, but lived only seven months ; and soon the wife's health began to fail. A wife's sick- [86] JOHN GILLEY ness, in the vast majority of families, means, first, the loss of her labor in the care and support of the household, and, secondly, the necessity of hiring some wo- man to do the work which the wife can- not do. This necessity of hiring is a heavy burden in a family where little money is earned, although there may be great comfort so far as food, fire, and cloth- ing are concerned. His young wife con- tinuing to grow worse, John Gilley tried all means that were possible to him to restore her health. He consulted the neighboring physicians, bought quantities of medicine in great variety, and tried in every way that love or duty could suggest to avert the threatening blow. It was all in vain. Harriet Gilley lived only two years and a half after her marriage, dying in June, 1857. At this period, his expenses being large, and his earning power re- duced, John Gilley was forced to borrow a little money. The farm and the house- hold equipment had absorbed his whole capital. On April 27, 1857, there came from [87 ] JOHN GILLEY Sullivan, to take care of Harriet, Mary Jane Wilkinson, her cousin. This cousin was only twenty-one years of age ; but her father was dead, and her mother had mar- ried again. She had helped her mother till she was almost twenty-one years of age, but now felt free. Until this cousin came, nieces and a sister of John Gilley had helped him to take care of his dying wife. The women relatives must always come to the aid of a family thus distressed. To help in taking care of the farm and in fishing, John Gilley habitually hired a man all through the season, and this season of 1857 the hired man was his wife's brother. When Harriet Gilley died, there was still the utmost need of a woman on the farm : so Mary Jane Wilkinson stayed during the summer and through the next winter, and before the end of that winter she had promised to marry John Gilley. There were at that time eight houses on Sutton's Island, and more permanent residents than there are now. Mary Jane Wilkinson was fond of the care of animals and of farm duties in general. She found at the farm [88] JOHN GILLEY only twelve hens, a cow, and a calf, and she set to work at once to increase the quantity of live stock ; but in April, 1858, she returned to her mother's house at West Gouldsboro', that she might prepare her wardrobe and some articles of house- hold linen. When, later in the season, John Gilley came after Mary Jane Wilkin- son at Jones's Cove, he had to transport to Sutton's Island, besides Mary Jane's per- sonal possessions, a pair of young steers, a pig, and a cat. They were married at North-East Harbor by Squire Kimball, in the old tavern on the west side of the harbor, in July, 1858 ; and then these two set about improving their condition by unremitting industry and frugality, and an intelligent use of every resource the place afforded. The new wife gave her attention to the poultry and made butter whenever the milk could not be sold as such. The price of butter had greatly improved since John Gilley was a boy on Baker's Island. It could now be sold at from twenty to twenty-five cents a pound. In summer Squire Kimball, at the tavern, bought their [89] JOHN GILLEY milk. All summer eggs could be sold at the stores on the neighboring islands ; but in the fall it was necessary to send them to Boston. During the fishing season the husband frequently went for fish in an open boat with one sail ; but he no longer absented himself from home for weeks at a time. His labor on the farm was inces- sant. On the crest of the island a small field had been cleared by the former occupant of the house. With the help of a yoke of oxen John Gilley proceeded to add to this field on the east and on the west. The piles of stones which he heaped up on the bare ledges remain to this day to testify to his industry. One of them is twenty-four feet long, fifteen feet wide, and five feet high. In after years he was proud of these piles, regarding them as monuments to his patient industry and perseverance in the redemption, or rather creation, of this precious mowing-field. In these labors three or four years had passed away, when the Civil War broke out, and soon, linseed-oil becoming scarce, porgy-oil attained an unheard of value. [90] JOHN GILLEY Fortunately for the New England shore people, the porgies arrived in shoals on the coast in every season for rather more than ten years. At various places along the shore from Long Island Sound to the Bay of Fundy, large factories were built for expressing the oil from these fish ; but this was an industry which could also be well conducted on a small scale with a few nets, a big kettle, and a screw-press worked by hand. For an enterprising and ener- getic man here was a new chance of getting profit from the sea. Accordingly, John Gilley, like thousands of other fishermen along the New England coast, set up a small porgy-oil factory, and during the porgy season this was his most profitable form of industry. During the last part of the war porgy-oil sold at a dollar or even a dollar and ten cents a gallon. The chum, or refuse from the press, was a valu- able element in manure. All of John Gilley's porgy-chum went to enrich his precious fields. We may be sure that this well-used opportunity gave him great satisfaction. [91 1 JOHN GILLEY The farm, like most farms on the Maine shore, not sufficing for the comfort- able support of his family, John Gilley was always looking for another industry by which he could add to his annual in- come. He found such an industry in the manufacture of smoked herring. This was at that time practised in two ways among the island people. Fresh herring were caught near home, and were immedi- ately corned and smoked ; and salted her- ring brought from the Magdalen Islands were bought by the vessel-load, soaked in fresh water to remove a part of the salt, and then smoked. John Gilley built a large smoke-house on his shore close to a safe and convenient anchorage, and there pursued the herring business in both forms, whenever supplies of herring could be ob- tained. This is an industry in which women can bear a part. They can pull out the gills and string the wet fish on the sticks by which they are hung up in the smoke-house ; and they can pack the dried fish into the boxes in which they are mar- keted. So the wife and the eldest daughter, [92 ] JOHN GILLEY as time went on, took a hand in this her- ring work. The sawed lumber for the boxes was all brought from the saw-mill at the head of Somes Sound, eight miles away. The men did that transportation, and nailed the boxes together. It was characteristic of John Gilley that he al- ways took pains to have his things better than anybody else's. He was careful and particular about all his work, and thor- oughly believed in the good results of this painstaking care. He was always confi- dent that his milk, butter, eggs, fowls, porgy-oil, and herring were better than the common, and were worth a higher price; and he could often induce purchasers to think so, too. Of the second marriage there came three girls, who all grew to maturity, and two of whom were married in due season ; but when John Gilley was seventy-four years old he had but two grandchildren, of whom the elder was only eight years old, his fate in this respect being far less fortunate than that of his father. Late marriage caused him to miss some of the [93] JOHN GILLEY most exquisite of natural human delights. He could not witness the coming of grand- children to maturity. He had the nat- ural, animal fondness — so to speak — for children, the economic liking for them as helpers, and the real love for them as affectionate comrades and friends. The daughters were disposed to help in the support of the family and the care of the farm. The eldest went through the whole course of the Normal School at Cas- tine, and became a teacher. The youngest was best at household and farm work, hav- ing her fathers head for business. The other daughter was married early, but had already gone from her father's house to Little Cranberry Island as a helper in the family of the principal storekeeper on that island. Since the household needed the assistance of another male, it was their cus- tom to hire a well-grown boy or a man dur- ing the better part of the year, the wages for such services being not more than from fifteen to twenty dollars a month in addition to board and lodging. Although the island lay much nearer to [94] JOHN GILLEY the shores of Mount Desert than Bakers Island did, the family had hardly more in- tercourse with the main island than William Gilley's family on Baker's Island had had a generation before. They found their pleasures chiefly at home. In the winter evenings they read aloud to one another, thus carrying down to another generation the habit which Hannah Lurvey Gilley had established in her family. The same good habit has been transmitted to the family of one of John Gilley's married daughters, where it is now in force. In the early autumn of 1874 a serious disaster befell this industrious and thriv- ing family. One evening Mr. and Mrs. Gilley were walking along the southern shore of the island toward a neighbor's house, when John suggested that it was time for Mary Jane to get the supper, and for him to attend to the fire in the smoke- house, which was full of herring hung up to smoke, and also contained on the floor a large quantity of packed herring, the fruit of the entire summer's work on her- ring. The smoke-house was large, and [95] JOHN GILLEY at one end there stood a carpenter's bench with a good many tools. It was also used as a place of storage for rigging, anchors, blocks, and other seamen's gear. Mrs. Gilley went home and made ready the supper. John Gilley arranged the fire as usual in the smoke-house, and went up to the house from the shore. As the family were sitting at supper, a neighbor, who had been calling there and had gone out, rushed back, exclaiming, " Your smoke- house is all afire ! " So indeed it was ; and in a few minutes John Gilley's chief investment and all his summer's work went up in flames. The whole family ran to the scene, but it was too late to do more than save the fish-house which stood near. John opened the door of the smoke- house and succeeded in rescuing a pair of oiled trousers and his precious compass, which stood on a shelf by the door. Ev- erything else was burned up clean. John said but little at the moment, and looked calmly on at the quick destruction; but when he went to bed that night, he broke down and bewailed his loss with tears and [96] JOHN GILLEY sobs. He had lost not only a sum of money which was large for him, — perhaps five hundred dollars, — but, what was more, he had lost an object of interest and affec- tion, and a means of livelihood which rep- resented years of patient labor. It was as if a mill-owner had lost his mill without insurance, or the owner of a noble vessel had seen her go down within sight of home. This was the only time in all their married life that his wife ever saw him overcome by such emotion. In conse- quence of this disaster, it was necessary for John Gilley, in order to buy stores enough for the ensuing winter, to sell part of the live stock off his farm. This fact shows how close may be the margin of livelihood for a family on the New Eng- land coast which really owns a good deal of property and is justly held by its neigh- bors to be well off. If the cash proceeds of a season's work are lost or destroyed, extraordinary and undesirable means have to be taken to carry over the family to another season. This may happen to a healthy, industrious, frugal household. 7 [ 97 1 JOHN GILLEY Much worse, of course, may happen in consequence of sudden disaster in an un- thrifty or sickly family. The investments of poor men are apt to be very hazardous. They put their all into farming-tools or live stock ; they risk everything they have on an old vessel or on a single crop, and therefore on the weather of a single season ; with their small savings they build a barn or a smoke-house, which may be reduced to ashes with all its contents in fifteen minutes. Insurance they can seldom af- ford. If the investments of the rich were as hazardous as are those of the poor, theirs would be a lot even more worrisome than it is now. The smoke-house was never rebuilt. At first the money to rebuild was lacking, and later a new prospect opened before the family. After the fire John Gilley went more into cows and less into fat oxen. Hitherto he had always kept a good yoke of oxen and some steers, and he had been accustomed to do their hauling and plough- ing for all the families on the island. Thereafter he generally had as many as [98 1 JOHN GILLEY five cows, but often only a single young ox to do the hauling for the island. He always trained his oxen himself, and had pleasure in the company of these patient and serviceable creatures. In 1880 the Gilleys on Sutton's Island heard that three " Westerners," or " rus- ticators," had bought land at North-East Harbor. One was said to be a bishop, another the president of a college, and the third and earliest buyer a landscape-gar- dener — whatever that might be. It was even reported that one of these pioneers had landed on the western end of Sutton's Island and walked the length of the island. The news was intensely interesting to all the inhabitants. They had heard of the fabulous prices of land at Bar Harbor, and their imaginations began to play over their own pastures and wood-lots. John Gilley went steadily on his laborious and thrifty way. He served the town in various ca- pacities, such as selectman and collector of taxes. He was one of the school com- mittee for several years, and later one of the board of health. He was also road [99] JOHN GILLEY surveyor on the island — there being but one road, and that grass-grown. As a town officer John Gilley exhibited the same uprightness and frugality which he showed in all his private dealings. To be chosen to responsible office by his fellow- townsmen, every one of whom knew him personally, was to him a source of rational gratification ; and in each of his offices he had occasion to enlarge his knowledge and to undertake new responsibilities. In 1884 the extreme western point of Sutton's Island was sold to a " Westerner," a professor in Harvard College, and shortly- after a second sale in the same neighbor- hood was effected ; but it was not until 1886 that John Gilley made his first sale of land for summering purposes. In the next year he made another sale, and in 1894 a third. The prices he obtained, though moderate compared with the prices charged at Bar Harbor or North-East Har- bor, were forty or fifty times any price which had ever been put on his farm by the acre. Being thus provided with what was for him a considerable amount of ready [ 100 ] JOHN GILLEY money, he did what all his like do when they come into possession of ready money — he first gave himself and his family the pleasure of enlarging and improving his house and other buildings, and then lent the balance on small mortgages on village real estate. Suddenly he became a pros- perous man, at ease, and a leader in his world. Up to this time, since his second marriage, he had merely earned a com- fortable livelihood by diversified industry ; but now he possessed a secured capital in addition to his farm and its buildings. At last, he was highly content, but neverthe- less ready as ever for new undertakings. His mind was active, and his eye and hand were steady. When three cottages had stood for several years on the eastern foreside of North-East Harbor, — the nearest point of the shore of Mount Desert to Sutton's Island, — John Gilley, at the age of sev- enty-one, undertook to deliver at these houses milk, eggs, and fresh vegetables every day, and chickens and fowls when they were wanted. This undertaking in- [ IOI ] JOHN GILLEY volved his rowing in all weathers nearly two miles from his cove to the landings of these houses, and back again, across bay waters which are protected indeed from the heavy ocean swells, but are still able to produce what the natives call " a big chop." Every morning he arrived with the utmost punctuality, in rain or shine, calm or blow, and alone, unless it blew heavily from the northwest (a head wind from Sutton's), or his little grandson — his mate, as he called the boy — wanted to accompany him on a fine, still morning. Soon he extended his trips to the western side of North-East Harbor, where he found a much larger market for his goods than he had found thirty-five years before, when he first delivered milk at Squire Kimball's tavern. This business involved what was new work for John Gilley, namely, the raising of fresh vegetables in much larger variety and quantity than he was accustomed to. He entered on this new work with interest and intelligence, but was of course sometimes defeated in his plans by wet weather in spring, a [ IQ 2 ] JOHN GILLEY drought in summer, or by the worms and insects which unexpectedly attacked his crops. On the whole he was decidedly successful in this enterprise undertaken at seventy-one. Those who bought of him liked to deal with him, and he found in the business fresh interest and pleasure. Not many men take up a new out-of-door business at seventy, and carry it on suc- cessfully by their own brains and muscles. It was one of the sources of his satisfaction that he thus supplied the two daughters who still lived at his house with a profita- ble outlet for their energies. One of these — the school-teacher — was an excellent laundress, and the other was devoted to the work of the house and the farm, and was helpful in her father's new business. John Gilley transported the washes from North-East Harbor and back again in his rowboat, and under the new conditions of the place washing and ironing proved to be more profitable than school-keeping. In the fall of 1896 the family which had occupied that summer one of the houses John Gilley was in the habit of supplying [ I0 3 ] JOHN GILLEY with milk, eggs, and vegetables, and which had a young child dependent on the milk, lingered after the other summer house- holds had departed. He consented to continue his daily trips a few days into October that the child's milk might not be changed, although it was perfectly clear that his labor could not be adequately recompensed. On the last morning but one that he was to come across from the island to the harbor a strong northeast wind was blowing, and some sea was running through the deep passage between Sutton's Island and Bear Island, which he had to cross on his way to and fro. He took with him in his boat the young man who had been working for him on the farm the few weeks past. They delivered the milk, crossed to the western side of North-East Harbor, did some errands there, and started cheerfully for home, as John Gilley had done from that shore hundreds of times before. The boy rowed from a seat near the bow, and the old man sat on the thwart near the stern, facing the bow, and pushing his oars from him. They had no [ 104 ] JOHN GILLEY thought of danger ; but to ease the rowing they kept to windward under Bear Island, and then pushed across the deep channel, south by west, for the western point of Sutton's Island. They were more than half-way across when, through some inatten- tion or lack of skill on the part of the young man in the bow, a sea higher or swifter than the rest threw a good deal of water into the boat. John Gilley immediately began to bail, and told the rower to keep her head to the waves. The overweighted boat was less manageable than before, and in a moment another roller turned her completely over. Both men clung to the boat and climbed on to her bottom. She drifted away before the wind and sea toward South-West Harbor. The over- setting of the boat had been seen from both Bear Island and Sutton's Island ; but it was nearly three quarters of an hour be- fore the rescuers could reach the floating boat, and then the young man, though unconscious, was still clinging to the boat's keel, but the old man, chilled by the cold water and stunned by the waves which 1 105] JOHN GILLEY beat about his head, had lost his hold and sunk into the sea. In half an hour John Gilley had passed from a hearty and suc- cessful old age in this world, full of its legitimate interests and satisfactions, into the voiceless mystery of death. No trace of his body was ever found. It disap- peared into the waters on which he had played and worked as boy and man all his long and fortunate life. He left his fam- ily well provided for, and full of gratitude and praise for his honorable career and his sterling character. This is the life of one of the forgotten millions. It contains no material for dis- tinction, fame, or long remembrance ; but it does contain the material and present the scene for a normal human develop- ment through mingled joy and sorrow, labor and rest, adversity and success, and through the tender loves of childhood, maturity, and age. We cannot but be- lieve that it is just for countless quiet, simple lives like this that God made and upholds this earth. [ 106] GREAT RICHES GREAT RICHES SINCE the Civil War a new kind of rich man has come into existence in the United States. He is very much richer than anybody ever was before, and his riches are, in the main, of a new kind. They are not great areas of land, or nu- merous palaces, or flocks and herds, or thousands of slaves, or masses of chattels. They are in part city rents, but chiefly stocks and bonds of corporations, and bonds of states, counties, cities, and towns. These riches carry with them of necessity no visible or tangible responsibility, and bring upon their possessor no public or semi-public functions. The rich men are neither soldiers nor sailors ; they are not magistrates, or legis- lators, or church dignitaries. They are not landlords in the old sense ; and they never lead their tenants into battle as did [ I0 9 ] GREAT RICHES the feudal chiefs. They have no public functions of an importance commensurate with their riches. They are not subject to the orders and caprices of a sovereign, or forced to contend with the intrigues and vices of a court. Such occupations as they have, in addition to the making of more money, they have to invent them- selves. The public admires and envies them, and sees that they are often service- able, but also criticises and blames them, and to some extent fears them. It is dis- posed to think them dangerous to the Republic and a blot on democratic society ; but at the same time is curious about their doings and their mode of life, and is in rather a puzzle about their moral quality. I propose to consider briefly some of the advantages and disadvantages which great modern riches bring the owner and the community. COMFORTS The modern very rich man can, of course, procure for himself and his family every comfort. He can secure invariably all [ »o] GREAT RICHES possible comfortable provisions in every- place where he dwells, — in his own houses, or in hotels, trains, and steamers ; but still his wealth will not ordinarily pro- cure for him greater personal comfort than persons of moderate fortune can command. A twelve-dollar chair may be just as com- fortable as a fifty-dollar chair. There is pleasure in living in a palace ; but when its inmates want to be comfortable they get into the small rooms, — into the bou- doir, or the little writing-room, or the low- studded small parlor. A soft bed is for many persons not so comfortable as a hard one. In short, adequate warmth and light, appropriate clothing, good bedding, good plumbing, and nice chairs, tables, and household fittings sufficient to ensure bodily comfort, are easily within the reach of all well-to-do persons ; and great riches can do no more for their possessor in the way of comfort. The least physical ailment, like a gouty toe, or a dull ear, or a decayed tooth, will subtract more from comfort than all the riches in the world can add. [»i ] GREAT RICHES PLEASURES With pleasures it is different. Some real pleasures are very expensive, and only- great riches can procure them. For in- stance, the unobstructed and impregnable possession of a fine natural landscape is a great pleasure which the very rich man can secure for himself by his private means ; whereas the poor man, or the man of moderate means, can enjoy such a priv- ilege only by availing himself of great public domains, or of unoccupied regions; and there his own privilege will not be secure, or transmissible to descendants. The very rich man can provide himself with music and the drama without regard to their cost ; but it by no means requires very great riches to procure a quite ad- equate amount of these pleasures. Such pleasures as involve the purchase and maintenance of very costly machines like yachts, or large automobiles, or of great stables rilled with fine horses and carriages, or of large greenhouses and gardens, may [ "2] GREAT RICHES be enjoyed in their extremes only by the very rich ; but then, on a smaller scale, similar pleasures may be equally enjoyed by persons who are only moderately well- off, and often the larger scale does not add to the pleasure. An active boy in a knock-about twenty feet long may easily get more fun out of racing or cruising than his fifty-year-old father can get out of his six-hundred-ton steam yacht. The young lawyer who is fond of riding may easily get more pleasure out of his single saddle horse, kept at a club stable, than the multi- millionaire gets from his forty horses and twenty different carriages. One advantage the very rich man un- doubtedly has. Many so-called pleasures pall after a little while. The possessor of numerous horses and carriages, for ex- ample, finds that he has no pleasure in driving or riding. He is tired of it all. Or, to his surprise, he finds his yacht a bore, and, on the whole, a plague. Then he can cast aside the pleasure which is no longer a pleasure, and take up with some new fad or fever. He can utterly disre- 8 [ ii3 ] GREAT RICHES gard cost in turning from one pleasure to another. He can seize on costly novelties which promise a new pleasurable sensation, and experiment with them on a small chance of winning some satisfaction. This is assuredly a freedom which great riches bring ; but it is not a very valuable free- dom. One steady, permanent outdoor pleasure, if pursued with unflagging de- light, is worth many shifting transitory pleasures. The public does not grudge their pleas- ures to the very rich, provided they can be pursued without harming others. Indeed, the public approves all the manly, out- door, risky sports of the rich, if not incon- siderately pursued, and rather prefers the very rich man who is extravagant in these ways to one who has no interest in sports. The pleasure of travelling is one which is open to the very rich, and this is in general an instructive and enlarging pleas- ure. The length of the traveller's purse is, however, the least important item in his equipment. The main items are eyes to see beauty, ears to appreciate music, a [ "4] GREAT RICHES memory stored with historical information, and power to talk with the peoples visited. The very rich man, although poorly equipped, will do well to travel far and often ; but his relatively impecunious neighbor who is mentally well prepared for foreign travel will far better enjoy his journeyings, although they be much cheaper than the rich man's. LUXURIES When it comes to what are called luxu- ries, the very rich have undoubtedly an advantage over other people, if one can imagine the possession and use of a lux- ury to be in any sense an advantage. Thus, the very rich can procure for them- selves all sorts of rare and delicious foods and drinks. They can have fruits and vegetables out of season, and fish and game brought from afar. They can drink the finest champagne, or claret, or Rhine wine, or cordial, without ever consider- ing its cost. Indeed, they may prefer a [ "5] GREAT RICHES costly drink, and enjoy it more, just for the reason that it is costly. These pleasures of the palate the man of moderate means can only enjoy in brief seasons or at long intervals. It may be doubted, however, whether the very rich man gets any more pleasure from his palate and his organs of smell in the course of the year than the man who is compelled to follow the changes of the season in the selection of his foods and drinks. Strawberries in January are not so good as strawberries in June, and straw- berries for two months of the year, chang- ing to raspberries, currants, blueberries, and blackberries, may give more gratifica- tion on the whole than strawberries for six months of the year. The same thing may be said concerning the enjoyment of flowers and flowering plants in the house. The very rich man can order from some florist a profusion of flowers for all the rooms in his house through the entire season. The regular commercial flowers like roses, carnations, violets, chrysanthe- mums, and so forth, will be supplied in [ "6] GREAT RICHES great quantities, and the spring flowers will be forced in greenhouses, and will ap- pear in the drawing-room in January and February. These beautiful objects will adorn the very rich man's rooms the year round, and their fragrance will penetrate every part of his house. He and his family will enjoy them ; but it is doubtful whether he will get so much pleasure out of all this hired decoration as the owner of one little garden and one little glass bow window will get out of his few beds, pots, and vases filled with only seasonable blooms, all of which he has worked over and cared for himself. At any rate, it is a different kind of pleasure, and not so keen and inexhaustible. Money indeed can buy these beautiful objects, but money cannot buy the capacity to enjoy them. That capacity may or may not go with the possession of the money. OBJECTS OF BEAUTY There are, however, luxuries of a rarer sort which the very rich man can secure [ "7 ] GREAT RICHES for himself and his family, while the poor man, or the man of moderate means, can- not procure them at all. Such a luxury is the ownership of beautiful artistic objects, — of fine pictures, etchings, statu- ary, or beautiful examples of ceramic art. To have these objects in one's house within reach, or often before the eyes, is a great luxury, if their possessor has eyes to see their beauty. This is a clear advan- tage which the very rich man may have over a man of small means. When, how- ever, the accumulator of great riches is an uneducated man, as is often the case, he is little likely to possess the intellectual quality which is indispensable to the en- joyment of the fine arts. This is one of the reasons that the newly rich are apt to be ridiculed or despised. They are thought to be people who are pecuniarily able to gratify fine tastes, but have no such tastes. The possession of beautiful and costly jewels is a luxury which rich people — whether educated or ignorant — often seem to enjoy. They like to see their C "8] GREAT RICHES women decked with beautiful gems. It is to be said in behalf of this luxury that it is a gratification which does no bodily harm to anybody, and gives pleasure to many observers besides the possessor of the jewels. The only criticism which can be made on indulgence in this luxury is that the money it costs might have been more productive of human happiness if spent in other ways. A million dollars' worth of diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and pearls might have endowed a school or a hospital, or have made a mill or a foundry a healthy place to work in instead of an unhealthy one, or have provided a public playground for many generations to enjoy. Nevertheless, in some measure nearly every one enjoys this particular luxury, whether in savage or in civilized society. AIDS TO HEALTH In the care of health — their own and that of those they love — very rich peo- ple have certain indisputable advantages, although they also suffer from peculiar [ "9] GREAT RICHES exposure to the diseases consequent on luxury and ennui. Thus, they are under no necessity of enduring excessive labor, but can order their daily lives so as to avoid all strains and excesses in work. Moreover, if any physical evil befall them or those they love, they can procure all possible aids in the way of skilled attend- ants and medical or surgical advice ; and they can procure for themselves and their families any advised change of scene or climate, and procure it at the right moment, and in the most comfortable way. Lord Rosebery has pointed out that this freedom to spend money for aids in case of sickness or accident is the chief advantage the rich man has over the poor man ; but it should be observed that one need not be very rich in order to procure these advantages in case of illness or ac- cident. Moreover, remedies for disease are a poor substitute for health. The ability to pay for any amount of massage is an imperfect compensation for the loss of enjoyable use of the muscles in work and play, or for the exhaustion of the [ 120 ] GREAT RICHES nervous system. No one who has had large means of observation can have failed to see that the very rich are by no means the healthiest and most vigorous members of the community. The uneducated rich seem to be peculiarly liable to medical delusions, perhaps because their wealth enables them to try in quick succession all sorts of expensive cure-alls and quack- eries. Their wealth has its own disad- vantageous effects on their bodies. Thus, the keen pursuit of wealth is often excit- ing and exacting ; to keep and defend great wealth is sometimes an anxious busi- ness ; and if great riches bring with them a habit of self-indulgence and of luxurious living in general, it is well-nigh certain that the self-indulgent and luxurious per- son will suffer bodily evils which his plain- living neighbors will escape. Of course a wise rich man may escape all these per- ils of luxury. He may keep himself in good physical condition by all sorts of outdoor sports. He may do as the Duke of Wellington is said to have habitually done — provide elaborate French dishes GREAT RICHES for his guests at dinner, and himself eat two plain chops and a boiled potato; but such an habitual self-protection requires an unusual amount of will-power and prudence. Health being the chief bless- ing of life after the domestic affections, the fact that very rich people have no advan- tage over common people in respect to keeping their health, but rather are at a disadvantage, suggests strongly that there is a formidable discount on the possession of great riches. SATISFACTIONS NOT DEPENDENT ON WEALTH All thinking men and women get the main satisfactions of life, aside from the domestic joys, out of the productive work they do. It is therefore a pertinent in- quiry — what occupations are open to the very rich, occupations from which they can get solid satisfaction ? In the first place, they can have, on a large scale, the satis- faction which accompanies the continuous accumulation of property. This satisfac- C 122 ] GREAT RICHES tion, however, is fortunately a very com- mon one. The man or the woman who earns five or six hundred dollars a year and lays up a hundred dollars of this in- come, may enjoy this satisfaction to a high degree. It is a serious error to suppose that satisfaction in the acquisition of prop- erty is proportionate to the amount of property acquired. A man can be as eager and pleased over the accumulation of a few hundred dollars as he can be over a few million ; just as it may be much more generous for one man or woman to give away five dollars than it is for another to give aw r ay five hundred thousand. That is the reason that property is so secure in a democracy. Almost everybody has some property ; and the man who has a little will fight for that little as fiercely as the man who has a great deal. The passion for accumulation is doubtless highly grat- ified in the very rich man's case; and there is apparently a kind of pride which is grat- ified by the possession of monstrous sums merely because they are monstrous, just as some people seem to be gratified by be- [ "3 ] GREAT RICHES ing twitched through space at the rate of fifty miles an hour because it is fifty and not twenty. This well-nigh universal de- sire to acquire and accumulate is, of course, the source of the progressive prosperity of a vigorous and thrifty race. It provides what is called capital. The very rich man has unquestionably much more capacity in this direction than the average man. He accumulates on a much larger scale than the average man, and in all probability, although his satisfaction is not proportion- ate to the size of his accumulations, he gets somewhat more satisfaction from this source than the man whose accumulations are small. To build a palace at fifty years of age in city or country, and maintain it hand- somely for his family, seems to be a nat- ural performance for a very rich man. It is interesting to build a palace, and it af- fords some temporary occupation ; but it is incredible that this achievement should give as much pleasure to the owner as a young mechanic gets who has saved a few hundred dollars, and then builds a six- [ "4] GREAT RICHES room cottage, to which he brings a young wife. He, being skilful at his trade, builds the cottage largely with his own hands, and she, out of her savings, pro- vides the household linen and her own wardrobe. The achievement of the me- chanic and his wife is a personal one, hal- lowed by the most sacred loves and hopes. The palace is the rich owner's public triumph, finely executed by hired artists and laborers. It is a personal achievement only in an indirect way. THE RICH MAN'S POWER A great capital at the disposal of a single will confers on its possessor power over the course of industrial development, over his fellowmen, and sometimes over the course of great public events like peace or war between nations. For some na- tures it is a real satisfaction to be thus a sort of Providence to multitudes of men and women, able at pleasure to do them good or harm, to give them joy or pain, and in position to be feared or looked up 1 125 1 GREAT RICHES to. Great capital directed by one mind may be compared to the mill pond above the dam, which stores power subject to the mill owner's direction. There is pleasure and satisfaction in directing such a power ; and the greater the power, the greater may be the satisfaction. In giving this direc- tion the great capitalist may find an enjoy- able and strenuous occupation. For a conscientious, dutiful man a great sense of responsibility accompanies the possession of power, and this sense of responsibility may become so painful as to quite over- come all enjoyment of the power itself; but nevertheless we cannot but recognize the fact that the exercise of power gives pleasure and satisfaction without this drawback to men of arbitrary tempera- ment, or of an inconsiderate disposition which takes no account of the needs or wishes of others. The most successful businesses are those conducted by remarkably intelligent and just autocrats ; and probably the same would be true of governments, if any mode had been invented of discovering and put- [ "6 ] GREAT RICHES ting in place the desirable autocrats. The prevailing modes of discovery and selection, such as hereditary transmission, or election by a Pretorian guard or an army, have been so very unsuccessful that autocracy as a mode of government has justly fallen into disrepute. In business enterprises the existing modes of discovering and select- ing autocrats seem to be better than in governments ; for autocracy in business is often justified by its results. The autocrat in business is almost invariably a capital- ist; and when he possesses great riches he may be, and often is, highly serviceable to his community or his nation through his beneficial direction of accumulated and stored power. Whether he himself wins satisfaction through the exercise of his power depends on his temperament, dispo- sition, and general condition of physical and moral health. When great riches are stored up in possession of one man, or one family, the power which resides in them can be directed by one mind into that channel, or those channels, where it can be made most effective, and this effective [ 127 1 GREAT RICHES direction it is which brings out in high relief the usefulness of great riches. What are ordinarily called benefactions — that is, gifts for beneficial uses — are, therefore, by no means the only benefits very rich men can confer on the com- munity to which they belong. Any man who, by sound thinking and hard work, develops and carries on a productive in- dustry, and by his good judgment makes that industry both profitable and stable, confers an immense benefit on society. This is indeed the best outcome of great riches. IMPROVING THE LAND Very rich men can, if they choose, win certain natural satisfactions which are not accessible to the poor or to the merely well-to-do. If they have the taste for such labors, they can improve fields and woods, brooks and ponds, make a barren soil fertile, raise the best breeds of cattle, horses, swine, and sheep, and in general add to the productiveness and beauty of a [ "8] GREAT RICHES great estate. They can develop landscape beauty on a large scale, making broad tracts of country more beautiful and more enjoyable. Since earth-work is the most durable of all human works, the wise im- provement of a great estate is a lasting contribution to human welfare and a worthy occupation of any man's time. It is a subject which will usefully employ all the senses of the keenest observer and the best judgment of a prudent but enthusiastic inventor and promoter. Whoever makes a farm, a forest, or a garden yield more than it did before has made a clear addi- tion to mankind's control of nature. For persons who have a natural taste for such employments a keen gratification accom- panies success in them. Very rich men can win this satisfaction with greater cer- tainty than men who must always be con- sidering whether the improvement they have projected will forthwith pay its cost. There is, however, a serious drawback on the satisfaction very rich men can de- rive from improving their estates, namely, an uncertainty with regard to the mainte- 9 [ 129 ] GREAT RICHES nance of the improved estate in the family of its chief creator. In this country it is difficult to pass down to another genera- tion large holdings of lands, at least with any assurance that the holdings will be kept. It frequently happens that no child of the rich man wishes, or is even willing, to keep up its father's establishment ; and indeed, in many cases no child is really able to maintain the father's establishment, having received only a fraction of the father's capital. Estates inherited through three generations are rare in the United State, particularly great estates brought together by very rich men. Ordinary farms are in a few cases transmitted through three generations, and some farms which have been lost to the family which made them are at times bought back in later gen- erations by descendants of the original proprietors ; but on the whole the trans- mission of landed estates from generation to generation is unusual in this country. Any rich man, therefore, who spends thought and money on the improvement of a large estate must always feel uncertain [ l 3° ] GREAT RICHES whether his fields and woods will remain in the possession of his family. In the neighborhood of large cities almost the only way to make sure that an estate, which the owner has greatly improved by his own thoughtfulness and skill, will re- main in good condition is to get the estate converted into a public domain. On an estate which becomes public property the chances are that all improvements will be maintained and that care will be taken to preserve all its landscape beauties. It is only a generous and public-spirited man, however, who looks forward with satisfac- tion to this fate for fields and forests which have become dear to him. THE HIGHER OPPORTUNITIES OF WEALTH In some exceptional cases a rich man uses his riches in pursuit of intellectual satisfactions of his own, for the full attain- ment of which riches are necessary, but which are in no way connected with his capacity for accumulating property. Such [ 131 1 GREAT RICHES a fortunate rich man, having acquired great wealth, uses it to meet the costs of his own scientific investigations, or in acquir- ing a fine library on a subject to which he had devoted himself before he was rich ; or he retires somewhat early in life from money-making and gives himself to study and authorship with every aid or facility which money can procure. These are the most fortunate of rich men. They obtain congenial intellectual satisfactions. They make themselves serviceable, and they have a better chance than most rich men of bringing up serviceable children. It is obvious that very rich men have power to render services to the public which it is impossible for poor men or men of moderate incomes to render. They can endow churches, schools, universities, li- braries, hospitals, museums, gardens, and parks with sums large enough to give these institutions stability and continuous usefulness. They can also come to the aid of private individuals who have suf- fered through illness, premature death of friends, or other disasters which justify [ x 32 ] GREAT RICHES helplessness. They can help widows and children bereft of their natural protectors and bread-winners. They can help young men and women to an education which will raise for the persons helped the whole level of their subsequent lives. All these things they can do on a scale impossible to men of moderate means. Great riches are constantly used in our country in all these ways to an extent which has never before been equalled, and which entitles the American very rich man to be recog- nized as a type by himself. The first question which arises about this beneficial use of great wealth is this : Does it give pleasure or satisfaction to the givers ; and is this pleasure or satis- faction, if any, proportionate to the mag- nitude of the gifts ? Does a man who gives $100,000 to a college or an academy get more pleasure from his gift than a man who gives $1,000, the first man be- ing one hundred times richer than the second man ? That there is real pleasure or satisfaction for the giver in his giving is altogether probable ; and it is quite [ J 33 ] GREAT RICHES possible that the pleasure in large giving is proportionate to that largeness, although the pleasure of acquisition is not propor- tionate to the amount acquired. Experi- ence seems to show that it is difficult for a very rich man to give away intelligently and with enjoyment as large a proportion of his income as a man in moderate cir- cumstances can easily give away. The proportion of an income given away ought to mount rapidly with the increase of the income, but experience indicates that it does not. It is no easy task to select wisely objects for great benefactions and to give money to the selected objects without doing injury. Thus, to endow a church, unless with its building and equipment only, is generally a mischief, not a benefit. The giving of thoroughly good things, like education and opportunities for travel or healthful exercise, to young people who are not bound to the giver by ties of kinship is accompanied by great difficulties. It is easy to pauperize the individuals helped. It is easy to destroy their self-reliance and their capacity for productive labor. [ 134] GREAT RICHES GIVING BY MEN OF WEALTH Very rich men differ greatly with re- gard to their method of giving. Some give quickly, with slight investigation con- cerning the objects to which they give. Others make the most careful and thor- ough investigation before making gifts, employing experienced agents in their in- quiries, and ascertaining the merits and demerits, the advantages and disadvan- tages, of the institution or society they think to aid. Some men of great wealth approach the whole subject of giving away money with conscientiousness and with a painful sense of responsibility for the use of wealth entrusted to them ; and this sense of responsibility may greatly impair their comfort or satisfaction in the power to give. Other men, no richer, give away great sums without serious examination and without any oppressive sense that they hold their property in trust for the benefit of the community. One anxiety, which most conscientious givers on a large [ !35 ] GREAT RICHES scale feel, is the anxiety lest, by coming with large gifts to the support of an insti- tution or association, they impair what may be called the natural or constitutional resources of the institution or association — such, for example, as the giving power of the alumni of a college or the yield of the annual taxes or subscriptions in a church. It is commonly dangerous for a school, or college, or library to get the reputation of being the special charge of a very rich individual or family. On this account givers of large sums often make it a condition of their gifts that some other sum shall be procured simultane- ously from other friends of the institution. Every very rich man who is in the habit of making gifts to individuals and to insti- tutions has met, in many instances, with a complete or partial defeat of his benevo- lent purpose ; but most of these defeats or failures occur in attempts to aid indi- viduals rather than institutions. The nineteenth century witnessed a con- siderable change in the destination of endowments. Endowments for palliating [ 136 1 GREAT RICHES some of the evils that afflict society used to be the commonest, such as endowments for almshouses, doles, and hospitals ; but now endowments for various sorts of education — such as academies, colleges, free-lecture courses, libraries, and museums supply — have become the commonest; and these last forms are far the wisest, because they are much more than palliations of evil. They are creators and diffusers of good. Through this change the chance of the very rich man to do perpetual good with his money has been greatly increased ; and surely the hope of doing some perpetual good with the product of one's intelli- gence, skill, and industry is one of the brightest of human hopes. THE CHILDREN OF THE VERY RICH The most serious disadvantage under which very rich people labor is in the bringing up of their children. It is well- nigh impossible for a very rich man to defend his children from habits of self- indulgence, laziness, and selfishness. The [ 137 ] GREAT RICHES children are so situated, both at home and at school, that they have no opportunity of acquiring any habit of productive labor. They do nothing for themselves, or for their parents and brothers and sisters. They have no means of acquiring the habit of co-operative work except in their sports, and in not all of those. The farmer's children co-operate from their tenderest years in the work of the house- hold and the farm. The very rich man's child is absolutely deprived of that in- valuable training. Moreover, the artifi- cial training which a very rich man can buy in the market for his child is deter- mined as to its quality, not by his own intelligence and wishes, but by what for- mer generations have produced in the way of educational institutions and private tui- tion. The rich man can find no better school for his boy and girl than has been developed without his aid, and mostly by a preceding generation. When the multi- millionaire comes to realize that he wants something for his child which the institu- tions of his time do not furnish, he can [ "3«] GREAT RICHES help to improve the defective institutions for the benefit of other people's children in subsequent years, but it is too late to improve them for his own children. The very rich man's sons know, first, that they will have no need of earning their living ; secondly, that their father can, if he choose, enable them to marry early, and to con- tinue to live, without any exertion on their part, in the same luxurious way in which they have always lived in their father's house ; thirdly, that mental exertion will be as unnecessary for them as physical exertion. They are therefore deprived of all the ordinary motives for industry and the assiduous cultivation of their powers, bodily and mental. Further, it is almost impossible to bring them up to a simple habit of life which takes account of the feelings and interests of others. Unless disciplined by ill-health or other personal misfortunes, they almost inevitably become self-indulgent and unambitious. This con- dition of a rich man's children is worse in the democratic society of the United States than in the older aristocratic socie- [ J 39 ] GREAT RICHES ties of Europe, because here no duties or responsibilities are inherited with their riches by the rich man's children. The children of the rich have with us no duties to the state, and no recognized duties to their family, or even to the creator of their wealth. They are not even bound to maintain their father's establishment. They are placed under no obligation to live where their father did, to carry on his business, to maintain his benefactions, or to build on any foundations which he laid. When property consists of stocks and bonds, almost all the safeguards with which feudal society surrounded the trans- mission of titles and great estates from father to son fail to take effect. The very rich man who succeeds, as some do succeed, in bringing up his chil- dren to useful and honorable careers of their own, has had, then, enormous diffi- culties to overcome. He can only over- come them through the influence of his own personal character, quite apart from the qualities which made him very rich. He must possess for himself, and inspire [ Ho ] GREAT RICHES in his children, nobler ambitions than that of being very rich. He must have a high purpose in the use of riches, which his children can see and learn to imitate ; and the convincing proof that he himself was possessed by a noble purpose will be the fact that his children escape the great dangers of being brought up rich, and de- velop a correspondingly high purpose in their own lives. There are, of course, many cases among the children of the rich where the parents* nature is not trans- mitted to the children, very unlike ten- dencies appearing in the children from any that the parents exhibited, as when scholarly children with artistic, literary, or scientific tastes appear in the families of uneducated parents whose practical sagac- ity and industry have made them rich. The impossibility of bringing up children satisfactorily in luxurious homes has led to the establishment of boarding schools of various sorts for the children of the rich ; and these schools have steadily increased in number and variety during the past thirty years. They are more necessary [ hi ] GREAT RICHES for boys than for girls, because the nature of boys is more perverted by luxury than the nature of girls, perhaps because enter- prise and ambition seem more indispen- sable in a man than in a woman. It seems to be easier to make a boy selfish and in- different to the feelings and rights of others than to spoil a girl in that way. The effects which very rich people have on their fellowmen are various, being much affected by the personal qualities of the possessors of great wealth and by the popular beliefs as to the sources of their wealth. The multitude recognize that they themselves are strongly influenced by the very same hopes and desires which have been gratified in the case of posses- sors of great wealth. In a democracy nearly every man and woman wishes and hopes to earn more and more money, and to lay up more and more money, and so to become more and more independent of the anxiety which inevitably accompa- nies dependence on daily toil to meet daily wants. Moreover, nearly every man and woman admires and respects those abilities [ 142 ] GREAT RICHES which make men rich, — acquisitiveness, frugality, industry, and business sagacity, — so that they are prepared to admire and respect those who possess in a high degree these qualities. On the other hand, the multitude is disposed to despise and con- demn the self-indulgence and the luxury which degrade and corrupt the possessors of great riches, together with their children and their dependents. The multitude feels a mild reprobation of extravagance, but a hearty contempt for penuriousness and lack of generosity in the very rich. It always experiences, and often expresses, a displeased surprise when a man who has lived without generosity and without splen- dor is discovered at his death to have been very rich. This is a kind of adverse post- humous judgment which never overtook the very rich in the earlier days when all property was visible, as in land, buildings, flocks, herds, and chattels. Not even gen- erous testamentary dispositions will recon- cile the American public to a penurious life on the part of a rich man. [ 143 ] GREAT RICHES PUBLIC JUDGMENTS OF THE RICH The judgments of the public concerning the means by which great riches have been acquired are fickle and uncertain, because, for the most part, made in the dark. In this respect the public has little confidence in its own impressions, unless legal pro- ceedings have brought to light the course of conduct and events which profited the possessors of great wealth, or the habitual mode of conducting the business which yielded great wealth. In spite of the fact that monopolies have for centuries been hateful to the main body of the consumers in every nation, the judgment of the pub- lic is ordinarily a lenient one toward the creators of successful monopolies ; because every one recognizes in himself a longing to secure some sort of monopoly — to be- come the possessor, for example, of some little art or little skill which nobody else possesses, to raise a vegetable or a flower which nobody else can raise, to write a book or paint a picture which nobody else [ H4 ] GREAT RICHES can produce, to practise a trade or a pro- fession without any effective competitors, or to invent or manufacture a patented ar- ticle which nobody else can make. The manufacture of a patented article affords a perfect example of monopoly ; but the American people, at least, are thoroughly accustomed to such perfect monopolies, and, on the whole, believe them to be suitable rewards for beneficial inventions. In spite, therefore, of the evils caused to the great body of consumers by monopo- lies, the American public is gentle in its judgment of the conduct of very rich men who have discerned and profited enor- mously by advantages in business which nobody else could or did procure. Al- most every business man feels that if he had had the skill, or the luck, to seize upon some such advantage, he would not have hesitated to do so. A community which is thoroughly possessed in all its strata with a desire and a purpose to better itself is not likely to be harsh in its judgment of men who have conspicuously succeeded in so doing. To be sure, if a very rich [ 145 ] GREAT RICHES man in pursuing the gratification of his own desires interferes with what his neigh- bors regard as their own traditional rights and customs, as, for instance, by enclosing large areas over which his neighbors have freely fished or hunted, or by occupying shores which have been open to the resort of a whole neighborhood, he is apt to encounter popular condemnation. If he pursues his pleasures with conspicuous disregard of the comfort or safety of other people he is likely to get into trouble, un- less, as is often the case, he can manage in his pursuit of his own pleasures to appear to be only enjoying, or perhaps defending, val- uable rights acquired by the whole public. THE WORLD'S ATTITUDE TOWARD RICH MEN In the long run the possessor of great wealth is judged in part by the use he makes of his riches, including in that use his disposal of them at his death, in part by the nature of the business which made him rich, and in part by the moral quality 1 146 ] GREAT RICHES he manifests in the conduct of his business. If it appears that the rich man recognized his responsibility to society for a right use of his wealth, the public will forgive much expenditure for his own pleasures and for the pleasures of his family, and for the se- curity of his children against the possibility of future want. They will condone great extravagance and waste, if, on the whole, a high and liberal purpose guided the man in his accumulations and in his benefac- tions. The peculiar faculties and powers which lead to the accumulation of riches resemble all other human faculties and powers in the following respect, — they may all be degraded and made sordid by a low purpose or elevated and exalted by a noble one. This is just as true of the powers of memory, invention, and pene- trative reasoning as it is of that practical sagacity which leads to the possession of wealth. Even love, that all-hallowing motive when it is pure, unselfish, and spir- itual, becomes a fearful implement of moral destruction if it be low and animal. The very rich man is, then, not to be pro- [ 147 ] GREAT RICHES nounced admirable and happy, or con- temptible and miserable, until his account is made up and the dominant purpose of his life is made plain. Again, the rich man is judged in part by the quality of the product which made him rich. A beneficial product tends to sanctify riches ; a harmful product poisons them. The public judgment is gentler toward men who got rich by producing or selling good petroleum, steel, or copper than it is toward men who produce or sell whiskey, patent medicines, lottery tickets, or advertising space for immoral undertak- ings. Riches acquired in making mankind more comfortable or healthier are much more likely to give satisfaction to their possessor, and through him to benefit so- ciety, than riches acquired through products which are injurious to mankind and so increase the sum of human misery. PUBLICITY A SAFEGUARD FOR WEALTH In regard to judging the morality of the processes by which great wealth has been [ h8 j GREAT RICHES acquired the public must always meet with serious difficulties and delays ; proof of misconduct is hard to get, and even the courts sometimes give an uncertain sound, for business methods which are not illegal may nevertheless be decidedly immoral ; for instance, they may be cruel, greedy, or treacherous, but within the law. Bought suppressions of truth, which in the public interest should be told, are usually im- moral but not illegal. The only sure pro- tection of the rich man against suspicions and adverse judgments in this respect is publicity for his methods and results. Many businesses are now under sufficient government supervision to secure some measure of publicity ; those conducted in secrecy and with no periodic publication of results are liable to intense suspicion on the part of the public whenever they yield immense fortunes for individuals at short notice. In such cases the public always suspects some sort of foul play or some unearned increment not fairly attributable to unusual foresight. The suddenly rich man finds that the presumptions are all [ 149 ] GREAT RICHES against him in the public mind, and that the public ear is open to the prosecuting attorney but shut to the defence. This distrust is the inevitable penalty for secrecy in money getting on a large scale. Many years may elapse before it is possible to get the final verdict, and oblivion may easily arrive before justice. The very rich people, then, like most other things and forces in this world, are a mixed product, and may work either good or evil for their neighborhood and their nation. Some of them do great harm by giving conspicuous examples of self- indulgent, pleasure-seeking, trivial lives ; others do great good by illustrating the noble and beneficent use of wealth. Some of them, in seeking their selfish ends, corrupt legislatures and courts, trample on the weak, betray trusts, cheat the law, de- ceive or bribe the agents of the law, raise the prices of necessaries of life, and by their example lower the moral standards of the business community ; others use all their influence to improve legislation, the ad- ministration of justice, the management [ 150] GREAT RICHES of corporations — including that of towns and cities — the execution of trusts, and the education of the people, and to diffuse and cheapen the good gifts of nature. The estimate which the rest of us form of the relatively few very rich men is guided by our opinions concerning their personal characters. We despise and abhor the coarse, ostentatious, selfish, unjust multi- millionaire, while we admire and respect the refined, generous, and just rich man, be his millions few or many, be his bene- factions direct through gifts to hospitals, churches, and colleges, or indirect through the improvement of the industries which maintain and extend civilization or the beautification of the common life. NO ABIDING CLASS OF RICH M#N It is quite unnecessary in this country to feel alarm about the rise of a permanent class of very rich people. To transmit great estates is hard. They get divided or dispersed. The heirs are often unable to keep their inherited treasures, or, if by [ 151 ] GREAT RICHES the help of lawyers and other hired agents they manage to keep them, they cease to accumulate, and only spend. This is one of the natural effects on his children of the very rich man's mode of life. With rarest exceptions the very rich men of to-day are not the sons of the very rich men of thirty years ago, but are new men. It will be the same thirty years hence. The wise rich father will try to put his sons into those beneficent professions and occupations which have strong intellectual and moral interest, and in which pecuni- ary independence is a distinct advantage. Such are the public service in elective or appointive offices, the ministry, scientific research, social service, and the manage- ment of charities and of serviceable endowed institutions. Inherited wealth enables young men to devote themselves early to these fine employments, which are not pecuniarily remunerative but yet pos- sess the highest sort of interest and offer all the rewards of beneficent influence among men. From persons so occupied, from the ranks of the learned and scientific [ 152] GREAT RICHES professions, and from the more intellectual and useful sorts of business, the highest class of each generation in a democracy is in large measure recruited. The new-made very rich may or may not belong to this class. The chances are against them, un- less they prove themselves men of distinc- tion both mentally and morally. One of the best tests of the worth of free institutions is their capacity to produce a numerous class of superior persons — rich, well-off, comfortable, or just self- supporting — a class larger in proportion to the mass of the people, and more meri- torious than any other form of government has produced. All signs indicate that the American democracy will meet this test. [ 153 1 THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE A lecture delivered at the close of the Eleventh Session of the Harvard Summer School of Theology, July 22, ipop THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE AS students in this summer's School of Theology you have attended a series of lectures on fluctuations in religious interest, on the frequent occurrence of religious declines followed soon by recov- eries or regenerations both within and without the churches, on the frequent at- tempts to bring the prevalent religious doctrines into harmony with new tenden- cies in the intellectual world, on the con- stant struggle between conservatism and liberalism in existing churches and between idealism and materialism in society at large, on the effects of popular education and the modern spirit of inquiry on re- ligious doctrines and organizations, on the changed views of thinking people con- cerning the nature of the world and of man, on the increase of knowledge as [ 157 ] THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE affecting religion, and on the new ideas of God. You have also listened to lectures on psychotherapy, a new develop- ment of ah ancient tendency to mix religion with medicine, and on the theory of evo- lution, a modern scientific doctrine which within fifty years has profoundly modified the religious conceptions and expectations of many thinking people. You have heard, too, how the new ideas of democ- racy and social progress have modified and ought to modify not only the actual work done by the churches, but the whole conception of the function of churches. Again, you have heard how many and how profound are the religious implica- tions in contemporary philosophy. Your attention has been called to the most recent views concerning the conservation of energy in the universe, to the wonder- ful phenomena of radio-activity, and to the most recent definitions of atom, mole- cule, ion, and electron — human imagin- ings which have much to do with the modern conceptions of matter and spirit. The influence on popular religion of [ 158] THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE modern scholarship applied to the New Testament has also engaged your atten- tion ; and, finally, you have heard an exposition of religious conditions and practices in the United States which assumed an intimate connection between the advance of civilization and the con- temporaneous aspects of religions, and illustrated from history the service of religion — and particularly of Christianity — to the progress of civilization through its contributions to individual freedom, in- tellectual culture, and social co-operation. The general impression you have re- ceived from this comprehensive survey must surely be that religion is not a fixed, but a fluent thing. It is, therefore, wholly natural and to be expected that the con- ceptions of religion prevalent among edu- cated people should change from century to century. Modern studies in compara- tive religion and in the history of religions demonstrate that such has been the case in times past. Now the nineteenth cen- tury immeasurably surpassed all preceding centuries in the increase of knowledge, and [ iS9 ] THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE in the spread of the spirit of scientific in- quiry and of the passion for truth-seeking. Hence the changes in religious beliefs and practices, and in the relation of churches to human society as a whole, were much deeper and more extensive in that century than ever before in the history of the world ; and the approach made to the em- bodiment in the actual practices of man- kind of the doctrines of the greatest religious teachers was more significant and more rapid than ever before. The religion of a multitude of humane persons in the twentieth century may, therefore, be called without inexcusable exaggeration a " new religion," — not that a single one of its doctrines and practices is really new in essence, but only that the wider acceptance and better actual application of truths familiar in the past at many times and places, but never taken to heart by the multitude or put in force on a large scale, are new. I shall attempt to state without reserve and in simplest terms free from technicalities, first, what the religion of the future seems likely not to be, and, [ 160] THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE secondly, what it may reasonably be ex- pected to be. My point of view is that of an American layman, whose observing and thinking life has covered the extraor- dinary period since the Voyage of the Beagle was published, anaesthesia and the telegraph came into use, Herbert Spencer issued his first series of papers on evo- lution, Kuenen, Robertson Smith, and Wellhausen developed and vindicated Biblical criticism, J. S. Mill's Principles of Political Economy appeared, and the United States by going to war with Mexico set in operation the forces which abolished slavery on the American continent — the period within which mechanical power came to be widely distributed through the explosive engine and the applications of electricity, and all the great fundamental industries of civilized mankind were re- constructed. i. The religion of the future will not be based on authority, either spiritual or temporal. The decline of the reliance upon absolute authority is one of the most significant phenomena of the modern [ .6i ] THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE world. This decline is to be seen every- where, — in government, in education, in the church, in business, and in the family. The present generation is willing, and indeed often eager, to be led ; but it is averse to being driven, and it wants to understand the grounds and sanctions of authoritative decisions. As a rule, the Christian churches, Roman, Greek, and Protestant, have heretofore relied mainly upon the principle of authority, the Reformation having substituted for an authoritative church an authoritative book ; but it is evident that the authority both of the most authoritative churches and of the Bible as a verbally inspired guide is already greatly impaired, and that the tendency towards liberty is progressive, and among educated men irresistible. 2. It is hardly necessary to say that in the religion of the future there will be no personifications of the primitive forces of nature, such as light, fire, frost, wind, storm, and earthquake, although primitive religions and the actual religions of bar- barous or semi-civilized peoples abound in [ '6 2 ] THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE such personifications. The mountains, groves, volcanoes, and oceans will no longer be inhabited by either kindly or malevolent deities ; although man will still look to the hills for rest, still find in the ocean a symbol of infinity, and refresh- ment and delight in the forests and the streams. The love of nature mounts and spreads, while faith in fairies, imps, nymphs, demons, and angels declines and fades away. 3. There will be in the religion of the future no worship, express or implied, of dead ancestors, teachers, or rulers ; no more tribal, racial, or tutelary gods ; no identification of any human being, how- ever majestic in character, with the Eternal Deity. In these respects the religion of the future will not be essentially new, for nineteen centuries ago Jesus said, cc Neither in this mountain, nor in Jeru- salem, shall ye worship the Father. . . . God is a Spirit ; and they that worship him must worship in spirit and truth." It should be recognized, however, first, that Christianity was soon deeply affected by [ '63 ] THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE the surrounding paganism, and that some of these pagan intrusions have survived to this day ; and, secondly, that the Hebrew- religion, the influence of which on the Christian has been, and is, very potent, was in the highest degree a racial religion, and its Holy of Holies was local. In war-times, that is, in times when the brutal or savage instincts remaining in humanity become temporarily dominant, and good- will is limited to people of the same nation, the survival of a tribal or national quality in institutional Christianity comes out very plainly. The aid of the Lord of Hosts is still invoked by both parties to international warfare, and each side praises and thanks Him for its successes. Indeed, the same spirit has often been exhibited in civil wars caused by religious differences. " Now glory to the Lord of Hosts, from whom all glories are ! And glory to our sovereign liege, King Henry of Navarre ! " It is not many years since an Archbishop of Canterbury caused thanks to be given 1 16 4 ] THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE in all Anglican churches that the Lord of Hosts had been in the English camp over against the Egyptians. Heretofore the great religions of the world have held out hopes of direct interventions of the deity, or some special deity, in favor of his faith- ful worshippers. It was the greatest of Jewish prophets who told King Hezekiah that the King of Assyria, who had ap- proached Jerusalem with a great army, should not come into the city nor shoot an arrow there, and reported the Lord as saying, " I will defend this city to save it, for my own sake, and for my servant David's sake." "And it came to pass that night, that the angel of the Lord went forth, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians an hundred fourscore and five thousand : and when men arose early in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses." The new religion cannot promise that sort of aid to either nations or individuals in peril. 4. In the religious life of the future the primary object will not be the personal welfare or safety of the individual in this [ 165] THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE world or any other. That safety, that welfare or salvation, may be incidentally secured, but it will not be the prime object in view. The religious person will not think of his own welfare or security, but of service to others, and of contributions to the common good. The new religion will not teach that character is likely to be suddenly changed, either in this world or in any other, — although in any world a sudden opportunity for improvement may present itself, and the date of that oppor- tunity may be a precious remembrance. The new religion will not rely on either a sudden conversion in this world or a sud- den paradise in the next, from out a sen- sual, selfish, or dishonest life. It will teach that repentance wipes out nothing in the past, and is only the first step towards reformation, and a sign of a better future. 5. The religion of the future will not be propitiatory, sacrificial, or expiatory. In primitive society fear of the supernal powers, as represented in the awful forces of nature, was the root of religion. These dreadful powers must be propitiated or [ 166 ] THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE placated, and they must be propitiated bv sacrifices in the most literal sense ; and the supposed offences of man must be ex- piated by sufferings, which were apt to be vicarious. Even the Hebrews offered hu- man sacrifices for generations ; and always a great part of their religious rites consisted in sacrifices of animals. The Christian church made a great step forward when it substituted the burning of incense for the burning of bullocks and doves ; but to this day there survives not only in the doctrines but in the practices of the Chris- tian church the principle of expiatory sac- rifice. It will be an immense advance if twentieth-century Christianity can be puri- fied from all these survivals of barbarous, or semi-barbarous, religious conceptions ; because they imply such an unworthy idea of God. 6. The religion of the future will not perpetuate the Hebrew anthropomorphic representations of God, conceptions which were carried in large measure into institu- tional Christianity. It will not think of God as an enlarged and glorified man, who 1 16 7 ] THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE walks " in the garden in the cool of the day/' or as a judge deciding between hu- man litigants, or as a king, Pharaoh, or emperor, ruling arbitrarily his subjects, or as the patriarch who, in the early history of the race, ruled his family absolutely. These human functions will cease to rep- resent adequately the attributes of God. The nineteenth century has made all these conceptions of deity look archaic and crude. 7. The religion of the future will not be gloomy, ascetic, or maledictory. It will not deal chiefly with sorrow and death, but with joy and life. It will not care so much to account for the evil and the ugly in the world as to interpret the good and the beautiful. It will believe in no malig- nant powers — neither in Satan nor in witches, neither in the evil eye nor in the malign suggestion. When its disciple en- counters a wrong or evil in the world, his impulse will be to search 6ut its origin, source, or cause, that he may attack it at its starting-point. He may not speculate on the origin of evil in general, but will 1 168 ] THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE surely try to discover the best way to eradicate the particular evil or wrong he has recognized. Having thus considered what the relig- ion of the future will not be, let us now consider what its positive elements will be. The new thought of God will be its most characteristic element. This ideal will comprehend the Jewish Jehovah, the Christian Universal Father, the modern physicist's omnipresent and exhaustless Energy, and the biological conception of a Vital Force. The Infinite Spirit pervades the universe, just as the spirit of a man pervades his body, and acts, consciously or unconsciously, in every atom of it. The twentieth century will accept literally and implicitly St. Paul's statement, "In Him we live, and move, and have our be- ing," and God is that vital atmosphere, or incessant inspiration. The new religion is therefore thoroughly monotheistic, its God being the one infinite force ; but this one God is not withdrawn or removed, but indwelling, and especially dwelling in every living creature. God is so absolutely 1 16 9 ] THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE immanent in all things, animate and inani- mate, that no mediation is needed between him and the least particle of his creation. In his moral attributes, he is for every man the multiplication to infinity of all the noblest, tenderest, and most potent qualities which that man has ever seen or imagined in a human being. In this sense every man makes his own picture of God. Every age, barbarous or civilized, happy or unhappy, improving or degenerating, frames its own conception of God within the limits of its own experiences and im- aginings. In this sense, too, a humane religion has to wait for a humane genera- tion. The central thought of the new re- ligion will therefore be a humane and worthy idea of God, thoroughly consistent with the nineteenth-century revelations concerning man and nature, and with all the tenderest and loveliest teachings which have come down to us from the past. The scientific doctrine of one omnipres- ent, eternal Energy, informing and inspir- ing the whole creation at every instant of time and throughout the infinite spaces, is [ !7° ] THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE fundamentally and completely inconsistent with the dualistic conception which sets spirit over against matter, good over against evil, man's wickedness against God's righteousness, and Satan against Christ. The doctrine of God's imma- nence is also inconsistent with the con- ception that he once set the universe a-going, and then withdrew, leaving the universe to be operated under physical laws, which were his vicegerents or substi- tutes. If God is thoroughly immanent in the entire creation, there can be no " sec- ondary causes," in either the material or the spiritual universe. The new religion rejects absolutely the conception that man is an alien in the world, or that God is alienated from the world. It rejects also the entire conception of man as a fallen being, hopelessly wicked, and tending downward by nature ; and it makes this emphatic rejection of long-accepted beliefs because it finds them all inconsistent with a humane, civilized, or worthy idea of God. If, now, man discovers God through 1 171 1 THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE self-consciousness, or, in other words, if it is the human soul through which God is revealed, the race has come to the knowl- edge of God through knowledge of itself; and the best knowledge of God comes through knowledge of the best of the race. Men have always attributed to man a spirit distinct from his body, though immanent in it. No one of us is willing to identify himself with his body ; but on the con- trary every one now believes, and all men have believed, that there is in a man an animating, ruling, characteristic essence, or spirit, which is himself. This spirit, dull or bright, petty or grand, pure or foul, looks out of the eyes, sounds in the voice, and appears in the bearing and manners of each individual. It is some- thing just as real as the body, and more characteristic. To every influential person it gives far the greater part of his power. It is what we call the personality. This spirit, or soul, is the most effective part of every human being, and is recognized as such, and always has been. It can use a fine body more effectively than it can a [ 172 ] THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE poor body, but it can do wonders through an inadequate body. In the crisis of a losing battle it is a human soul that rallies the flying troops. It looks out of flashing eyes, and speaks in ringing tones, but its appeal is to other souls, and not to other bodies. In the midst of terrible natural catastrophes, — earthquakes, storms, con- flagrations, volcanic eruptions, — when men's best works are being destroyed and thousands of lives are ceasing suddenly and horribly, it is not a few especially good human bodies which steady the survivors, maintain order, and organize the forces of rescue and relief. It is a few superior souls. The leading men and women in any society, savage or civilized, are the strongest personalities, — the personality being primarily spiritual, and only second- arily bodily. Recognizing to the full these simple and obvious facts, the future religion will pay homage to all righteous and loving persons who in the past have exemplified, and made intelligible to their contemporaries, intrinsic goodness and effluent good-will. It will be an all-saints [ J 73 ] THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE religion. It will treasure up all tales of human excellence and virtue. It will rev- erence the discoverers, teachers, martyrs, and apostles of liberty, purity, and right- eousness. It will respect and honor all strong and lovely human beings, — seeing in them in finite measure qualities similar to those which they adore in God. Rec- ognizing in every great and lovely human person individual will-power which is the essence of the personality, it will naturally and inevitably attribute to God a similar individual will-power, the essence of his infinite personality. In this simple and natural faith there will be no place for metaphysical complexities or magical rites, much less for obscure dogmas, the result of compromises in turbulent conventions. It is anthropomorphic ; but what else can a human view of God's personality be ? The finite can study and describe the in- finite only through analogy, parallelism, and simile ; but that is a good way. The new religion will animate and guide ordi- nary men and women who are putting into practice religious conceptions which result [ 174] THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE directly from their own observation and precious experience of tenderness, sym- pathy, trust, and solemn joy. It will be most welcome to the men and women who cherish and exhibit incessant, all-compre- hending good-will. These are the "good" people. These are the only genuinely civilized persons. To the wretched, sick, and downtrodden of the earth, religion has in the past held out hopes of future compensation. When precious ties of affection have been broken, religion has held out prospects of immedi- ate and eternal blessings for the departed, and has promised happy reunions in an- other and a better world. To a human soul, lodged in an imperfect, feeble, or suffering body, some of the older religions have held out the expectation of deliver- ance by death, and of entrance upon a rich, competent, and happy life, — in short, for present human ills, however crushing, the widely accepted religions have offered either a second life, presumably immortal, under the happiest conditions, or at least peace, rest, and a happy oblivion. Can [ 175 ] THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE the future religion promise that sort of compensation for the ills of this world any more than it can promise miraculous aid against threatened disaster ? A candid reply to this inquiry involves the state- ment that in the future religion there will be nothing " supernatural. " This does not mean that life will be stripped of mys- tery or wonder, or that the range of natural law has been finally determined; but that religion, like all else, must conform to natural law so far as the range of law has been determined. In this sense the relig- ion of the future will be a natural religion. In all its theory and all its practice it will be completely natural. It will place no reliance on any sort of magic, or miracle, or other violation of, or exception to, the laws of nature. It will perform no magi- cal rites, use no occult processes, count on no abnormal interventions of supernal powers, and admit no possession of super- natural gifts, whether transmitted or con- ferred, by any tribe, class, or family of men. Its sacraments will be, not invasions of law by miracle, but the visible signs of [ 176 ] THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE a natural spiritual grace, or of a natural hallowed custom. It may preserve histori- cal rites and ceremonies, which, in times past, have represented the expectation of magical or miraculous effects ; but it will be content with natural interpretations of such rites and ceremonies. Its priests will be men especially interested in religious thought, possessing unusual gifts of speech on devotional subjects, and trained in the best methods of improving the social and industrial conditions of human life. There will always be need of such public teachers and spiritual leaders, heralds, and prophets. It should be observed, however, that many happenings and processes which were formerly regarded as supernatural have, with the increase of knowledge, come to be regarded as completely natural. The line between the supposed natural and the supposed supernatural is, therefore, not fixed but changeable. It is obvious, therefore, that the com- pletely natural quality of the future relig- ion excludes from it many of the religious compensations and consolations of the [ VI ] THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE past. Twentieth-century soldiers, going into battle, will not be able to say to each other, as Moslem soldiers did in the tenth century, " If we are killed to-day, we shall meet again to-night in Paradise." Even now, the mother who loses her babe, or the husband his wife, by a preventable disease, is seldom able to say simply, " It is the will of God! The babe — or the woman — is better off in heaven than on earth. I resign this dear object of love and devotion, who has gone to a happier world/' The ordinary consolations of institutional Christianity no longer satisfy intelligent people whose lives are broken by the sickness or premature death of those they love. The new religion will not attempt to reconcile men and women to present ill by promises of future blessed- ness, either for themselves or for others. Such promises have done infinite mischief in the world, by inducing men to be patient under sufferings or deprivations against which they should have incessantly struggled. The advent of a just freedom for the mass of mankind has been delayed [ 178] THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE for centuries by just this effect of compensa- tory promises issued by churches. The religion of the future will approach the whole subject of evil from another side, that of resistance and prevention. The Breton sailor, who had had his arm poisoned by a dirty fish-hook which had entered his finger, made a votive offering at the shrine of the Virgin Mary, and prayed for a cure. The workman to-day, who gets cuts or bruised by a rough or dirty instrument, goes to a surgeon, who applies an antiseptic dressing to the wound, and prevents the poisoning. That surgeon is one of the ministers of the new religion. When dwellers in a slum suffer the familiar evils caused by overcrowding, impure food, and cheerless labor, the modern true be- lievers contend against the sources of such misery by providing public baths, play- grounds, wider and cleaner streets, better dwellings, and more effective schools, — that is, they attack the sources of physical and moral evil. The new religion cannot supply the old sort of consolation ; but it can diminish the need of consolation, [ 179 1 THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE or reduce the number of occasions for consolation. A further change in religious thinking has already occurred on the subject of hu- man pain. Pain was generally regarded as a punishment for sin, or as a means of moral training, or as an expiation, vicari- ous or direct. Twentieth-century religion, gradually perfected in this respect during the last half of the nineteenth century, re- gards human pain as an evil to be relieved and prevented by the promptest means possible, and by any sort of available means, physical, mental, or moral ; and, thanks to the progress of biological and chemical science, there is comparatively little physical pain nowadays which cannot be prevented or relieved. The invention of anaesthetics has brought into contempt the expiatory, or penal, view of human pain in this world. The younger gener- ations listen with incredulous smiles to the objection made only a little more than sixty years ago by some divines of the Scottish Presbyterian church to the em- ployment of chloroform in childbirth, [ 180] THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE namely, that the physicians were interfer- ing with the execution of a curse pro- nounced by the Almighty. Dr. Weir Mitchell, a physician who has seen much of mental pain as well as of bodily, in his poem read at the fiftieth anniversary of the first public demonstration of surgical anaesthesia, said of pain : " What purpose hath it ? Nay, thy quest is vain: Earth hath no answer : If the baffled brain Cries, 'T is to warn, to punish, Ah, refrain ! When writhes the child, beneath the surgeon's hand, What soul shall hope that pain to understand ? Lo ! Science falters o'er the hopeless task, And Love and Faith in vain an answer ask." . . . A similar change is occurring in regard to the conception of divine justice. The evils in this world have been regarded as penalties inflicted by a just God on human beings who had violated his laws ; and the justice of God played a great part in his imagined dealings with the human race. A young graduate of Andover Theological Seminary once told me that when he had [ 181 ] THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE preached two or three times in summer in a small Congregational church on Cape Cod, one of the deacons of the church said to him at the close of the service, " What sort of sentimental mush is this that they are teaching you at Andover ? You talk every Sunday about the love of God ; we want to hear about his justice." The future religion will not undertake to describe, or even imagine, the justice of God. We are to-day so profoundly dissatisfied with hu- man justice, although it is the result of centuries of experience of social good and ill in this world, that we may well distrust human capacity to conceive of the justice of a morally perfect, infinite being. The civilized nations now recognize the fact that legal punishments usually fail of their objects, or cause wrongs and evils greater than those for which the punishments were inflicted ; so that penology, or the science of penalties, has still to be created. It is only very lately that the most civilized communities began to learn how to deal with criminal tendencies in the young. In the eyes of God human beings must all [ >8z ] THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE seem very young. Since our ideas of God's modes of thinking and acting are necessarily based on the best human attain- ments in similar directions, the new religion cannot pretend to understand God's jus- tice, inasmuch as there is no human ex- perience of public justice fit to serve as the foundation for a true conception of God's. The new religion will magnify and laud God's love and compassion, and will not venture to state what the justice of God may, or may not, require of himself, or of any of his finite creatures. This will be one of the great differences between the future religion and the past. Institutional Christianity as a rule condemned the mass of mankind to eternal torment ; partly be- cause the leaders of the churches thought they understood completely the justice of God, and partly because the exclusive pos- session of means of deliverance gave the churches some restraining influence over even the boldest sinners, and much over the timid. The new religion will make no such pretensions, and will teach no such horrible and perverse doctrines. 1 183] THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE Do you ask what consolation for human ills the new religion will offer ? I answer, the consolation which often comes to the sufferer from being more serviceable to others than he was before the loss or the suffering for which consolation is needed ; the consolation of being one's self wiser and tenderer than before, and therefore more able to be serviceable to human kind in the best ways ; the consolation through the memory, which preserves the sweet fragrance of characters and lives no longer in presence, recalls the joys and achieve- ments of those lives while still within mortal view, and treasures up and multi- plies the good influences they exerted. Moreover, such a religion has no tendency to diminish the force in this world, or any other, of the best human imaginings con- cerning the nature of the infinite Spirit immanent in the universe. It urges its disciples to believe that as the best and happiest man is he who best loves and serves, so the soul of the universe finds its perfect bliss and efficiency in supreme and universal love and service. It sees evi- [ i8 4 ] THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE dence in the moral history of the human race that a loving God rules the universe. Trust in this supreme rule is genuine con- solation and support under many human trials and sufferings. Nevertheless, al- though brave and patient endurance of evils is always admirable, and generally happier than timid or impatient conduct under suffering or wrong, it must be ad- mitted that endurance or constancy is not consolation, and that there are many physi- cal and mental disabilities and injuries for which there is no consolation in a literal sense. Human skill may mitigate or pal- liate some of them, human sympathy and kindness may make them more bearable, but neither religion nor philosophy offers any complete consolation for them, or ever has. In thus describing the consolations for human woes and evils which such a religion can offer, its chief motives have been de- picted. They are just those which Jesus said summed up all the commandments, love toward God and brotherliness to man. It will teach a universal good-will, under [185 ] THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE the influence of which men will do their duty, and at the same time, promote their own happiness. The devotees of a religion of service will always be asking what they can contribute to the common good ; but their greatest service must always be to in- crease the stock of good-will among men. One of the worst of chronic human evils is working for daily bread without any in- terest in the work, and with ill-will toward the institution or person that provides the work. The work of the world must be done ; and the great question is, shall it be done happily or unhappily ? Much of it is to-day done unhappily. The new re- ligion will contribute powerfully toward the reduction of this mass of unnecessary misery, and will do so chiefly by promot- ing good-will among men. A paganized Hebrew-Christianity has unquestionably made much of personal sacrifice as a religious duty. The new religion will greatly qualify the supposed duty of sacrifice, and will regard all sacri- fices as unnecessary and injurious, except those which love dictates and justifies. [186] THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE cc Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." Self-sacrifice is not a good or a merit in itself; it must be intelligent and loving to be meritorious, and the object in view must be worth its price. Giving up at- tractive pleasures or labors in favor of some higher satisfaction, or some engross- ing work, is not self-sacrifice. It is a re- nunciation of inferior or irrelevant objects in favor of one superior object ; it is only the intelligent inhibition of whatever dis- tracts from the main pursuit, or the wor- thiest task. Here, again, the new religion will teach that happiness goes with duti- ful ness even in this world. All the religions have been, to a greater or less extent, uplifting and inspiring, in the sense that they raised men's thoughts to some power above them, to some be- ing or beings, which had more power and more duration than the worshippers had. When kings or emperors were dei- fied, they were idealized, and so lifted men's thoughts out of the daily round of their ordinary lives. As the objects of [ i8 7 ] THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE worship became nobler, purer, and kinder with the progress of civilization, the pre- vailing religion became more stimulating to magnanimity and righteousness. Will the future religion be as helpful to the spirit of man ? Will it touch his imagina- tion as the anthropomorphism of Judaism, polytheism, Islam, and paganized Christi- anity have done ? Can it be as moving to the human soul as the deified powers of nature, the various gods and goddesses that inhabited sky, ocean, mountains, groves, and streams, or the numerous dei- ties revered in the various Christian com- munions, — God the Father, the Son of God, the Mother of God, the Holy Ghost, and the host of tutelary saints ? All these objects of worship have greatly moved the human soul, and have inspired men to thoughts and deeds of beauty, love, and duty. Will the new religion do as much ? It is reasonable to expect that it will. The sentiments of awe and reverence, and the love of beauty and goodness, will remain, and will increase in strength and influence. All the natural human affections will re- [ 188 ] THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE main in full force. The new religion will foster powerfully a virtue which is com- paratively new in the world — the love of truth and the passion for seeking it, and the truth will progressively make men free ; so that the coming generations will be freer, and therefore more productive and stronger than the preceding. The new religionists will not worship their ancestors ; but they will have a stronger sense of the descent of the present from the past than men have ever had before, and each gen- eration will feel more strongly than ever before its indebtedness to the preceding. The two sentiments which most inspire men to good deeds are love and hope. Religion should give freer and more ra- tional play to these two sentiments than the world has heretofore witnessed ; and the love and hope will be thoroughly grounded in and on efficient, serviceable, visible, actual, and concrete deeds and conduct. When a man works out a suc- cessful treatment for cerebro-spinal menin- gitis — a disease before which medicine was absolutely helpless a dozen years ago — [ >89i THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE by applying to the discovery of a remedy ideas and processes invented or developed by other men studying other diseases, he does a great work of love, prevents for the future the breaking of innumerable ties of love, and establishes good grounds for hope of many like benefits for human gen- erations to come. The men who do such things in the present world are ministers of the religion of the future. The future religion will prove, has proved, as effective as any of the older ones in inspiring men to love and serve their fellow-beings, — and that is the true object and end of all philosophies and all religions ; for that is the way to make men better and happier, alike the servants and the served. The future religion will have the attri- bute of universality and of adaptability to the rapidly increasing stores of knowledge and power over nature acquired by the human race. As the religion of a child is inevitably very different from that of an adult, and must grow up with the child, so the religion of a race whose capacities are rapidly enlarging must be capable of a cor- [ 190 ] THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE responding development. The religion of any single individual ought to grow up with him all the way from infancy to age ; and the same is true of the religion of a race. It is bad for any people to stand still in their governmental conceptions and practices, or in the organization of their industries, or in any of their arts or trades, even the oldest ; but it is much worse for a people to stand still in their religious conceptions and practices. Now, the new religion affords an indefinite scope, or range, for progress and development. It rejects all the limitations of family, tribal, or national religion. It is not bound to any dogma, creed, book, or institution. It has the whole world for the field of the loving labors of its disciples ; and its fun- damental precept of serviceableness ad- mits an infinite variety and range in both time and space. It is very simple, and therefore possesses an important element of durability. It is the complicated things that get out of order. Its symbols will not relate to sacrifice or dogma ; but it will doubtless have symbols, which will 1 191 1 THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE represent its love of liberty, truth, and beauty. It will also have social rites and reverent observances ; for it will wish to commemorate the good thoughts and deeds which have come down from former gen- erations. It will have its saints ; but its canonizations will be based on grounds somewhat new. It will have its heroes ; but they must have shown a loving, disin- terested, or protective courage. It will have its communions, with the Great Spirit, with the spirits of the departed, and with living fellow-men of like minds. Work- ing together will be one of its fundamental ideas, — of men with God, of men with prophets, leaders, and teachers, of men with one another, of men's intelligence with the forces of nature. It will teach only such uses of authority as are neces- sary to secure the co-operation of several or many people to one end ; and the dis- cipline it will advocate will be training in the development of co-operative good- will. Will such a religion as this make prog- ress in the twentieth-century world? You [ J 92 ] THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE have heard in this Summer School of Theology much about the conflict be- tween materialism and religious idealism, the revolt against long-accepted dogmas, the frequent occurrence of waves of re- form, sweeping through and sometimes over the churches, the effect of modern philosophy, ethical theories, social hopes, and democratic principles on the estab- lished churches, and the abandonment of churches altogether by a large proportion of the population in countries mainly Protestant. You know, too, how other social organizations have, in some con- siderable measure, taken the place of churches. Millions of Americans find in Masonic organizations, lodges of Odd Fellows, benevolent and fraternal societies, granges, and trades-unions, at once their practical religion, and the satisfaction of their social needs. So far as these mul- tifarious organizations carry men and women out of their individual selves, and teach them mutual regard and social and industrial co-operation, they approach the field and functions of the religion of 13 [ 193 ] THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE the future. The Spiritualists, Christian Scientists, and mental healers of all sorts manifest a good deal of ability to draw people away from the traditional churches, and to discredit traditional dogmas and formal creeds. Nevertheless, the great mass of the people remain attached to the traditional churches, and are likely to re- main so, — partly because of their tender associations with churches in the grave crises of life, and partly because their actual mental condition still permits them to accept the beliefs they have inherited or been taught while young. The new religion will therefore make but slow progress, so far as outward organization goes. It will, however, progressively modify the creeds and religious practices of all the existing churches, and change their symbolism and their teachings con- cerning the conduct of life. Since its chief doctrine is the doctrine of a sublime unity of substance, force, and spirit, and its chief precept is, Be serviceable, it will exert a strong uniting influence among men. [ J 94 ] THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE Christian unity has always been longed for by devout believers, but has been sought in impossible ways. Authorita- tive churches have tried to force every- body within their range to hold the same opinions and unite in the same observ- ances, but they have won only temporary and local successes. As freedom has in- creased in the world, it has become more and more difficult to enforce even outward conformity ; and in countries where church and state have been separated, a great diversity of religious opinions and practices has been expressed in different religious organizations, each of which commands the effective devotion of a fraction of the population. Since it is certain that men are steadily gaining more and more free- dom in thought, speech, and action, civil- ized society might as well assume that it will be quite impossible to unite all religiously minded people through any dogma, creed, ceremony, observance, or ritual. All these are divisive, not uniting, wherever a reasonable freedom exists. The new religion proposes as a basis of [ 195 ] THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE unity, first, its doctrine of an immanent and loving God, and, secondly, its precept, Be serviceable to fellow-men. Already there are many signs in the free countries of the world that different religious de- nominations can unite in good work to promote human welfare. The support of hospitals, dispensaries, and asylums by persons connected with all sorts of re- ligious denominations, the union of all denominations in carrying on Associated Charities in large cities, the success of the Young Men's Christian Associations, and the numerous efforts to form federations of kindred churches for practical purposes, all testify to the feasibility of extensive co-operation in good works. Again, the new religion cannot create any caste, eccle- siastical class, or exclusive sect founded on a rite. On these grounds it is not un- reasonable to imagine that the new religion will prove a unifying influence and a strong reinforcement of democracy. Whether it will prove as efficient to deter men from doing wrong and to en- courage them to do right as the prevailing [ 196 ] THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE religions have been, is a question which only experience can answer. In these two respects neither the threats nor the prom- ises of the older religions have been re- markably successful in society at large. The fear of hell has not proved effective to deter men from wrong-doing, and heaven has never yet been described in terms very attractive to the average man or woman. Both are indeed unimagi- nable. The great geniuses, like Dante and Swedenborg, have produced only fantastic and incredible pictures of either state. The modern man would hardly feel any appreciable loss of motive-power toward good or away from evil if heaven were burnt and hell quenched. The prevail- ing Christian conceptions of heaven and hell have hardly any more influence with educated people in these days than Olym- pus and Hades have. The modern mind craves an immediate motive or leading good for to-day on this earth. The new religion builds on the actual experience of men and women and of human society as a whole. The motive powers it relies on [ 197 1 THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE have been, and are, at work in innumer- able human lives ; and its beatific visions and its hopes are better grounded than those of traditional religion, and finer, — because free from all selfishness, and from the imagery of governments, courts, social distinctions, and war. Finally, this twentieth-century religion is not only to be in harmony with the great secular movements of modern society — democracy, individualism, social ideal- ism, the zeal for education, the spirit of research, the modern tendency to welcome the new, the fresh powers of preventive medicine, and the recent advances in busi- ness and industrial ethics — but also in essential agreement with the direct, per- sonal teachings of Jesus, as they are reported in the Gospels. The revelation he gave to mankind thus becomes more wonderful than ever. THE END Deacidified using the Bookkeeper proce: Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide Treatment Date: Sept. 2009 PreservationTechnologie A WORLD LEADER IN COLLECTIONS PRESERVATI 1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive Cranberry Township, PA 1 6066 (724) 779-2111