Copyiightl^°. 
 
 ic-t. 
 
 COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 
 
ESSAYS 
 
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 in 2011 with funding from 
 The Library of Congress 
 
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VITTORIA COLON N A. 
 
PS -^sos 
 
 Copyright, ipop, 
 
 By 
 
 Mary Eliza Gully Cole. 
 
 JUL 8 1909 
 
Dedicated 
 
 to 
 MY SONS 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGl 
 
 The Social Life of the Italian Renais- 
 sance 9 
 
 Vittoria Colonna • . • . 29 
 
 Savanarola 51 
 
 Shelley 71 
 
 Thought, The Parent of Originality 95 
 
 Prayer 109 
 
 Nineteenth Century Conception of 
 
 Humanity . . . . 121 
 An Interpretation of Emerson's 
 
 ''Sphinx'' .... 147 
 Woman's Work in the Nineteenth 
 
 Century 167 
 
 Threnody 193 
 
 Impractibility . • . . 205 
 
 Questioning , « ^ , 211 
 
Acknowledgment is made to The 
 Open Court and to The Unitarian, 
 in which magazines some of these 
 essays have previously appeared. 
 
THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE ITALIAN 
 RENAISSANCE 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE ITALIAN 
 RENAISSANCE. 
 
 A GREAT period, like a great indi- 
 vidual, lives in the heart of man- 
 kind, creating vivid pictures 
 around which the imagination loves to 
 linger. Thus the period of the Italian 
 Renaissance will ever remain a shining 
 mark holding us captive by its brilliant 
 achievements in art and literature, its fas- 
 cinating personalities, its monuments in 
 stone and marble, its materialization of 
 beauty and harmony in unfading colors 
 on canvas and wall, its undying truths 
 written in the lives and deaths of saints 
 and scholars, and an ethereal atmosphere 
 of fine poetic sentiment which wraps the 
 name of Italy in a mantle of hazy beauty ! 
 If we can pierce through this shimmering 
 mantle, which dazzles our eyes, and dis- 
 cern wherein the world-spirit breathed 
 upon this sunny land, bringing forth some 
 
 9 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 of Its rarest flowers, to draw the human 
 family upward and onward to that goal 
 of perfection towards which all life tends, 
 a dignity, grandeur and vitality will be 
 added to our understanding and apprecia- 
 tion of this great epoch, and will enable us 
 to see more clearly the historic trend of 
 events. We shall see that this birth or 
 re-birth, with its far-reaching, brilliant 
 results, was followed by death or trans- 
 formation, which was only another step, 
 another birth into something higher and 
 better which the future will realize and 
 whose birth-throes we are feeling to-day. 
 For ''every art ends in a science, and all 
 poetry in a philosophy, for science and 
 philosophy do but translate into precise 
 formula the original conceptions, which 
 art and poetry render sensible by im- 
 aginary figures.'' A mine of wisdom 
 may be gathered by a comprehensive 
 glance at any world-historic epoch, and 
 for this reason is ever worthy of our care- 
 ful study. 
 
 In looking over the higher forms of so- 
 cial life, during the period of the Italian 
 Renaissance, the first important element 
 
 10 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 we discover is the almost entire eradica- 
 tion of the idea of Caste. Social life was 
 based upon the existence of an educated 
 and cultured class. There were a few 
 exceptions to this rule, but the whole cur- 
 rent of the time was set steadily towards 
 the fusion of classes. The reasons for 
 this were: First, the study of antiquity; 
 second, the immense power the Condot- 
 tirie acquired ; third, the intensely marked 
 individuality men attained; fourth, the 
 widespread influence of humanism; fifth, 
 a reaction from ecclesiastical rule and au- 
 thority and a partial return to the free- 
 dom of paganism. Each one of these in- 
 fluences was a strong, clear and distinct 
 movement in itself, and volumes might be 
 and have been devoted to each; they are 
 circles within circles. 
 
 Personal achievement, nobility and 
 valor were the watchwords of this civili- 
 zation. Dante, to give this idea emphasis, 
 calls ''Nobility the sister of philosophy.'' 
 While Dante does not belong in any strict 
 sense to the revival of learning, yet ''to 
 him in a truer sense than to any other 
 poet belong the double glory of immorta- 
 
 II 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 lizing in verse the centuries behind him, 
 while he inaugurated the new age/' 
 
 Naples offers an exception to the rest 
 of Italy in this grand progressive move- 
 ment. In 1442 the last King of the An- 
 jou dynasty was conquered by Alfonso of 
 Aragon, and under the Aragonese and 
 Spanish Kings it was ruled by Viceroys 
 until the peace of Utrecht, when it was 
 annexed to the possessions of the house of 
 Hapsburg. ''Her pride, vanity and strict 
 isolation more than any other cause ex- 
 cluded her from the spiritual movement 
 of the Renaissance, and the establishment 
 of the Aragonese government completed 
 the work and brought about those social 
 changes, obedience to French and Spanish 
 ideas which only followed in the rest of 
 Italy a hundred years later." The prin- 
 cipal features of this disastrous transfor- 
 mation were a contempt for work and a 
 passion for titles. It is a curious fact 
 that this indolence and this passion for 
 titles still exist in Naples, and a Principi 
 (or Prince) may be found loitering on 
 every street corner, possessing neither a 
 virtue nor a ducat. Out of this desire 
 
 12 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 for titles and love of display grew the 
 fondness for the tournament. In the 
 middles ages, knighthood stood for all 
 that was brave and noble, and we owe 
 much to it. The good that was in it has 
 survived, and the obligations of the world 
 to it as an ameliorating and civilizing 
 agent are very great. This spirit has been 
 preserved to us by the poets, Spenser and 
 Ariosto. But knighthood was never of 
 any great importance in Italy; first, be- 
 cause of the rise of the Italian Republic; 
 second, the development of the commer- 
 cial spirit and the introduction of the Con- 
 dottirie were all circumstances unfavor- 
 able to the growth of this idea. Poggio 
 and Sacchetti exhausted their irony upon 
 the tournament, and left us ludicrous pic- 
 tures of forlorn knights riding still more 
 forlorn horses, and suggested conferring 
 the honor of knighthood upon the lower 
 animals and inanimate objects, and Cer- 
 vantes a century and half later gave the 
 final blow to knight-errantry and its false 
 pretences in his inimitable Don Quixote. 
 Personal skill, dexterity and fine phys- 
 ical strength were cultivated to the ut- 
 
 13 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 most, and a graceful and dextrous ''tilting 
 with the lance" was a fashionable pas- 
 time. Caesar Borgia delighted to exhibit 
 his marksmanship by shooting condemned 
 criminals in the yard of the Vatican, and 
 could fell an ox with one blow. Alberti 
 could ''pierce the strongest armor with his 
 arrows and so deftly fling a coin that it 
 touched the highest point of a church or 
 palace roof/' 
 
 Wealth was considered as one of the 
 elements of refined life, but only because 
 it gave its possessor leisure for cosmopol- 
 itan culture, which was the highest ideal 
 of that period. 
 
 The dress of a nation, as of an indi- 
 vidual, gives indication of its general cul- 
 ture; earnest and deliberate study entered 
 into every department of life, and the Ital- 
 ians pursued the idea of dress with per- 
 sistent and artistic purpose. But the idea 
 of dress was not confined to women ; even 
 serious men considered it an important 
 element in the perfection of the individ- 
 ual. 
 
 The people were as a nation vain and 
 fond of display, and as birth gave little 
 
 14 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 distinction, each individual cultivated all 
 personal qualities, grace and affluence of 
 speech, dignified and courtly behavior, 
 perfect physical strength and beauty, ar- 
 tistic dressing and great learning. 
 
 One of the marked peculiarities in re- 
 gard to personal adornment was the de- 
 sire to form a conventional type, disguise 
 nature by every conceivable device. The 
 reasons for this were the efifort made for 
 perfect youthful beauty and the represen- 
 tation of the mysteries, when masks and 
 many other artificial conditions were al- 
 lowable to produce dazzling and brilliant 
 efifects. 
 
 ''Blonding'' the hair is no modern in- 
 vention, for this was the much desired 
 color, and silver and gold-colored thread 
 was often used to decorate the heads of 
 matron and maid. This passion for ar- 
 tificial adornment, though ridiculed by 
 poets and philosophers, and held up to 
 scorn by preachers, ruled the fancy of 
 woman with the true tyranny of fashion, 
 excepting now and then, when appealed 
 to by some inspired fanatic, like Savana- 
 rola, who, possessing the key to woman's 
 
 15 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 nature, touched her conscience; then she 
 humbly cast her vanities upon the funeral 
 pyre erected in the pubHc square. 
 
 Italy had all Europe for a school of 
 manners, and the Renaissance produced 
 her Lord Chesterfield in one named 
 Giavano Delia Casa, a Florentine, who 
 wrote a book, giving in a delicate and 
 minute way details for good behavior, 
 ''prescribed with the same tact with which 
 a moralist discerns the highest ethical 
 truths/^ One enthusiastic writer says of 
 Cosimo de Medici, ''That to see him at 
 table, a perfect model of the man of old, 
 was of a truth a charming sight/' 
 
 Fine tact was cultivated as a universal 
 social duty, and was not, as we are often 
 led to believe from its extreme rarity, an 
 especial gift of the Gods. Lorenzo the 
 Magnificent, by some historians called the 
 "father of literature,'' was supreme over 
 his circle by his wonderful and exquisite 
 tact; he entertained all men with equal 
 grace; his large erudition enabled him to 
 converse with the theologian of theology, 
 with the scholar of letters, with the mu- 
 sician of music, with the artist of art, and 
 
 i6 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 the scientist of science. His almost un- 
 bounded knowledge gave him a power 
 over his contemporaries which few men 
 ever possessed. 
 
 Nothing was neglected in this egoistic 
 age which would add to the elegance or 
 comfort of human existence, and even in 
 domestic life we find a thorough system 
 of training throughout the household; 
 there was organization, discipline and 
 education. 
 
 While other nations were walking or 
 riding horseback, the Italians were dri- 
 ving over well-paved streets in fine car- 
 riages, and enjoying the luxuries of costly 
 carpets, fine furniture, abundance of ex- 
 quisite linen, splendid tapestries, magnifi- 
 cent china and dresses and ornaments of 
 oriental beauty and splendor. 
 
 Music was an important element in so- 
 cial life, and under the genius and direc- 
 tion of Palestrina underwent important 
 modification. Before Palestrina's time 
 secular tunes formed the principal theme 
 of all masses and psalms. 
 
 Language, whether written or spoken, 
 was held to be an object of respect and the 
 
 17 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 crowning glory of a dignified and noble 
 behavior. The Italians anticipated by 
 three centuries the French Salon, for in 
 the social circle all subjects were fully and 
 freely discussed, and the loftiest problems 
 of human life were included in their con- 
 versation. ''The production of noble 
 thoughts was not, as was commonly the 
 case in the North, a work of solitude, but 
 of society.'^ 
 
 Dante raised the Italian language from 
 comparative rudeness to the highest re- 
 finement, and it was he who wrote the first 
 complete treatise on any modern lan- 
 guage. There were numerous dialects in 
 Italy at this time. Dante's classification 
 gives fourteen (14), another writer gives 
 seventeen (17). One of the most vigor- 
 ous and important efforts of the Renais- 
 sance was made for one classical lan- 
 guage. ''Language is here conceived 
 apart from its uses in poetry, its highest 
 function being clear, simple, intelligent 
 utterance in short speeches, epigrams and 
 answers. This faculty was admired as 
 among no other nation, excepting the 
 Greeks and Romans.'' 
 
 18 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 Women, no less than men, strove for a 
 ''complete individuality,'' and Michael 
 Angelo and Aritino were no more a pro- 
 duct of the peculiar atmosphere of the 
 times than Vittoria Colonna or Ranata of 
 Ferara. Women were the queens and 
 centers of the social circles, and became 
 illustrious without in any way compro- 
 mising their reputations. The reasons 
 for this were that women strove for 
 beauty and strength of character as well 
 as physical perfection, and because ''she 
 was conscious of a state full of danger 
 and opportunity/' Intellectuality and 
 high sentiment held a large place in wom- 
 en's lives, where usually sentimentality 
 and emotion reign supreme. 
 
 By a careful study of the manner in 
 which a nation finds its amusements and 
 recreations, a very just estimate may be 
 formed of its civilization, for these will 
 bear unmistakable impress of the thoughts 
 and aims of the period. There has been 
 no time in the history of the world when 
 so much talent, invention and such fabu- 
 lous sums of money were employed for 
 the purpose of pleasure and amusement. 
 
 19 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 Such was the magnificence of these dis- 
 plays that ''whole volumes might be writ- 
 ten on the architecture alone/' Leonardi 
 da Vinci did not disdain to use his divine 
 gifts to invent machinery and personally 
 to direct the costumes and decorations for 
 many of these festivals, and Andrea Del 
 Sarto painted chariots used in the proces- 
 sions. The middle ages were essentially 
 ages of Allegory, but the particular form 
 of these festivals and processions may be 
 traced directly to the Romans. The con- 
 ditions necessary to make these displays 
 successful and national were wealth, lei- 
 sure and education among the nobility 
 and appreciation and understanding on 
 the part of the masses. It is a striking 
 proof of the universal culture of the Ital- 
 ians that they did so understand the won- 
 derful Allegory, the antique representa- 
 tions and the classic allusions. It was 
 considered a part of an aristocratic breed- 
 ing to be critical in such matters, and the 
 masses were familiar with at least the 
 poetic basis of these shows. 
 
 ''Both plastic art and poetry were ac- 
 customed to represent famous men and 
 
 20 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 women; for instance, the Divine Comedy 
 of Dante, the Trionfi of Petrarch, the 
 Amorosa Vissione of Boccaccio, all of 
 these works constructed on this principle 
 and the great diffusion of culture which 
 took place under the influence of anti- 
 quity, made the nation familiar with the 
 historic element." In Florence the sev- 
 eral quarters of the city were in early 
 times organized with a view to such ex- 
 hibitions. 
 
 In 1304, ''Hell was represented by 
 Scaffolda and boats in the river Arno. By 
 mechanical appliances figures of angels 
 were made to rise and float in the air. 
 The festival which called for exceptional 
 treatment was the Feast of Corpus 
 Christi. At this were represented a suf- 
 fering Christ amid singing cherubs, the 
 Last Supper with a figure of Thomas 
 Aquinas, the combat between the arch- 
 angel Michael and the devil, fountains of 
 wine and orchestras of angels, the scenes 
 of the Resurrection, and finally on the 
 Square, before the Cathedral, the tomb 
 of the Virgin. It opened after High 
 Mass and the benediction, and the Mother 
 
 21 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 of God ascended singing to Paradise, 
 where she was crowned by her Son and 
 let into the presence of the Eternal/' The 
 house of Borgia particularly distin- 
 guished itself by magnificent displays of 
 this character, as also the Court of Fer- 
 ara, but owing doubtless to the introduc- 
 tion of Calvinistic ideas, which found 
 much favor and sympathy there, the rep- 
 resentations were chiefly secular. The 
 Venetian festivals were marvels of fan- 
 tastic splendor, not on land alone, but on 
 the Grand Canal, where in one case we 
 read that ''A round universe floated, so 
 immense that a ball was given inside of 
 it/' The Roman carnivals were more va- 
 ried in the fifteenth century than else- 
 where, and they were the first to disclose 
 the effect of a great procession by gas- 
 light. 
 
 The Florentine Carnival surpassed the 
 Roman in a certain class of processions, 
 for instance: ''among a crowd of maskers 
 on foot and on horseback appeared a huge 
 chariot, and upon it allegorical figures, or 
 groups of figures, with their proper ac- 
 companiments, as Jealousy with four 
 
 22 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 spectacled faces on one head; the four 
 Temperaments with the planets belonging 
 to them; the three Fates; Prudence en- 
 throned above Hope and Fear, which lay 
 bound before her; the four Seasons; also 
 the famous chariot of death; and the 
 naval car — a ship fitted up with great 
 splendor/' Often fine scenes from myth- 
 ology were grandly represented, which 
 would fill volumes to describe. 
 
 Napoleon the First, imitating the vic- 
 torious Roman warrior, made his return 
 after one of his campaigns as magnificent 
 as possible, and was laurel-crowned amid 
 enthusiastic admirers. 
 
 The chief features of the social Hfe of 
 the Renaissance were: First, the partial 
 equalization of the classes; second, wom- 
 an's social equality with man; third, a 
 system of aesthetic behavior; fourth, a 
 vigorous efifort for the perfection of the 
 individual; fifth, a desire to become fa- 
 mous and immortal by achievment; sixth, 
 an efifort for pure and lofty forms of 
 speech; seventh, an intense love of scenic 
 display, which is shown in the carnivals, 
 festivals and processions. In a word all 
 
 23 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 departments of life were elevated to the 
 rank of a fine art. The mind becomes al- 
 most fatigued and dazed in looking over 
 this period of social splendor and immense 
 intellectual activity. All sacred and pro- 
 fane history, all mythological and legend- 
 ary history, philosophy, poetry, painting, 
 sculpture, music, many of the sciences and 
 mechanical arts, were combined to pro- 
 duce a perfection of life never before at- 
 tained and whose brilliancy dazzles us 
 even to-day. 
 
 Much of this gorgeous coloring was 
 transitory. But there were developed at 
 this period divine truths, made manifest 
 and permanent through art and imperish- 
 able as only art can be. But Italy was 
 rapidly passing the zenith of her glory. 
 Art was loved and sought, not for its own 
 sake, but only in so far as it w^ould excite 
 the appetite for selfish pleasure and add 
 to the amusement of the people. This soon 
 degenerates into a love of enervating ease 
 and luxury, which marks the decay of 
 any nation. But the corruption of Church 
 and State, and the licentiousness of the 
 ruling classes, though an outgrowth of a 
 
 24 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 high state of civiHzation, the excrescence 
 and fungus growth which must end in 
 final rot and decay — these were not the es- 
 sence, the creative spirit of the Renais- 
 sance; had they been, it would not live 
 to-day as one of the great world-historic 
 epochs. It was an age of surpassing ego- 
 ism; each individual posed before the 
 world for his own glory. It was the ego- 
 ism born of man's becoming self-con- 
 scious and the absolute devotion of a 
 nation to the perfection of the individual, 
 regardless of the higher law, which recog- 
 nizes the broader spiritual truth that 
 man's first duty and keenest pleasure is a 
 loving sacrifice to his brother man. 
 
 25 
 
VITTORIA COLONNA 
 
yiTTORIA COLONNA. 
 
 THE most beautiful woman, as well 
 as the most beautiful character, of 
 the Italian Renaissance was Vit- 
 toria Colonna, the one and only love of 
 Michael Angelo. This fact is of itself 
 enough to immortalize her. Not only the 
 greatest artist of the world loved her, but 
 the whole nation bowed in admiration of 
 her beauty, and reverence for her nobility 
 and purity of character. 
 
 Many women have been loved by great 
 men before. It is said of George Sand 
 that '7^1^s Sandeau loved her dearly, 
 Chopin madly, Alfred de Musset passion- 
 ately,'' but the love which Michael Angelo 
 bore Vittoria was a beautiful reverential 
 adoration, somewhat as Dante loved his 
 Beatrice. 
 
 Vittoria Colonna was the daughter of 
 Fabrizio Colonna, of a noble and princely 
 
 29 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 Italian family, originating back in the 
 eleventh century. Her mother was Ag- 
 nese di Montifelto, the daughter of the 
 Duke of Urbine (the birthplace of Ra- 
 phael). Vittoria was born in the Castle 
 of Marino, on the Lago d'Albano, in Feb- 
 ruary, 1490, and at an early age, scarcely 
 four years, she was affianced by her par- 
 ents to Ferdinando Francesco d'Avalos, 
 son of the Marquis of Pescara. For a 
 term of years she was associated and edu- 
 cated with her future husband, under the 
 care of a sister of Pescara, in the little 
 town of Ischia, a beautiful island in the 
 Mediterranean, belonging to the Kingdom 
 of Naples. 
 
 Very little is given of Vittoria's early 
 years, yet imagination pictures her as a 
 sweet, beautiful, thoughtful child, deep, 
 strong and unchanging in her affections. 
 This is evinced by her devotion to her 
 young lover, for although others sought 
 her in marriage, she would listen to no 
 other proposals. Ischia is in sight of the 
 buried cities of Pompeii and Herculan- 
 eum, and in full view of blazing Vesuvius. 
 With all these grand, natural phenomena 
 
 30 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 around her, with the blue skies and poetic 
 atmosphere, close association with rare 
 and cultivated minds, and all the refine- 
 ments of a high state of social and intel- 
 lectual culture, we have all the conditions 
 which assist in producing a character of 
 rare beauty and symmetry. The poetic 
 temperament could scarcely find a more 
 congenial atmosphere, where nature and 
 art united in creating, not only the soft, 
 sensuous and pleasing, but the epic and 
 grand. 
 
 At the early age of seventeen years, 
 Vittoria and Pescara were married. The 
 wedding is described as unusually bril- 
 liant even for those days of princely mag- 
 nificence, and there is a long and curi- 
 ously interesting list of the bridal gifts, 
 which were truly royal in costliness and 
 splendor. 
 
 Very pertinently Trollope says, ''For 
 two years she was happy and wrote no 
 poetry.'' 
 
 The most authentic portrait of Vittoria 
 is one preserved in the Colonna Gallery at 
 Rome. ''It is a beautiful face, of the true 
 Roman type, perfectly regular, of exceed- 
 
 31 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 ing purity of outline, and perhaps a little 
 heavy about the lower part of the face, 
 but the calm, large, thoughtful eyes and 
 superbly developed forehead secure it 
 from any approach toward an expression 
 of sensuahsm, the fulness of the lips is 
 only sufficient to indicate that sensitive- 
 ness to, and appreciation of, beauty, which 
 constitutes an essential element in the 
 poetic temperament. The hair is of the 
 bright golden tint that Titian loved so 
 well to paint/' 
 
 There is also one in England, supposed 
 to have been painted by Michael Angelo, 
 a description of which is given us by 
 Grimm. ''We have before us an aged 
 woman. There is no longer the fair hair 
 which once invested her with such a 
 charm ; a white widow's veil, brought low 
 down upon her brow, envelops her head 
 and falls over her bosom and shoulders. 
 A tall figure, dressed in black velvet, up- 
 right, and sitting without support on a 
 chair, the circular simply-formed back of 
 which is grasped in front by her right 
 hand, while the other is lying on an open 
 book in her lap. There is a grand repose 
 
 32 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 in her features, a slightly pained com- 
 pression about the eyes and mouth; she 
 appears aged, but not decrepit; and the 
 deep lines which fate has drawn are noble 
 and energetic/' 
 
 These two portraits are typical of the 
 perfect woman Vittoria was, the first giv- 
 ing us the beauty, grace and physical 
 loveliness which nature sometimes be- 
 stows upon her children, and with the 
 richer accompaniment of a fine, strong 
 mind and warm, constant heart in its 
 youth and energy. Even in the first pic- 
 ture, the promise of that dignified and 
 grand old age was foreshadowed, the 
 serene and noble evening of a most glori- 
 ous morning of human life. 
 
 Pescara, following the example of all 
 noblemen of his time, entered the army, 
 and chose for the motto on his shield, 
 ''On this, or by this,'' and engaged in the 
 war between France and Venice. He ''re- 
 ceived from Vittoria at parting a superb 
 pavilion and an embroidered standard, as 
 well as some palm leaves, in token of the 
 hope that he would return crowned with 
 honor/' 
 
 33 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 During her husband's absence, Vittoria 
 occupied herself with her correspondence 
 with him, and the study of Hterature, of 
 the best ancient and modern authors. 
 Pescara won distinguished honors, as a 
 brilHant General, and was offered the 
 Kingdom of Naples, a most tempting 
 bribe. It is not absolutely sure that he 
 contemplated accepting the bribe, or turn- 
 ing traitor to Charles of Spain, because 
 the plans were unsuccessful, but Pescara's 
 character was laid open to the severest 
 criticism of his own and of succeeding 
 times. In this respect Vittoria stood in 
 noble contrast to her husband, as not a 
 shadow rests upon her in this affair. Her 
 letters to him place her most nobly and 
 loyally before the world. 
 
 In 1525 Pescara died. Vittoria's grief 
 was overwhelming, and for a time she lost 
 her reason. She desired to retire to the 
 Convent of San Silvestro, and did so for 
 a short time, and she would gladly have 
 remained within its sheltering walls, but 
 the Pope, with the wisdom and Machia- 
 vellian policy, peculiar to Popes and 
 princes of the time, absolutely forbade 
 
 34 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 this. After a year at Rome, she returned 
 to Ischia, and began those poems, on the 
 loss of her husband, which form an ''In 
 Memoriam,'' and a deep and constant 
 study of the best masters of ancient and 
 modern thought. 
 
 Vittoria was at this period of her life 
 the most beautiful woman in all Italy. 
 Cities and Courts quarreled over her as a 
 guest, she was the friend and correspond- 
 ent of many of the greatest men of the 
 day; the intimate friend of Cardinals Pole 
 and Contarini and Bernardino Ochino, 
 men in whose minds was kindled the fire 
 of revolution, which finally resulted in the 
 Italian Reformation; Ischia was the cen- 
 ter of a little circle of the most illustrious 
 and renowned poets and scholars; and 
 Vittoria was the Priestess of that circle. 
 One is reminded of that wonderful Athe- 
 nian circle, where Aspasia reigned su- 
 preme, but in Ischia a purer, loftier di- 
 vinity inspired her devotees ; one gives us 
 the Pagan ideal, the other the Christian, 
 and again later the little circle of Weimar, 
 where Charlotte Von Stein, Goethe and 
 Schiller held high court and high thought. 
 
 35 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 Trollope tries to make much of what he 
 calls the deteriorating influence of Pes- 
 cara on Vittoria's character, and speaks 
 particularly of her lack of patriotism, and 
 suggests the husband's influence as a pos- 
 sible cause, quoting Tennyson's lines : 
 
 ^'Thou shalt lower to his level day by day, 
 
 What is fine within thee growing coarse 
 
 To sympathize with clay. 
 
 As the husband is, the wife is. 
 
 Thou art mated with a clown. 
 
 And the grossness of his nature 
 
 Will have weight to drag thee down." 
 
 Trollope also speaks ironically of her 
 long years of lamentation over the loss of 
 her husband, and suggests that she was 
 doubtless as much in earnest as Petrarch 
 in his adoration for Laura. 
 
 All of these accusations are at variance 
 with the facts of the history of Vittoria's 
 life and character. In the first place, as 
 the biographers have given us the lives of 
 the two, Vittoria and Pescara, Vittoria's 
 seems to be absolutely without flaw, or 
 speck, or blemish. Second, the husband 
 and wife were separated by war two years 
 
 36 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 after marriage, and she only saw him at 
 rare intervals, after he entered the army, 
 before his death; therefore, his influence 
 in moulding her opinions was doubtless 
 very slight, and in the few instances given 
 she held her own ideas of right with un- 
 yielding pertinacity. Third, patriotism is 
 not an inborn sentiment, but a plant of a 
 peculiar civilization, and the lack of patri- 
 otism could be brought against many of 
 the best minds of the age, ''for patriot- 
 ism," says Simonds, ''ceased to be an in- 
 stinct, just as the moral and religious sen- 
 sibilities were blunted. Instead of patri- 
 otism, the Italians of the Renaissance 
 w^ere inflamed with a desire for cosmo- 
 politan culture.'' This desire for culture, 
 which was the highest ideal of the time, 
 Vittoria possessed in an eminent degree. 
 It is an open question as to what ex- 
 tent Vittoria espoused the Calvinistic or 
 ^'new opinions,'' as they were then called. 
 Her poems show that she at least thought 
 much upon the subject then agitating all 
 Italy. As she was an honored guest at 
 the Court of Ferara, she undoubtedly met 
 and conversed with many of the most 
 
 3Z 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 noted reformers. Calvin enjoyed the 
 friendship of Margaret of Navara, and 
 the patronage of Renata of Ferara, these 
 two noble women were dear and close 
 friends of Vittoria's, and we may imagine 
 high and glorious conversation when this 
 ''triumvirate of noble women'' met and 
 held communion with such a mind as Cal- 
 vin's. Seeds of thought, sown upon soil 
 so well prepared for truth, doubtless bore 
 fruit. But it was fruit not destined to 
 ripen to perfection. 
 
 ''While Vittoria was in Rome, she was 
 received by the Pope, as became a Prin- 
 cess of her rank. The Emperor, while 
 in Rome, visited her in her palace; the 
 Cardinals Pole and Contarini, the heads 
 of the Ochino party, were her intimate 
 friends; and those not linked with her by 
 the interests of religious reform were at- 
 tracted by her beauty and amiability, and 
 that which is styled by her contemporaries 
 her learning. People were proud to be able 
 to reckon themselves as her friends, ador- 
 ers or proteges, for her connection and 
 the high consideration of her family per- 
 
 38 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 mitted her to take many under her pro- 
 tection/' 
 
 When Vittoria met Michael Angelo he 
 was sixty years old, and she, though no 
 longer young, was still ''beautiful, cheer- 
 ful and full of intellectual activity.'' She 
 possessed to an eminent degree that chief- 
 est of graces in woman, exquisite tact. 
 Without apparent effort, without coercion, 
 without violence toward any, she seemed 
 to draw the spirits of men to her by a 
 power lofty and ennobling, as it was sweet 
 and enticing. It was the natural, and not 
 the supernatural, result of that perfection 
 of character whose spirituality breathes 
 through their individuality as a fine ethe- 
 real essence. It is not a thing to be imi- 
 tated, it is the essence of character, where 
 virtue and beauty are united with high 
 intelligence. 
 
 An instance of this tact is shown where 
 she changed her husband's nephew, whom 
 she adopted, treated and loved as a son 
 (for she was childless), from a wild, reck- 
 less youth to become a sober, scholarly 
 man. Again this wonderful tact is shown 
 in the way she arranged to bring Michael 
 
 39 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 Angelo into the Church of San Silvestro 
 to meet Francesca de Orlando, a miniature 
 painter from Spain, who desired much to 
 hear Michael Angelo converse upon art, 
 and where Michael Angelo used these 
 noble words upon art: ''True painting is 
 only an image of the perfection of God, a 
 shadow of the pencil with which he paints, 
 a melody, a striving after harmony,'' and 
 ''true art is made noble and religious by 
 the mind producing it,'' and the famous 
 saying, "Art belongs to no land; it comes 
 from Heaven," words which might be 
 written in letters of fire, where all aspir- 
 ants could read them as they entered the 
 field of Art. They are severe, grand and 
 true. 
 
 About 1538, Contarini and Pole had 
 secret hopes of filling the Papal chair aft- 
 er the death of Paul, and in this hope Vit- 
 toria fully sympathized, and said after the 
 former's sad and sudden death, "He, Con- 
 tarini, ought to have been Pope to have 
 made the age happy." 
 
 The five years previous to this were 
 years of great happiness to Michael An- 
 gelo, as they brought him into compan- 
 
 40 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 ionship with the noblest woman of his 
 age, and for the first time in his Hfe he 
 learned the sweet pleasure of yielding his 
 wishes to another, to one who could fully 
 comprehend him and his work, a friend- 
 ship unique and rare, as it was pure and 
 holy. That he loved her, and would have 
 gladly taken her into his heart and life 
 as a wife, is undoubtedly true, but Vit- 
 toria was a widow, in heart and act; that 
 their friendship was purely platonic, and 
 fully, aye, cruelly, recognized as such by 
 Michael Angelo, is evinced by a sonnet 
 addressed to her, which is full of exqui- 
 site pathos : ''That thy beauty may tarry 
 upon earth, but in possession of a woman 
 more gracious and less severe than thou 
 art, I believe that nature is asking back 
 thy charms, and commending them to 
 gradually leave thee, and she takes them. 
 With thy divine countenance she is adorn- 
 ing a lovely form in the sky ; and the God 
 of Love endeavors to give her a compas- 
 sionate heart ; and he receives all my sighs, 
 and he gathers up my tears, and gives 
 them to him who will love her as I love 
 thee. And, happier than I am, he will 
 
 41 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 touch her heart perhaps with my tor- 
 ments; and she will afford him the favor 
 which is denied to me." 
 
 But another poem still more plainly 
 shows the influence which Vittoria exer- 
 cised over the somber life and genius of 
 Michael Angelo : 
 
 "When Godlike art has, with superior 
 
 thought, 
 The limbs and motions in idea conceived 
 In simplest form, in humble clay achieved. 
 Is the first offering into being brought ; 
 Then stroke on stroke, from out the living 
 
 rock. 
 Its promised work the practiced chisel 
 
 brings. 
 And into life a form so graceful springs. 
 That none can fear for it time's rudest 
 
 shock. 
 Such was my birth; In humble mould I 
 
 lay 
 At first ; to be by thee, O ! lady high ! 
 Renewed, and to a work more perfect 
 
 brought ; 
 Thou givest what lacking is, and filest 
 
 away 
 
 42 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 All roughness : Yet what torture lie, 
 Ere my wild heart can be restrained and 
 taught/' 
 
 Though we have many poems and son- 
 nets written by Michael Angelo to Vit- 
 toria, there is but one scrap of her wri- 
 ting to him left to us, and that is a letter 
 in the possession of the British Museum, 
 ''though eight others are said to be still 
 held back in Florence,'' and of the many 
 letters of his to her, only one is said to be 
 in existence, and but very few of his 
 poems can be said to be certainly his. 
 
 There were many editions of Vittoria's 
 poems published, and they were read with 
 avidity by all her contemporaries. 
 
 The tenor and spirit of her poems are 
 of true humility, sustained by hope and 
 faith, a spirit striving for resignation and 
 perfection of soul, a vivid hope of immor- 
 tality, and increase of life and love, in a 
 world to come. Her early sorrow, in the 
 death of her husband; her deep seclusion 
 for years afterwards, her devotion to 
 good deeds and great thoughts, her inti- 
 mate acquaintance with the best writers 
 
 43 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 of the past, and her intimate personal 
 acquaintance with the highest minds of 
 her own day, her character elevated and 
 purified by the fires of shattered hopes and 
 ambitions, and the complete downfall of 
 her once powerful family, of which she 
 was naturally and loyally proud, all con- 
 spired to develop the poetic genius within 
 her. That her poems are somewhat 
 stately and scholastic is perhaps attribu- 
 table to the style cultivated at the period, 
 but dignified, and full of holy feeling, cer- 
 tainly they are. 
 
 With the death of Contarini and the 
 reign of Caraffa, her hopes were crushed 
 for the supremacy of the Ochino party, 
 and she retired to Viterbo. Later came 
 the final blow, when the Castles of the 
 Colonnas were seized, and on her return 
 to Rome, Vittoria found none of her fam- 
 ily, and all was wreck and ruin of her 
 earthly hopes of a return of power or 
 prosperity. 
 
 She retired into the Benedictine Con- 
 vent of St. Anne dei Funarie, where she 
 spent the remainder of her life. How 
 powerful was her influence and how 
 
 44 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 greatly she was feared by the Inquisition 
 is illustrated by the fact that twenty years 
 after her death a Florentine nobleman 
 was to be burned to death, and one of the 
 principal crimes that was brought against 
 him was the fact that he had been a friend 
 of Vittoria Colonna ! 
 
 In 1547 Vittoria failed rapidly, and died 
 in February, in the fifty-seventh year of 
 her age. Michael Angelo saw Vittoria 
 up to the last, and it is recorded of him 
 that he said after her death that ''he re- 
 pented of nothing so much as having only 
 kissed her hand, and not her forehead and 
 cheeks also, when he went to her at her 
 last hour.'' Yet here is shown the habit- 
 ual, deferential and constant habit of 
 mind and thought which he bore towards 
 Vittoria in her life, so strong that, even 
 in the agony of utter loss, of utter im- 
 possibility of reproach or of reciprocation 
 from her he so loved, he did not press 
 upon cheek, or forehead, the passionate 
 kisses which were never permitted in life. 
 It was an instinct of deep reverence, as 
 truly as habit, and shows the great con- 
 trol which this man of fire and genius had 
 
 45 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 over himself, and makes luminous to the 
 eyes of a critical world her pure and lofty 
 relation with him. History ofifers not a 
 parallel case of such noble friendship be- 
 tween a man and woman. There is an 
 almost impenetrable veil over Michael 
 Angelo's influence over Vittoria, but she 
 seems to be one of those deep natures, 
 whose love, once aroused, burns out its fire 
 of passion at the altar of the one and only 
 beloved. 
 
 We have no desire, even if we had the 
 right, to peer into her heart, and see there 
 its secret thoughts ; but that these thoughts 
 must have been noble and pure in the 
 highest degree is certain; for thought is 
 the well-spring of action, and all the facts 
 of her eventful life were irreproachable. 
 That her influence over Michael Angelo 
 was purifying as the purging fires is 
 shown by his sufferings and strivings ; but 
 she also brought to him such happiness as 
 is rarely vouchsafed to man, for a true 
 kindred soul is the chief est blessing which 
 life can give. She was a benediction to 
 him, entering into his gloomy soul and 
 lifting it up on the eternal heights of 
 
 46 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 serenity and peace. She brought to him, 
 though late in his Hfe, sweet inspiration, 
 thorough understanding and S3mipathetic 
 appreciation; gave him a keener mental 
 and spiritual insight, and brought his 
 whole nature into greater harmony with 
 himself and the world. It enables us to 
 see more clearly the delicate, tender and 
 humane traits in that large, many-sided 
 nature. It was a flood of warm, revivi- 
 fying, purifying sunshine that burst upon 
 Michael Angelo's life, that illuminated its 
 close, leaving us with a fuller knowledge 
 of the greatest artist, and giving a glimpse 
 of the possibilities of sweetness and gen- 
 tleness which might have characterized 
 Michael Angelo's life had this sunshine 
 breathed upon his rigid nature in the 
 daily companionship of a happy domestic 
 life. Yet sorrow and solitude are the al- 
 tars to which genius so often brings the 
 offerings of earthly bliss, and whose fires 
 burn away all grossness, leaving us only 
 the richer inheritance of imperishable 
 truth and beauty. 
 
 47 
 
SAVANAROLA 
 
SAVANAROLA. 
 
 IN estimating human character, three 
 things must be considered as pri- 
 mary and formative factors. First, 
 heredity; second, temperament, or consti- 
 tutional idiosyncrasy ; third, environ- 
 ment. In some cases the first has an over- 
 whelming influence, almost depriving the 
 individual of moral responsibility; for in- 
 stance, inherited insanity, inebriety and 
 kleptomania. Such cases are exceptional, 
 but in every instance that which we in- 
 herit remains a strongly modifying influ- 
 ence to the end of life. 
 
 The second, temperament, is an attri- 
 bute that can be largely controlled and 
 modified, but this will be a lifelong work, 
 because it will confront us hourly, and 
 clamor for supremacy. 
 
 The third, environment, occupies a 
 large field and embraces a much discussed 
 
 51 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 question. The Napoleonic theory, so 
 boastfully expressed when its author was 
 at the zenith of his power, that ''man 
 makes his own circumstances,'' is con- 
 fronted at once by the dismal picture of 
 this same great conqueror, desolate and 
 defenseless, on the Island of St. Helena. 
 
 Men are the architects of their own des- 
 tiny and weave the principal thread of 
 their lives, and are responsible for their 
 acts, for this is the corner-stone of any 
 true ethical system. It is those who are 
 unable to cope with life heroically who 
 fall back upon the pitiful plea, ''Circum- 
 stances were against me." This plea be- 
 gan with Adam and has never lacked fol- 
 lowers. 
 
 In summing up the character of Sa- 
 vanarola we shall find that he was very 
 strongly influenced by his environment; 
 his temperamental weakness he conquered 
 almost wholly. 
 
 He was of a delicate, proud, passion- 
 ate, over-sensitive disposition, but a love 
 of ease he consciously exchanged for a 
 life of rigid austerity; from a shrinking, 
 sensitive spirit he was urged by the fervor 
 
 52 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 of his convictions to become the most un- 
 yielding and implacable of warriors. 
 
 The ancestral blood which flowed in the 
 veins of Savanarola was largely belliger- 
 ent and warlike, for his ancestors, like 
 himself, were men of Padua. Yet, on the 
 other hand, the religious and artistic feel- 
 ings were cultivated by contact with noble 
 works of art, which shed their softening 
 and benign influence upon his fiery dis- 
 position. 
 
 Michael Angelo was but one year 
 younger; Bartolomea but eight years 
 older; Perugino but nineteen years his 
 senior, and Fra Angelica, who wrought 
 those sweet, angelic faces which still live 
 for us, had died only twenty years previ- 
 ously; besides the works of all the other 
 great Masters, who had left their work 
 and spirit indelibly impressed upon the 
 minds and hearts of the people of Italy 
 and the world. 
 
 Savanarola's nature partook of the 
 epic as well as of the artistic spirit of his 
 age, and accounts somewhat for the con- 
 tradictions in his nature. 
 
 Savanarola's family belonged to the 
 53 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 medical profession, his grandfather being 
 a celebrated physician, a man of large and 
 varied learning, devoted to his grandchild 
 and desiring him to follow in his foot- 
 steps. 
 
 Emilio Castilar says : ''Savanarola's 
 education commenced with the physical 
 sciences — a course alien to his natural dis- 
 position and contrary to his mental voca- 
 tion. Fortunately, medicine was not at 
 that time so much separated from arts 
 and letters as at the present.'' This 
 grandfather exercised much influence 
 over the early years of Savanarola, but 
 died before his education was completed, 
 and his father ''restricted the training of 
 his son to the science of the period," viz., 
 a thorough acquaintance with the dogmas 
 of the church. But his mother, a woman 
 of rare gift of mind and heart, exercised 
 a still stronger influence over him, an in- 
 fluence which was never lost, and was 
 overshadowed by a greater and stronger 
 one only for a brief period, when he met 
 and loved the beautiful woman belonging 
 to the patrician Florentine family of 
 Strozzie. But Savanarola's family was 
 
 54 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 considered far beneath them, belonging to 
 the medical profession, which, strange as 
 it may appear to us, was not held in very 
 high respect, and to this fact we owe the 
 public work and life of Savanarola, for 
 the family would not hear of an alliance 
 with Savanarola for their lovely daugh- 
 ter. 
 
 Thus, before he was twenty years old, 
 the saddest of all disappointments and 
 sorrows had entered his soul. After a 
 long and severe struggle with the love and 
 duty he owed to his beloved mother, be- 
 tween whom and himself existed a most 
 beautiful sympathy and appreciation, he 
 buried himself in the cloister in April (the 
 24th), 1475, from which he was to emerge 
 years afterwards a melancholy, wornout 
 ascetic, to yield his body to the rack of 
 torture and final death. 
 
 Emilio Castilar says of him after this 
 event, entering the cloister, took place: 
 ''As a monk, he will have to see things of 
 the world through the walls of the clois- 
 ter; as a politician, he will have to look 
 upon the cloister through the atmosphere 
 of the world ; as a mystic, he will have to 
 
 55 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 convert moral and religious rules into 
 coercive laws ; as a politician, he must give 
 prayers, sermons and penitential services 
 a certain revolutionary tone, certain war- 
 like complexion. But with all these con- 
 tradictions — possibly on account of these 
 contradictions — no one in history personi- 
 fies and represents with better right that 
 new birth of the religious spirit presented 
 in the gospel of Christ which has come 
 down into the midst of society like a 
 leaven of life, quickening all its institu- 
 tions as with a new soul/' 
 
 As with all true men, the political wel- 
 fare of his country, as wxll as the moral, 
 filled his heart with keen anxiety and he 
 became thoroughly permeated with the po- 
 litical atmosphere of his time. 
 
 The state was unsettled and heated; it 
 was like living under the shadow of a 
 volcano; church and state were at war 
 with each other ; Popes and Princes fought 
 for supremacy. The same spirit which 
 actuated the internal wars and dissensions 
 between Guelphs and Ghibilines two cen- 
 turies before, in Dante's time, filled the 
 hearts of the different factions, and the 
 
 56 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 political welfare and freedom of Flor- 
 ence was as dear to the fiery heart of the 
 religious enthusiast as centuries before it 
 had been to the melancholy, far-seeing 
 soul of the divine poet. 
 
 Something of the belligerent spirit of 
 the times may be imagined from a little 
 story. When Charles of Spain, with a 
 grand army, pressing to the gates of 
 Florence, said, 'If you do not comply with 
 our terms, we will blow our trumpets," he 
 was grandly and proudly answered by 
 Capponi, one of the ''ten" who composed 
 the Senate, "Then we will ring our bells." 
 This, the ringing of the bells, was the 
 signal which had been agreed upon by the 
 Florentines to take up arms against the 
 French. 
 
 Savanarola was the advance guard of 
 that mighty army which was to come with 
 fire and sword a half-century later to 
 electrify the Kingdoms of Europe, to 
 usher the light of the Reformation, ban- 
 ners of which were borne by Luther, 
 Calvin, Huss and Knox. 
 
 Like all great minds, Savanarola was 
 far in advance of his time. The prophetic 
 
 57 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 spirit which is one of the elements of gen- 
 ius, but which to the ignorant and super- 
 stitious seems miraculous, is only far- 
 sighted wisdom, and a knowledge of uni- 
 versal truth, based upon history and phil- 
 osophic insight. Savanarola grasped these 
 historical truths because he could ''read 
 between the lines,'' and knew that great 
 changes must come to his beloved Flor- 
 ence. He knew that the tidal wave had 
 swept as far in the direction of depravity 
 and error as it could go, and that reac- 
 tion must set in. Into his hands he 
 thought was given the command and 
 power to close the floodgates of sin and 
 error, and stop the devastation which 
 must inevitably follow unless the tide was 
 turned. 
 
 A great diversity of opinion has ever 
 existed in regard to the character of 
 Savanarola, as well in his own as in sub- 
 sequent times, and while some have con- 
 sidered him a saint and a martyr, others 
 have stigmatized him as an impostor and 
 demagogue. This difference of opinion 
 was the logical result of the contradictory 
 nature of the man. One writer very per- 
 
 58 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 tinently says: ''It has been asked how it 
 was that Socrates, after thirty years of 
 pubHc, notorious and efficacious discours- 
 ing, lost his hold upon the people of Ath- 
 ens; and the reason has been found to be 
 in the character and circumstances of the 
 Athenians. Savanarola exercised a power 
 and sway over the minds of the people and 
 over the history of Florence never pos- 
 sessed by Socrates, and the people turned 
 against him with a completeness and bit- 
 terness which far exceeded the madness 
 of the people of Athens/' 
 
 By a close analysis of Savanarola's 
 character, we shall find that his uncom- 
 promising, unyielding harshness had 
 within itself the sure prophecy of failure, 
 for ''we have now learned that to paralyze 
 personal liberty beyond what is absolutely 
 necessary for the protection of others is to 
 induce evils far greater than any which we 
 are able to suppress/' That Savanarola 
 did not grasp this principle is evident 
 through all the acts of his eventful life. 
 It is not strange, nor even discreditable 
 that he did not ; for liberty and patriotism 
 in the larger sense were not a part of the 
 
 59 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 movement of the Italian Renaissance. 
 These principles did not belong to his 
 time. This charge could be brought 
 against many other great minds of this 
 period. 
 
 His uncompromising severity is well il- 
 lustrated by this story told of him. In 
 one of his sermons, speaking of the cor- 
 ruption in the church, he said, ''In the 
 primitive church were chaHces of wood 
 and Prelates of gold; in these days, the 
 church has golden chalices and wooden 
 Prelates !" It was a most heroic thing to 
 proclaim war heroically upon the vices of 
 a vicious age, especially when these vices 
 were incarnate in the rulers of church and 
 state. But Savanarola feared neither 
 Prince nor Pope and hurled his javelins 
 of fierce denunciation, meaning to cut 
 deep into the heart of sin and corruption. 
 
 It is one of the peculiarities of genius 
 that it overreaches itself, that it has in it 
 the spirit of prophecy and inspiration. 
 When Savanarola told his people that he 
 was "called of God," "That God had re- 
 vealed his divine will to him," though us- 
 ing this rather ambiguous language, he 
 
 60 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 recognized his purely human powers, and 
 when not borne along by the passion of 
 his feelings, took reasonable views of his 
 work. But he had launched his bark 
 upon a stream whose current he did not 
 fully realize or fathom. At last, when he 
 did realize it, it was too late, and in a 
 moment of weakness, after long hesita- 
 tion, he yielded to the satanic demands of 
 his enemies and consented to pass through 
 the ''test of fire," and this moment marked 
 his doom. We cannot assume positively 
 what the result would have been had he 
 never for one moment yielded his higher 
 convictions to this demand; possibly the 
 present result would have been the same, 
 for the tide had set and could not be easily 
 changed, but not so weakly superstitious 
 would he have appeared upon the pages of 
 history. 
 
 Savanarola believed with his whole 
 soul in the work he had to do and the re- 
 forms he advocated; but there came a 
 time, there was a point at which he be- 
 came uncertain of himself. He did not 
 lay claim to the power of performing 
 miracles, but his great fault, even sin, lay 
 
 6i 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 in the fact that he did not from the first 
 discourage the superstition that such mir- 
 acles or evidence might be granted in con- 
 firmation of his power and doctrines. 
 
 Savanarola's character in its deep in- 
 tensity and fierce power of denunciation 
 is Dantesque. He belonged strictly to the 
 church militant. He did not realize that 
 virtue is of slow growth; he had not 
 learned to wait. He planted his seed in 
 the ground and then called upon the sun 
 and rain to pour upon it, and all nature to 
 hasten her operations, to bring forth the 
 full grown tree and fruit at once. He was 
 intensely practical and had magnificent 
 executive abilities, but he lacked imagina- 
 tion and took little heed of individual 
 rights and needs. Such impetuous men 
 seem to be necessary in the development 
 of truth and humanity, and they carry the 
 torch of reformation into the very heart 
 of complacent mediocrity. Such men are 
 ever the pioneers of God's work in the 
 world. 
 
 Savanarola's character stands for mar- 
 tyrdom to the higher law, because he 
 would obey the voice of his own soul and 
 
 62 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 conscience rather than the voice and au- 
 thority of the Church. James Freeman 
 Clark, speaking of Jean d'Arc and Savan- 
 arola, says, ''Both were Lutherans before 
 Luther and Protestants before Protest- 
 antism. Neither had any quarrel with the 
 Church as such, both desired to be its 
 faithful and obedient servants, both be- 
 lieved its doctrines and gladly received its 
 sacraments, but each was compelled by 
 the awful voice of conscience to refuse 
 obedience to the authority of the Church.'' 
 Why Savanarola should have failed at 
 last so utterly and completely longer to 
 hold his power over the people of Flor- 
 ence is a difficult question to answer, per- 
 haps impossible to answer. It cannot be 
 found to rest alone on his puritanical, in- 
 tolerant spirit, for severe as this was, he 
 could melt the hearts of his listeners to 
 the sweetest humility and bring tears to 
 the eyes of the stoic and conviction to the 
 cultured and philosophic. It cannot be 
 found to rest alone on the character of the 
 Florentines themselves. It cannot be 
 proven that it was alone in the viciousness 
 of the age; for vicious as it undoubtedly 
 
 63 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 was, it had scarcely passed the meridian 
 of a period whose glories in art, literature 
 and social culture outrival all other his- 
 toric periods; an age ushered in by the 
 somber genius of Dante, followed by a 
 long line of the brightest and greatest 
 minds that ever challenged the admiration 
 and reverence of a hero-worshiping world. 
 Neither can it be found in any peculiar 
 culmination of circumstances. Where, 
 then, can we look for the cause of the dis- 
 mal going out of this great luminary? 
 
 The one cause more than any other 
 which contributed to this unhappy end was 
 a failure on the part of Savanarola to 
 cling unfalteringly to his highest ideal, to 
 be absolutely true to his innermost con- 
 victions. He had become uncertain of 
 himself, and as a last tremendous effort 
 and struggle for supremacy, he weakly 
 yielded to the insistence of his enemies 
 and the urgent persuasion of his unwise 
 and misguided friend, San Silvestro, and 
 consented to that pitiful ''test by fire.'' 
 This moment marked his doom. There is 
 strong evidence that he realized this and 
 felt it most keenly. It was the vain cling- 
 
 64 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 ing to a straw of one who knew he was 
 drowning. The proof of this Hes in the 
 fact, first, from his association with his 
 grandfather and his scientific and medical 
 education, even sHght as it was in those 
 days, must have taught him something of 
 the law of nature, and the relation of 
 cause and efifect. He must have learned 
 that it is the nature and law of fire to 
 burn ; and that God does not interrupt the 
 workings of his immutable laws. His 
 study of physical sciences had doubtless 
 taught him this much, hence his reluctance 
 and hesitancy to undergo the test by fire. 
 But he was still in the thraldom of super- 
 stition and bound by the chains of author- 
 ity. Second, he did not lay claim to the 
 performance of the miracles, or make 
 many of the prophecies which his ardent 
 friends claimed for him. His burning 
 words, often spoken in metaphor, were 
 exaggerated and distorted by the ignorant 
 and over-zealous. Third, he did not use 
 every effort from the very first to discour- 
 age the belief that he could perform such 
 a miracle as the passing through fire un- 
 burned. Fourth, it was the fear of fail- 
 
 65 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 ure and the almost certain knowledge that 
 his power over the people was ebbing, and 
 this knowledge, coupled with a certain 
 stubbornness, inherent in his blood, which 
 was exemplified again and again in many 
 acts of his Hfe, made him willing to grasp 
 even this straw, in the hope of saving his 
 power over the people whom he loved. It 
 had in it a certain Machiavellian element 
 which he often used in his relation with 
 the Princes and Popes, to whom he was 
 opposed. Fifth, he yielded his reason and 
 will to superstition ; he was not yet a free 
 soul. The strongest proof of this lies in 
 the fact that in the last sad moments of 
 his life, when under the severest torture, 
 when every other question was answered 
 with clearness and precision, when his ac- 
 cusers came to the question of miracles 
 and prophecies, his language at once, con- 
 sciously or unconsciously, became dim, un- 
 certain, ambiguous. Time and again the 
 same questions were put to him with the 
 same result. It was the last effort of a 
 soul to be absolutely true to itself. _ ^ 
 
 There was no hesitancy, no ambiguity, 
 in Luther's answer to his tormentors at 
 
 66 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 the Diet of Worms, '1 can retract noth- 
 ing, here I take my stand," and this spirit 
 was repeated again by Ridley, Latimer 
 and John Rogers at the stake and Robert 
 Emmet on the scaffold. 
 
 It is one of the glories of our age that 
 such a spectacle is well-nigh impossible as 
 the ''test by fire/' Science forbids, com- 
 mon sense forbids. Something of its folly 
 sank into the soul of the martyr, Savana- 
 rola, but he was not ready to burst the 
 bonds that held him captive. But to him 
 belong the honor and the glory of paving 
 the way for those who came after him to 
 live up to the light of freedom. 
 
 ^7. 
 
SHELLEY, 
 
SHELLEY. 
 
 SheIvIvEy's Views of^ Nature; Parai^lei.- 
 
 iSM AND Contrast With Other 
 
 Poets. 
 
 MOST modern poets have looked 
 to Nature for inspiration, con- 
 solation, sympathy and perennial 
 freshness, the sacred shrine whereon to 
 lay the incense of each burning thought, 
 or calm the troubled spirit. The unfath- 
 omable mystery of Nature's processes, the 
 marvelous ebb and flow of the tides, the 
 regularity of the returning seasons, the 
 beauty of the sea and sky and flower, the 
 harmony of revolving worlds, and systems 
 of worlds, have ever kindled the imagina- 
 tion and excited the curiosity of the true 
 poetic soul. In earlier times these phe- 
 nomena only excited fancy, admiration, 
 wonder, awe or fear. As knowledge and 
 
 71 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 science advance, revealing with telescope 
 and microscope myriad worlds in infinite 
 space, the exquisite beauty hidden in the 
 commonest weed, the wonderful relation 
 of one form of development to another, 
 the variety and beautiful interdependence 
 of each to all and all to each, the admi- 
 ration and wonder do not grow less, but 
 the poetic imagination, guided by the 
 revelations of Science, revels in truth and 
 beauty, knowing for certainty that we 
 may worship Nature, and through Na- 
 ture, Nature's God. The poet sees some- 
 thing of that love and wisdom which is 
 existent in and through all external phe- 
 nomena, and being thus related to Nature 
 becomes her reverent devotee and seeks 
 through her laws to pierce the veil of the 
 unknown and find a solution of those 
 problems of Life, Death and Immortality 
 which has been the craving of all high 
 souls in all times. The poet's mind is 
 filled with glorious visions of the Unseen, 
 while his enraptured eyes behold with 
 keenest joy the perfection and beauty 
 around him. His poetry partakes of this 
 knowledge and this ecstasy, and becomes 
 
 72 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 through his genius a world poem, because 
 it draws its sustenance from the infinite, 
 and rests upon the highest canons of art, 
 which demands some Universal Truth for 
 its basis. 
 
 Shelley was a child of Nature and saw 
 her with unfettered vision. Throwing off 
 early in life the yoke of superstition, he 
 came to her untrammeled and she yielded 
 to him her rarest secrets. His soul, with 
 all its surging, swaying passions strug- 
 gling for expression, finds at all times 
 sympathy, correspondence and inspiration 
 in the changing moods and forms of the 
 material universe. 
 
 Shelley has been truly called a poet of 
 the Nineteenth Century, for in this mar- 
 velous youth, this radiant Apollo, we find 
 the close observation and keen analysis of 
 the scientist united with the fiery passion 
 and clear insight of the poet and seer. In 
 him were united in a rare degree the 
 ''Wisdom of Love, with the Love of Wis- 
 dom.'' I cannot forbear to mention the 
 first quality of Shelley's poems, although 
 the second is that to which this paper is 
 properly assigned. 
 
 73 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 The two great passions of his Hfe, love 
 of humanity and love of Nature, were so 
 interwoven that it is difficult to consider 
 them independently. For his views of 
 Nature were so mingled with his views 
 of human life, the Creator of the world, 
 and its ultimate perfection, that all of 
 these are embraced in his anthems of pro- 
 phecy and rejoicing. 
 
 The first impression received in reading 
 Shelley's poems from Queen Mab to 
 Prometheus Unbound is his love of hu- 
 manity. This was the fire that kindled 
 each thought and lighted each glowing 
 word. He anticipated the fever which has 
 risen to white heat to-day, when the re- 
 ligion of humanity by whatsoever name 
 called is the highest expression of Christ- 
 liness, the undying principle of all relig- 
 ions or ethics and the chief hunger of all 
 true souls. This love, coupled with a 
 marvelous insight into the inevitable trend 
 of human destiny upward and onward to 
 a goal of final perfection, was not simply 
 a hope, it was a sublime faith, based upon 
 the recognition of the divine possibilities 
 inherent in the nature of man. This 
 
 74 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 largeness of vision and prophetic insight 
 placed him far above and in advance of 
 his own time, and accounts somewhat for 
 the apparent contradictions and the mis- 
 understandings of his work and genius. 
 
 The second quahty in Shelley's poems 
 is his adoring love of Nature, his perfect 
 sympathy and oneness with Nature, and 
 his scientific and speculative view, a view 
 unknown and undreamed of by the ancient 
 poets. Dowden, in speaking of Queen 
 Mab, says: ''Seldom before in English 
 poetry had the unity of Nature and the 
 universality of law, the idea of a Cosmos 
 been expressed with more precision or 
 more ardent conviction: seldom before in 
 poetry had the vast and ceaseless flow of 
 being, restless, yet subject to a constant 
 law of evolution and development, been so 
 vividly conceived.'' 
 
 Nature, or, as Shelley preferred to say, 
 the Spirit of Nature acting necessarily, 
 and at present producing indifferently 
 good and evil, giving birth alike to the 
 hero, the martyr, the bigot, the tyrant, 
 poisonous serpent and innocent lamb, yet 
 tends unconsciously upward to nobler de- 
 
 75 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 velopments, purging itself of what is weak 
 and base. Shelley's Spirit, which circles 
 half-mournfully, half-exultantly above the 
 ruins of the past, which rises on the wing 
 and screams at sight of all oppression and 
 frauds done under the sun in this our day, 
 flies to the future and embraces it with 
 lovers' joy. That his ideal of the future 
 golden age may be smiled at by common 
 sense as impracticable, need give us small 
 offense. In following the sun, he loses 
 his way in a radiant cloudland; yet still 
 amid bright voluminous folds of error he 
 is on the track of the sun. 
 
 Shelley's views of Nature were not 
 alone the result of his poetic insight, but 
 were based upon the substantial study of 
 Philosophy and Science under such mas- 
 ters as Pliny the Elder, Bacon, Rousseau, 
 Bailey, Locke, Hume and Newton. He 
 was constantly searching for the ''Mani- 
 festation of something beyond the present 
 and tangible object." - He pierced through 
 things to their spiritual essence. In Na- 
 ture there was no voice, however soft and 
 low, that he did not hear, no shade of 
 beauty that he did not perceive, no crash 
 
 76 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 of thunder or roll of cataract that he did 
 not revel in. He early recognized the re- 
 lation of cause and effect, not revealed to 
 him alone by an array of facts and figures 
 of the calm, patient scientist, but blazing 
 forth in flash of inspiration and revela- 
 tion. For all art ends in Science and all 
 poetry in a Philosophy. For Science and 
 Philosophy do but translate into precise 
 formulae the original conceptions which 
 art and poetry render by imaginary fig- 
 ures. Michael Angelo and Raphael were 
 followed by Galileo; after Shakespeare we 
 had a school of naturalists leading up to 
 Harvey; after Bacon, Descartes and New- 
 ton, and after Goethe, Darwin and Hux- 
 ley and Spenser. 
 
 At the early age at which Shelley wrote 
 Queen Mab we see this scientific and 
 speculative thread running clearly and un- 
 mistakably through the poem. He says: 
 
 ''Spirit of Nature ! here 
 In this interminable wilderness 
 Of worlds, at whose immensity 
 Even soaring fancy staggers, 
 Here is thy temple. 
 
 77 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 Yet not the Lightest Leaf 
 
 That quivers in the passing breeze 
 
 Is less instinct with Thee. 
 
 Yet not the meanest worm 
 
 That lurks in groves, or fattens on the 
 
 dead, 
 Less shares thy eternal breath/' 
 
 In the exquisite little poem, ''The 
 Cloud," he says: 
 
 ''I am the daughter of earth and water 
 
 And the nursling of the sky, 
 
 I pass through the pores of the ocean and 
 
 shores, 
 I change: But I cannot die/' 
 
 In these lines we see a recognition of 
 the indestructibility of matter and of the 
 law of transformation and organization 
 ever going on around us, creating its mir- 
 acles of beauty and life in infinite variety. 
 
 In the Prometheus Unbound, where we 
 find the matchless songs over the glad day 
 which is to be, the moon sings thus : 
 
 ''Music is in the sea and air. 
 Mingled clouds soar here and there ; 
 
 78 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 Dark with the rain new buds are dream- 
 ing of, 
 'Tis Love- All Love." 
 
 And the Earth takes up the refrain and 
 answers : 
 
 ''It interpenetrates my granite mass, 
 Through tangled roots and trodden clay 
 
 doth pass 
 Into the utmost leaves and delicatest flow- 
 
 ers; 
 
 And Demigorgon, answering Asians 
 breathless questions, says: 
 
 ''If the abysm 
 Could vomit forth its secrets — 
 
 But a voice 
 Is wanting, the deep truth is 
 
 Imageless ; 
 For what would it avail to bid 
 Gaze 
 
 On the revolving world? What 
 To bid speak 
 
 Fate, time, occasion, chance 
 And change? To thee 
 All things are subject but 
 Eternal Love/' 
 
 79 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 Words could not better or more finely 
 express the poet's reliance upon that love 
 which is coexistent with lav/, or a more 
 perfect recognition of the Divine and eter- 
 nal. 
 
 He reaHzed that man is a microcosm, a 
 reflection of that power which holds the 
 universe in harmony, and which he called 
 the ''Spirit of Nature," because he did not 
 wish to limit or define the limitless and un- 
 definable. None but the most reverent 
 and humble spirits thus confess the limita- 
 tions of the finite mind, and the impossi- 
 bility of absolutely unclouded knowledge 
 of the Infinite. 
 
 Goethe. 
 
 In Goethe's works we find a wonderful 
 similarity of view of Nature, with the 
 same love, sympathy and delight in study- 
 ing her mysteries. Goethe says: ''Life 
 is not light, but refracted color.'' Here the 
 thought is repeated in metaphor drawn 
 from Goethe's study of color. The water- 
 fall is a symbol of human endeavor, im- 
 petuous, never ending, destructive, yet in- 
 
 80 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 spiring and creating force, and the rain- 
 bow is the divided ray of the intolerably 
 keen white light of truth, as it is reflected 
 in and overhangs the monuments of life. 
 Shelley expresses exactly the same 
 thought in a different image, where he 
 says, in Adonais: 'Xife like a dome of 
 many colored glass stains the white ra- 
 diance of eternity." In the second part 
 of Faust we find in one of the songs of 
 the chorus of the maidens : 
 
 ''Given again to the daylight are we 
 Persons, no more 'tis true 
 We feel it and know it. 
 But to Hades return we never ! 
 Nature the ever living 
 Makes to us spirits 
 Validest claim, and we to her also." 
 
 Taylor says of these lines : ''The twelve 
 Maidens of the Chorus divide themselves 
 into four groups, relinquish their human 
 forms and enter into the being of trees, 
 echos, brooks and vineyards. Goethe was 
 so well satisfied with this disposition of 
 an antique feature, for which there seems 
 to be no place in the romantic world, that 
 
 8i 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 we can hardly be mistaken as to his de- 
 sign. The transfusion of Nature with a 
 human sympathy belongs exclusively to 
 modern literature.'' 
 
 It is not the dryad but the tree itself, 
 not the creed but the spirit of the moun- 
 tain which speaks to us now. We have 
 lost the fascinating existence of ancient 
 fable in their human forms, but Nature, 
 then their lifeless dwelling, now breathes 
 and throbs with more than their life, for 
 we have clothed her in the garments of 
 our own emotion and aspiration. 
 
 No fairy tale of nymph or dryad can 
 compare in wonder with the transfigura- 
 tion which the woods themselves reveal to 
 us, in the ever-returning birth, death and 
 resurrection of her changing forms. 
 Again in the second part of Faust, Thales, 
 the Greek philosopher and mathematician, 
 who thought, more than three hundred 
 years before Christ, that ''All things were 
 instinct with life," is made to say: 
 
 ^^Nature, the living current of her powers 
 was never bound to day and night 
 and hours : 
 
 82 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 She makes each form by rules that never 
 
 fail, 
 And 'tis not force even on a mighty scale/' 
 
 These lines express Goethe's scientific 
 creed. In 1831 Goethe said: ''The older 
 I grow the more surely I rely on that law 
 by which the rose and the lily blossom." 
 But nowhere is Goethe's idea of Nature 
 so finely expressed as in the Proemium to 
 God and the World : 
 
 ^'What were the God, who sat outside to 
 scan 
 
 The spheres, that 'neath His circling fing- 
 ers ran? 
 
 God dwells within and moves the world 
 and moulds 
 
 Himself and Nature in one form enfolds. 
 
 >i^ ^tc ^Sf ^If ^tc ^tf ^tf 
 
 Thus all that lives in Him and breathes 
 
 and is, 
 Shall ne'er His puissance, ne'er His spirit 
 
 miss." 
 
 Emerson. 
 
 Our own philosopher and poet, Emer- 
 son, seems at times to touch the very 
 
 83 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 spirit and pulse of Nature, and we feel 
 her throbbing life in his epigramatic lines. 
 In Wood Notes he tells the story of evo- 
 lution : 
 
 "To the open ear it sings 
 
 Sweet the genesis of things: 
 
 Of tendency through endless ages 
 
 Of Star-dust and star-pilgrimmages, 
 
 Of rounded worlds, of space and time, 
 
 Of the old floods' subsiding slime. 
 
 Of chemic matter, force and form, 
 
 Of poles and powers, cold, wet and warm, 
 
 The rushing metamorphosis 
 
 Dissolving all that fixture is. 
 
 For Nature beats in perfect tune, 
 And rounds with rhyme her every rume, 
 Whether she work in land or sea. 
 Or hide under ground her alchemy. 
 The wood is wiser far than thou. 
 The wood and wave each other know. 
 Not unrelated, unaffied. 
 But to each thought and thing allied, 
 Is perfect Nature's every part, 
 Rooted in the mighty heart." 
 
 84 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 Browning. 
 
 Among our modern poets, none have 
 sung the truth revealed by Science and 
 the metaphysical and intimate relation of 
 spirit and matter more splendidly than 
 Robert Browning. It pervades all he says 
 like a fine ethereal fire, whose glow lights 
 up the dim regions of futurity and gives 
 him those broad views of love and faith 
 which are rooted deep in infinity. He too 
 based his hopes of man's ultimate perfec- 
 tion and immortality on that law which 
 holds the worlds in their orbits and tints 
 the smallest flower. Browning was one 
 who had with great care, deep thought 
 and conscientious research, joined the ever 
 enlarging ranks of those modern thinkers 
 who are striving to bring harmony out of 
 chaos, chaos caused by the rapid change 
 in the last half century of old landmarks, 
 old ideals. The influx of positive knowl- 
 edge in place of authority and vulgar em- 
 piricism, and the persistent research into 
 the causes of all phenomena, physical or 
 spiritual, mark our era. Close upon the 
 heels of this age of analysis will follow a 
 
 85 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 still more glorious age of synthesis, whose 
 dawn we already see creeping slowly over 
 the horizon. In Paracelsus, Browning 
 thus traces the law of evolution of pro- 
 gression : 
 
 ''Hints and previsions of which faculties, 
 Are strewn confusedly everywhere about 
 The inferior natures, and all lead up 
 
 higher. 
 All shape out dimly the superior race. 
 The heir of hopes too fair to turn out 
 
 false. 
 And man appears at last. So far the seal 
 Is put on life; one stage of being com- 
 plete. 
 One scheme wound up: and from the 
 
 grand result 
 A supplementary reflux of light. 
 Illustrates all the inferior grades, explains 
 Each back step in the circle. Not alone 
 For their possessor dawn those qualities. 
 But the new glory mixes with the heaven 
 And earth; man, once descried, imprints 
 
 forever 
 His presence on all lifeless things: the 
 winds 
 
 86 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 Are henceforth voices, waiHng or a shout, 
 A querulous mutter or a quick gay laugh. 
 Never a senseless gust now man is born/^ 
 In Asolando, Browning's last work, we 
 find the ripened thought o£ his eighty 
 years expressed in a short poem called 
 "Reverie": 
 
 '1 truly am, at last ! 
 For a veil is rent between 
 Me and the truth which passed 
 Fitful, half guessed, half seen, 
 Grasped at — not gained, held fast. 
 
 I for my race and me 
 Shall apprehend life's Law: 
 In the legend of man shall sfee 
 Writ large what small I saw 
 In my life's tale, — ^both agree. 
 
 All is effect of cause: 
 As it would, has willed and done 
 Power : And my mind's applause 
 Goes, passing laws each one. 
 To Omnipotence, lord of laws. 
 
 I have Faith such end shall be : 
 From the first, Power was — I knew. 
 
 87 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 Life has made clear to me 
 That, strive but for closer view, 
 Love were as plain to see. 
 
 As the record from youth to age 
 
 Of my own, the single soul, 
 
 So the world's wide Book: One page 
 
 Deciphered explains the whole 
 
 Of our common heritage/' 
 
 Homer. 
 
 The limits of this paper will not admit 
 of an exhaustive survey of the objective 
 poets, of whom Homer is the ancient rep- 
 resentative, as Shakespeare is the modern. 
 The Greeks delighted in the sunny out- 
 ward manifestation of Nature, not her 
 mysterious depths. The special and dis- 
 tinctive office of the poet in ancient times 
 was to give delight; to recount to eager 
 listeners heroic, valorous deeds of godlike 
 men. 
 
 Life was divided into good and evil 
 without complexity; subjective musings 
 were not dreamed of; controversies be- 
 tween Religion and Science were un- 
 known; doubt had not been born in the 
 
 88 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 Homeric time ; the eternal ''Why" had not 
 entered the poet's thought to breed its 
 legions of unanswerables. It was reflec- 
 tion that changed the spirit of freedom 
 and simplicity of the Greeks. In Homer 
 we are borne along as on a swift current 
 by his matchless descriptions, splendid 
 narration of events rapidly succeeding 
 each other, by his characters, perfectly 
 drawn and clearly defined, and through 
 all a diversity and simplicity which has 
 been the marvel and delight of ages. But 
 though possessing vivid and boundless im- 
 agination, nowhere does he show any sign 
 of that inward searching, that quest for 
 the hidden meaning of things. Gladstone 
 says of Homer: 
 
 "Of the impersonated unseen no poet 
 has made such efifective employment; of 
 the unseen, except as connected with im- 
 personation, he never, I think, makes use, 
 unless on two occasions, once when the 
 ships of the Phaiakes (Phi-a-kes) are 
 swift as a wing or as a thought, and the 
 other where he compares the agitated 
 mind of Hera with the quickened intelli- 
 
 89 
 
ESSAYS 
 gence of a man stimulated and informed 
 
 by travel." 
 
 How different the modern poet; every 
 line is an invocation to the unseen, every 
 thought an interrogation, every sign an 
 appeal for light. Yet the epic of the fu- 
 ture will embody the grand onward march 
 of progressive thought and life, and m.ust 
 find its final reconciliation in Law and 
 Love. 
 
 Conclusion. 
 
 What was the spirit of Nature to which 
 Shelley bowed his head with the rever- 
 ence of an idolator? It was the great 
 first cause which lies back of all phenom- 
 ena, material and spiritual, which men 
 have worshiped under different names 
 and different forms since the world's re- 
 lief from the barbarism of base fear, be- 
 ginning with reverence for something 
 above him, which in the evolution of 
 thought finds its best expression in the 
 reverence for one's self or the soul of 
 man, as the highest creation, the divine 
 and immortal. 
 
 He recognized that all beauty, all har- 
 90 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 mony is the direct result o£ a cause inde- 
 finable, but a natural development and se- 
 quence, the secret of which he is ever 
 striving to find. 
 
 A keen poetic insight which flashes 
 forth in revelations of the future, whose 
 reverberations will roll down the coming 
 centuries to kindle to renewed activity 
 men's thoughts and purposes and clarify 
 the atmosphere of gross materiality. 
 
 Shelley's love of Nature was not alone 
 sensuous, though his ear thrilled to every 
 vibration of sound and his eye delighted 
 in every tint of beauty. He found a par- 
 tial answer at least to his questionings, 
 and his aspirations. 
 
 His views of Nature, though alien to his 
 own time, have been largely verified by 
 modern Science. There was a quality in 
 the man and his poems akin to Nature, 
 vast, luminous, tremulous with light in- 
 tangible, impalpable. 
 
 But his music is permanent, for he is 
 allied to that small choir of choice spirits 
 who are the harbingers of the perfecti- 
 bility of the human race. In his own beau- 
 tiful words we may say: 
 
 91 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 ^^Mourn not for Adonais. Thou 
 
 Young Dawn, 
 
 Turn all thy dews to splendor, for 
 
 From Thee 
 
 The spirit thou lamentest is 
 
 Not gone. 
 
 He is made one with Nature ! 
 
 There is heard 
 
 His voice in all her music. 
 
 From the moan of thunder 
 
 To the song of the night's sweet bird. 
 
 The splendors of the firmament 
 
 Of time 
 
 May be eclipsed, but are 
 
 Extinguished not: 
 
 Like stars to their appointed height 
 
 They climb. 
 
 And death is a low mist which 
 
 Cannot blot 
 
 The brightness it may veil when 
 
 Lofty thought 
 
 Lifts a young heart above its mortal lair, 
 
 And Life and love contend in it, for what 
 
 Shall be its earthly doom, the dead live 
 
 there 
 And move like winds of light on dark and 
 
 stormy air." 
 
 92 
 
THOUGHT, THE PARENT OF ORIG- 
 INALITY 
 
THOUGHT, THE PARENT OF 
 ORIGINALITY. 
 
 EACH age must write its own books. 
 Meek young men grow up in 
 libraries, believing it their duty 
 to accept the views which Cicero, which 
 Locke, which Bacon have given; forget- 
 ful that Cicero, Locke and Bacon were 
 only young men in libraries when they 
 wrote these books/' — Emerson. 
 
 He who accepts the theory, or truth, 
 full-fledged, all worked out in detail, from 
 the brain of another, loses very much, 
 even though he may comprehend the thing 
 perfectly and grasp it wholly. When man 
 works out his own problems he puts into 
 the old truth (for truth is never new) 
 that which gives it fresh life and vigor. 
 He reclothes it with that fine something 
 which is a part of his own being. The 
 truths underlying the Christian religion, 
 and the Platonic philosophy, were before 
 
 95 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 Christ or Plato; for truth, like law, was, 
 is, and ever will be. But these minds, 
 grasping the germinal truths, moulded 
 them into form and gave them palpable 
 existence. The glory of Jesus and Plato 
 is the weaving of their spirit in and 
 through these truths, making them lu- 
 minous to the world. Just this touch of 
 individuality is the secret of all creative 
 work, and is what we call genius. The 
 sculptor's ideal, the artist's spirit, the 
 fires of divine revelation it is which makes 
 marble speak, canvas glow, music thrill 
 and poetry stir. The difference between 
 artistic and inartistic work is the differ- 
 ence in individual power and insight. This 
 it is which gives permanence and tenacity 
 to all art creation and is seen in all effort 
 from the simplest forms of material work- 
 manship to man's highest conception of 
 law and order in the universe of God. 
 Genius is always accompanied by his twin 
 brother — independent individuality— and 
 these two are linked with a third — mar- 
 velous courage. The genius who announ- 
 ces absolute truth is usually fortified by 
 a moral courage as wonderful as the crea- 
 
 96 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 tive faculty itself. Genius is not given to 
 all men, but to each is given a talent, and 
 it is a sacred duty for each one to use this 
 talent and to think and act for himself, for 
 he is not an integral, but a part of the 
 whole brotherhood of humanity, a link in 
 the endless chain of being. Whether this 
 thought be helpful and luminous to others, 
 gathering its followers and lending its ra- 
 diance, or remains within the quiet limits 
 of one's own soul as guide and light, mat- 
 ters not; we have been true to ourselves 
 and true to a great ethical principle. Any- 
 thing short of this individual effort is 
 either stolen, borrowed or imitated. A 
 modern writer says: ''The true original 
 genius does not kick out of the traces of 
 the universe, but heroically carries it for- 
 ward; not imitating the old, but trans- 
 forming into it the new, wherein lies just 
 his originality.'' 
 
 St. Augustine says: ''Christianity has 
 existed since time or the world began. 
 Christ's coming gave to the principles he 
 advocated the name it now bears." To 
 accept crystalized truth without knowing 
 anything about the wonderful process of 
 
 97 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 crystalization may be a mental pleasure, 
 but is lacking in that keener, finer joy 
 which one may experience who has him- 
 self traced each step in the crystalization. 
 All may have a simple appreciation of the 
 general phenomena of the sun, moon and 
 stars, but how grand is the conception of 
 the universe! Man should use his brain, 
 chemicals, reason and analysis to disin- 
 tegrate the atoms of truth or thought, and 
 then build up for himself; then the final 
 synthesis will have a fullness, a roundness, 
 a clearness that stamps at once the origi- 
 nal thinker from the mere imitator. 
 
 To arrive at the truth we should begin 
 by slaying the dragons, the negatives, as 
 they arise successively in the mind; when 
 this labor has been accomplished, and 
 there are no more dragons to slay, the 
 mind will be filled with a radiant sunshine 
 of affirmative. Then are we truly placed. 
 Then have we truly found ourselves. If 
 we leave the mind unsettled, chaotic, we 
 not only destroy the pleasure an unvvaver- 
 ing affirmative gives, but we destroy its 
 efficacy as a guiding principle of life, 
 which is the chief object of all truth or 
 
 98 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 knowledge. The healthiest attitude of the 
 mind is one of questioning. There are 
 many questions which in their nature can- 
 not be answered with entire satisfaction; 
 these have been most truly named — the 
 great ''unknowables.'' Here we reach our 
 limitations, but until we have sounded 
 with our plummet every question that 
 arises for us, whether this plumb-line be 
 long or short, it is our most sacred duty 
 and blessed privilege to use it. 
 
 The perceptive genius, or man of talent, 
 may be a brilliant, shining light, but he 
 has no permanency, excepting as he be- 
 comes identified with some idea of another. 
 He is the Prophet that bears the word to 
 the people. Perception is often mistaken 
 for creation. What we have an undoubted 
 right to is this : We may see, and adore ; 
 and far better still if we catch something 
 of the divine aspiration and fervor which 
 has made this creation possible; if we be 
 induced to ''go and do likewise,'' this art 
 creation has spoken its best lesson to us. 
 Inspiration to efifort is the lesson all true 
 art teaches. This is not a discouraging 
 view ; it simply recognizes individual limi- 
 
 99 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 tations and capacities, and without such 
 intelHgent recognition no true work can 
 be accompHshed. 
 
 We may accept crystaHzations of 
 thought in the same spirit that we accept 
 a work of plastic art. It is ours to emu- 
 late and enjoy, but if we receive from it 
 only a passing gratification, which may be 
 coldly intellectual or warmly sensuous, 
 then that thought has not spoken its best 
 word to us. What is the highest word 
 spoken to us by all art products? It is 
 this: If we are drawn towards the art- 
 ist's ideal; if we apprehend the meaning 
 and content of the work, and if we feel 
 this so strongly that we shall turn from it 
 with longing and desire to attain also to 
 some ideal — not necessarily to this par- 
 ticular expression of an ideal, but to some 
 one; if we are touched by the fires of the 
 artist's aspiration, and desire to emulate 
 his achievements, and are touched so sin- 
 cerely, so fervently, deeply that we are 
 induced to press forward with new energy, 
 new zeal, new resolve, new activity into 
 some field of labor peculiarly our own, 
 then, and not until then, has this thought, 
 
 100 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 or this art creation, spoken to us from its 
 highest to our highest. What we may 
 call the appreciative genius, while not the 
 highest, differs greatly from the common- 
 place, and to these original genius owes 
 much; it is to these that the seer-few 
 speak. It is they who carry down the 
 ages the word or work of the masters. 
 ''There are leaders and followers,'' and it 
 is to this large class of appreciative ''fol- 
 lowers'' that we owe tradition. Tradition 
 is born of perception and appreciation, 
 and to tradition we owe history. Genius 
 alone could not make history, though it 
 is the source of all history. There is a 
 vast gulf between a man of talent and the 
 commonplace; for the latter cannot even 
 experience vicariously the inspiration, or 
 aspiration, of another. These are unim- 
 aginative, sluggish, dull, unthinking ; they 
 are the "passive souls" — who dwell not 
 even in the Inferno, but remain in Limbo, 
 "who by not doing, not by doing, lost." 
 All great minds have been free and origi- 
 nal thinkers. All men who have given 
 new impulses and movements to the world- 
 spirit. "In the spiritual order, as in the 
 
 lOI 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 physical, to live is to change; to cease to 
 change is to cease to live/' To verify this 
 truth we have only to glance backward 
 over the past and recall the noble Socrates 
 of old, the patient Galileo, the mighty 
 Luther, the steadfast Giordano Bruno, the 
 belligerent Savanarola, and all the long 
 line of martyrs that have yielded up their 
 lives for their thought. 
 
 It is not strange that the world's Christs 
 have been given supernatural births, for 
 each has stood among the common masses 
 of humanity around him, as solitary moun- 
 tain upon a vast plain. So out of the gen- 
 eral order of the universe do they seem, 
 that in ignorance and superstition man- 
 kind has resorted to the supernatural to 
 account for their existence, and these 
 seers, conscious of the divinity of the 
 truths they bear, accept metaphorically 
 what is meant literally. This, acting upon 
 the minds of their followers, coupled with 
 the worship inherent in human nature, 
 which rejoices in finding an incarnation 
 of its ideals, clothes these saviors in gar- 
 ments woven wholly of the imagination, 
 and their words, only dimly or partially 
 1 02 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 understood, are given a meaning far dif- 
 ferent from that intended. When Christ 
 said: ''1 and my Father are one/' he did 
 not mean it in the Hteral sense, but in the 
 sense of the divinity of truth, in which all 
 mankind are one with the Father, when 
 they comprehend His Divine purpose and 
 obey His Divine commands. After eight- 
 een centuries of Christian precepts hu- 
 manity has not yet risen even to the just 
 conception of Christ's teachings, much 
 less to living these truths. It has taken 
 eighteen centuries for mankind to gather 
 the kernel and spirit of Christ's teachings 
 and to fully realize the one grand central 
 truth He came to proclaim, namely, the 
 Divine human and the human Divinity. 
 
 Why Christ, the child of simple, loving 
 parents, born in quiet Nazareth town, 
 should have seen, comprehended and 
 solved the problems of life around Him, 
 and given us those universal principles 
 which hold the essence of ethical life for 
 all time is an interesting question, and is 
 not answered by any theory of immacu- 
 late conception or supernatural birth. 
 Why He carried the world's sorrow and 
 
 103 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 pathos in His heart, was bowed with the 
 weight of its sin, yearned over it with a 
 deep and tender love, and gladly yielded 
 up His life for this love; why His brood- 
 ing spirit should have seen, as no eye had 
 ever before seen with such sun-lit clear- 
 ness, such supernal wisdom, such radiant, 
 far-reaching vision, must ever fill us with 
 wonder and admiration. But this one 
 truth is apparent in the life of Christ as 
 of others. Had Christ followed the tra- 
 ditions of His race, had He walked in the 
 familiar and beaten paths of His ances- 
 tors, had He been wedded to the forms 
 and ceremonies of His people, or had 
 yielded Himself unthinkingly to His en- 
 vironment, had not torn Himself away 
 from the temptation to glide smoothly 
 with the popular tide, He would never 
 have so stirred the w^aters of life anew 
 for mankind. Why Dante, ''the articulate 
 voice of ten silent centuries," should speak 
 those clarion notes that still echo down 
 the centuries and shall be heard through 
 long ages to come; why this somber-vis- 
 aged, far-seeing genius beheld the soul's 
 journey and epitomized it in that match- 
 
 104 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 less allegory where all, if they will but 
 look, may see the reflex of themselves, is 
 answered, partly at least, by the fact that 
 he thought long and deeply, and independ- 
 ently upon the problems of life and death, 
 sin and the judgment, and took no other 
 man's view of life , political, social or 
 moral. 
 
 To each individual is given some task 
 to perform, some problem to solve, which, 
 if he rightly and bravely enunciate, first 
 making clear to his own mind, will leave 
 the world brighter and better for his hav- 
 ing been. The true attitude of mind, and 
 the only one in which man can do noble 
 and efficient work, is absolute freedom of 
 thought. This is what our age persist- 
 ently demands and what freedom means. 
 It is what our age is working out in its 
 practical and spiritual affairs, and is be- 
 ing demonstrated every day in intellectual, 
 political and social life. This freedom of 
 thought will not in the future, as it has 
 so often in the past, mean banishment, re- 
 vilement, martyrdom and death. True 
 freedom will be tolerant, broad, all-em- 
 bracing, all-benevolent, all-loving, dis- 
 
 105 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 carding nothing in the past which has 
 helped mankind in its progress, and haiHng 
 with outstretched arms all that is new, 
 true and beautiful. 
 
 io6 
 
PRAYER 
 
PRAYER. 
 
 "The self-same moment I could pray, 
 And from my neck so free 
 
 The Albatross fell off, and sank 
 Like lead into the sea." 
 
 *'He prayeth best who loveth best 
 All things, both great and small, 
 
 For the dear God who loveth us, 
 He made and loveth all." 
 
 IT would seem strange to any truly 
 thoughtful person that the question 
 of the use and beauty of prayer 
 should be a debatable subject, did we not 
 remember the origin and low conception 
 of prayer which obtained in the earlier 
 ages, and which even to-day are not en- 
 tirely eradicated from our religious life. 
 The begging for some favor of the All- 
 Wise Creator, some petty desire to be 
 granted, some selfish wish to be fulfilled, 
 seems to us a shocking conception of 
 prayer. But there is a conception of 
 prayer which makes it at once helpful, 
 real and permanent. 
 
 109 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 The necessity for prayer in the human 
 soul in moments of its highest aspiration, 
 deepest sorrow, or keenest ecstasy, is its 
 own justification, and one proof that 
 prayer will be satisfactorily answered, 
 though by no means answered always as 
 we, with our finite vision, would wish. 
 
 The materialistic school would banish 
 prayer entirely or relegate it to a purely 
 scientific field. They cannot deny the re- 
 flex action, but would not assign to it any 
 higher possibilities. Reflex action is cer- 
 tainly one of the elements of true prayer, 
 because any effort of the soul reaching 
 forth in unselfish desire Hfts it into a 
 higher atmosphere, and this reflex action 
 of the mind upon itself elevates and en- 
 nobles. But this is not all. We have 
 learned that the Inferno is a state of 
 mind; that Heaven is within us, and not 
 without; and that prayer is an attitude of 
 the soul, not a begging for some material 
 blessing. Prayer, then, is an attitude of 
 the soul. Let us remember this, and see 
 if we may learn how it is possible to at- 
 tain this attitude. One may also say that 
 prayer is an attitude of the mind, for no 
 no 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 soul groveling in low or sordid desires can 
 be said to be prayerful, and because, in 
 its reaching upwards to the source of all 
 things it touches the Infinite. It gives 
 breadth to character, because it embraces 
 in its beautiful spirit all sweet human re- 
 lations and experiences, and remains with 
 the soul, as one of its eternal possessions. 
 And it gives depth, because the awakened 
 mind reaches into the very heart of the uni- 
 verse, seeking there the laws of its being. 
 Prayer follows the law of growth and 
 development, as other attributes of the 
 mind. If we use our reasoning faculties 
 over a mathematical problem seriously, 
 persistently, knowledge will shine in upon 
 our understanding, and reveal to us the 
 truth we seek, and this seeming miracle is 
 repeated again and again in our experi- 
 ence. It is ever the same wonderful rev- 
 elation, and the joy we feel when the 
 light leaps up in our minds, like a flash 
 of lightning, revealing the truth that was 
 before hidden — this is of itself enough to 
 teach us to have faith that every effort in 
 the right direction will, sooner or later, be 
 rewarded, as the solution of a mathe- 
 III 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 matical problem is. If a muscle of our 
 arm be weak and feeble, and we use it 
 gently, quietly, continuously, obeying at 
 the same time the laws of physical well 
 being, growth, strength and use will come 
 to the enfeebled member. 
 
 We have also a spiritual faculty of the 
 mind. This spiritual faculty, if developed 
 and rightly used, and in that mood which 
 we call prayerful, meaning simply a reach- 
 ing forth and upward to the source of all 
 light, in an attitude of childlike receptivity 
 and earnest effort, such prayer will be re- 
 warded ; by what laws we do not now know, 
 but an answer will come, in the form of 
 clearer insight, greater moral strength, 
 heavenly comfort, and possible joy. 
 
 Prayer is the activity of the spiritual 
 part of our nature, and is doubtless gov- 
 erned by fixed and immutable laws, just 
 as the physical and mental nature of man 
 are governed by such laws. 
 
 It matters little that we cannot define 
 or prove the existence of the spiritual or- 
 gans, which are co-related to this spiritual 
 function. But we know, through the ne- 
 cessity in our own being and by faith, cor- 
 
 112 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 roborated by the history of man's spiritual 
 growth throughout the world, and in all 
 ages, verified by observation and experi- 
 ence, that such organs and such functions 
 must exist. 
 
 The need for prayer in the human soul 
 is its own justification for being, and is 
 common to the whole race of mankind, 
 partaking in the lower phases of the nature 
 of fear, begging and pleading, and in the 
 higher of worship, praise and rejoicing. 
 
 The first requisite for a true attitude of 
 prayer is to gird one's self with the ''rush 
 of humility," and an honest belief that we 
 deserve the sufferings brought or inflicted 
 upon us, and a determination not to shrink 
 or run away from conflict, nor to be 
 crushed by opposing forces ; but a rational 
 acceptance of consequences, and an ear- 
 nest desire that through this lacerating 
 strife wisdom and holiness shall become 
 ours. 
 
 To receive true blessedness through 
 prayer one must drink of the waters of 
 Lethe, that Lethe ''Whither to lave them- 
 selves the spirits go, w^hose blame hath 
 been by penitence removed." And this is 
 
 "3 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 not the Lethe of the Hindoo Nirvana, but 
 a continued and never-ending series of 
 transmigrations from our lower selves to 
 our higher selves, pressing on from height 
 to height, until, having passed through the 
 Inferno and Purgatorio, we reach the di- 
 vine heights of Paradiso, where shine the 
 white lights of serenity and peace. Here 
 ''the word becomes flesh" and the incar- 
 nation a reality. 
 
 To make this attitude of mind habitual, 
 we should begin with the child at the tend- 
 erest age. Teach him to let the mind, in 
 some quiet hour each day, return in upon 
 itself, to become self-searching, to bring 
 the mind to feel thankfulness for blessings 
 received, sorrow for wrong-doing, and 
 there rekindle the fires of aspiration. Let 
 him be taught to carry all its conflicts, all 
 its passions, all its hopes, to this internal 
 subjective tribunal, this sacred altar, with 
 fires ever burning ready for the sacrifice, 
 the pleading and the praise. The sacrifice 
 of all selfishness, the pleading for all good, 
 the praise and thankfulness for all joy. 
 We may, if we choose, teach the child to 
 discard the material altar, built of wood 
 114 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 and stone, or covered with cloth of gold, 
 to which the ancients brought peace offer- 
 ings of slaughtered goats and rams, of 
 sweet herbs, and of those things most 
 precious to them. Nor is it altars of pol- 
 ished wood, nor fine vestments, nor sooth- 
 ing music, nor aesthetic coloring, nor pol- 
 ished rhetoric, the heart, and that the true 
 oil to keep the fires burning is the sacrifice 
 of selfish desires and gross passions. 
 Through this action will be developed a 
 clearer consciousness of right and the 
 ability to seize quickly the best and the 
 true, which will in time become habitual, 
 and finally there will grow up, in the ex- 
 panding soul, that keener insight into 
 what are the real and eternal verities, and 
 a nearness to all that is most desirable and 
 beautiful in life. And later will come that 
 consciousness and knowledge of the di- 
 vine purposes, and the close fellowship 
 with God, which, in its final synthesis, is 
 unity with God, and the recognition of the 
 divinity and brotherhood of mankind. 
 This preparation would afford an impreg- 
 nable fortress against sin and temptation, 
 because this habitual attitude of the mind 
 
 115 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 would at once repel all sudden attacks of 
 evil, which we have most cause to dread. 
 
 The good effect of a rational under- 
 standing of the meaning and purpose of 
 prayer is illustrated by a fact from life. 
 Two little boys had a quarrel. Neither 
 would acknowledge that he was in the 
 wrong, nor would they speak to each other 
 for many weeks. One little fellow told 
 his mother, ''I have not repeated the whole 
 of the Lord's Prayer since my quarrel 
 
 with G . I did not and could not say 
 
 'Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive 
 those who trespass against us.' '' But 
 finally, when he had brought himself to 
 say those lines feelingly and truly, he was 
 the first to speak, and the breach was 
 healed. Here was the prayer and here the 
 answer to prayer; whether by reflex ac- 
 tion, the interposition of Providence, or the 
 action of the will alone, it matters little; 
 the result was all that could be desired, 
 and the activity of the child's spiritual na- 
 ture strengthened his moral courage ; and 
 was a general uplifting of his whole na- 
 ture towards the higher and better. 
 
 It is not enough that we cultivate the 
 ii6 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 intellect alone, for we have abundant evi- 
 dence that there may be the finest culture 
 and a cold, hard, barren spiritual nature. 
 The brilliant men and women of the Ital- 
 ian Renaissance furnish some of the most 
 striking illustrations of this, and our nine- 
 teenth century renaissance resembles the 
 spirit of that remarkable period. There 
 is the same spirit of egoism, of worship 
 of the antique, love of luxury, love of 
 learning, and also love of display. These 
 are all characteristic of both the past and 
 present times. The cultivation of the in- 
 tellect alone is often a mere delightful 
 pastime, a mental and emotional excite- 
 ment, which is purely aesthetic, and may 
 be a most selfish act. We have learned 
 that neither statuesque beauty nor culti- 
 vated intellect can take the place of that 
 interior attitude of the mind which in- 
 cludes both the ''good of the intellect" and 
 that supreme beatitude of spirit which 
 'Vejoiceth not in iniquity, hopeth all 
 things, endureth all things.'' But in our 
 day there is an element which acts as a 
 restraining power, even though uncon- 
 sciously. We are direct heirs of those 
 117 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 principles of Puritanism which made and 
 molded our grandsires, and we cannot 
 lightly throw off our birthright. There is 
 with us a moral hurt for wrong-doing, an 
 underlying protest from this puritanic 
 spirit, like the still, small voice to those 
 grand men who made the love and worship 
 of God the first duty and pleasure of Hfe. 
 Therefore, let us not discourage prayer, 
 but rather cultivate this highest language 
 of the soul, and strive to make the prayer- 
 ful attitude habitual, an ever-present fac- 
 tor in our lives, as the rational man makes 
 his reason the arbiter of all vexed ques- 
 tions. This will be an equipment with 
 which to do glorious battle-work in the 
 world. For, take life on whatever basis 
 you may, there are stern, warlike elements 
 in it which never will and never can be 
 eliminated, and the success or failure of 
 life will largely depend upon the choice of 
 weapons he shall select with which to fight 
 life's battles. And if we would keep in 
 the tide that bears upon its bosom the 
 grand movement of the world-spirit, we 
 must seek to obtain and retain the prayer- 
 ful attitude. 
 
 ii8 
 
NINETEENTH CENTURY CONCEPTION 
 OF HUMANITY 
 
NINETEENTH CENTURY CONCEP- 
 TION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 WHAT we may call the Historical 
 Perspective is now the recog- 
 nized necessity for the rational 
 treatment of any subject. We cannot take 
 one isolated fact, or person, or period, and 
 draw our conclusions from these alone. 
 
 In considering the Nineteenth Century 
 Conception of Humanity, it is necessary 
 that we take the whole grand movement 
 of mankind, the history of the human race, 
 photograph it upon the mind in a complete 
 picture, before we have even a right to 
 form an opinion, or pass judgment upon 
 it. To trace out in detail the relation of 
 one event, or epoch, to another; to ascer- 
 tain the cause, or causes, by which certain 
 effects were produced would be too tre- 
 mendous an undertaking for one essay. 
 But we may indicate very briefly the line 
 of march of the ideas which have cul- 
 
 121 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 minated to-day in such a glorious concep- 
 tion of humanity; in what particulars it 
 differs from other times, and wherein it 
 is an advancement upon the past. This 
 movement, which antedates history, will be 
 found to preserve throughout cohesion 
 and unity, despite all apparent changes 
 and differences ; that there is no such thing 
 as hap-hazard work in the growth of 
 man's moral perception, or the develop- 
 ment of the moral idea. Looking down 
 through this long historical perspective, 
 we shall see the present in its true and 
 proper proportions. The history of the 
 growth of the moral idea is preserved and 
 revealed to us by the patient researches of 
 the archaeologist, the persistent investiga- 
 tion of scientists, the untiring efforts of 
 scholars and the true interpretations of 
 mythology and history transmitted to us 
 through art and song and story. 
 
 The Nineteenth Century idea of Hu- 
 manity is best defined by the word ''altru- 
 ism,'' a word which is used to express the 
 great humanitarian movement now sweep- 
 ing over the world, and to which all classes 
 of writers, thinkers and workers are bend- 
 
 122 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 ing their best efforts. It expresses the 
 highest conception of man's relation to 
 man, and contains the basic principle of 
 all the different activities for the ameliora- 
 tion of the race under the name of Social 
 Science. 
 
 In the cc«isideration of our subject we 
 find it necessary, first, to learn as nearly 
 as may be the origin of the idea of ''al- 
 truism,'' or the feelings and principles 
 which gave rise to it, following its growth 
 down to the present time; second, to seek 
 those causes which have been most potent 
 in its development; third, wherein the 
 Nineteenth Century Conception differs 
 from that of other great historical peri- 
 ods, and wherein it is an advancement 
 upon the past. 
 
 At the earliest period of time of which 
 we have any historic record, the family 
 was already in a somewhat advanced 
 stage. We also find that the idea of the 
 family and religious ideas have developed 
 side by side. Indeed, society was at first 
 dependent upon and governed by religious 
 conceptions. The family life of the an- 
 cients developed around their domestic 
 
 123 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 Gods, and finally the state itself was gov- 
 erned by this paternal idea. The earliest 
 races of men could not grasp the idea of 
 a Creator, beyond the father of the fam- 
 ily, from whom they derived the spark of 
 life. The tombs of their fathers were lo- 
 cated near the house to give access for 
 frequent worship. Their Gods therefore 
 were ever present. Annual banquets or 
 feasts were held in honor of these 
 ''manes," as they were called among the 
 Greeks and Romans, meaning the spirits 
 of their departed parents. Sacrifices were 
 constantly ofifered for propitiation or pro- 
 tection. ''Marriage among the Greeks 
 and Romans was controlled by the same 
 principle, the continuity of the family, sur- 
 vival, was the object of most jealous care, 
 adultery was most impious because it 
 might taint the very God-head, celibacy 
 was forbidden, the women of the family 
 were made subordinate. The rights of 
 property were fixed exclusively in the head 
 of the family, the right of succession and 
 inheritance was controlled and almost 
 every act of life was regulated by this 
 system. Every house had its altar and its 
 124 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 altar fire, renewed every year." But as 
 population increased it became apparent 
 that the family could not take in all in- 
 dividuals, so the tribe was formed, and 
 afterwards the curia, city and state, but 
 still controlled by the family idea. This 
 paternal form of government was finally 
 superseded by one based upon the idea of 
 contract, where law and strict obedience 
 to its commands ruled domestic as well as 
 public life. This contract society was a 
 necessity, as the boundaries of territory 
 widened and population increased. But 
 this form of government in its first con- 
 ception and practice was fraught with ex- 
 treme severity and harshness. The Ro- 
 man state grew and flourished by the in- 
 sistence upon one idea, the idea of hold- 
 ing together the people to fortify and en- 
 rich the patricians, and developed the idea 
 of loyalty and obedience to the state in 
 the highest degree. But this power, born 
 of superior brute force, by territorial con- 
 quest and slavery, naturally became se- 
 vere and oppressive. Unlimited power in 
 the hands of king or ruler not only ig- 
 nored the rights of the individual, but 
 
 1^5 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 grew rapidly to absolute tyranny. The 
 exacting demands of the state were re- 
 flected to the family, and bore with es- 
 pecial cruelty upon women and children. 
 This movement was, however, an effort 
 for justice, and finally brought about a 
 conflict between the individual and the 
 state which, growing slowly and with 
 many modifications, has finally resulted in 
 the conception of the freedom of the in- 
 dividual, where men rule themselves, and 
 by protecting their own rights protect the 
 rights of others. This idea of obedience 
 permeated the religious life for many cen- 
 turies, until its abuse resulted in the Re- 
 formation. 
 
 We cannot trace in detail the great 
 epochs of history which have successively 
 followed each other, or their influence as 
 felt for a longer or shorter period of time, 
 according to the truth which such epoch 
 especially demonstrated. 
 
 We know something of the Greek, Per- 
 sian, Egyptian, Roman, Indian, Jewish 
 and Christian streams of civilization and 
 their co-mingling in a thousand smaller 
 streams until their waters have inundated 
 
 126 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 nearly all periods of recorded time and all 
 traces of man, but each had lifted human 
 life and human endeavor upon a still 
 higher plane. Though each stream will 
 be found to contain much that is imper- 
 fect, it is man's work in the world to sift 
 the real from the unreal, the true from 
 the untrue, and leave for the next genera- 
 tion the largest kernel of absolute truth 
 which we can find and preserve. 
 
 The same principle holds true of great 
 minds as of great epochs. Ever and anon 
 rises some master mind upon the horizon, 
 as Socrates, Confucius, Buddah, Cfirist 
 and a long line of Seers, Prophets, Saints 
 and Martyrs, who give new impetus, new 
 life and new energy to the growth of the 
 moral idea. Doubtless there will ever 
 arrive, as time and occasion are ripe for 
 them, others bearing new messages to the 
 world. Hence we find that no one mind 
 holds within itself the totality of truth. 
 These men and these world-historic epochs 
 will be found to bear a direct relation to 
 and interdependence upon each other, and 
 form a chain of unity, whose links reach 
 
 127 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 backward to the beginning of history and 
 forward to the end of time. 
 
 The poetry of history is to follow the 
 rhythmical movements of action and re- 
 action of one civilization upon another, 
 and to find their reconciliation in the 
 knowledge that all are operating under 
 eternal, unchanging and beneficent law. 
 
 Among the more immediate causes 
 which have led up to the world-wide in- 
 terest felt to-day in the betterment of 
 mankind, none are more potent than the 
 men whose fiery words brought about that 
 stupendous movement — the French Revo- 
 lution — and from which dates so much of 
 the Nineteenth Century progress. Rous- 
 seau and his compatriots furnished largely 
 the momentum which finds expression to- 
 day in the many organizations for the 
 freedom and comfort of the masses. 
 Whatever may be said of these men and 
 their measures, they created a new gospel, 
 and inaugurated a new idea of political 
 and social life, based upon personal lib- 
 erty. 
 
 Strange as it may seem, we owe, in no 
 small degree, to the Guillotine the princi- 
 
 128 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 pie of freedom which we now enjoy. ''The 
 nature of the Revolution is not affected by 
 the vices of the revolters ; for this is purely 
 a moral force/' 
 
 Great epochs of this kind do not spring 
 up Minerva-like in one day, but are the 
 culmination of decades or centuries of 
 slow growth in the direction of justice and 
 mercy. When Russia freed her serfs and 
 America emancipated her slaves, it was 
 simply the bursting forth, volcano-like, of 
 the hidden fires which had apparently 
 slumbered for generations. It was the 
 triumph of the moral idea over brute 
 force. 
 
 What we have said in regard to especial 
 epochs and especial individuals, namely, 
 that they have a direct relation to each 
 other and swell the sum total toward the 
 moral idea, is also true of all systems and 
 Utopias that have been the dream of phi- 
 losopher, philanthropist or sage from 
 Plato down. The many distinct move- 
 ments which are presented to us to-day are 
 really but parts of a grand whole and ap- 
 peal to different minds through their very 
 diversity. Tolstoi, in homespun clothes, 
 
 129 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 making his own shoes, will appeal to many 
 who would not be reached by Mill or Gun- 
 ton. Others will build air castles with 
 Bellamy who would not be touched by 
 Browning or Emerson. Another will seek 
 the philosophy of this new renaissance 
 through Kant or Hegel. 
 
 The poetic mind seeks the meaning of 
 this unrest, and the reconciliation through 
 the genius of Dante, Shakespeare or 
 Goethe. Many are striving to unravel the 
 mysteries hidden in theosophy and psy- 
 chology. Statesmen are seeking the bet- 
 terment of man's condition through the 
 revision of existing laws or the making 
 of new ones. Each diverse opinion and 
 activity has its leaders and followers. This 
 is not detrimental, but, on the contrary, is 
 productive of the highest good. 
 
 One of the most potent factors in this 
 altruistic movement, and one that is pe- 
 culiarly our own, is the revelations made 
 by modern science, because science rests 
 upon verifiable hypotheses. This does not 
 imply that all truth is verifiable. But in 
 the future the science of psychology will 
 doubtless reveal many laws the governing 
 
 130 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 spirit of which we know nothing of to-day. 
 The researches of the Christian Scientists 
 and Psychologists, though now in a dan- 
 gerously crude state, are groping towards 
 this end. 
 
 It is the opposite poles of the battery 
 that bring forth the spark of light ; so it is 
 through the touch of opposite lines of 
 thought that truth will flash forth. This 
 will make us tolerant of all efforts and re- 
 veal to us the unity of all activities. 
 
 Our Nineteenth Century idea of human- 
 ity is a culmination of the moral idea 
 which we inherit from the long past, and 
 its growth has been in a continuous line 
 of ascent. We also find it to be in the in- 
 herent nature of things that humanity 
 should progress and not retrogress. If 
 at times there has been a seeming stagna- 
 tion, or even going backward, it has been 
 a passing phase only, for human nature 
 must, sooner or later, rise to the level of 
 its source, which is the infinite. 
 
 In the development of man's triune na- 
 ture, the moral is the last, as it is the high- 
 est and slowest to ripen to perfection. But 
 it is an immense step gained from the first 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 conception of duty in the heart of primi- 
 tive man, engendered by purely selfish and 
 egotistic motives of perpetuating himself 
 through lineal descent, to the lofty ideals 
 that prevail to-day, which include all hu- 
 manity in its altruistic consciousness. 
 
 We now come to the important question 
 — Wherein do our Nineteenth Century 
 ideas difif er from those of other great his- 
 toric periods? We find the fundamental 
 difiference to lie in four essential points : 
 
 First, the idea of God, or the Creator 
 of the universe. 
 
 Second, a truer conception of the rights 
 of others. 
 
 Third, the quickened sense of personal 
 responsibility. 
 
 Fourth, that this humanitarian move- 
 ment is in favor of no special religious 
 creed, or class of persons, or sex, but has 
 for its object the rounded perfection of 
 every individual, and the well-being and 
 happiness of all sentient creatures. 
 
 First, primitive man, as we have seen, 
 did not and could not have any conception 
 of God or Deity such as we mean when 
 using these words. This is also true of 
 
 132 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 many savage tribes to-day. From the 
 Ghosts of ancestors, revered and propi- 
 tiated, up through all the various concep- 
 tions which have held sway over the minds 
 of men from time to time, being now the 
 worship of wooden images, now certain 
 animals, now the forces of nature as re- 
 vealed in the changing phenomena of 
 storm and sunshine, day and night; now 
 the worship of many Gods and now of 
 one. These different ideas brought down 
 to us through sacred and profane history, 
 through the rise and fall of states and em- 
 pires, through the birth and death of 
 various civilizations, through all the beau- 
 tiful mythological disguises, through all 
 literature and art, until it is finally re- 
 vealed to us in that marvelously beautiful 
 declaration which says — ''God is love/' 
 and the highest service of the soul is — 
 love to God and love to man; that this 
 love and this service is not in asceticism, 
 nor exclusion, but is active and inclusive. 
 Second, our conception of what is due 
 to others is clearer and broader than ever 
 before, and reaches deep enough and far 
 enough to embrace an abstract idea of 
 
 133 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 right. While it is true that history fur- 
 nishes many illustrations of individual 
 men and women who have sacrificed all 
 for an abstract principle, as Socrates, 
 Savanarola and Luther, we have risen to 
 the conception of.the principle of universal 
 freedom. 
 
 Third, in no other age have the ideals 
 of men and women attained to such 
 heights of personal purity and personal 
 responsibility. Never before have men 
 realized the divine possibilities inherent in 
 human nature, and never before have 
 these possibilities been more ardently 
 loved, more keenly felt, or more earnestly 
 sought after. 
 
 Fourth, our civilization is built, not 
 upon one single idea, but has grown from 
 large conflicting parties in church and 
 state. Not only in politics and religion do 
 men differ, and labor for what they con- 
 sider the right and true; but in nearly 
 every private effort, or public organiza- 
 tion, the rights of the individual are re- 
 spected and private opinion tolerated. 
 Thus one party acts as a corrective and 
 restraining influence upon the other, 
 
 134 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 The man or party who sees that regen- 
 eration of the race must come only from 
 the betterment of man's physical environ- 
 ment, and would direct all his efforts to- 
 wards regulating the hours of the work- 
 ingmen, or by giving them better homes, 
 or better food; is balanced by the party 
 who sees that man's spiritual and^mental 
 wants are often keener and more absolute 
 than the physical. This diversity of opin- 
 ion and effort will counteract the tendency 
 to run to extremes and keep up the equilib- 
 rium. These different elements, particu- 
 larly the altruistic, working side by side 
 with our immense material prosperity, will 
 make such a catastrophe as happened to 
 Greece and Rome impossible. 
 
 It is apprehended by many that our 
 splendid achievements in material pros- 
 perity, in mechanics, in science and the 
 fine arts will deaden our aspiration for 
 spiritual things. But when we consider 
 the immense gain to the masses in phys- 
 ical comfort, in education, in leisure for 
 culture, in general happiness, as compared 
 with many epochs in the past, we shall 
 see that the average of humanity is far 
 
 135 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 happier, even if more discontented, and 
 more ambitious than at any other time. 
 This is more true of our own beloved 
 country than elsewhere. Far better is it 
 for a nation, as well as an individual, that 
 it has the ferment in its blood of a holy 
 discontent. Without this no growth to 
 either is possible, and stagnation, disease 
 and death must follow. 
 
 Another factor, and one destined to be- 
 come of great importance in the future, 
 is the superior education and position of 
 women. When we remember that it is 
 not so very long since women have been 
 thought to be without souls. 
 
 The early church, with its magnificent 
 structure of gorgeous forms and cere- 
 monies, employed woman's fine emotions 
 to keep alive her altar fires. Woman's 
 devotional nature, her keen mental wants, 
 and the finer passions of the heart have 
 heretofore found in formal religious ob- 
 servances a large field of activity. But 
 to-day woman is called to a higher con- 
 secration of her powers than embroider- 
 ing altar cloths or priestly robes. 
 
 The exquisite angel-faced Madonnas 
 136 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 ''Wrought in a sad sincerity/' by the ear- 
 nest passion of the artist souls of the past, 
 and whose deification of motherhood has 
 added not a Httle to the growth of the 
 true worship of woman, would seem to be 
 superseded to-day by the ''Madonna of 
 the tubs,'' and a holy zeal to rescue for- 
 lorn and suflfering women everywhere. 
 
 The gospel of the divinity of human 
 nature comes with a new revelation, and 
 a new hope, especially to woman. Woman 
 now realizes that any violation of her na- 
 ture, mental, moral or physical, is fol- 
 lowed by the law of retribution, for law 
 makes no sentimental discrimination in 
 favor of her sex. This larger position of 
 women carries with it an immense respon- 
 sibility, and its force in our modern civi- 
 lization is incalculable. Goethe, true seer 
 and prophet that he was, realized what 
 this influence was to be when he used 
 those imperishable words — "It is the 
 eternal womanly which is to draw us on- 
 ward." 
 
 The sacredness and the purity of the 
 family is also being more and more con- 
 sidered and insisted upon. Despite the 
 
 137 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 discussion of Mona Caird, E. Linn Lin- 
 ton and Grant Allen, despite decadents, 
 ego-maniacs and degenerates, it is in all 
 essential features an improvement upon 
 what has gone before. Despite the ques- 
 tion we so often hear, ''Is marriage a fail- 
 ure?" and much we know to exist that is 
 unhallowed, we feel sure the consensus of 
 the Nineteenth Century will give a ring- 
 ing negative reply. 
 
 The problems raised by Max Nordau, 
 Benjamin Kid and others will eventually 
 be answered to the benefit of coming gen- 
 erations. 
 
 Another important element is the fact 
 that we do not hold the blessings of cul- 
 ture and education as an especial privi- 
 lege of any one class or condition of peo- 
 ple. We do recognize that ''life, liberty 
 and the pursuit of happiness'' is the right 
 of all mankind. Out of the conflict of 
 diverse opinions we may confidently hope 
 for the development of systems, educa- 
 tional and philanthropic, which will be 
 particularly adapted to our present ideas 
 and necessities. That we possess the free- 
 dom to discuss these questions without 
 
 138 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 fear of torture or ostracism, and of dem- 
 onstrating our theories and methods, is 
 our especial privilege. 
 
 Again we find that a greater respect 
 for life is a marked characteristic of this 
 Century, Not alone human life, but life 
 in all its manifold forms. This is well at- 
 tested by the humane societies in all large 
 cities. This is an effort to create finer 
 sensibilities, especially in the young, to- 
 wards all kinds of cruelty and suffering. 
 
 In man's growing sensitiveness to pain, 
 we see one of the chief elements of true 
 culture. 
 
 Through our larger international com- 
 munication we are brought face to face 
 with the sufferings by cold and hunger of 
 the Irish Peasantry; we thrill with horror 
 at the torture practised upon Russian 
 prisoners ; or we are torn with pity when 
 we read of "Prisoners of poverty at home 
 or abroad"; or, when reading "In Dark- 
 est England," we feel that life can hold 
 nothmg more of sweetness and light for 
 us until those three million of souls are 
 rescued from perishing in the sea of de- 
 pravity and sin. Being thus forced to see 
 139 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 and recognize these facts by the changed 
 conditions, externally, we are driven by 
 this knowledge, and the finer impulses 
 from within, to make an effort for the 
 relief of suffering humanity everywhere. 
 Intellectual culture alone will not give 
 us this delicate sensitiveness, for we 
 read that the highly cultured Leo X. 
 shot condemned criminals for his own 
 amusement in the yard of the Vatican. 
 ''Only when intellect has been wedded to 
 unselfish love the ideal man will have 
 appeared/' 
 
 The scientific probing knife of Dr. Nor- 
 dau has revealed to us many of the causes 
 of the mental, moral and physical diseases 
 of our century. But even this all too pes- 
 simistic and fanatical writer has at the 
 last this hopeful word to say of the fu- 
 ture of mankind: ''Humanity is not 
 senile. It is still young, and a moment 
 of over-exertion is not fatal to youth; it 
 can recover itself. Humanity resembles 
 a vast torrent of lava which rushes broad 
 and deep from the crater of a volcano in 
 constant activity. The outer crust cracks 
 into cold, vitrified scoria, but under this 
 140 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 the mass flows, rapidly and evenly, in 
 living incandescence/' 
 
 Our own philosopher, Emerson, says, 
 ''We think our civilization at its meridian, 
 but we are only at the cock-crowing and 
 the morning star/' 
 
 The moral or altruistic sentiment has 
 the force and persistency of eternal law 
 in it. Blunted, disfigured, dragged 
 through fire and blood, it survives all 
 changes, all wars, all discussions. Wheth- 
 er we see this truth through the eyes of 
 philosophers, who tell us that duty or the 
 ''moral imperative'' lies inherent in the 
 soul of man, or whether we believe with 
 the scientists, that in the evolution of life 
 it is impossible for wrong to triumph over 
 right, that it is as necessary that the hu- 
 man soul should ultimately reach perfec- 
 tion as for bodies to follow the law of 
 gravitation, we see that the moral idea 
 is a positive entity, a real and active force 
 in the universe. It has worked its way 
 through immense resistance, resistance 
 offered by ignorance and selfishness. But 
 this principle, growing slowly, like the Al- 
 pine Glaciers, as it moves onward through 
 
 141 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 human nature, changes the moral senti- 
 ments of humanity. The aggregate of the 
 moral idea as it has accumulated from age 
 to age is stupendous, and has the force and 
 sanction of infinity. 
 
 Fortunately for us, that we have out- 
 grown the morbid doctrine so thoroughly 
 taught and insisted upon by the mediaeval 
 fathers, that our duty must be dolorous 
 and one of rigid self-sacrifice. We have 
 learned that ''pagan self-assertion is one 
 of the elements of true worth, as well as 
 Christian self-denial.'' In the future all 
 service of humanity will be a joy, free, 
 spontaneous and bountiful, as the lover 
 to his beloved, or the mother to her child. 
 
 Through all evolutional developments, 
 through all forms of religious worship, 
 through all societary life, through all lit- 
 eratures and art, and all individual effort 
 nothing has been lost, but all changes, 
 whether volcanic or peaceful, have tended 
 to the betterment of mankind. Every 
 martyr that has died in the long past, by 
 fire or sword, has added so much to the 
 sum total of that ''Spirit which makes for 
 righteousness.'' The men and women who 
 
 142 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 to-day are dying in Siberian exile will ha- 
 sten the freedom of that great Empire. 
 All altruistic activities now sweeping over 
 the hearts of mankind but swell the ag- 
 gregate of this regenerating spirit. 
 
 ''One accent of the Holy Ghost 
 The heedless world hath never lost." 
 
 This is what the Nineteenth Century 
 Conception of Humanity means, and what 
 it is working out with quickened pulse and 
 loving heart-beats. 
 
 Sophocles, speaking of his great pre- 
 decessor in the tragic art, said, ''^schylus 
 does what is right without knowing it.'' 
 If this is true of genius, it is also true of 
 the highest conception of humanitarian 
 efforts. When it has become the daily 
 habit of the soul, we shall do right with- 
 out knowing it. Then will the powers of 
 the earth and the human mind ally them- 
 selves with the powers of God and nature 
 to bring about that ''Kingdom on earth 
 which is in Heaven.'' 
 
 "Then happiness will be at its maxi- 
 mum, and the soul-felt desires of millions 
 of generations will be heard as prayers 
 and answered as facts. Love is the high- 
 
 143 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 est manifestation of mental life. The 
 mind through all its developmental ca- 
 reer has been reaching toward it and long- 
 ing for it. The elemental form of love ap- 
 pears in every pleasure of every kind, but 
 its highest manifestation is altruistic." 
 
 144 
 
AN INTERPRETATION OF EMERSON'S 
 "SPHINX" 
 
AN INTERPRETATION OF EMER- 
 SON'S "SPHINX." 
 
 The Poem. 
 
 THE Sphinx is drowsy, 
 Her wings are furled, 
 Her ear is heavy, 
 She broods on the world. — 
 ''Who'll tell me my secret 
 The ages have kept ? 
 I awaited the seer, 
 
 While they slumbered and slept; — 
 
 ''The fate of the man-child; 
 The meaning of man; 
 Known fruit of the Unknown; 
 
 Dsedahan plan; 
 Out of sleeping a waking. 
 Out of waking a sleep. 
 Life death overtaking. 
 Deep underneath deep. 
 147 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 ''Erect as a sunbeam 
 
 Upspringeth the palm; 
 The elephant browses 
 
 Undaunted and calm; 
 In beautiful motion 
 
 The thrush plies his wings ; 
 Kind leaves of his covert! 
 
 Your silence he sings. 
 
 ''The waves, unashamed, 
 
 In difference sweet, 
 Play glad with the breezes, 
 
 Old playfellows meet. 
 The journeying atoms. 
 
 Primordial wholes, 
 Firmly draw, firmly drive. 
 
 By their animate poles. 
 
 "Sea, earth, air, sound, silence, 
 
 Plant, quadruped, bird. 
 By one music enchanted. 
 
 One deity stirred, — 
 Each the other adorning. 
 
 Accompany still; 
 Night veileth the morning, 
 
 The vapor the hill. 
 
 148 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 ''The babe by its mother 
 
 Lies bathed in joy; 
 GHde its hours uncounted, — 
 
 The sun is its toy; 
 Shines the peace of all being, 
 
 Without cloud, in its eyes, 
 And the sum of the world 
 
 In soft miniature Hes. 
 
 ''But man crouches and blushes, 
 
 Absconds and conceals ; 
 He creepeth and peepeth. 
 
 He palters and steals; 
 Infirm, melancholy. 
 
 Jealous glancing around. 
 An oaf, an accomplice, 
 
 He poisons the ground/' 
 
 Out spoke the great mother. 
 
 Beholding his fear ; — 
 At the sound of her accents 
 
 Cold shuddered the sphere; — 
 "Who has drugged my boy's cup? 
 
 Who has mixed my boy's bread? 
 Who with sadness and madness 
 
 Has turned my child's head?" 
 
 149 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 I heard a poet answer 
 
 Aloud and cheerfully, 
 ''Say on, sweet Sphinx! thy dirges 
 
 Are pleasant songs to me. 
 Deep love lieth under 
 
 These pictures of time ; 
 They fade in the light of 
 
 Their meaning sublime. 
 
 ''The fiend that man harries 
 Is love of the Best; 
 Yawns the pit of the Dragon, 
 Lit by rays from the Blest. 
 The Lethe of Nature 
 
 Can't trance him again, 
 Whose soul sees the Perfect, 
 Which his eyes seek in vain. 
 
 "To insight profounder 
 Man's spirit must dive; 
 His eye-rolling orbit 
 
 At no goal will arrive. 
 The heavens that now draw him 
 
 With sweetness untold, 
 Once found, — for new heavens 
 He spurneth the old. 
 
 150 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 'Tride ruined the angels, 
 
 Their shame them restores; 
 And the joy that is sweetest 
 
 Lurks in stings of remorse. 
 Have I a lover 
 
 Who is noble and free, — 
 I would he were nobler 
 
 Than to love me. 
 
 ^'Eterne alternation 
 
 Now follows, now flies; 
 And under pain, pleasure, — 
 
 Under pleasure, pain lies. 
 Love works at the centre. 
 
 Heart-heaving alway; 
 Forth speed the strong pulses 
 
 To the borders of day. 
 
 ^'DuU Sphinx, Jove keep thy five wits: 
 
 Thy sight is growing blear ; 
 Rue, myrrh, and cummin for the Sphinx, 
 
 Her muddy eyes to clear V — 
 The old Sphinx bit her thick lip, — 
 
 Said, ''Who taught thee me to name?'' 
 I am thy spirit, yoke-fellow. 
 
 Of thine eye I am eyebeam. 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 ''Thou art the unanswered question; 
 
 Could'st see thy proper eye, 
 Always it asketh, asketh ; 
 
 And each answer is a he. 
 So take thy quest through nature, 
 
 It through thousand natures ply ; 
 Ask on, thou clothed eternity; 
 
 Time is the false reply/' 
 
 Up rose the merry Sphinx, 
 
 And crouched no more in stone; 
 She melted into purple cloud. 
 
 She silvered in the moon ; 
 She spired into a yellow flame ; 
 
 She flowered in blossoms red ; 
 She flowed into a foaming wave ; 
 
 She stood Monadnoc's head. 
 
 Through a thousand voices 
 Spoke the universal dame : 
 'Who telleth one of my meanings, 
 Is master of all I am." 
 
 The Interpretation. 
 
 The negative side of man's spirit as 
 represented by average humanity is dull, 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 stupid and sleepy from ignorance. His 
 ''ear is heavy" and he ''broods" because he 
 cannot comprehend the mighty secrets of 
 the external and internal world. He waits 
 through the slow creeping ages for the 
 revelation yet to be made by the Seer and 
 the Poet. These questionings. 
 
 "The fate. of the man-child; 
 The meaning of man;" 
 
 have puzzled and kept the minds of the 
 thoughtful in unrest, in all ages of the 
 world ; and are, and ever will be, the deep- 
 est of all questions. The commandment 
 "Know thyself" is God implanted, and has 
 raged in the souls of men always, with 
 more or less of divine fervor, and is being 
 answered with greater clearness to-day 
 than ever before. Life with its manifold 
 activities man realizes is the outgrowth of 
 some unseen force, the result is apparent, 
 but the causes, and that which lies still 
 farther back, the primal cause, he cannot 
 see. Yet, by some strange, irresistible 
 force, he is ever impelled to seek after the 
 "unknown." The workings of the world 
 are so mysterious, so intricate, so laby- 
 
 153 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 rinthine, that to the ''drowsy'' passive ones 
 it cannot but seem a ''DaedaHan plan/' not 
 only in the material universe, but still 
 more so in the marvelous complexity of 
 the human mind. 
 
 ''Out of sleeping a waking, 
 Out of waking a sleep." 
 
 This is the wonderful resurrection psalm, 
 sung through all nature and in the soul's 
 immortality. Each death ushers in a new 
 birth, the mysterious transformation and 
 transfiguration, going on in all life, where 
 "if we could watch with eyes all seeing, 
 we should expect to watch those world- 
 systems themselves coming and going, like 
 the leaves upon our trees, like the human 
 generations, systems evolving and dis- 
 solving in endless cycles of cosmic repro- 
 duction." Verily, 
 
 "Life death overtaking; 
 Deep underneath deep." 
 
 Out of decaying nature wake the springs 
 of budding life, and in the sleep of the 
 body which we call death, the waking into 
 immortal life. Even this sleep of the body 
 
 154 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 is only apparent, for when the spirit has 
 fled, nature begins her work of resurrec- 
 tion at once, forming new combinations 
 of gases and chemical compounds, out of 
 which new births will arise. 
 
 In external nature, and in the lower 
 forms of animal life, all is calm, peaceful 
 and free. No unrest, no questioning of 
 the why. The happy birds sing gaily, 
 speaking for the voiceless, silent leaves, 
 thus reciprocating their shelter and prais- 
 ing their beauty. Here all is joy and glad- 
 ness living out a perfect existence, obedi- 
 ent to the laws which govern them, and 
 all moving together harmoniously, the 
 Supreme over all, and in all, and a beauti- 
 ful interdependence, as 
 
 ^^By one music enchanted, 
 One deity stirred.'' 
 
 ^^The journeying atoms, 
 Primordial wholes. 
 Firmly draw, firmly drive, 
 By their animate poles.'' 
 
 Here Is a recognition of nature's immut- 
 able laws revealed by modern science, 
 
 155 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 where there is neither wavering nor vacil- 
 lation. How articulate with power and 
 meaning is the word ''firmly!" 
 
 The new-born babe appears to us a di- 
 rect revelation and gift from the Divine. 
 Those calm, unfathomable depths in its 
 eyes strongly suggest a past life — "The 
 immortality that lies behind us/' But here 
 is the potential man, here 
 
 "The sum of the world 
 In soft miniature lies.'' 
 
 Nothing could exceed the beauty of this 
 expression, and the possibility it fore- 
 shadows of man's high destiny. 
 
 Man, by his pettiness, selfishness and 
 passions, grows weak and infirm. The 
 world is not dismal, nor sad, nor melan- 
 choly, if he fills it with purpose, and is 
 gifted with wisdom and faith. It is not 
 God, not nature, that has "poisoned the 
 ground," but man's own acts, the result 
 of his perverted will. 
 
 The "great mother," speaking for all 
 mothers, in that agonized cry which is 
 wrung from the torn heart, when the eyes 
 of her boy have lost "the peace of all 
 
 156 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 being/' and whose character has been 
 destroyed by a Hfe o£ sin and folly, gives 
 us in epitome the pathos of maternal love 
 and care. But the poet, if he be a true 
 poet, is seer and prophet, and can be 
 cheerful, even joyous, because he sees 
 that 
 
 "Deep love lieth under'' 
 
 all these dark and despairing circum- 
 stances. He reaches out and beyond the 
 present and the particular up to the uni- 
 versal, and there reads in golden letters 
 
 ''The meaning sublime.'' 
 
 But man is not content to sit idle, or drink 
 of the waters of Lethe, because — 
 
 ''The fiend that man harries" 
 
 is aspiration, which will never let him 
 sleep. It goads and pricks him on, keep- 
 ing him forever in search of the highest, 
 the "best." The "pit of the Dragon," 
 which symbolizes the negative side of 
 man's nature, is ever open, yawning, 
 ready to engulf the weak, faint-hearted, 
 passive souls "Who by not doing, not by 
 
 157 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 doing, lost/' But even this dismal pit is 
 illumined ''by rays from the Blest/' 
 These rays were intended primarily to 
 make the pit visible, but they will light 
 the way for him who will rise to the task 
 of searching, thinking and acting for 
 himself. Man is given free-will, and the 
 power to choose, and if he desire not to 
 fall into ''the pit of the Dragon,'' let him 
 become self-remedial, and a free soul, 
 through renunciation and reconciliation. 
 There is no rest in the finite for one 
 whose soul is once filled with the ideal, 
 the perfect. He may not be able to real- 
 ize this ideal, it may not be perceptible to 
 the senses, but he knows its verity, its 
 truth. This is to him the supreme good. 
 Man must look beyond the present and 
 his environment, else he will be blind to 
 what are the true and the beautiful. 
 
 "To insight profounder 
 Man's spirit must dive" 
 
 if he would receive an answer to his aspi- 
 rations. But having found the heaven 
 of his desires he will not be contented to 
 soar no more, but will press forward seek- 
 
 158 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 ing ''new heavens'' to explore. Thus the 
 spirit of activity, which is the world- 
 spirit, is kept alive and forever moving. 
 Out of evil there will come good. Pride 
 will cure pride, by bringing shame, which 
 will restore. Sin will react upon the sin- 
 ner, and work redemption. The dual na- 
 ture of man makes all the fluctuations in 
 human life, ''The eterne alternation.'' 
 Pain is born of pleasure in excess, and 
 pleasure of pain, in the light which brings 
 wisdom and grace. Pain is the "blessed 
 Angel," and brings "the peace that pass- 
 eth understanding" upon her wings. But 
 through all the conflicts, 
 
 "Love works at the centre" 
 
 and will bring about the final reconcili- 
 ation. 
 
 "Have I a lover 
 
 Who is noble and free? — 
 I would he were nobler 
 Than to love me." 
 
 Here the poet rises beyond the beatitude 
 of "Love's young dream," beyond all 
 
 159 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 present finite joy, and points to a love 
 centered in the ideal, the eternal. 
 
 The ''dull Sphinx" mirrors man's own 
 stupidity. Finitude blinds his eyes. She 
 is indeed and in truth his ''spirit, yoke- 
 fellow.'' Man here sees the reflex of him- 
 self. He is the unanswerable question, the 
 riddle of all time. If we would solve the 
 problems of life, we must seek to learn 
 the laws which govern life, because law 
 is the most direct revelation from the Di- 
 vine. Here the Poet has given us the key 
 which unlocks the secrets of the universe. 
 Man is clothed with immortality, there- 
 fore, the finite, the present and the in- 
 dividual will not give us the true answer, 
 and is a "lie," and the present time, which 
 is limited, must of necessity be a "false re- 
 ply." We must pierce even into eternity, 
 with the spirit's eye, for the solution of 
 the deep and holy mystery of life. 
 
 Why should the Sphinx be "merry"? 
 Because she has at last caught a glimpse 
 of her true self. Man is now revealed, 
 has become self-conscious. He will 
 "crouch" no more, but will rise to his full 
 stature, the glorious heights of the recog- 
 
 i6o 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 nition of his infinitude and immortality. 
 He has now found freedom through his 
 ''profounder'' insight. This is the su- 
 preme beatitude. This is the joy that 
 saints and martyrs have striven to ex- 
 press, when yielding up all, even life, for 
 truth's sake. This the poets have essayed 
 to express, from the beginning of the 
 world. This is the ecstasy, this the true 
 elixir of life. 
 
 The creative force, the ''universal 
 dame," speaks through all life and moves 
 as truly in the infusorial animacula as in 
 the solar system, or the soul of man. 
 When man recognizes this truth and his 
 unity with God, then he is ''Master of all 
 I am,'' and the "drowsy" Sphinx v/ill un- 
 furl her wings, and never again will she 
 "brood on the world." 
 
 The poem could not have been written 
 by one who was not in full sympathy with 
 the scientific as well as the spiritual move- 
 ment of our age. With a poet's fine ear 
 he hears the deep questionings which are 
 borne on every breeze, and with a poet's 
 clear vision he sees the spiritual facts un- 
 derlying all phenomena: "Prove them 
 
 i6i 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 facts? That they o'er-pass my power of 
 proving, proves them such/' 
 
 The poem is pitched in the highest key. 
 It is marvelously concrete, considering its 
 scope. Its phraseology is marked and pe- 
 cuHar and abstruse until one has found the 
 keynote, then it unfolds in wonderful per- 
 fection and beauty. It mirrors the sub- 
 jective and objective world. We feel the 
 rhythmical movement of Cosmos in it. It 
 grasps the macrocosm and microcosm, 
 and we may, if we listen well, hear the 
 harmony of the spheres in their eternal 
 progress. To appreciate it, one must have 
 an ear finely attuned to the world's har- 
 monies and a mind kindled by imagina- 
 tion. He must be able to grasp the totality 
 of life and carry it in his soul, as one 
 grand, illuminated picture; then the 
 ''Sphinx" will whisper her secret to him. 
 
 The poem naturally divides itself into 
 five parts. The first, limiting itself to the 
 first two verses, gives us the superficial 
 view of life, and must of necessity, from 
 its superficiality, be pessimistic; we can- 
 not catch even a glimpse of the finality. 
 But this is only the genesis of the poem; 
 
 162 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 it will grow out of this gloom, as it de- 
 velops. 
 
 The second part reveals the marvelous 
 harmony, beauty and gladness of the ma- 
 terial world and of animal life. 
 
 In the third part, in wonderful conden- 
 sity is shown the negative, or ugly, side 
 of man's nature. So cutting and strong 
 is the description that one shrinks from it 
 as from a blow. We feel the old Hebraic 
 scorn of the flesh : verily, we are ''worms 
 of the dust,'' groveling, and ''poisoning" 
 the ground. But the symphony now arises 
 in cheerfulness, steady, strong, assured. 
 Under the dirges which the Sphinx sings, 
 we hear soft strains of spirit-music of love 
 and harmony, which are finally to reveal 
 to us the meaning of this discord. Pri- 
 marily, this discord lies deep in the nature 
 of man, his aspiration striving against his 
 limitations. This begets conflict, until fi- 
 nally, 
 
 "His soul sees the perfect. 
 Which his eyes seek in vain." 
 
 Now the symphony passes to the oratorio 
 and becomes recitative, explanatory with 
 
 163 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 the adagio-con-gravita movement, giving 
 us clear reasoning, and answering our per- 
 sistent why. 
 
 In the fourth movement, we are thrilled 
 by a grand song of triumph in crescendo- 
 al-fortissimo, announcing that ''Thou art 
 the unanswered question/' Thou art the 
 ''clothed eternity;" Thou art the immor- 
 tal one. Humanity here rises to the level 
 of its source, and the idea of the Divine- 
 human leads naturally and logically to the 
 idea of immortality. This is the synthesis 
 of evolution and of thought. 
 
 In the fifth and final movement, the or- 
 chestra bursts forth in a Giulivissimo song 
 of free, joyous rapture, man finds his 
 apotheosis, and is 
 
 "Master of all I am.'' 
 
 164 
 
WOMAN'S WORK IN THE NINE- 
 TEENTH CENTURY 
 
WOMAN^S WORK IN THE NINE- 
 TEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 Part I. 
 The General Outlook. 
 
 WE hear on every hand the cry, 
 this is the age of invention, of 
 the purely practical, when sci- 
 ence and mechanics are revolutionizing 
 the methods of man's labor to wrest from 
 the productive earth the comforts and ne- 
 cessities of life with the least possible out- 
 lay of vital force. Simultaneously we 
 hear the cry, this is the age of material- 
 ism, agnosticism, unrest, spiritual heresy 
 and infidelity; the age of social upheav- 
 als, of the shattering of old ideals, the 
 destruction of old landmarks, old idols, 
 and the disintegration of family life. This 
 is an age when the state and the nation 
 are as unstable as the individual. The 
 monarch sleeps uneasily, fearing the as- 
 sassin's knife. Nihilists and anarchists 
 
 167 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 with brain and bomb are striving to break 
 down all institfitions, religious, social and 
 political. But, side by side v/ith telegraph 
 and railroad, has grown a broader idea of 
 man's true relation to man; a larger 
 knowledge of the rich resources of the 
 world, a consciousness of wonderful 
 achievements in art, science and literature, 
 and a spirit of noble emulation, which 
 promises splendid results in the future. 
 Keeping pace with the stealthy move- 
 ments of the social revolutionists has been 
 a steady vein of growth and thought look- 
 ing to a higher, purer state of well being, 
 not only for the few, but for the great 
 mass of mankind. If we read of numer- 
 ous divorces, with all the slime and filth 
 there revealed, indicating the disintegra- 
 tion of family life, do we remember that 
 upon the opposite page may be written 
 the lives of men and women, whose fidel- 
 ity to all the sacred relations of life are 
 unparalleled in history or song. Evil ap- 
 palls a community and crime is published 
 broadcast, but virtue, being more normal, 
 seldom awakens comment. 
 
 With the current of doubt and unbelief 
 i68 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 which threatens to inundate this fair age 
 Hke the waters of the Nile over the Egyp- 
 tian sands, runs another current, strong, 
 pure and crystal-clear, acknowledging in- 
 finite wisdom and recognizing the sun-like 
 truths of justice, mercy and freedom. In 
 no age of the world have the ideals of 
 men and women attained to such sublime 
 heights of personal purity and personal re- 
 sponsibility. Never before have men real- 
 ized the divine possibilities inherent in 
 human nature, and never before have 
 these ideals and these possibilities been 
 more keenly felt, more ardently loved and 
 more earnestly sought after. Man is 
 learning to analyze, but not wholly to 
 destroy, to build anew out of the old. Sci- 
 ence is not all analysis, nor art all synthe- 
 sis, for science builds up as wxll as tears 
 down, and art discriminates, and dissects, 
 and gives us in the higher forms only con- 
 crete truths. 
 
 There is a subject which lies at the cen- 
 ter of life and well being, which on the 
 one hand is related to all that life means 
 of peace and holiness, and, on the other 
 hand, is the source of degradation, sin and 
 
 169 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 discord. But neither school of scientists 
 has given exhaustive attention to it; 
 Historians only touch upon it, Philoso- 
 phers merely glance at it, Poets have sung 
 only of its sunny side, and Reformers 
 have generally ''made the darkness more 
 visible/' I mean the social and domestic 
 life of men and women. If my pen could 
 adequately portray this antithesis, could 
 paint the glory of the one and the horrors 
 of the other, no further argument would 
 be necessary to arouse mankind to give to 
 this subject that close study which is now 
 being given to kindred subjects. 
 
 In all ages of the world men and w^omen 
 have ''heard the voice of God" calling 
 them to a consecration of their powers to 
 the services of mankind. To-day the word 
 is spoken emphatically to woman. The 
 perfect type of domestic felicity can 
 scarcely be found, yet does not each un- 
 tainted soul hold in its innermost recess a 
 sacred ideal of this relation? The pos- 
 session of this ideal is one proof of its 
 possible fulfillment. If we can build up a 
 social structure so that the whole fabric 
 stands complete in its unity and perfec- 
 
 170 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 tion, and prove its logical and spiritual 
 reasons for being, we shall give to the 
 world an ideal which shall be to the soul 
 of man as lasting an inspiration as the 
 Athenian Parthenon has been to the high- 
 est art feeling for centuries. 
 
 Our subject lies at the root of civiliza- 
 tion, and to evolutional development and 
 immutable law, in so far as it has yet been 
 revealed to man, we must look for light 
 in the solution of our problem: First: 
 What are the laws governing mind and 
 body? Second: To what extent does one 
 modify and control the other? Third: 
 When conflict arises, which is inevitable 
 from the imperfection of all finite rela- 
 tions, shall expediency and emotion de- 
 cide, or abstract principle? Fourth: To 
 what extent should the fact of parentage 
 influence us in decisions touching this 
 question? Fifth : What are the laws gov- 
 erning social development ? Sixth : What 
 are the laws governing individual develop- 
 ment? Seventh: What is the relation of 
 the individual to others, or the general 
 good? Eighth: Woman's influence and 
 her especial duty to-day ? 
 
 171 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 First. The law of soul and body. 
 Man's threefold nature, instead of an- 
 tagonizing, should be one expression of 
 a perfect whole. Man cannot live in his 
 animal state alone, neither can he live 
 alone in the intellectual; neither in the 
 spiritual. The animality of the savage 
 represents the first; the cold devotee of 
 learning the second, and the pale, unnatu- 
 ral ascetic the third. Neither of these 
 gives us the type of a perfect rounded 
 manhood. This triune nature, and how 
 to harmonize and unify it, and thereby 
 make man free, has puzzled even the 
 wise. No faculty is given us for neglect, 
 but for use and beauty. History bears 
 out the truth of this, for when develop- 
 ment takes on a purely one-sided form, 
 nature revenges herself by sweeping over 
 to the opposite side, as is illustrated by the 
 violent recalcitration from corruption and 
 folly, to cruel austerity and severity. 
 From unquestioning obedience to author- 
 ity and superstition to heresy and fanatic- 
 ism. This brings about, approximately, 
 an equilibrium and keeps up that ponder- 
 ous movement which we call history. 
 
 172 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 Second. When conflict arises, principle 
 and not expediency and feeling must ever 
 determine. Third. The fact of parent- 
 age is, or should be, an eternal bond. The 
 living soul evolved from out the creative 
 forces in the universe, holding those two 
 wills responsible for its being, is the weav- 
 ing of a chain whose growing links 
 stretch far into eternity. The soul created 
 to-day creates in the fulness of time other 
 souls, who perpetuate good or evil. 
 Fourth. In the early development of 
 races the animal propensities predominate, 
 for the perpetuation of the race and give 
 us titanic types of men and women. Thus 
 the gluttonous, drinking early Saxon and 
 Norman has had as necessary place in the 
 world as the Hindoo ascetic. Each epoch 
 stands for some truth which remains a 
 guiding principle for decades or centuries, 
 until a new movement arises, and all 
 things are changed. Thus each period be- 
 comes world-historic. It is the chief work 
 of mankind from age to age to seek out, 
 keep alive and perpetuate these truths. 
 This is God's work in and through man. 
 At some periods the tide of civilization 
 
 ^7Z 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 reaches higher and makes a larger, 
 grander sweep than at others, and in such 
 proportion will that influence be felt 
 for a longer or shorter period of time. 
 How deep and long is the Hebraic stream. 
 How full of beauty and perfection the 
 Greek. How broad, prophetic and spirit- 
 freeing the Christian. All ethics must be 
 judged by the light of the age in which 
 such ethics were the highest conception of 
 human thought and action, for only so can 
 we form a just estimate of the value of any 
 particular time. In this way only can we 
 get a proper perspective by which to form 
 our opinion of the present, as well as the 
 past. 
 
 Sixth. On the laws governing individ- 
 ual development, John Stewart Mill says: 
 '*No one can be a great thinker who does 
 not recognize that as a thinker it is his 
 first duty to follow his intellect to what- 
 ever conclusion it may lead,'' and again, 
 ''In proportion to the development of his 
 individuality, each person is more valuable 
 to himself and is therefore more valuable 
 to others. There is a greater fullness of 
 life about his own existence, and where 
 
 174 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 there is more life in the units there is more 
 Hfe in the mass which is composed of 
 them/' The keynote of all reform is the 
 perfection of individual character. Each 
 human being must in and of himself, and 
 out of such conditions and environments 
 as may surround him, and out of such ma- 
 terial as hourly presents itself, work out 
 the problems which life brings to him. 
 This is the source of all character mould- 
 ing. Goethe says, 'Xet a man learn, we 
 say, to figure himself without permanent 
 relation; let him seek consistency and se- 
 quences not in circumstances, but in him- 
 self; there will he find it; there let him 
 cherish and nourish it.'' A recent writer 
 says, ''Freedom for development and ap- 
 plication of pure moral impulse is now the 
 hunger of humanity; mutual coercion and 
 suppression of this impulse is its crime." 
 When conflict arises between the individ- 
 ual and the rights of others, ''The less 
 must be sacrificed to the greater," the in- 
 dividual to the state, the state to the na- 
 tion. Socrates gave his life to the state, 
 to which he owed allegiance, because he 
 had disregarded the laws of the state; he 
 
 175 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 could pay this deference to its require- 
 ments, because it did no injury to his con- 
 science. But his opinion and reason he 
 would not yield; he was true to the voice 
 of God in his own soul. In the beautiful 
 story of Agamemnon's daughter, Ephi- 
 genia, this truth is given us in mytholog- 
 ical guise, and in reading mythology we 
 must remember that 'Tagan self-assertion 
 is one of the elements of human worth, as 
 well as Christian self-denial.'' There is 
 no real antagonism between the right to 
 individual development and the duty to 
 mankind. Out of the perfection of the 
 individual will grow the perfection of the 
 race; in proportion to the perfection of 
 the units will be the perfection of the 
 whole. 
 
 PART 11. 
 
 Eor what shall woman stand in this 
 civilization? What shall she do to assist 
 in solving the great social problems of 
 the day? As we glance backward over 
 the mighty past, and hopefully toward the 
 future, may we not take a comprehensive 
 view and evolve from out the truths of 
 
 176 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 religion, mythology, history, science and 
 social and political economy a code of 
 ethics that shall be as a beacon light to the 
 coming generation ? 
 
 The social organization is composed of 
 two separate individualities, man and 
 woman. For the harmonious development 
 of the whole race each should be cultivated 
 to the fullest extent of their capabilities, 
 yet each may grow after the manner of 
 its needs and in no way interfere with the 
 free, healthful growth of the other. To 
 make the perfect tree, the trunk follows 
 the law of its nature, the leaves know 
 their own needs and the roots reaching 
 down into the cool, damp ground find 
 there what they require for sustenance. 
 Each member follows the law of its own 
 being, yet all grow together to form the 
 perfect whole. One imperfect member 
 destroys the beauty and symmetry of the 
 tree. Thus it is in the social body; free 
 play must be allowed to all the faculties 
 of_ the two members, and freedom to do 
 this carries with it an immense responsi- 
 bility, which must be considered. 
 
 In all the higher forms of civilization 
 177 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 woman has been recognized, to some ex- 
 tent, as the equal of man. ''Far back in 
 the days of the Vedas of India, and many 
 centuries later, when the great Buddhist 
 hopes were built, there we find from the 
 poetry of the former and the bas-reliefs 
 of the latter women mixed freely and un- 
 veiled at feasts and sacrifices, and the two 
 great Sanscrit epics, the Manhabahharata 
 and the Ramayana, with some of the later 
 tragedies, turn on chivalrous stories 
 wherein women played noble parts and 
 were nobly beloved/' The Homeric age 
 gives us such noble examples of woman- 
 hood as Penelope and Andromache. The 
 heroic age of woman among the Britons 
 was the age to which Boadicea belonged. 
 So in the Periclean age exceptional wom- 
 en discussed grave questions with wise and 
 great men. Sophocles and Euripides wri- 
 ting in classic Athens give us such glori- 
 ous types of womanhood as Alcestis and 
 Antigone. The heroism of the Roman 
 matron is a matter of history. Aggrip- 
 pina, wife of Germanicus, lives beside her 
 husband, and Cloelia's brave efifort for 
 home and freedom reads like a tale from 
 
 178 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 the Arabian Nights. The Jews had their 
 Miriam and Deborah, and a woman, Hul- 
 da, was intrusted with the key to the 
 ''Holy of Hohes." Italy gives us such 
 matchless women as Vittoria Colonna and 
 Margaret of Navara. Our own time fur- 
 nishes numberless instances of personal 
 valor, strength, purity and achievement. 
 So all down through the stream of history, 
 individual women have risen who quick- 
 ened the development and helped to ripen 
 and perpetuate the truth for which their 
 especial epochs stand. But these are ex- 
 ceptional cases. The feeling of the great 
 mass of mankind is doubtless more nearly 
 voiced by Dean Swift, who, when giving 
 an account of a disaster, summarized it by 
 saying: ''Two thousand souls lost and 
 several women and children.'' ^Our com- 
 placency and pride in our Nineteenth Cen- 
 tury civilization is shocked when we read 
 in the papers such items as this : "There 
 are in India four hundred thousand wid- 
 ows under eighteen years of age. One- 
 fifth of these are under nine years of age. 
 The former barbarous custom of burning 
 these poor girl-widows has been abolished. 
 
 179 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 But the inhuman and unnatural custom of 
 perpetual widowhood still holds sway/' 
 Bound in the unyielding chains of ignor- 
 ance are those bodies and souls. Again 
 we see the trail of superstition in the old 
 idea that ''The Priest shall make atone- 
 ment for you/' but you as an individual 
 may not enter the ''Holy of Holies." Was 
 not the cry of the Israelites in the Psalm, 
 "My soul thirsteth for God, when shall I 
 come and appear before the face of God/' 
 a cry of the heart to reach forth and clasp 
 the hand of the eternal, at any time or 
 place, when the soul's needs were felt most 
 keenly. Woman must learn to think and 
 act for herself, and lean on none save 
 God only. It is not so much what we be- 
 lieve as what we do. To be, and not to 
 seem to be, is the keynote to all true char- 
 acter growth. Let the severity which has 
 characterized woman's obedience to au- 
 thority in the past stand as a type of the 
 severity with which, as a rational human 
 being, she will hold herself responsible for 
 all inward thought or outward act. The 
 church has ever employed woman's fine 
 emotions to keep alive her altar fires. Her 
 
 1 80 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 devotional nature, her keen mental wants, 
 and the finer passions of the heart have 
 heretofore found in religious observances 
 a large field of activity. But to-day wom- 
 en are called to a higher consecration of 
 their powers than embroidering altar 
 cloths and priestly robes. Yet let us never 
 forget what the Church has done for the 
 conservation of art and literature, and 
 that all this has meant and still means 
 spiritual and mental growth. 
 
 The true conception of woman's work 
 in the world, her duties, privileges and re- 
 sponsibilities, is yet to be conceived in the 
 brain of some seer, to be given to the 
 world by some noble teacher, and finally 
 to be lived and proved by generations, be- 
 fore it can become a vitalizing, regenerat- 
 ing power. While a few minds have rec- 
 ognized this truth, and a few women have 
 distinguished themselves sufficiently to 
 keep the truth alive, this is only the his- 
 torical few, the ''Saving Remnant.'' The 
 most of womankind do not fully realize 
 their powers or responsibilities. But 
 whenever the ideals, the leading minds of 
 a nation are lofty, the masses will strive 
 
 i8i 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 toward these ideals. If a few women, 
 rarely gifted, rarely endowed with moral 
 courage, and a philanthropic spirit, will 
 point the way, time will bring out the final 
 redemption. Woman must learn that any 
 violation of her nature, mental, moral or 
 physical, is followed by retribution, for 
 law makes no sentimental discrimination 
 in favor of her sex. Law does not even 
 take account of motives, be that motive 
 ever so high or holy. 
 
 It is unnecessary to discuss the equality 
 or inequality of men and women. John 
 Stewart Mill says: ''When Christ wrought 
 out for woman not a social identity, but a 
 social equality, not a rivalry with the func- 
 tions of men, but an elevation of her own 
 functions, as high as his, it made the world 
 and human life in this respect also a true 
 image of God." It is often said with bi- 
 ting sarcasm that women have never writ- 
 ten great histories, never written a great 
 epic poem, never accomplished a great 
 work of art, never discovered anything 
 new in science, never invented machinery, 
 never proved themselves astute or gifted 
 in statesmanship. All these accusations 
 
 182 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 are but partly true and have many excep- 
 tions. But let us remember they were the 
 mothers of those accredited with all these 
 great achievements. We cannot say that 
 woman will do her best work in the direc- 
 tion of science, art or literature ; time, the 
 revealer of all truth, will demonstrate this 
 upon the future pages of history. But the 
 same causes which have operated against 
 woman's advancement or achievement in 
 the past do not exist to-day. There are 
 few fields of activity wherein she may not 
 spread her wings and soar as high as her 
 capacity will admit. There are remaining 
 few causes for complaint. She has only 
 to prove her fitness and worthiness to re- 
 ceive in nearly all departments of life full 
 recognition and appreciation. The few 
 barriers which now restrict her activities 
 will doubtless soon be removed. But we 
 must be patient as well as persistent, for 
 nature has given us no universal panacea 
 warranted to cure quickly or suddenly our 
 ills, whether they be physical or social. 
 Let woman use her superior advantage, 
 her more carefully trained emotions, her 
 better disciplined mind, to bear upon those 
 
 183 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 problems, which by their nature He nearer 
 to her than to man. Let her give long, 
 patient thought to the search after those 
 laws which govern the spiritual, social and 
 domestic world. Here is the center of her 
 work, fixed by the immutable laws of her 
 being. Whatever of light and blessing it 
 is given her to shed upon the world, its 
 purest rays must radiate from this central 
 sun. This is in the most direct line of her 
 life, and she cannot escape the responsi- 
 bilities if she would. The very generic 
 difference from man may be a divinely ap- 
 pointed means by which she may arrive 
 at a true conception of this most complex 
 question. This is the ''eternal womanly" 
 which is to ''draw us onward.'' To these 
 problems let her give her best endeavors, 
 her utmost efforts and the consecration of 
 a life, if necessary. Mothers may emulate 
 the historic and mj^thic sacrifices of the 
 Greek and Roman fathers, not as Ephi- 
 genia or Virginia; but daughters may be 
 taught to sacrifice enervating luxury, ease 
 or even comfort, rather than sell them- 
 selves for pleasure, place or power. Wom- 
 en should not shrink from the cares of 
 
 184 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 maternity, but bring a greater consecra- 
 tion to it. All reform is effective in pro- 
 portion to the amount of enthusiasm, love 
 and consecration we take to it. All the 
 knowledge, refinement, education, wis- 
 dom and grace will find a fitting niche in 
 the receptive mind of the young. If 
 mothers seek to be companions to their 
 children, then each day will be a beautiful 
 idyl, where wit, wisdom, beauty and love 
 shall make the poem complete. In this 
 way only can perfect unity exist between 
 parent and child. Woman must stand first 
 and last, striving always to retain under 
 all circumstances her perfect equipoise, 
 and ceaselessly labor for a perfect indi- 
 viduality, strong yet flexible. 
 
 She must stand for absolute sincerity, 
 absolute purity, absolute integrity; recog- 
 nizing her responsibility and rising to a 
 consciousness of the sacredness and beauty 
 of her functions, her duties, which are as 
 limitless as the universe and as vast as 
 humanity. She must see the trend of 
 events and have some voice in shaping 
 their course. The gospel of the divinity 
 in human nature comes with a new revela- 
 
 185 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 tion, a new hope and a new aim. How 
 could woman work, with care, and joy, 
 when she beHeved herself to be without a 
 soul? Women should stand as one for 
 absolute fidelity to the ideal marriage, 
 never debasing it for any reason what- 
 soever, and never assuming the relation 
 for any reason excepting the highest, 
 which is love. No more should we seek 
 marriage, for any other reason than the 
 highest, than v/e should seek God for any 
 but the highest motive, which is love. To 
 seek God for fear, for hope of gain or re- 
 ward, is to the enlightened conscience blas- 
 phemous. Equally so should it be to seek 
 marriage, which is the highest symbol of 
 our unity with the Creator, and was often 
 so used by the Nazarene teacher. Abso- 
 lute personal purity has never attained 
 universality, though the ideal has been 
 accepted and realized in many individual 
 lives, thus keeping alive the spark which 
 shall kindle to purify the whole human 
 family. A Utopian dream, perhaps, but 
 not impossible. The Vestal virgins of 
 Rome furnished an example of genera- 
 tions of chaste women, for it is recorded 
 
 i86 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 that in one thousand years only eighteen 
 cases o£ unchastity occurred. This can be 
 made possible only by the slow process of 
 a proper education of the young, in the 
 principle underlying their nature, empha- 
 sized in the family and insisted upon by 
 the state. The time is full ripe for noble 
 work to be done. A glance at the family 
 life in our large cities, the abnormal life 
 of most of our young women, and the cor- 
 rupt lives of young men, show a tendency 
 to drift into a vortex of immorality. 
 Much of this tendency is due to the change 
 and unrest of the age, and the great pros- 
 perity and rapid growth of a new country, 
 two causes most fruitful of evil, unless a 
 counter current shall set in which will 
 purify the stream and modify its course. 
 Eventually, in the pendulous movement of 
 the world's growth, the needle of the com- 
 pass will point to the marriage of one 
 man with one woman, or a pure single life. 
 The dawn of this coming era began far 
 back in the ages, antedating Christianity, 
 where the Hindoo poet, with divine in- 
 sight, speaks from the voice of the In- 
 dian Maiden, Savitri, these beautiful 
 
 187 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 words, when asked to choose a lover the 
 second time : ''Once falls a heritage, once 
 a maiden yields her maidenhood, once doth 
 a father say choose, I abide thy choice. 
 These three things done are done forever. 
 Be my prince to live a year, or many 
 years ; be he as great as Norada hath said, 
 or less than this, once I have chosen him, 
 I choose not twice." Let this truth, hav- 
 ing traveled down the centuries, become 
 crystalized in the most gracious age. Let 
 the dawn brighten into day, and in the 
 splendor of this principle the high thought 
 of the Oriental poet shall clasp hands with 
 the best modern thought, forming a circle 
 which sooner or later will embrace the 
 whole world. 
 
 But we must not forget that much of 
 the greatest of the world's work has been 
 done in solitude and celibacy, and that 
 character can be, and is, developed into 
 rounded perfection outside of this rela- 
 tion. Here the law of conservation of 
 force applies, as elsewhere. This con- 
 verging of many rays of light in this cen- 
 tury promises a solution to many vexed 
 questions. First, because we are ''Heirs 
 
 1 88 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 of all the Ages," and are beginning to 
 learn how best to use our inheritance ; and, 
 second, because we are living under the 
 noon-day sun of a free, ripening civiliza- 
 tion, whose most penetrating ray touched 
 the world eighteen hundred years ago, and 
 whose refulgent beams shine upon us with 
 reflected glory as we move on from the 
 past to the future. 
 
 We find that for a comprehensive un- 
 derstanding of woman's work in the Nine- 
 teenth Century it is necessary : First, that 
 she should be thoroughly acquainted with 
 the atmosphere and movements of the age 
 in which she lives ; also the relation of the 
 past to the present, and its true value, as 
 giving that large perspective by which 
 alone we can adequately measure the needs 
 and importance of her work to-day. Sec- 
 ond, her right to individual culture and 
 freedom to follow out the highest convic- 
 tions of reason, subject only to another 
 law, equally sacred, which respects the 
 rights of others to do the same. Third, 
 her exact relation to society, wherein the 
 individual should, or should not, be sac- 
 rificed to the general good. Fourth, the 
 189 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 fact of parentage involves the whole char- 
 acter, and is the cause of the deepest 
 tragedies of life, and calls loudly for a 
 more serious consideration and readjust- 
 ment of laws, social and legal. Fifth, 
 when conflict arises between soul and 
 body, or reason and feeling, reason must 
 decide, for feeling is only transitory, while 
 reason is abiding and gives strength and 
 self-determination. Sixth, woman's work 
 is largely determined by immutable law, 
 and her labors are inside of this law, and 
 not outside of it; the field is as boundless 
 as space, and as infinite as the soul; she 
 is especially called upon to-day to conse- 
 crate anew her powers to the elevation of 
 mankind by making vital the principles of 
 purity, justice, freedom and equality. 
 
 igq 
 
THRENODY 
 
THRENODY. 
 
 THE poet is above all others the man 
 of spirit, the medium through 
 which the divine will and law is 
 revealed to us. We hear much of Emer- 
 son, the philosopher — rarely of Emerson, 
 the poet. Yet I would give the Concord 
 Seer a place among the laurel-crowned. 
 
 By prose and poetry Emerson has es- 
 sayed to answer the yearnings for evi- 
 dence of things not seen, by a glorious 
 faith and sublime assurance of the har- 
 mony of the Universe. This is the legacy 
 he has bequeathed to us, a legacy large, 
 bountiful, beneficent. In Emerson's Thre- 
 nody we feel that the poet has scaled the 
 heights of joy, drunk deep of the cup of 
 sorrow, soared above the height of des- 
 pair, into the clear white light of spiritual 
 insight. This poem represents an intelli- 
 gent, open-eyed, conscious acquiescence in 
 the eternal order of the World; — not a 
 blind ''submission'' to the will of merciless 
 Jehovah. 
 
 193 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 The poem may be divided into four 
 parts. The first one hundred and fifty or 
 two hundred Hnes give us the agony of the 
 first shock of the bereaved heart; the 
 mourn for the beloved. 'Xost, Lost/' is 
 the refrain. In the first wild pang of 
 grief, nature's bright joyousness seems a 
 mockery. The south wind brings life, sun- 
 shine and desire ; but our loved one nature 
 cannot restore. In the first black hours 
 how we miss the voice whose ''silver war- 
 ble" ''outvalued every pulsing sound/' for 
 whom all beauty, all nature might well 
 exist; because he, the boy soul, is more 
 precious than all, he is the perfect flower 
 of nature. The creative forces still con- 
 tinue; "the trees repair their boughs," but 
 the form we love may not again be re-in- 
 carnated. The wail he has "disappeared," 
 nature's "Deep eye" "cannot find him," the 
 soul cannot be re-clothed at our will or in- 
 sistence. What then is left to us ? Where 
 find restitution for this grievous loss ? Has 
 our philosopher nothing to ofifer? Noth- 
 ing to assuage the world, the severest na- 
 ture inflicts, when she robs us of our un- 
 tainted youth? Our Seer says: — "My 
 
 194 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 hopes pursue, they cannot bind him." 
 Whither pursue? To future Hfe, to fu- 
 ture joy? But the human heart returns 
 again and again to the lament. Nature 
 taunts our pain by the return of ''young 
 pines" and building birches, ''but finds not 
 the budding man." Then comes the cry of 
 the intellect as well as of the heart, 
 "whither now my truant wise and sweet?" 
 And quickly follows the self-accusing 
 question, how have I forfeited the right 
 "thy steps to watch?" Then the question 
 of the hungry, jealous heart, "hast thou 
 forgot me in a new delight?" Ah! This 
 were indeed bitter pain, to be "so soon for- 
 got?" The heart returns to memory for 
 comfort, recalls those scenes which had 
 gladdened the heart in the happy days 
 gone by, "When every morn my bosom 
 glowed to watch the convoy on the road," 
 and yet again the lament, "The brook into 
 the stream runs on, but the deep-eyed boy 
 is gone." 
 
 In the next forty lines we hear the wail 
 of the broken heart. Who has not felt the 
 "needless glow" of all life and sunshine 
 during the first hours of bereavement? 
 
 195 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 We ask again and again 'Why should 
 every chick of every bird and weed and 
 rock-moss be preferred." Why take this 
 priceless blossom; ''For flattering planets 
 seemed to say, 'This child should ills of 
 ages stay/ '' 
 
 The writer touches every circle of sor- 
 row, every excuse which the aching soul 
 of man makes to itself for its indulgence 
 in grief. The high, the wonderful, the 
 rare, is entered as a special plea why death 
 should not lay his cruel hand upon this 
 fairest bloom. But already we catch a 
 glimpse of that "Good'' which may be 
 gathered from these pains. 
 
 ''The eager Fate which carried three 
 Took the largest part of me. 
 For this losing is true dying ; 
 This is lordly man's down lying.'^ 
 
 The loosening of earth ties, the yielding of 
 selfish will, and desire, to the order of the 
 universe : 
 
 "This his slow but sure declining. 
 Star by star his world resigning.'^ 
 196 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 Still the struggle goes on, and he asks 
 — nay, even censures. Nature, when he 
 cries : 
 
 ''O Truth and Nature's costly lie, 
 O trusted, broken prophesy, 
 
 richest fortune, sourly crossed. 
 
 Born for the future, to the future lost/' 
 
 But again the deeper insight speaks 
 "weepest thou?'' ''Worthier cause for 
 passion wild,'' ''To be alone wilt thou be- 
 gin when worlds of lovers hem thee in.'' 
 
 We are reminded that there are other 
 loves and lovers, to whom we owe allegi- 
 ance, that this tie does not incompass the 
 whole Universe of Love : 
 
 ^'I gave thee sight, — where is it now? 
 
 1 taught thy heart beyond the reach 
 Of ritual, Bible or of speech. 
 
 Taught thee each private sign to raise, 
 Lit by the super-solar blaze." 
 
 By this suffering the soul learns more 
 of life's richest truths than may be learned 
 in days of joy. It is a mine of wealth 
 and revelation. We learn through this 
 
 197 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 gift of human love more than may be 
 taught by all books, all Bibles. It has 
 opened up new worlds which we see 
 through the eyes of the beloved. Our gain 
 is far greater than the loss, for the blessed 
 loan of love, the loss is for the present, the 
 temporary only; the gain for all time. 
 The gain is to know that 
 
 ^' 'Tis not within the force of Fate 
 The fate conjoining to separate." 
 
 This is faith, based upon the rock of 
 nature's undeviating laws, the immortality 
 of all things. This love teaches us ''past 
 utterance and past belief, and past the 
 blasphemy of grief, the mysteries of Na- 
 ture's heart.'' Nothing stronger has ever 
 been written against useless grief, the 
 waste of tears. 
 
 ''And though no Muse can these impart, 
 Throb thine with nature's throbbing 
 
 breast. 
 And all is clear, from East to West." 
 
 No Muse can give us truth with the 
 directness with which it comes to us from 
 the "throbbing breast" of human love; if 
 
 198 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 wisely comprehended, it gives us the key 
 to the highest. Through the eye of inno- 
 cence, purity, we learn to know all that is 
 sweetest and best in life. Reproof follows 
 reproof in rapid order, ringing stronger, 
 louder, clearer as the mind gradually per- 
 ceives light breaking through the dark- 
 ness. And yet so tenderly with all, kind 
 nature says, ''I come to thee as to a 
 friend,'' not with ''tutor's,'' but a ''joyful 
 eye," the eye of love. For our gain and 
 growth we may enjoy "the richest flower- 
 ing of all art," the divine incarnated in the 
 human form : Through this love and this 
 loss we may know "the riches of sweet 
 Mary's son," and the riches of His sor- 
 row and the world's sorrow, and the 
 world's joy. But life must go on, in spite 
 of all changes in our small personal at- 
 mosphere : "hig-h omens ask diviner guess" 
 ^^And know my higher gifts unbind the 
 zone that girds the incarnate mind." 
 
 The higher gifts. What are they? 
 Where are they? They are the glimpses 
 of truth poured into the mind through the 
 meeting of the "Incarnate mind," through 
 which alone the infinite is revealed to the 
 
 199 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 finite. Here is the superlative note, the 
 highest moment portrayed by poets and 
 philosophers. The higher gifts, per- 
 ceived through life's joy and sorrow, re- 
 lease the soul from the close-clinging ten- 
 acity to this life and unbind the crust that 
 wraps the soul in earthliness and sets it 
 free. 
 
 'When the scanty shores are full 
 
 With thought's perilous, whirling pool, 
 
 When frail nature can no more 
 Then the spirit strikes the hour. 
 
 My servant, death, with solving rite 
 Pours finite into infinite.'' 
 
 Death is thus beautifully clothed in 
 thought and word. This is the incarna- 
 tion of faith and trust. Death is God's 
 ''servant" and a ''solving rite," beautiful 
 as the bursting chrysalis into the butterfly. 
 Then arises the question : Would you have 
 it otherwise? "Wilt thou freeze Love's 
 tidal flow?" Wilt thou with thy puny 
 knowledge question the All-wise? Wilt 
 thou interrogate the "unreplying fate" 
 that has never yet made answer to these 
 agonized questions ? But we have the ac- 
 
 200 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 cumulated and accumulating race history 
 to answer us, and the consensus of the 
 billions and trillions of hopes and loves 
 and faiths; say in the words of the poet 
 Seer: 
 
 ''What is excellent, as God lives, is perma- 
 nent. 
 Hearts are dust, hearts loves remain, 
 Heart's love will meet thee again/' 
 
 Lift your soul to the level of the infinite 
 soul, then all is clearly love and wisdom. 
 The future is not a heaven of ''adamant 
 and gold'' not ''stark and cold," "but a 
 nest of bending reeds, aflowering grass 
 and scented weeds." The soul yields to 
 love's decree as bends the reed to the 
 breeze that nourishes and strengthens it. 
 All individual sorrow is merged in the 
 universal ; a change of one chord into that 
 of another, a higher. True, this faith is 
 "built of tears and sacred flames," "and 
 virtue reaching to its aims," "built of fur- 
 therance and pursuing," ''not of spent 
 deeds, but of doing." 
 
 Activity is ever the command of nature, 
 stagnation, inertia, is as abhorrent, as a 
 
 201 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 vacuum ; only by pursuing some high ob- 
 ject in life shall the spirit be renewed, not 
 lingering over ''spent deeds'' or recount- 
 ing good already accomplished, but ever 
 pressing onward, forward, uoward, to new 
 achievements : 
 
 ''Silent rushes the swift Lord 
 Through ruined systems still restored. 
 
 Broad sowing, bleak and void to bless 
 Plants with worlds the wilderness." 
 
 The infinite spirit moves over and al- 
 ways through all systems, ruined or de- 
 caying in their form. From that which 
 seems "bleak" and "void" the creative 
 force "plants worlds" of beauty in this 
 wilderness of apparent decay and ruin, 
 and "watered with tears of ancient sor- 
 row," "apples of Eden, ripe to-morrow." 
 
 "House and tenement go to ground," 
 "Lost in God, in God-head found." 
 
 Thus the conditioned, transient is found 
 in the permanent, the unconditioned, the 
 universal. 
 
 202 
 
IMPRACTICABILITY 
 
IMPRACTIBILITY. 
 
 THERE is no word more persist- 
 ently and constantly misused and 
 misapplied than the word prac- 
 tical. It is an especial favorite with the 
 narrow-minded and ignorant. An ac- 
 quaintance said recently, speaking of one 
 of our greatest modern philosophers, "He 
 has a great mind, but is so very imprac- 
 tical.'' The fine scorn and air of superior- 
 ity with which this was said was proof of 
 the pitying contempt in which she held 
 this seer and prophet. It also measured 
 her appreciation of the eternal verities; 
 she scorned all theories, all isms, and saw 
 no deeper than to give the needy their 
 daily bread. Food for the spirit she did 
 not count among the necessaries of life. 
 Yet the history of man's spiritual life 
 shows us that the hunger for truth, the 
 passion for righteousness, the yearning 
 
 205 
 
•ESSAYS 
 
 of the soul for God and Immortality, will 
 sacrifice all material things, even life it- 
 self, to these wants. Novalis says, ''Phi- 
 losophy can bake no bread; but she can 
 procure for us God, freedom an^ ^'mmor- 
 tality." 
 
 The more civilized man is, the more dif- 
 ferentiated, individualized he is. This dif- 
 ferentiation seeks expression and sepa- 
 rates itself from the mass. He does not 
 let the masses absorb him, he absorbs the 
 masses. Therefore the one man is worth 
 a thousand other men; one Shakespeare, 
 one Emerson — there is no equivalent to 
 these, in numbers. The man of thought 
 cannot live a gregarious life, he seeks com- 
 panion with the highest only. We cannot 
 live with the stars if we keep our eyes 
 fixed on the ground. The man of thought 
 cannot be absorbed by surrounding cir- 
 cumstances and conditions, but will ab- 
 sorb them. He takes these up, digests 
 them, retaining what is valuable and cast- 
 ing away the husk; yet many live on the 
 husks alone and think they have lived! 
 There is no such thing in Nature, or man, 
 as absolute identity. Nature abhors iden- 
 206 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 tity as she abhors a vacuum. This gives 
 us the splendid diversity in human char- 
 acter, and makes its study forever the 
 deepest joy and the deepest pain of man- 
 kind. 
 
 207 
 
QUESTIONING 
 
QUESTIONING. 
 
 WHAT if imagination's play 
 Assumes thoughts truer, clearer 
 way, 
 And cheats our soul with fancy's dream, 
 With hopes that are not, only seem? — 
 
 If Plato's philosophic scheme 
 And Jesus's teaching by the stream 
 Were but fine cerebral fires. 
 Dying when man expires? 
 
 What if the martyrs' faith and hope 
 Were only passions broader scope. 
 To realize the general plan 
 And bridge the space 'twixt God and 
 Man?— 
 
 And all the loves of human hearts 
 Not perfect wholes, but only parts, 
 Of the great universal whole. 
 And lost the individual soul ? 
 
 211 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 Is song of bird or tint of flower, 
 Beauty to please a passing hour, 
 And not to mould our souls to know 
 Love, above, around, below? 
 
 Only nature's sensuous jest. 
 
 All the sunsets in the west? 
 
 In their colors' vieing glow 
 
 Is there nothing we may know? — 
 
 Is there never voice of one 
 Who bids us look beyond the sun, 
 To Him on whom men ever cry, 
 When the hour of travail's nigh? 
 
 The worshipper of holy fires 
 
 To the same lofty heights aspires, 
 
 As we, whose souls burn clear and strong. 
 
 To strengthen right, to weaken wrong. 
 
 Is lost this vast resistless power, 
 The soldier's calm, the prophet's dower. 
 Which grows and grows from age to age. 
 Writ in History's crimsoned page? 
 
 From earliest dawn of man's estate 
 To the last soul who whispers, ''Wait,'^ 
 We see through faith the best word spoken 
 Is love, not power, but love unbroken. 
 
 212 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 This word must pass from tongue to 
 
 tongue, 
 Its truth throughout the world be rung, 
 Revealed through Science's open gate, 
 And souls divinely conquering fate. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 213 
 
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