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THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 THE POETRY OF THE ORIENT. A Critical and 
 Historical Introduction to Sanskrit, Arabic, and Persian 
 Poetry. Illustrated by several hundreds of characteristic 
 specimens. One volume. i6mo. Fourth edition. Price, 
 $1.50. 
 
 THE GENIUS OF SOLITUDE. One volume. 
 T6mo. Ninth edition. Price, $1.50. 
 
 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF WOMEN. One volume. 
 i6mo. Ninth edition. Price, $1.50. 
 
 A CRITICAL HISTORY OF THE DOCTRINE 
 OF A FUTURE LIFE. One volume. 8vo. Eleventh 
 edition. Price, $3.50. 
 
 LEGISLATIVE PRAYERS. One volume. i6mo. 
 Second edition. Price, $1.50. 
 
 LIFE OF EDWIN FORREST, The American Tra- 
 gedian : with a Critical History of the Dramatic Art. 
 Two volumes. 8vo. With Portraits and Steel Plates. 
 Price, $10.00. 
 
THE 
 
 SCHOOL OF LIFE 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM ROUNSEVILLE ALGER. 
 
 * 
 
 The universe, all glittering through with stars, 
 Is kept by God, an everlasting school : 
 This truth, but that its fruit his folly mars, 
 Would make a wise man out of every fool. 
 
 ^ 
 
 V 
 
 
 No.JikJS.k.fK 
 
 
 **!S 
 
 BOSTON: 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS. 
 
 1881. 
 
 r 
 
$ 
 
 ^ 
 
 Vv* 
 
 Copyright, 1881, 
 By Roberts Brothers. 
 
 University Press : 
 John Wilson and Son, Cambridge. 
 
THE AUTHOR 
 
 INSCRIBES THIS LITTLE BOOK 
 &o $ttf|il0, 
 
 WITH SYMPATHY FOR THEIR AIMS, 
 
 ^nb to %fat\zx% t 
 
 WITH REVERENCE FOR THEIR PROFESSION. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Introduction n 
 
 Rooms in the School 14 
 
 The Founder of the School 25 
 
 The Providential Teachers 26 
 
 General Teachers 33 
 
 Special Teachers • • 35 
 
 Two Incitements of the Teacher ... 36 
 
 Cruelty and Kindness in Teachers . . 37 
 
 Education the Business of Life .... 39 
 
 Books in the School 41 
 
 Studies in the School of Life .... 46 
 Chief Lessons taught in the School . . • 55 
 
 Lesson of Docility 56 
 
 Lesson of Energy 64 
 
 Lesson of Submission 66 
 
 Lesson of Faith 70 
 
 Lesson of Love 74 
 
 Lesson of Exemplification 78 
 
 The Infallible Judge 82 
 
 True Aims of the Pupils 85 
 
 The Possession of the Body 85 
 
 The Possession of the Soul 92 
 
8 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 The Possession of Society . . 
 The Possession of the Universe 
 The Education of Consciousness 
 Definition of Consciousness 
 First Stage of Consciousness . 
 Second Stage of Consciousness 
 Third Stage of Consciousness . 
 Fourth Stage of Consciousness 
 The Contents of Consciousness 
 The Secret for developing Consciousness 
 First Reason for educating Consciousness 
 Second Reason for educating Conscious- 
 ness 
 
 Third Reason for educating Consciousness 
 
 Motives in the School 
 
 Desire to improve : Aspiration . . . . 
 The Desire to surpass Others : Ambition 
 Fear of Punishment : Disgrace . . . . 
 The Law of Expression as a Motive . . 
 
 Two Classes of Motives 
 
 The Scale of Moral Ranks 
 
 Rules in the School 
 
 Epitome of the Rules 
 
 Conclusion 
 
 PAGE 
 
 IOO 
 
 io 5 
 108 
 
 no 
 
 1I 3 
 119 
 121 
 
 122 
 126 
 127 
 131 
 
 *33 
 i34 
 136 
 140 
 142 
 
 i45 
 148 
 164 
 
 165 
 168 
 200 
 203 
 
THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 An Eastern vizier, it is said, once sent his 
 sons away to be educated in a common school 
 with the children of the people. Those who 
 distinguished themselves by good behavior and 
 rapid improvement he recalled to the palace, 
 and made confidential officers of the Sultan ; 
 but those who were vicious, who proved indo- 
 lent and backward, he disowned, and left to 
 grow up as shepherds, ignorant of their high 
 birth and deprived of its privileges. 
 
 The tale is a poetic and solemn figure of 
 our existence. So humanity sends her children 
 forth to mix in the level struggle, to be taught 
 and disciplined by rough taskmasters, and to 
 contend with the various problems that burden 
 the faculties of intelligence or solicit the ener- 
 
1 2 INTRO D UCTION. 
 
 gies of passion. Meanwhile the overseers or 
 monitors have their eyes fixed on each one, to 
 give him discriminated spiritual position accord- 
 ing to his gifts and his application. Thus, in 
 its very reality and working functions, the world 
 is a vast schoolhouse and our life a continuous 
 pupilage. This view is so large and free and 
 beautiful that it is fitted to infuse something 
 of the enthusiasm of the poet even into the 
 dryness of the pedagogue, and fire the tedious 
 routinist with a rich zeal. And this is a rare 
 service. For no teacher or pupil should ever 
 be a dull proser. Every one, wherever he goes, 
 should carry the spring of Parnassus in his 
 breast. 
 
 The earth has frequently been called a vale 
 of tears, trodden by mourners ; a desert, threaded 
 with caravans of pilgrims ; a bower of pleasure, 
 inhabited by careless flutterers; a gloomy prison, 
 occupied by convicts on probation; a tent, in 
 which immortal travellers encamp for a night; 
 a ship sailing around the zodiac, the generations 
 its successive crews ; a temple dedicated to wor- 
 
INTROD UCTION. 1 3 
 
 ship, the human race its natural priesthood ; 
 and so on, with scarcely an end. But, on the 
 whole, no other comparison of it is so satis- 
 factory as that which likens it to a school, and 
 describes the business of its occupants as the 
 pursuit of an education fitting them to graduate 
 into the invisible university of God. 
 
 Wilkinson has finely said, "Education is noth- 
 ing but an assimilative career. The full social 
 form is the blood into which we are to enter. 
 The nature of the child, or the roughness of 
 the adult, is the material to be admitted and 
 refined. Delight and curiosity, with sparkling 
 eyes and tiny gestures, come tripping forth to 
 the time of their lessons in the classes of 
 existence ; and there is no finish to education, 
 because there is no end to the improvement 
 of mutual good works." Dr. Adam, one of the 
 schoolmasters of Sir Walter Scott, implied this 
 figure, with a pathos nigh sublime, when in his 
 last illness he said, " It is growing dark, the boys 
 may dismiss," and immediately expired. In 
 truth, the experience associated with the pro- 
 
14 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 cesses of instruction and training to which the 
 rising generations of every civilized land are sub- 
 jected, in their most plastic and tenacious years, 
 is so varied and keen and deep that all litera- 
 ture is full of imagery based upon it. What- 
 ever most profoundly and vividly shapes and 
 colors our consciousness is ever the richest and 
 most effective source of rhetorical figures. This 
 is a principle which no teacher can , afford to 
 neglect. 
 
 ROOMS IN THE SCHOOL. 
 
 Viewing this stupendous educational estab- 
 lishment, the earth, as a schoolhouse, the 
 nations become rooms. Cities, villages, com- 
 merce, agriculture, art, all modes of toil or 
 play, all varieties of suffering and enjoyment, 
 are seats filled with students. In the various 
 parts of the building different branches of 
 study predominate .and contrasting methods 
 are employed. The great desideratum, now at 
 length rapidly getting itself actualized, is the 
 free circulation, through every apartment, of 
 
ROOMS IN THE SCHOOL. 1 5 
 
 all the light, air, and benignant influence re- 
 ceived or generated anywhere within the whole 
 structure. With reference to this end, it will 
 be useful to take a comprehensive survey of 
 the outspread school, from a general point of 
 view, before proceeding to the study of it in 
 detail from the individual point of view. For, 
 whether we regard the Calmucks, the Kamt- 
 chatkadales, the Patagonians, the Otaheitans, 
 the Norwegians, the Arabs, the Abyssinians, 
 the Hungarians, or the Malays, everywhere the 
 character, customs, experience, and destiny of 
 individuals are found to be prevailingly moulded 
 and fixed by the predetermining institutions 
 and ideas of their respective nationalities. The 
 stimulus from the public environment chiefly 
 decides the development of the personal cen- 
 tres. And how strangely distinct these are in 
 the separated parts of the globe, so that the 
 child born in Cambodia perforce becomes a 
 very different style of man every way from 
 the child born in Portugal ! 
 
 Far up towards the north pole the Esqui- 
 
1 6 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 maux shudder on the bleak benches of Green- 
 land ; and stern Necessity, with uplifted ferule, 
 drives them to read starvation on the page of 
 the wintry storm, spell exultation in dragging 
 a walrus through a hole in the ice, write es- 
 cape on the snow with their sledge-runners, 
 cipher a feast from the entrails of an ensnared 
 bear, — in a word, to work out a practical an- 
 swer to the question how a livelihood may be 
 wrung from such adverse circumstances. 
 
 In China the seats are crowded by the mil- 
 lions whom Confucius guides to tend the 
 tombs of their ancestors, worship the sover- 
 eign, cultivate tea, practise ceremony, suspect 
 strangers, and be content in their stolid, mate- 
 rialistic fashion, straying not from the ancient 
 ways. 
 
 India, still inwardly chained to the traditions 
 of the past, though outwardly breaking away, 
 brooding over old philosophy, teaches her chil- 
 dren to mutter the mystic monosyllable Om, 
 and dream of extrication from the wheel of trans- 
 migrations for absorption into the Godhead. 
 
ROOMS IN THE SCHOOL. IJ 
 
 Africa and Australia, so long abandoned as 
 the wild playgrounds of barbarism, the revelling- 
 places of savage war, despotism, and slavery, 
 are beginning gradually to be lighted up and 
 reclaimed by the most energetic races of the 
 earth, through colonization, missionary enter- 
 prise,, and commerce, — the luminous vanguard 
 of civilization steadily pushing back the night 
 and cruel chaos. 
 
 Immemorial Egypt, taking a lesson from the 
 finance and skill and adventure of the West, 
 lifts her head above the mummy-pits of Thebes 
 and Memphis, and makes pyramids and sphinxes 
 echo the hum of unwonted enterprises. 
 
 Marvellous Japan, at one bound throwing off 
 the profound slavery of the superstition of four 
 thousand years, assimilating the experience and 
 science of alien races, starts on a career of 
 brilliant and manifold progress, showing that 
 it is never too late to mend, and that the fu- 
 ture may at any time make new departures 
 unprophesied by the past. 
 
 Turkey and Russia, under providential dis- 
 
1 8 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 cipline, grapple to give and take the necessary- 
 lessons of the time in the terrible tutelage of 
 war, — lessons so poorly learned that outer 
 peace but summons them both to inner problems 
 more fearful still : for the paralyzing fatalism of 
 the Koran and the besotted polygamy of the 
 Court land the former in bankruptcy and help- 
 lessness ; while the corrupt and cruel autocracy 
 of the Throne and the rebellious unbelief of the 
 people terrify the latter with the double spec- 
 tre, confronting Tyranny and Nihilism, the 
 desperate efforts of the one to repress freedom 
 provoking the other to reach after anarchy- 
 through assassination. 
 
 France, long a pupil to the national spirit 
 impersonated in beautiful and fickle Paris, first 
 learns the divine truth of popular fraternity, then 
 quenches its light in the blood of brethren ; 
 at one time is baffled and supine beneath the 
 surd quantities of pauperism, priestcraft, and 
 tyranny ; at another time solves the problem 
 of government with the bright answer of a 
 republic ; then, betrayed by a false teacher, 
 
ROOMS IN THE SCHOOL. 1 9 
 
 groans in helpless shame and grief under the 
 retributions provoked by her conceit and licen- 
 tiousness, — -retributions which it is to be hoped 
 may teach her that Providence is a refentless 
 disciplinarian, using the very vices of nations 
 to scourge them into reformation. 
 
 Great, instructed, regulated, despotic Ger- 
 many, subsidizing all the resources of knowledge, 
 skill, and obedience, advances with overwhelming 
 force in front of history, to show the world the 
 irresistible power of combined enlightenment and 
 drill ; although the harsh blood-and-iron prin- 
 ciple of her domineering bureaucracy threatens 
 to convert what should be the fruitfulness of an 
 academy into the barrenness of a camp, and force 
 a democratic upheaval to fling off the official 
 pressure which is becoming insufferable. 
 
 Popular justice, constitutional liberty, mechan- 
 ical science, and free trade are the firm quartet 
 of teachers who, despite all drawbacks and im- 
 pediments, instruct the minds and train the ener- 
 gies of conquering England, as decade after decade 
 she progresses in social sympathy and political 
 righteousness. 
 
20 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 Poor, beautiful, proud Spain, once the most 
 opulent and illuminated member of the school, 
 the strongest and haughtiest queen among 
 the nations, but now for two hundred years 
 staggering downward and backward from the 
 summit of her peerless sway, licentiousness in 
 her throne, indolent and insolent conceit in her 
 palaces, pleasure and murder dancing together in 
 her laughing vineyards, her desperate efforts for 
 regeneration and liberty, ever baffled by selfish 
 pretenders and their factions, are yet ever re- 
 newed, because the glory of her traditions still 
 feeds an unquenchable hope. 
 
 Dear Italy, lovely benefactress and inspirer 
 of the world, matchless in scenery, clime, and 
 fruits, in noble men and enchanting women, 
 encumbered with the lustrous trophies of her 
 own history, equally weighted down with pleas- 
 ure and with oppression, long prostrate under 
 the tiaraed Incubus, but now starting up with 
 unprecedented promise in many directions, — the 
 scholars, artists, and freemen of all the earth 
 salute her from their hearts with an auspicious 
 
ROOMS IN THE SCHOOL. 21 
 
 God-speed ! as they see her who has so long 
 taught others begin at last to teach herself the 
 vital lessons she needs. 
 
 The ignorant and quarrelsome occupants of 
 Mexico, Peru, Chili, and their kindred neighbors, 
 convulsed and lacerated by selfish adventurers 
 and insane factions, benighted with superstition 
 and cursed with military domination, in a state 
 of chronic misrule and recklessness, despise the 
 instructions of history and disgrace the riches of 
 their clime ; the teeming expanse of Brazil alone, 
 under her wise and good emperor, a solitary 
 example of beneficent stability and improvement. 
 
 To the students in the sparse forms of Amer- 
 ica, — forms that traverse a hemisphere and are 
 sprinkled with the spray of three oceans, — glow- 
 ing young Democracy, himself busy with studies 
 and hopes, has set the hardest but most inspiring 
 sums. Many of these they have already mastered, 
 by expelling the savage, taming the wilderness, 
 covering the wilds with industrial mills and 
 blessed homes, and trampling out murderous 
 rebellion; and they will never pause, let us 
 
22 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 trust, till they have answered the rest, by 
 abolishing great social evils and showing an 
 example of unrivalled prosperity, for the incite- 
 ment "of other countries, whose teachers are 
 less benignant, whose conditions are more en- 
 tangled with discouragements, whose people are 
 less ambitious and persevering than theirs. 
 
 And thus the Father of men has gathered 
 them into great national classes, which he is 
 instructing slowly how to outgrow their crimes 
 contentions and follies, collect their truants, 
 reduce their insubordinates, and blend in one 
 accordant family ordered by justice and crowned 
 with delight. Would that all kings, presidents, 
 prime ministers, influential publicists, were alive 
 to their ability, their duty, their privilege, in 
 respect to this sublime end, the redemption of 
 humanity ! Then might we look for the speedy 
 inauguration of that new style of governmental 
 oversight and legislative direction for which the 
 generations sigh through all their ranks. 
 
 Governments, for the most part, have been, 
 and still are, oligarchic cliques of the strongest 
 
ROOMS IN THE SCHOOL. 2$ 
 
 and most unscrupulous men, who sit at the top 
 of their respective countries to keep subordina- 
 tion, preserve the statics quo, wring taxes out of 
 the lower classes, jealously watch other nations 
 and pounce on them whenever occasion offers, 
 devising, meanwhile, the cunningest possible pol- 
 icy to grow rich at their expense. But, in steep 
 distinction from this form of rule, which tries 
 to enable all above to prey on all below, and all 
 at home to thrive at the cost of all abroad, the 
 true type of government, the type we need, will 
 consist of the wisest and best men, who will take 
 charge of the interests of whole nations in a 
 spirit of equity and sympathy, seeking to recon- 
 cile the passions and industries of all classes by 
 principles of universal right ; aiming not to dic- 
 tate and oppress, but to enlighten and guide the 
 peoples, to remove temptation and friction, per- 
 fect the supplies for wants, create liberty and 
 leisure, cause circulating superfluities and defects 
 to neutralize each other in equilibrium, make 
 cosmopolitan thought and affection extinguish 
 the animosities of race and creed, and establish 
 
24 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 the kingdom of heaven on its only possible 
 foundations, the solid supports of fairly regulated 
 labor and exchange, free from the sloth and lux- 
 ury now festering on the summit of society, the 
 cruel hardships and wrongs groaning at the 
 bottom, and the rapacious greed and piratical 
 fraud everywhere rampant between. Office- 
 holders, and their moneyed rulers, must cease to 
 be leagues of conspirators to govern the major- 
 ity for the advantage of the minority, and must 
 become committees of experts to inquire, and 
 teachers to instruct their fellow-citizens, how best 
 to manage production and distribution in the 
 harmonized interests of all. Then the most val- 
 uable moral traits and social achievements of the 
 different portions of the human family, unin- 
 tercepted any longer by bigotry, may pass for 
 assimilation where they are needed ; Chinese 
 patience, economy, and reverence for superiors 
 inoculate American conceit, recklessness, hurry, 
 and intemperance ; Hindu idealism of faith, tran- 
 scendent introspection of spirit, tenderness of 
 sentiment and imagination, benignly modify Brit- 
 
THE FOUNDER OF THE SCHOOL. 2$ 
 
 ish materialism, sensuality, and arrogance ; and 
 in return, our Western precision of science, wealth 
 of mechanism, audacity of will and enterprise, 
 usefully stir the depths of Oriental stagnation, and 
 displace despotic dreams with waking tasks of 
 sunnier omen. Then the palace and the barrack, 
 with their idle pleasure and stern repression, 
 shall give way to the busy mill and the happy 
 home ; where stood the arbitrary throne shall 
 rise the instructive desk, while the sceptre and 
 the sword vanish before the light of truth and 
 the intrinsic persuasion of harmony. Then the 
 world, from an arena where men are forcibly 
 governed, will become a school where they are 
 freely taught. No more will the stronger and 
 shrewder, by force and hoodwinking, compel the 
 weaker and blinder to obey them, but the wisest 
 and freest will teach the rest to do what is right 
 of their own spontaneous accord. 
 
 THE FOUNDER OF THE SCHOOL. 
 
 God is the founder and head of this vast 
 schoolhouse, the world. His name, though 
 
26 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 often engraved in invisible ink, is over all its 
 doors. He has endowed it for the perpetual 
 support of a matchless corps of instructors. 
 The night-sky is its astronomic roof, the min- 
 eral strata its geologic floor, the blue horizon 
 its meteorological wall. Birth impartially ad- 
 mits all applicants for its privileges, with no 
 entrance-fee beyond a saluting cry. Its entire 
 contents — the splendid and terrible phenom- 
 ena of nature, the many-colored and ever- 
 shifting diagrams of society, the substances 
 of truth and the romances of experience — 
 form one complicated apparatus of instruction. 
 And when they have finished their allotted 
 term, Death bows the graduates out with such 
 honors and disgraces as they have won, — the 
 abandoned profligate with cold neglect or a 
 condemning sigh, the public benefactor with 
 tolling bells and universal tears. 
 
 THE PROVIDENTIAL TEACHERS. 
 
 Regarding the world, then, as a gigantic 
 seminary, at which all mankind are entered as 
 
THE PROVIDENTIAL TEACHERS. 2J 
 
 scholars, supported by the free foundation of 
 Providence, it will be in order first to notice 
 what Teachers are provided. For a school 
 full of pupils without instructors would be a 
 babel. 
 
 The theme of man and his schoolmasters is 
 too rich for us to do more than glance at its 
 principal topics. From the moment the new- 
 born babe crosses the threshold of existence, 
 under the combined tutorage of instinct within 
 and parental care without, to the expiring gasp 
 of the old man whom religious faith teaches 
 to die with resignation, man at every step is 
 waited on by guardians, disciplinarians, men- 
 tors, to meet his wants, chide his wayward- 
 ness, correct his folly, spur his indolence, set 
 him lessons, offer him rewards, and thus train 
 him towards the attainment of the real end of 
 his being, — the harmonious perfection of all 
 his powers. 
 
 First, our Desires are schoolmasters, from 
 whom we cannot escape. To what investiga- 
 tions and devices, early and late, they compel 
 
28 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 us ! And what sharp stimulants they employ to 
 secure our application and our development ! 
 Nine-tenths of the practical studying in the 
 world are done under their sightless but po- 
 tent direction. 
 
 Secondly, Ideas are schoolmasters. The idea 
 of God, as the omnipresent Father, educates 
 the spiritual nature of every person into whose 
 soul it comes. The idea of freedom, flung 
 forth by ardent champions to battle amidst a 
 careless people, between philanthropists and ty- 
 rants, the idea of any grand political reform 
 or moral right, proclaimed and opposed in the 
 press and on the platform, discussed by ex- 
 cited multitudes and meditated by lonely think- 
 ers, stirs, instructs, and lifts a nation. To the 
 soul that thinks, every thought, according to 
 its character, is a tutor, foul or holy. 
 
 Thirdly, Labor is a renowned schoolmaster. 
 His hands are hard, and his face is embrowned 
 from rain and storm, and his attire is rude, and 
 his mien is uncourtly. But there is no deceit 
 in his smile, there are no lines of dissipation 
 
THE PROVIDENTIAL TEACHERS. 29 
 
 on his cheek, and his voice is as frank and 
 wholesome as the shout of a farmer in the 
 meadow when the notes of lark and robin 
 mingle with his tones. In his vast forms mil- 
 lions of pupils are ranged and kept busy with 
 their studies. Plats of earth are their slates, 
 hoes and spades their pencils, scythes and 
 sickles their sponges. The more advanced pu- 
 pils of this rough but most successful teacher 
 are seen, in a selecter department of his realm, 
 occupied with gases and telescopes, striving to 
 reduce the furious forces of the earth and the 
 passionless laws of the sky to the service of 
 man ; while in the highest seats of all a few 
 gifted students are seen at work, philosophy, 
 poetry, and religion their materials, truths and 
 affections their implements, social virtue and 
 happiness their aims. Labor, from the rude 
 beginnings of the world, has pioneered the 
 steps of progress and taught his disciples the 
 costliest lessons ; and though they have learned 
 with sweat and scars, they owe him gratitude 
 for the fruits. 
 
30 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 This great teacher has an insidious and hurt- 
 ful rival, Luxury, who often seduces away from 
 him the young pupils who should have remained 
 his. Labor teaches those who wait on him how 
 to climb bravely up those heights of wisdom, 
 influence, and glory, which Luxury teaches her 
 followers how to slide ignobly down. Luxury 
 teaches how to squander in pernicious waste 
 the fortune, faculty, and opportunity which La- 
 bor teaches how to acquire and direct to noble 
 ends of utility and beauty. It makes a mighty 
 difference whether one chooses as his school- 
 room the chamber of indulgence or the work- 
 shop of toil. 
 
 Fourthly, Experience is a schoolmaster, the 
 most ancient, severe, wise, and constant of all 
 we have, keeping open session for the whole 
 race, with never a vacation nor an absence. 
 Whoever would consult with this sure teacher 
 will always find him ready. Those who will 
 learn of no other are sometimes forced to learn 
 of him, and he is hard and bitter then. He 
 has a multitude of sub-masters, through whom 
 
THE PROVIDENTIAL TEACHERS. 3 1 
 
 he dispenses his instructions ; and a motley set 
 they are, — of good and ill, joy and sorrow, 
 clearness and mystery, fact and illusion, dis- 
 appointment and triumph. Now, at his order, 
 pain teaches the burnt child to dread the fire ; 
 and again, a thrill of pleasure encourages the 
 good man to repeat a kind deed. At one 
 moment he commands reflection to make an 
 unhappy pupil drink "adversity's sweet milk, 
 philosophy;" at another moment he sends ret- 
 ribution to make a spoiled darling of indulgence 
 eat satiety's bitter ashes, remorse. Experience 
 is the greatest and most incessant of teachers. 
 He has authority over the human pupil from 
 the first breath to the last sigh ; and his in- 
 structions are limited only by the measure of 
 our docility. For, after all, as has been said, 
 it is less the skill of the teacher than the 
 aptness of the pupil that secures the result. 
 An antique fresco fitly caricatures Seneca, as 
 teacher of Nero, under the image of a butter- 
 fly serving as charioteer to a dragon. In con- 
 trast with this, how beautiful and happy was 
 
32 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 the relation, painted by the Greek mythologists, 
 between the good Cheiron, the expert old Cen- 
 taur, and his beloved pupil, the prompt and 
 grateful young Achilles ! Let no one forget 
 that the fruits of experience spoil if gathered 
 too late. 
 
 Fifthly, Example, or Social Influence, is a 
 most subtle and powerful teacher. Society is 
 a mutual school, where all the members are al- 
 ternately pupils and teachers. In the alliances 
 and rivalries of business, in the conflicts and 
 friendships of life, by our public and private 
 examples, by conversational interchanges of 
 experience, by hostile criticisms and friendly 
 encouragements, now we instruct and now we 
 learn. Two neighbors going out and coming 
 in before each other will constantly impart and 
 receive information and impulse — educational 
 influences — by the characteristics they exhibit, 
 the ends they follow, the policies they adopt, 
 the scorns they express, the arguments they 
 hold together, the worship they pay. Every 
 human presence exerts its magnetism, benefi- 
 
GENERAL TEACHERS. 33 
 
 cent or injurious. Indeed, characters breathe 
 and absorb such contagious influences, to in- 
 fect or to enrich, that companionship is often 
 more important than preceptorship. 
 
 GENERAL TEACHERS. 
 
 But in this common, mutual, monitorial school 
 of civilized society some individuals are called 
 by their position and endowment to be pre- 
 eminently teachers ; and no office is more beau- 
 tiful and lordly than theirs. Not one in the 
 long line of the popes forms a more lovely and 
 august picture than Gregory, in the depth of 
 the Dark Ages, publishing his chants, and 
 training choirs to sing them ; for he thus stood 
 out before the world as the paternal school- 
 master of Christendom. Great men, the lau- 
 relled heads of immortal genius, lifted above the 
 roaring flood of decay, are emphatically the 
 teachers of our race. A master like Arnold 
 of Rugby wields a benign sway over the whole 
 future of his native land. A pastor like Ober- 
 3 
 
34 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 lin dispenses instruction and sets an example 
 which shed a beneficent moral power through 
 long succeeding generations of the country in 
 which he lives and dies. A saint like Am- 
 brose, by the life he leads and the spirit he 
 breathes, inculcates through the public air of 
 history the highest truths of religion. A met- 
 aphysician like Aristotle trains the minds of 
 whole ages and nations. A poet like Dante 
 exerts more influence to touch hearts, kindle im- 
 aginations, exercise intellects, and mould souls 
 than ten thousand technical pedagogues and 
 mental hammerers. A philosopher like Newton 
 enlightens the world. An inventor like him who 
 devised the art of printing permanently goes 
 on educating mankind. The founder of a re- 
 ligion, like Mohammed, converts entire coun- 
 tries into a huge catechetical school, where he 
 sits in magisterial chair as the centuries roll 
 away ; and at his nod a million obedient tutors 
 indoctrinate and drill the people in the ways 
 he has appointed. 
 
SPECIAL TEACHERS. 35 
 
 SPECIAL TEACHERS. 
 
 In addition to the solemn world-preceptors 
 thus furnished and supported by Providence, 
 — Desire, Thought, Labor, Experience, and Ex- 
 ample, the five divine professors who still stay 
 in their offices when thousands of classes have 
 come and gone, — there is, speaking more lit- 
 erally, a body of dedicated teachers whose spe- 
 cific business it is to teach other persons. No 
 recognized class of men deserves to take prece- 
 dence of these, or can more peremptorily chal- 
 lenge our respect and gratitude. This is true 
 in the highest degree of those who bring to 
 their work not a mere empiric repetition and 
 mechanical faithfulness, but a living mastery and 
 application of ends and motives. An example 
 of fresh, competent perception of ultimate laws 
 and methods generates in those who see it an 
 assimilating enthusiasm scarcely possible other- 
 wise. An instructor without insight of prin- 
 ciples, as Delsarte said, is like an ape showing 
 a magic lantern. 
 
36 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 TWO INCITEMENTS OF THE TEACHER. 
 
 Every thoughtful teacher has two great in- 
 citements to earnestness in his work : one 
 arising from what he knows, and one from 
 what he does not know. He knows, that, re- 
 gardless of all incidental considerations, it is his 
 duty to devote himself with a consecrating zeal 
 to the discharge of his function towards his 
 pupils. The knowledge of this simple moral ob- 
 ligation is an inducement which should suffice 
 for an honorable mind. But then the thought 
 of his ignorance on one vital point adds another 
 powerful motive ; for he does not know what 
 prodigious consequences of good or of ill, to his 
 country and his kind, may depend on his fidelity 
 or neglect. That pupil, now plastic for his 
 moulding, may have in him the making of a 
 Plato, a Milton, a Watt ; or may be capable 
 of becoming a plotter of immeasurable treasons 
 and mischiefs. 
 
 A considerate tutor trains his ward according 
 
CRUELTY AND KINDNESS. . 37 
 
 to his antecedents and his destiny : the son of a 
 trader, for the counting-room and the ledger ; a 
 prince, for the reception-chamber and the trun- 
 cheon. Now the teacher should remember that 
 even of the meanest clad and wretchedest class, 
 every one is the child of an infinite King and 
 the heir of an immortal empire. Each descends 
 from God and inherits eternity. Therefore, be- 
 sides for the claims of his tender susceptibilities, 
 he should be treated with delicate consideration, 
 and an authority veiled in kindness. 
 
 CRUELTY AND KINDNESS IN TEACHERS. 
 
 In the recollection of how many men, in 
 the experience of how many soft and timid 
 youths, tragedies are held in this simple phrase, 
 — the cruel teacher ! It conjures up a mien in 
 which no gentleness is, a terrifying frown, a 
 harsh voice, a loaded ruler ; and the cheek is 
 blanched, and the poor heart throbs at the hate- 
 ful remembrance. If ever bland persuasion, if 
 ever patient forbearance, if ever firm and un- 
 
38 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 weariable sympathy, are needed at all in this 
 world, they are required from teachers towards 
 children, whose exuberant hearts are so easily 
 wounded and discouraged ; whose wild freedom 
 is imprisoned in a tedious seat ; whose flitting 
 fancies are chained to a slate ; whose wills, 
 played on by impulse, it is so hard for them 
 soberly to govern ; whose elastic spirits are com- 
 pelled to tasks as dry as dust, and a discipline 
 not less irksome than it is necessary. 
 
 " Through life," said the good Jean Paul, " I 
 have keenly felt the loss of what Heaven denied 
 to my youth, teachers and love." And alas ! as 
 we look through the abodes of humanity, to 
 what multitudes society is but a Ragged 
 School ! Behold them, put at nurse to filthy 
 penury, hunger and temptation their primary 
 teachers, hardships their exclusive lessons, abuse 
 their sole stimulus. The piteous spectacle 
 makes our hearts bleed, and we sigh for the 
 time when all the rich, wise, and happy will be- 
 come consecrated teachers of all the destitute, 
 degraded, and sorrowful members of the family, 
 
EDUCATION OUR BUSINESS. 39 
 
 to take them by the hand in Christ's own spirit 
 of tenderness and veneration, and lead them up 
 to holier homes and brighter days. 
 
 EDUCATION THE BUSINESS OF LIFE. 
 
 The world being a schoolhouse, consum- 
 mately equipped with apparatus and teachers, 
 and containing the human race as pupils, the 
 normal course of life is a steady process of edu- 
 cation. The business and end of our existence 
 is to learn. We are here really to acquire 
 knowledge of the infinite wisdom, love of the 
 infinite goodness, enjoyment of the infinite 
 blessedness. That is, we are here to study. 
 We are sent out on this earthly campaign of 
 life to enrich ourselves with the spoils of van- 
 quished difficulties and the wealth of captured 
 truth and beauty. The innumerable suns that 
 wheel and gleam through immensity are shining 
 lessons set along the limitless ascension our 
 learning souls must climb. 
 
 Inexhaustible are the studies inviting: us in 
 
40 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 this primeval school of the creation. Every 
 event is full of meaning, babbling, to the atten- 
 tive ear, the secrets of its origin and its conse- 
 quences. Every sound is a monitor. Every ray 
 is a revealing flash. Every object is compacted 
 throughout and written all over with truth. 
 Nature is a transparency, ablaze with back-lights 
 of intention and bursting with mysteries. In 
 short, the universe is a moving congeries of 
 truths within truths and good on good, every 
 member and particle of which it is meant shall 
 be known. The truths of the works and ways 
 of God were originally arranged to be pub- 
 lished ; and intelligent souls are called into 
 being on purpose to find them out, and to live 
 blessedly by them. There "is nothing covered 
 which shall not be revealed, or hid which shall 
 not be made known, or w r hispered in privacy 
 which shall not be shouted on the house-top. 
 There is a pre-established harmony between the 
 concealed facts of science and the prying fac- 
 ulties of man, plainly indicative of the Creator's 
 will, making the grand arena of matter and the 
 
BOOKS IN THE SCHOOL. 4 1 
 
 endless community of minds strictly a school. 
 Swammerdam, in old age, — in a morbid, if not 
 insane, mood, — burned all his manuscripts, con- 
 taining the results of years of laborious investi- 
 gations into the habits of insects, saying that 
 God had hidden these minute secrets so care- 
 fully for some wise purpose, and that it would be 
 sacrilege to disclose them ! But clearly that 
 wise purpose for which truths are hidden is this 
 very thing, — that men should secure the devel- 
 opment, of their souls and the enrichment of 
 their lives by pursuing the clews that lead to 
 them, and bringing them to the light. 
 
 BOOKS IN THE SCHOOL. 
 
 One o£ our foremost and richest aids in the 
 studies we have to pursue is books. Before the 
 eyes of every scholar who will ponder their pages, 
 the volumes of extant literature, in many lan- 
 guages, unroll their contents, showing him what 
 others have discovered or thought and felt. They 
 are the embalmed record of human experience 
 
42 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 and achievement up to the present time. What 
 has been said of history is at least as applicable 
 to literature, namely, that it is the message which 
 all mankind delivers to every man. No student 
 can afford to despise or neglect books. Yet, 
 when we regard individual nobility, new con- 
 quests, fresh appreciation of truth and beauty, 
 books are but the humbler auxiliaries of the 
 school. And the earnest pupil who combines an 
 inward-looking mind with an outward-observing 
 sensibility will, wherever he touches 
 
 " This our life, exempt from public haunt, 
 Find tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, 
 Sermons in stones, and good in every thing." 
 
 Nature is the original text-book in the school 
 of life, of which all others are but secondary and 
 imperfect transcripts. That inexhaustible volume 
 is divided into the different parts of earth, 
 water, air, and ethereal medium, — the mineral, 
 vegetable, animal, human, and divine kingdoms. 
 The diligent scholar, with poetic soul, wandering 
 in the dusty, sun-gilt alcoves of time and the 
 world, may always say, — 
 
BOOKS IN THE SCHOOL. 43 
 
 " My library is large and full ; 
 And ever, as a hermit plods, 
 I read until my eyes are dull 
 
 With tears, for all these tomes are God's." 
 
 The original books of science are the objects 
 and phenomena themselves written by the Crea- 
 tive hand. The material of psychology is in the 
 soul ; of meteorology, in the atmosphere. The 
 laws of music are proclaimed by vibratory bodies. 
 The .facts of physiology are incarnate in our 
 frames. The story and life of a nation exhibit 
 the principles of political economy. Flowering 
 plants publish the truths of botany with their fra- 
 grant petals. The science of astronomy is en- 
 acted around us in the azure and golden-orbed 
 orrery of space. In this way, we see, truth is 
 everywhere waiting for us to apprehend it, and 
 to appropriate its uses while we worship its Au- 
 thor. In this glorious work there is no termi- 
 nation ; for the deepest scholar, reviewing his 
 multifarious lore, must still modestly declare, 
 with Shakespeare's soothsayer, — 
 
 " In nature's infinite book of secrecy 
 A little I can read." 
 
44 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 No doubt the incessant reading in our day is 
 weakening the vigor and tenacity of the facul- 
 ties. More direct experience, and patient atten- 
 tion to it, less dissipated poring over printed pages, 
 are wants of the time. Pedantry is a dry pulver- 
 ization of all the powers of fruitful intelligence, 
 sentiment, and enthusiasm. One need not study 
 hydrostatics to learn to swim. Perhaps the sym- 
 bolism of Odin forced to leave his eye in pledge 
 with Mimir means that absorption in literature 
 destroys insight for nature. 
 
 The worst influence of books is seen when, 
 instead of stimulating the feelings and illuminat- 
 ing the perceptions of the student, they overlay* 
 befog, and soak his powers. This oftenest results 
 from that dawdling habit of passive reading which 
 is so serious and so common a waste. Multi- 
 tudes of persons in our day spend a considerable 
 share of their time in turning over the pages of 
 reviews, magazines, and books, listlessly scanning 
 their contents, with no girded attention, resolute 
 discrimination, or patient attempt to estimate and 
 retain, but suffering the words to make such im- 
 
BOOKS IN THE SCHOOL. 45 
 
 pressions as they can, and then for the greater 
 part pass into oblivion. Under the dominion of 
 such a habit, the mind tends to become a mere 
 muddle. To read argumentative works in this 
 way demoralizes the faculties of the intellect, and 
 to read sensational works so debauches the emo- 
 tions of the soul. A lazy voluptuary may sleepily 
 observe and applaud a company of athletes at 
 their gymnastic feats, while his torpid habits are 
 reducing his own muscles to strings of jelly, and 
 his connective tissue to a mush. So the reader 
 of books will get little good from them unless he 
 reproduces by the positive action of his own fac- 
 ulties the mental processes of the authors, verify- 
 ing their conclusions for himself, and assimilating 
 for his conscious growth in knowledge and power 
 whatever nutritious substance they contain. The 
 most cogent inductions, the most poetic pictures, 
 the most eloquent appeals, are useless if the pu- 
 pils approach them with reason relaxed, imagi- 
 nation asleep, and affection dead. The best rule 
 for profiting from books is, Read nothing without 
 giving the alert and intent life of the mind to the 
 work. 
 
46 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 STUDIES IN THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 The whole creation being the work of one God 
 who acts by uniform methods, and men being 
 made in his image, and working within their lim- 
 its after his methods, it will be found that the 
 entire realms of nature and art are pervaded by 
 resemblances. Symbolic relation, or what we call 
 analogy, is the echo of identical principles in 
 different domains. When we have learned to un- 
 derstand a principle in one sphere of experience, 
 on seeing a reflection of it somewhere else, we 
 can, with a profitable gain of light, apply to the 
 new instance what we before knew of the old 
 one. Now, illustrating this doctrine in the case 
 before us, we may perceive that the artificial 
 studies pursued in our technical schools have 
 their practical correspondences in the natural 
 studies of the school of life. 
 
 For instance, what are the essential signifi- 
 cance and aim of theoretic logic but to teach us 
 to reason well, to discriminate accurately, and 
 avoid fallacies, collecting true premises and de- 
 
STUDIES IN THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 47 
 
 ducing just inferences ? And is not the moral 
 equivalent of this, in our actual living, to follow 
 correct processes for discovering the right rela- 
 tions of the elements of our experience and con- 
 duct, the comparative importance of the various 
 prizes alluring us, that we may prevent fatal mis- 
 takes, understand our duties, and wisely conform 
 to them, ranking the trivial and the momentous in 
 their fit grades ? Can there be a fool.isher fallacy 
 than he commits who sacrifices health to money, 
 or subordinates love to show ? And did any 
 gowned schoolman lecturing in a mediaeval uni- 
 versity ever need skill in the syllogistic art so much 
 as every man needs proficiency in this more sacred 
 logic, which should preside over all his voluntary 
 acts ? Creation and government throughout the 
 universe are the live logic of God, in which cause 
 and effect are the omnipotent premise and the 
 infallible conclusion. To trace these accurately 
 belongs to all men as much as it does to any, to 
 him who reads these words as much as it did to 
 Duns Scotus or Thomas Aquinas. 
 
 Ethics would inaugurate a just order in our 
 
48 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 conduct and its motives, while religion would 
 breathe a divine spirit through our characters. 
 Has not every human being as strong a call to 
 the substance of these studies as any member of 
 a theological seminary ? 
 
 So far as the aim of rhetoric is to secure a 
 fit utterance for thoughts, should not every man, 
 not less than Isocrates was a verbal one, be a 
 moral rhetorician, seeking to give just expres- 
 sion to choice virtues and high purposes in lovely 
 traits and deeds ? 
 
 A science is the presentation of the laws of a 
 department of nature ; in other words, the or- 
 ganic arrangement in propositions of the correla- 
 tion and succession of phenomena. Shall not 
 the man labor as earnestly to master these ma- 
 terials of learning for his eternal destiny as the 
 naturalist does for his temporal profession ? 
 
 Philosophy is to explain to reason what appears 
 to perception. The abstrusest problems of met- 
 aphysics are but translations of the ordinary 
 concerns of men into a higher dialect for a finer 
 handling, — attempts to interpret experience to 
 
STUDIES IN THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 49 
 
 consciousness. Kant's great distinction of ob- 
 jective and subjective is one which common 
 sense makes every day, without being aware of 
 it, in recognizing the fact that there is nothing 
 pleasant or odious, good or ill, but thinking makes 
 it so. Or, as the master poet causes the Moor to 
 say, — 
 
 " He that is robbed, not wanting what is stolen, 
 Let him not know it, and he 's not robbed at all." 
 
 It is beautiful to see with what ease and with 
 what point the principles of every school-study, 
 from the fundamental facts of physics to the re- 
 motest speculations of transcendentalism, may be 
 moralized so as to teach man useful lessons for 
 the guidance of his life and the culture of his 
 character. How obvious, for example, is the 
 spiritual equivalent of the proposition in natural 
 philosophy, that a stream cannot rise higher than 
 its fountain ! Action cannot be higher than mo- 
 tive.. If we would be conquerors in the battle 
 of destiny, we must have the faith that overcomes 
 the world : that is, the stream of life must flow 
 from the fountain of God's grace, or it cannot rise 
 4 
 
50 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 to the reservoir of his acceptance. Contemplat- 
 ing a man, like the founder of Buddhism, who, 
 by the power of his organized thought, sentiment, 
 and volition, lifts swarming millions on swarming 
 millions, impels towards his standard generations 
 after generations, we see reproduced in morals 
 the law of the hydrostatic paradox, — one drop 
 balancing an ocean. Does not a man, distracted 
 with the attractions of many enterprises, whereof 
 no one wins a decisive preference, the subject of 
 counter motives, intending to do many things, 
 but really idle, illustrate the principle in dynam- 
 ics that the resultant of equal antagonist forces 
 is equilibrium ? His diverse inclinations neu- 
 tralize each other, and the equipoise result is 
 nothing. Such an one, " to double business 
 bound, stands in pause, where he shall first be- 
 gin, and both neglects." 
 
 The truths of mathematics are capable of 
 striking applications to moral subjects. For 
 example, since the whole is greater than any 
 of its parts, how clear it is that life should 
 not be frittered away in a petty regarding of 
 
STUDIES IN THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 5 I 
 
 its details, but that we should grasp it in 
 our thought as an entirety, with dignified 
 survey laying its ground-plan and command- 
 ing its outlines ! He is a mean man who 
 characteristically deals in vulgar fractions, to the 
 neglect of integers. Nothing can be straighter 
 than a straight line ; and honest frankness is the 
 shortest distance between the two points, a good 
 design and a happy fulfilment. 
 
 What is the most glorious of all sums in ad- 
 dition ? To add to your faith virtue, and to vir- 
 tue knowledge, and to knowledge temperance, 
 and to temperance patience, and to patience 
 godliness, and to godliness brotherly kindness, 
 and to brotherly kindness universal love. 
 
 What is the direst of all sums in subtrac- 
 tion ? It is when, in the examination of a 
 man, the fearful subtrahend of his vices being 
 taken from the poor minuend of his merits, a 
 negative quantity remains. 
 
 To nurture a prudential virtue while indulging 
 an immoral passion is to take pains to heighten 
 your coefficient while reducing your exponent. 
 
$2 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 Take the depravity and weakness of the human 
 heart for your multiplicand, the temptation and 
 idleness of the world for your multiplier, and 
 your product will be the woe of history and the 
 image of hell. 
 
 It is so much harder to climb than to fall, 
 to win than to lose, that we may, in many 
 particulars, be said to do the former by the 
 accumulating units of arithmetical progression, 
 the latter by the multiplying powers of geo- 
 metrical progression. 
 
 One of the commonest mistakes of man con- 
 sists in overlooking the fact that no number 
 of units of one kind can compose a unit of 
 another kind. An ounce of frankincense cannot 
 be manufactured from a million pennyweights 
 of gold ; nor can any quantity of wealth 
 or honor constitute one grain of happiness. 
 The elementary atoms of happiness are 
 strength, health, love, wisdom, peace, and 
 hope : no process has yet been discovered for 
 directly transmuting money, noise, reputation, 
 and show, into these components. 
 
STUDIES IN THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 53 
 
 The difference in the problem of living, to a 
 person of humble simplicity and to a person of 
 complicated ostentation, is that the latter has 
 many superfluous quantities and neutralizing 
 terms to eliminate before he approaches the 
 real solution. Yet there is another side to 
 this truth. For the value of a figure depends 
 not only on what it expresses by itself, but 
 also on where it stands. The figure Napo- 
 leon expressed a wondrous energy and genius 
 when a subaltern at Brientz ; but it denoted 
 a world-shaking fate when at the head of 
 an army on the field of Austerlitz. Even a 
 cipher standing in a rich place may multiply 
 other sums to a prodigious amount. Still, it 
 should not be forgotten that fortune may effect 
 a thousand transformations in the equation of 
 a man, and his value remain unchanged. 
 
 Since division by less than one is the same as 
 multiplication by more than one, the fraction of 
 contentment can be increased in value as much 
 by lessening the denominator of what you want, 
 as by enlarging the numerator of what you 
 
54 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 have. " Nay," quoth Carlyle, " unless my alge- 
 bra deceive me, unity itself divided by zero-will 
 give infinity. Make thy claim of wages a zero, 
 then, and thou hast the world under thy feet." 
 
 The least common multiple of men is van- 
 ity ; their greatest common measure, heirship 
 of God. 
 
 A lawless and obstinate man is a surd ; you 
 cannot extract the square root of his whims, and 
 so get at the secret of managing him. The 
 best thing you can do is to cover him with 
 the radical sign of dislike and put him aside. 
 
 In the exertion of influence character is the 
 measure of power. But example is the expo- 
 nent of character, precept only its coefficient. 
 A negative power in the exponent may hor- 
 ribly empty the highest coefficient. A parent 
 who inculcates verbal honesty on his child, 
 but exhibits living dishonesty to him, will find 
 his counsel barren, his conduct fruitful. An 
 old crab said to her son, "Awkward one, walk 
 not so crookedly." " Mother," he replied, " walk 
 you straight ; I will watch and follow." 
 
CHIEF LESSONS TAUGHT. 55 
 
 The asymptotical line extending toward the 
 hyperbola foreshadows the mystery of constant 
 moral progress never reaching its mark, — cease- 
 less approximation to an unattainable goal. In 
 the light of this illustration we may see how 
 we should seek the loftiest end, but do it in 
 the lowliest spirit. In other words, we must 
 aspire towards perfection, but recognize our 
 imperfection. The sight of that will give us 
 courage ; the consciousness of this will keep us 
 modest. 
 
 Finite being is a surface of flowing points, 
 every point an immortal soul ; and there can 
 be no hopeless tangents of perdition, since 
 God, as infinite, admits of no beyond. 
 
 CHIEF LESSONS TAUGHT IN THE SCHOOL. 
 
 Passing on from the other features of the 
 subject, let us fix our attention on the central 
 question : What are the most important lessons 
 to be learned in this complex and wondrous 
 school of life? 
 
56 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 In addition to the. innumerable particular 
 lessons, useful in their degrees to different 
 persons, there are a few general lessons nec- 
 essary for all to learn, — indispensable for the 
 perfecting of our nature and experience here 
 below, also indispensable for our fitness to 
 graduate into a higher department. These 
 few chief lessons are of such transcendent 
 moment to us, and are inculcated by our in- 
 structors in so many ways, that it almost 
 appears as if the school were established, 
 and its symbolic apparatus provided, expressly 
 to teach them. 
 
 LESSON OF DOCILITY. 
 
 The first great lesson, set before all alike, 
 but adequately learned by very few, is the 
 lesson of docility itself, the acquisition of a 
 progressive spirit of teachableness, never to 
 be laid aside. The lack of this is the prin- 
 cipal reason of the sudden stop of most pupils 
 at no very advanced station in the various 
 
LESSON OF DOCILITY. 57 
 
 lines of progress on which they set out. The 
 presence of this active habit, on the other 
 hand, this open and assimilative temper, is 
 the deepest cause of the surprising achieve- 
 ments of the few who, long and steadily con- 
 tinuing to improve, become the supreme mas- 
 ters in their several departments. To be 
 earnestly alive, eagerly attentive, modest, and 
 docile, always trying to do better to-day than 
 yesterday, and still better to-morrow than 
 to-day, is to perceive the means of improve- 
 ment on all sides, to appropriate helps or 
 incentives from all sorts of people, and to 
 rise constantly in richness of endowments 
 and rank of performances. 
 
 There is scarcely any degree of excellence 
 beyond the reach of the aspirant who is really 
 willing to pay its price. The greatest artists, 
 heroes, world-benefactors, however rare their 
 original gifts, have been yet more distin- 
 guished for their zeal to learn, their indomita- 
 ble perseverance in practices and self-sacrifice. 
 Hundreds of others might have equalled or 
 
58 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 even surpassed these, had they only been ready 
 to make the same efforts. Let any one blessed 
 with sufficient sensibility — the raw material of 
 all greatness — be prepared and desirous to learn 
 from everybody who can teach him any thing, 
 either by criticism or example, by praise or 
 blame ; then let him continue to study, ever 
 keeping before his mind an ideal ahead of his 
 present realization, and he will not cease to 
 advance until extreme old age. And there is 
 hardly any degree of merit which such an one 
 may not attain. 
 
 But, on the contrary, to feel yourself superior 
 to others, and therefore unable to learn any 
 thing from them, to cherish the conceit that 
 you already have knowledge or skill or virtue 
 enough, is to be fixed in a groove of hopeless me- 
 diocrity, surrounded by a wall through which no 
 influences can penetrate for your improvement. 
 
 A vital and watchful docility is the one vir- 
 tue for every pupil in the school of life, prelim- 
 inary to all the other virtues. It is the high 
 road of advancement towards every perfection. 
 
LESSON OF DOCILITY. 59 
 
 The difficulty of fully acquiring and keeping 
 this spirit, the precious fruits it yields, and the 
 fatal penalties of its failure, constitute a lesson 
 which, in its whole extent, not one man out 
 of millions appreciates. How many painters, 
 singers, actors, preachers, writers, there are, 
 whose productions at fifty or sixty are no bet- 
 ter than they were at thirty or forty ! It can- 
 not be that they had so early reached perfection. 
 It is that, at a relatively low stage of excellence, 
 they lost their stimulating ideal, and ceased to 
 use the means for further improvement. And 
 is not that a fault of which, in this boundless 
 school with its endless prizes, any pupil ought 
 to be ashamed ? We cannot with too great 
 earnestness beware of the habit of mechanically 
 following the usages of our own past ; for that 
 is a habit which makes it impossible for us to 
 learn fresh lessons and start on new and bet- 
 ter courses. 
 
 Ah, how many gifted and ambitious persons 
 there are whose one fatal fault is unwillingness 
 to take what they feel to be the humiliating at- 
 
DO THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 titude of docility before others, and learn from 
 them what they need ! Who has not often 
 known such persons, — vain of their powers, 
 yet making no use of them, chafing against 
 outer facts as the causes of their inner failure, 
 showing an obstinate addiction to their rou- 
 tine, a singular combination of profound self- 
 complacency with a universal querulousness, 
 angrily resenting every attempt on the part 
 of their friends to teach them what they are 
 slowly sinking and dying for the want of? A. 
 modest openness to advice, and a resolute ac- 
 ceptance and application of it, would save them, 
 and lead to the successes they wish. But try to 
 tell them this, offer them practical help, on the 
 condition that they will practise your precepts, 
 and they turn on you as an enemy. At last every 
 earnest and noble friend is obliged, in despair of 
 doing them any good, to leave them to their 
 conceit, their caprice, and their self-created fate. 
 There is in such an one — and it is aston- 
 ishingly common too — a most subtle and pow- 
 erful propensity to picture himself in his own 
 
LESS OAT OF DOCILITY. 6 1 
 
 imagination as superior to others, and so he 
 criticises what he meets instead of studying it. 
 He has a large and complacent idea of himself 
 with, which he is forever secretly glutting his 
 mind; and this preoccupation causes him to shed 
 even the most valuable suggestions, unless they 
 chance to flatter his bent. Quite unconsciously, 
 perhaps, but none the less really, he asserts 
 himself and clings to his biases, in place of 
 trying to pass out of his mere selfhood in or- 
 der accurately to estimate all that is proposed 
 to him, and to gain from it. He looks down 
 on his advisers, and repels them and their 
 teachings. Whereas the imaginative, practical 
 habit of those best fitted to improve, and who 
 do really make the greatest progress, is to pic- 
 ture self as in presence of something superior, 
 and to take the position of a disciple who is 
 ever looking up, and welcoming whatever can 
 strengthen, instruct, or guide him. 
 
 There is a story, a little ethical apologue, 
 about one Peter, a poor and ignorant teamster, 
 who, dissatisfied with his hard life of drudgery, 
 
62 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 prayed that he might be allowed the comfort 
 of a walk in paradise. An angel appeared, and 
 offered to grant his wish if he would promise 
 to study with docility whatever he saw there and 
 to utter no criticism or censure ! 
 
 Accepting the terms, he joyfully accompanied 
 his guide. The first thing he noticed was that 
 the houses of the inhabitants were made of trans- 
 parent gems. " Why," he exclaimed, " this is a 
 great defect : there can be no privacy ; you are 
 all exposed to public gaze ! " The angel, with 
 a slight frown and a warning finger, replied, 
 " They who are free from sin and guile need 
 no concealment. The glory of God is rather 
 in exhibiting than in hiding." 
 
 They passed on, and Peter next perceived 
 several angels bearing golden buckets full of 
 water, which they poured into sieves. He could 
 not restrain his surprise and disapproval. " What 
 a folly ! " he cried ; " the water runs out as fast 
 as they pour it in." The angel sternly rebuked 
 him for this second violation of his pledge, and 
 showed him that the fine sieves strained out the 
 
LESSON OF DOCILITY. 63 
 
 leaves and other matter floating in the water, 
 which then ran underground in numerous chan- 
 nels, all over the garden, to refresh the flowers 
 and the fruit-trees. 
 
 Peter hung his head, and proceeded for some 
 time in silence. In a little while, however, 
 they came to a gorgeous chariot whose driver 
 was urging with voice and whip two pairs of 
 horses harnessed on his right and left, one pair 
 headed to the east, the other pair to the west. 
 Peter forgot all his caution and his former ex- 
 periences. Was he not a teamster, and did he 
 not k?iow? In a loud voice he called to the 
 charioteer, " Fasten your horses all in the same 
 direction, or you can never move ! " Suddenly 
 a bitter repentance fell on him ; for he now 
 saw that the horses had wings, and as they 
 strove in contrary directions, the chariot rose 
 into the air, as was meant. It was his third 
 offence against the teaching spirit ; and the 
 angel put a bandage over his eyes, seized him 
 by the ear, and hustled him out of paradise 
 into the sterile place whence he had come. 
 
64 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 The human is admitted into the society of the 
 angelic not to criticise or condemn, but to love 
 and assimilate. The first lesson, therefore, is 
 docility. 
 
 LESSON OF ENERGY. 
 
 But the second is the lesson of resolute cour- 
 age, a working spirit of fearless energy. There 
 is a multitude of ringing maxims with which the 
 wise in all ages have tried to enforce this salutary 
 lesson on idlers, unbelievers, and shivering de- 
 serters. Fortune favors the bold. God reaches 
 us good things with our own hands. Little can 
 be done for him who will himself do nothing. 
 The laggards are left contemptuously behind, the 
 weak are remorselessly trampled down, and the 
 cowards are omitted in the distribution of prizes. 
 Like it or dislike it, this is the law, namely, that 
 we must either resolve and strive, or fail and die. 
 
 Nor will frenzied fits of enterprise answer. 
 Determined, sober continuity of toil is necessary. 
 The brawny arm and the heavy hammer are re- 
 quired to make the anvil of our opportunity ring, 
 
LESSON OF ENERGY. 65 
 
 and to shape the stubborn masses of our fortune. 
 Uncertainty, timidity, laziness, and enervation 
 are the most fatal betrayers of men, while a be- 
 lieving and vital intrepidity is their surest guide 
 to success. Volition must tread on the heels of 
 desire : that is to say, we must earn what we 
 would have by conquering the impediments to 
 it and fearlessly seizing it. The optative mood 
 should always lead in the imperative, a firm re- 
 solve chasing a worthy wish, if we would have 
 the glorious indicatives of victory displace the 
 wretched subjunctives of condition. 
 
 There are no obstacles which will not go down 
 before the fire and charge of enthusiasm, hero- 
 ism, clearness, and decision. Thrilling voices 
 breathe from the monuments of the mighty dead, 
 and thunder through the dome of fame the truth 
 that determination, strength, and perseverance 
 are the three champions of the world. 
 
 Let us all take this truth vividly home to our 
 
 hearts. We shall often enough need it. And 
 
 yet it is to be kept in mind that courage and 
 
 energy must not be egotistic or reckless. Rash 
 
 5 
 
66 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 excess is as bad as trembling defect. Many a 
 brave votary of high ambitions worries and 
 wears himself fruitlessly to death by too great 
 personal exertion. The most tremendous strength 
 and heroism, let it ever be remembered, are those 
 which appear when man foregoes all uninter- 
 mitted private endeavor, and peacefully allows 
 universal laws to make him their calm but irre- 
 sistible instrument. He then wins victories as 
 quietly as the sunshine ripens harvests. 
 
 LESSON OF SUBMISSION. 
 
 The third great lesson, then, which we have to 
 learn in the school of life, to learn early and to 
 learn late, is submission, — submission to the 
 unavoidable limitations of our nature and life. 
 We cannot too soon or too thoroughly compre- 
 hend the fact that we are in the embrace of a 
 resistless system of forces to whose order we 
 must conform our plans, and not attempt to 
 array our caprices against it. After the most 
 puissant efforts of our knowledge and prowess, 
 there are multitudes of facts with reference to 
 
LESSON OF SUBMISSION. 6j 
 
 which we are equally ignorant and helpless. 
 Herein our best wisdom is modest surrender and 
 acquiescence. When our designs are formed and 
 our actions guided in accordance with the organic 
 relations of things, the truths established by the 
 Creator, there is no jar in our course, no clash in 
 our fate. But if we lift our rebellious purposes in 
 opposition to the decrees of Providence, we are 
 quickly made to know our impotence and to feel 
 our folly. Man's freedom is tethered by law ; 
 and at the inevitable limit of his energy he 
 should voluntarily kneel in submission. This is 
 a lesson we are slow to learn ; but nature is fast 
 in teaching it, and experience thrusts it on our at- 
 tention from every side, until, sooner or later, we 
 become fully aware of its import, though it may 
 be not until we are at our last gasp. 
 
 Perhaps an illustration will cause us more 
 vividly to appreciate this great truth. A man 
 was once sitting with Solomon, the sovereign of 
 the genii, when the Angel of Death, visible in a 
 human shape, passed by, and looked fixedly at 
 him in passing. " Who is that ? " asked the 
 
68 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 shrinking companion of Solomon. " It is the 
 Angel of Death," replied the king. " He has 
 come for me," cried the man in terror ; " blow 
 me into India." Solomon raised a wind which 
 swept the trembler whither he had desired to be 
 borne ; and then asked the dread messenger of 
 fate why he had gazed so sharply at the man. 
 " Because," he answered, " sent to take him in 
 India, I was surprised to see him in Palestine." 
 
 Borne along on the swooping worlds of im- 
 mensity, we know but little and are very feeble. 
 But when our energy can carry the conquering 
 banners of duty no further, one thing remains, — 
 to practise the lesson taught so long, submission. 
 Destiny quietly guides the acquiescent to their 
 salvation, but violently flings the resisting upon 
 their destruction. 
 
 There can be no permanent peace for man un- 
 til he has learned both in theory and practice the 
 great lesson of submission to the necessary lim- 
 its which hedge him in on every side, and to the 
 inevitable disappointments he must meet at every 
 step of his life. But when at last, be it early or 
 
LESSON OF SUBMISSION. 69 
 
 be it late, he has really assimilated this profound 
 truth, and transmuted it into instinctive habit, 
 no matter what fortunes befall him, they will 
 both find him and leave him contented, serene, 
 and trustful. Ah, how sorely many of us need 
 this blessed solace, and how terribly many more 
 will need it before they get through with what 
 the world holds in store for them ! There is no 
 one of mortals who has not his visionary desires, 
 his poetic dreams, his imaginative longings after 
 ineffable things never, never to be attained on 
 this rough earth. The finer and vaster our af- 
 fections are, the higher our ambition and aspira- 
 tion are, so much the sharper and larger will be 
 the share of disappointment and sorrow we are 
 destined to encounter. Nothing can enable us 
 to meet these grievous trials without bitterness 
 or resentment save that resigned and docile tem- 
 per which gently acquiesces in whatever it can- 
 not surmount. If the ordeal be hard, as first 
 applied to our brilliant fancies and boundless 
 hopes in youth, how calm and sweet is the tri- 
 umph when we have earned the well-adjusted 
 
JO THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 and submissive old age which our poet has so 
 charmingly painted in his verses descriptive of 
 the sea, motionless under the morning clouds, 
 with the sails of ships dreamily glimmering in 
 the horizon, like the spires of a distant city, and 
 as the vessels sailed on, with them sailed also, 
 farther and farther away, his restless fancies 
 and insatiable desires, until all had disappeared, 
 save a few that, moored in the neighboring road- 
 stead, rode at anchor, looming large in the mist. 
 
 " Vanished too are the thoughts, the dim unsatisfied longings; 
 Sunk are the turrets of cloud into the ocean of dreams ; 
 While, in a haven of rest, my heart is riding at anchor, 
 Held by the chains of love, held by the anchors of trust ! " 
 
 LESSON OF FAITH. 
 
 A fourth precious lesson our leading pre- 
 ceptors in this world are commanded to give 
 us, — .the habit of faith, the exercise of a ra- 
 tional faith as a guide and a consolation in 
 those regions of experience where knowledge 
 is not yet attainable. How clearly, all the 
 way through our allotted term, we are in- 
 
LESSON OF FAITH. J I 
 
 structed to believe and to trust ! Nearly the 
 first thing we learn to do is to place im- 
 plicit confidence in our parents. We are called 
 to believe in the reality of the phenomena of 
 nature about us, the reliableness of the laws 
 that hold the world together, the stable and 
 regular beneficence of the order by which we 
 live in time and space. Hinting gleams of 
 a concealed truth and glory greater than we 
 dream early awaken strange hopes in our 
 breasts. Experience, reminding us of the bless- 
 ings we have enjoyed, the conquests we have 
 made, the deliverances we have received, the 
 perplexities that have been cleared up, the af- 
 flictions that have been compensated, assures 
 us that so it will be forever ; that after every 
 storm the sun will smile, for every problem 
 there is a solution, and that the soul's inde- 
 feasible duty is to be of good cheer, still 
 looking for a satisfactory result. Above all, 
 the continued inspiration of the Divine Spirit 
 who made us always lives and works in us, 
 forbidding us to yield to desperation, forever 
 
72 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 breathing balm, whispering promises, lifting 
 veils, answering prayers, solving doubts, preach- 
 ing glad tidings. 
 
 But even beyond all these instinctive, ex- 
 perimental, and celestial agencies, whose per- 
 suasions combine to teach us faith, there is 
 a central necessity of our condition which 
 shuts us up to the same high and consola- 
 tory lesson. For there are within our cogni- 
 zance myriads of mysteries utterly impenetrable 
 by any gaze of ours. Plummetless abysses of 
 ignorance yawn around us ; tragedies of sor- 
 row and horror burst on us, before which, if 
 we had not faith to leave all confidingly with 
 Omnipotence, we should be left without com- 
 fort or resource. Childish, utterly contemptible, 
 is our fathom-line of reason, our explanatory 
 analysis, before the infinite problems of con- 
 sciousness, evil, fate, freedom, eternity. Oc- 
 currences throng in our daily lives which 
 would lacerate our sensibilities with hopeless 
 grief and mock our understandings with vain 
 anxiety, could we not simply fall back on 
 
LESSON OF FAITH. 73 
 
 faith, and, in spite of the enshrouding mys- 
 tery, still feel secure that, in some way or 
 other, they are right and good. 
 
 For man, considered as a pupil in this sub- 
 lime university of space, faith is a cardinal ne- 
 cessity, — faith in his teachers, faith in himself, 
 faith in his tasks, faith in his fellows, faith in 
 God, faith in the attainableness and worth of his 
 aims. Never should we allow any torpor, base- 
 ness, or even treachery of others to prey on 
 our noblest hopes for humanity and eat out 
 the core of our divinest resolutions. However 
 many may prove false and unworthy, still the 
 True, the Beautiful, and the Good remain 
 enshrined in all their imperishable glory. 
 Nor let us ever despair of correcting our 
 own blunders and improving our acquisitions. 
 A voice from heaven tells us that there is 
 time enough yet, because to be is in the 
 infinitive mood ; while consciousness endures 
 learning is in apposition with life ; and to heal 
 every wound is both the normal office of na- 
 ture and the benignant miracle of grace. 
 
74 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 Faith is, first, the mind of docility ; next, 
 the soul of energy ; then, the strength of sub- 
 mission ; and, lastly, the substance of things 
 hoped for, and the infallible clew of the spirit 
 that feels itself to be unquenchable. 
 
 LESSON OF LOVE. 
 
 Still another lesson — and one deeper, 
 sweeter, higher, than any other — the pupils 
 in the school of life are privileged to learn : 
 and that is to regard ail that falls within 
 their observation with a complacent good-will, 
 wholly free from hate, bigotry, or scorn, 
 assimilating for their own every good they 
 behold. Here we come to the crowning lesson 
 of all education, — the one which realizes in 
 itself the end to which the others are only 
 means. For while docility is but a means 
 for advancement, and energy is insufficient 
 and brief at best, and both submission and 
 faith are duties conditioned on our feebleness 
 and ignorance, love is forever the very sal- 
 
LESSON OF LOVE. ?$ 
 
 vation and blessedness of the soul which har- 
 bors it. Love is the fruition of our faculties 
 at their goals. What unwearied pains the 
 Head of the School has taken to instil this 
 sentiment into our minds and to train us to 
 practise it ! Love is the divine attraction of 
 our being to its ends, the gravitation of souls 
 in the universe of spirit. God has made each 
 scene of beauty and each strain of music preach 
 to the human soul with mystic eloquence, 
 " Abjure every form of pride and hate, and 
 open thyself to all gentleness and love." The 
 wonders of his wisdom and the bounties of his 
 skill lavished on his works are spread before 
 us ; the sacred dependencies, sweet fellow- 
 ships, and appealing sorrows of a common 
 humanity are exhibited in our fellow-men 
 moving around us ; the mysterious attractions 
 of an infinite loveliness are let down on our 
 contemplation in alluring symbols of accom- 
 modated knowledge, grandeur, and goodness, 
 — all to dispel our stagnation, melt our hard- 
 ness, awaken our embracing sensibilities, — in 
 
J 6 % THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 one word, to draw forth every pure and generous 
 passion of our souls by teaching, us the one 
 essential lesson of being — love. 
 
 The choicest attainment of man in every 
 department or particular of his experience is 
 an affectionate and admiring sympathy. With- 
 out this last touch all foregone labor is lost. 
 For love is the enjoying exercise of our facul- 
 ties, the very essence of good in every cham- 
 ber of the soul and every relationship of 
 existence. The blockhead who loathes the 
 sight of a book, shudders at a blackboard, 
 groans at the suggestion of engaging in 
 thought, can find no satisfaction in his school- 
 life. It is the bitterest slavery to him. Every 
 task is a painful penance. But the student 
 who loves his studies, whose understanding 
 sees pictures in geometrical diagrams, whose 
 imagination poetry thrills, whose heart history 
 touches while enriching his memory with wel- 
 come stores, whose reason logic braces to 
 sinewy vigor, in whose sympathetic curiosity 
 every fresh fact o'f science deposits a new 
 
LESSON OF LOVE. % J J 
 
 delight, — to such an one each lesson is a 
 privilege, each recitation a triumph. Even so 
 great is the difference of life to the man of 
 trustful love and to the man of sceptical 
 moroseness. Love is a conductor, joining the 
 currents of the individual with the currents of 
 the universe ; hate is an insulator, cutting the 
 soul off from the kindly communions of hope, 
 though not defending it from the vengeful 
 thunderbolts of fear, but rather elevating it 
 to be their signal mark. The snarling cynic, 
 soured, scornful, discordant, filled with dislike 
 of every thing, can take no comfort anywhere. 
 Leaving the lesson of love neglected, the 
 poison of unkindness neutralizes the good of 
 what he has learned, and turns the bland 
 goblet of happiness into a burning dish of 
 gall. But the poetic, humane, devout man, 
 who has expelled from every cranny of his 
 being the wicked leaven of malice and dulness, 
 whose soul, overflowing with cordial sentiment, 
 embraces with its outstretching sympathies the 
 fair round of nature, the brotherhood of human- 
 
?8 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 ity, and the all-blessed Father, — he has so 
 learned the lesson of love as to have reached the 
 summit of mortal scholarship, where he clasps 
 the eternal ends of being in their progressive 
 fulfilment. 
 
 LESSON OF EXEMPLIFICATION. 
 
 And now there is one more lesson for us to 
 learn, the climax of all the rest, namely, to make 
 a personal application to ourselves of every thing 
 which we know. Unless we master this lesson, 
 and act on it, the other lessons are virtually use- 
 less, and thus robbed of their essential glory. 
 The only living end or aim of every thing we 
 experience, of every truth we are taught, is the 
 practical use we make of it for the enrichment 
 of the soul, the attuning of the thoughts and 
 passions, the exaltation of the life. Yet how 
 many there are whose actions mock their knowl- 
 edge, whose practice belies their theory, whose 
 condition, appearance, and bearing unspeakably 
 disgrace their advantages and their profession ! 
 
LESSON OF EXEMPLIFICATION. 79 
 
 It is because they do not apply to themselves 
 the truths they perceive and which they are 
 quite ready to urge upon the observance of 
 others. When we do what we know, then first 
 does it put on vital lustre and become divinely 
 precious. 
 
 The first lesson to be learned in the school of 
 life is the art of learning lessons ; the last one 
 is the habit of unflinchingly applying to self 
 whatever is learned and personally exemplifying 
 what it requires. But this is really something 
 which only the fewest persons faithfully do. It 
 demands more combined humility and aspira- 
 tion, greater earnestness of purpose and conse- 
 cration in motive, than most men or women 
 possess. And nothing is more common, as 
 nothing is intrinsically more dishonoring, than 
 for people to have a clear perception of truths 
 they do not obey, methods they never apply, 
 beauty and good they make no effort to appro- 
 priate. Of the throngs, for instance, who study 
 the fine arts, how many put themselves in train- 
 ing to realize in their own persons the ideals 
 
80 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 they see portrayed there ? Does one in ten 
 thousand ? All but that one earnest disciple 
 are vapid dilletanti. 
 
 There are throngs of learned scholars whose 
 knowledge is so much mere lumber in the mem- 
 ory, leaving them unwise, unproductive, dyspep- 
 tic, awkward, useless, uninteresting. There are 
 multitudes of able critics whose discrimination 
 is employed in finding fault with others. The 
 illustrious Agassiz understood the science of 
 physiology and the art of health as fully as any 
 one on earth ; and yet, driven by a noble zeal, he 
 systematically overtaxed his powers, until, at 
 sixty-six, he sunk in sudden and disastrous 
 eclipse an invaluable life which his marvellous 
 and almost matchless constitution ought to have 
 carried to a hundred years in full majesty of 
 function. " 
 
 After long study and observation of the world, 
 I am forced to believe that the most inveterate 
 and universal fault of man is the neglect to 
 make direct application to self of every practical 
 lesson learned. There is one moral 'connected 
 
LESSON OF EXEMPLIFICATION. 8 1 
 
 with this fact, of the most momentous character. 
 There have been many men who have mastered 
 truths of incomparable profundity and value, and 
 have taught them to others with the greatest 
 clearness and earnestness, and yet they have 
 died without producing the impression they ex- 
 pected. Why has it been ? Because they have 
 failed to incarnate and exemplify those truths in 
 their own personal character and practice. No 
 new teaching takes effect to win disciples, make 
 way, and reform the world, unless its teacher em- 
 bodies it in his own visible and breathing life. 
 All emphasis fails to do justice to the impor- 
 tance of this fact in biography and history. Let 
 every aspirant remember that only the knowl- 
 edge which we earnestly obey and fulfil in our 
 character and conduct is glorified in its ztses, for 
 us and for our associates. That which lies idly 
 unexemplified is a mere load to its possessor ; 
 and, when paraded before others, it becomes an 
 ostentatious nuisance. 
 
 Hast thou conceived an ideal ? Be not con- 
 tent to preach it to other men, but worshipfully 
 6 
 
82 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 pursue it thyself. Hast thou mastered any 
 truth ? Rest not with a verbal celebration of it, 
 but show it to thy neighbor transmuted into the 
 flesh and blood of thine own life. Then, at last, 
 it may inoculate him also. 
 
 And so the chief general lessons to be learned 
 in this wonderful school of human life are docil- 
 ity, energy, submission, faith, love, and personal 
 fidelity. Each of these has its own special 
 stamp of attraction and command, but God 
 equally teaches them all, and asks us all to learn 
 them. 
 
 THE INFALLIBLE JUDGE. 
 
 He himself, meanwhile, stands over us all, as 
 universal Teacher and everlasting Father, with 
 love in his eye to encourage our efforts, and 
 lures in his hand to draw us on. Nothing can 
 be neglected in his omniscient oversight, or 
 escape his unerring law. In that inner world of 
 our consciousness, where he sits in judgment, 
 justice is forever done to each one exactly ac- 
 cording to his deserts ; for the facts themselves 
 
THE INFALLIBLE JUDGE. 83 
 
 are the verdicts. No real injustice, therefore, is 
 possible. The chief trouble with us is that in 
 our slovenly external absorption the mysteries 
 of this inward world of the soul and its amazing 
 experiences elude our perception. We are dis- 
 crowned outcasts in our own kingdom. 
 
 Let us awake to the truth, see God within us, 
 remount the throne, resume the sceptre, and be- 
 gin to devote to the claims of our nature and 
 the secrets of our destiny a study worthy of 
 their inexhaustible grandeur. For this earth is 
 but one little primary room in that glittering 
 and indestructible College of Being whereof 
 all immortal intelligences are the entered stu- 
 dents. And for him who trusts to the eternal 
 prophecies of the instincts that kindle his reason 
 and warm his heart, there is no end to the 
 lessons assigned, and can be no exhaustion for 
 the motives impelling. The pursuit of greater 
 excellence should be our supreme aim. If in 
 place of this we take pleasure for our end, it will 
 soon make a disgraceful end of us. 
 
 "Ever higher and yet higher" is the motto 
 
84 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 which burns before every thing that has life. 
 The interval from dust to deity, from nothing to 
 infinity, can never be passed. And so through 
 all the rising spires of form still the deathless 
 spirit climbs with hungering aspirations, mount- 
 ing along the links of the chain of evolution, 
 unappeased, — from nebula to crystal, from crystal 
 to flower, from flower to insect, from insect to 
 man, from man to angel, from angel eternally 
 toward God. 
 
 This, then, is our work now : to chip off the 
 modern faults of the body, wash out the ancient 
 stains of the spirit, complete their union in all 
 that is true and beautiful and good, and so pre- 
 pare the angel already latent within us to be 
 set free for the next advance. In this divine 
 work let us beware alike of doubt, of sloth, and 
 of all crude impatience. Doing the best we can 
 with our own faculties under the limits of sense 
 and time, then let us surrender ourselves to 
 the mystic laws that operate in ways and at 
 depths beyond the reaches of our conscious 
 thought. Remember too that whether we 
 
THE POSSESSION OF THE BODY. 85 
 
 work or wait, watch or sleep, One there is 
 whose vigilance nothing can elude, — the Author 
 of the Universe, the Artist of Minds, who is 
 slowly fashioning all creatures after his own 
 perfect designs. 
 
 TRUE AIMS OF THE PUPILS. 
 
 The succeeding point in our theme is as to the 
 ends to be aimed at by the pupils in the school 
 of life. What are the proper objects of our work 
 here ? No other consideration can be superior 
 in importance to this one. It is of the pro- 
 foundest consequence that our conclusions in 
 this particular be sound, distinct, vivid, and kept 
 constantly in mind. 
 
 THE POSSESSION OF THE BODY. 
 
 The first aim of the studies and practices at 
 which we are put on our entrance into the school 
 of existence, under the tutorship of constitu- 
 tional instincts, is to get complete possession 
 and use of our limbs and our senses, to secure 
 
86 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 the accurate adjustment, harmonious action, and 
 free direction of our entire bodily organism. This 
 task properly constitutes our earliest conscious 
 initiation into the outer court of the kingdom of 
 God ; for the material universe is the further- 
 most term or limit whither God radiates his 
 creative energies, and where the vast family of 
 filial spirits begin their long journey towards his 
 manifest presence and a clear share in his pre- 
 rogatives. 
 
 Little by little, the creeping, tottling infant, 
 after many a timid effort and many a painful fall, 
 learns to walk with confidence. But very few 
 ever learn' to walk with that perfect grace, that 
 exact economy of muscular exertion and nervous 
 expenditure, which leaves the greatest amount of 
 vital force at liberty to be used in free spiritual 
 function. 
 
 After thousands of rude experiments, aided 
 by corrective tests, we learn to judge of the 
 shape and size of objects and of distances by 
 the reason-governed eye ; for, as Berkeley first 
 proved, we have no direct knowledge of the 
 
THE POSSESSION OF THE BODY. 8? 
 
 forms of bodies or of measures of space, — all 
 such knowledge being the inferences drawn by 
 experience from differences of lights and colors, 
 hues and shades. The inexperienced child 
 fancies he can clutch the moon ; the skilled 
 marksman or billiard player calculates with an 
 accuracy almost unerring. 
 
 The compassing of this primary aim at physi- 
 cal harmony, self-possession, and command, in 
 any high degree, is neither so simple a matter 
 nor so commonly done as may be thought. 
 Compare the lithe, nimble, vigorous, blooming- 
 gymnast with the pale, sedentary, flabby, or 
 emaciated professor, or with the obese and 
 waddling alderman ! Contrast a lazy sensualist 
 of the city, whose most violent exercise and 
 sharpest observation are a stroll on the prome- 
 nade and a languid gaze at the passers, with a 
 keen and sinewy Indian of the wilderness, whose 
 pulses beat the march of exultant strength, who 
 knows his way by the bark on the trees and by 
 the nightly stars, who can mimic the cries of all 
 the birds and beasts of the forest, and outwit 
 them in their own wiles. 
 
88 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 In our modern civilization this rudimentary 
 but indispensable branch and aim of human edu- 
 cation is immensely undervalued and neglected. 
 Common as the mistake is, it is the gravest of 
 follies, because a very large part of all the good 
 within our reach, however much it may flower 
 into something higher, is based on the ground 
 of bodily force and harmony. While we ' are in 
 this world, a perfect body in perfect health is 
 second in value only to a perfect soul in perfect 
 virtue ; and it is most doubtful if the latter can 
 possibly be attained without the former. 
 
 An aesthetic gymnastic, drawn from the finest 
 knowledge of many sciences and applied for the 
 patient perfecting of the human- organism in 
 form and function, is a crying and religious need 
 of the age. It should be practised, year after 
 year, to perfect men and women for the pur- 
 poses of their own personal life, with the exem- 
 plary perseverance shown by the circus-rider, 
 the dancer, the actor, and the singer, in training 
 themselves for the so much less valuable end 
 of public exhibition. To possess your physical 
 
THE POSSESSION OF THE BODY. 89 
 
 organism in full poise of power, freedom, and 
 unity, is to exult in the divine richness of the 
 boon of .existence. To be constricted, discord- 
 ant, awkward, and weak, is to be miserable and 
 rebellious. The one is a successful birth of 
 providence, the other a wretched abortion. The 
 man who can balance and carry himself with 
 the unconscious precision and fearlessness with 
 which Blondin trundled his wheelbarrow along 
 the wire stretched over Niagara Falls, — the 
 woman who can poise and move and modulate 
 herself with the grace and harmony of a Taglioni, 
 — has the first condition for a life of exquisite 
 beauty and inexhaustible wealth. The divine 
 power may be abused, as it usually is, for sensu- 
 ality ; but it is equally indispensable as the basis 
 of the most godlike fruitions. 
 
 A constringed body puts the soul in pawn to 
 a tyrannical self-consciousness which will never 
 let it go free until the uttermost farthing of pen- 
 alty is paid. The results of this are a great 
 waste of the nervous force required to carry on 
 the organic processes of the body ; and an un- 
 
90 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 easiness of spirit, an unhappy constraint of 
 thought and feeling and motion, which make an 
 awkward and displeasing personality. The more 
 harmonic and frictionless the arrangement of the 
 organs of the physical frame, and the freer the 
 play of the articulations, so much the less expen- 
 sive is the working of the vital machinery, and 
 so much the larger the proportional supply of 
 energy left for the transcendent offices of ideal- 
 ity, spontaneous affection, faith, and romance. 
 Our modern life, with its intense and relentless 
 exactions and unnaturalness, is so over-exciting, 
 that instances of erect and elastic freedom of 
 body in persons of middle age are very rare. 
 The average man with us is so tied up by strict- 
 ures' in all parts of his frame, so imprisoned in 
 a network of contracted and feverish nerves, that 
 he cannot make a movement without feeling the 
 chafe of some fatal fetter, which causes a resent- 
 ful reaction of the irritated and rebellious self* 
 whose consciousness is thus aroused and limited. 
 Relax all these sinful and imprisoning cords, let 
 a reposeful equilibrium change them into co-ordi- 
 
THE POSSESSION OF THE BODY. 9 1 
 
 nating bands which blend the parts of the body 
 into an harmonious whole, interacting in entire 
 freedom, and the self-consciousness, no longer 
 vainly asserting itself against baffling bounds, 
 flows in happy function and becomes a playing 
 centre of universal forces. 
 
 The highest state of an organism is the one 
 that generates the greatest amount of force for 
 the supply of function, and expends the least 
 amount in friction or impediments. This im- 
 plies strength in the centres and freedom in the 
 surfaces, with an open circulation of all the vital 
 and mental motions between the centres and the 
 surfaces. Now all volitional exertion tends to 
 contract and harden our organic structures, while 
 the law of gravitation is also incessantly acting 
 to drag every thing in us downwards. A true 
 gymnastic, therefore, should be adapted to neu- 
 tralize these two evil drifts of habit by lifting off 
 from every lower part of the body the pressure 
 of every higher part, and by removing from every 
 higher part the pull of every lower part. The 
 desideratum is to acquire and preserve the ut- 
 
92 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 most erectness and unity with the utmost flexibil- 
 ity. The physical gamut of a man — the strict 
 analogue of his spiritual gamut — is the distance 
 through which the elastic play of the parts in 
 the whole of his body enables his contours to 
 move to and from their centres. The aim should 
 be to reduce to its minimum the opposition to. 
 the free passage of. the circulating currents and 
 the molecular vibrations. 
 
 THE POSSESSION OF THE SOUL. 
 
 The second end for which the pupils in the 
 school of life should strive is to ge,t the full 
 possession and use of all the powers of the soul. 
 Parallel with the training to acquire the free 
 direction of the physical organization, exalted 
 to its highest potency and accord, there should 
 be a correspondent endeavor to secure the great- 
 est clearness, vigor, and liberty of all the spir- 
 itual faculties. Man is not merely an animal, 
 endowed with limbs, senses, and instincts : he 
 is also a spirit, gifted with understanding, imagi- 
 
THE POSSESSION OF THE SOUL. 93 
 
 nation, faith, affection, and conscience. Thus 
 he is called on not merely to free his fleshly 
 frame from every twist, cramp, or stiffness, and 
 render it the supple and melodious instrument 
 of the vital forces ; but likewise he must free 
 the mental and moral sides of his being from 
 every prejudice, bias, corrupt inclination, insen- 
 sibility, or bondage, so that all his psychological 
 faculties, liberated and illuminated, may act in 
 the most perfect harmony with those laws of 
 truth, beauty, and goodness which are the 
 perpetual revelation of God in his works and 
 creatures. 
 
 This task is one of immense scope and sig- 
 nificance, — to weed out all sluggishness, self- 
 will, insurgent pride, deathly sloth, befogging 
 delusions, sinful ambition, fires of lust and 
 phlegms of stupidity, that the soul may be a 
 pure, open medium for divine reality. But if the 
 cleansing of the spirit from the evils that clog 
 or chain it is a harder task even than to perfect 
 the bodily condition, the reward is richer. The 
 scholar, whose memory, stored with great ranges 
 
94 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 of learning, has ready command of its treasures ; 
 the philosopher, who can think consecutively 
 and deeply, grasping universal truths, and mar- 
 shalling comprehensive systems of ideas for 
 inspection on the echoless plain of his mind ; 
 the poet, whose genius bears him at will, amidst 
 visions of entrancing splendor, through the empire 
 of fair possibilities ; the philanthropist, whose 
 sympathy, extending to the circumference of his 
 race, broods lovingly over the fortunes of the 
 whole, — are as much above the brawny gladi- 
 ator, or hunter, as the skyey Apollo, who seems 
 made to tread the amber and crystal heights of 
 immortality, is superior to the stooping Dis- 
 cobolos, who gravitates sheerly to the ground. 
 
 It is of especial importance, in this aim at 
 getting the full possession and use of the soul, 
 to avoid that very common error which con- 
 founds the material conditions of good with the 
 essence of good. Crowds of men, for example, 
 are so eagerly devoted to the accumulation of 
 the means of life, in quantities beyond their 
 need, that they overlook every thing else, and 
 
THE POSSESSION OF THE SOUL. 95 
 
 fail to apply the means for the fruition of their 
 proper ends. Nothing is more frequent than an 
 insane bondage to the work of getting money, 
 regardless of the generous and holy uses which 
 alone can give money any true value or charm. 
 The avaricious slave who toils and moils to heap 
 up wealth, without any joyous use of it, is a 
 miserable drudge, no matter how big his heap 
 of dollars is. 
 
 Multitudes also estimate conspicuous social 
 rank, political station, or literary fame, above 
 unrecognized genius, ability, worth, and service. 
 And yet how clear it is to unsophisticated 
 thought that the intrinsic should in the sight 
 of men, as it must in the sight of God, take 
 precedence of the extrinsic ! When the incom- 
 petent or the unfaithful enter illustrious place 
 they make it a pillory. The lustre of the throne 
 is quenched when the crime and vice of its 
 occupant shed over it the infamy of the gibbet. 
 It is not high and envied place that is desira- 
 ble, but the magnanimous services and benefits 
 which ought to signalize such a place. No soul 
 
g6 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 of real purity and elevation but would immeas- 
 urably prefer to bestow a great blessing on man- 
 kind, and receive no acknowledgment for it, than 
 to be crowned with all the luxuries and honors 
 of the earth while leading a life of corrupt self- 
 ishness, inoculating the public weal with wrong 
 and misery. Health, strength, harmony, wis- 
 dom, love, romantic hopes, innocent ambitions, 
 deathless faith, progressive insight, and generous 
 services to others, — intrinsic goods independent 
 of outer estimates or favor, — are to be coveted 
 as beyond all comparison with the delusive or 
 futile prizes of fortune and society. To invert 
 this order is to subordinate the greater to the 
 lesser, and sacrifice ends to means. 
 
 This may seem, to the careless reader, very trite 
 preaching. Worn and tame as the moral may 
 appear, however, every one who shall be induced 
 steadily to practise it, by striving unobtrusively 
 to grow in the intrinsic excellences of his own 
 soul and experience, will find the fruits it yields 
 to be unspeakably new and precious as long as 
 he lives. While, on the other hand, the man who 
 
THE POSSESSION OF THE SOUL. gy 
 
 applies all his energies and wits to devise means 
 to further his vanity or pride and surround him- 
 self with gilded shams, must discover the world 
 becoming, as he grows old, year after year, more 
 bitter and hollow. 
 
 Reputation, office, wealth, are but haggard 
 mockeries when their possessor has not the 
 intelligence, vitality, worth, enjoying power to 
 make use of them to bless his own affections 
 and aid his neighbors. Better trip it nimbly on 
 your own elastic feet than be drawn, a gouty and 
 grumbling paralytic, in a coach and four with 
 liveried outriders. The very apple of the eye 
 of wisdom is, through all the entrapping arts of 
 the intermediate means of life, to seize the 
 real ends of life cleared from every fiction and 
 glamour. 
 
 Another gross and yet constant fallacy is that 
 of the scholar who makes scholarship an end in 
 itself. The amount of what one knows is of 
 far less consequence than the well-directed force 
 with which he can employ and wield what he 
 knows. No sum of information which can be 
 7 
 
98 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 stored in our faculties is comparable in value 
 with the free and harmonious activity of the 
 faculties themselves. A learned man has knowl- 
 edge gathered ; but a wise man has knowledge 
 assimilated. The one is a tank ; the other is a 
 spring. There was deep sense as well as keen 
 wit in the sarcastic epitaph on Hardouin, the 
 crammed and eccentric Jesuit scholar: "Here 
 lies a man of blessed memory awaiting judg- 
 ment" The interiors of many a mind are lum- 
 bered and littered with worthless stuff, the mere 
 trumpery of learning, an empty parade of pedan- 
 try. To seek truth for the sake of its service 
 in uses, beauty for the joy of its charms, and 
 goodness for the love of its divinity, are the gen- 
 uine ends of all inward culture. 
 
 And we are capable of realizing this in indefi- 
 nite degrees. Our power of self-liberation and 
 extension of the psychical functions is far beyond 
 that which we can exert upon our bodily organs. 
 The exquisite marvels of intellect and sensibil- 
 ity, the overwhelming and inexpressible wonders 
 of experience, vouchsafed to the rarest types of 
 
THE POSSESSION OF THE SOUL. 99 
 
 human nature, must remain unknown to all 
 others. But what a stimulus to aspiration and 
 toil must be felt by any one who appreciates 
 the distance that lies between the rapture of 
 the child absorbed over his toy and the ecstasy 
 of the saint lost in the beatific vision ! 
 
 The pupils of the world are exposed to such 
 incitements of necessity, danger, pleasure, and 
 hope, they receive the unavoidable lessons of so 
 many natural teachers, that nearly all of them 
 secure at least some degree of development in 
 their nobler faculties. But it is painful, nay, it 
 is amazing, to notice what a comparatively small 
 number by their own earnest exertions co-oper- 
 ate with the obvious design of the Founder of 
 the School to achieve this end in the more con- 
 summate degrees. To large proportions of man- 
 kind the earth remains unto the day of their 
 death an infant school. A goodly class, indeed, 
 transform it into a grammar school. It becomes 
 a high school to a smaller number. A se- 
 lect squad keep on through the more advanced 
 branches, and it is a college for them. But only 
 
100 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 the fewest continue to live in it as resident stu- 
 dents in a university. Of all the inhabitants 
 of the world, there are a million spelling in words 
 of a single syllable where there is one compe- 
 tent to grapple with the ultimate enigmas of 
 our destiny, the sursolid problems of life. To 
 become what we are meant to be, to grasp the 
 noblest possibilities of our state and lot and 
 make them real in living fruition, we must eman- 
 cipate our spiritual faculties from every enslav- 
 ing hatred, every constriction of dead habit, 
 every fetter of bigotry and fear, and live in this 
 boundless, teaching universe of God as fresh 
 observers and worshippers. 
 
 THE POSSESSION OF SOCIETY. 
 
 Besides the full development and use of their 
 physical frames, and besides the full develop- 
 ment and use of their spiritual faculties, there, 
 is another end for the pupils in the school of 
 life, namely, to get such a command of the man- 
 ners, customs, arts, trades, and laws of society 
 
THE POSSESSION OF SOCIETY. 10 1 
 
 as will enable them to play a helpful and becom- 
 ing part in it. No one has a right to be a drone 
 in the hive of humanity. Each one, therefore, 
 accepting or choosing his vocation, should 
 then qualify himself with such a mastery of 
 its methods that he can stand fitly at his post 
 and render his share of service to the collective 
 weal. 
 
 A small portion only of the strenuous school- 
 ing of the world is done within academic walls. 
 The general germs of culture, the elementary 
 principles of education, are there disseminated ; 
 but the toughest toil is afterwards done by each 
 student in the special school of his professional 
 calling. The actor studies for the stage, on the 
 stage ; the courtier, for the saloon, in all parlors ; 
 the lawyer, for the bar, at the bar ; the politician, 
 for the senate, in the caucus ; the physician, for 
 the sick-room, amidst his practice ; the clergy- 
 man, for the pulpit, not less after than before he 
 begins to preach. The farmer studies agricul- 
 ture more effectually by practical farming than 
 in any bookish theory. No pedant or dreamer 
 
102 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 in scholastic halls pores over his manuscripts 
 and themes with more intensity and perseverance 
 than the devoted artist gives to the elements 
 of iris designs, to the features of the landscape, 
 and to the colors on his canvas. And then 
 what disciplinary processes of tuition and prac- 
 tice do a hundred million laborers undergo in 
 the dinning school of the mechanic arts, in whose 
 seats their sturdy ranks stoop and strike, spin 
 and weave, mould and polish, plane and saw, 
 sift and strain, from dawn to dusk, till their 
 trades are learned, and their tasks are completed, 
 and they rest in welcome sleep underneath the 
 sod ! 
 
 Thus every one who would worthily fill any 
 office in society must study to acquire command 
 of the materials, and skill in the practice, of the 
 profession he chooses. And if he would not 
 allow his work to become a degrading drudgery, 
 a distasteful and wearisome bondage, he must 
 acquire and apply to it two insights : first, a per- 
 ception of the necessary and beneficent relation 
 it bears to the common necessities and welfare 
 
THE POSSESSION OF SOCIETY. 103 
 
 of mankind ; second, a recognition of the will of 
 God in it as a part of the 4 universal constitution 
 of things. The humblest routine of toil and 
 care, the tritest monotony of laborious repeti- 
 tions, is relieved of its worst pressure when we 
 see it to be a means of blessed service indispen- 
 sable in the order of society ; and it becomes 
 sublime when clothed afresh in the divine sanc- 
 tions of duty and love. The fabrication of pin- 
 heads is a trivial and repulsive task, viewed out 
 of its proper moral connections ; but when he 
 who bends himself to it lovingly associates there- 
 with thoughts of ministering to his family and 
 his kind, and glad purposes of obedience to his 
 Maker, he may become a hero and a saint, and 
 find his hardships transmuted into a romance of 
 redemption. 
 
 But in order to experience this magic moral 
 amelioration of oppressive tasks and make the 
 dark and bleak post of daily toil a glorious 
 centre of duty and joy, the vocation must be 
 an honest and helpful one. It must minister to 
 natural and virtuous wants. The parasites and 
 
104 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 the panders who diseasedly prey on their fellow- 
 beings, the seductress who lures victims to their 
 ruin, the purveyors to the vicious appetites of 
 men, the gamblers and speculators who inflame 
 the community with desire for discordant and 
 unhallowed gains, the setters of the bad exam- 
 ples of unprincipled ambition and selfish luxury, 
 are necessarily deprived of this precious privi- 
 lege. When gray disenchantment and the in- 
 cubus of ennui come upon these, they can find 
 no alleviation in that sweet sense of service to 
 their neighbor, no sublime joy in that recognized 
 obedience to God, which are able to make every 
 honorable laborer contented and grateful amidst 
 his work. The art of freshening and aggrandiz- 
 ing the humblest and most unvarying lot is to 
 contemplate its usefulness to men and its ordi- 
 nation by God ; for thus we and our toil are 
 directly associated with the beauty and grandeur 
 of that eternal principle of uses which is the 
 central revelation of the Creator and the source 
 of all the blessedness in the universe. 
 
POSSESSION OF THE UNIVERSE. 105 
 
 THE POSSESSION OF THE UNIVERSE. 
 
 The fourth and final aim of every student in 
 this world-school of life, the crowning combi- 
 nation and result of the other aims, is to secure 
 the immortal, ever-increasing enjoyment of a 
 free and harmonious soul which feels itself to be 
 a mystic image and heir of the Infinite. Here 
 at last we really touch the nature and grandeur 
 of man, and that sublime" goal of perfectibility 
 which retreatingly allures him on forever. For 
 he is a conscious centre at once in four worlds, 
 all whose treasures lie awaiting his appropria- 
 tion. He is a centre of being in the world of 
 God ; a centre of sense in the world of matter ; 
 a centre of thought in the world of mind ; and 
 a centre of interpretation and response in that 
 world of language which presents a concentrated 
 and continual revelation of the other three. 
 The laws of all these worlds, without breach or 
 joint or seam, pervade the infinitude of reality, 
 and have a consentient focus in every free per- 
 
106 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 sonality, whose faculties burn with prescience 
 and know no bounds which they do not spurn 
 with their insatiable demand and expansion. 
 When the individual spirit, fully developed and 
 equipped, in the attraction of beauty, in the au- 
 thority of truth, in the obedience of right, in the 
 inspiration of love, in the joy of liberty, exer- 
 cises its powers, communes with its Author, and 
 peacefully aspires to its eternal perfection, then 
 truly, and then alone, is the inclusive end of 
 earthly study and toil accomplished. 
 
 The ultimate object of every thing for man 
 here is to dignify and adorn his soul and ena- 
 ble him to live better, exalting his conscious life 
 to its highest maximum of nobility and bliss. 
 Nothing is of any final service to him which does 
 not help in some way to make him a nobler 
 being, master of a grander experience, — having 
 the adequate use of his body in nature, of his fac- 
 ulties in the soul, of his relations in society, and 
 of his being in the limitless universe of God. Ex- 
 cept as this aim is in some degree reached, all in- 
 structors, text-books, opportunities, are fruitless. 
 
POSSESSION OF THE UNIVERSE. 107 
 
 Placed in this magnificent and mysterious 
 school, surrounded with such costly privileges, 
 how solemn, then, is the duty, and how profound 
 must be the satisfaction, of so using our means 
 as every day to make unfailing progress ! It is 
 a dark and sorrowful fact that so many are 
 vicious roamers from the door, and so many care- 
 less idlers among the desks. Does it not seem 
 as if mature men and women would be above the 
 childish folly of playing truant from their tasks? 
 Yet nothing is more common. With all but one 
 in a thousand, said Lessing, the goal of thought 
 is where they grow tired of thinking. Let it not 
 be so with us. Let us ntft join that great mul- 
 titude who stop short when they can count ten, 
 fancying their education finished. Join we, 
 rather, those choicer scholars who are advancing 
 from the first signs of the alphabet and the in- 
 fantile rudiments of good to the last provinces of 
 speculative thought and the heroic heights of 
 saintliness, where the personal spirit becomes a 
 focal epitome of the universe, in breathing fellow- 
 ship with God and immortality. 
 
108 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 Then this old schoolhouse of the world shall 
 put on new splendor with each added year, our 
 teachers appear more persuasive and divine, and 
 the lessons and prizes held before us become 
 ever fuller of interest and sweetness. Instead of 
 complaining that we have* nothing to live for, 
 the great aims of life will fill us with an inspira- 
 tion of enthusiasm proof against every disheart- 
 enment. And should any one ask us what our 
 aim in life is, we can frankly reply : — 
 
 " I live for those who love me, 
 
 Whose hearts are kind and true, 
 For the heaven that smiles above me, 
 
 And awaits my coming too ; 
 For the human ties that bind me, 
 For the tasks by God assigned me, 
 And the good that I can do ! " 
 
 THE EDUCATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 
 
 Summing up the previous head of the subject 
 in one sentence, we may say that the collec- 
 tive end in human life is the attainment of the 
 good, the use of the true, and the fruition of 
 the beautiful, regarding these as manifestations 
 
THE EDUCATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 109 
 
 of divine being, revelatory symbols of God. 
 These alone, sought in the ways of right, and 
 crowned at their goals with the prerogatives of 
 power, can make us really noble and blessed. 
 For the pursuit of no other end is accompanied, 
 as this is, by the freshness and relish of a per- 
 petual variety, or marked, as this is, by a prog- 
 ress never to be finished. Truth, good, and 
 beauty are the divine philters given by the 
 infinite Lover to souls masquerading here in the 
 flesh, to make them love him. The effect of 
 taking these potions is sanity, serenity, incorrup- 
 tible blessedness. But for us to realize this effect 
 in lucid experience we must not suffer ourselves 
 to go blindly reeling through nature and life, 
 accepting material appearances as the ultimate 
 finalities of being. We must clearly see that 
 all outer things are but masks and forms which 
 serve as symbols to convey to our intelligence 
 and affection communications of power, wisdom, 
 and love from the Infinite One. All that ap- 
 pears to sense is the speech of God ; all that 
 is to spirit is the meaning of that speech. 
 
HO THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 In addition to the hints already thrown out in 
 passing, we need further light on the precise 
 method to be followed in the pursuit of our 
 ends. We must see more distinctly what is 
 the essential feature of the work necessary for 
 the completest compassing of our aims. It is the 
 development of consciousness, the rousing of the 
 personal consciousness of the pupil to its maxi- 
 mum of clearness and fulness in all directions. 
 
 DEFINITION OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 
 
 Consciousness, in the deepest meaning of the 
 term, is the intuitive grasp and feeling of itself 
 by the ego, the direct thinking into, and taking 
 possession of, its own subjectivity by the ego. 
 But, as more ordinarily apprehended, conscious- 
 ness is the play of changes in a personal self. 
 It is an interfusion of thought, feeling, and vo- 
 lition, in a centre of persistent identity. This 
 self, or centred identity, is the mystic substance 
 of our being, an indefinable entity, the constant 
 though trackless substratum of the shifting 
 
DEFINITION OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 1 1 1 
 
 states which we recognize. For the support of 
 a living consciousness, in the popular sense of 
 the word, three factors seem to be necessary : 
 first, a subject, or the self; second, an object, 
 distinguished from the self; third, a relation 
 between the subject and the object. The states 
 of the self and the states of the not-self, with 
 their mutual relations, constitute the woof and 
 warp and woven sheet of the texture of our 
 spiritual life. The self throws the crossing shut- 
 tle of the woof, the not-self holds the steady- 
 threads of the warp, and the connections of these 
 make the web of experience. 
 
 Consciousness is proportionate to the distinct- 
 ness and the co-ordination of these three ele- 
 ments rimmed with the selvage of individuality. 
 The sharper each feature is in its definition, and 
 the more varied and vivid are the combinations 
 of them all, the higher and richer will be the 
 consciousness. Vagueness, obscurity, and con- 
 fusion degrade and deaden whatever they affect, 
 coarsen the edge of faculty, and lower the rank 
 of life. 
 
112 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 The omniscience of God we suppose to be 
 perfect and absolute. He is infinitely conscious 
 of all that is, both as regards subjects and ob- 
 jects. We hold that the three distinctions in 
 his being — love, wisdom, and power — are the 
 ground of his self-knowledge, and constitute the 
 eternal pattern of every free personality. In 
 the unity of man exists a trinity of life, mind, 
 and will — instinct, reason, and affection — cor- 
 respondent with that of his Maker. The con- 
 sciousness of each is a subject-object in triple 
 combination, each of the three elements co- 
 penetrating the other two. And it seems clear 
 that our highest dignity and destiny consist in 
 raising our particular individual consciousness to 
 its climax, taking possession of our whole nature 
 and its relationships' in the completest possible 
 degree. God is power, wisdom, and love, in 
 their plenary and illimitable perfection. We also 
 are force, intelligence, and affection ; obscure, 
 finite images of him, called to recognize, in ever- 
 ascending degrees, the revelations he makes of 
 himself in the symbols of goodness, truth, and 
 
FIRST STAGE OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 113 
 
 beauty, and, by translating these into their living 
 uses, to brighten and exalt the divine likeness 
 in us to the highest pitch, approximating our 
 experience towards his own exactness of vision, 
 harmony of will, and fulness of joy. Every step 
 of this work implies the cleansing, the enlarge- 
 ment, the intensification, and the systematic 
 rule of consciousness. 
 
 Let us mark the progressive stages in this 
 evolution, beginning with the lowest. 
 
 FIRST STAGE OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 
 
 The most demoralized and lamentable -con- 
 dition of man is that in which the parts of his 
 bodily organization are so perverted from their 
 proper freedom and symmetry by contractions 
 or disproportionate developments that their func- 
 tions are thrown into discord and rigidly fettered, 
 while the faculties of his spirit, in an inward echo 
 of the same state, lose all but their crudest attri- 
 butes and act with the extremest sluggishness 
 and insensibility. Reduced to the animal ele- 
 
1 14 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 ments of his being, tied up in a confused mass of 
 fleshly instincts and spiritual powers enslaved 
 by mechanical habits, he blindly obeys the forces 
 that act on him within and without, quite igno- 
 rant of his own condition. This is the most de- 
 humanized state, the nearest to a machine, into 
 which man can sink, — chained, imprisoned, bur- 
 dened, goaded, lashed, deprived of every precious 
 prerogative of his nature, and not knowing it. 
 Thus the extremity of degradation is coincident 
 with the maximum of unconsciousness. 
 
 No one can descend beneath him who is a 
 perverted and insensate wretch, a beast, a slave, 
 or a devil of self-bondage and lawless appetite, 
 and is utterly unaware of it, — the parts of his 
 nature all misadjusted and inverted in their 
 order, — the free consciousness which ought to 
 reign in light at the summit being trodden under 
 foot in darkness. Here the man approaches the 
 automaton or puppet ; the life is an obscure stir 
 and fret of compressed functions ; the instruments 
 of the soul, and their uses, alike are chiefly out 
 of consciousness. 
 
FIRST STAGE OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 1 15 
 
 The essence of this condition consists in its 
 confinement and uneasiness. The stiff and 
 awkward clodhopper, the ignorant and drunken 
 boor, whose pipe and mug are the keenest com- 
 fort their obtuse senses can taste, as compared 
 with the refined and trained gentleman or lady 
 who has every muscle and every thought under 
 clear and full direction, are in a state of slavery 
 and misery, however little they may realize it. 
 
 The first necessity for elevating the victims of 
 this automatic subjection, this deathful routine, 
 is to make them conscious of their condition. 
 As soon as they learn to appreciate the facts of 
 the case, they will resent their bonds and aspire 
 to liberty. A man leading a swinish life, and 
 not perceiving its swinishness, as revealed by the 
 contrast of something diviner, — a man robbed 
 of nine-tenths of the richness and glory of his 
 human prerogatives by a rooted baseness and 
 torpidity, — may grovel contentedly on to the 
 end. But let noble examples of genius, heroism, 
 sacred service, romantic adventure, supernal 
 faith, flash into his soul a sudden perception 
 
Il6 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 of their transcendent superiorities, and the un- 
 wonted inspiration will kindle a new conscious- 
 ness, causing him to struggle for deliverance 
 from his old lethargy, enrolling him as a fresh 
 soldier of the ideal. 
 
 Under the evil historic conditions inherited 
 from the past, pain is the pioneer of con- 
 sciousness. Our conscious perceptions are first 
 awakened and intensified by facts of slavery and 
 misery, vexatious obstacles to our wishes. The 
 chafe and irritation of these are our stimulus to 
 seek for liberty and blessedness in the fulfilment 
 of the ends of our being. In angelic life, on the 
 contrary, delight is the pioneer of consciousness. 
 The perceptions and desires are elicited not by 
 obstacles but by gratifications. With them edu- 
 cation is the action of harmony and pleasure, 
 not the reaction of baffled powers. But with us 
 to suffer is to become conscious, and strife is the 
 price of victory. If this law appear hard, it is 
 nevertheless beneficent. How clearly he has 
 made a great step of advance and ascent who 
 has ceased to be unconscious of his limitations 
 
FIRST STAGE OF CONSCIOUSNESS. \\J 
 
 by learning to appreciate the prizes of higher 
 degrees of excellence and fruition contrasted 
 with the foils of lower ones ! 
 
 To earn by toil, or to receive by grace, any 
 valuable boon, it is a preliminary necessity that 
 we become personally conscious of our want of 
 it. Unused the days fly by, inertly our pow- 
 ers waste away, and the divine desirablenesses 
 crowding the universe draw no nearer to us, so 
 long as we lie stupidly contented in ignorance 
 or besotted with conceit. But as soon as we 
 begin sharply to feel our defects and covet the 
 possible supply, the path of progressive attain- 
 ment opens before us, and our energies are 
 strung to their appointed tasks. A story in 
 point is told of a king who had a lovely daughter, 
 idolized by him, but blind from her birth. She 
 had grown up to full maidenhood, kept sedu- 
 lously from knowing her great misfortune. One 
 day an old sage came to the court who promised 
 the king that he would give his child her sight. 
 But he declared it to be indispensable that she 
 should first become conscious of her blindness, 
 
Il8 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 that she might intelligently co-operate in the 
 needful process. The king sought to prepare 
 her. " My child," he said, " you know that your 
 feet are to walk with, your hands to touch with, 
 your ears to hear with, your nose to smell with, 
 your tongue to taste with. But others can also 
 see, while you are blind!' "Blind, father," she 
 asked in wonder, "what is that?" "Darling," 
 he added, " what do you think your eyes were 
 made for?" "Oh," she replied, "when my 
 heart is full, the tears always come into my 
 eyes ; and that, I suppose, is what they are for ! " 
 With the tenderest painstaking the king and the 
 sage succeeded in awakening in her the con- 
 sciousness of her defect, and at length, to her 
 unspeakable astonishment and delight, vision 
 was given to her. 
 
 Ah, yes, this principle holds true for all the 
 multitudes of the world. While the vain, the 
 proud, the insensible, impoverished and blinded 
 by their incompetent self-sufficiency, remain un- 
 blessed, the modest seekers and suppliants who 
 clearly feel their own deficiencies, and trust that 
 
SECOND STAGE OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 119 
 
 there is no pang without a remedy, no want 
 without a correspondent provision, are enriched 
 more and more with the choicest blessings of 
 earth and heaven. The stolid materialist, 
 absorbed in the scramble for sensual goods, 
 unaware of his spiritual blindness, can never 
 see any thing beyond the grasp of sense. The 
 devout comrade of nature and lover of men, 
 whose heart and imagination have been touched 
 by a mystic feeling of the Infinite, hungers and 
 thirsts after God, weeps in solitude over his 
 inner poverty and loneliness, seeks for God 
 through long years of darkness and sorrow, and, 
 in consequence, finally wins that experience of 
 the divine fellowship whose peace is deeper than 
 plummet of thought ever sounded, whose bliss is 
 higher than hint of language can ever reach. 
 
 SECOND STAGE OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 
 
 In regard to the education of self-perception 
 and the introspective reading of experience, the 
 lowest stage, as we saw, is where the organs 
 
120 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 and faculties, as well as their uses, are out of 
 consciousness. Then the man is an automatic 
 bundle, a heap of stagnant habitudes. The 
 second stage is when he becomes sensitive and 
 perceptive of his perversion, slavery, and degra- 
 dation. When the eye is disordered by inflam- 
 mation, in proportion as its uses are impeded or 
 excluded, the mechanism of its structure comes 
 into consciousness. A man suffering under an 
 attack of gout, in proportion as his attempts to 
 walk are baffled by the excruciating torture they 
 cause, becomes conscious of his foot and of its 
 unhappy condition. If he were fully aware of a 
 satisfactory locomotion, he would not think of 
 his pedal muscles or nerves at all. This dis- 
 tressing inversion of the rightful order of things 
 sharpens his perceptions, and educates him to 
 shrink from the evil which is actual, and yearn 
 towards the good which is possible. He has a 
 wretched sense of the instruments of his being, 
 but knows that they are thwarted of their 
 ends. They work ineffectually in obstruction 
 and friction. At this degree of evolution his 
 
THIRD STAGE OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 121 
 
 organs and faculties are in consciousness, their 
 uses out of it. 
 
 THIRD STAGE OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 
 
 But the third stage is attained when all our 
 personal instruments and their uses are distinctly 
 within our own free possession and direction. 
 Then we knowingly feel and wield our physiologi- 
 cal organs and our psychological faculties in the 
 actual fulfilment of their intentions. We em- 
 brace the means and the ends of our life together 
 in clear feeling, intelligence, and will. We con- 
 sciously contain our powers and voluntarily guide 
 them to their fruitions. A consummate billiard 
 player, or master of the art of fencing, has a clear 
 and strong sense of satisfaction in his conscious 
 command of the uses of his limbs and weapons. 
 The convalescent who has recovered from a 
 severe attack of dyspepsia often experiences a 
 sharp and massive pleasure, a pervasive feeling of 
 luxurious comfort, when, after a good meal, his 
 reinvigorated stomach properly fulfils its office, 
 
122 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 and the reports of the happy digestion are sent 
 all through his reposeful and assimilating organ- 
 ism. It is quite obvious how desirable an exalta- 
 tion this is above the horrors of the preceding 
 stage of conscious indigestion. 
 
 FOURTH STAGE OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 
 
 This liberated possession and enjoyment of 
 ourselves, in seeking our designed ends, is a high 
 and delightful stage of consciousness. Multi- 
 tudes always remain below it, constrained and 
 uneasy in -their various degrees of slavery and 
 misery. Very few ever rise above it to enter on 
 that fourth and last stage which is the supreme 
 height of experience, reached only by the rarest 
 spirits, namely, that stage in which the means 
 and instruments vanish in the very perfection 
 of their own operation. Then our organs and 
 faculties are out of consciousness, because the 
 exquisite fulness and harmony of their uses 
 preoccupy and absorb the consciousness. The 
 element of self is reduced in our apprehension to 
 
FOURTH STAGE OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 1 23 
 
 its utmost minimum, because our powers act to 
 their ends with such spontaneous ease and ex- 
 emption from disturbing limits and frictions that 
 consciousness takes no cognizance of any thing 
 but the performance and the fruition. 
 
 This is the state known as inspiration, in which 
 every action does itself so spontaneously that the 
 subject feels it not done by his own efficiency, 
 but by the influx and possession of some foreign 
 power. Inspired genius is intensely conscious, 
 but of its experiences rather than of self. The 
 more purely any function is realized, so much the 
 more perfectly it fills the field of consciousness 
 unadulterated and undistracted by any sense or 
 notice of the tools and the methods. But the 
 bungler, just in proportion to the crudity and 
 confusion of his bungling, is occupied with his 
 instruments and efforts, and has so much the less 
 faculty and freedom left for appreciating the 
 things done. The clumsiness and bashfulness of 
 the lout make it a fearful task and an intense 
 agony for him to execute a simple dance in 
 company ; but as the accomplished votary of the 
 
124 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 Terpsichorean art waltzes melodiously through 
 the mazes of movement, the body and limbs float 
 out of attention in automatic obedience to the 
 trained instincts, and a voluptuous intoxication 
 alone overflows the vessel of consciousness. An 
 eye in healthy state and normal action is delight- 
 edly conscious of the uses of vision, though not 
 at all aware of the physical apparatus. The 
 eager, tiptoe youth running over with life and 
 motion is so unconstrained and satisfied in his 
 moving that he thinks. not of the feet and muscles 
 with which he moves. An inferior musician, 
 playing an untried composition on a piano, has 
 his attention so taken up with the difficulties of 
 the instrumentation as to be quite unable to 
 enjoy the music ; but an absolute master plays 
 it so easily that his entire thought may be 
 devoted to a critical estimate, or a surrendered 
 enjoyment, of the harmony. 
 
 This is the divine type of life reproduced in 
 our human type, when the place occupied in 
 consciousness by organs and machinery comes 
 nearest to disappearance, and the place filled by 
 
FOURTH STAGE OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 1 25 
 
 uses and fruitions comes nearest to monopoly. 
 The adjustments in the geometry of the solar 
 system and its working are so perfect and 
 jarless that the instrumentality of mechanism 
 and force is wholly concealed in the fulness of 
 the visible effect. So the law of gravitation is 
 impenetrably hidden in its own transparency, but 
 its uses are obvious everywhere. God disposes 
 his means with such suavity that the perceptions 
 of the intellect can trace no effort, and attains his 
 ends with such power that the affections of the 
 will are satisfied. And this is the ideal for us to 
 cultivate, the typical life of heroes and seers who 
 have become saints, whose experiences are so 
 adequate and complete that their being is ab- 
 sorbingly occupied with satisfaction. Perfected 
 fruitions of ends so free the faculties that their 
 limits cease to fret the soul, and are no longer 
 reported in consciousness. This is the state of 
 ecstasy, or an experience so intense and lucid that 
 while it lasts it monopolizes us and obliterates 
 every thing else, giving to oblivion even the ex- 
 periencing selfhood and the containing time. 
 
126 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 The incomparable height and preciousness of 
 such an attainment reside herein, that it reduces 
 the individual aspects of our being to their small- 
 est dimensions, and exalts their universal signifi- 
 cance to its greatest possibility. «■. 
 
 THE CONTENTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 
 
 The evolution of consciousness opens to us 
 all the heights and depths of immensity and 
 eternity. It is the sole key to those transcendent 
 marvels of experience of which such strange hints 
 glimpse out at us in the writings of the Mystics. 
 For the human soul is^ a centre of being which 
 open outwardly into the illimitableness of the 
 material creation, and inwardly into the spiritual 
 boundlessness of God. And there is no fixed 
 confine to the receptive capacity of the soul thus 
 centred in the double infinity of the objects and 
 subjects whose two receptacles are space and 
 time, or immensity and eternity. 
 
 What an inexhaustible gamut of states human 
 consciousness can span ! It may be a stagnant 
 
CONTENTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 12J 
 
 fen of insensibility, a rotten mire of sensualism, 
 a disintegrating chaos of terror, a dazzling trance 
 of amazement, a dissolving delirium of delight, a 
 swoon of unbalanced excess, or an ecstasy of 
 peace based on the fulness of all the faculties 
 in exact equivalence. Madness in its wretched 
 extreme is an ecstasy of bias ; blessedness in its 
 inspired extreme is an ecstasy of equilibrium. 
 And what a range of degrees between the contor- 
 tions of the lunatic and the repose of the prophet, 
 the convulsive leaps of Saint Vitus, antitype of 
 the whirling dervish, and the Nirvana-soul of 
 Buddha, balancing equivalent of infinitude ! 
 
 THE SECRET FOR DEVELOPING CONSCIOUSNESS. 
 
 But what is the secret of guiding consciousness 
 along the path of development to the evolution 
 of its highest potentiality ? Attention. We 
 must gird up our faculties, and fix them on their 
 work, in a voluntary effort of watching the phe- 
 nomena that pass before them. We must direct a 
 concentrated attention at once upon the matters 
 
128 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 experienced, and the experiencing powers, if we 
 desire to push consciousness to greater fineness 
 and greater profundity. Carelessness, fickleness, 
 ambiguity, distraction, are our worst foes here. 
 Crowds of people feel, but perceive not what they 
 feel ; see, but know not what they see. Earnest 
 endeavors to clear our observing faculties from 
 every indecisive waver or blur, and to secure 
 the utmost purity and edge of discrimination, by 
 means of analysis, definition, comparison, and 
 contrast, will steadily tend to dispel fogs, shed 
 light upon obscurities, and bring the hidden 
 things of the regions of ignorance and surmise 
 to light within our assured grasp. 
 
 But the secret of the education and discipline 
 of consciousness is not merely the direction of 
 our awakened and energized attention to the 
 action of our organs and faculties. We must 
 also aim distinctly, by processes voluntarily pros- 
 ecuted, to secure the best co-ordination of the 
 body and the soul in their parts and in their 
 union. 
 
 In each example of exceptional, wholesome 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 1 29 
 
 power, beauty, and harmony of functions, we 
 shall find a condition of the organism in which 
 the centres and the surfaces are released from 
 every hampering tie with each other, and the 
 circulations between them are therefore in their 
 fullest volume and liberty. This condition is 
 equally favorable to excellence of appearance and 
 length of endurance. Organic rank and longevity 
 are intrinsic correlates. In opposition to this, 
 ugliness, plebeian lowness of function, deformity, 
 brittleness of state and quickness of decay, are 
 found in that condition of the organism where the 
 centres constringe the surfaces upon themselves, 
 and shrivelled fibres destroy all the open inno- 
 cence and ease of flesh and feature, reducing the 
 interplay of the organs and the transmission of 
 vibrations to their lowest terms. 
 
 An equal development of the vital, mental, 
 and moral natures, it is clear, furnishes the best 
 state for both richness and length of life, for 
 beauty and for staying power. The vice of an 
 over-developed vital nature in a man is gluttony ; 
 and he perishes of hypertrophy, an excessive 
 9 
 
130 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 tasking and clogging of the burdened circula- 
 tions overloaded with adipose. Such a one may 
 not be a glutton himself, but the ancestral or 
 habitual automatic action in him is, and he 
 has to suffer the consequence. The vice of an 
 over-developed mental nature is avarice ; and the 
 man perishes from atrophy, the excessive effort 
 of acquisition shrinking the structures, heating 
 and lessening the obstructed and irritated circu- 
 lations. The vice of an over-developed moral 
 nature is fanaticism ; an ascetic and jealous zeal 
 inverting the expenditures into their antitheses, — 
 love of good into hate of evil, desire for truth into 
 aversion for falsehood, and worship of the beau- 
 tiful into execration of the ugly ; and the man 
 perishes from the poisoning of the altered circula- 
 tions with the acrid ingredients of negation, sus- 
 picion, fear, and persecution. The desideratum 
 is to have each of the senses — the stomach, the 
 liver, the kidneys, the lungs, the brain, the heart, 
 every gland, every nervous plexus — free to sus- 
 tain its own proper form and rhythm of vibrations, 
 while all co-operate in an exact composite con- 
 
FIRST USE OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 1 3 I 
 
 cord, the whole body from scalp to sole capable, 
 as if it were one unbroken muscle, of elastic ex- 
 pansion and contraction from centre to extremes 
 under the lead of the will and the impulse of the 
 respiration. 
 
 This result attained in the physical tenement, 
 it becomes comparatively easy to establish a 
 similar state in the spiritual tenant, extruding all 
 sinful and morbid biases of egotism, and flood- 
 ing the individual forms with universal contents. 
 Then potency, virtue, charm, blessedness, lon- 
 gevity, are all seen at their highest values, and 
 human experience becomes a conscious realiza- 
 tion of the meanings of the divine symbols of 
 truth, beauty, and good. 
 
 FIRST REASON FOR EDUCATING CONSCIOUSNESS. 
 
 There are three reasons for trying thus to 
 educate our consciousness. The first is that we 
 may be warned by it of the earliest and least 
 symptoms of danger, and not, through our ob- 
 tuseness, allow distortions of form, deteriorations 
 
132 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 of structure, and disturbances or diminutions of 
 functions, to go on, unrecognized, until they are 
 remediless. Feeble persons often outlive the 
 robust, because their valetudinarian sensitiveness 
 detects the slightest signals of ill, and heeds 
 what is required ; while the oaken strength of the 
 others overlooks the faint summons to beware of 
 error, in a complacent hardihood unaware of the 
 harms and threats gathering suddenly and fatally 
 to smite. So the cultivated aspirant, all alive and 
 alert, starts up to grasp a good at the first and 
 dimmest indication of its approach or possibility 
 of attainment ; while the sluggard sleeps on, un- 
 noticing, until it is too late to act with any effect. 
 What is a sluggard ? One in whom laziness has 
 become organized into a dead instinct, which 
 works degradingly in the ignorant darkness of 
 its own sloth. In a soul of such unresponsive 
 lethargy there may be a wilderness of obscure 
 activities and signals going on with all their ap- 
 peals and warnings, and the possessor, torpid or 
 bewildered, be utterly uncertain of his duty ancl 
 his interest. But let definite perception fling its 
 
SECOND USE OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 1 33 
 
 light over the dusky domain, and his work will 
 be plain and its motives obvious: The uncertain 
 gloom and apathy are changed to precision and 
 decision. 
 
 SECOND REASON FOR EDUCATING CONSCIOUSNESS. 
 
 The next motive for a strenuous attempt to 
 educate our conscious perceptivity is that we may 
 know what to approve, to seek, and to cherish, and 
 what to reject, condemn, and avoid, outside of 
 ourselves as well as within ourselves. Nothing 
 can be more important for us than to be able 
 instantly and exactly to discriminate the good 
 from the bad, the true from the false, the graceful 
 from the awkward, the right from the wrong, the 
 ingenuous from the affected, so that we may 
 correctly regulate the reactions of our souls upon 
 them. It is our noblest duty, nay, it is our 
 divinest dignity, freely to order the constituents 
 and activities of our consciousness, loyally bring- 
 ing them into harmony with the manifested 
 attributes and laws of God. This can only be 
 
134 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 done by eliciting in all the latent capacities and 
 outlooks of our being the highest degrees of 
 objective cognition and subjective recognition. 
 Man must develop his consciousness in order 
 that he may become free, obeying nothing 
 except that which he ought to obey. He who 
 submits to a base appetite or passion, against his 
 reason or conscience, is a slave ; while he who 
 resists and overcomes it, because that is his duty, 
 is a freeman. The greatest help to this liberty 
 is an accurate discrimination of the ranks of 
 motives. 
 
 THIRD REASON FOR EDUCATING CONSCIOUSNESS. 
 
 Another reason for developing the personal 
 consciousness of each one to its utmost capacity 
 is that this is a necessary condition for the ex- 
 tension of our faculties and functions to take 
 possession of the finest and the grandest experi- 
 ences possible to human nature. The conscious 
 voluntary side of our activities remaining blunt, 
 loose, obscure, weak, incoherent, we must leave 
 
THIRD USE OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 1 35 
 
 vast ranges of the most delicate and sublime in- 
 telligence and emotion wholly beyond our grasp, 
 and even unsuspected by our imagination. The 
 stupidest and vulgarest of fallacies is to suppose 
 that things are the same to all, that the experi- 
 ences of men amount to about the same result. 
 Nothing is the same to any two persons. Every 
 experience is to be valued by its own worth, plus 
 the worth of the consciousness into which it 
 comes. The same experience when stirring the 
 activities of a soul which is a drop, and when 
 stirring those of a soul which is an ocean, would 
 have an almost infinitely different value in the 
 two cases. An electric shock is not measured 
 by the jar which emits it, but by the mass of the 
 conditions on which it takes effect. What is the 
 aesthetic value of a landscape when inspected 
 by the eye of a vulture as compared with its 
 value when contemplated by the eye of an artist ? 
 The divinest specimens of our race, unfolding and 
 utilizing their nature with a faithful persever- 
 ance engrafted on their free gifts, come at last 
 to experience a luminousness and precision of 
 
I36 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 thought, a grandeur and vividness of imagination, 
 a massive richness and intensity of emotion, 
 transcending the wildest dreams of the ground- 
 lings of humanity. One thrill of the soul of 
 Shakspeare outvalues the gathered experience 
 of a whole race of Calibans. The smallest spark 
 may fire the vastest magazine, while the hugest 
 flash must prove a weak affair if it meets but a 
 grain of powder. So the value of any experience 
 is to be estimated by adding to it the sum of the 
 faculties and accomplishments of him who ex- 
 periences it. There can be no stronger motive, 
 there need be no other, for cultivating the con- 
 sciousness to its most illuminated extension and 
 energy. 
 
 MOTIVES IN THE SCHOOL. 
 
 The next department of our subject is, the 
 motives which the schoolmasters of man use to 
 stimulate him to his tasks. Our native care- 
 lessness is such, our indolence is so deep-seated, 
 we are beset by so many distractions, the mis- 
 leading examples around us are so numerous 
 
MOTIVES IN THE SCHOOL. 1 37 
 
 and seductive, the temptations to yield to super- 
 ficial and perilous pleasures are so keen and so 
 constant, we have to encounter so many subtle 
 persuasions to self-deceit and evasion of the 
 stern behests of duty, that we need carefully to 
 cherish our sensibility to all the incentives of 
 aspiration and resolve. The commonest and 
 deadliest foe to excellence is the habit of dull 
 conformity to the average life around us, sinking 
 contentedly into a set of mechanical usages or a 
 torpid routine. To prevent this there must be 
 kept alive a fresh perception and feeling of those 
 great moral considerations which quicken and 
 instigate the energies of man to an untiring 
 pursuit of their appropriate goals. 
 
 If every one were in a wholesome condition, free 
 from foul delusions within and base allurements 
 without, then a distinct apprehension of virtues 
 and ends — the true things to be sought accord- 
 ing to the general agreement of mankind — 
 would be enough to keep his loyalty earnest. 
 The simple contemplation of a good end would 
 of itself generate the desire and will to attain it. 
 
138 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 But unfortunately such is not the case with 
 most of us. We are both fettered by slothful 
 errors and assailed by furious passions from 
 within, and also enticed by manifold fallacies 
 and blandishments from without. J\nd so the 
 necessity arises not only for us to see clearly 
 what the true ends in life are, but likewise con- 
 tinually to make the most vivid application we 
 can to our conscience and affection of the stimu- 
 lating inducements to fidelity in the pursuit of 
 these ends. 
 
 And the one primary thing in our power to do 
 in this respect is to cultivate our own moral sen- 
 sibility, so that it can, with the utmost quickness 
 and accuracy, discriminate and respond to the 
 different grades of moral stimulus. The fineness 
 and extent of the motives which suffice to ani- 
 mate a man determine his moral rank. How 
 wide is your mental horizon, and how definitely 
 does your sympathy include its details ? is the 
 question which distributes the souls of men in 
 their places on the scale of greatness and worih. 
 And is it not obvious how much is left here for 
 
MOTIVES IN THE SCHOOL. 139 
 
 every one of us to do or to neglect ? It is 
 forever within his own soul that the first work 
 is to be done by each person. In vain shall we 
 seek outwardly for the place where inspiration 
 falls from heaven. Wisdom and duty are to 
 cultivate the conditions of inspiration within us, 
 wherever we are. To him whose heart and 
 brain furnish a suitable conductor no spot of 
 space is without the tripod, but every atom is 
 drenched and sultry with power. 
 
 Just so long as the intrinsic attraction exerted 
 upon our hearts by the ends of life is insuffi- 
 cient to make the labor for them a spontaneous 
 tribute, we must still recall to attention the 
 motives which are their sanctions and spurs, and 
 nurse their influence on the will, not forgetting 
 meanwhile that something diviner even than 
 duty is seen when the bond of obligation is 
 transmuted into the garland of liberty. Man is 
 then most worthy in the sight of God when 
 from love through wisdom he spontaneously 
 fulfils uses unconstrained by any foreign mo- 
 tive. 
 
I40 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 DESIRE TO IMPROVE : ASPIRATION. 
 
 We are usually, however, in a state less free 
 and harmonious than that just described, a state 
 needing additional incitements. These are not 
 left unsupplied. But the educators of the human 
 pupil, with their adjuncts, the tutoring influences 
 of nature, properly make their first appeal to his 
 innate love of improvement in knowledge, pleas- 
 ure, and concord, his inherent desire for spiritual 
 power, joy, and peace. The soul was made on 
 purpose to learn to possess itself in conscious- 
 ness of truth and good, and it finds a pure bliss 
 in fulfilling this destiny. Even the most de- 
 graded pupil, amidst his ignorance and dirt, 
 instinctively loves knowledge and purity, and 
 yearns to rise into their atmosphere. That 
 sensitive plant, the human soul, however long 
 shut in darkness, leans towards the first ray of 
 light which struggles through the lattices of 
 its sensual dungeon. As the marvellous young 
 Novalis said, " Philosophy is homesickness, a de- 
 
DESIRE TO IMPROVE. 141 
 
 sire to be at home everywhere in the universe." 
 Man wishes to be on familiar terms with every 
 thing around him. He longs to have in his 
 mind a system of reasoned truths corresponding 
 with the divine body of truths amidst which he 
 is placed. There is a foreordained agreement 
 between the uses of all natural laws and the 
 faculties of the human mind, the beauties of the 
 creation and the sensibilities of the observer. 
 And by this original fact, by the pure desire and 
 joy of making progressive attainments, the pupil 
 is allured to his education, — allured with a force 
 proportioned to his spiritual rank. True fulfil- 
 ment everywhere is pure happiness. All the suf- 
 ferings of man are either the base alloys mixed 
 with the clear metal of his experience, or the 
 purging fires made necessary by his errors and 
 failures. The study and practice of wisdom and 
 love in their uses are the perpetual chewing of 
 a honey which never cloys ; and, compared with 
 a hut in which dwells a man devoted to this art, 
 the palace of Sardanapalus is a sty. 
 
142 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 DESIRE TO SURPASS OTHERS * AMBITION. 
 
 The second force which our teachers put in 
 play to keep us zealously at our studies is ambi- 
 tion. The most gifted and lofty students find 
 incentive enough in the intrinsic claims and 
 charms of excellence, and are rather called to 
 guard against over-excitement than tempted to 
 complain of dulness. But a great many, if left 
 to this motive alone, would find it but deadish, 
 and would sleep and stagnate. There is, there- 
 fore, in human nature — and it is fortunate there 
 is — a strong propensity to set up standards in 
 the sight of spectators, and endeavor to reach 
 them : to enter the lists with rivals, and fight for 
 victory. Nature subsidizes this stimulant for 
 high ends ; sometimes, unhappily, for low ends. 
 
 There is a noble emulation, each one striving 
 to see who can do the best ; and there is a mean 
 competition, each one plotting to defeat his peers. 
 The hateful existence of this jealous form of ambi- 
 tion has led many teachers to condemn the em- 
 
DESIRE TO SURPASS OTHERS. 1 43 
 
 ployment of any overt prizes or invidious distinc- 
 tions as incitements to greater exertion ; and we 
 must confess our sympathy goes very far with 
 them. But a good thing is not to be wholly re- 
 jected because a bad thing now and then steals 
 in after it. The use is to be kept, while careful 
 measures are taken to avert the abuse. The 
 higher motives should receive the greater promi- 
 nence, but it does not yet seem expedient to ex- 
 clude the lower ones. A bar of steel, hung in the 
 magnetic meridian, and struck, is magnetized ; 
 that is, the vibrations received cause a molecular 
 rearrangement, and the metal acquires new and 
 nobler qualities. So there is something very 
 beautiful, expressive of a divine law, when an 
 idle and reckless boy, placed in a class of studious 
 and aspiring ones, is suddenly struck by emu- 
 lation, magnetized with a higher motive, and 
 begins to work in a resolute and generous style 
 foreign to him before. No, this force is not 
 always an unworthy one. 
 
 See how it is in the great school of God. What 
 innumerable rewards of merit, with nicely gradu- 
 
144 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 ated degrees, are there prepared and distributed ! 
 Now one is promoted to the head of his class ; 
 now one receives a medal. What applauses, 
 resounding across seas and echoing to far ages> 
 are for those who acquit themselves brilliantly 
 on the exhibition-days of the world ! To take 
 this mighty impulse all away, at present, would 
 surely be pernicious, if not fatal. 
 
 And yet it must be admitted that this motive 
 is too frequently used and too strongly pressed. 
 Society suffers in all its avenues from the fierce 
 contests of men with one another for superiority. 
 The struggle entails a ruinous extravagance of 
 exertion, as well as excites to a feverish exaspera- 
 tion selfish passions previously but too intense. 
 This high-strung contention is adapted to lessen 
 or exclude the action of purer and nobler motives 
 far more wholesome alike for the private indi- 
 vidual and the general public. The true com- 
 petitor for man to take is himself, — ever calmly 
 and heroically working to make his present sur- 
 pass his past, and his future transcend his pres- 
 ent. That is to say, the most auspicious, the 
 
' FEAR OF PUNISHMENT. 145 
 
 truly divine, contest of man is that in which he 
 makes his actual self the rival of his ideal self, 
 and illustrates with a series of realizing victories 
 the models strewn along the ascending heights of 
 his career. The supreme aim of the educator — 
 whether the educator of himself or the educator 
 of others — should be to need less and less the 
 goading stimulus of those historic motives of self- 
 love, pride, emulation, and vanity, which transmit 
 the virus of ancient antagonisms, and to use more 
 and more the calming inspiration of those pro- 
 phetic motives of duty, disinterestedness, sym- 
 pathy, and universal harmony, whose promises 
 guide the way of humanity, and already throw 
 their illumination on a redeemed future. 
 
 FEAR OF PUNISHMENT : DISGRACE. 
 
 The teachers in the school of life have also a 
 powerful hold upon many of their pupils in the 
 sense of shame and the fear of punishment. In 
 the book of public observation and memory, black 
 marks are made for the faults of offenders. The 
 10 
 
I46 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 ignoramus, the shirk, the plagiarist — bung- 
 ling, boosted by prompting, or stupidly silent — 
 are degraded to the foot, and must suffer mor- 
 tification, especially on examination-days and 
 when it comes time to review. Strict rules have 
 to be enforced, even if severe measures are 
 necessary, upon the dunces, the rogues, the 
 truants, and the rebels of the school. Otherwise 
 the utter subversion of discipline and nullification 
 of good results would ensue. The imprisonment 
 of formidable criminals is their suspension, the 
 execution of desperate characters is their ex- 
 pulsion, from the school of life. And while it 
 is true that self-esteem, anger, and mortification 
 are adulterated motives, we must not overlook 
 the fact that they are powerful ones, and often 
 quite indispensable. Their usefulness is extreme, 
 although on a vulgar plane. Give pride and 
 shame sufficient strength, and they will make the 
 jail and the gibbet needless. 
 
 The complex machinery of legal and ceremo- 
 nial penalty and reward is the venerable device 
 for keeping order while the world's pupils are 
 
FEAR OF PUNISHMENT. 1 47 
 
 studying their lessons. But the model scholar 
 is one who is always exemplary, not from fear 
 of punishment, but from spontaneous inclina- 
 tion; who, mild and prompt in manners, heeds 
 his teachers with reverence ; who is impelled 
 •not by vanity, but by love of study ; and who 
 thinks more of acquisition than of recitation, 
 more of progress than of promotion. 
 
 Still it is a fact not to be forgotten that in- 
 evitable retributions are awarded according to 
 deserts. The Brahmanic devotee, refusing to 
 move, is paralyzed and stiffened into a helpless 
 stump ; so the miserable mental sluggard slowly 
 perishes from atrophy of thought, a marasmus 
 or wasting away of the unnourished soul. The 
 critic who examines every thing, not to assimilate 
 it and profit by it, but to find fault with it and 
 reject it, is the victim of a spiritual dyspepsia. 
 We read in Greek mythology that the hapless 
 Orion, patiently turning his blank eyeballs 
 towards the sun, at length received his sight. 
 So the blind soul, holding itself to the truth 
 with noble desire, obtains the power of vision 
 
148 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 as its reward. Culture, accordingly as it is 
 good or bad, is in itself both pay and penalty. 
 For a symmetrical or a deformed education will 
 mould the faculties and train the habits of its 
 subjects to fair or to hideous results. Just as 
 in those English forests of oaks, grown for ship- 
 timber, some are helped to shoot up tall and 
 straight, but others are artificially guided into 
 twisted shapes of knots, knees, curves, and 
 angles, which the vegetation of simple nature 
 never knew. 
 
 THE LAW OF EXPRESSION AS A MOTIVE. 
 
 Perhaps the most central and powerful, cer- 
 tainly one of the most intrinsic and inexhausti- 
 ble, of stimulants to the pursuit of excellence in 
 character and in accomplishments is that which 
 arises from a clear appreciation of the moral 
 ranks and values of different men and -of their 
 experiences, as revealed through the law of ex- 
 pression. He who estimates his fellows coarsely 
 by their degrees of outward success alone, and 
 
LAW OF EXPRESSION AS A MOTIVE. 1 49 
 
 sees no marked distinction between the genius 
 and the charlatan, the coward and the hero, 
 the sluggard and the aspirant, the cynic and the 
 humanitarian, the voluptuary and the saint, the 
 artist and the bungler, the sage and the dolt, 
 may be excitable only to vulgar ends by vulgar 
 motives, and may doze in stupid contentment 
 while the clarions of the cherubim are sounding 
 and God himself is displaying his divinest prizes. 
 But let one have a keen discrimination of the 
 various orders of character, with a loathing for 
 the base and a reverence for the noble, and as 
 each example in turn passes before his inspec- 
 tion, the appropriate grades of moral passion 
 are kindled in his soul, and he is armed with 
 aversion for the evil and reanimated with love 
 for the good. 
 
 This is a result equally desirable for the indi- 
 vidual and for the community : because such a 
 man cannot remain inert and unprogressive in 
 himself; nor can he be deceived by the claimants 
 for public honor and advancement who solicit 
 his approval. He will well understand how to 
 
150 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 distinguish the little, fidgety natures, afflicted 
 with an itch for notoriety, restlessly planning to 
 secure prominence and to palm themselves off 
 on the people as leaders and idols, from the 
 great calm spirits who slowly grow in weight 
 and worth by a solitary waiting on God, a sacred 
 devotion to truth and good ; and who are ever 
 more earnest to acquire private merit than to 
 gain a public recognition of it, however strongly 
 they may desire the latter also. If such an edu- 
 cation in discriminative insight were general, the 
 superficial and unprincipled self-seekers, now so 
 commonly hoisted into conspicuous stations, 
 would remain in the obscurity and neglect be- 
 fitting them, and a very different class of men 
 would be called to the posts of leadership. 
 
 The expression of the votary of ambition and 
 vanity compared with that of the votary of worth 
 and improvement, makes it easy for any one who 
 understands the manifestations of character in- 
 stantly to tell them apart. The one desires the 
 appearances and the material advantages of 
 merit ; the other seeks the reality of it, with 
 
LAW OF EXPRESSION AS A MOTIVE. 151 
 
 its spiritual fruitions. The one is uneasily en- 
 gaged in plots to make himself prominent before 
 the public eye, that he may show off and gain 
 the admiration and envy of men ; the other is 
 busy in private labors to purify and harmonize 
 his faculties and perfect his attainments. If this 
 latter one too seeks opportunities of appearing 
 on public occasions, it is neither for ostentation 
 nor for selfish advancement, but to fulfil his uses. 
 And if he cannot get such opportunities without 
 servile attentions to petty or corrupt persons, he 
 quietly foregoes them, and retires into the un- 
 noticed routine of private duty, satisfied with his 
 own respect and the all-weighing approbation of 
 God. 
 
 Such a man as Daniel Webster would covet 
 the presidency of the United States, because he 
 knew he was pre-eminently fitted to fill the sta- 
 tion with dignity and honor, with credit to him- 
 self and glory to the country. But numerous 
 men, celebrated solely as political managers, 
 caucus-dictators, have impudently sought to foist 
 themselves into that great office — as all ac- 
 
152 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 quainted with their real characters are well 
 aware — for merely selfish ends, from personal 
 ambition. Such men, so far from being ad- 
 mired for their brilliancy and prowess, their 
 "scathing invectives and brilliant outbursts," 
 should be nauseated. Instead of being enabled to 
 travel over the land amidst showy ovations, care- 
 fully prepared by themselves and their conspira- 
 tors, they should be retired from public life, as 
 the most insidious enemies of the people and the 
 worst danger of the country. 
 
 The demagogue may always be known by the 
 ignoble passions he makes use of, the low motives 
 he appeals to, his quarrelsome egotism, the parti- 
 san and personal character of his ends, the bitter 
 dissensions he breeds, his habit of withdrawing 
 public attention from generous aims and benefi- 
 cent measures and fixing it upon mean and irri- 
 tating things. For their own protection from 
 misleaders, the citizens of a country where the 
 ballot rules should learn to interpret the signs of 
 character. For when the ideals of a people are 
 just their government will be pure. They will 
 
LAW OF EXPRESSION AS A MOTIVE. 1 53 
 
 see that a statesman should be a pilot, but that a 
 politician is a barnacle. Statesmanship is the 
 art of changing a faulty nation from what it is 
 into what it ought to be. Politics is too often 
 but the set of tricks by which scrambling man- 
 agers secure their own elevation and emolument. 
 Ambition excites the conspiracy of the few, 
 while patriotism would inspire the co-working of 
 all. Mastery of the law of expression will enable 
 him who loves his country to detect the char- 
 latan and the plotter under all their disguises, 
 and so preserve his unprostituted vote for those 
 really worthiest to teach and guide the people. 
 
 But that law has a still more intimate personal 
 application to us all. It is the key to self- 
 direction as well as to the estimates we should 
 form of others. 
 
 The secrets of our being and the ultimates of 
 our destiny are, in the case of every one of us, 
 concentrated and published in the expression of 
 our form and its bearing. When the face is un- 
 covered, and the voice in exercise, what open or 
 hidden truth of his personality and experience 
 
154 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 can a man hold back from betrayal to the com- 
 petent beholder and listener ? Not one. In the 
 proportions and play of his features, in every 
 limb, in every look, in every motion, the deepest 
 mysteries of his disposition and life leak out, flash 
 forth, or obscurely hint in pregnant symbols at 
 what they are. No mortal can escape either the 
 facts of his individuality or the law of their 
 manifestation. The angles and curves of his 
 movement, the sway of his centre of gravity, the 
 inflections of his speech, the depth of his eye, a 
 hundred nameless signals intuitively grasped, re- 
 veal the measure of his soul, the grade of his ex- 
 perience, the quality of his conscience, his mystic 
 poise and openness of sensibility or his sandy 
 dryness, and make him wondrously attractive 
 or shallowly neutral or painfully repulsive, — 
 according to the scale of nature and the domin- 
 ancy of habit indicated. And he cannot help it ; 
 because being is fate and expression is its signal. 
 The skin of every one is the livery of the god 
 he serves. Look first at the roseate bloom, 
 peach tint, pearly purity, and satin texture of the 
 
LAW OF EXPRESSION AS A MOTIVE. 155 
 
 cheek of youthful health and innocence, then at 
 the washed-leathern or tripe-like face of a hag- 
 gard old roue ; and what more penetrative moral 
 lesson can be applied to a soul of undefiled 
 sensibility ? 
 
 The eyes are the amulets of the mind. 
 Through one pair shine angelic messages sig- 
 nifying all that goes on in the seventh heaven ; 
 while another pair mean no more than a couple 
 of beads ; and another still, bloodshot and stained 
 with all foulness, seem surcharged with the vices 
 and crimes of Tophet. Who that has the least 
 perception of the ranks of things, of the com- 
 parative worths of experiences, but would be de- 
 lighted to own the first as his, pained or horrified 
 at the others ? 
 
 The nose is the index of the soul and the rudder 
 of the body. And how it varies in its grades of 
 moral revelation, from the royal and divine symbol 
 of immortal liberty, pride, power, worship, and re- 
 pose, in the Apollo, to the monstrous fungus, or 
 the shapeless bulb of warty purple, sometimes 
 shamelessly protruded on the face of a glutton- 
 
156 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 ous wine-bibber. And these various expressions 
 not only betray the secrets, ancestral or individ- 
 ual, of their subject ; they likewise rain retribu- 
 tion on him in the instinctive emotions they 
 conjure up in their beholders. 
 
 The voice is the organ of the character. Our 
 chronic states of body and dominant modes of 
 affection fix the qualities of our vocal utterance, 
 which ranges from squeak, grunt, and splutter, to 
 flute, harp, and trumpet, and produces in the 
 hearer estimates antl feelings towards us in pre- 
 cise accordance with what it is supposed to show 
 we are, through what it seems to symbolize. 
 What an intense motive is here brought to bear 
 on every one who cares for the judgments of his 
 fellows, to become all that he ought to be, so 
 that his expression will produce in others the 
 emotions he would wish them to entertain 
 towards him ! For the only sure way to seem 
 attractive is by being worthy. 
 
 There is a man whose supercilious forehead 
 and insolent breast look as if they were aston- 
 ished and indignant that all persons do not kneel 
 
LAW' OF EXPRESSION AS A MOTIVE. 1 57 
 
 in worship as they come in sight ; and his arro- 
 gant demeanor makes every one resent him with 
 anger, with disgust, or with pity, according to 
 the disposition of the observer. Who would be 
 willing unwittingly to evoke and draw on him- 
 self such an instinctive reaction ? 
 
 A certain man, after an avaricious and cruel 
 career full of wrong success, died, leaving a vast 
 fortune which his skinflint soul had kept him 
 from using and forced him merely to hoard. An 
 artist competent to do .it, if asked to epitomize 
 his history and symbolize his life, would draw a 
 gaunt leg and foot running away, and a bony 
 hand convulsively clutching a bag of money 
 surmounted by a flint with a skin tightly drawn 
 over it. Who that can read meanings would not 
 rather live and die very poor, than be doomed to 
 carry such an expression and leave such a moral ? 
 But in overwhelming contrast with this dire 
 specimen, there is a man who at seventy-five 
 is as young and fresh in heart as ever, ingenuous, 
 modest and affectionate as a maiden, heroic and 
 chivalrous as a knight, master of the mighty 
 
158 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 treasures of history, science, poetry, and philos- 
 ophy, blessed devotee of truth, beauty, and good, 
 flaming with generous indignation at injustice 
 and tyranny, loving all humanity as he loves 
 himself, quick to answer every call of suffering, 
 rapt in worshipful contemplation of God, ab- 
 solutely fearless of death in his solid assurance 
 of immortality. The expressive symbol for this 
 character would be an outstretched, open hand, 
 full of gifts, and an altar with a burning heart on 
 it, from which a diffusive incense ascends into 
 the over-arching infinitude. Can any intelligent 
 and sensitive observer look on this contrast and 
 not be filled with a beautiful desire and nerved 
 with a sacred resolution ? 
 
 There comes down the front steps of her 
 glittering mansion a woman of great wealth and 
 aristocratic family, beflounced, bejewelled, and 
 befurred, with a hundred thousand dollars value 
 in toggery on her person. She laboriously 
 climbs, with obsequious aid, into her carriage 
 with its uniformed flunkeys, and rolls along the 
 avenue, looking down with lazy disdain on the 
 
LAW OF EXPRESSION AS A MOTIVE. 1 59 
 
 plebeian passers, her nose seeming incessantly 
 to sniff the perfume of her own pride, and to 
 seek with angry disappointment the scent of 
 homage from others. Her luxury and sloth have 
 deformed her out of all symmetry into a fearful 
 ugliness, and her arrogant temper has depraved 
 the features of her visage into the mingled ex- 
 pression of a pride whose complacence no gazer 
 can stomach, and of an exaction whose merciless 
 stoniness is frightful. She weighs two hundred 
 and eighty pounds. Her eyes and ears are sunk 
 half out of sight, while her lips and cheeks, of the 
 color of pounded beefsteak, are hanging collops. 
 Yet this awful mass of fat and blood without, 
 conceit and scorn and burdensome uselessness 
 within, thinks herself an object of interest, and 
 superior to most of her fellow-beings, because 
 she is rich in money and of high lineage in the 
 fashionable world ! What a terrible plunge her 
 self-esteem would make if she could understand 
 the figure she cuts in the sight of all who can 
 read and estimate interiors and exteriors by the 
 intrinsic standards of excellence ! What a differ- 
 
l6o THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 ent picture, and what an opposite result, had this 
 woman been a gentle and devout lady, so wisely 
 faithful to every law of duty and grace as to 
 secure for herself at once transcendent goodness 
 of character and exquisite beauty of person, not 
 proud of her fortune, but consecrating it as a 
 means of greater usefulness, a model of fidelity 
 in every domestic and social relation, surrounded 
 by loving friends, followed by worshipful in- 
 feriors ! We all perforce express what we are, 
 and are treated, secretly if not publicly, in ac- 
 cordance. 
 
 At the same time, in the same city with the 
 foregoing example of half-dehumanized mon- 
 strosity, lives a poor shop-girl, whose wages barely 
 supply herself and her aged mother with the 
 necessities of existence. At nightfall she hurries 
 to the single upper chamber which is their home. 
 A canary sings welcome, and there are a few 
 simple prints on the walls, and some flowers 
 growing in the windows. As the mother and 
 child embrace each other, with a kiss, their faces 
 are filled with a divine light of love. In spite of 
 
LAW OF EXPRESSION AS A MOTIVE. l6l 
 
 poverty and toil the maiden has health and 
 strength, and a heart as full of trust and joy as 
 it is of innocence and affection. She seems ever 
 encompassed by invisible angels, because she 
 is herself a visible angel of goodness, beauty, 
 and grace. She carols at her tasks about the 
 chamber as lightly as a bird, and is as happy as 
 the spirits of guiltlessness and unselfish service 
 can render their spotless habitation. No unper- 
 verted spectator can behold her, and take the 
 impression of her exquisite charm of soul and 
 form and feature, without a reverential tribute of 
 admiration and love. An ineffable harmony and 
 blessedness float about her wherever she moves, 
 enveloping her as a spiritual atmosphere whose 
 fragrant loveliness every friend senses with a 
 mystic delight. Is there any motive stronger 
 than the one thus conveyed should be to inspire 
 the wish and purpose l;o be good and pure, guile- 
 less, modest, loyal to duty, an open medium of 
 the divine spirit ? What we are, breathes 
 through us at every pore. What we do, moulds 
 the interiors and leaves its trace on the exteriors, 
 ii 
 
1 62 % THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 Destiny reveals us in our expression, assigns us 
 our rank, shows to every interpreter how pre- 
 cious we are, or how worthless, and makes us 
 correspondently charming or odious. 
 
 To know this law, and to practise the art of 
 reading its lessons in others and in ourselves, is 
 the most stimulative of all the forms of moral 
 education. And when we see one making the 
 most debased and horrid manifestations of its 
 secrets, in utter ignorance of it himself, the 
 application of its teachings becomes more pun- 
 gent and awful than ever. The writer, in illus- 
 tration, vividly remembers an example from 
 many years ago. The keeper of a stall in a 
 metropolitan market for the sale of pork had 
 amassed a large fortune, and was much puffed 
 up by the consequence it gave him in his own 
 eyes and in the eyes of his vulgar peers. He 
 knew not that he was unspeakably coarse, mean, 
 ungainly, stupid, and devoid of interest. Asked 
 one day to contribute a small sum in charity, 
 he refused with offensive bluntness. Instantly, 
 before the refined vision of his applicant, the 
 
LAW OF EXPRESSION AS A MOTIVE. 1 63 
 
 huge boor was unveiled in symbolic revelation. 
 The visitor saw the butcher stripped, scraped, 
 hung by a gambrel through his ankle on a hook 
 in the stall, while one of the dead animals was 
 taken down, placed upright on his hind feet, and 
 apparelled in a pair of trousers, a necktie, and a 
 linen collar ; and it was then quite impossible 
 to tell which was the man and which was the 
 hog. 
 
 And, before spiritually minded observers, this 
 dreadful blazonry of the interiors is continuously 
 going on, all over the world, wherever men meet 
 and part. What a motive to make us shrink 
 from the evil, yearn to the good ! What a 
 tremendous exposure of the portents of human 
 doom, in the constant day of judgment ! 
 
 A young man, whose portrait had just been 
 painted, when it came home sat down to a care- 
 ful study of it, to see if he could detect what it 
 revealed. He recognized in it something which 
 greatly dissatisfied him. He destroyed the por- 
 trait, saying to himself, " If that is the way I 
 look, I must at once begin to cultivate traits and 
 
1 64 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 lead a life which will develop a better expres- 
 sion, an expression which will show me to be 
 worthy of the respect and affection of those I 
 shall meet in the various paths of the world." 
 There spoke the voice of a noble aspiration 
 sustained by a profound insight, and setting an 
 example pre-eminently worthy to be followed by 
 every one who would make his real become 
 plastic under the remoulding influence of a 
 diviner ideal. 
 
 TWO CLASSES OF MOTIVES. 
 
 Thus we see that there are two classes of 
 motives for stimulating pupils to the discharge 
 of their duty. First, the positive motives, 
 hopes of the rewards of fidelity and success ; 
 desires for the substantial goods of experience. 
 These appeal most strongly to high and gen- 
 erous natures. Secondly, the negative motives, 
 fears of disagreeable punishments of sin and 
 failure ; aversions from the retributive evils of 
 experience. These appeal most strongly to low 
 and mean natures. 
 
THE SCALE OF MORAL RANKS. l6$ 
 
 The skill to see' which kind of motive will 
 work best in a given instance is a desideratum 
 in a teacher : for there are pupils on whom the 
 silken thread of honor has a more powerful hold 
 than the hempen cable of infamy ; and there are 
 others whom a shock of alarm will impel much 
 farther than any attraction of reverence can. 
 
 THE SCALE OF MORAL RANKS. 
 
 There is a moral scale which marks the ranks 
 of motives. The top of the scale is the disinter- 
 ested love of right, whose standard is the will 
 of God, the universal order and fitness of things, 
 what is in itself absolutely the best and most 
 becoming, — these three formulas being but dif- 
 ferent modes of stating the same thing, — though 
 no little discernment is required to know which 
 form of expression will, in each case, be most 
 intelligible and effective. The bottom of the 
 scale is the base dread of bodily pain. Between 
 these two extremes, of pure loyalty to truth and 
 good, and of mean shrinking from physical chas- 
 
1 66 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 tisement, there are many grades, the relative 
 height of each one of which is determined by 
 the degree of its limitation to mere self, or of its 
 extension to include unselfish ends, — the happi- 
 ness or unhappiness of relatives and friends, the 
 approval or disapproval of neighbors, the benefit 
 or injury of the community and the world, the 
 order or disorder of the universe, the smile or 
 frown of God. The moral worth of the motive 
 brightens and rises with each expansion of the 
 good regarded ; darkens and sinks with each 
 contraction of that good. And what a gamut 
 it is which man spans between the free sacrifice 
 of his life in rapturous martyrdom for humanity, 
 and the reckless subordination of every higher 
 good to the appetite for a quid of tobacco or 
 an intoxicating quaff! 
 
 Now, the noblest pupil is he who is most 
 capable of being ruled exclusively by means of 
 the highest motive ; and the basest pupil is he 
 who is least able to be ruled by any but the 
 lowest motive. The aim of every teacher, with 
 reference to the motives he applies, should be to 
 
% THE SCALE OF MORAL RANKS. 1 67 
 
 begin at the, top of the scale, and descend as 
 little and as rarely as possible and yet keep 
 order and secure his ends. The character and 
 rank of any teacher, as a disciplinarian, may be 
 accurately graded by the constancy with which 
 he is able to stay at the summit of the scale, or 
 the frequency with which he is forced to stoop 
 to the foot of it. Every high-toned teacher, in 
 literal schools, or in the great untechnical school 
 of life, will wish to rise in his appeals, along 
 the ascending personal affections, to where con- 
 science is a pure echo of the divine law; and 
 will dislike to sink along the narrow shames and 
 hates, down to where the flesh winces under 
 the rod. 
 
 Education should counteract, not foster, self- 
 ishness. Glory may be used as a spur; it should 
 never be made an aim. Aspiring to acquire 
 and impart disinterestedness, the motives ought 
 always to be congruous with the business. Who 
 would light a torch to exhibit a star ? 
 
 No other motives wear like the disinterested 
 ones. Ambition, disappointed, is apt to turn 
 
1 68 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 into misanthropy. And it often grows torpid 
 when fed on applause ; there is danger of too 
 many poppies creeping among its laurels. But 
 its edge can never become dull when whetted 
 by the constant sight of superior perfection. 
 
 No other man is characterized by such dignity 
 and calmness as he who is consecrated to the 
 divinest ends and possessed by the loftiest mo- 
 tives. Vulgarity and fear mark those who are 
 subservient to the temporary means and artifices 
 of society, while a noble serenity distinguishes 
 him whose chief attention is given to the eternal 
 aims and authorities of life. Our agitation and 
 precariousness are proportioned to the lowness, 
 our weight and poise to* the altitude, of our 
 ends and motives. A shock may shatter the 
 ship, but no storm can stir the star. 
 
 RULES IN THE SCHOOL. 
 
 There are a few practical rules by which the 
 pupil, grappling with the life-studies assigned to 
 him in this world, will do well to be guided. 
 
RULES IN THE SCHOOL. 169 
 
 These rules are drawn from the experience of 
 sage teachers, and embody the best advice their 
 philosophy can furnish for the young disciples 
 who look to them for direction. 
 
 I. The first rule is, Have a definite object, and 
 keep it distinctly in view. Do not live at random. 
 Purpose is the very life of our life, without which 
 a man might as well not be a man. Miscellane- 
 ous studies not integrated by some comprehen- 
 sive design, rambling desires and incoherent 
 efforts, tend to scattered and vague results 
 swiftly evaporating. An aimless man will always 
 be a nameless man. 
 
 A chronic purpose, firmly held in sight, year 
 after year, is like an intellectual trade-wind blow- 
 ing through the life, magnetizing the mind, and 
 attracting all the appropriate materials that pass. 
 Definiteness of aim also brings every thing to a 
 head, concentrates and organizes into available 
 shape things otherwise lawlessly distributed, 
 useless, and soon lost. Toils and acquisitions 
 which, with unsettled intentions, flatten into a 
 desert, with consistent designs, loom into a 
 
170 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 mountain. A ruling purpose is thus necessary 
 to make repetitions accumulation, and to com- 
 bine fractional experiences into an integral life. 
 
 II. Make no skips. As far as you go, master 
 every step thoroughly. To the childish mind it 
 sometimes seems a shrewd achievement to omit 
 a dull page, evade a puzzling impediment, leap 
 over a difficult task or chapter, and go on to the 
 next. Even adult pupils, in the gravest affairs 
 of life, are not unfrequently guilty of the same 
 folly. But it saves a little exertion in the pres- 
 ent, only to impose far severer efforts in the fu- 
 ture. It spares a little patience now, but by and 
 by will exact the remitted sum with compound 
 interest at a hundred per cent. Every such 
 omission costs a thousand times more than it 
 saves : for succeeding processes depend on pre- 
 ceding ; and, sooner or later, exigencies will arise 
 out of which there is no extrication but by going 
 back, and doing, at a greatly heightened expense, 
 the work which the callow toilsman thought he 
 was so acute in eluding. 
 
 Life in all its great enterprises and aspirations, 
 
RULES IN THE SCHOOL. 171 
 
 from first to last, is like a chain : no matter how 
 excellently made and welded the chain, no 
 matter how well fastened at one extremity to 
 a precious load, no matter what immense draw- 
 ing power clasps it at the other extremity, — if, 
 at any intermediate point, a single link be un- 
 hasped or wanting, the load cannot be moved, 
 all the elaborate apparatus is useless. 
 
 Buckle down, therefore, resolutely to every 
 problem in turn as you reach it, and never give 
 it up unvanquished. Every such conquest sharp- 
 ens the wits, confirms the courage, makes the 
 soul athletic and self-reliant, and engenders a 
 growing force to win new victories. 
 
 III. Beware of errors. Mistakes are worse 
 than ignorance, as a clear soil is better than a 
 soil infested with weeds. One erroneous datum 
 in a sum, and it is incapable of solution. One un- 
 sound principle ingrained in a character, or one 
 mischievous postulate laid at the basis of a course 
 of life, and it may be almost impossible to har- 
 monize that character, or successfully adjust that 
 life to the standard of wisdom and virtue. A 
 
172 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 compact and imposing fabric of argument, built 
 up with great pains, may be utterly demolished 
 by the detection of a false premise at the be- 
 ginning, or an unlucky non-sequititr in the 
 middle. In the concatenated succession of in- 
 ferences and events, motives and deeds, a single 
 blunder or sophism may transmit its effect along 
 the whole construction, vitiating all, and produc- 
 ing at last the most destructive consequences. 
 There is no telling how or when a mistake will 
 terminate. It is the worst thing in the universe, 
 except a sin, and is half-brother to that. 
 
 It is necessary, when seeking to avoid errors, 
 to be as circumspect in rejecting as in accepting ; 
 because a negation is often the most positive of 
 affirmations. For example, to refuse to do a 
 virtuous deed obligatory on you is to do a vicious 
 deed. And then the observer must never forget 
 that in this world scarcely any thing is altogether 
 as it seems. It is by no means the glibbest 
 tongue that proves the wisest head, nor the 
 smoothest face that indicates the frankest heart. 
 Mistakes beset the inquirer at every avenue, and 
 
RULES IN THE SCHOOL. 1 73 
 
 all the earth is full of deceits. The moon sheds a 
 broad sheet of silver over the whole lake ; but, 
 from where you stand, only a single, shimmering 
 bar of radiance is visible. We must, therefore, 
 keep every faculty vigilant to prevent errors. 
 And in this task a wise teacher will try to 
 make his pupils see that a habit of mental and 
 verbal exactitude is invaluable. Precise defini- 
 tions, in the search for truth, may be likened to 
 lamps ; but, when confused or obscure, these 
 very lamps become additional stumbling-blocks. 
 Look sharply after the meanings of terms, and 
 see that they are used with combined perspicuity 
 and uniformity. 
 
 IV. Another rule to be laid down for the ob- 
 servance of every earnest student in the school 
 of life — a rule much too little heeded by most 
 persons — is this : If you feel a particular dis- 
 like for any given branch of culture, yet know 
 it to possess intrinsic worth, then take special 
 pains to cultivate that precise province. It is 
 your weak points that most need reinforcement. 
 Your strong points are comparatively able to 
 
174 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 take care of themselves. Of course no one 
 would assert the paradox that a man should 
 choose for his vocation that department of labor 
 for which he has least affinity, — he who has no 
 ear for music becoming a musician, he who has 
 no eye for forms and colors becoming a painter. 
 But educative art should aim to remedy natural 
 defect. If a person discovers in himself exu- 
 berance of imagination, enthusiastic sensibility, 
 copiousness of language, then let him, however 
 distasteful it be at first, study mathematics and 
 the natural sciences, in order that systematic 
 knowledge of facts and laws may balance the 
 fervors of his genius, and ballast his fancy with 
 solid materials. On the other hand, a man of 
 dry mind, of sterile feeling, should strive to 
 counteract his excessive literality and plodding 
 hardness of soul by paying assiduous court to 
 all the softening charms and inspiring influences 
 of music, painting, poetry, and whatever else 
 tends to melt or fire the heart. Revere your 
 aptitudes, but forget not to fortify your weak- 
 nesses with compensating culture. 
 
RULES IN THE SCHOOL. 1 75 
 
 V. The next rule to be offered is, Never rest 
 with the mere recollection of facts, but reach 
 after the comprehension of principles. The solu- 
 tion of a multitude of difficult questions empiri- 
 cally affords no help towards settling any new 
 inquiries which may arise. But he who has 
 mastered their principle holds the open secret in 
 his hand, and can unhesitatingly read off the 
 answers. Here is the distinction between the 
 sciolist and the sage, the philosopher and 
 the quack. One explains the reason, the other 
 at best can only set forth the fact. In the long 
 run, fundamental thoroughness alone is true 
 speed. If the charlatan, who acts by rote, from 
 a superficial remembrance of instances, some- 
 times does well, he can never be safe. A fatal 
 test question may at any time put him to con- 
 fusion. But the proficient, who acts by science, 
 from insight of laws, is sure of his ground, and 
 not at the mercy of chance. 
 
 The true student will not stop at a mere phe- 
 nomenon, but will endeavor to learn what is im- 
 plied by it. He will investigate its antecedents, 
 
176 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 its concomitants, and its sequences, so as to in- 
 fer all that it is capable of teaching. Sometimes, 
 when beholding a black spot glide across the 
 yellow cornfield you may know, without looking 
 up, that a cloud is passing ; or, at another time, 
 without seeing him, that a crow sails above. 
 To get things by memory, and not by reason, 
 to take traditions and assertions on blind author- 
 ity, beyond what is needful under your limita- 
 tions and appropriate modesty, is like stealing 
 the answers to your sums from another's slate, 
 or copying them from a key, instead of working 
 them out and verifying them for yourself. To 
 drop in prostration before an altar, merely be- 
 cause you see others doing so, is only a form of 
 social apery : for it to become religion, the rev- 
 erential hinges of the knees must fall in spon- 
 taneous response to an original apprehension of 
 something divine. 
 
 VI. Always prefer the positive and loving ex- 
 ercise of the faculties to their negative or dis- 
 liking action. To love and worship, to desire 
 and receive, is to live more and endure longer ; 
 
RULES IN THE SCHOOL. 1 77 
 
 but to reject and despise, is to live less and 
 perish sooner. Wisdom and gladness dwell with 
 him who chooses chiefly to contemplate things 
 true and beautiful and good ; folly, meanness, 
 and odiousness will be found to be the comrades 
 of the man whose vision preferentially selects 
 what is false, ugly, and bad. The different forms 
 of sympathy, admiration, reverence, and enthu- 
 siasm are the feelers of the soul, by which we 
 appropriate nutrition and sustain a growing life. 
 If we have only disgusts, scorns, hatreds, and 
 wearinesses as exploring tentacles, we cease to 
 nourish our spirits, and finally die of disenchant- 
 ment and inanition. And this is the most 
 lamentable of all deaths, perishing from want 
 of incentive to live. He who neither desires 
 nor admires any thing has no reason for con- 
 tinuing alive. 
 
 VII. But this rule, to cultivate ingenuous faith 
 and affection, needs to be complemented with 
 another. Avoid that quivering sensitiveness 
 which wastes the treasures of the heart in re- 
 senting fancied slights, or in brooding over 
 
178 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 secret hurts and unmet demands. Those in- 
 trusted with the perilous gift of an excessive 
 sensibility are in double danger ; for they may 
 be destroyed by denial or devoured by indul- 
 gence. Many a man of a lavishly generous and 
 asking nature has been sapped and ruined by 
 his own too-deep tenderness. Rebuffed, neg- 
 lected, deceived, he has inwardly wept and bled 
 to death ; for sentiment is spiritual blood, and the 
 depletion of it, in baffled and pining lonesome- 
 ness, slowly proves mortal. So, too, has many 
 another, of kindred stamp, moulded of a finer 
 clay and tuned to a richer music than ordinary, 
 found the cup of life too intoxicating, and, quaff- 
 ing it over eagerly, his nerves have melted away, 
 in dissolving thrills. The intensity of delight 
 is to such souls even more fatal than the bitter- 
 ness of disappointment. They need, as protec- 
 tion, a stoic regimen, self-administered. They 
 must think and will more, dream and feel less. 
 Emotion must be transmuted mto intellection. 
 
 Reason calms, while feeling perturbs, the soul. 
 Steady insight, resolutely sought, can allay and 
 
RULES IN THE SCHOOL. 1 79 
 
 guide the storms of imagination and sense. Ah, 
 yes, he who is made three parts silk, fire, 
 and velvet should have the fourth part steel ! 
 Else he will be too soft for this fierce, hard 
 world. An illustration is seen in Angelo and 
 Goethe, living with vigorous fertility beyond 
 their fourscore years, as contrasted with Ra- 
 phael and Schiller, perishing before their beau- 
 tiful morning had closed. 
 
 Undue preponderance and indulgence in any 
 part of our triple nature is prejudicial to force 
 and longevity ; a balanced action of all the parts, 
 conducive to them. The fund of power may be 
 dissolved in sensuality, frozen in intellectuality, 
 or evaporated in emotionality ; but it is glorified 
 and preservingly reproduced only when it is 
 expended aright in the fulfilment of harmonious 
 uses. Subdue sensuous impulse by rational 
 principle, and make joy a consequence but not 
 an aim, is, therefore, the rule for converting the 
 sentimental weakling into the invincible war- 
 rior. And this is one of the constant miracles 
 wrought by gentle, shrinking, aspiring natures, 
 
l8o THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 who train their delicacy into firmness by con- 
 secrating self to God. 
 
 VIII. Recognize the immense superiority of 
 life to literature, of breathing persons over 
 printed volumes. To experience the charms of 
 the material universe in all their original aspects, 
 and the treasures of the human soul in all their 
 endless diversity, is a direct privilege offered 
 to every one of us. But to realize it we must 
 bring to the work free and undepraved faculties, 
 eager for the immediate apprehension of the 
 true, the beautiful, and the good, in their own 
 facts, wherever they are to be found. He who 
 most cultivates independent thought and affec- 
 tion of his own, who cherishes solitude that in 
 it he may lie passively expectant and open to 
 the Infinite Spirit, free from egotistic bias or 
 taint, disinterestedly asking to be taught and 
 moulded, — is the one to derive the greatest ben- 
 efit also from the recorded experiences of others. 
 
 But at the present time, and growingly so, 
 multitudes are so absorbed in reading what 
 others have written, that they have no time or 
 
RULES IN THE SCHOOL. l8l 
 
 strength left for any thing else. The bookworm 
 is a sorrowful perversion of humanity. All fresh- 
 ness of joy, all fruitfulness of vigor, is taken out 
 of this shrivelled mummy. What should be his 
 staff becomes his tyrant. He is prematurely 
 bent and wrinkled and mildewed. And all for 
 what ? For nothing but a slavish obedience to 
 a mechanical habit, or else for the empty chaff 
 and name of learning. Many a person, once 
 gifted with faculties of vivid bloom, reads three 
 or four newspapers daily, half a dozen magazines 
 weekly, twenty or thirty reviews a month, and 
 two or three hundred volumes a year ; and the 
 whole of it becomes to him only an indistinct 
 mass of rubbish blowing through his mind, leav- 
 ing but a dust of weariness and depression. It 
 is a lamentable mistake. A twentieth part of 
 the reading, and nineteen parts more of medi- 
 tation, quietude, prayer, observation, experiment, 
 would lead to results unspeakably preferable. 
 
 Especially desirable is it that such a slave to 
 sedentary seclusion and printed pages should be 
 induced to go forth into the tonic embrace of 
 
1 82 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 'open nature, and seek the corrective discipline 
 and inspiration of converse with his living fel- 
 lows. To a man of sensitive and aspiring soul 
 the temptations to *a bookish life are most seduc- 
 tive. , The book makes no resistance. You can 
 take it up or lay it down at will. You freely 
 make your choice of them, consulting nothing 
 but your own pleasure as to times and seasons. 
 But the living man makes his demands on you. 
 He reacts on you in accordance with your action 
 on him. His qualities and yours often conflict. 
 All the more valuable for this is the relationship 
 between you and him. The frictions may polish 
 as well as excite. Excess may supplement de- 
 fect, and bias offset bias. The book is fixed and 
 dead ; the man is alive and variable, a potential 
 test and revelator of innumerable things. 
 
 Still more strikingly is the constant and large 
 intercourse of man with men indispensable as a 
 means of training us in charity and catholicity. 
 And the pain suffered from earnest miscellane- 
 ous converse with society will be lessened, and 
 the enjoyment increased, in even pace with our 
 
RULES IN THE SCHOOL. 1 83 
 
 progress in subduing our own self-absorption 
 and tremulous vanity, and forming the habit of 
 studying all persons disinterestedly, in the light 
 of universal principles, for the sake of universal 
 ends. Human nature is never so sacred with 
 inexhaustible claims, nor is life ever so intense 
 and sublime in its interest, as when, having found 
 something of God in ourselves, we go tirelessly 
 among our fellow-creatures, seeking to find more 
 of Him in them. He in whose chronic expe- 
 rience the pages of a book are more fascinating 
 and instructive than the presence of a human 
 being has yet to learn one of the most fertile 
 and profound lessons of practical wisdom. 
 
 IX. Keep your working power at its maxi- 
 mum. In our day of enlarged and intensified 
 social connections, of exasperated vanity and 
 ambition, there is no form of foolishness more 
 frequent, or more fatal to all calm joy and grand 
 endurance, than the habit of overtasking the 
 forces of body and mind. He whose eyes have 
 been opened, by a personal experience of the 
 melancholy results of this habit, to observe his 
 
1 84 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 fellow-men, must be astonished at the number of 
 those whose energies have been reduced to a 
 chronic level far, far below their normal height, 
 and whose work, in consequence, is sadly les- 
 sened and deteriorated in quantity and quality, 
 and their daily experience changed from an 
 overflowing well of satisfaction to a thin dribble 
 of misery and complaint. Their real life flutters 
 and chafes in sad and grumbling incompetency 
 against the demands of their ideal ; and the dis- 
 parity breeds an incessant wretchedness. For 
 in every organism meant to work easily under 
 the accurately regulated pressure of a supply of 
 power at its full head, but reduced to struggle 
 laboriously in a condition twenty or fifty degrees 
 below this, there is a profound sense of the 
 dreadful disadvantage under which it is working. 
 This discord engenders a gloom and a querulous- 
 ness that fret and poison all the faculties and 
 make happiness an impossibility. 
 
 The most massive and central element of 
 wisdom, in the care of our being and the guid- 
 ance of our conduct, is to preserve health and 
 
RULES IN THE SCHOOL. 1 85 
 
 strength at their full height, never suffering them 
 to become permanently lowered by extravagant 
 expenditures or by unconscious wastes. Guard 
 your dynamic capital from loss. Efforts in 
 sudden excess or too long sustained must be 
 scrupulously avoided ; for they are apt so to 
 drain away the nervous wealth as to produce 
 an aching vacuum which stays in retributive 
 fixture when the causal occasion has passed. 
 Temperate exertions, with proper rests, illustrate 
 in experience that law of all wholesome exercise, 
 — moderate expenditures of force are immedi- 
 ately returned with interest. 
 
 There are, doubtless, sometimes, critical exi- 
 gencies, supreme moments of duty, when our 
 spiritual life is perfected and freed by sacrificing 
 our physical life. But with this exception, which 
 rarely occurs, it is the sovereign interest and 
 obligation of every one to maintain his vital 
 exaltation and energy unimpaired. Then he can 
 do the best work, and the most of it, in the 
 easiest manner and with the greatest enjoy- 
 ment. What is finer than to see serenity smil- 
 
1 86 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 ingly throned on strength ? How few the ex- 
 amples of it are becoming ! And how numerous 
 the dismal instances of men whose forces are re- 
 duced to the lowest ebb, and who feebly dawdle 
 on in vain attempts to achieve their ends ! 
 Their condition is like that of a man once reck- 
 lessly spending an organic income of fifty thou- 
 sand a year, but now reduced to the nervous and 
 functional penury of living on five hundred a 
 year. Their habits of work, no longer volun- 
 tarily regulated by the law of fruitful spontane- 
 ity, have run down to the level of an automatic 
 slavery which ceaselessly spins their vitality 
 away in restless frittering and ineffectual fuss. 
 
 There is but one remedy, and that is for them 
 to lower their consumption of force and raise 
 their assimilation of it. By rest from mental 
 worry and muscular effort, and by improved 
 nutrition, they must give nature a chance to 
 replenish the exhausted reservoirs. The devital- 
 ized and irritable plodder, living impotently on 
 the dregs of his impoverished nerves, may well 
 subordinate everything else to the sacred work 
 
RULES IN THE SCHOOL. 1 87 
 
 of restoring his dynamic tone. And it can be 
 done. With the proper care and patience, res- 
 olutely kept up, the wrecked and shrivelled 
 organism may be readjusted and filled with 
 fresh exuberance of power. And then, having 
 learned from bitter experience its true value, 
 what a divine luxury is the power of calm 
 and happy fulfilment in every function at its 
 highest pitch ! 
 
 The birds in their average condition appear 
 endowed with more common sense than we 
 are ; for they do not overdraw their reserves of 
 strength, but are so full of resilient life that their 
 motions seem to dart from their centres as 
 shedding quivers of electrical superfluity. Once 
 in a great while we see a man or a woman with 
 this godlike saturation of potency, every tissue 
 and nerve surcharged with drenches of dynamic 
 peace which the least stimulus thrills into puls- 
 ing overflows of bliss. This state, once possessed, 
 should be preserved with conscientious vigilance ; 
 lost, should be held cheaply regained at the 
 largest price any one can pay. Therefore, on no 
 
1 88 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 account, except at the command of God, suffer 
 the power that drives the machinery of life to 
 ebb down towards its minimum. 
 
 X. Remember that the field of all experience, 
 and of all the preparations for the improvement 
 and extension of experience, is within your own 
 breast. It is only within our own faculties that 
 we are capable of experiencing any thing : with- 
 out these we should be in the condition of a stone. 
 How clearly, then, the nature and value of our 
 life depend, year by year, on what we become in 
 faith, feeling, and thought ! Man is subject to no 
 more frequent or more obstinate fallacy than 
 that of looking for great and costly experiences 
 to be given to him from without. God and his 
 innumerable forms of beauty, truth, and good 
 no doubt exist outside of us and independently of 
 us ; but it is perfectly certain that we can never 
 know any thing of them, excepting as revealed 
 within us by the developed activity and consent- 
 ing grasp of our own conscious powers. Thus, 
 by an insuperable necessity, despite the sophis- 
 tical prejudice of sense peering after outward 
 
RULES IN THE SCHOOL. 189 
 
 wonders, it is in the quiet and sacred privacy of 
 the individual soul, before the sightless altar of 
 its own faith and love, that the essential battles 
 of destiny are to be fought, and the sacramen- 
 tal mysteries of the universe celebrated. Here, 
 therefore, in the withdrawn depths and seclusion 
 of the private breast of each one, his supreme 
 work waits to be done. To neglect this, dis- 
 sipated in foreign affairs, is the veriest folly 
 and fatuity of man. Can the acquisition of any 
 piece of property compensate for the loss of 
 peace of mind ? If the soul be really a divine 
 mirror, before which unknown and incalculable 
 realities are forever gliding in dim forms or 
 shapeless clouds, we may well afford, now and 
 then, to turn from external solicitations, and 
 cleanse the glass, and watch the drifting scud, 
 if, haply, through the vapor we may sometimes 
 behold planets pass, or even suns burst into 
 view. 
 
 XI. See that every human consciousness is 
 potentially infinite, and consequently that the 
 sanction of duty and the charm of life are in- 
 
190 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 exhaustible. We may, by our own faults of 
 excess or omission, become satiated and stupid ; 
 but God can never be divested of his absolute 
 mysteriousness, nor the spectacle of the universe 
 be drained of its everlasting surprises. Every 
 man is a door of infinitude. Some of these doors 
 are opaque, some are transparent. When their 
 hinges turn, and the openings confront each 
 other, what revelations stream forth or are shut 
 in ! The Creator says, — 
 
 " I cause from every creature 
 His proper good to flow ; 
 As much as he is and doeth, 
 So much he shall bestow." 
 
 There is no limit to the experiences possible 
 to be won by him who develops his soul to its 
 utmost. Side by side two men may live and 
 work, day after day, while illimitable leagues of 
 difference estrange and dispart their interiors;] 
 aspirations and fruitions occupying the one, of 
 which the other has not the faintest hint. What 
 unuttered and unutterable secrets go on in the 
 mystic spacelessness of the personal spirit — 
 
RULES IN THE SCHOOL. 191 
 
 diabolical combats, angelic banquets, ineffable 
 touches and visions from the Holy Ghost — can 
 only be guessed by each one from what he has 
 himself known, or constructively imagined from 
 the feebler echoes of literature. But in each, 
 beyond the region of expression, is that mapless 
 domain of the incommunicable, with whose aw- 
 fulness of woes or enhancements of bliss no 
 stranger can intermeddle. This is no truer in 
 hortatory rhetoric than it is to competent reflec- 
 tion ; for, according to the deepest theory of the 
 deepest thinking of our race, man is the form of 
 an infinite content, morality being the active, 
 religion the emotional, and philosophy the specu- 
 lative, effort to realize that content, or raise 
 it out of abstract possibility into progressive 
 consciousness. 
 
 The grossness of materialism, the vulgarity of 
 infidelity, cannot again touch him whose in- 
 teriors have been opened to these mysteries. 
 And there is henceforth nothing too sublime for 
 him to believe and to expect. When the un- 
 known chords of a soul have once responded to 
 
192 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 the voice of God, speaking to it in its own time- 
 less and boundless deep, it can never again deny 
 its supersensual origin and destiny. Why are we 
 never satisfied on earth ? Why, even in our 
 most ecstatic joy, does there always mingle a 
 profound and mysterious pain, an ineffable want? 
 Ah, it is a tone from eternity, which we, pris- 
 oners of time, recognize. It compels us to feel 
 sad that a pleasure so divine should be so brief. 
 And thus it prophesies our immortality. For 
 we cannot possibly suppose that the Creator 
 taunts his creatures with the evanescent frag- 
 ments of bliss he flings them. 
 
 XII. Finally, Be your own severest critic. 
 Fail not to feel that the fittest object for your 
 criticism is always yourself and your defects. 
 Whenever you perceive any new truth, let the 
 first application of it be in testing your own 
 traits, aims, and performances, to see wherein 
 they fall short of the proper requirement, or 
 diverge from the best possibility. The most 
 prolific cause of the failure of the great multi- 
 tude of men to reach the mark of their high 
 
RULES IN THE SCHOOL. 1 93 
 
 calling, in character, attainments, skill, and pro- 
 duction, is that they are blinded and drugged by 
 the delusions of self-love. They do not appre- 
 ciate their own faults and wants. They exag- 
 gerate their own gifts and accomplishments. 
 And so they rest contentedly at a low stage of 
 excellence. They sink into ruts of passive 
 habit, and there spend their life in a dull routine 
 of mediocrity. 
 
 One of the chief cures for this is to be found 
 in an honest self-criticism, ever more vigilant 
 and unsparing in the lash and spur it uses at 
 home than in those it applies abroad. How 
 frequent, and how destructive to all fresh and 
 noble advancement, is the sway of a fond vanity 
 or the load of a stagnant laziness, making their 
 subject utterly incapable of a just estimate of 
 himself in what he is and what he should be, in 
 what he does and what he ought to do ! The 
 remedy is at hand, if he will make careful in- 
 spections of his condition and performance, at 
 short intervals, compare the results with keen 
 impartiality, and revise his methods and guide 
 13 
 
194 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 his efforts, ever anew, in accordance with the 
 insight thus gained. 
 
 He can also get most important help to an 
 accurate perception of his precise stage of prog- 
 ress, his exact defects and merits and wants, by- 
 comparing his achievements with those of other 
 men, his rivals, friends, associates, strangers. 
 When this is done without egotism or envy, 
 done in a modest and generous spirit of im- 
 provement, it is of invaluable service in clearing 
 the sight and stimulating the will. Comparison 
 for the sake of a carping criticism of others is a 
 vulgar vice ; but when practised by us for the 
 purpose of purifying and enriching ourselves, 
 and enabling us to help others, it is an exalted 
 use and virtue. 
 
 We must not compare ourselves with others 
 in order to fix our relative grades of worth, but 
 only to see what useful thing we can learn, what 
 good we can receive or impart. As the deep 
 Hedge has said, " God alone knows how much 
 any man is worth." We should, therefore, leave 
 the question of our comparative ranks to Him 
 
RULES IN THE SCHOOL. 1 95 
 
 alone. To criticise ourselves is always becoming 
 and profitable. But pride prefers the unseemly 
 office of criticising others, and is forced to pay 
 the penalty. For he who takes the interior at- 
 titude of an inferior, and humbly studies to learn 
 all he can from every one, will become a superior ; 
 while he who always plays the superior, will for- 
 ever remain an inferior. 
 
 We find it, usually, a fixed attribute of the 
 unregenerate man that his first instinctive move- 
 ment is an impulse to combat or reject every 
 suggestion from others. Much conventional 
 learning, or prolonged literary training, is not 
 only not a help, but is a positive obstacle, both to 
 inspiration in one's self, and to recognition of it 
 in others. Bishop Home met the claims of Jacob 
 Behmen, as advanced by William Law, with a 
 depreciating, if not contemptuous, rebuff. How 
 much fitter and how much more beneficial would 
 it have been for that miffed dignitary if he had 
 opened his soul with assimilative fairness to the 
 divinely inspired shoemaker ! For what was 
 Bishop Home in comparison with Jacob Beh- 
 
I96 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 men ? Less than a midget to an eagle, a fly 
 buzzing over a leaf to a condor floating above 
 Chimborazo. The prelate had social promi- 
 nence, literary equipment, and a mitre : the poor 
 obscure cobbler was God-possessed, and saw the 
 heavens and hells unrolling. 
 
 The man who would steadily rise in goodness, 
 charm, and power, needs not merely to fix his 
 impartial critical attention on himself and what 
 he is doing ; but, furthermore, he must strive in 
 every possible manner to perfect the standard by 
 which his criticising judgments are regulated. 
 That is to say, if he has not in his mind a clear 
 ideal soliciting him beyond his actual, he will 
 surely stop where he is, or retrograde into deeper 
 inferiority. Here is touched, on its quick, the 
 secret of the ruin of many a painful votary of 
 ambition. A singer, of good abilities, who be- 
 lieved he had discovered a new and better 
 method of vocalization, was so possessed by a 
 desire for transcendent excellence in his art that 
 he practised, almost incessantly, eight, ten, 
 twelve hours in the day, month after month, 
 
RULES IN THE SCHOOL. 1 97 
 
 year after year. By such a deadly mechanical 
 excess of effort he wearied and wore his organs 
 down to the lowest pitch. He hammered and 
 jumped his voice, shouted and rattled his very 
 brains out. But he pleased himself with the 
 dreary delusion that he was fast becoming an in- 
 comparable master of song ; although, in fact, his 
 rasping and shattered tones were a torture to 
 every ear but his own. He spent his closing days 
 in a lunatic asylum, paralyzed and demented, yet 
 to the very last assured that he should soon be 
 the first singer on the earth, the most admired 
 of all mankind. The case is an extreme one, 
 but typical of a whole class. What is needed to 
 prevent such a mournful perversion is, first, a 
 comparative criticism constantly clarified by an 
 unshrinking discrimination of the facts of the 
 case ; and, second, the moderation and direc- 
 tion of effort by a sound ideal ahead of the 
 fulfilment. This would make self-deception, and 
 a delirious contentment with mediocrity, im- 
 possible. 
 
 A perfected ideal of what a man ought to be 
 
I98 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 and of what the world should become, held 
 vividly in the mind, is at once a glorious 
 safeguard and a permanent inspiration. It will 
 inspire its possessor with an unappeasable wish 
 to exemplify in living action, in his own person, 
 what it requires. Employing him in the exact- 
 ing and generous task of outgrowing his im- 
 perfections and acquiring with each added year 
 a purer dignity, a deeper peace, a richer benefi- 
 cence, a more adequate culture and faith, it will 
 preserve him from all temptation to a waspish 
 censure of others, or a cynical undervaluation 
 of existence. He will seek the renovation of 
 society, It is true ; but he will take no pessimistic 
 view of its present state. Busy in making him- 
 self an orderly part in the general scheme, 
 pleased with experiences progressive in their 
 harmony, he will cherish the happiest hopes for 
 the future of his race on earth. But, on the 
 contrary, misgivings and censorious dislikes are 
 native growths of the temper of him who neg- 
 lects himself. 
 
 It is easier to put your foot in a shoe than it is 
 
RULES IN THE SCHOOL. 199 
 
 to cover the world with leather, although the re- 
 sult be practically the same. The reformer who 
 spends his time in launching bitter criticisms 
 on the existing order of things, tries to cover 
 the world with leather ; and his bare feet are 
 blistered by the flints. The reformer who de- 
 votes every energy to making himself all that 
 he ought to be as a part of the whole, puts 
 his foot in a shoe ; and finds it comfortable 
 walking. 
 
 In truth, the worst essence of evil is nothing 
 but a reflex from the dissonant finite spirit. If 
 God is an absolute and infinite perfection there 
 can be no substantial evil, only an appearance of 
 it. The good man made wise sees this, and is 
 calm and blessed. With an unquailing courage, 
 with an adamantine poise of reason and faith, 
 he confronts the black and confused phenomena 
 of life, and his eye-beam looks the dizzy maze 
 into a lucidity of order from which every shadow 
 melts away. 
 
200 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 EPITOME OF THE RULES. 
 
 Have an object in view. Make no skips. Be- 
 ware of errors. Nurse your slimmest gifts with 
 greatest care. Reach beyond all word-smatter- 
 ing, and grasp substantial truth. Rest not in 
 negations but pass to positive good. Girdle 
 sensibility with intellect and will, lest its softness 
 undermine manhood. Recognize the incompa- 
 rable superiority of the substance of life to its 
 literary expression. Keep your vital energy at 
 it's full height. Remember that the scene of ex- 
 perience and the work of duty for each one lie 
 within his own soul. Perceive that every human 
 being is a focus of immensity, and his conscious- 
 ness capable of indefinite expansion. All the 
 way through your course be a faithful student of 
 yourself, criticising yourself in the light of the 
 highest standards. 
 
 Such are some of the principal rules for direct- 
 ing the members of this teeming school of the 
 earth through the momentous term-time of their 
 life. As the pupils observe or neglect these, 
 
EPITOME OF THE RULES. 201 
 
 and the like rules, they will progress or lag, be 
 bright models and leaders, or sottish dolts and 
 fags. The distinctive value of such rules ob- 
 viously lies in the fact that they concentrate and 
 transmit the results of the collective experience of 
 the past. The docile disciple who appropriates 
 the fruits and the processes achieved by his pred- 
 ecessors should improve with far greater rapidity 
 than they could ; as mathematicians, since the 
 day of Napier, add or subtract the convenient 
 logarithms instead of multiplying or dividing the 
 cumbrous numbers. But insensible and careless 
 students, taking no advantage of the helpful ap- 
 purtenances of apparatus, examples, and methods, 
 which the contributions of foregone generations 
 have arranged in the school, are but little better 
 off as learners than their ancestors were. To 
 reap the fullest benefit of having had an ancestry, 
 they must transmute the ancestral experience 
 and its generalized rules afresh into their own 
 living faculties and action. To exalt truisms into 
 truths is the office of genius ; to degrade truths 
 into truisms, the function of vulgarity. 
 
202 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 The diagrams hung through nature and society 
 are as different to a thoughtful scholar and a 
 reckless idler as a page of printed characters is 
 to one who can read and one who cannot. But 
 meanwhile there "is one great truth which may be 
 used both for warning and for encouragement, 
 namely, that to all pupils, in the schools of all 
 worlds and lives, the rewards and punishments, 
 promotions and degradations, acquisitions and 
 failures, depend primarily on themselves. Wher- 
 ever on the globe a man stands, a vertical line 
 passing through his position will coincide with 
 an axis of the earth and the apex of the sky ; so 
 that all things revolve around him as a centre, 
 and open into his faculties in proportion to his 
 sensibility and attention. To him who earnestly 
 tries to do his best every object is a teacher, 
 and every event an admonition ; every hour 
 presents some new lesson of virtue, some fresh 
 knowledge of truth ; and at every examination he 
 may have the joy of finding that he has made 
 additional conquests of wisdom and nobleness. 
 
CONCLUSION. 203 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 The daily employment of a man is the most 
 important force in his education, although it is 
 the least thought of in this light. Our actions 
 and the organic attitudes which they imply are 
 of prime influence in moulding our characters. 
 The educational agency second in rank is the 
 power of example, the actions we see others 
 perform. The third and weakest influence, 
 although the one most relied on, is precept, 
 maxims inculcated by printed page or living 
 voice. 
 
 Perhaps the most valuable direction which 
 can be given to an aspirant is this : Aim al- 
 ways at a rounded consistency of purpose and 
 method and motive, unmarred by flaws and 
 contradictions. All who desire great excellence 
 and power, .but in vain, fail through inconsis- 
 tency or unfitness somewhere. The essence of 
 weakness, as well as of unclean'ness, is incon- 
 gruity. As Martineau, the high master of all 
 
204 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 
 
 who study conscience, has said, with his won- 
 drous felicity of verbal touch, "The heavens 
 look down on no sadder sight than the slug- 
 gard and the slattern at their prayers." All 
 things in keeping, is the law of purity and of 
 power. 
 
 The great question for each one now and ever 
 to ask himself is, What am I learning? For 
 while some, with temptation and evil for teachers, 
 are at the degrading tasks -of sin, others, under the 
 instruction of virtuous example or the impulse of 
 a sacred zeal, are mastering every divine lesson 
 in the world. Let an aspirant discriminate the 
 good teachers and lessons from the vicious ones, 
 let him endeavor, in that great school of design 
 which the present state is, to execute the pattern 
 of a useful and blessed life, and every day he 
 shall finish some worthy toil, and leave no oc- 
 casion empty of a profit which is prophetic. In 
 the vision of his faith this world shall appear but 
 the primary apartment, where infant scholars 
 are learning to lisp and to spell easy words. 
 Nor will he deem his education more than begun, 
 
CONCLUSION. 205 
 
 even when graduating from time, decked with 
 the highest diplomas of earth. For he shall then 
 expect, ushered into the school of eternity, to-be 
 matriculated with the angels of heaven, whose 
 divine employment is the endless learning of 
 endless lessons in the fresh transmutation of 
 love and wisdom into use and joy under the 
 guidance of the infinite Teacher. 
 
 University Press : John Wilson and Son, Cambridge. 
 
rt 
 
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