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What is the value of culture and art?
(1) Culture, according to Matthew Arnold, [Footnote: Culture and Anarchy, Preface, and chap. I.] is "the disinterested endeavor after man's perfection . . . . It is in endless additions to itself, in the endless expansion of its powers, in endless growth in wisdom and beauty that the spirit of the human race finds its ideal." This wisdom, this beauty that culture offers us, does not need extrinsic justification; it is, as Emerson so happily said, its own excuse for being; it is a fragment of the ideal; and it means that life has in so far been solved, its goal attained. It is in itself a great addition to the worth, the richness and joy, of life, and it is a pledge to the heart of the possibility of the ideal, a realization of that perfection for which we long and strive.
It means a multiplication of interests, a participation by proxy in the throbbing life of mankind, which lifts us above the disappointments of our personal fortunes, helps us to identify ourselves with the larger currents of life, and to live as citizens of the world. A limitless resource against ennui, it refreshes, rests, and recreates, relieves the tension of our working hours, makes for health and sanity. "If a man find himself with bread in both hands," said Mohammed, "he should exchange one loaf for some flowers of the narcissus, since the loaf feeds the body, indeed, but the flowers feed the soul."
There is in certain quarters a tendency to disparage culture as not practical-" a spirit of cultivated inaction" -unworthy of the attention of serious men. The word connotes, perhaps, to these critics certain superficial polite accomplishments, mere frills and decorations, which fritter away our time and dissipate our ambitions. But in its proper sense, culture is far more than that; it is the comprehension of the meaning of life and the appreciation of its beauty. And grim as is the age-long struggle with evil, insistent as is the duty to toil and suffer and achieve, it were a harsh taskmaster who should refuse to poor driven men and women the right to snatch such innocent joys as they can by the way, to try to understand the whirl of existence in which they are caught; in short, to really live, as well as to earn a living. It would be a sorry outcome if when we reached the age of complete mechanical efficiency, with all the machinery of a complex industrial life well oiled and perfected, we should find ourselves imaginatively sterile, hopelessly utilitarian, earthbound in our vision.
(2) But the moralist need not rest with this apology for culture. By helping us to understand the life about us, culture shows us the better how to solve our own problems, and saves us from the tragedy of putting our energies into fiction, poetry, and the drama give us an insight into the longings, the temptations, the ideals of others, and so indirectly into our own hearts. Thus a normal perspective of values is fostered; we come to learn what is base and what is excellent, and have our eyes opened to the inferior nature of that with which we had before been content. There is a pathos in the ignorance of the uncultivated man as to what is good. Give him money to spend and he will buy tawdry furniture and imitation jewelry, he will go to vulgar shows and read cheap and silly trash. He is unaware of what the best things are, and unable to spend his money in such a way as really to improve his mind, his health, or his happiness. Even in his vocation he could be helped by a background of culture; the college graduate outstrips the uneducated man who has had several years the start of him. And no one can tell how many an undeveloped genius there may be, now working at some humble and routine task, who might have contributed much to the world if his mental horizon had been widened and his latent powers unfolded. Knowledge is power; we never know what bit of apparently useless insight may find application in our own lives and help us to solve our personal problems.
(3) Moreover, culture is not only informative, it is inspirational. History and biography fire the youth with a noble spirit of emulation; poetry, fiction, and the drama, and to some extent music, painting, and sculpture, arouse the emotions and direct them-if the art is good-into proper channels. Meunier's sculptured figures, Millet's Angelus or Man with the Hoe, the oratorio of the Messiah or a national song like the Marseillaise, have a stirring and ennobling effect upon the soul; while such a poem as Moody's Ode in Time of Hesitation, a story like Dickens's Christmas Carol, or a play like The Servant in efficacious than many a sermon. The study of any art has a refining influence, teaching exactness and restraint, proportion, measure, discipline. And in any case, if no more could be said, art and culture substitute innocent joys and excitements for dangerous ones, satisfy the craving for sense-enjoyment by providing natural outlets and developing normal powers, thus tending to check its crude and unwholesome manifestations. In these ways they are valuable moral forces, whose usefulness we ought not to neglect.
(4) Culture socializes. It adds to our competitive life, to our personal ambitions and self-seeking, an unselfish pleasure, a pleasure which we can share with all, and which needs to be shared to be best enjoyed. Nothing binds men together more joyously and with less likelihood of friction than their common love of the beautiful. All classes and all peoples, men of whatever trade or interests, may learn to love the same scarlet of dawn, the same stir and heave of the sea, that Homer loved and fixed in winged words for all men of all time. From whatever land we come we may thrill to the words of English Shakespeare or Florentine Dante, to the chords of German Wagner and Italian Verdi, to the colors of Raphael and Murillo, to the noble thoughts of Athenian Plato, Roman Marcus Aurelius, and Russian Tolstoy. Our opinions differ, our interests diverge, our aims often cross; but in the presence of high truth and beauty, fitly expressed, our differences are forgotten and we are conscious of our essential unity. Prejudices and provincialisms crumble, personal eccentricities fade, barriers are broken, all sorts of fanaticisms and frictions are choked off, under the influence of a widespread cultural education. What is most important in cultural education? Wisdom and beauty are vague words; and to make our discussion practical we must indicate what in the ideal curriculum. It is a matter of relative values, since nearly every study is of some worth; and the detailed decision as to subjects and methods must be left to the expert on pedagogy. But to present the general needs that education must meet falls within our province. In addition, then, to the particular vocational education which is to fit each man for his specific task, in addition to that physical development which must always go hand in hand with intellectual growth, in addition to that moral-religious training and that preparation for parenthood, of which we shall later speak, we may mention three important ideals to be grouped under our general conception of culture.
(1) First, we must have KNOWLEDGE of the world we live in -not so much masses of facts as a comprehension of principles, insight into relations and tendencies. A man should be at home upon the earth; he should be able to call the stars by name, to realize something of the immensities by which this spinning planet is surrounded, and to see in every landscape a portion of the wrinkled, water-eroded surface of the globe. He should see this apparently solid sphere as a whirl of atoms, and come face to face with the old puzzles of matter and mind. He should be able to trace in imagination the growth of stellar systems; the history of our own earth; the evolution of plant and animal life, from the first protoplasmic nuclei to the mammoth and mastodon; the emergence of man from brute hood into self-consciousness, his triumph over nature and the other animals, and his achievement of civilization. He should watch primitive man wrestling with problems as yet partly unsolved, see him gradually establishing law and order, inventing and discovering, mastering his fate. He should follow the floods and ebbs of progress, the rise and fall of nations, know the great names of history and have for friends humanity's saints and heroes. He should be at home in ancient Israel, in classic Greece, in Rome of the Republic, in Italy of the Renaissance, especially in the early days of our own land, learning to comprehend and sympathize with the struggles and ideals that have made our nation what it is. He should understand the clash of creeds and codes, follow the thoughts of Plato, of Bacon, of Emerson, and grasp the essence of the problems that now confront us. What dangers lie before us, what the great statesmen and reformers are aiming at, what are the meaning and use of our institutions, our government, our laws, our morals, our religion - here is a hint of the knowledge that every man who comes into the world should amass. To know less than this is to be only half alive, and unable to fulfill properly the duties of citizenship. Widespread ignorance of the larger social, moral, political, religious problems of the day, is ominous to the Republic; and it is impossible to understand aright without a background of history and theory. The aim of the schools should be to give not only some detailed information but a structural sense of life as a whole, a sane perspective; and to inspire an enthusiasm for intellectual things which shall outlast the early years of schooling. The few facts imparted should suggest the vast fields beyond, and stir youth to that passion for truth which shall lead to ever-new vistas and farther horizons.
(2) But the most encyclopedic acquaintance with facts, or even with principles, is not enough; TRAINING TO THINK ACCURATELY, to reason logically, so as to arrive at valid conclusions and be able to discriminate sound from unsound arguments in others, is vitally necessary. With new and intricate problems continually confronting us, we need the temper that observes with exactness, and without prejudice or passion, that judges truly, that thinks clearly, and forms independent convictions. There has been in our educational system an overemphasis on the acquirement of facts, a natural result of our modern dependence upon books; too much is accepted on authority, too little thought out at first hand. We must "banish the idolatry of knowledge," as Ruskin exhorted, and "realize that calling out thought and strengthening the mind are an entirely different and higher process from the putting in of knowledge and the heaping up of facts." We have many well-informed scholars to one clear and reliable thinker; the world is full of books, widely read and applauded, in which the trained mind detects false premises, fallacious reasoning, unwarranted conclusions. When the public is really educated, these superficially plausible arguments will not be heeded, these appeals to the prejudices and emotions of the reader will not be tolerated; a stricter standard of logic will be demanded, and we shall be by so much the nearer a solution of our perplexing problems.[Footnote: This mental training can be given not merely by a specific course in logic, but by an insistence on exactness and the critical spirit in every study. It is particularly easy to cultivate this temper in scientific study. So Karl Pearson, for example, pleads for more science in our schools: "It is the want of impersonal judgment, of scientific method, and of accurate insight into facts, a want largely due to a non-scientific training, which renders clear thinking so rare, and random and irresponsible judgments so common in the mass of our citizens today." (Grammar of Science, Introductory.) Cf. Emerson, "Education," in Lectures and Biographies: "It is better to teach the child arithmetic and Latin grammar than rhetoric or moral philosophy, because they require exactitude of performance; it is made certain that the lesson is mastered, and that power of performance is worth more than the knowledge." There is in our modern get-knowledge-easy methods a grave danger of letting the child absorb wisdom so comfortably, so almost unconsciously, that its wits shall not be sharpened to grapple with fallacies, to refute specious arguments, and to find their way through a chaos of facts to a correct conclusion. By way of contrast with these pleas for science, the student should read Arnold's argument for the superiority of literature, in the address on "Literature and Science" included in Discourses in America.] We may include under our ideal of clear thought, the ability to use clearly and efficiently the language by which the steps and conclusions of thought are formulated and expressed. Thought proceeds, where it is precise and logical, by words; unless a man's vocabulary is wide, unless his understanding of the language is exact, his thoughts must inevitably be vague and muddled. Moreover, he will be unable to transmit his thoughts clearly and readily to others. The most important tool for the carrying on of life is- language; the slovenliness and inadequacy of the average man's speech is a sad commentary on our boasted educational system.
(3) Wide information and a trained mind must be supplemented by a SOUND TASTE. To love excellence everywhere, to appreciate the good and the beautiful in every phase of life, should be the third, and possibly most important, aim of cultural education. It is, at least, the prime function of art. Art informs us of life, its pursuit trains in precision and judgment; but above all, it opens our eyes to beauty. The man who is versed in the work of the masters can never after be content with the ugliness and squalor that our industrial civilization continually tends to increase. He has caught the vision of beauty, and must strive to shape his environment toward that high ideal. The artist sees what we had not learned to see; by isolating and perfecting this bit of the ideal, he directs our attention to it and teaches us to love it. No one can feel the spell of a landscape by Corot or Innes without delighting more deeply in such scenes in the outdoor world; no one can live long in the atmosphere of Greek art without longing for such a body and such a poise of spirit. We are not accustomed to look at nature, or at man, with observing eyes, to see the richness of color in sun-kissed meadows or humming city streets, the infinite variations of light and shade, the depth of distance, the charm of line and composition. The picturesque is everywhere about us, undiscerned and unloved. So us the marvelous varieties in human character and circumstance, the humor and dignity and pathos of life. Literature and art, by revealing to us unsuspected possibilities of beauty, breed a healthy discontent with ugliness and urge us on to its banishment. The ultimate aim of art should be to make life beautiful in every nook and corner, to elevate the humdrum working days of common men by fair and sunny surroundings, to make manners gentle and gracious, speech melodious and refined, homes, pleasant and restful.
But art has a further function. However beautiful and harmonious our lives, they are at best confined within narrow boundaries; and the lover of beauty will always rejoice in the glimpses which art affords into an ideal realm beyond his daily horizon. He will gaze eagerly at the masterpieces of color and form that he cannot have forever about him, he will enrich his imagination with the great scenes of drama, he will solace his soul with the cadenced lines of poetry and the melody of music, he will live with the heroes of fiction for a day, and return to his work ennobled and sweetened by the contact with these forms of excellence which lie beyond the bounds of his own outward life. In two ways the fine arts add to the preexisting beauty in a man's life: by representing to him beautiful scenes and objects which he cannot enjoy in themselves, because he cannot go where they are, and by creating from the artist's imagination a new universe of emotions and satisfactions, congenial to the human spirit and full of a refined and pure joy.
What dangers are there in culture and art for life?
We must now glance at the other side of the picture. Enormous as are the potentialities for good in culture and art, they also have their perils.
(1) Culture and art must not take time, energy, or money that is needed for work. Achievement necessitates concentration and sacrifice; beauty must not beguile men away from service. [Footnote: Cf. what Pater says of Winckelmann (The Renaissance, p. 195): "The development of his force was the single interest of Winckelmann, unembarrassed by anything else in him. Other interests, practical or intellectual, those slighter motives and talents not supreme, which in most men are the waste part of nature, and drain away their vitality, he plucked out and cast from him."] The boys and girls who squander health in their eagerness to explore the new worlds opening before them, the older folk who give a disproportionate share of their time and money to music or the theater, the voracious readers who pore over every new novel and magazine without really assimilating and using what they read, are turning what ought to be recreation or inspiration into dissipation, and thereby seriously impairing their efficiency. It is so much easier to read something new than to meditate fruitfully upon what one has read, to pass from picture to picture in a gallery and win no genuine insight from any. A single great book thoroughly mastered-the Bible, Homer, Shakespeare-were better for a man than the superficial skimming of many, one beautiful picture well loved than a hundred idly glanced at and labeled with some trite comment. Too many of the upper class, for whom limitless cultural opportunities are open, dabble in everything, know names and schools, repeat glibly the current phrases of criticism, but miss the lesson, the clarification of insight, the vision of the author or artist. Such superficial culture is a futile expenditure of time and money. [Footnote: For an arraignment of the money thrown away on modern decadent art, see Tolstoy's What is Art? chapter I.]
In this connection we must mention the waste of time over what Arnold called "instrument knowledge." Years are spent by most upper-class boys and girls in half-learning several languages which they will never use, in acquiring the technique of the piano, or of some other art which they will never learn to practice with proficiency. There is, to be sure, a certain mental training in all this, but no more than can be found in more useful studies. A foreign language is essentially a tool for carrying on conversation with its users, or for utilizing the literature written therein; the technique of an art is a tool for producing or copying beautiful forms of that art. And except as these tools are actually so utilized, the time spent on learning to handle them might better be otherwise occupied.
(2) More than this, cultural interests may fritter away in passive and useless thrills the emotions and energies that ought to stimulate moral and practical activity. It is so easy, where there is money enough to live on, to let one's faculties become absorbed in the fascinations of study, without applying it to practice; to enjoy the relatively complete attainment possible in the fine arts, and keep out of the dust and chaos and ugliness of real life. Or, when the student or art-lover does return to realities, after his absorption in some dream-world, there is danger that he carry over into actual moral situations his habit of passive contemplation, that he be content to remain a spectator instead of plunging in and taking sides. He has learned to enjoy the spectacle-sin, suffering, and all-and lost the primitive reaction of protest against evils, of practical response to needs, and the impulse to realize ideals in conduct. Thus culture and art may relax human energy or scatter it in trivial accomplishments; the dilettante spends his days in dreaming rather than in doing. [Footnote: Cf. William James, Psychology, vol. I, pp. 125-26: "Every time a fine glow of feeling evaporates without bearing practical fruit is worse than a chance lost; it works so as positively to hinder future emotions from taking the normal path of discharge. There is no more contemptible type of human] Footnote continued from Page 269 [character than that of the nerveless sentimentalist and dreamer, who spends his life in a weltering sea of sensibility and emotion, but who never does a manly concrete deed. . . . The habit of excessive novel reading and theater going will produce true monsters in this line. The weeping of a Russian lady over the fictitious personages in the play, while her coachman is freezing to death on his seat outside, is the sort of thing that everywhere happens on a less glaring scale. Even the habit of excessive indulgence in music, for those who are neither performers themselves nor musically gifted enough to take it in a purely intellectual way, has probably a relaxing effect upon the character. One becomes filled with emotions which habitually pass without prompting to any deed, and so the inertly sentimental condition is kept up. The remedy would be, never to suffer one's self to have an emotion at a concert, without expressing it afterward in some active way. Let the expression be the least thing in the world-speaking genially to one's aunt, or giving up one's seat in a horse-car, if nothing more heroic offers-but let it not fail to take place." Professor James also refers in this connection to an interesting paper by Vida Scudder in the Andover Review for January, 1887, on "Musical Devotees and Morals."]
(3) Graver still, however, is the risk of the overstimulation of certain dangerous emotions. The "artistic temperament" is notoriously prone to reckless self- indulgence; the continual seeking of the immediately satisfying tends to weaken the powers of restraint. Artists and poets, and those who immerse themselves constantly in the pleasures of sense, tend to chafe under the dull repressions of morality and crave ever-new forms of excitement. Art is an emotional stimulant; and unless the emotions aroused are harnessed in the service of morality, they are apt to run amuck. Artists and authors often take to drink, and almost always have to meet exceptional sexual temptations. The most beautiful forms of art are those which have the element of sex interest, and the general emotional susceptibility of the creator or lover of beauty makes the sex emotion particularly inflammable. Other emotions also may be unwisely stimulated by art. In times of international friction, war-songs, "patriotic" speeches, or martial processions may arouse an unreasoning jingo spirit. The love of deviltry is fostered in boys by many of the penny novels, by sensational "movies" and newspaper "stories"; a famous detective has said that seventy per cent of the crimes committed by boys under twenty are traceable to "suggestions" received from these sources. Should art be censored in the interests of morality? Art, then, with its vast potentialities of both good and harm, needs supervision in the interests of human welfare. The motto, "Art for art's sake," should not be taken to mean that what is detrimental to human life must be tolerated, just because it is art. There is, indeed, this truth in the adage, that art does not need to have a moral or practical use to justify its existence. It may be merely pleasant, serving no end beyond the enjoyment of the moment. But it must not be harmful. It is but one of the many interests in life, and must be judged, like any other interest, in the light of the greatest total good. We cannot say, "Work for work's sake," "Education for education's sake"; not even, "Morality for morality's sake"; it is work, education, morality, for the sake of the ultimately happiest human life. The moralist must not despise forms of art which have no ulterior, utilitarian value; but he must insist that no enjoyment of art is really, in the long run, good for man which influences his life in the unwholesome ways we have indicated. Since morality is that way of life that gives it its greatest worth, indulgence in art at the expense of morality is seizing an immediate but lesser good at the expense of an ultimately greater good. Practically, however, the censorship of art is the most delicate of matters, because the influence of the same work of art on one person may be widely different from its effect upon another. A play or a picture that pleases or even inspires one spectator may be disastrous to his neighbor. And it is always difficult to decide between the claims of an immediate good and the warnings of dangers that may lurk therein. But we universally acknowledge the duty of some censorship, by prohibiting the most openly tempting pictures, plays, and literature. And there can be no doubt that this supervision should be carried further than it now is.
The most pressing contemporary problem is that concerning the stage. [Footnote: See J. Addams, The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets, chap. IV. P. MacKaye, The Civic Theatre in Relation to the Redemption of Leisure. H. Munsterberg, Psychology and Social Sanity, pp. 27-43. J. H. Coffin, The Socialized Conscience, pp. 130-41. Outlook, vol. 92, p. 110; vol. 101, p. 492; vol. 107, p. 412. Atlantic Monthly, vol. 89, p. 497; vol. 107, p. 350.] Any number of boys and girls owe their undoing to the influences of the theater. No other form of art now tolerated so frequently overstimulates the sex instinct. The scant costumes permitted, with their conscious endeavor to reveal the feminine form as alluringly as possible, the voluptuous dances and ballets, the jokes, stories, and suggestive gestures, and often the low moral tone of the play, making light of sacred matters and encouraging lax ideas on sex relations, are powerful excitants. Many theaters frankly pander to the desire for such stimulation; and they are crowded. For while human nature remains as it is, the young will flock whither they can find sex excitement. Scarcely less dangerous are the magazines and books that by their pictures and their stories play up to this eternal instinct. Even painters in oils often use this drawing card; the Paris salons have always a considerable sprinkling of nudes, in all sorts of voluptuous attitudes, making a frank appeal to desire. French literature abounds in books, some of great literary merit, that exploit this aspect of human nature; but in every tongue there are the Boccaccios and the Byrons.
Plato found this problem in planning his ideal republic, and decreed that all voluptuous and tempting art must be banished. We are rightly unwilling to sacrifice beauty and enjoyment to so great an extent; such Puritanism inevitably provokes reaction, besides sadly impoverishing life. The feminine form, at its best, is exquisitely lovely; and a perfect nude is one of the most beautiful things in the world. [Footnote: On the moral problem of the nude in art, see Atlantic Monthly, vol. 88, pp. 286, 858.] How we shall retain this beauty to enrich our lives while avoiding the overstimulation of an already dangerously dominant instinct, is a problem whose gravity we can but indicate without presuming to offer a satisfactory solution.
What can emphatically be said is that artists must subordinate themselves to the welfare of life as a whole. And this is not so great a loss, for only that art is of the deepest beauty which expresses noble and wholesome feelings. The trouble with the artist is apt to be that he becomes so absorbed in the solution of the practical difficulties attendant upon his art that he cares primarily for triumphs of technique, irrespective of the worth of the feelings which that technique is to express. Indeed, there is actually a sort of scorn of beauty in certain studies and studios; the "literary" or "artistic" point of view is taken to mean a regard only for skill of execution, rather than for that beauty of whose realization the skill should be but the means. There is, indeed, a beauty of words and rhythms, of brushwork, of modeling; but if the poet does not love beautiful thoughts and acts, no verbal power can make his product great; and if the artist paints trivial or vulgar subjects he wastes his genius. Too much poetry that is sensual, flippant, drearily pessimistic, morbid, or obscure, is included in anthologies because cleverly wrought, with a sense for form and cadence. Too many stories, too many pictures, are applauded by critics, though in subject and tone they are contemptible. As proofs of human skill these works may excite such admiration as we give to a juggler's feats; as practice in handling a stubborn medium they may be valuable. But the artist who does not have a sane and high sense of what is really noble and beautiful in life prostitutes the talents by which he ought to serve the world. Often one feels as Emerson felt when he wrote of another, "I say to him, if I could write as well as you, I would write a good deal better." The bald truth is that artists are seldom competent to be final judges of art; they are too much behind the scenes, concerned too constantly with problems of method. The final judgment as to beauty can come only from one who combines a delicate appreciation of technique with a wide insight into life and a sane perspective of its values. For lack of such a criticism of art, the average man wanders distracted through our art-museums, with their hodge-podge of beautiful and ugly pictures, wades through the ingeniously clever stories and sensationally original but often meaningless or trivial verses in the magazines, goes to a concert and joins others in applauding some brilliant display of vocal gymnastics, some instrumental pyrotechnics, while his heart is thirsting for high and noble feelings, for something to elevate and inspire his life. The great poets, the great painters, the great dramatists and novelists, have been high-souled men as well as artists, lovers of the really beautiful in life as well as masters of their medium. Their art has no conflict with morality; it is rather its greatest stimulus and stay. To the lesser brood with the gift of melody, of rhythm, with an eye for color or form, but without a true perspective of human values, we must repeat sadly, or even sternly, the poet's reproof: "Can'st thou from heaven, O child Of light, but this to declare?"
On culture: Matthew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy; "Literature and Science" (in Discourses in America). F. Paulsen, System of Ethics, book III, chap. V. H. Spencer, Education. H. Sidgwick, Practical Ethics, chap. VIII. Atlantic Monthly, vol. 90, p. 589; vol. 97, p. 433; vol. 109, p. 111. International Journal of Ethics, vol. 23, p. 1. On the moral censorship of art: Plato, Republic, books. I, III, X. Aristotle, Poetics. Ruskin, Lectures on Art. Tolstoy, What is Art? G. Santayana, Reason in Art, chaps. IX, XI. R. B. Perry, Moral Economy, chap. V. H. R. Haweis, Music and Morals. Mackenzie, Manual of Ethics, chap. XVI. C. Read, Natural and Social Morals, chap. X. Forum, vol. 50, p. 588. Outlook, vol. 107, p. 412.
CHAPTER XXI
THE MECHANISM OF SELF-CONTROL
To discuss, as we have been doing, the various duties which are the unavoidable pre-conditions of a lasting and widespread welfare for men, would be futile, if we had not the ability to fulfill them. The power of self-control is the sine qua non of a secure morality, and therefore of a secure happiness. But this power seems often bafflingly absent. Hard as it is to know what is right to do, it is harder yet for many of us to make ourselves do what we know is right. Life for the average conscientious man is a perpetual battle between two opposing tendencies, that which his better self endorses, and that which is easiest or most alluring at the moment of action. The latter course too often seduces his will; and for the earnest and aspiring this continual moral failure constitutes one of the most tragic aspects of life. [Footnote: Cf. Ovid's Video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor. And St. Paul's "To will is present with me, but how to perform that which is good I find not. For the good that I would I do not, but the evil which I would not, that I do." From pagan and Christian pen alike there comes testimony to this universal and disheartening experience.] There is no greater need for most men than that of some wiser and more effective method whereby those who have ideals beyond their practice may regularly and consistently realize them.
What are our potentialities of greater self-control?
The encouraging side of the matter is that there have been many, of very various codes and creeds, who have attained to a nearly perfect self-control, who easily and almost inevitably govern their conduct by their ideals. Puritans with their personal Devil, Christian Scientists who believe that there is no evil at all-Christians, Buddhists, atheists-there have been saints in all the folds. The fact seems to be that the particular form which our moral ideas take matters much less than the completeness with which they possess the mind. Almost any of the many motives to right conduct will reform a character if it be so stamped into the mind as to become the dominant idea. What is necessary is some vivid and dominating anti-sinning idea rammed deep into the brain. The religions have been the chief means of effecting this; and the Church, that draws men together, and into the presence of God, for the reinforcing of their better selves, is the most efficacious of instruments for the control of sin. But the existence of a vast, and by most men hardly tapped, reservoir of power for righteousness (whether or not it is thought of as God) is recognized today by science as well as by religion; and we must here discuss the matter in a purely secular way. We can control our conduct if we care enough to set about using the forces at our disposal. The various religions have found and used them; modern psychology, analyzing their success, shows us clearly and exactly how to succeed, even if we stand aloof from religion altogether.
Psychologically considered, this whole affair of saintliness or sinfulness is a matter of the preponderant idea. To have merely resolved is not enough; our moral forces must be drilled and made ready before the battle. This fortifying process we nowadays call "suggestion." By it we can so "set" our minds, so deepen the channels that flow toward the right actions, that when the time of conflict comes our minds will work along those grooves. Habit, to be sure, means a deep-cut channel in the mind; it may require much effort to dig a deeper one to take its place. Unless the work is persistently carried through, the mental currents, diverted temporarily into the new course, will soak through the barriers and find their old bed again. Moreover, different minds differ greatly in their plasticity, their susceptibility to suggestion. But the great fact remains that habits can be made over, temptations rendered harmless, and character formed, by this simple means.
It may be worthwhile to remind ourselves of the remarkable power of suggestion. It is most strikingly seen at work in the phenomena of hypnotism, because a person who is hypnotized is in a peculiarly susceptible state; he is asleep to everything but the words of the hypnotist, which thus have full influence over him, except as checked and balanced by the preexisting bias of his mind. Hypnotism is simply the perfect case of suggestion, isolated from disturbing factors. The hypnotizing process itself, the putting to sleep, is only preliminary to the suggestion; and to patients who are difficult to hypnotize, "waking suggestion" is given, with the patient in as relaxed and empty a state of mind as possible. The popular notion that healing through hypnotism is uncanny and dangerous is, of course, entirely erroneous. To be sure, every great power has its dangers from misuse, and hypnotism is not to be used except for proper ends; but there is nothing occult about it. It simply uses the psychological truth that the mind acts on the predominating idea, by lulling to sleep all ideas but the one wanted and impressing that upon the mind. Immediate and lasting moral changes are daily being effected through suggestion by professional hypnotists.
But though the power of suggestion is most obvious when employed by the scientifically trained physician of today, it has been successfully, though often unconsciously, used in all times. Prophets and saints of old, the touch of a king's hand, the sight of relics or images, have wrought striking moral and physical cures through this same mental law. Christian Scientists and mental healers of various sorts are curing people daily through them. Cases of religious conversion, where a man's whole inner life is turned about through a powerful emotional appeal, show best of all the possibilities of suggestion in the moral field. These are the extreme cases. But, indeed, all our moral education is, in psychological language, but so much "suggestion." The imperious necessity for man of preaching, of ritual and liturgy, of prayer and praise, is to drive home the high and noble thoughts which in his sanest moments he recognizes to be what he needs. The aim of the preacher is to bring to his hearers ideals of right living and to make them as appealing and vivid as possible. Yet even the best preaching comes only on Sundays, and there are six days between of other sorts of suggestion, which are often counter- suggestions, so that it is no wonder we lag so far behind our Sabbath- day ideals. In subtle and unrealized ways all the factors of our environment are so many sources of suggestion, constantly working upon our minds. Could we always command powerful and inspiring moral influences, and keep out of range of evil ones, our morals would perhaps take care of themselves. But while seeking so far as possible these external props, and if necessary having recourse to the still more effective help of the professional hypnotists, there remains a vast deal that we must do for ourselves if we are to resist successfully the downward pull of evil influences, solve our own individual problems, conquer our own peculiar temptations, and attain our ideals. We must practice autosuggestion. It is noteworthy that the loftiest spirits have always practiced it, in their habit of daily prayer. For whatever else prayer accomplishes, it certainly brings the mind back to its ideals, concentrates it earnestly engaged in, is the best possible form of suggestion. The lapse of this habit helps to explain why unbelievers so often degenerate morally. Comte, that positive disbeliever in supernatural dogmas, clearly recognized this danger, and enjoined upon his followers a consecration prayer three times a day. In recent years the writers who call their doctrine by the name of The New Thought - and other kindred thinkers have called attention to the possibilities of self- help, directing us to "retire into the silence," there to concentrate our minds upon those beliefs that are comforting and inspiring to us; and have helped many thereby to attain peace and self-possession. But still the conscious use of autosuggestion for the attainment of personal ideals has been very little discussed, and in the employment of this great power we are astonishingly backward.
A practicable mechanism of self-control.
Let us, then, outline briefly the chief points necessary to note in using this force for our own benefit. A necessary preliminary is to study our problems, analyze our difficulties, make sure exactly what we want to do and wherein we fail; and thereby to pin our aspirations down to definite resolves to act in certain ways rather than in certain other ways. Our ideals are apt to be vague and even conflicting, or else so abstract and general as to fail to direct us with precision to any concrete act. We realize dumbly that we are not what we should be, and we grope for better things; but just wherein the difference consists, just where is the point where we go off the track, is uncertain in our minds. As in physical achievement, half the success lies in applying the effort at just the right place. The men who have accomplished much are those who have known exactly what they wanted to do and have concentrated their energies upon that. If we have so much self-reformation to accomplish as to dissipate our attention, it may be wise to decide which changes are most immediately important and to limit our endeavors at first to those.
Included in this preliminary task is the fixation in our minds of the reasons for the lines of conduct we intend to follow, all the motives that draw us toward them. This will show us whether we, i.e., our better selves, really wish to acquire these new habits, are really convinced that they are right, or whether we are merely putting before ourselves some one else's ideal which we vaguely feel we ought or are expected to follow. One can often convince one's self quite thoroughly of ideas one did not really believe in by this method of suggestion; but if we are to control our own morals we wish to control them not by some one else's ideals but by our own. If a thing is really right to do there must be definite and legitimate reasons for the doing which can appeal to our intelligence and our emotions; these we should bring into the foreground of our thought and express as clearly and forcibly as possible.
We have now the material for our work. We must so hammer these resolutions and the motives to them into our heads that they will be vividly conscious to us when they are needed. In this process there are three main points to be remembered - Concentration, Iteration, and Assertion.
(1) Concentration. The more completely the mind can be concentrated upon the resolution and its motives the deeper will they penetrate into it, to lie there ready for use at the moment of action. A definite time should be set apart when the mind can be withdrawn from other thoughts and compelled to give all its attention to this matter. On first waking, or just before going to sleep. If one is not too tired-one can usually best get away from the distracting details of life. The resolutions should be written down, with the most important words or phrases underlined, to serve as catchwords and mottoes. They should be read aloud and repeated from memory, as well as thought over silently, thus adding visual and auditory images to the mental concepts. In meditating upon them one's thoughts should not be allowed to wander too far, but must be constantly referred to the definite numbered resolutions. The use of symbols, of colors, etc, will readily occur to any one who goes into this matter with lively interest. Always repeat the resolutions with the greatest possible emphasis and enthusiasm, so as to carry them away ringing in the mind. Remember that the astonishing results of hypnotism and mental healing are due simply to the complete possession of the mind by the new idea.
(2) ITERATION. The oftener the mind is fixed upon the resolution and its motives, the more deeply will they become engraved in it. Sometimes one determined concentration will carry the day; but if this quick assault does not win the victory a long-continued siege can do it. By hammering away continually at the same spot the requisite impression will finally be made. A momentary rehearsal of the resolutions may be made a hundred times a day, in passing; and immediately before the time for execution, if it can be foreseen, forces should be rallied, even if only by an instantaneous flash of determination. Above all, one should not be discouraged and stop trying; for every renewed effort, even if showing no reward in success, produces its exact and unfailing effect. Keeping everlastingly at it is as necessary for success in morals as in everything else.
(3) ASSERTION. The more vigorously we assert our power to keep our resolutions the more likely we are to do so. It is largely lack of confidence in ourselves that paralyzes us. The religions have realized the need of inspiring hope and confidence in their converts by preaching the necessity of faith.
The faith we need is not necessarily faith in any supernatural help, but only in the demonstrated fact of the possibility of controlling our own minds and morals by going at it in the right way. But we must not passively wait for faith to possess us, we must grasp it, cleave to it, assert it. We must repeat our resolutions always with the conviction that we are really going to carry them out. We must picture ourselves at the time of temptation, with the triumphant thought of how splendidly we are going to worst the Devil, and never for a moment think or talk of ourselves as likely to forget or yield. Such persistent assertion, even if there is a background of distrust that we cannot wholly banish from our minds, will greatly help. Whatever we may think about the ethics of belief as applied to supernatural things, the "will to believe" in our own power is certainly legitimate and important. [Footnote: The important problem of the ethics of belief, as applied to religious matters, has not been discussed in this volume. The present writer hopes to discuss it fully in a later volume, to be called Problems of Religion.] Various accessoriesand safeguards. The dogged and hearty practice of auto-suggestion, whether in the secular form above outlined, or in the warmer and more satisfying form of prayer, is sufficient to keep a man master of himself and above the reach of whatever temptations he recognizes and chooses to resist. But there are various other furtherances to self- control that may be briefly suggested.
(1) The method of "turning over a new leaf" is of the utmost value to minds of a certain type. To declare a definite break with the old life, a fresh beginning, unstained and full of hope, often gives just the extra impetus that was needed. We are weighted by the memory of our failures, we live in the shadow of the past, and easily slide into a hopelessness and sense of impotence which a mere dogged persistence cannot overcome. New Year's Day, a birthday, any change in place or manner of life, may well be made the occasion for a bout of "moral house-cleaning," which will give a new enthusiasm and vitality to our better natures. The essential thing in such cases is to look out for the first tests, and not allow a single exception to the new resolutions. A slight lapse, that seems inconsequential, may serve to check the new momentum; as La Rochefoucauld says, "It is far easier to extinguish a first desire than to satisfy all those that follow in its train."
There is, however, a real danger in this method, of a discouragement and demoralization resulting from the collapse of enthusiastic hopes. And there is the further danger that a man will excuse indulgence in such hours of discouragement, on the ground that he is going to turn over another new leaf to-morrow and might as well have a good fling to- day. It is well to remember the truth that Martineau expressed by his apt phrase, "the tides of the spirit." "But, alas," Stevenson puts it, "by planting a stake at the top of the flood, you can neither prevent nor delay the inevitable ebb." After all, in most of our moral warfare, "it's dogged as does it." "He that stumbles and picks himself up is as if he had never fallen."
"We cannot kindle when we will The fire which in the heart resides; The spirit bloweth and is still, In mystery our soul abides. But tasks in hours of insight will'd Can be through hours of gloom fulfill'd."
If we do try the abrupt break, it is of the utmost importance to utilize every opportunity for the carrying out of the new program, to hunt up occasions while the will is strong and the courage high. One actual fulfillment of a resolution is worth many mental rehearsals. And when the enemy is repulsed by this charge with the bayonet, vigilance must not be relaxed, lest he return to take us unawares. [Footnote: I cannot forbear including, in this connection, the admirable remarks of William James (Psychology, vol. I, pp. 123-24): "The first [maxim] is that in the acquisition of a new habit, or the leaving off of an old one, we must take care to LAUNCH OURSELVES WITH AS STRONG AND DECIDED AN INITIATIVE AS POSSIBLE. Accumulate all the possible circumstances which shall reinforce the right motives; put yourself assiduously in conditions that encourage the new way; make engagements incompatible with the old; take a public pledge, if the case allows; in short, envelop your resolution with every aid you know. This will give your new beginning such a momentum that the temptation to break down will not occur as soon as it otherwise might; and every day during which a breakdown is postponed adds to the chances of its not occurring at all. "The second maxim is: NEVER SUFFER AN EXCEPTION TO OCCUR TILL THE NEW HABIT IS SECURELY ROOTED IN YOUR LIFE. Each lapse is like the letting fall of a ball of string which one is carefully winding up; a single slip undoes more than a great many turns will wind again. The need of securing success at the OUTSET is imperative. Failure at first is apt to dampen the energy of all future attempts, whereas past experience of success nerves one to future vigor. It is surprising how soon a desire will die of inanition if it be NEVER fed. "A third maxim may be added to the preceding pair: SEIZE THE VERY FIRST POSSIBLE OPPORTUNITY TO ACT ON EVERY RESOLUTION YOU MAKE, AND ON EVERY EMOTIONAL PROMPTING YOU MAY EXPERIENCE IN THE DIRECTION OF THE HABITS YOU ASPIRE TO GAIN. It is not in the moment of their forming, but in the moment of their producing MOTOR EFFECTS that resolves and aspirations communicate the new 'set' to the brain."]
(2) It is an excellent thing to do a little gratuitous spiritual exercise every day, just to keep in training, to get the habit of conquering impulse, of doing disagreeable things. Nothing is more useful to a man than that power. We must not let our lives get too easy and our wills too soft. To jump out of bed when the whistle blows, instead of dawdling just for a minute more in indolent comfort, to make one's self take the cold bath that is abhorrent to the flesh, to deny one's self the cigar or the candy that may not be in itself particularly harmful-by some means or other to keep one's self in the saddle and riding one's desires, may enable one when some crisis comes to thrust aside a man too fatally accustomed to doing things in the easiest way.
(3) Discretion is sometimes the better part of valor. Besides strengthening our own wills, it is wise to seek in every way to remove temptation from our path, and, if need be, to run away from it. We must keep away from situations that experience warns are dangerous for us, however innocent they may be to others. If a man find that dancing, or the theater, arouses his passionate nature, it may be better to avoid it entirely till his hypersensitive state is normalized. Always alcoholic liquors are to be avoided; they cloud the reason and the will, and let impulse loose. Always overexcitement and overfatigue are to be avoided. "The power to overcome temptation," Jane Addams writes, "reaches its limit almost automatically with that of physical resistance."
(4) We must follow Bossuet's advice not to combat passions directly so much as to turn them aside by applying them to other objects. Our emotional nature is a gift of the gods; the sinner might have been a saint if his emotions had only been enlisted under the right banner. Something good to love, to work for, and think about, something that can arouse our whole nature and relieve it from suppression, is the best antidote to morbid desire. It is sometimes alleged that it is better to satisfy a passion than to keep it pent up within the organism. But satisfying a wrong passion not only brings its inevitable unhappy consequences, to one's self and to others, it makes it far harder to resist the passion again, when it recurs. The only safe outlet is one that leads into right conduct; under skilful guidance all passions can be transmuted into valuable driving forces and allies of morality.
(5) Even if one seems to be playing a losing game, one can still keep up the fight. One can spoil one's enjoyment in self-indulgence or selfishness; one can refuse to give in all over. This minority representation of the better impulse will suffice to keep it alive in us; and when the revulsion from sin comes we shall be in better shape to make the fight next time. A hundred failures need not discourage; some of the greatest men have gained the final ascendancy over their weaknesses only after a long and often losing struggle. The case is hopeless only for the man who stops fighting.
Self-control is the measure of manhood. It is the most important thing in the personal life. And it is within the reach of any man who can be brought to understand the mechanism where through it can be attained. It remains true that it is best attained through religion, which utilizes the power of prayer, of faith, the enthusiasm of a great cause and motive, and the comradeship and help of others engaged in the same eternal war with sin. But religion, to be efficacious, must be not passively accepted, but USED. Its help comes not to him who saith "Lord, Lord!" but to him who earnestly seeks to do the will of the Father. J. Payot, Education of the Will. H. C. King, Rational Living, chap. VI, sec. III; chap. X. W. James, Psychology, vol. I, pp. 122-27; vol. II, pp. 561-79. W. E. H. Lecky, Map of Life, chap. XII. A. Bain, The Emotions and the Will, part II, chap. IX. L. H. Gulick, in World's Work, vol. 15, p. 9797. Bossuet, Connaissance de Dieu et de Soi meme, chap. III, sec. 19. St. Augustine, Confessions, book VIII, chap. V. Janet, Elements de Morale, chap. X, sec. 3. W. L. Sheldon, An Ethical Movement, chap. X. A. Bennett, The Human Machine, chaps. I-V. O. S. Marden, Every Man a King.
CHAPTER XXII
THE ATTAINABILITY OF HAPPINESS
WE have now discussed the more recurrent problems of the individual, and pointed out the salient duties that private life entails. But there remains something to be added before we shall have clearly pointed the way to personal happiness. "Mere morality," even when coupled with good fortune, is not enough; a sinless man, scrupulous to fulfill the least command of the law, may yet be anxious, restless, depressed, unsatisfied. We need more than morality, as the word is commonly used; we need religion - or something of the sort. There is no doubt that for the attainment of a pervasive and stable happiness there is nothing so good as the best sort of religion; but, as in discussing self- control, we must here steer clear of religious controversy and phrase what we have to say in the colder terms of "mere morality." And though there will be a great loss in feeling, in persuasiveness and unction thereby, there will be gain in clearness. It is possible to express in the drab tones of morality the profound insights which have made religion the great guide to happiness; and even the man who deems himself irreligious may, if he takes to heart these more prosaic counsels, find something of the peace that has been the boon of true believers.
The threefold key to happiness:
I. HEARTY ALLEGIANCE TO DUTY.
The one thing above all others that makes life worth living is the utter devotion of the heart and will to the commands of morality. To throw one's self whole-heartedly into the game, to play one's part for all it is worth, transforms what were else a grim and unhappy necessity into a glorious opportunity. The happy man is the loyal man, the man who has taken sides, who has enrolled himself definitely on the side of right and tastes the zest of battle. He has something to live for, and something lasting. He has put his heart into a cause that the limitations and accidents of life cannot take from him, he has laid up his treasure in heaven, where moth and rust doth not corrupt or thieves break through and steal.
Any cause, any ambition, any great endeavor that can stir the blood, and give a life direction, purpose, and continuity of achievement, has the power to rescue life from ennui, from emptiness, and give it positive worth. But most ambitions pall in time, and many a cause that has taken a man's best energies has come to seem mistaken or futile with the years. There is only one great campaign which is so eternal, so surely necessary, so clear in its summons to all men, that the heart can rest in it as in something great enough to ennoble a whole life. That is the age-long war against evil, the unending summons to duty, the service of God. Once a man learns this deepest of joys, nothing can take it from him; whatever his limitations, however narrow his sphere, there will not fail to be a right way, a brave way, a beautiful way to live. There is comradeship in it; in this common service of God - or of good, if we must avoid religious terms - we stand shoulder to shoulder with the saints and heroes of all races and times, with all, of whatever land or tongue, who are striving to push forward the line, to make the right prevail and banish evil. Every effort, every sacrifice, has its inextinguishable effect; in his moral conquests a man is no longer an individual, he is a part of the great tide that is resistlessly making toward the better world of the future, the Kingdom of God. The great Power in the world that makes for righteousness is back of him, and in him; in no loyal moment is he alone. . . . Inevitably the tongue slips into religious language in dealing with these high truths; but nonetheless are they scientific truths, matters of plain every day observation.
The essential point is, that it is not enough to obey the Law; we must ESPOUSE the Law, clasp it to our bosoms, love it, and give ourselves to it utterly. We must - to use the pregnant words of James "base our lives on doing and being, not on having"; base our lives solidly upon it, so that everything else is secondary. The pleasures of life are well enough in their time, but they must not usurp the chief place in a man's thought.[Footnote: Cf. J. S. Mill, Autobiography, p. 142: "The enjoyments of life are sufficient to make it a pleasant thing, when they are taken en passant, without being made a principal object. The only chance is to treat, not happiness, but some end external to it, as the purpose of life."] His first concern must be to keep true, to play the game; he must seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, if he would have these other things added unto him. He must lose his life his worldly interests, his dependence upon ease and luxury, and even love if he would truly find it. In a hundred such phrases from the Great Teacher's lips one finds the secret. More baldly expressed, it comes to this, that only through putting the main emphasis upon doing the right, obeying the call of duty, only through the courageous attack and the giving of our utmost allegiance, can we keep a positive zest in living, exorcise the specter of aimlessness and depression, and lift ordinary commonplace life to the level of heroism. Blessed is the man whose DELIGHT is in the law of the Lord.
II. HEARTY ACQUIESCENCE IN OUR LOT.
The fighter, for whatever cause, can bear the blows that come as a part of the battle; if a man has put his heart into living by his ideal, he is immune from the disappointments and irritations that beset man upon a lower level. But it is well to take thought also for this side of the matter, to cultivate deliberately the spirit of acquiescence in the inevitable pain and losses of life. Many of the sweetest pleasures are by their nature uncertain or transient; these we must hold so loosely that, while not refusing to enjoy their sweetness, we are ]ot dependent upon them and can let them go without losing sight of the steady gleam that we follow. However dear to us are the people we love, and the material things we own, we must keep the underlying assurance that if they be taken from us life will still bring us in other ways renewed opportunities for that loyalty to duty, that faithful living, which is after all the end for which we live. We must count whatever comes to us, whether sweet or bitter, as the conditions under which we serve, the material with which we have to work, the stuff which we have to "try the soul's strength on." For there is no way to be armor-proof against unhappiness but by seeing to it that our hearts are not set on anything but doing or being; nothing else is reliably permanent amid the fitful sunshine and shadow of human life. "Make hy claim of wages a zero; then hast thou the world at thy feet." [Footnote: In Maeterlinck's Measure of the Hours, he speaks of a sundial found near Venice by Hazlitt with the inscription, Horas non numero nisi serenas and quotes Hazlitt's remarks thereon: "What a fine lesson is conveyed to the mind to take no note of time but by its benefits, to watch only for the smiles and neglect the frowns of fate, to compose our lives of bright and gentle moments, turning always to the sunny side of things and letting the rest slip from our imaginations, unheeded or forgotten."] This necessity of detaching the heart from dependence upon uncertainties found extreme expression in the various historic forms of asceticism and monasticism. Such a running away from the world does not satisfy our age, with its eagerness for life and life more abundantly; if it escapes the poignant sorrows it cannot happiness, or make life better for others. But we may well take to heart the half-truth taught by the hermits and monks of the past. We may be "in the world," indeed, but not "of it"; we, too, may make no claims upon life, while putting our hearts into playing our own part in it well. The writings of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius are full of passages that express the gist of the matter, such as the following: "It is thy duty to order thy life well in every single act; and if every act does its duty as far as is possible, be content; no one is able to hinder thee so that each act shall not do its duty. But something external will stand in the way? Nothing will stand in the way of thy acting justly and soberly and considerately. But perhaps some of thy active powers will be hindered? Well, by acquiescing in the hindrance, and being content to transfer thy efforts to that which is allowed, another opportunity of action is immediately put before thee in place of that which was hindered." What is this but saying in other words that not in having lies our life, but in doing and being. Not even in succeeding, we must remember; and this is perhaps the hardest part of our lesson. It is one thing to bear with serenity those blows of fortune against which we are obviously defenseless; it is another thing, when there seems a chance for averting the disaster, when our whole heart and soul are thrown into that effort, to await the outcome with tranquility, to bear failure without complaint. The "might have been's" and the "perhaps may yet be's" are the greatest disturbers of our peace. To use our keenest wits for attaining what seems best, to use our utmost persuasion for protecting ourselves from the selfishness and stupidity of others, and then if we fail, if the fair hope slips from our grasp, if the thoughtlessness or cruelty of men prevails against us, to smile and attack the next problem with undaunted cheerfulness, requires, indeed, to attain to that level may well be called "the last infirmity of noble minds." For the very concentration of life upon doing and being carries with it the danger of staking happiness upon the success of the doing, the attainment of the ideals. We must count even the stupidity and impulsiveness of our own mental make-up as among the materials we have to work with, and not allow remorse for our own part in past failures to interfere with the joyful earnestness with which we attack the problems of the eternal present. We may, indeed, often succeed, and that may be a very great and pure joy to us; but we are not to count upon success; or, to put it another way, we are to think of the real success as lying in the dauntless renewal of the effort rather than in the show of outward result. "To have often resisted the diabolic, and at the end to be still resisting it, is for the poor human soldier to have done right well. To ask to see some fruit of our endeavor is but a transcendental way of serving for reward." This is not pessimism, it is the first step toward a sound and invulnerable optimism. We must recognize once for all that this world is not the world of our dreams, and cease to be so pathetically surprised and hurt when it falls short of them. Were we to be rebellious at life for not being built after the pattern of our ideals there would be no limit to our faultfinding. We may, indeed, long in our idle hours with Omar "To grasp this sorry scheme of things entire, shatter it to bits-and then Remould it nearer to the heart's desire!" But in our daily life a braver and saner attitude befits us; for it is not in such an ideal world but in the actual world that we have to live. Evils there are in it and will yet be-why we cannot tell and need not know; the only alternative we have is to take them cheerfully or gloomily, to rebel or to accept the situation. Our duty then is clear. To face the events of life as they come to us, without discouragement or dismay, to laugh at them a little and learn to carry on our lives through them with steadfast heart and smiling face- surely that is the part of wisdom and of true manliness. The ugly things in life seem much less formidable when thus boldly faced than when we try to shut our eyes to them, with the consequent disillusion at their continual reappearance. Confess frankly the faults of life and it becomes tolerable, is even in a fair way to become lovable. For after all, when its obvious imperfections do not blind us to its good points, it is a dear old world we live in, and the healthy minded man loves it, as he loves his friends in spite of their faults loves it, and finds it a world gloriously worth living in.
III. HEARTY APPRECIATION OF THE WONDER AND BEAUTY IN LIFE.
Finally, when we have our great purpose in life, and have overcome the fear of pain and loss, we must learn to see and appreciate the beauty of the world we live in. The man who refuses to be downed by trouble is in a condition to enjoy each bit of good fortune that comes to him, to welcome each as a pure gift or addition to life, and to know that gifts of some sort or other will always come. Holding all things with that looser grasp that is ready to let them go if go they must, he can relish the good things of life the more freely for not having counted on them, as he can the more freely admire the virtues of his friends for not having expected them to be perfect. He can feel the beauty of the world without being dependent upon it, not looking for mortal things to be immortal or human things to be ideal, but whole-heartedly enjoying today what he has today and tomorrow what he shall have to-morrow. The things he cannot have at all, instead of spoiling his happiness in what he has, will rather add to it by forming another dimension of the actual, full of beautiful visions and glorious possibilities. And meantime the real world, of events that actually occur, will not fail, in spite of its flaws and rebuffs, to bring him ever-fresh delights. Let no one minimize these delights. There is more beauty, more interest here in this mundane existence of ours, more inspiration, more inexhaustible possibility of enjoyment than the keenest of us has dreamed of. We need some sort of shaking up to rouse us to the beauty of common things- the freshness of the air we breathe, the warmth of sunshine, the green of trees and fields and the blue of the sky, the joy in exercise of brain and muscle, in reading and talking and sharing in the life of the world; and in such daily things as eating at the family table when we are hungry, or a good night's sleep when we are tired. We need some teacher like Whitman to open our eyes to the beauty not only of flowers but of leaves of grass, to the picturesqueness and significance of so dull a thing as a ferryboat; or like Wordsworth, with his picturing of homely country scenes and events, with his emotion at the sight of the sleeping city- "a sight so touching in its majesty." This sense of the meaning of common things floods most of us at one time or another, and we see what in our blindness we have been overlooking. Go without your comfortable bed for a while, your well-cooked food, your home, friends, neighbors, and you will discover how rich you have been. Your mother's face hinted by some stranger in a foreign land will some day overcome you with the realization of the comfort of her love; and unless you are a crabbed egotist the life of your fellows can furnish you with endless pleasures. It is not necessary to own things to enjoy them; our interests and enjoyments may well overlap and include those of our friends and neighbors, and even those of strangers. The smile of a happy child, a friend's good fortune a sunrise or moonlit cloud-strewn sky, should bring a pure gladness to any one who has eyes to see and heart to feel. We must "Learn to love the morn, Love the lovely working light, Love the miracle of sight, Love the thousand things to do." [Footnote: These lines are Richard Le Gallienne's. Cf. also Matthew Arnold's lines: "Is it so small a thing To have enjoyed the sun, To have lived light in the spring, To have loved, to have thought, to have done, To have advanced true friends and beat down baffling foes? The sports of the country people, A flute note from the woods, Sunset over the sea; Seed-time and harvest, The reapers in the corn, The vinedresser in his vineyard, The village girl at her wheel. . ."] The true lover of beauty will not need to seek forever-new scenes and objects to admire. He will find that which can feed his heart in the clouds of morning, the blue of noon, or the stars of night. One graceful vase with a flower-stalk bending over to display its drooping blossoms, will fill him with a quiet happiness; the merry laughter of a child, the tender smile of a lover, the rugged features of a weather beaten laborer, will stir his soul to response; a few lines of poetry remembered in the midst of work, a simple song sung in the twilight, a print of some old master hanging by his bedside, a bird-call heard at sunset or the scent of evening air after rain, may so speak to his spirit that he will say, "It is enough!" It is not the number of beautiful things that we have that matters, but the degree in which we are open to their influence, the atmosphere into which we let them lead us. Our hearts must be free from self-seeking, from regret, from anger, from restlessness. The vision comes not always to the connoisseur, comes to him whose life is simple, earnest, open-eyed and openhearted. In the pauses of his faithful work he will refresh his soul with some bit of beauty that tells of attainment, of peace, of perfection. That is a proof to him of the beauty in the midst of which he lives, inexhaustible, hardly discerned; it carries him beyond itself into the ideal world of which it is a sample and illustration; unconsciously during the duties of the day he lives in the light of that vision, and everything is sweetened and blessed thereby.
Can we maintain a steady under glow of happiness?
Happiness—happiness sufficient to make life well worth living is, for most men at least, at most times, a real possibility. To be won it has but to be sought vigorously enough. It is to be sought, however, not primarily by changing one's environment but by changing one's self; not by acquiring new things, but by acquiring a new attitude toward things; not by getting what could make one happy, but by learning to be happy with what one can get. THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN IS WITHIN YOU! This is not merely a moralist's theory, or an empirical observation; it is a scientific fact. We may restate the matter in psychological language by saying that happiness and unhappiness are responses of the organism to its environment, reactions upon a stimulus, our attitude of welcome or dissatisfaction toward the various matters of our experience. True, we often think of the quality of pleasantness as inhering in the things we enjoy, and speak of troubles and sorrows as objective. But this is only a shorthand way of describing experience. In reality the pleasure we feel in eating when we are hungry or in seeing a friend we love is something added to and different from the taste sensations, or the complex visual perceptions and memory images the friend arouses in us. So a cutting or burning sensation, the thought of a friend's death, or of our failure, on the one hand, and our unhappiness thereat on the other hand, are two distinct things, closely bound together in our minds but separable.
The separation is, indeed, difficult to bring about, because the age long struggle for existence has made unhappiness at physical pain and pleasure at the healthy exercise of our organs or satisfying of our appetite instinctive and immediate, that we may avoid what is harmful to life and pursue what is useful. All our cravings and longings and regrets have this biological value; they are the machinery by which nature spurs us on to better adjustment to the conditions of life. And in learning to do without the spur we must learn not to need it. Discontent is better than laziness, remorse better than callous selfishness, suffering under extreme cold better than recklessly exposing the body till it is weakened. But as soon as we have reached that stage of rationality where we can choose the better way and stick to it without the stinging goad of pain, the pain is no longer necessary and we may safely learn to weed it out.
A few blessed souls we know who have learned the secret, who go about with perpetually radiant face and take smilingly the very mishaps that worry and sadden the rest of us. To some extent this may be merely a matter of better nerves, of less sensitive temperament, of more abounding vitality; but there are many of the weakest and most sensitive among those who have learned that better way; they can turn everything into happiness as Midas turned everything into gold. It is surprising, looking through such a one's eyes, to see how full life is of delight. Yet in the same situations there may be room for endless complaint if "every grief is entertained that's offered." It all depends on the attitude taken. In trouble one man will fall to fretting, while another does what can be done and then turns his thoughts to something else; in discomfort one will lower the corners of his mouth and feel wretched, while the other finds it all vastly amusing; one will have his day quite spoiled by some disappointment which the other takes as a mere incident; one will find the same environment dull and stupid which the other finds full of interest and opportunity; and so out of like conditions one will make an unhappy, the other a happy life. [Footnote: Cf. "In journeying often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren, in weariness and painfulness, in watching often, in hunger and thirst, in fasting often, in cold and nakedness . . . yet always rejoicing!" "Rejoicing in tribulation" even, because to the brave man every obstacle and failure is so much further opportunity for courage and contrivance, for matching himself against things. "Human joy," writes the author of the Simple Life, "has celebrated its finest triumphs under the greatest tests of endurance." The Apostle Paul is but one of many who have welcomed each rebuff, and proved that if rightly taken life almost at its worst can be transmuted by courage into happiness.] This, then, is the philosophy of happiness in a nutshell: PUT YOUR HEART INTO DOING YOUR DUTY; DEMAND NOTHING ELSE OF LIFE THAN THE OPPORTUNITY TO DO YOUR DUTY; ENJOY FREELY AND WITHOUT FEAR EVERYTHING GOOD AND BEAUTIFUL THAT COMES IN YOUR WAY.
To acquire and keep this attitude of mind requires of course resolution and persistence. We must rouse ourselves and take sides. We must definitely pledge ourselves once and for all to happiness; and if we] cannot at a leap attain to it, we must still remember that we have committed ourselves to that side. We must pretend to be happy, throw aside all complaining and sighs and long faces; whatever comes, we must remember that we are on trial to preserve our buoyancy, our power not to be downcast. We shall not be able] to disuse our habit of unhappiness at once. But if we stick to our colors and refuse to add to whatever depression masters us by brooding upon it and giving it right of way; if we remember the conditions of happiness stated above, and thrust resolutely from us all thoughts and words incompatible with living according to them, the unhappiness will be gone before we know it. It is a well-known psychological law that if we choke the expression of an emotion, we shall presently find that we have smothered the emotion itself. It may seem like hollow pretense at first, but it will pay to pretend hard; when we have pretended long enough, we shall find we no longer need to pretend. There will always be those, no doubt, who will declare it impossible, and they will continue to be unhappy; there will be many others who will concede the possibility of it, but will not have the determination and persistence to effect it; but there will always be some who will say, "Happiness is possible!" who will set out to get it, and who will get it, as they will deserve to. Some men are born happy, some seem to have happiness thrust upon them, but some achieve happiness. It will not be the same kind of happiness that we had as children, before the shocks of life awoke us. It will be a happiness that meets and rises above pain. Life will always have its tragedies, sickness and separation, pain and sudden death. They are the common inheritance of mankind. But it is not these things in themselves that make life unendurable, it is the way we take them, our fear of them, our worry over them, our longings and rebelliousness, our magnifying and brooding over and shrinking from them; when we resolve to lift our heads and assert our power, we shall find life tragic, yes, but endurable, and full of a deep joy. The little worries and disappointments will cease to trouble us. And the same attitude that enables us to rise above them will, when more staunchly held, lift us over the great sorrows also, and keep alive in us an under glow of joy. An under glow of joy-that is what can be found in life in any but its highly abnormal phases, by conforming to its conditions and taking it for what it is, stuff which, we have to shape into service to the ideal. It should be recognized as the final word of personal morality that a man must train himself to a happiness that is independent of circumstances. We need no mystical painting out of the shadows, no blindness to facts, only a will to serve the right, a readiness to accept the imperfect, and eyes to see the beauty that surrounds us. "If I have faltered more or less In my great task of happiness, If I have moved among my race And shown no glorious morning face, If beams from happy human eyes Have moved me not; if morning skies, Books" and my food, and summer rain, Knocked on my sullen heart in vain. If, in short, we have not disciplined ourselves to happiness, it may well be maintained that we have left undone our highest duty to our neighbor and ourselves. And he may with good reason declare that he has solved the greatest problem of life who can proclaim with Tolstoy, "I rejoice in having taught myself not to be sad!" or with the Apostle Paul, "I have learned in whatsoever state I am therein to be content." Much of the secret of happiness is to be found in Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius and, of course, in the Gospels. Of modern writers, among the most useful are Stevenson and Chesterton. See, for example, Stevenson's Christmas Sermon, and J. F. Genung's Stevenson's Attitude toward Life. Chesterton's counsels are too sattered to make reference practicable.
See also C. W. Eliot, The Happy Life. C. Hilty, Happiness. P. G. Hamerton, The Quest of Happiness. P. Paulsen, System of Ethics, book m, chap, n, sees. 3, 6; chap, iv, sees. 1, 2. H. C. King, Rational Living, chap, x, sec. iv. J. Payot, Education of the Will, book iv, chap. iv. A. Bennett, The Human Machine, chaps, VI; Mental Efficiency, chap. ix. In Royce's Philosophy of Loyalty, Roosevelt's Strenuous Life, and Gannett's Blessed be Drudgery, we get valuable notes; and Carlyle has many, especially ID the latter chapters of Sartor Resartm.
PART IV
PUBLIC MORALITY
CHAPTER XXIII
PATRIOTISM AND WORLD-PEACE
THE goal of personal morality is reached with the adoption of that mode of life that leads to the stable and lasting happiness of the individual. Such a happiness necessarily presupposes relations of kindness and cooperation with those other persons that form the immediate environment. But it is quite compatible with a neglect of those wider aspects of duty that we call public morality. The Stoics, the anchorites, some communities of monks, and many a well-to-do recluse today, are examples of those who have found a selfish happiness for themselves without taking any hand in forwarding the general welfare. Yet the greatest total good is not to be attained in any such way; if man is to win in his inexorable war with a hostile and grudging environment, men must march EN MASSE, must work for ends that lie far beyond their personal satisfactions, for the welfare of the State and posterity. It is these larger, public duties that we must now consider. And it is here that our greatest stress must be laid; for these obligations are too easily overlooked, and toward them the contemporary conscience needs most sharply to be aroused. The first great public problem, historically, is that of war. And theoretically it may well come first, since the attainment of peace is the prerequisite of all other social advance. While a nation's energies are absorbed in war, nothing, or nearly nothing else can be done. So we turn to a consideration of war; and first, of that emotion, patriotism, whose training and redirection must underlie the movement toward universal peace.
What is the meaning and value of patriotism?
Matthew Arnold began his famous American address on Numbers by quoting Dr. Johnson's saying, "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." We must admit that to certain forms of it the gibe is pertinent. But in its essence, patriotism is that most useful of human possessions, an emotion that turns a duty into a joy. It is necessary for men, however burdensome they may find the obligation, to be loyal to the interests of the State of which they are members. But the patriot feels it noburden; he loves his country, and serves her willingly, as his privilege and glad desire. To be conscious of belonging to a social group, whose interests are regarded as one's own, to mourn its disasters and rejoice in its successes, and give one's hands and brains without reluctance, when needed, to its service- that is patriotism. For the individual, its value is that it widens his sympathies, gives him new interests, stimulates his ambition, warms his heart with a sense of brotherhood in common hopes and fears; the "man without a country" is, as Dr. Bale's story graphically depicted, like a man without a home; the "citizens of the world," who voluntarily expatriate themselves, miss much of the tang of life that is tasted by him who keeps his local attachments and national loyalty. For the State, its value is that it welds men together, softens their civil strife, lifts them above petty jealousies, rouses them to maintain the common weal against all dangers, external and internal. Especially in view of our hybrid population is it necessary to stimulate patriotism, by the celebration of national anniversaries, the salutation of the flag in the public schools, and whatever other means help to enlist the emotions on the side of civic consciousness. But while seeking to foster patriotism, for its great potentialities of good, we must guard diligently against its lapse into forms that are really harmful to the community which it avowedly serves. Like every other great emotion, it needs to be controlled, developed along the lines of greatest usefulness, directed into proper channels. How should patriotism be directed and qualified?
(1) Patriotism must be rationalized, so as to be an enthusiasm for the really great and admirable phases of the national life. Instead of a pride in the prowess of army and navy, of yachts or athletes, it should become a pride in national efficiency and health, in the national art, literature, statesmanship, and educational system, in the beauty of public buildings and the standards of public manners and morals. It should think not so much of defending by force the national "honor," as of maintaining standards of honor that shall be worth defending. There may, indeed, still be occasions when we can learn the truth of the old Roman verse, Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori; but the newer patriotism consists not so much in willingness to die as in willingness to live, for one's country-to take the trouble to study conditions, to vote, and to work for the improvement of conditions and the invigorating of the national life. The real anti-patriots are not the peace-men, but the selfish and unscrupulous money-makers, the idle rich, the dissolute, the ill-mannered, all those who put private interest or passion above the public weal, help to weaken national strength and solidarity, and bring our country's name into disrepute.
(2) Patriotism must not merge into conceit and blind self-satisfaction. The superior, patronizing air of many Americans, their insufferable boasting and dogmatism, does more, perhaps, to prejudice foreigners against us than any other thing. We must teach international good manners, a becoming modesty, a generosity toward the prejudices of others, and a recognition of our own shortcomings. The blind patriotism that will not confess to any fault, that shouts, "Our country, right or wrong," leads in the direction of arrogance, wrongdoing, and dishonor. We must be free to criticize our own government; we must have no false notions about national "honor" such as were once held concerning personal "honor" in the days of dueling. We shall doubtless be in the wrong sometimes; we must welcome enlightenment and try to learn the better way. Apologizing is sometimes nobler than bluster; and he is no true lover of his country who seeks to condone, and so perpetuate, her errors.
(3) Patriotism must not imply a hatred of, or desire to hurt, other countries. The sight of one great civilization seeking to injure another is the shame of humanity. For in the end our interests are the same; we should not profit by Germany's loss any more than Connecticut would gain by injury to Vermont. Jingoism, contempt of other peoples, and purely selfish diplomacy, are sinful outgrowths of patriotism. We must learn to be fair and good-tempered, to appreciate the admirable in other nations, to thrill to their ideals, and banish all suspicious, sneering, or hypercritical attitudes toward them. It is a pity that the mass of our people get their conceptions of foreign peoples and rulers so largely through newspaper cartoons and caricatures, which emphasize and exaggerate their points of difference and inferiority instead of revealing their power and excellence. It is a stupid provinciality that conceives a distaste for foreigners because of their alien manners and to us uncouth language, their different dress and habits. As a matter of fact, they feel as superior to us as we to them, and on the whole, perhaps, with as good a right. No one of the nations but has some noble ideals and achievements to its credit; if we do not appreciate them, we are thereby proved to be in need of what they have to give. And underneath these usually superficial differences, we are all just men and women, with the same loves and hatreds, the same needs, the same weaknesses and repentances and aspirations. If we realized our common humanity, we should try to treat them as we should wish to be treated by them; the Golden Rule, the Christian spirit, the method of reason and kindness, is as applicable to international as to inter-personal relations. We should not be too sensitive to the trivial breaches of manners, the intemperate words and selfish acts of neighbor-nations, but make allowances and preserve our good-fellowship, as we do in our personal life. We should beware of letting our own patriotism lead us into like misconduct. Above all, we must refuse to let it lead us into the lust of conquest; we must respect the rights and liberties of other peoples, keep strictly to our treaty obligations, honor less the patriots who have inflamed national hatreds and led us to battle against other peoples than those who have wrought for their country's righteousness and true honor, and let it be our pride to stand for international comity and good will. A question that may properly be discussed here is whether it is permissible to shift patriotism from one country to another. Such a change of loyalty is, in times of war, called treason, and naturally evokes the resentment of the deserted side. Even as impartial judges, we are properly suspicious of such action, as denoting a vacillating nature, devoid of the true spirit of loyalty, or as indicative of a selfishness that follows its own personal advantage. And so far as that suspicion is well founded, we must condemn the traitor. But certainly, if a man experiences a sincere change of conviction, he should not be required to continue to serve the side that he now feels to be in the wrong; every man must be free to follow his conscience, even if it leads him to disavow his own earlier allegiance. Suppose Benedict Arnold to have developed a sincere conviction that the American revolutionists were in the wrong, and that the true welfare of both America and Britain lay in their continued union. In such a case he must, as a conscientious man, have transferred his allegiance to the Tory side. So a man who has been a worker for the saloon interests, who should become convinced of the anti-social influence of the liquor trade, would do right to come over to the anti- saloon side and work against his former associates. The really difficult question lies rather here: may such a man use for the advantage of the cause he now serves the knowledge he gained, the secrets entrusted to him, the power he won, as a worker for the opposite cause? If Benedict Arnold was a sincere convert to the British cause, did he do right in trying to deliver West Point into their hands? Or are we right in execrating him for his attempted breach of trust? May the former saloon-worker use his inside knowledge of the saloon men's plans, and his familiarity with the business, to help the cause to which he has transferred his allegiance? The two cases may be closely parallel; but each will probably be decided by most people according to the side upon which they stand. An impartial judgment will, perhaps, condemn all breaches of faith, all use of delegated power for ends contrary to those for which the power was delegated, including secrets deliberately entrusted, but will not condemn the use for the new cause of knowledge gained by the individual's own observation, or influence won through the power of his own personality.
What have been the benefits of war?
War has not been an unmitigated evil. In fairness we must note the following points:
(1) In spite of its danger, and its pain, war has been a great excitement and joy to men. Tennyson is doubtless true to life in making Ulysses exclaim "All times I have enjoyed Greatly, have suffered greatly. . . And drunk delight of battle with my peers, Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy. How dull it is to pause, to make an end, As though to breathe were life!"
In the Iliad, indeed, we read: "With everything man is satiated, sleep, sweet singing, and the joyous dance; of all these man gets sooner tired than of war." In primitive times, and even, though decreasingly, in modern times, the cause of war has lain not merely in the ends to be attained thereby, but in the sheer love of war for its own sake-the quickened heartbeats, the sense of power and daring and achievement, the joy in martial music and uniforms, in the rhythmic footsteps of marching men, in the awakened thrill of patriotism, the love of effort and sacrifice for a cherished cause. |
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