OPTIMISM AND INTEREST.
Not long ago I met an old acquaintance, and by way of greeting asked how affairs were with him. “All right,” he replied; “business is looking up; the city is improving; the State is in a better condition; we have a good Legislature, a good Governor; it is a beautiful day, a beautiful world; everything is all right.” And I went on my way, meditating on interest and optimism. His interest in life was not due to any recent stroke of good fortune, but was habitual.
The optimist is your best philosopher. He adapts himself to the world and uses it. He selects the best that life offers, and, when the sky is gloomy, he lives in hope of bright days. He has faith in the ultimate beneficent outcome of the plan of the Creator. As there is light for the eye, sound for the ear, form for the touch, aromas for the smell, food for the taste, so there is an object in the outer world, adapted to every human instinct and impulse. The impulse for life and action, the desire for property, the impulse for friendship, the impulses of wonder, æsthetic admiration, and religious worship—each has its objective counterpart. Man is adjusted to his environment, and his environment includes the whole round world of utility and sentiment. Human life is perpetual activity, a searching for objects that will meet material needs and conduce to spiritualdevelopment. The feeling of interest arises when the mind finds the object of its search or feels that it is on the right track.
Interest is the condition of the mind that makes a thing of value to us. It is the cry ofEurekawhen a fitting discovery is made. It is the magnetic relation between impulse and the end at which it aims, between man and the outer world, between man and himself. It makes life worth living, and is the secret of activity and progress. Inasmuch as interest shows the kind of objects that appeal to the mind, it is a revelation of character.
The objects, which a man may cherish are limitless. He may rejoice in his strength, his personal adornment, his lands and money, his books and works of art. He may find an eager interest in his own image as pictured in the minds of his relatives, friends, or fellow citizens. He may take pride in family or in personal glory and honor. Men pose before the world; they act often with reference to the appreciation they will receive. It is told that the poet Keats could not live without applause. Carlyle says men write history, not with supreme regard for facts, but for the writing. Nero conceived that he was a musician, poet, and actor, surpassing in merit the geniuses of his age.
Man’s attitude toward wisdom and religion, the quality of his thoughts and feelings, his aspirations, constitute his spiritual interest. The sentiments of his soul are his; for them he is responsible, and in them he finds satisfaction or humiliation.
As one forgets self and self-interest, more and more he makes the whole world his possession.Nature, the welfare of others, man in history and literature, the Maker of all, may become objects of regard. A French nobleman who in the vicissitudes of revolution lost his estates and titles, but received a small pension from the government, became a philosopher and had the world at his command. For slight pay, willing service for his daily needs was his; private gardens, public parks, the broad landscape, the sky were his to enjoy, and he was free from care and fear. Some interests are universal, not the heritage and possession of one, but, like sun and air, free. They fall “as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath,” and bless him that receives. Rich in experience is he who can see in the drifted gleaming snows on our mountain peaks more than the summer’s irrigation, in the green plains of May more than the growing crops of wheat and alfalfa, in the orchard bloom more than the promise of fruit, in public education and charity more than political and social prudence, in religious devotion more than conventionality. For him blessings come on the morning breeze, gleam from the midnight sky, appear in the quality of mercy, and spring from communion with the Soul of Nature.
Prometheus is said to have given to men a portion of all the qualities possessed by the other animals—the lion, the monkey, the wolf—hence the many traits that are manifest in his complex nature. There is a slight suggestion of evolution in this—that man is but the highest stage of animal development, and that his refined emotions are but the instincts of the lower orders modified by complex groupings. We grant the process, but not necessarilythe inference. An apple is none the less an apple because it is the product of an unbroken development from a germ and simple shoot. The spirit of self-sacrifice need be none the less valid because it is a late phase of some simple instinct. We believe the world was fashioned according to an intelligent plan, a plan gradually realized, and that its meaning is found, not in the lower, but in the higher stages of development. We explain the purpose of creation, not by the first struggle of a protozoan for food, but by the last aspiration of man for heaven.
“From harmony, from heavenly harmony,This universal frame began:From harmony to harmonyThrough all the compass of the notes it ran,The diapason closing full in Man.”
“From harmony, from heavenly harmony,This universal frame began:From harmony to harmonyThrough all the compass of the notes it ran,The diapason closing full in Man.”
“From harmony, from heavenly harmony,This universal frame began:From harmony to harmonyThrough all the compass of the notes it ran,The diapason closing full in Man.”
“From harmony, from heavenly harmony,
This universal frame began:
From harmony to harmony
Through all the compass of the notes it ran,
The diapason closing full in Man.”
The latest science hesitates to question the validity of our higher emotional life. It is becoming antiquated to say that, because we are descended from animals, our sense of duty, our feelings of faith and reverence have no more significance than the animal instincts from which they may have developed. There they are in all their refinement, need, and suggestiveness, and, as such, are a proper ground of belief. A late philosophical evolutionist says it is useless to theorize about our impulse to pray, its use or futility—we pray because we cannot help praying. Evolution is undergoing the test of the last stage of a scientific process—in this instance that of fitness to explain the facts of man’s nature. It may not escape the test by denying the facts.
Pardon the seeming digression, but the reasonableness of our faith is the ground of interest. Interestvanishes with the genuineness of our supposed treasure. We do not like to handle counterfeit coin; we do not value antiquities and sacred relics of modern manufacture, or mementos that no longer represent cherished memories. Much that stimulates the higher life would perish did we doubt the truth of our nature; the glory of the world would depart were the soul lost out of it.
Some interests have sacred claims above others; there is a hierarchy amongst our impulses. Analyze the fact as we may, duty still remains. Moral laws and their practical application are progressively revealed by the relations of men in society. We may believe the laws are there in the nature of things, but that our discovery of them is gradual, as is the discovery of the unchanging laws of physics. The moral problem is the old one of the struggle between light and darkness, between good and evil, between duty and pleasure—the problem of responsibility, character, and destiny. In its modern form it is the problem of utility, that is, of life and happiness. But utilitarianism includes, and ever must include, the happiness that comes from the exercise of the higher spiritual functions, from the sense of duty performed, and from belief in divine approbation.
Interests chosen and pursued reveal the character. Men do not gather grapes of thorns nor figs of thistles. “A good tree can not bring forth evil fruit; neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.” The outward act is but the visible expression of the inner life.
There is something more than a pleasing myth in the Greek conception of choosing the lot of life.Every responsible act of free will is gradually fixing our destiny. The conduct of life is not a series of skirmishes with fate; it is fate itself, and a thing largely of our own creation. We are constructing the future out of the present. For the goal that we may finally reach we are even now running the race, the direction is already chosen, and, if we find ourselves on the wrong road, time is already lost.
Times change, science brings in new conceptions, superstitions vanish, beliefs are modified, new conditions and duties arise. But as the scenes shift and new actors come on the stage, the themes are still human history, comedy, and tragedy. The argument of the play is still the triumph of heroism and the reward of virtue. The spectators still smile at innocent pleasures, weep with misfortune, and applaud sentiment and worth, and the orchestra still plays the triumph or the dirge as the curtain falls on the final scene. The ideals of the saints, the courage of heroes, the sufferings of martyrs still teach their lesson. Reverence for God, justice, benevolence, the ethical worth of the individual are still dominant ideas.
If our ideals are less severe, they are more practical; if our heroism is less phenomenal, it takes on new forms or is reserved for imperative need; if we shrink from martyrdom, it may be because martyrdom is sometimes folly; if we worship with less zeal, we are more conscious of the rational grounds of worship. Our justice and benevolence have become more useful and practical, and reach all men. The problems of physical comfort and material progress, of practical charity, of political justice, of social purity, of the rights of all classes of men, ofeducation, of peace and good will, of the true grounds of religious faith are at the front, and claim our interest and devotion. Romance is not dead. The modern hero has his opportunity, an opportunity open as never before to all kinds and conditions of men. Every educated young man has an unlimited field, a free lance, and a cause worthy of his valor. Let him go forth, as an ideal knight of old, pure in heart and life, with consecrated sword, to aid misfortune, to defend the people, and fight bravely for truth and right.
I have seen young men going about, dallying with this or that pleasure, physically lazy, mentally indolent, morally indifferent, burdened withennui, aimless, making no struggle. Will power must be awakened, life given to the mechanism, or it will go to rust and decay. While there is hope there is life. When interest is gone, the mind and spirit are dead, and the body is dying. What a hopeless lump of clay is he who, standing in this infinitely glorious world of ours and having eyes sees not, having ears hears not, and having a heart understands not.
What shall men do who have not come to a consciousness of their better impulses, to whom the number and worth of human possibilities are unknown, who have hidden, silent chords, awaiting the touch that will set them vibrating? Plainly by studying the highest types of men, the completeness of whose inner life is revealed in their deeds and thoughts. By contact with a better than himself one comes to know his better self. Under the influence of great companionship, whether in life or literature, new conceptions may appear in the vacant soul.
A popular work of fiction lately published shows incidentally how great conceptions may grow in a foreign and incongenial soil. It treats of the times of Nero and the early struggles of the Christians in Rome. Amidst that folly, profligacy, debauchery, strife, and cruelty, the Christian purity, humility, brotherly love, and faith in God are made to stand forth in world-wide contrast. Through a series of dramatic events, possessing for him a powerful interest, a Roman patrician comes to receive the Christian ideas, and, under the nurture of interest, they gradually wax strong and become the dominant impulses of his being. A fellow patrician, maintaining a persistent attitude of indifference to the new truths, lives and dies, to the last a degenerate Roman and a Stoic.
A remote interest whose attainment is doubtful may come to wholly possess the mind. A young man, misunderstood and underestimated by friends, suffering years of unrequited effort, persevering in silent determination, standing for the right, making friends with all classes, seizing strongly the given opportunity, defying popularity, and thereby winning it, may gradually rise to prominence through long years of focusing of effort.
Man’s free will makes him responsible for his interests. Aristotle’s dictum comes down to us in an unbroken line of royal descent: Learn to find interest in right things. Repugnance to the sternest demands of duty may be converted into liking, and, in the process, character is made. If you have a need for mathematics, science, history, poetry, or philanthropy, cultivate it, and interest will come as a benediction upon the effort. I sometimes thinkthe gods love those who in youth are compelled to walk in hard paths. Rudyard Kipling has a trace of imperialism which is not the least valuable feature of his unique writings. In a late story he describes the transformation of a son of wealth who is already far on the road to folly—one of those nervous, high-strung lads who in the face of hardship hides behind his mother, and is a particular nuisance to all sensitive people. Crossing the ocean in a palatial steamer, he chances to roll off into the Atlantic and is conveniently hauled aboard a fishing schooner, out for a three months’ trip. He has literally tumbled into a new life, where he is duly whipped into a proper frame of mind and made to earn his passage and a small wage, by sharing the hardships of the fishermen. In time he is returned to his parents, together with a bonus of newly acquired common sense and love for useful work. Hardship did for him what all his father’s wealth could not buy.
It is in the time of need that men seek ultimate reality. A scientific writer, after speaking of our interest in the friendship and appreciation of men, refers to our need of friendship and appreciation in our time of stern trial, when we stand alone in the performance of duty. Then we have an intuitive consciousness of a Being supremely just and appreciative, who recognizes worth at its exact value, and will duly reward. We feel that in Him we live and move and have our being. The finite conditions of life drive us to the thought of an infinite One, who possesses in their fullness the ideals imperfectly realized in us. When the world swings from under our feet we need a hold on heaven. In these moderndays we need the spirit of the hero who places honor above life, the spirit that places character above material advantage. Without it we are like Falstaff, going about asking “What is honor?” and complaining because it “hath no skill in surgery.” Balzac, describing one of his human types, paints a striking picture. A miser is on his death bed. As the supreme moment approaches, and a golden crucifix is held before his face, he fixes his glazing eyes upon it with a look of miserly greed, and, with a final effort of his palsied hand, attempts to grasp it. He takes with him to the other world in his soul the gold, not the Christ crucified.
There are people who demand a series of ever varied, thrilling, fully satisfying emotional experiences. For them “the higher life consists in a sort of enthusiastic fickleness. The genius must wander like a humming-bird in the garden of divine emotions.” When they do not save themselves by devotion to scholarly work or by refuge in the church, they frequently end in pessimism, madness, or suicide. They exalt theEgo, do not lose self in the pursuit of proper objects of utility. Nordau has done the world one service in branding them as degenerates, living in abnormal excitement, instead of employing the calm, strong, balanced use of their powers. Their fate is fittingly suggested by a choice sentence from a well-known writer, describing Byron’s “Don Juan”: “It is a mountain stream, plunging down dreadful chasms, singing through grand forests, and losing itself in a lifeless gray alkali desert.” Goethe’s Faust sets forth—be it noted, under the guidance of the devil—to findcomplete enjoyment, and tries the whole round of experience. Everything palls upon him, until he at last finds permanent satisfaction in earnest practical labor for the welfare of his fellow-men. In the words of Faust:
“He only earns his freedom and existenceWho daily conquers them anew.”
“He only earns his freedom and existenceWho daily conquers them anew.”
“He only earns his freedom and existenceWho daily conquers them anew.”
“He only earns his freedom and existence
Who daily conquers them anew.”
Labor! It is the secret of happiness. We are born bundles of self-activity, in infancy ever developing our powers by ceaseless movement, with eager curiosity ever reaching out toward knowledge of external things, ever laboring and constructing in imitation of the great, working world. Unless our energies are wasted by folly and our hearts are chilled by custom, it is the natural condition, even as children, older and wiser, but still as children, ever to extend with enthusiasm the boundary of knowledge, and in reality to join in the labor which was the play-work of our childhood. And when our effort overcomes, creates, develops power, aids humanity, we are conscious of the joy of true living. In our work self must be put in the background. “He that loseth his life shall find it.” The great Goethe, once weighed down with a mighty sorrow, forgot his grief in the study of a new and difficult science.
It is a mistake to suppose that interest and happiness may not attach to duty. Duty is not a dead, barren plant that no more will put forth green leaves and blossom. Philanthropists do not need our sympathy. A man of learning, culture, and ability, capable of enjoying keenly the amenities of civilization, and of winning worldly success, goes ona mission to the interior of Darkest Africa. Amid hardships and dangers, he offers his life to help an alien race in its suffering, ignorance, and savagery. He makes this devotion his supreme interest, and who shall say that his satisfaction will not be as great as that of the most favored son of wealth amid the luxuries of civilization? “He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him.”
One great purpose of education is to increase and strengthen our interests. It shows the many fields of labor and gives us power to work therein; it reveals the laws and beauties of the natural world; it introduces us to many lands and peoples, and acquaints us with the problems and means of progress; it opens to us the treasury of man’s best thoughts; it gives us philosophical and poetic insight.
Sydney Smith, indulging one of his quaint conceits, says: “If you choose to represent the various parts in life by holes upon a table, of different shapes—some circular, some triangular, some square, some oblong—and the persons acting these parts by bits of wood of similar shapes, we shall generally find that the triangular person has got into the square hole, the oblong into the triangular, and a square person has squeezed himself into the round hole.” This fancy has some truth, but more of nonsense. “Men at some time are masters of their fates.” Create your place in life and fill it, or adapt yourself to the best place you can find. The choice of occupation is important, but filling well the profession chosen is more important. Turn yourknowledge and power to the performance of to-day’s duty.
Lowell in his “Vision of Sir Launfal” imparts one of the sweetest lessons man may learn. Sir Launfal is to set forth on the morrow in search of the Holy Grail, the cup used by our Saviour at the last supper, and in his sleep there comes to him a true vision. As in his dream he rides forth with pride of heart, at his castle gate a leper begs alms, and in scorn he tosses him a piece of gold. Years of fruitless search pass, and as he returns old, broken, poor, and homeless, he again meets the leper at the castle gate, and in Christ’s name he offers a cup of water. And lo! the leper stands forth as the Son of God, and proclaims the Holy Grail is found in the wooden cup shared with communion of heart. The morn came and Sir Launfal hung up his idle armor. He had found the object of his quest in the humble duty at hand.
A poet of our day quaintly but not irreverently writes of the future life, “When the Master of all Good Workmen shall set us to work anew.” There we shall work for the joy of it; there we shall know things in their reality; there we shall enjoy the perfect appreciation of the Master, and know the blessedness of labor performed in His service. Thus the lesson is good for this world as well as the next.
“And only the Master shall praise us, and only the Master shall blame;And no one shall work for money, and no one shall work for fame;But each for the joy of the working, and each, in his separate star,Shall draw the Thing as he sees It for the God of Things as They Are.”
“And only the Master shall praise us, and only the Master shall blame;And no one shall work for money, and no one shall work for fame;But each for the joy of the working, and each, in his separate star,Shall draw the Thing as he sees It for the God of Things as They Are.”
“And only the Master shall praise us, and only the Master shall blame;And no one shall work for money, and no one shall work for fame;But each for the joy of the working, and each, in his separate star,Shall draw the Thing as he sees It for the God of Things as They Are.”
“And only the Master shall praise us, and only the Master shall blame;
And no one shall work for money, and no one shall work for fame;
But each for the joy of the working, and each, in his separate star,
Shall draw the Thing as he sees It for the God of Things as They Are.”