THE GREEK VIRTUES IN MODERN APPLICATION.
At the risk of imitating the severe logical discourses which proceed at least as far as fifthly, let us enumerate some essential conditions that by the agreement of thoughtful men are requisite for a satisfactory life: (1) a sound body; (2) courage; (3) intellectual ideals; (4) moral ideals; (5) reverence. While these elements are selected for their intrinsic value, without reference to the history of ethical thought, the discovery that they show more than a fancied similarity to the ancient and the early Christian ideals strengthens our belief in their value, and suggests that essential human standards are not for one people or one age, but for all peoples and all time, and that they are spontaneously recognized even in an age like ours, when men readily turn toward utilitarian ends.
If we go back to the dawn of philosophic thought and listen to the early revelators of the nature of man and his relation to the world and society—converse with Plato in the groves of Academus, or walk with Aristotle in the shady avenues of the Lyceum—we find them proclaiming the great truths which have been confirmed by the experience of ages, and urging upon men Moderation, Courage, Wisdom, Justice, and the Good, or God, as aim. If we cross over from the ancient world to the Christian Empire,where old ethical thought was already taking on deeper meaning, broader application, and richer life, we find in the Cardinal Virtues of St. Ambrose and St. Augustine a new and vitalized form of the Greek Virtues: Temperance, Christian Fortitude, Christian Wisdom, Christian Justice, God as aim. If we come down to modern times, and catch the spirit of ideals that still dwell among the people, we find that human nature is everywhere the same, and that the experience of human life in all ages discovers through the organization of society the same divine principles—laws to be reverenced and obeyed, to be followed as practical guides to success.
Modern psychology has rendered a service of far-reaching practical benefit in showing more definitely the intimate connection between the brain and mental action. In this connection of body and soul the two are correlated; the brain is organic to the functions of the soul. The health of the brain is largely dependent upon general physical conditions, and the old apothegm, “Mens sana in corpore sano,” is interpreted with a new meaning not fully known in the days of Juvenal. Maxims of health, sifted by the experience of ages, transmitted from generation to generation, and confirmed by the proofs of modern science, are wisdom of inestimable value for our instruction. He who wastes energy of the body wastes vigor and duration of mental power. Rev. William R. Alger used to say: “Keep yourself at highest working capacity by preserving the vigor of the body.” The various ways of wasting physical energy are susceptible of classification, and it is well worth the while to make athoughtful analysis of the subject. We admire the firm step, erect bearing, clear eye, and bright brain that belong to healthful habits and noble manhood. Many a man by carefully conserving the vital forces will outlive and outdo others who, with stronger bodies, waste their energy.
Physical sins react upon the mind and debase character. They are signs of a character already weak, and the interaction between mind and body doubly hastens the relaxing of just restraint. The ancient virtue of moderation, or temperance, meant more than temperate habit; it meant the submission of animal unreason to reason—the “observance of due measure in all conduct.”
In accord with the maxims of health are the Greek Virtue of Moderation, the Cardinal Virtue of Temperance, the Hebrew Purity. Regard for these maxims is an important condition of success.
Courage appears in the Greek Category as heart for energetic action, and in the Cardinal Virtues as firmness for the right and against the wrong. Courage is thesine qua nonof success. The student must have courage to overcome his inertia. A venerable professor of my college days used to say: “Every young man is naturally as lazy as he can be, and the greatest problem of education is to gain an energetic will.” Courage is required to undertake an enterprise demanding long years of toil. A volume recently published contains the early experience of celebrated authors now living, and nearly every one owes his success to a persevering determination, in spite of poverty, rebuffs, criticism, and repeated failures. Their genius lies in their courage. Weneed the courage of our convictions to stand by the right. The great reformers have shared this kind of confidence of soul. Nearly all of Carlyle’s types of the world’s great heroes possessed it to an almost sublime degree, and, most of all, the hero of the Reformation. Waiving all religious controversies that centre about the doctrines of Martin Luther, he is a figure for the world to admire. Some of his memorable words are known as household words, but, like strains of familiar grand music, are ever grateful—they lose nothing by repeating. When warned that Duke George of Leipzig was his enemy he said: “Had I business, I would ride into Leipzig though it rained Duke Georges for nine days running.” When summoned to the Diet at Worms, he answered the friends who would dissuade him: “Were there as many devils in Worms as there are roof tiles, I would on.” When urged in the presence of that august council to recant, he replied: “Here I stand; I can do no other; God help me.” And the courage of his religious faith rose to its climax when he boldly faced the supernatural and hurled his inkstand at the head of the Devil himself. The student needs the courage of faith in his own powers and possibilities. Many a one fails because he has not confidence in himself. In rare moments of meditation one sometimes discovers capacities and possibilities of attainment that become a life inspiration.
We are proud of our Teutonic ancestry; of the bold enterprise that led the Teutons across Europe in conquest, or impelled them to embark in their galleys and push forth with adventurous spirit, and fearlessly ride the tempestuous waves, as their oarskept time to the music of their songs of victory. Their courageous and progressive spirit, tamed and refined, reappeared in the religious convictions of the Puritans, in the settlement of America, in the westward march of civilization in our own country, in the confidence of the pioneers that early crossed the plains and pitched their tents by these mighty mountains, in the energy that has made all that the world holds as greatest and best in material civilization, invention, government, science, literature, and moral and religious principle. The young man who has in his veins the blood of this people, and inherits the blessings that his race has wrought out, is a recreant to his trust if he does not stand courageously for all that is best in his own development, and all that is best in the progress of his age. Thor, the Norse god, possessed a belt of strength by which his might was doubled, and a precious hammer which when thrown returned to the hand of its own accord. When he wielded the hammer, as the Northern legends relate, he grasped it until the knuckles grew white. This hammer is an heirloom of the Northern races, handed down from the Halls of Walhalla. And herein lies the secret of success: grasp the hammer until the knuckles grow white.
Plato held Wisdom to be the supreme means by which to attain the great purpose of human existence. The Cardinal Virtue of Christian Wisdom is to gain knowledge of God. Plato conceived growth in wisdom to be a gradual realization, in the consciousness of man, of the eternal ideas. Man came from heaven and in his progress in knowledge he was but climbing the upward path to regain his lost estate.The exercise of wisdom marked him off from the lower order of beings, and he was fulfilling the distinctively human function only when living a rational life.
If nature is a congeries of metaphors arranged in a system of relations and constituting a sublime allegory, and we, being the offspring of God, may interpret this allegory and thereby come to a consciousness of verities, if there is a spiritual sense that may feel the presence of great truths and of a personal God—then man pursues his supreme calling when through the laws of physical nature, when through the beauty of its forms, when through knowledge of self, when through the world’s history and literature and philosophy he aims at a further acquaintance with truth. If knowledge and the power that comes through knowledge enhance our material civilization and make more favorable conditions for the body and more leisure for the mind and more refinement for the spirit, if to create material things brings us more in accord with the creative spirit of the universe, then we have the highest incentives to gain knowledge toward so-called practical ends.
The universities are not always the first discoverers of wisdom, but they are the storehouses of the wisdom of the ages, and the distributing points. They are not a substitute for nature and real life, but they help to interpret both. They are not a substitute for practical experience, but they bestow the instruments with which to do better the work of practical experience. They do not create power, but they develop power.
A few geniuses have in strong degree the intellectual impulse and follow it until they becomeoriginal and creative, and contribute to the world’s insight. But the average youth needs all that the formal training of the schools can give him. When the student is once aroused by the sense of his privileges and duties, he will select no easy goal to attain. He will not be satisfied until he has learned the secrets of nature’s processes, has examined his own nature, has made use of the recorded experience of the ages—thereby taking a giant stride in knowledge that he could not have taken alone—has given himself the power to help in the work of his own time.
Justice was regarded by Plato as the ground of social uprightness; Christian justice recognized the brotherhood of man, with all that follows in moral conduct; “moral ideals” for us has the same significance. This is not the place for the discussion of ethical theories, but it is of the highest importance for the young man, after wandering more or less vaguely over the field of ethical doctrines, to turn to the nature of his own being and find there written the supreme fact of moral obligation, with its implications of freedom of will, a personal God, and immortality of the soul.
Every man knows that even in his ordinary approvable acts he does not work to the end of pleasure, but that he has impulses that reach out in fellowship and compassion toward others, impulses that reach out toward the Truth and Beauty and Supreme Goodness of the world. Every man knows that he possesses a power to choose amongst and regulate his impulses; that such aims are to be employed as will conduce to the perfection of his being and of all human being; that his reward liesin this perfection, in a noble and approvable character, which is not to be completed in this life, but is to attain its full realization in a future life. And hence is revealed to him the rational necessity of that life, without which the present struggle and growth would lack meaning.
If there is moral order in the universe, then man will be successful as he conforms to that order. If he goes against the great silent forces moving in the direction of Right, his life can but result in failure. Men who show a disregard for moral law are held to possess a dangerous malady slowly decaying the tissues of the soul. They are treated with suspicion in business relations and condemned in the minds of others and by their own judgment. Sound to the core must a man be who would make the most of life and receive the approval which the world bestows upon character.
A true man is bold; he feels that for him all the forces of right will contend. He has courage for his work, because he knows he is on the right path and is moving toward ever higher attainments and a supreme result.
The subject is old as man, the thoughts are trite; why not utter your maxim and proceed, or rather say nothing? While there are lives empty of purpose and hearts that bleed in contrition and tragedies that fill prisons and madhouses, there is much to say and more to do. Have we no further use for wisdom? Have we ceased to erect perennial monuments to the memory of saints and reformers? If the subject is old, the generations of men are new, and the race has not attained its perfection. The best men and the best thoughts reveal us toourselves, are the source of our aspiration; and we of the present, not half-way toward the goal, have need of our Socrates, Augustine, Luther, and supremely of the divine Christ. We still have need of our Pilgrim’s Progress.
The aim of Plato’s philosophy was the Supreme Good, or God. The Cardinal Virtues were framed in the light of religious faith. Reverence is the sentiment whose object is God. Says the Sage of Chelsea: “All that we do springs out of Mystery, Spirit, invisible Force.” Some, well-versed in Spencer’s works, have failed to note this passage: “One truth must grow ever clearer—the truth that there is an Inscrutable Existence everywhere manifested, to which the man of science can neither find nor conceive either beginning or end. Amid the mysteries which become the more mysterious the more they are thought about there will remain the one absolute certainty, that he is ever in the presence of an Infinite and Eternal Energy, from which all things proceed.” Add to this the Faith which is the “substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen,” and you have the origin of all religions, of all temples of worship. It is the conception of the philosopher and the insight of the poet; it is held most strongly by the most profound. Few great men, though they may reject formal creeds, are without the feeling of Reverence. Carlyle’s “Everlasting Yea” is the vision of a true seer, and it reveals, in the spontaneous language of earnest thought, the breadth and depth of a possible Christian experience. He speaks through the hero of the “Sartor Resartus.” By disappointment anddim faith the universe had become to him a vast merciless machine; he was filled with an indefinable fear. But over his soul came the spirit of Indignation and Defiance, and he shook off fear of all that is evil, and all that may happen of evil. In his words: “The Everlasting No had said: ‘Behold, thou art fatherless, outcast; and the Universe is mine (the Devil’s)’; to which my whole Me now made answer: ‘I am not thine, but Free, and forever hate thee!’” This is but the first step, and only by the “Annihilation of Self” does he awake to a “new Heaven and a new Earth.” Now nature is seen to be the “Living Garment of God.” The Universe is no longer “dead and demoniacal,” but “godlike and his Father’s.” He looks upon his fellow man with an “infinite Love, an infinite Pity,” and enters the porch of the “Sanctuary of Sorrow.” Happiness is no longer the aim; happiness cannot be satisfied. “There is in man aHigherthan Love of Happiness; he can do without Happiness, and instead thereof find Blessedness!” “Love not pleasure; love God. This is theEverlasting Yea.” The Temple of Sorrow (the Christian Temple) is partly in ruins, but in a crypt the sacred lamp still burns for him, and for all. Applied Christianity is action. He says: “Do the Duty which lies nearest thee: thy second Duty will already have become clearer.” Thy opportunity is in whatever thy condition now and here offers thee. “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy whole might.” Christianity “flows through all our hearts and modulates and divinely leads them.” Of immortality he says: “Know of a truth that only the Time-shadows have perished, or are perishable;that the real Being of whatever was, and whatever is, and whatever will be,iseven now and forever.... Believe it thou must; understand it thou canst not.”
If we may draw a lesson from this, Carlyle’s greatest work, it is that the completeness of life requires vivifying, hope-giving, sin-subduing, courage-inspiring faith and reverence. To the hero of Carlyle’s prose poem success did not come, until the “Fire-Baptism” of his soul. He confesses: “I directly thereupon began to be a man.”
Are these ideals of value for practical success? Yes, for all the success worth striving for and worth having. Does not craft succeed better than honesty? Sometimes, and for a time, but honesty appears to be even the best policy, and it is the essential stamp of real manhood and womanhood. The genuine heroes of all history are the morally great. Are not such standards too high—impractical ideals for the pulpit and platform, which no one is expected to carry into real life? No one attains even his own ideals, much less the absolute standards; but they are the steady aim of a fully successful life.
If a young man is true to himself, the bounties of nature, the good will of others, the coöperation of the forces of right, and the approval of God are his. The world waits to see what he will do with his powers and opportunities. Much is expected of him, and rightly. The state which has helped educate him expects much; the home which has made sacrifices for him expects much. Will he have the courage to stand by his ideals? To progress mustbe part of his religion. When the oak has ceased to put forth its leaves and extend its branches, it has gone into hopeless decay. There is no lasting happiness but in action and ever new and higher realizations.
Longfellow represents early manhood turning regretfully from the memory visions of childhood and youth to the earnest work of life.
“Visions of childhood! Stay, O stay!Ye were so sweet and wild!And distant voices seem to say,It cannot be! They pass away!Other themes demand thy lay;Thou art no more a child!“The land of Song within thee lies,Watered by living springs;The lids of Fancy’s sleepless eyesAre gates unto that Paradise,Holy thoughts, like stars, arise,Its clouds are angel’s wings.“Look, then, into thine heart, and write!Yes, into Life’s deep stream!All forms of sorrow and delight,All solemn Voices of the Night,That can soothe thee, or affright,—Be these henceforth thy theme.”
“Visions of childhood! Stay, O stay!Ye were so sweet and wild!And distant voices seem to say,It cannot be! They pass away!Other themes demand thy lay;Thou art no more a child!“The land of Song within thee lies,Watered by living springs;The lids of Fancy’s sleepless eyesAre gates unto that Paradise,Holy thoughts, like stars, arise,Its clouds are angel’s wings.“Look, then, into thine heart, and write!Yes, into Life’s deep stream!All forms of sorrow and delight,All solemn Voices of the Night,That can soothe thee, or affright,—Be these henceforth thy theme.”
“Visions of childhood! Stay, O stay!Ye were so sweet and wild!And distant voices seem to say,It cannot be! They pass away!Other themes demand thy lay;Thou art no more a child!
“Visions of childhood! Stay, O stay!
Ye were so sweet and wild!
And distant voices seem to say,
It cannot be! They pass away!
Other themes demand thy lay;
Thou art no more a child!
“The land of Song within thee lies,Watered by living springs;The lids of Fancy’s sleepless eyesAre gates unto that Paradise,Holy thoughts, like stars, arise,Its clouds are angel’s wings.
“The land of Song within thee lies,
Watered by living springs;
The lids of Fancy’s sleepless eyes
Are gates unto that Paradise,
Holy thoughts, like stars, arise,
Its clouds are angel’s wings.
“Look, then, into thine heart, and write!Yes, into Life’s deep stream!All forms of sorrow and delight,All solemn Voices of the Night,That can soothe thee, or affright,—Be these henceforth thy theme.”
“Look, then, into thine heart, and write!
Yes, into Life’s deep stream!
All forms of sorrow and delight,
All solemn Voices of the Night,
That can soothe thee, or affright,—
Be these henceforth thy theme.”