Education and the Higher Life Part 6

Emotion is spontaneous, and adorers, like lovers, neither ask nor care for reasons. There is in fact an element of illusion in feeling; pa.s.sion is non-rational; and when the spirit of the time is intellectual, men are seldom devout, however religious they may be. The scientific habit of mind is not favorable to childlike and unreasoning faith; and the new views of the physical universe which the modern mind is forced to take, bring us face to face with new problems in religion and morals, in politics and society.

Whatever we may think of the past, whatever we may fear or hope for the future, if we would make an impression on the world around us, we must understand the thoughts, the purposes, and the methods of those with whom we live; and we must at the same time recognize that though the truth of religion be unchangeable, the mind of man is not so, and that the point of view varies not only from people to people, and from age to age, but from year to year in the growing thought of the individual and of the world. As in travelling round the earth, time changes, and when it is morning here, it is evening there, so with difference of lat.i.tude and longitude, of civilization and barbarism, the opinions and manners of men grow different. They who observe from positions widely separate do not see the same things, or do not see them in the same light. Proof for a peasant is not proof for a philosopher; and arguments which in one age are held to be unanswerable, in another lose power to convince, or become altogether meaningless. It is not to be imagined that the hearts of Christians should again burn with the devotional enthusiasm and the warlike ardor of the Crusaders; and just as little is it conceivable that men should again become pa.s.sionately interested in the questions which in the fourth and fifth centuries filled the world with the noise of theological disputation. It were mere loss of time to beat now the waste fields of the Protestant controversy. Wiseman's book on science and revealed religion, which fifty years ago attracted attention, lies like a stranded ship on a deserted sh.o.r.e, and attempts of the kind are held in slight esteem. The immature mind is eager to reduce faith to knowledge; but the accomplished thinker understands that knowledge begins and ends in faith. There is oppugnancy between belief in an all-wise, all-good, and all-powerful G.o.d, and belief in the divine origin of Nature, whose face is smeared with filth and blood; but we hold that the conflicting faiths and increasing knowledge cannot add to the difficulty. On the contrary, the higher the intelligence, the purer Nature seems to grow. The chemical elements are as fair and sweet in the corpse as in the living body, and the earthquake and the cyclone obey the same laws which make the waters flow and the zephyrs breathe perfume. It is the imagination and not the reason that is overwhelmed by the idea of unending s.p.a.ce and time. To the intellect, eternity is not more mysterious than the present moment, and the distance which separates us from the remotest stars is not more incomprehensible than a hand's breadth. Science is the widening thought of man, working on the hypothesis of universal intelligibility toward universal intelligence; and religion is the soul, escaping from the labyrinth of matter to the light and love of the Infinite; and on the heights they meet and are at peace.

Meanwhile they who seek natural knowledge must admit that faith, hope, and love are the everlasting foundations of human life, and that a philosophic creed is as sterile as Platonic love; and they who uphold religion must confess that faith which ignorance alone can keep alive is little better than superst.i.tion. To strive to attain truth under whatever form is to seek to know G.o.d; and yet no ideal can be true for man, unless it can be made to minister to faith, hope, and love; for by them we live. Let us then teach ourselves to see things as they are, without preoccupation or misgivings lest what is should ever make it impossible, for us to believe and hope in the better yet to be. Science and morality need religion as much as thought and action require emotion; and beyond the utmost reach of the human mind lie the boundless worlds of mystery where the soul must believe and adore what it can but dimly discern. The Copernican theory of the heavens startled believers at first; but we have long since grown accustomed to the new view which reveals to us a universe infinitely more glorious than aught the ancients ever imagined. We do not rightly see either the things which are always around us, or those which for the first time are presented to our eyes; and when novel theories of the visible world, which in some sense is part of our very being, profoundly alter our traditional notions, the mind is disturbed and overclouded, and the lapse of time alone can make plain the real bearing of the new learning upon life, upon religion, and upon society. There can be no doubt but increase of knowledge involves incidental evils, just as the progress of civilization multiplies our wants; but the wise are not therefore driven to seek help from ignorance and barbarism. Whatever the loss, all knowledge is gain. The evils that spring from enlightenment of mind will find their remedy in greater enlightenment. Such at least is the faith of an age whose striking characteristic is confidence in education. Men have ceased to care for the bliss there may be in ignorance, and those who dread knowledge, if such there still be, are as far away from the life of this century as the dead whose bones crumbled to dust a thousand years ago.

The aim the best now propose to themselves is to provide not wealth or pleasure, or better machinery or more leisure, but a higher and more effective kind of education; and hence whatever one's preoccupation, whether social, political, religious, or industrial, the question of education forces itself upon his attention. Pedagogy has grown to be a science, and chairs are founded in universities to expound the theory and art of teaching. The learning of former times has become the ignorance of our own; and the cla.s.sical writings have ceased to be the treasure-house of knowledge, and in consequence their educational value has diminished.

Whoever three hundred years ago wished to acquaint himself with philosophic, poetic, or eloquent expression of the best that was known, was compelled to seek for it in the Greek and Latin authors; but now Greek and Latin are accomplishments chiefly, and a cla.s.sical scholar, if unacquainted with modern science and literature, is hopelessly ignorant.

"If any one," said Hegius, the teacher of Erasmus, "wishes to learn grammar, rhetoric, mathematics, history, or holy scripture, let him read Greek;" and in his day this was as true as it is false and absurd in our own. In the Middle Ages, Latin was made the groundwork of the educational system, not on account of any special value it may have been supposed to possess as a mental discipline, but because it was the language of the learned, of all who spoke or wrote on questions of religion, philosophy, literature, and science; but now, who that is able to think dreams of burying his thought in a Greek or Roman urn? The Germans in philosophy, the English in poetry, have surpa.s.sed the Greeks; and French prose is not inferior in qualities of style to the ancient cla.s.sics, and in wealth of thought and knowledge so far excels them as to preclude comparison.

The life of Greece and Rome, compared with ours, was narrow and superficial; their ideas of Nature were crude and often grotesque; they lacked sympathy; the Greek had no sense of sin; the Roman none of the mercy which tempers justice. In their eyes the child was not holy, woman was not sacred, the slave was not man. Their notion of liberty was political and patriotic merely; the human soul, standing forth alone, and appealing from States and emperors to the living G.o.d, was to them a scandal. Now literature is the outgrowth of a people's life and thought, and the n.o.bler the life, the more enlightened the thought, the more valuable will the expression be; and since there is greater knowledge, wisdom, freedom, justice, mercy, goodness, power, in Christendom now than ever existed in the pagan world, it would certainly be an anomaly if modern literature were inferior to the cla.s.sical. The ancients, indeed, excel us in the sense for form and symmetry. There is also a freshness in their words, a joyousness in their life, a certain heroic temper in their thinking and acting, which give them power to engage the emotions; and hence to deny them exceptional educational value is to take a partial view. But even though we grant that the study of their literatures is in certain respects the best intellectual discipline, education, it must be admitted, means knowledge as well as training; and thorough training is something more than refined taste. It is strength as well, and ability to think in many directions and on many subjects.

Nothing known to men should escape the attention of the wise; for the knowledge of the age determines what is demanded of the scholar. And since it is our privilege to live at a time when knowledge is increasing more rapidly even than population and wealth, we must, if we hope to stand in the front ranks of those who know, keep pace with the onward movement of mind. To turn away from this outburst of splendor and power; to look back to pagan civilization or Christian barbarism,--is to love darkness more than light. Aristotle is a great mind, but his learning is crude and his ideas of Nature are frequently grotesque. Saint Thomas is a powerful intellect; but his point of view in all that concerns natural knowledge has long since vanished from sight. What poverty of learning does not the early medieval scheme of education reveal; and when in the twelfth century the idea of a university rises in the best minds, how incomplete and vague it is! Amid the ruins of castles and cathedrals we grow humble, and think ourselves inferior to men who thus could build.

But they were not as strong as we, and they led a more ignorant and a blinder life; and so when we read of great names of the past, the mists of illusion fill the skies, and our eyes are dimmed by the glory of clouds tinged with the splendors of a sun that has set.

Certainly a true university will be the home both of ancient wisdom and of new learning; it will teach the best that is known, and encourage research; it will stimulate thought, refine taste, and awaken the love of excellence; it will be at once a scientific inst.i.tute, a school of culture, and a training ground for the business of life; it will educate the minds that give direction to the age; it will be a nursery of ideas, a centre of influence. The good we do men is quickly lost, the truth we leave them remains forever; and therefore the aim of the best education is to enable students to see what is true, and to inspire them with the love of all truth. Professional knowledge brings most profit to the individual; but philosophy and literature, science and art, elevate and refine the spirit of the whole people, and hence the university will make culture its first aim, and its scope will widen as the thoughts and attainments of men are enlarged and multiplied. Here if anywhere shall be found teachers whose one pa.s.sion is the love of truth, which is the love of G.o.d and of man; who look on all things with a serene eye; who bring to every question a calm, unbiased mind; who, where the light of the intellect fails, walk by faith and accept the omen of hope; who understand that to be distrustful of science is to lack culture, to doubt the good of progress is to lack knowledge, and to question the necessity of religion is to want wisdom; who know that in a G.o.d-made and G.o.d-governed world it must lie in the nature of things that reason and virtue should tend to prevail, in spite of the fact that in every age the majority of men think foolishly and act unwisely. How divine is not man's apprehensive endowment! When we see beauty fade, the singer lose her charm, the performer his skill, we feel no commiseration; but when we behold a n.o.ble mind falling to decay, we are saddened, for we cannot believe that the G.o.dlike and immortal faculty should be subject to death's power. It is a reflection of the light that never yet was seen on sea or land; it is the magician who shapes and colors the universe, as a drop of water mirrors the boundless sky. Is not this the first word the Eternal speaks?--"Let there be light." And does not the blessed Saviour come talking of life, of light, of truth, of joy, and peace?

Have not the Christian nations moved forward following after liberty and knowledge? Is not our religion the worship of G.o.d in spirit and in truth? Is not its motive Love, divine and human, and is not knowledge Love's guide and minister?

The future prevails over the present, the unseen over what touches the senses only in high and cultivated natures; and it is held to be the supreme triumph of G.o.d over souls when the young, to whom the earth seems to be heaven revealed and made palpable, turn from all the beauty and contagious joy to seek, to serve, to love Him who is the infinite and only real good. Yet this is what we ask of the lovers of intellectual excellence, who work without hope of temporal reward and without the strength of heart which is found in obeying the Divine Will; for mental improvement is seldom urged as a religious duty, although it is plain that to seek to know truth is to seek to know G.o.d, in whom and through whom and by whom all things are, and whose infinite nature and most awful power may best be seen by the largest and most enlightened mind. Mind is Heaven's pioneer making way for faith, hope, and love, for higher aims and n.o.bler life; and to doubt its worth and excellence is to deny the reasonableness of religion, since belief, if not wholly blind, must rest on knowledge. The best culture serves spiritual and moral ends. Its aim and purpose is to make reason prevail over sense and appet.i.te; to raise man not only to a perception of the harmonies of truth, but also to the love of whatever is good and fair. Not in a darkened mind does the white ray of heavenly light break into prismatic glory; not through the mists of ignorance is the sweet countenance of the divine Saviour best discerned. If some have pursued a sublime art frivolously; have soiled a fair mind by ign.o.ble life,--this leaves the good of the intellect untouched. Some who have made strongest profession of religion, who have held high and the highest places in the Church, have been unworthy, but we do not thence infer that the tendency of religion is to make men so. They who praise the bliss and worth of ignorance are sophists. Stupidity is more to be dreaded than malignity; for ignorance, and not malice, is the most fruitful cause of human misery. Let knowledge grow, let truth prevail. Since G.o.d is G.o.d, the universe is good, and the more we know of its laws, the plainer will the right way become. The investigator and the thinker, the man of culture and the man of genius, cannot free themselves from bias and limitation; but the work they do will help me and all men.

Indifference or opposition to the intellectual life is but a survival of the general anti-educational prejudices of former ages. It is also a kind of envy, prompting us to find fault with whatever excellence is a reproach to our unworthiness. The disinterested love of truth is a rare virtue, most difficult to acquire and most difficult to preserve. If knowledge bring power and wealth, if it give fame and pleasure, it is dear to us; but how many are able to love it for its own sake? Do not nearly all men strive to convince themselves of the truth of those opinions which they are interested in holding? What is true, good, or fair is rarely at once admitted to be so; but what is practically useful men quickly accept, because they live chiefly in the world of external things, and care little for the spiritual realms of truth and beauty.

The ignorant do not even believe that knowledge gives power and pleasure, and the educated, except the chosen few, value it only for the power and pleasure it gives. As the disinterested love of truth is rare, so is perfect sincerity. Indeed, insincerity is here the radical vice.

Good faith is essential to faith; and a sophistical mind is as immoral and irreligious as a depraved heart. Let a man be true, seek and speak truth, and all good things are possible; but when he persuades himself that a lie may be useful and ought to be propagated, he becomes the enemy of his own soul and the foe of all that makes life high and G.o.dlike.

Now, to be able to desire to see things as they are, whatever their relations to ourselves may be, and to speak of them simply as they appear to us, is one result of the best training of the intellect, which in the world of thought and opinion gives us that sweet indifference which is the rule of saints when they submit the conduct of their lives wholly to divine guidance. Why should he whose mind is strong, and rests on G.o.d, be disturbed? It is with opinion as with life. We cannot tell what moment truth will overthrow the one and death the other; but thought cannot change the nature of things. The clouds dissolve, but the eternal heavens remain. Over the bloodiest battlefields they bend calm and serene, and trees drink the sunlight and flowers exhale perfume. The moonbeam kisses the crater's lip. Over buried cities the yellow harvest waves, and all the catastrophes of endless time are present to G.o.d, who dwells in infinite peace. He sees the universe and is not troubled, and shall not we who are akin to him learn to look upon our little meteorite without losing repose of mind and heart? Were it not a sweeter piety to trust that he who made all things will know how to make all things right; and therefore not to grow anxious lest some investigator should find him at fault or thwart his plans? As living bodies are immersed in an invisible substance which feeds the flame of life, so souls breathe and think and love in the atmosphere of G.o.d, and the higher their thought and love the more do they partake of the divine nature. Many things, in this age of transition, are pa.s.sing away; but true thoughts and pure love are immortal, and whatever opinions as to other things a man may hold, all know that to be human is to be intelligent and moral, and therefore religious. A hundred years hence our present machinery may seem to be as rude as the implements of the middle age look to us, and our political and social organization may appear barbarous,--so rapid has the movement of life become. But we do not envy those who shall then be living, partly it may be because we can have but dim visions of the greater blessings they shall enjoy, but chiefly because we feel that after all the true worth of life lies in nothing of this kind, but in knowing and doing, in believing and loving; and that it would not be easier to live for truth and righteousness were electricity applied to aerial navigation and all the heavens filled with argosies of magic sail. It is not possible to love sincerely the best thoughts, as it is not possible to love G.o.d when our aim is something external, or when we believe that what is mechanical merely has power to regenerate and exalt mankind.

"It takes a soul To move a body; it takes a high-souled man To move the ma.s.ses ... even to a cleaner sty; It takes the ideal to blow a hair's-breadth off The dust of the actual--Ah, your Fouriers failed, Because not poets enough to understand That life develops from within."

He who believes in culture must believe in G.o.d; for what but G.o.d do we mean when we talk of loving the best thoughts and the highest beauty? No G.o.d, no best; but at most better and worse. And how shall a man's delight in his growing knowledge not be blighted by a hidden taint, if he is persuaded that at the core of the universe there is only blind unconscious force? But if he believe that G.o.d is infinite power working for truth and love, then can he also feel that in seeking to prepare his mind for the perception of truth and his heart for the love of what is good and fair, he is working with G.o.d, and moves along the way in which his omnipotent hand guides heavenly spirits and all the countless worlds. He desires that all men should be wiser and stronger and more loving, even though he should be doomed to remain as he is, for then they would have power to help him. He is certain of himself, and feels no fear nor anger when his opinions are opposed. He learns to bear what he cannot prevent, knowing that courage and patience make tolerable immedicable ills. He feels no self-complacency, but rather the self-dissatisfaction which comes of the consciousness of possessing faculties which he can but imperfectly use. And this discontent he believes to be the infinite G.o.d stirring within the soul. As the earthquake which swallows some island in another hemisphere disturbs not the even tenor of our way, so the pa.s.sions of men whose world is other than his, who dwell remote from what he contemplates and loves, shake not his tranquil mind. While they threaten and pursue, his thought moves in spheres unknown to them. He knows how little life at the best can give, and is not hard to console for the loss of anything. There is no true thought which he would not gladly make his own, even though it should be the watchword of his enemies. Since morality is practical truth, he understands that increasing knowledge will make it at once more evident and more attractive. Hatred between races and nations he holds to be not less unchristian than the hatred which arms the individual against his fellow-man. It is impossible for him to be a scoffer; for whatever has strengthened or consoled a human soul is sacred in his eyes; and wherever there is question of what is socially complex, as of a religion or a civilization, there is question of many human lives, their hopes, their joys, their strivings, their yearnings, disappointments, agonies, and deaths; and he is able to perceive that in the ports of levity there is no refuge for hearts that mourn. Does not love itself, in its heaven of bliss, turn away from him who mocks? The lover of the intellectual life knows neither contempt nor indignation, is not elated by success or cast down by failure; money cannot make him rich, and poverty helps to make him free. His own experience teaches him that men in becoming wiser will become n.o.bler and happier; and this sweet truth has in his eyes almost the elements of a religion. With growing knowledge his power of sympathy is enlarged; until like Saint Francis, he can call the sun his brother and the moon his sister; can grieve with homeless winds, and feel a kinship with the clod. The very agonies by which his soul has been wrung open to his gaze visions of truth which else he had never caught, and so he finds even in things evil some touch of goodness. Praise and blame are for children, but to him impertinent. He is tolerant of absurdity because it is so all-pervading that he whom it fills with indignation can have no repose.

While he labors like other men to keep his place in the world, he strives to make the work whereby he maintains himself, and those who cling to him, serve intellectual and moral ends. He has a meek and lowly heart, and he has also a free and illumined mind, and a soul without fear. He knows that no gift or accomplishment is incompatible with true religion; for has not the Church intellects as many-sided and as high as Augustine and Chrysostom, Dante and Calderon, Descartes and Da Vinci, De Vega and Cervantes, Bossuet and Pascal, Saint Bernard and Gregory the Seventh, Aquinas and Michael Angelo, Mozart and Fenelon? Ah!

I behold the youthful throng, happier than we, who here, in their own sweet country,--in this city of government and of law with its wide streets, its open s.p.a.ces, its air of freedom and of light,--undisturbed by the soul-depressing hum of commerce and the unintellectual din of machinery, shall hearken to the voice of wisdom and walk in the pleasant ways of knowledge, alive, in every sense, to catch whatever message may come to them from G.o.d's universe; who, as they are drawn to what is higher than themselves, shall be drawn together, like planets to a sun; whose minds, aglow with high thinking, shall taste joy and delight fresher and purer than merriest laughter ever tells. Who has not seen, when leaden clouds fill the sky and throw gloomy shadows on the earth, some little meadow amid the hills, with its trees and flowers, its grazing kine and running brook, all bathed in sunlight, and smiling as though a mother said, Come hither, darling?

Such to my fancy is this favored spot, whose invitation is to the fortunate few who believe that "the n.o.blest mind the best contentment has," and that the fairest land is that which brings forth and nurtures the fairest souls. When youthful friends drift apart, and meet again after years, they find they have been living not only in different cities, but in different worlds. Those who shall come up to the university must turn away from much the world holds dear; and while the companions they leave behind shall linger in pleasant places or shall get money, position, and applause, they must move on amid ever-increasing loneliness of life and thought. Xanthippe would have had altogether a better opinion of Socrates had he not been a philosopher, and the best we do is often that for which our age and our friends care the least; but they who have once tasted the delights of a cultivated mind would not exchange them for the gifts of fortune, and to have beheld the fair face of wisdom is to be forever her votary. Words spoken for the ma.s.ses grow obsolete; but what is fit to be heard by the chosen few shall be true and beautiful while such minds are found on earth. In the end, it is this little band--this intellectual aristocracy--who move and guide the world. They see what is possible, outline projects, and give impulse, while the people do the work. That which is strongest in man is mind; and when a mind truly vigorous, open, supple, and illumined reveals itself, we follow in its path of light. How it may be I do not know; but the very brain and heart of genius throbs forever in the words on which its spirit has breathed. Let this seed, though hidden like the grain in mummy pits for thousands of years, but fall on proper soil, and soon the golden harvest shall wave beneath the dome of azure skies; let but some generous youth bend over the electric page, and lo!

all his being shall thrill and flame with new-born life and light.

Genius is a gift. But whoever keeps on doing in all earnestness something which he need not do, and for which the world cares hardly at all, if he have not genius, has at least one of its chief marks; and it is, I think, an important function of a university to create an intellectual atmosphere in which the love of excellence shall become contagious, which whosoever breathes shall, like the Sibyl, feel the inspiration of divine thoughts.

Sweet home! where Wisdom, like a mother, shall lead her children in pleasant ways, and to their thoughts a touch of heaven lend! From thee I claim for my faith and my country more blessings than I can speak,--

Our scattered knowledges together bind; Our freedom consecrate to n.o.ble aims.

To music set the visions of the mind; Give utterance to the truth pure faith proclaims.

Lead where the perfect beauty lies enshrined, Whose sight the blood of low-born pa.s.sion tames.

And now, how shall I more fittingly conclude than with the name of her whose generous heart and enlightened mind were the impulse which has given to what had long been hope deferred and a dreamlike vision, existence and a dwelling-place,--Mary Gwendolen Caldwell.

THE END.

LAUREL-CROWNED TALES.

ABDALLAH; OR, THE FOUR-LEAVED SHAMROCK. By EDOUARD LABOULAYE.

Translated by MARY L. BOOTH.

Ra.s.sELAS, PRINCE OF ABYSSINIA. By SAMUEL JOHNSON.

RAPHAEL; OR, PAGES OF THE BOOK OF LIFE AT TWENTY. From the French of ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE.

THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD. By OLIVER GOLDSMITH.

THE EPICUREAN. By THOMAS MOORE.

PICCIOLA. By X. B. SAINTINE.

AN ICELAND FISHERMAN. By PIERRE LOTI.

PAUL AND VIRGINIA. By BERNARDIN DE ST. PIERRE.

THE STANDARD CANTATAS. Their Stories, their Music, and their Composers.

The "Standard Cantatas" forms the third volume in the uniform series which already includes the now well known "Standard Operas" and the "Standard Oratorios." This latest work deals with a cla.s.s of musical compositions, midway between the opera and the oratorio, which is growing rapidly in favor both with composers and audiences.

As in the two former works, the subject is treated, so far as possible, in an untechnical manner, so that it may satisfy the needs of musically uneducated music lovers, and add to their enjoyment by a plain statement of the story of the cantata and a popular a.n.a.lysis of its music, with brief pertinent selections from its poetical text.

The book includes a comprehensive essay on the origin of the cantata, and its development from rude beginnings; biographical sketches of the composers; carefully prepared descriptions of the plots and the music; and an appendix containing the names and dates of composition of all the best known cantatas from the earliest times.

This series of works on popular music has steadily grown in favor since the appearance of the first volume on the Operas. When the series is completed, as it will be next year by a volume on the Standard Symphonies, it will be, as the New York "Nation" has said, indispensable to every musical library.

THE STANDARD SYMPHONIES.

Their History, their Music, and their Composers.

The usefulness of this handbook cannot be doubted. Its pages are packed full of these fascinating renderings. The accounts of each composer are succinct and yet sufficient. The author has done a genuine service to the world of music lovers. The comprehension of orchestral work of the highest character is aided efficiently by this volume. The mechanical execution of the volume is in harmony with its subject. No worthier volume can be found to put into the hands of an amateur or a friend of music.--_Public Opinion, Washington_.

None who have seen the previous books of Mr. Upton will need a.s.surance that this is as indispensable as the others to one who would listen intelligently to that better cla.s.s of music which musicians congratulate themselves Americans are learning to appreciatively enjoy.--_Home Journal, New York_.