The Investment of Influence Part 5

The men whose duty it was to follow the line of battle and bury our dead soldiers tell us that in the dying hour the soldier's hand unclasped his weapon and reached for the inner pocket to touch some faded letter; some little keepsake, some likeness of wife or mother.

This pathetic fact tells us that soldiers have won their battles not by holding before the mind some abstract thought about the rights of man.

The philosopher did, indeed, teach the theory, and the general marked out the line of attack or defense, but it was love of home and G.o.d and native land that entered into the soldier and made his arm invincible.

Back of the emanc.i.p.ation proclamation stands a great heart named Lincoln. Back of Africa's new life stands a great heart named Livingstone. Back of the Sermon on the Mount stands earth's greatest heart--man's Savior. Christ's truth is enlightening man's ignorance, but his tears, falling upon our earth, are washing away man's sin and woe.

Impotent the intellect without the support of the heart. How thickly are the sh.o.r.es of time strewn with those forms of wreckage called great thoughts. In those far-off days when the overseers of the Egyptian King scourged 80,000 slaves forth to their task of building a pyramid, a great mind discovered the use of steam. Intellect achieved an instrument for lifting blocks of granite into proper place. In that hour thought made possible the freedom of innumerable slaves. But the heart of the tyrant held no love for his bondsmen. The poor seemed of less worth than cattle. Because the King's heart felt no woes to be cured, his hand pushed away the engine. A great thought was there, but not the kindly impulse to use it. Then, full 2,000 years pa.s.sed over our earth. At last came an era when man's heart journeyed forward with his mind. Then the woes of miners and the world's burden-bearers filled the ears of James Watt with torment, and his sympathetic heart would not let him stay until he had fashioned his redemptive tool.

For generations, also, the thoughts of liberty waited for the heart to re-enforce them and make them practical in inst.i.tutions. Two thousand years before the era of Cromwell and Hampden, Grecian philosophers wrought out a full statement for the republic and individual liberty.

The right of life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness were truths clearly perceived by Plato and Pericles. But the heart loved luxury and soft, silken refinements, and Grecian philosophers in their palaces refused to let their slaves go.

Wide, indeed, the gulf separating our age of kindness from Cicero's age of cruelty! The difference is almost wholly a difference of heart.

This age has oratory and wisdom, and so had Cicero's; this age has poetry and art, and so had that; but our age has heart and sympathy, and Cicero's had not. Caesar's mind was the mind of a scholar, but his hands were red with the blood of a half-million men slain in unjust wars. Augustus loved refinement, literature and music. He a.s.sembled at his table the scholars of a nation, yet his culture did not forbid the slaying of ten thousand gladiators at his various garden parties.

We admire Pliny's literary style. One evening Pliny returned home from the funeral of the wife of a friend and sat down to write that friend a note of grat.i.tude for having so arranged the gladiatorial spectacle as to make the funeral service pa.s.s off quite pleasantly. For that age of intellect was also an age of blood; the era of art and luxury was also an era of cruelty and crime. The intellect lent a shining l.u.s.ter to the era of Augustus, but because it was intellect only it was gilt and not gold. Had the heart re-enforced the intellect with sympathy and justice the age of Augustus might have been an era golden, indeed, and also perpetual.

Great men capitalize the impotency of unsupported intellect.

Ten-talent men have often known more than they would do. The children of genius have not always lived up to their moral light. Burns' mind ran swiftly forward, but his will followed afar off. If the poet's forehead was in the clouds, his feet were in the mire. How n.o.ble, also, Byron's thoughts, but how mean his life! Goethe uttered the wisdom of a sage, as did Rousseau, yet their deeds were often those we would expect from a slave with a low brow. Even of Shakespeare, it is said in the morning he polished his sonnets, while at midnight he poached game from a neighboring estate. Our era bestows unstinted admiration upon the essays of Lord Bacon. How n.o.ble his aphorisms!

How petty his envy and avarice! What scholarship was his, and what cunning also! With what splendor of argument does he plead for the advancement of learning and liberty! With what meanness does he take bribes from the rich against the poor! His mind seems like a palace of marble with splendid galleries and library and banqueting hall, yet in this palace the spider spins its web and vermin make the foundations to be a noisome place.

In all ages also the intellect of the common people has discerned truth and light that the will has refused to fulfill. Generations ago society discovered the doctrine of industry and integrity, and yet thousands of individuals still prefer to steal or beg or starve rather than work. For centuries the work of moralists and public instructors has not been so much the making known new truth as the inspiring men to do a truth already known. As of old, so now, the word is nigh man, even in his mouth, for enabling society to lift every social burden, right every social wrong, turn each rookery into a house, make each place wealth, make every home happiness, make every child a scholar, a patriot and a Christian. In Solomon's day wisdom stood in the corner of the streets but man would not regard, and the city perished. Should the heart now join the intellect, man's feet would swiftly find these paths that lead to prosperity and perfect peace.

Fascinating, indeed, the question how feeling and sentiment control conduct and character. Modern machinery has thrown light upon the problems of the soul. The engineer finds that his locomotive will not run itself, but waits for the steam to pound upon the piston. The great ships also are becalmed until the trade winds come to beat upon the sails. Informed by these physical facts, we now see a n.o.ble thought or ambition or social ideal is a mechanism that will not work itself, but asks the enthusiastic heart to lend power divine. Some of earth's greatest orators, like Patrick Henry, have been unlearned men, but no orator has ever fallen short of being an enthusiastic man. A generation ago there appeared in Paris one whose voice was counted the most perfect voice in Europe. Musical critics gave unstinted praise to the purity of tone and accuracy of execution. Yet in a few weeks the audiences had dwindled to a handful, and in a few years the singer's name was forgotten. Obscurity overtook the singer because there was no heart behind the voice and so the tones became metallic. Contrariwise, the history of Jenny Lind contains a letter to a friend in Sweden, in which the singer writes: "Oh, that I may live two years longer and be permitted to save enough money to complete my orphans' home!" As the sun's warm beams lend a soft blush to the rose and pulsate the crimson tides through to the uttermost edge of each petal, so a great, loving sympathy, sang and sighed, thrilled and throbbed through the tones of the Swedish singer, and ravished the hearts of the people and made her name immortal.

History portrays many men of giant minds whose intellect could not redeem them from aimlessness and obscurity. Not until some divine enthusiasm descended upon the mind and baptized it with heroic action did these men find themselves. To that young patrician, Saul, journeying to Damascus, came the heavenly vision, and the new impulse of the heart made his cold mind warm, lent wings to his slow feet, made all his days powerful, made his soul the center of an immense activity.

This glowing heart of Paul explains for us the fact that he achieved freedom of thought and speech, endured the stones with which he was bruised, the stocks in which he was bound, the mobbings with which he was mutilated; explains also his eloquence, known and unrecorded; explains his faith and fort.i.tude, his heroism in death. And not only has the zeal of the heart made strong men stronger, turned weak men into giants, lent the soldier his conquering courage and lent the scholar a stainless life--to men whose will has been made weak by indulgence, the new love has come to redeem intellect and will from the bondage of habit.

No one who ever heard John B. Gough can forget his marvelous eloquence, his wit and his pathos, his scintillating humor, his inimitable dramatisms. He did not have the polished brilliancy of Everett or the elegant scholarship of Phillips, and yet when these numbered thousands of admirers, Gough numbered his tens of thousands. In his autobiography this man tells us to what sad straits pa.s.sion had brought him; how he reflected upon the injury he was doing himself and others, only to find that his reflections and resolutions snapped like cobwebs before the onslaught of temptation. One night the young bookbinder drifted into a little meeting and, b.u.t.toning his seedy overcoat to conceal his rags, in some way he found himself upon his feet and began to speak. The address that proved a pleasure to others was a revelation to himself. For the first time Gough tasted the joys of moving men and mastering them for good. Within a week that love of public speech and useful service had kindled his mental faculties into a creative glow. The new and higher love of the heart consumed the lower love of the body, just as the sun melts manacles of ice from a man's wrist.

History is full of these transformations wrought by the heart. It was a new enthusiasm that changed Augustine the epicurean into Augustine the church father. It was a new enthusiasm that turned Howard the pleasure-lover into Howard the prison-reformer. It was a glowing heart that lent power to Mazzini and Garibaldi and gave Italy her new hope and liberty. Indeed, the history of each life is the history of its new loves. The enthusiasms are beacon lights that glow in the highway along which the soul journeys forward. When the hero's ships were becalmed Virgil tells us that Aeolus struck the hollow mountain with his staff and straightway, released from their caves, the winds went forth to stir the waves and smite upon the sails and sweep the becalmed ship on toward its harbor. Oh, beautiful story, telling us how Christ touches the heart with his regenerating hand to release the soul's deeper convictions, to sweep man forward to the heavenly haven!

If sentiment working in sound can make music; if working in colors, etc., it can fill galleries with statues and pictures; if sentiment working in literature can produce poems, it should not seem strange that the heart, with its affections, furnishes the key of knowledge and wisdom. The time was when authors were supposed to think out their truths; now we know that the greatest truths are felt out. Matthew Arnold said that mere knowledge is cold as an icicle, but once experienced and touched with n.o.ble feelings truth becomes sweetness and light. This author thought that the first requisite for a good writer was a sensitive and sympathetic heart.

Even in Shakespeare the springs of genius were not in the mind. The heart of our greatest poet was so sensitive that he could not see an apple blossom without hoping that no untimely frost would nip it; could not see the cl.u.s.ters turn purple under the autumn sun without hoping that hailstones would not pound off the rich cl.u.s.ters; could not see a youth leave his home to seek his fortune without praying that he would return to his mother laden with rich treasures; could not see a bride go down the aisle of the church without sending up a pet.i.tion that many years might intervene before death's hand should touch her white brow.

Sympathy in the heart so fed the springs of thought in the mind that it was easy for the poet to put himself in another's place. And so, while his pen wrote, his heart felt itself to be the king and also his servant, to be the merchant and also his clerk, to be the general and also his soldier. He saw the a.s.sa.s.sin drawing near the throne with a dagger beneath his cloak; he went forth with King Lear to shiver beneath the wintry blasts; he rejoiced with Rosalind and wept with Hamlet, and there was no joy or grief or woe or wrong that ever touched a human heart that he did not perfectly feel and, therefore, perfectly describe. For depth of mind begins with depth of heart. The greatest writers are primarily seers and only incidentally thinkers. As of old, so now, for a thousand thinkers there is only one great seer.

Having affirmed the influence of the heart upon the intellect and scholarship, let us hasten to confess that the heart determines the religious belief and creed. It is often said that belief is a matter of pure reason determined wholly by evidence. And doubtless it is true that in approaching mathematical proofs man is to discharge his mind of all color. That two and two are four is true for the poet and the miser, for the peaceable man not less than the litigious. But of the other truths of life it is a fact that with the heart man believes. We approach wheat with scales, we measure silk with a yardstick; we test the painting with taste and imagination, and the symphony with the sense of melody; motives and actions are tested by conscience; we approach the stars with a telescope, while purity of heart is the gla.s.s by which we see G.o.d. The scales that are useful in the laboratory are utterly valueless in the art gallery. The scientific faculty that fits Spencer for studying nature unfits him for studying art. In his old age Huxley, the scientist, wrote an essay forty pages long to prove that man was more beautiful than woman. Imagine some Tyndall approaching the transfiguration of Raphael to sc.r.a.pe off the colors and test them with acid and alkali for finding out the proportion of blue and crimson and gold. These are the methods that would give the village paint-grinder precedency above genius itself.

In 1837 two boys entered Faneuil hall and heard Wendell Phillips'

defense of Lovejoy. One youth was an English visitor who saw the portraits of Otis and Hanc.o.c.k, yet saw them not; heard the words of Phillips, yet heard them not, and because his heart was in London believed not unto patriotism. But the blood of Adams was in the veins of the other youth. He thought of Samuel Adams, who heard the firing at Lexington and exclaimed; "What a glorious morning this is!" He thought of John Adams and his love of liberty. He thought of the old man eloquent, John Quincy Adams, in the Halls of Congress, and as he listened to the burning words of the speaker, tears filled his eyes and pride filled his soul. It was his native land. With his heart he believed unto patriotism.

What the man is determines largely what his intellect thinks about G.o.d.

When the heart is narrow, harsh, and rigorous its theology is despotic and cruel. When the heart grows kindly, sympathetic and of autumnal richness, it emphasizes the sympathy and love of G.o.d. Each man paints his own picture of G.o.d. The heart lends the pigments. Souls full of sweetness and light fill the divine portrait with the lineaments of love. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness.

Happy, indeed, our age, in that the heart is now beginning to color our civilization. Vast, indeed, the influence of library and lecture-hall, of gallery and store and market-place, but the most significant fact of our day is that sympathy is baptizing our industries and inst.i.tutions with new effort. Intellect has lent the modern youth instruments many and powerful. Inventive thought has lent fire to man's forge, tools for his hands, books for his reading, has lent arts, sciences, inst.i.tutions. The modern youth stands forth in the aspect of the Roman conqueror to whom the citizens went forth to bestow gifts, one taking his chariot, one leading a steed, the children scattering flowers in the way, young men and maidens taking the hero's name upon their lips.

Unfortunately mult.i.tudes have declined those high gifts, turning away from the open door of the schoolhouse and college; many young feet have crossed the threshold of the saloon. Having entered our museum or art-gallery, mult.i.tudes enter places of evil resort.

Despising the opportunity offered by music or eloquence, by book or newspaper, by trade and profession, many choose sloth and self-indulgence. These needy millions, blinded with sin and ignorance, stand forth as a great opportunity for loving hearts. Sympathy is making beautiful the pathway of knowledge, that young hearts may be allured along the shining way. By a thousand arts and devices young people of refinement and culture are founding centers of light among the poor. The opportunity that William the Silent found in the starving millions of Holland; that Garrison found in the miserable slaves of the South; that Livingstone found in Africa, the modern hero is finding in the tenement-house district. Through sympathy a new hope is entering into all cla.s.ses of society.

The heart is also coloring industry. This year it is said that more than a score of great industrial inst.i.tutions in our country have, to the factory, added gymnasium, recreation-hall, schoolroom, library, free musicals and lectures. The intellect has failed to solve the social problems by giving allopathic doses from Poor Richard's Almanac.

Impotent also those dreamers who have insisted that society must have socialism--either G.o.d's or the devil's. Impotent those who, during the past week, have proposed to cure economic ills by spitting the heads of tyrants upon bayonets. But what force and law cannot do is slowly being done by sympathy and good-will. The heart is taking the rigor out of toil, the drudgery out of service, the cruelty out of laws, harshness out of theology, injustice out of politics. Love has done much. The social gains of the future are to be to the gradual progress of sympathy and love.

Unto man who goes through life working, weeping, laughing, loving, comes the heart believing unto immortality. For reason oft the immortal hope burns low and the stars dim and disappear, but for the heart, never! Scientists tell us matter is indestructible. And the heart nourishes an immortal hope that no doubt can quench, no argument destroy, no misfortune annihilate. Comforting, indeed, for reasons, the arguments of Socrates that life survives death. After the death of his beloved daughter Tullia, Cicero outlined arguments which have consoled the mind of mult.i.tudes. But in the hour of darkness and blackness, for a man to put out upon Death's dark sea, upon the argument of Cicero, is like some Columbus committing himself to a single plank in the hope of discovering an unseen continent.

In these dark hours the heart speaks. In the poet's vision, to blind Homer, falling into the bog, torn by the thorns and thickets and lost in the forest and the night, came the young G.o.ddess, the daughter of Light and Beauty, to take the sightless poet by the hand and lead him up the heavenly heights. Sometimes intellect seems sightless and wanders lost in the maze. Then comes the heart to lead man along the upward path. For even in its dreams the heart hears the sound of invisible music. Oft before reason's eye the heart unveils the Vision Splendid. The soul is big with immortality. When the heart speaks it is G.o.d within making overtures for man to come upward toward home and heaven.

RENOWN THROUGH SELF-RENUNCIATION.

"To live absolutely each man for himself could not be possible if all were to live together. In course of time, in addition to utility, certain more sensitive individuals began to see a charm, a beauty in this consideration for others. Gradually a sort of sanct.i.ty attached to it, and nature had once more ill.u.s.trated her mysterious method of evolving from rough and even savage necessities her lovely shapes and her tender dreams. To a.s.sert, then, with some recent critics of Christianity, that that law of brotherly love which is its central teaching is impracticable of application to the needs of society, is simply to deny the very first law by which society exists."--_Richard Le Galliene, in "The Religion of a Literary Man._"

"It is only with renunciations that life, properly speaking, can be said to begin. . . . In a valiant suffering for others, not in a slothful making others suffer for us, did n.o.bleness ever lie."--_Carlyle_.

"You talk of self as the motive to exertion. I tell you it is the abnegation of self which has wrought out all that is n.o.ble, all that is good, all that is useful, nearly all that is ornamental in the world."--_Whyte Melville_.

"Jesus said; 'Whosoever will come after Me, let him renounce himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me.' Perhaps there is no other maxim of Jesus which has such a combined stress of evidence for it and may be taken as so eminently His."--Matthew Arnold.

CHAPTER VIII.

RENOWN THROUGH SELF-RENUNCIATION.

History has crowned self-sacrifice as one of the virtues. In all ages selfishness has been like a flame consuming society, like a sword working waste and ruin, but self-sacrifice has repaired these ravages and achieved for man victories many and great. The church owes so much to the company of martyrs whose blood has crimsoned her every page, the state is so deeply indebted to the patriots who have given their lives for liberty, man has derived such strength from those who have endured the fetter and the f.a.got rather than belie their convictions, woman has derived such beauty from the example of that Antigone who died rather than desert the body of her dead brother, as that each modern youth beholds self-sacrifice standing forth clothed with immeasurable excellence.

Not large the company of the Immortals whose birthdays society celebrates. Yet when on these high days, through song or story the poet or orator draws back the veil and reveals to the a.s.sembled mult.i.tude the face of some Garibaldi or Hampden or Lincoln, the beloved one is seen to be clothed with genius and beauty and truth indeed, but also to be crowned with self-sacrifice. Society makes haste to forget him who remembers only himself. As there can be no illiterate sage, no ignorant Shakespeare, so history knows no selfish hero. For the mercenary forehead memory has no wreath. A sentinel with a flaming sword guards the threshold of the temple of fame against those aspirants named Ease, Avarice, Self-indulgence.

"Shall I be remembered by posterity?" asked the dying Garfield. In this eager, tremulous question the renowned and the obscure alike have a pathetic interest. For the deeply reflective mind oblivion is a thought all unendurable. The tool man fashions, the structure he rears, the success he achieves, not less than his marble monument, looks down upon the beholder with a mute appeal for recollection. To each eager aspirant for everlasting remembrance Christ comes whispering his secret of abiding renown. Speaking not as an amateur, but as a master, Christ affirms that he who would save his life must lose it, that he who would be remembered by others must forget himself, that the soldier who flees from danger to save his body shall leave that life upon the battlefield, while he who plunges his banner into the very thick of the fight and is carried off the field upon his shield shall in safety bear his life away. Hard seem the terms; they rebuke ease, they smite self-indulgence, they deny the maxims of the worldly wise.

But in accepting Christ's principle and forsaking their palaces that they might be as brothers to beggars, Xavier and Loyola found an exhilaration denied to kings; while each Sir Launfal, in his ease denied the Holy Grail, has in the hour of self-sacrifice discerned the Vision Splendid. To each young patriot and soldier looking eagerly unto the tablets that commemorate the deeds of heroes, to each young scholar aspiring to a place beside the sages, comes this word: Life is through death, and immortal renown through self-renunciation.

This law of self-sacrifice is imbedded in nature. Minot, the embryologist, and Drummond, the scientist, tells us that only by losing its life does the cell save it. The new science exhibits the body as a temple, constructed out of cells, as a building is made of bricks.

Just as some St. Peter represents strange marble from Athens, beauteous woods from Cyprus, granite from Italy, porphyry from Egypt, all brought together in a single cathedral, so the human body is a glorious temple built by those architects called living cells. When the scientist searches out the beginning of bird or bud or acorn he comes to a single cell. Under the microscope that cell is seen to be absorbing nutrition through its outer covering. But when the cell has attained a certain size its life is suddenly threatened. The center of the cell is seen to be so far from the surface that it can no longer draw in the nutrition from without. The bulk has outrun the absorbing surface.

"The alternative is very sharp," says the scientist, "the cell must divide or die." Only by losing its life and becoming two cells can it save its life.

Later on, when each of the two cells has grown again to the size of the original one, the same peril threatens them and they too must divide or die. And when through this law of saving life by losing it nature has made sure the basis for bud and bird, for beast and man, then the principle of sacrifice goes on to secure beauty of the individual plant or animal and perpetuity for the species. In the center of each grain of wheat there is a golden spot that gives a yellow cast to the fine flour. That spot is called the germ. When the germ sprouts and begins to increase, the white flour taken up as food begins to decrease. As the plant waxes, the surrounding kernel wanes. The life of the higher means the death of the lower. In the orchard also the flower must fall that the fruit may swell. If the young apple grows large, it must begin by pushing off the blossom. But by losing the lower bud, the tree saves the higher fruit.

Centuries ago Herodotus, the Grecian traveler, noted a remarkable custom in Egypt. Each springtime, when the palms flowered, the Egyptians went into the desert, cut off branches from the wild palms and, bringing them back to their gardens, waved them over the flowers of the date trees. What was meant by this ceremony Herodotus did not know. The husbandmen believed that if they neglected it the G.o.ds would give them but a scanty crop of dates. It was reserved for the science of our century, through Drummond, to explain the fact that the one palm saved its dates because the other palm lost its fertilizing pollen.

Should nature refuse to obey this law of losing life in order to save it, man's world would become one vast Sahara waste, an arctic desolation.

The law of sacrifice is also industrial law. Great is the power of wealth. It buys comfort, it purchases travel, it secures instruments of culture for reason and taste, it is almoner of bounty for sympathy and kindness. Flowing through man's life, it seems like unto some Nile flowing through Egypt with soft, irrigating flow, bearing man's burdens upon its currents, giving food to bird and beast. But the story of each Peter Cooper, each Peabody, each Amos Lawrence, is the story of the ease of life lost to-day that the strength of life may be saved to-morrow. Each young merchant loved luxury and beauty, but in the interests of thrift he denied the eye its hunger, the taste its satisfaction. When pride asked for dress and show, the youth rebuked his vanity. When companions scoffed at the young merchant as a n.i.g.g.ard he subdued his sensitiveness and inured himself to rigid economy. When increasing wealth began to lend influence, and society urged him to give his evenings to gayety, the young merchant denied the social instinct and gave his long winter evenings to broadening his knowledge and culture. Having lost the lower good, at last the time came when the American merchant and philanthropist had saved for himself universal fame. Having lost ease and self-indulgence during the first half of his life, he saved the higher ease and comfort for the second period of his career.

Similarly of the young men in Parliament who to-day have charge of the destinies of the English empire, it may be said that they have saved their lives, because the fathers lost theirs. One hundred years ago these fathers made exiles of themselves in the interests of their sons and daughters. The East India merchant exiled himself into the tropic land where heat and malaria made his skin as yellow as the gold he gained. Others braved the perils of the African forests, dared the dangers of Australian deserts, endured the rigor of the arctic cold.