OFF ITT DQ/VAT/O/V 
 
ESSAYS IN APPLICATION 
 
ESSAYS 
 IN APPLICATION* 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY VAN DYKE 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 CHARLKS SCRIBNKR S SONS 
 1906 
 
Copyright, 1905, by Charles Scribners Sons 
 
 Published, October, 1905 
 
 -., .;,- 
 
PREFACE 
 
 THE forces that impel action reside 
 in temperament. The ideals and con 
 victions that guide it are hidden in the 
 mind and heart. A man moves slowly 
 or swiftly, he does his work weakly or 
 strongly, according to the energy that 
 is in him. But the direction of his life, 
 this way or that way, follows the un 
 seen influence of what he admires and 
 loves and believes in. 
 
 It is not easy to take stock of these 
 controlling ideals and convictions, and 
 estimate them at their true value. It 
 is harder still to arrange and order them 
 in a system clear, logical, consistent 
 a philosophy of life. Few men have 
 the ability to make such a total state- 
 
PREFACE 
 
 ment of their spiritual assets. Even for 
 those who might be able to do it after 
 a fashion, it is difficult to find the time, 
 because they are actively engaged in the 
 business of living. 
 
 But every now and then, in writing 
 or in speaking, a man who takes his 
 affair seriously has occasion to meet one 
 or another of the problems of life in a 
 way that calls him to get at his inmost 
 convictions and to apply them to the 
 matter in hand. It is not always pos 
 sible, nor often necessary, to give an 
 elaborate description of his point of 
 view, or to trace the paths of inheritance 
 or reasoning by which he has reached 
 it. These are things that will probably 
 betray themselves, clearly enough, in his 
 work. Whether he be materialist or 
 idealist, radical or conservative, optim 
 ist or pessimist or meliorist, what he 
 has to do is just to stand where he be- 
 
 [vi] 
 
PREFACE 
 
 longs, and to put his ideals in applica 
 tion to the question before him. 
 
 That which is spoken or written in 
 this way may have some value, propor 
 tionate to its lucidity and sincerity, as 
 a partial showing of the practical con 
 clusions to which certain principles lead. 
 And if, as I believe, life is the test of 
 thought, rather than thought the test 
 of life, we should be able to get light 
 on the real worth of a man s theo 
 ries, ideals, beliefs, by looking at the 
 shape which they would give to human 
 existence if they were faithfully ap 
 plied. 
 
 It is in this way that the chapters of 
 this book have been written, and thus I 
 should like to have the reader take them. 
 I have tried to touch on certain points 
 in education, in politics, in literature, in 
 religion, in the conduct of life, from 
 the standpoint of one who wishes to 
 
 [vii] 
 
PREFACE 
 
 be guided in e very-day judgments and 
 affairs by a sane idealism. The book 
 makes no claim to be a defense, or even 
 a statement, of a complete system of 
 philosophy or faith. It is simply a col 
 lection of essays in application. 
 
 [ viii 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. Is THE WORLD GROWING BETTER ? . . . . 1 
 II. RULING CLASSES IN A DEMOCRACY .... 36 
 
 III. PUBLICOMANIA 75 
 
 IV. THE HERITAGE OF AMERICAN IDEALS . . . 84 * 
 V. THE POWERS THAT BE 104 
 
 VI. THE FLOOD OF BOOKS 123 
 
 VII. BOOKS, LITERATURE, AND THE PEOPLE . . 140 
 
 VIII. CHRISTIANITY AND CURRENT LITERATURE . 152 
 
 IX. THE CHURCH IN THE CITY 172 
 
 X. PROPERTY AND THEFT 183 
 
 XI. THE CREATIVE IDEAL OF EDUCATION . . . 209^ 
 
 XII. THE SCHOOL OF LIFE . . 247 
 
IS THE WORLD GROWING 
 BETTER? 
 
 No man knows, of a certainty, the 
 answer to this question. 
 
 If it were an inquiry into the con 
 dition of the world s pocket-book, or 
 farm, or garden, or machine-house, or 
 library, or school-room, the answer 
 would be easy. Six million more spin 
 dles whirling in the world s workshop 
 in 1903 than in 1900; eight hundred 
 million more bushels of wheat in the 
 world s grain-fields than in 1897; an 
 average school-attendance gaining 145 
 per cent, between 1840 and 1888, while 
 the population of Europe increased 
 only 33 per cent. So the figures run in 
 every department. No doubt the world 
 
IS THE WORLD GROWING BETTER? 
 
 is busier, richer, better fed, and prob 
 ably it knows more, than ever before. 
 
 I am not one of those highly ethereal 
 and supercilious people who can find 
 nothing in this to please them, and who 
 cry lackadaisically: "What is all this 
 worth?" I am honest enough to confess 
 to a sense of satisfaction when my little 
 vegetable garden rewards my care with 
 an enlarged crop, or when my children 
 bring home a good report from school. 
 Why should not a common-sense phil 
 anthropy lead us to feel in the same 
 way about the improved condition and 
 the better reports of the big world to 
 which we belong? Of course our sat 
 isfaction is checked and shadowed, 
 often very darkly shadowed, by the 
 remembrance of those who are left 
 behind in the march of civilization 
 the retarded races, the benighted classes, 
 the poor relations, of the world. But 
 
IS THE WORLD GROWING BETTER? 
 
 our sympathy with them is much more 
 likely to be helpful if it is hopeful, than 
 if it is despairing. I do not think it 
 necessary to. cultivate melancholy or 
 misanthropy as a preparation for benefi 
 cence. 
 
 A generous man ought to find some 
 thing cheerful and encouraging to his 
 own labours, in the knowledge that the 
 world is growing "better off." 
 
 But is it growing better? That s an 
 other question, and a far more im 
 portant one. What is happening to the 
 world itself, the owner of all this gear, 
 the prosperous old adventurer whose 
 wealth, according to Mr. Gladstone, in 
 creased twice as much during the first 
 seventy years of the nineteenth century 
 as it had done during the eighteen hun 
 dred years preceding? Is this marvel 
 lous increase of goods beneficial to the 
 character of the race? Or is it injuri- 
 
IS THE WORLD GROWING BETTER? 
 
 ous ? Or has it, perhaps, no deep or def 
 inite influence one way or the other? 
 
 f You know how hard it is to come to 
 a clear and just conclusion on such 
 points as these, even in the case of 
 an individual man. Peter Silvergilt s 
 wealth has grown from nothing to 
 three hundred million dollars during 
 the last fifty years; but are you sure 
 that Peter s personality is better, finer, 
 nobler, more admirable than it was 
 when he was a telegraph-boy earning 
 ten dollars a week? William Wiseman 
 has a world-wide fame as a scholar; it 
 is commonly reported that he has for 
 gotten more than most men ever knew; 
 but can you trust William more implic 
 itly to be fair and true and generous 
 than when he was an obscure student 
 just beginning to work for a degree in 
 .philosophy? 
 
 / When we try to apply such questions, 
 
 [4J 
 
IS THE WORLD GROWING BETTER? 
 
 not to a single person, but to the world 
 at large, positive and mathematical an 
 swers are impossible. The field of in 
 quiry is too vast. The facts of racial 
 character are too secret and subtle. 
 
 But a provisional estimate of the gen 
 eral condition of the world from the 
 point of view of goodness, comparing 
 the present with the past a probable 
 guess at the direction in which the race 
 is moving morally this is something 
 that we may fairly make. Indeed, if 
 you think and care much about your 
 brother men you can hardly help mak 
 ing it, and upon the colour of this guess 
 the tone of your philosophy depends. 
 If the colour is dark, you belong among 
 the pessimists, who cannot be very 
 happy, though they may sometimes be 
 rather useful. If the colour is bright, 
 you are what men call an optimist, 
 though I think George Eliot s word, 
 
IS THE WORLD GROWING BETTER? 
 
 "meliorist," would be a more fitting 
 name. 
 
 For what is it, after all, that we can 
 venture to claim for this old world of 
 ours, at most? Certainly not that it is 
 altogether good, nor even that it is as 
 good as it might be and therefore ought 
 to be. Police-stations and prisons and 
 wars are confessions that some things 
 are wrong and need correction. The 
 largest claim that a cheerful man who is 
 also a thoughtful man a child of hope 
 with his eyes open dares to make for 
 the world is that it is better than it used 
 to be, and that it has a fair prospect 
 of further improvement. This is meli 
 orism, the philosophy of actual and pos 
 sible betterment; not a high-stepping, 
 trumpet-blowing, self -flattering creed, 
 immediately available for advertising 
 purposes ; but a modest and sober faith, 
 useful for consolation in those hours of 
 [6] 
 
IS THE WORLD GROWING BETTER? 
 
 despondency and personal disappoint 
 ment when the grasshopper and the 
 critic both become a burden, and for 
 encouragement to more earnest effort 
 in those hours of cheer when a high-tide 
 of the spirit fills us with good-will to 
 our fellow-men. 
 
 I asked John Friendly the other day: 
 "Do you think the world is growing 
 better?" 
 
 "Certainly," said he, with a smile like 
 sunrise on his honest face, "I haven t 
 the slightest doubt of it." 
 
 "But what makes you so sure of it." 
 
 "Why, it must be so! Look at all the 
 work that is being done to-day to edu 
 cate people and help them into better 
 ways of living. All this effort must 
 count for something. The wagon must 
 move with so many horses pulling at it. 
 The world can t help growing better!" 
 
 Then he left me, to go down to a meet- 
 [7] 
 
IS THE WORLD GROWING BETTER? 
 
 ing of his "Citizens Committee for the 
 Application of the Social Boycott to 
 Political Offenders" (which frequently 
 adjourns without a quorum). Immedi 
 ately afterward I passed the door of the 
 "Michael T. Moriarty Republi-cratic 
 Club" wide open and crowded. On 
 my way up the avenue I saw a liquor- 
 saloon on every block and all busy. 
 The news-stands were full of placards 
 announcing articles in the magazines 
 "Graft in Chicago," "The Criminal 
 Calendar of Millionaires," "St. Louis, 
 the Bribers Paradise," "The Plunder 
 of Philadelphia." Head-lines in the 
 yellow journals told of "Immense 
 Slaughter in Manchuria," "Russia 
 Ripe for Revolution." "The Black 
 Hand Terror in the Bronx," "Gilded 
 Gambling-Dens of the Four Hun 
 dred," "Diamonds and Divorce." 
 John Friendly s cheerful a priori con- 
 
 [8] 
 
IS THE WORLD GROWING BETTER? 
 
 fidence in the betterment of the world 
 seemed to need reinforcement. Some of 
 the horses are pulling his way, no doubt, 
 but a good -many appear to be pulling 
 the other way. Under such conditions 
 the wagon might stick fast, or go back 
 ward. Possibly it might be pulled to 
 pieces. Who can measure, in the ab 
 stract, the comparative strength of the 
 good and the evil forces? Who can tell 
 beforehand which way the tug-of-war 
 must go? 
 
 The only sound and satisfactory 
 method is to bring out the foot-rule 
 of fact and apply it to the tracks of the 
 wagon. Has it moved? How fast, how 
 far, which way? 
 
 "Growing better" is a phrase about 
 which a company of college professors 
 would probably have a long preliminary 
 dispute; but plain people understand it 
 well enough for practical purposes. 
 [9] 
 
IS THE WORLD GROWING BETTER? 
 
 There are three factors in it. When we 
 say that a man grows better, we mean 
 that, in the main, he is becoming more 
 just, and careful to do the right thing; 
 more kind, and ready to do the helpful 
 thing; more self -controlled, and willing 
 to sacrifice his personal will to the gen 
 eral welfare. Is the world growing bet 
 ter in this sense? Is there more justice, 
 more kindness, more self-restraint, 
 among the inhabitants of earth than in 
 the days of old? 
 
 Of course, when we consider a ques 
 tion like this, before even a modest 
 guess at the answer is possible, we must 
 be willing to take a long view and a 
 wide view. The world, like the in 
 dividual man, has its moods and its 
 vagaries, its cold fits and its hot fits, its 
 backslidings and its repentances, its re 
 actions and its revivals. An advance 
 made in one century may be partly lost 
 
 [10] 
 
IS THE WORLD GROWING BETTER? 
 
 in the next, and regained with interest 
 in a later century. One nation may be 
 degenerating, under local infections of 
 evil, while others are improving. There 
 may be years, or regions, of short har 
 vest in the field of morals, just as there 
 are in the cotton-field or the corn-field. 
 The same general conditions that work 
 well for the development of most men, 
 may prove unfavourable to certain 
 races. Civilization seems to oppress and 
 demoralize some tribes to the point of 
 extinction. Liberty is a tonic too strong 
 for certain temperaments ; it intoxicates 
 them. But what we have to look at is 
 not the local exception, nor the tem 
 porary reaction: it is the broad field as 
 far as we can see it, the general move 
 ment as far as we can trace it. And 
 as I try to look at the question in this 
 way, clearly and steadily, it seems to me 
 that the world is really growing better: 
 MM 
 
IS THE WORLD GROWING BETTER? 
 
 not in every eddy, but in the main cur 
 rent of its life; not in a straight line, 
 but with a winding course ; not in every 
 respect, but in at least two of the three 
 main points of goodness; not swiftly, 
 but slowly, surely, really growing better. 
 
 Take the matter of justice. The world s 
 sense of equity, its desire to act fairly 
 and render to every man his due, is ex 
 pressed most directly in its laws. Who 
 can fail to see a process of improve 
 ment in the spirit and temper of legis 
 lation, a conscientious effort to make 
 the law more efficient in the protection 
 of human rights and more just in the 
 punishment of offences? 
 
 In Shakespeare s time, for example, a 
 woman s existence, in the eye of the law, 
 was merged in that of her husband. A 
 man could say of his wife: "She is my 
 goods, my chattels ; she is my house, my 
 household stuff, my field, my barn, my 
 
 [12] 
 
IS THE WORLD GROWING BETTER? 
 
 
 
 horse, my ox, my anything." The very 
 presents which he gave her were still 
 his property. He could beat her. He 
 could deprive her of the guardianship 
 of her children. It was not until the 
 end of the seventeenth century that 
 the law secured her right to the separ 
 ate use of her property, and not until 
 the middle of the nineteenth century 
 that the legislation of Great Britain 
 and America began to recognize and 
 protect her as a person, entitled to work 
 and receive wages, to dispose of her 
 own earnings, to have an equal share 
 with her husband in the guardianship 
 of their children. Surely it is an im 
 mense gain in justice that woman 
 should be treated as a human being. 
 
 This gain is most evident, of course, 
 in those nations which are leading the 
 march of civilization. But I think we 
 can see traces of it elsewhere. The aboli- 
 
 [13] 
 
IS THE WORLD GROWING BETTER? 
 
 tion of child-marriage and the practical 
 extinction of the suttee in India, the de 
 cline of the cruelly significant fashion 
 of "foot-binding" in China, the begin 
 ning of the education of girls in Egypt, 
 are hints that even the heathen world 
 is learning to believe that woman may 
 have a claim to justice. 
 
 In the same way we must interpret the 
 laws for the protection of the young 
 against cruelty, oppression, and in 
 justice. Beginning with the Factory 
 Act of 1833 and the Mines and Col 
 lieries Act of 1842 in England, there 
 has been a steadily increasing effort to 
 diminish and prevent the degradation 
 of the race by the enslavement of child 
 hood to labor. Even the parent s right 
 of control, says the modern world, must 
 be held in harmony with the child s 
 right to life and growth, mental, moral, 
 and physical. The law itself must rec- 
 
 [14] 
 
IS THE WORLD GROWING BETTER? 
 
 ognize the injustice of dealing with 
 young delinquents as if they were old 
 and hardened criminals. No more herd 
 ing of children ten and twelve years 
 old in the common jail! Juvenile courts 
 and probation officers, asylums and re 
 formatories: an intelligent and sys 
 tematic effort to reclaim the young life 
 before it has fallen into hopeless bond 
 age to crime: this is the spirit of 
 civilized legislation to-day. In 1903 no 
 less than ten of the American States 
 enacted special statutes with this end in 
 view. 
 
 The great change for the better in 
 modern criminal law is another proof 
 that the world is growing more just. 
 Brutal and degrading methods of exe 
 cution, such as crucifixion, burying 
 alive, impaling, disembowelling, break 
 ing on the wheel: the judicial torture 
 of prisoners and unwilling witnesses by 
 
 [15] 
 
IS THE WORLD GROWING BETTER? 
 
 the thumb-screw, the strappado, and 
 the rack: cruel and agonizing penalties 
 of various kinds have been abolished, 
 not merely by way of concession to hu 
 manity, but with the purpose of main 
 taining justice in purity and dignity. 
 The world has been learning to dis 
 criminate more carefully between the 
 degrees of crime. In the eighteenth 
 century men were condemned to death 
 for forgery; for stealing from a shop 
 to the value of five shillings or from a 
 house to the value of forty shillings; 
 for malicious injury to trees, cattle, or 
 fish-ponds; for the cutting of hop- 
 bands from the poles in a plantation. 
 Within eighty years capital punish 
 ment has been inflicted in England for 
 sheep-stealing and for robbery from a 
 house. The laws of Pennsylvania at 
 the time of the Revolution enumerated 
 twenty crimes punishable with death; 
 [16] 
 
IS THE WORLD GROWING BETTER? 
 
 in Virginia and Kentucky there were 
 twenty-seven. Modern legislation rec 
 ognizes the futility as well as the funda 
 mental injustice of such crass and in 
 discriminate retribution, and reserves 
 the final penalty for the supreme crime 
 against the life of the individual or the 
 State. 
 
 At the same time there has been a two 
 fold rectification of the scope of the 
 criminal law. Some of the offences most 
 severely punished in old times have 
 ceased to be grounds of prosecution: 
 for example, heresy, witchcraft, re 
 ligious nonconformity. On the other 
 hand, misdeeds which formerly were 
 disregarded have been made punish 
 able. It was not until 1833 that the 
 English law began to treat drunken 
 ness as a crime, rather than a misfort 
 une. In 1857 a fraud on the part of a 
 trustee, and in 1875 the falsification of 
 [17] 
 
IS THE WORLD GROWING BETTER? 
 
 accounts, were declared to be criminal. 
 The laws of various States are rec 
 ognizing and defining a vast number of 
 new misdemeanors, such as the adul 
 teration of foods, gambling, violation 
 of laws in restraint of the liquor traffic, 
 selling cigarettes to children, tapping 
 .electric wires, disfiguring the land 
 scape with advertisements or printing 
 them on the American flag, making 
 combinations in restraint of trade, 
 sleeping in a public bakery, spitting on 
 the floor of a street-car. I do not say 
 that all of these offences are wisely de 
 fined or fairly punished; but I do say 
 that the process of modern legislation 
 in regard to such matters indicates a 
 growing desire among men that justice 
 shall prevail in the community. 
 
 A large part of what appears to be the 
 increase of crime in recent years (ac 
 cording to statistics) , is due to this new 
 
 [18] 
 
IS THE WORLD GROWING BETTER? 
 
 definition of misdemeanors. There are 
 more offenders in the most peaceful 
 and well-governed States, because there 
 are more offences defined. Another part 
 comes from the greater efficiency in the 
 execution of laws and the greater com 
 pleteness in the tabulation of reports. 
 The remaining part comes from a cause 
 on which I will touch later. But in spite 
 of this apparent increase of crime, no 
 sensible man believes that the actual 
 amount of violence and disorder among 
 men is as great as it used to be. Pike s 
 "History of Crime in England" esti 
 mates that in the fourteenth century 
 murders were at least sixteen times as 
 frequent as in our own day. 
 
 I pass by such notorious and splendid 
 triumphs of the world s moral sense as 
 the abolition of the slave-trade, and the 
 establishment of international law, to 
 mention two humble, concrete illustra- 
 [19] 
 
IS THE WORLD GROWING BETTER? 
 
 tions of what I mean by the advance 
 of justice. The purchase by the Ameri 
 can Government of the lands of the 
 Spanish friars in the Philippines was a 
 just way of accomplishing what would 
 have been done a century ago by con 
 fiscation. The passage by the Congress 
 of the United States of an act grant 
 ing copyright to foreigners was a rec 
 ognition, resisted by selfishness and 
 ignorance for fifty years, of the fund 
 amental principles of righteousness and 
 fair dealing. 
 
 I know there are many items, and 
 some of them most grievous, to be set 
 down on the other side. There are still 
 wars of conquest; corruptions and de 
 lays in legislation; oppressions and in 
 equalities in government; robberies and 
 cruelties which go unpunished. But 
 these are not new things: they are as 
 old as sin; evils not yet shaken off. I 
 
 [20] 
 
IS THE WORLD GROWING BETTER? 
 
 do not dream that the world is already 
 quite just. But by the light that comes 
 from the wiser, fairer laws of many 
 lands, I guess that the world is grow 
 ing more just. 
 
 In regard to the increase of kindness 
 in the human race, the evidence is even 
 more clear and strong. There are more 
 people in the world who love mercy, 
 and they are having better success 
 in making their spirit prevail. More 
 is being done to-day to prevent and 
 mitigate human suffering, to shelter 
 and protect the weak and helpless, to 
 minister wisely to the sick and wounded 
 in body and in mind, than ever before in 
 the history of mankind. Part of the evi 
 dence of this lies in some of the facts 
 already noted in connection with the 
 humanizing of the law, and in the ex 
 traordinary story of the work begun 
 by John Howard, a hundred and thirty 
 
 [21] 
 
IS THE WORLD GROWING BETTER? 
 
 years ago, which has cleansed away so 
 much of the shame of a cruel, filthy, and 
 irrational prison-system. But there is 
 evidence, also, of a more direct and 
 positive sort, going beyond the removal 
 of ancient evils and manifesting a spirit 
 of creative kindness eager to find new 
 ways of helping others. 
 
 Since the middle of the nineteenth 
 century, says the best authority on 
 statistics, charity has grown twice as 
 fast as wealth in England, three times 
 as fast in France. In the United States 
 the amount of the larger gifts ($5,000 
 or" more) rose from $29,000,000, in 
 1893, to $107,000,000, in 1901. The 
 public and private charities of New 
 York alone (excluding the money 
 spent on buildings) are estimated at 
 $50,000,000 a year. 
 
 With all this increase of money comes 
 an equal increase of care and thought 
 
 [22] 
 
IS THE WORLD GROWING BETTER? 
 
 in regard to the best way of using it 
 for the real benefit of mankind. Reck 
 less almsgiving is recognized as an ami 
 able but idiotic form of self-indulgence. 
 The penny dropped into the beggar s 
 hat gives place to an inquiry into the 
 beggar s condition. This costs more, but 
 it is worth more. Waste in money 
 given is no more virtuous than waste 
 in money earned. Schools of philan 
 thropy are established to study and 
 teach the economy of generosity. Asy 
 lums are investigated and supervised. 
 Relief funds are intrusted to responsi 
 ble committees, who keep books and ren 
 der accounts. Men and women are try 
 ing to take the head into partnership 
 with the heart in beneficence. A rich 
 father and mother lose their child by 
 scarlet fever: they give a million dol 
 lars to endow an institution for the 
 study and prevention of infectious dis- 
 
 F231 
 
IS THE WORLD GROWING BETTER? 
 
 eases. An excursion steamboat is 
 burned in New York harbor and a 
 thousand people, most of them poor, 
 lose their lives: within two weeks $125,- 
 000 is given for relief; it is not thrown 
 away with open hands, but administered 
 by a committee with as much care as 
 they would bestow on their own affairs ; 
 every dollar is accounted for, and a 
 balance of $17,000 is left, to meet fu 
 ture calls, or to be devoted to some 
 kindred purpose. These are illustra 
 tions of intelligent mercy. 
 
 Consider the advance in the general 
 spirit of kindness which is indicated by 
 such a fact as the founding and success 
 ful operation of the system of Work 
 ing Men s Insurance in Germany. A 
 certain sum of money is set aside for 
 each workman every week (the em 
 ployer and the employee each contribut 
 ing half), and the Government adds a 
 
 [24] 
 
IS THE WORLD GROWING BETTER? 
 
 supplement of $12 on each pension. 
 Ten million workmen are thus insured 
 against sickness; seventeen million 
 against accident; ten million against 
 disability from old age. Six hundred 
 and seventy thousand persons receive 
 the benefit of this fund in yearly pen 
 sions. Incidentally there has been an 
 immense benefit in the increase of pre 
 cautions to prevent accidents and to re 
 duce dangerous occupations. The em 
 ployer who is not yet willing to protect 
 his workmen, for kindness sake, will do 
 it to escape heavier taxes. And the com 
 munity which silently compels him to do 
 this, the community which says to the 
 labouring man, "If you will perform 
 your duty, you shall not starve when 
 you are sick and old," is certainly grow 
 ing more kind as well as more just. 
 
 Look at the broad field of what we 
 may call international mercy. It has 
 
 [25] 
 
IS THE WORLD GROWING BETTER? 
 
 been estimated that since the days when 
 the failure of the harvest drove Abra 
 ham from Palestine down to Egypt to 
 seek food for his starving people, there 
 have been three hundred and fifty great 
 famines in various parts of the world. 
 How many of the hungry nations re 
 ceived help from the outside world be 
 fore the nineteenth century began? But 
 now, within a week after the distress is 
 known, money, food, and help of all 
 kinds begin to flow in from all quarters 
 of the globe. The famine in India in 
 1900-1901 called forth contributions 
 from Great Britain, Germany, France, 
 America, to the amount of $72,000,000. 
 The greater part came from England, 
 of course, but the whole world stood 
 ready to aid her. 
 
 After the great fire of London in 
 
 1666, and the Lisbon earthquake in 
 
 1755, there was some outside assistance 
 
 [26] 
 
IS THE WORLD GROWING BETTER? 
 
 given, it is true. But in the main, the 
 stricken cities had to suffer alone and 
 help themselves. When the little city of 
 Galveston, Texas, was swept by flood 
 in 1900, within three weeks $750,000 
 was poured in for its relief, and the 
 whole fund amounted to nearly a mil 
 lion and a half. 
 
 Turn again to look at the effort which 
 the world is making to get rid of the 
 hell of war, or, if that be not possible, 
 at least to mitigate its horrors and tor 
 ments. The High Tribunal of Arbitra 
 tion at The Hague is a milestone on 
 the world s path of progress toward the 
 peaceful method of solving interna 
 tional disputes. Each year sees some 
 new advance in that direction. Since 
 1903 Great Britain and France, Hol 
 land and Denmark, France and Spain, 
 Great Britain and Italy, France and 
 Holland, Great Britain and Spain, 
 [27] 
 
IS THE WORLD GROWING BETTER? 
 
 Italy and France, have made treaties 
 by which they pledge themselves to 
 refer all differences of certain kinds 
 which may arise between them to this 
 tribunal for settlement. During the 
 same time at least seven international 
 questions have been referred to special 
 arbitrators. 
 
 True, war has not yet been eliminated 
 from the programme of the race. Great 
 armaments are maintained at incredi 
 ble expense, and nations insist, as Rus- 
 kin said, that it is good policy to pur 
 chase terror of one another at the cost 
 of hundreds of millions every year. 
 Some of the honest friends of peace are 
 not yet reasonable enough to see the fol 
 ly of this arrangement. A peace which 
 depends upon fear is nothing but a sup 
 pressed war. Every now and then the 
 restraining fear gives way, in one place 
 or another, and thousands of men are 
 
 [28] 
 
IS THE WORLD GROWING BETTER? 
 
 dressed in uniform and marshalled with 
 music to blow one another s brains out. 
 
 But, in spite of all this, the growth of 
 the spirit of mercy in the world makes 
 itself known in the application of more 
 humane rules to the inhumanity of war. 
 Private wars, prevalent in the Middle 
 Ages, and piracy, tolerated until the 
 nineteenth century, have been abolished. 
 The slaughter, torture, and enslave 
 ment of prisoners of war, which was 
 formerly practised by even Christian 
 nations, gave place in the middle of the 
 seventeenth century to the custom of 
 releasing all prisoners at the close of 
 the war without ransom. Even Ma 
 hometan nations agreed by treaty that 
 they would no longer subject their cap 
 tives to bondage or torture. Persia and 
 Turkey, in 1828, pledged themselves to 
 the exchange of prisoners. 
 
 There has been a steady advance in 
 [29] 
 
IS THE WORLD GROWING BKTTKR? 
 
 the strictness and efficiency of the rules 
 protecting the life and property of non- 
 combatants, an immense decrease in the 
 atrocities inflicted by conquering armies 
 upon the peaceful inhabitants of van 
 quished countries. Let any man read 
 the story of the siege and sack of a town 
 in Holland by the Spanish soldiers as 
 it is given in Motley s "Dutch Re 
 public," and compare it with the story 
 of the capture of Paris in 1870, or even 
 the taking of Pekin in 1900, and he will 
 understand that war itself has felt the 
 restraining touch of mercy. Let him re 
 flect upon the significance of the work 
 of the Red Cross Society, with its 
 pledge of kindly succor to all who are 
 wounded in battle, "treating friend and 
 foe alike" ; let him consider the remark 
 able fact that this society in Japan has 
 a service as perfectly organized as any 
 in the world, with a million members, 
 
 F301 
 
IS THE WORLD GROWING BETTER? 
 
 and an annual income of more than 
 $1,500,000, and he cannot but acknowl 
 edge that the spirit of pity and compas 
 sion has gained ground since the days 
 of Charlemagne and Barbarossa arid 
 Napoleon yes, even since the days of 
 Libby Prison and Elmira. And if none 
 of these things are enough to comfort 
 or encourage him, let him take in the 
 meaning of the simple fact that not one 
 of the great nations of the world to-day 
 would dare to proclaim a war in the 
 name of Religion. By this blessed 
 change alone, I should make bold to 
 guess that the world is surely growing 
 better. 
 
 But how is it with the third factor 
 of real betterment: self-restraint, the 
 willingness to sacrifice one s own pas 
 sion and pleasure for the good of 
 others? Here, I confess, my guessing is 
 confused and troubled. There was a 
 
 [31] 
 
IS THE WORLD GROWING BETTER? 
 
 vast improvement from the fourteenth 
 to the nineteenth century, no doubt. 
 But whether the twentieth century is 
 carrying on the advance seems uncer 
 tain. 
 
 It may be that on this point we have 
 entered into a period of reaction. The 
 theory of individual liberty threatens to 
 assert itself in dangerous forms. Lit 
 erature and art are throwing their en-> 
 chantments about the old lie that life s 
 highest value is found in moments of 
 intense self -gratification. Speed is glo 
 rified, regardless of direction. Strength 
 is worshipped at the expense of reason. 
 Success is deified as the power to do 
 what one likes. Gilding covers a multi 
 tude of sins. 
 
 On the one hand, we have a so-called 
 "upper class," which says: "The world 
 was made to amuse me; nothing else 
 matters." On the other hand, we have 
 
 [32] 
 
IS THE WORLD GROWING BETTER? 
 
 an apparent increase of the criminal 
 class, which lives at war with the social 
 order. Corporations and labour unions 
 engage in a struggle so fierce that the 
 rights and interests of the community 
 are forgotten by both parties. In our 
 own country lynching, which is organ 
 ized murder for unproved offences, 
 grows more common; divorces increase 
 to 60,000 in one year; and there is an 
 epidemic of shocking accidents and dis 
 asters, greater than any hitherto record 
 ed, and due apparently to the spirit of 
 unrestraint and recklessness which is 
 sweeping furiously in its motor-car 
 along the highways of modern life. 
 
 Is this selfish and headlong spirit 
 growing? Will it continue to accelerate 
 the pace at which men live, and diminish 
 the control by which they are guided? 
 Will it weaken more and more the bonds 
 of reverence, and mutual consideration, 
 
 [33] 
 
IS THE WORLD GROWING BETTER? 
 
 and household fidelity, and civic virtue, 
 until the states which have been civilized 
 by the sanctions of love and the convic 
 tions of duty are whirled backward, by 
 the passion of self-indulgence, into the 
 barbarism of luxurious pleasure or the 
 anarchy of social strife? 
 
 These are the questions that rise to 
 trouble us in our moments of despond 
 ency and foreboding. But I think that 
 it is neither wise nor brave to give 
 them an answer of despair. Two are 
 stronger than one. The growth of jus 
 tice and of kindness, I guess, will in the 
 long run prevail over the decline of self- 
 restraint, and the selfish, reckless spirit 
 will be overcome. 
 
 At all events, when Christmas comes 
 I shall sit down with John Friendly to 
 enjoy its cheer, rather than with any 
 sour pessimist. For one thing is sure. 
 The hope of humanity lies in the widen- 
 
 [34] 
 
IS THE WORLD GROWING BETTER? 
 
 ing, deepening influence of that blessed 
 Life which was born nineteen hundred 
 years ago in Bethlehem. The Lesson 
 which that Life teaches us is that the 
 only way to make the world better is 
 for each man to do his best. 
 
 [35] 
 
II 
 
 RULING CLASSES IN A 
 DEMOCRACY 
 
 A DEMOCRACY differs from a mon 
 archy, an empire, an aristocracy, not 
 in the absence of ruling classes, but in 
 the method by which they are selected. 
 
 Government without rulers is as im 
 possible as steering without rudders. 
 Man is by nature a civil creature. His 
 natural rights, however you may define 
 them, coexist with a natural instinct of 
 organization. Organization implies or 
 der. Order implies control. Control im 
 plies authority. Authority implies a rul 
 ing class. 
 
 Rudiments of this civil instinct may 
 be seen in some of the lower animals. 
 
 [36] 
 
RULING CLASSES IN A DEMOCRACY 
 
 Bees and ants reflect, in a dim and 
 partial way, the image of an organ 
 ized state. Herds of elephants and 
 horses, colonies of birds and beavers, 
 are obedient to leadership and direction. 
 In almost every case we can measure 
 a creature s place in the scale of intel 
 ligence by the force and efficiency of the 
 civil instinct. Man is no exception, but 
 the great example. The first social prob 
 lem is the problem of rule: who shall 
 exercise it, how far shall it go, and by 
 what means shall it be enforced? The 
 highest social triumph is the establish 
 ment of authority in the hands of those 
 who are best fitted to exercise it. 
 
 But while man has an instinct which 
 recognizes and seeks this end, he has 
 also an impulse which rebels against the 
 means necessary to secure it. The free 
 dom of the will carries with it the crav 
 ing for unrestrained liberty of action. 
 
 [37] 
 
RULING CLASSES IN A DEMOCRACY 
 
 I^ut liberty absolutely unrestrained is 
 inconsistent with the existence of any 
 kind of rule. 
 
 Suppose that you and I are farmers, 
 whose fields march together. If you 
 are free to do just what you please, 
 and I am free to do precisely what 
 I like, it is not probable that peace 
 will prevail along our line-fences; at 
 least not until we are both perfectly 
 sanctified and the millennium arrives, 
 which is evidently some distance away. 
 Meantime it is quite necessary for both 
 of us that there should be some one 
 authorized and competent to say what 
 shall be done about those line-fences; 
 and how the roads which we use in 
 common shall be kept up; and how 
 the agreements which we make to ex 
 change our labour, or the products of 
 our labour, shall be enforced; and what 
 means shall be used to guard us both 
 
 [38] 
 
RULING CLASSES IN A DEMOCRACY 
 
 against common dangers and disasters ; 
 and how the cost of these things shall 
 be divided. 
 
 This is rule. The men who have "the 
 say" about these subjects belong to 
 the ruling classes. Against them, and 
 against the things that they say, the 
 impulse of unregulated freedom al 
 ways reluctates. 
 
 Few men doubt their ability to make 
 laws. Most men, at some time or other, 
 dislike the necessity of obeying them. 
 Personal restraints are not often per 
 sonal pleasures. The visit of the tax- 
 collector seldom gives unmixed joy. It 
 is easier to do what you please than to 
 do what you ought. Individual rights 
 seem more concrete and familiar than 
 reciprocal duties. Under every form of 
 government known to man there has 
 been, there still is, and there probably 
 will be, an element of discontent and 
 
 [39] 
 
RULING CLASSES IN A DEMOCRACY 
 
 restlessness arising from the natural hu 
 man impulse natural at least to man 
 in his present condition to resist rule. 
 
 The problem of civilization is how to 
 subdue this impulse by correlating in 
 dividual rights with social duties, and 
 how to develop, enlighten, and guide the 
 civil instinct which seeks order through 
 rule. 
 
 Now, it is evident that the method of 
 selecting the ruling classes must have a 
 considerable influence in the working 
 out of this problem. It is true that at 
 any given time people are most likely 
 to be contented, peaceful, and happy 
 under the rulers who actually give them 
 the most firm, orderly, and equitable 
 government, no matter how they may 
 have been selected. There is a certain 
 amount of hard common sense in the 
 remark of Alexander Pope, although it 
 was made in verse : 
 
 [40] 
 
RULING CLASSES IN A DEMOCRACY 
 
 " For forms of government let fools contest ; 
 Whate er is best administered is best." 
 
 But the wisdom of this couplet is 
 confined to the present tense. It is 
 good only for the moment in which 
 it is uttered. A form of government 
 may be well administered to-day, badly 
 to-morrow. The great question is, how 
 to secure a continuity of good admin 
 istration. How shall the men who are 
 best qualified to control and direct the 
 common interests of their fellow-men 
 be discovered? How shall they be sanc 
 tioned in the use of just authority, and 
 restrained from the exercise of unjust 
 tyranny? How shall it be made most 
 easy to correct the accident of power 
 falling into unfit hands? How shall the 
 great force of public opinion, from 
 which, in the last analysis, all govern 
 ments derive their energy and stability 
 
 how shall this common sense of jus- 
 Mi ] 
 
RULING CLASSES IN A DEMOCRACY 
 
 tice and right be satisfied in the selec 
 tion of the ruling class? 
 
 Different methods have been devised. 
 They may be classed under three heads : 
 autocratic, automatic, and democratic. 
 
 The autocratic method practically 
 amounts to allowing the chief ruler to 
 select himself and appoint his subordi 
 nates. This is the oldest method and the 
 rudest 
 
 "the simple plan 
 
 That those should take who have the power, 
 And those should keep who can." 
 
 It is based upon the assumption that 
 might coincides with right. This would 
 be convenient if it were true. It would 
 be a great saving of time if we could 
 just let the strongest man rule, and 
 feel sure that he was the best. But, 
 unfortunately, the history of imperial 
 sway does not support this idea. When 
 an autocrat imposes the taxes, there is 
 
 [42] 
 
RULING CLASSES IN A DEMOCRACY 
 
 often "the de il to pay." And when a 
 tyrant chooses the judges, Justice does 
 not need to have her eyes bandaged, 
 for she is stone-blind already. 
 
 The automatic method relies upon he 
 redity to supply the ruling classes. Cer 
 tain families are endowed with titles 
 and powers, and the head of a particu 
 lar family inherits the sovereignty. All 
 that he has to do is to be born at the 
 right time, and live long enough, and 
 the sceptre comes to him as a matter of 
 course. Meantime natural forces are at 
 work producing hereditary legislators 
 to support and share his power. The 
 scheme has an aspect of antique dignity 
 and piety. It appears to put great reli 
 ance upon Providence, and, indeed, it 
 has often sanctioned itself in old times 
 by an appeal to the "Divine Right of 
 Kings." In practice it has two very 
 serious drawbacks. First, the wrong 
 
 [43] 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF 
 
RULING CLASSES IN A DEMOCRACY 
 
 family may be chosen to start the pro 
 cession; and, second, the so-called law 
 of heredity often produces very unex 
 pected and curious results. 
 
 The democratic method intrusts the se 
 lection of the ruling classes to the col 
 lective reason and justice of the people. 
 In the conduct of government it ap 
 peals to the governed for their consent. 
 "Consent of the governed," in this con 
 nection, does not mean their permission, 
 merely; for if this were the meaning, 
 it would be equally true of a constitu 
 tional monarchy, and even of a benevo 
 lent and popular empire. The subjects 
 of Edward VII. and of William II. 
 "consent," in this sense, to their govern 
 ments, with practically as much una 
 nimity as the citizens of the United 
 States feel at any given time in con 
 senting to the authority of the Presi 
 dent in office. The "consent* of democ- 
 
 [44] 
 
RULING CLASSES IN A DEMOCRACY 
 
 racy, if it has any distinctive meaning, 
 must signify the thinking together, the 
 acting together, of the people in the 
 choice of their rulers, and, consequent 
 ly, in the direction of the state. Three 
 things are essential to the reality of 
 this popular participation. 
 
 First, there must be an untrammelled 
 opportunity for the people to express 
 their choice by suffrage. It is by no 
 means necessary that this suffrage 
 should be universal. As a matter of 
 fact, it never has been. There is no na 
 tion known to history in which all citi 
 zens, male and female, old and young, 
 native and foreign-born, have had the 
 suffrage. It is not a common right. It 
 is a civil privilege intended to protect 
 common rights. It has always been re 
 stricted in one way or another. The only 
 things necessary to its sufficiency are 
 that it should be truly representative, 
 
 [45] 
 
RULING CLASSES IN A DEMOCRACY 
 
 and that the conditions which restrict it 
 should be equal for all, except in the 
 case of forfeiture for crime. 
 
 The second essential of popular par 
 ticipation in government is that the 
 terms of office of those who are chosen 
 to rule should be so limited that changes 
 of national judgment, arising from 
 experience, from education, or from 
 changed circumstances, may be made 
 effective without rebellion or revolu 
 tion. 
 
 The third essential is that the func 
 tions and powers of the ruling classes 
 thus chosen should be restricted to those 
 which are actually conferred in the 
 choice. For this reason there can be no 
 real and permanent democracy without 
 a constitution. True democrats are jeal 
 ous and zealous for the sanctity of the 
 constitution. They know that it is the 
 sea-wall between them and autocracy. 
 
 [46] 
 
RULING CLASSES IN A DEMOCRACY 
 
 Now, where these three essentials ex 
 ist, a representative and equal suf 
 frage, periodical opportunity for the 
 people to change their rulers peaceful 
 ly, and a careful limitation of official 
 powers by the constitution, there is 
 genuine democracy. 
 
 Foreign critics say that the United 
 States is not a truly democratic coun 
 try, because the people are not all on 
 a level, all alike. But when did democ 
 racy offer to guarantee the similarity 
 of people, or grade mankind down to 
 a dead flat? When all the trees in the 
 forest have the same number of leaves, 
 when all the rivers that flow into the 
 sea contain the same number of fish, 
 when all the fields in the farm bear the 
 same crop, then will all men be alike in 
 their power and skill, and consequently 
 on a level in degree and station. Democ 
 racy is no miracle-worker, no infidel 
 
 [47] 
 
RULING CLASSES IN A DEMOCRACY 
 
 toward natural law. Democracy de 
 clares that men, unequal in their endow 
 ments, shall be equal in their rights to 
 develop those endowments. 
 
 Classes must exist in every social order 
 ruling classes, teaching classes, agri 
 cultural classes, manufacturing classes, 
 commercial classes. All these are in the 
 labouring class, but their labour is di 
 vided. The moment you begin to divide 
 labour you begin to differentiate men. 
 The moment you have men devel 
 oped, by different kinds of work, on 
 different sides of their nature, you 
 have classes. 
 
 What democracy says is that there 
 shall be no locked doors between these 
 classes. Every stairway shall be open. 
 Every opportunity shall be free. Every 
 talent shall have an equal chance to earn 
 another talent. I think we may claim 
 that this is the case in the United States, 
 
 [48] 
 
RULING CLASSES IN A DEMOCRACY 
 
 at least to a larger extent than ever be 
 fore in the history of the world. Not all 
 the farmers boys in the country may 
 become Presidents of the nation. That 
 would be physically impossible. But 
 any of them may do so, and several of 
 them have done so. Some of them, like 
 Henry Clay and Daniel Webster, at 
 tained such eminence and power that 
 the Presidency could hardly have added 
 to their fame. 
 
 These cases are not accidents. They are 
 logical evidences of an equality among 
 men in the only sense in which equality 
 is possible equality of opportunity. 
 This equality is no nebulous dream of 
 a state in which degree is abolished and 
 every man is as mediocre as everybody 
 else. It is a real escape from the tyranny 
 of artificial and hereditary distinctions ; 
 a real approximation of position and 
 fitness, honour and ability. It is safe- 
 
 [49] 
 
RULING CLASSES IN A DEMOCRACY 
 
 guarded, and its effects are diffused in 
 some measure through the whole f abric 
 of social life, not by any mere legal 
 enactment, but by something vastly 
 stronger and more efficient : the state of 
 mind which is created in the people by 
 committing to them the choice of their 
 own ruling classes. Herein is fulfilled 
 the divine prophecy of democracy: 
 "And their nobles shall be of them 
 selves, and their governors shall pro 
 ceed from the midst of them." 
 
 In regard to this democratic method of 
 electing rulers there are some things 
 which I should like to say, with as much 
 emphasis and clearness as may be con 
 sistent with brevity. 
 
 It is the highest and most reasonable 
 method. In the case of ignorant, unde 
 veloped peoples, with whom the impulse 
 of resistance is stronger than the in 
 stinct of order, the other methods may 
 
 [501 
 
RULING CLASSES IN A DEMOCRACY 
 
 be necessary. But they are to be consid 
 ered as educative, corrective, discipli 
 nary. All peoples, like all children, 
 should be regarded as on their way to 
 self-rule. When they are able to main 
 tain it, they are entitled to have it. All 
 arguments against the democratic meth 
 od, based on the weakness, folly, and sel 
 fishness of human nature, apply with 
 greater force to the autocratic and au 
 tomatic methods. The individual follies 
 of a multitude of men often neutralize 
 one another, leaving an active residuum 
 of plain common sense. But for a fool 
 king there is no natural antidote; and 
 sometimes men have sadly found that 
 the only way to set his head straight was 
 to remove it. 
 
 It is said that democracies are pecul 
 iarly subject to the microbes of financial 
 delusion and the resultant boom- fever 
 and panic-chill. But the Mississippi 
 
 [51] 
 
RULING CLASSES IN A DEMOCRACY 
 
 Scheme and the South Sea Bubble 
 flourished under monarchical institu 
 tions ; and the worst-depreciated curren 
 cies in the world have been stamped 
 with the image and superscription of 
 kings. 
 
 It is said that democracies are reck 
 less, extravagant, spendthrift, and that 
 official dishonesty and corruption thrive 
 in them. But it would be difficult to par 
 allel the extravagance and corruption 
 of the government of France under 
 the Bourbons, in the history of any re 
 public. The Russian railway across Si 
 beria has been built through a quagmire 
 of public peculation as vast as the Em 
 pire itself. And when the records of 
 South Africa are fully written, unless 
 all signs fail, it will be found that the 
 pickings of the rulers of the Boer re 
 publics, compared with those of the ser 
 vants of the new British Overlord of 
 
 [52] 
 
RULING CLASSES IN A DEMOCRACY 
 
 the Transvaal, were on the scale of one 
 horse to a thousand mules. 
 
 It is said that democracies sometimes 
 choose weak, incompetent, and even bad 
 men for their ruling classes. So they do. 
 But they have no monopoly in this re 
 spect. The automatic method of select 
 ing rulers produced Charles II. and 
 James II. and George III. It would be 
 difficult to surpass in any republic the 
 folly which selected Lord North to 
 guide the policy of Great Britain at 
 a time when Lord Chatham, Charles 
 James Fox, and Edmund Burke were 
 on the stage. Yet this was done, not by 
 an ignorant democracy, but by an auto 
 matic king. Nor does the autocratic 
 plan of allowing rulers to choose them 
 selves work any more infallibly. France 
 had two examples of it in the last 
 century. Napoleon I. was a catastrophe. 
 Napoleon III. was a crime. 
 
 [53] 
 
RULING CLASSES IN A DEMOCRACY 
 
 All that may be said of the propriety 
 of appealing to Providence and trust 
 ing God for the ordaining of the pow 
 ers that be, applies to the democratic 
 method even more than to any other. 
 Why should we suppose that Provi 
 dence has anything more to do with the 
 ambition of a strong man to climb a 
 throne, than with the desire of a great 
 people to make a strong man their lead 
 er? Why should we imagine that God 
 is any more willing to direct the intri 
 cacies of royal marriages, and regulate 
 the matrimonial alliances of titled per 
 sonages, for the sake of producing 
 proper kings and lords, than to guide 
 the thoughts and desires of a great peo 
 ple and turn their hearts to the choice 
 of good presidents? The characteristic 
 of democracy, says James Russell Low 
 ell, is its habit of "asking the Powers 
 that Be, at the most inconvenient mo- 
 
 [54] 
 
RULING CLASSES IN A DEMOCRACY 
 
 ment, whether they are the Powers that 
 Ought to Be." And what is this ques 
 tion but an appeal to the divine judg 
 ment and law? 
 
 There is as much room for Providence 
 to act in the growth of public opinion as 
 in the rise and propagation of a royal 
 house. What royal house is there that 
 goes so far to vindicate the ways of God 
 to man as the succession of Presidents 
 chosen by the people of the American 
 Republic? Some of the choices have not 
 been brilliant, a few have been unfort 
 unate, none has been evil or corrupt. 
 There is no line of hereditary kings, no 
 line of autocratic emperors, that claims 
 as many great men, or half as many 
 good men, in an equal period of time, as 
 the line of Presidents of the United 
 States. 
 
 There is warrant, then, in reason and 
 in experience, for believing in the divine 
 
 [55] 
 
RULING CLASSES IN A DEMOCRACY 
 
 right of democracy. It is not the only 
 righteous and lawful method of select 
 ing rulers, but it is the highest and most 
 reasonable. We lift our patriotism 
 above the shallow and flashy enthusiasm 
 for institutions merely because they are 
 ours. We confide ourselves to the hope 
 ful and progressive view of human nat 
 ure, to the faith that God is able to 
 make truth and right reason prevail in 
 the arena of public opinion. We bless 
 the memory of our first and greatest 
 hero because he had no desire for a 
 crown, and so, by his personal influ 
 ence, helped to make the choice of rul 
 ing classes in the United States neither 
 autocratic nor automatic, but demo 
 cratic. 
 
 But this method of providing for civil 
 rule has its dangers, which cannot be de 
 nied, and which ought not to be for 
 gotten. 
 
 [56] 
 
RULING CLASSES IN A DEMOCRACY 
 
 Government by majority is not an in 
 fallible device for securing the best wis 
 dom at any particular moment. It is a 
 good working plan for conducting the 
 experiments which need to be tried in 
 order to determine, by success or fail 
 ure, the direction in which the best wis 
 dom lies. Our local failures ought to be 
 as instructive as our general success. In 
 our prosperity we should imitate the 
 custom of the Romans, who sobered the 
 joys of a public triumph by the pres 
 ence of a monitor to warn the victor 
 that he was not exempt from the dan 
 gers and frailties of mortality. 
 
 Three chief perils attend the demo 
 cratic method of selecting the ruling 
 classes : 
 
 The red peril of the rise of the dema 
 gogue. 
 
 The yellow peril of the dominance of 
 wealth. 
 
 [67] 
 
RULING CLASSES IN A DEMOCRACY 
 
 The black peril of the rule of the 
 Boss. 
 
 There is a singular relationship among 
 these perils. They are interwoven and 
 concomitant. Unlike as are the men in 
 whom they are separately embodied, the 
 man through whom they all become 
 possible is one and the .same: the cele 
 brated "man with the hoe." 
 
 Hear a parable of the machine, the 
 money-bag, the mouth, and the hoe. 
 The man with the machine persuaded 
 the man with the hoe to vote precisely 
 according to orders, and thus made him 
 self of much value as an agent of bar 
 ter or an instrument of assessment. The 
 man with the money-bag, desiring pro 
 tection or power, went into the market 
 place and found there the man with the 
 machine, whereupon these two discov 
 ered a community of interest. This 
 worked well until the man with the 
 
 [58] 
 
RULING CLASSES IN A DEMOCRACY 
 
 hoe grew suspicious that his part in the 
 transaction, while the most important, 
 was the least profitable. Then appeared 
 the man with the mouth, promising to 
 wind up the concern, distribute the as 
 sets, and alter the laws of nature so far 
 as necessary to effect a universal ex 
 change of hoes for money-bags. This 
 programme was not fully carried out. 
 But the machine was put temporarily 
 out of repair; the money-bag was sent 
 abroad for its health; the mouth had 
 an opportunity to explain some of its 
 promises and retract the rest; and the 
 hoe, having marched in several proces 
 sions and gained much experience, went 
 on hoeing as before. 
 
 I do not mean to say that this some 
 what allegorical description has ever 
 been completely realized, on any large 
 scale in our country. But certain frag 
 mentary features of it may be dimly 
 
 [59] 
 
RULING CLASSES IN A DEMOCRACY 
 
 recognized, here and there, in our poli 
 tics. Men whose chief distinction is their 
 wealth, men whose only profession is 
 the manipulation of political wires, (un 
 derground,) men who are related to 
 real statesmen as quacks to real physi 
 cians, have at times found their way 
 into our ruling classes. Their presence 
 is a menace to the integrity and security 
 of the democracy. 
 
 Legislation hostile to wealth is politi 
 cal brigandage. Legislation subservient 
 to wealth is political suicide. It cannot 
 be denied that "money talks." The 
 thing to be prevented is that money 
 should talk with more tongues than be 
 long to it, and that it should say things 
 that are neither true nor just, and that 
 these things should be made laws for 
 the people. 
 
 It is not likely that rich men, by virtue 
 of their riches, will ever become the 
 
 [60] 
 
RULING CLASSES IN A DEMOCRACY 
 
 ruling class in this country, in the open. 
 The natural operation of jealousy and 
 envy will take care of that. The posses 
 sion of a large estate, in the eyes of 
 those who do not consider how it was 
 acquired nor how it is used, will always 
 be a cause of suspicion, often, as in the 
 case of Washington, most ungenerous 
 and unjust. But that rich men should 
 endeavor to control legislation, local 
 and national, in their own interest, and 
 to secure influence and thus to become a 
 ruling class in secret, is more than like 
 ly. It is natural. It is a fact. 
 
 But what makes it possible in a democ 
 racy? No one could buy a vote if some 
 one else were not willing to sell a vote. 
 No one could run a legislature from 
 his office if there were not a lobby at 
 the capitol. No lobby could do business 
 if there were not a machine. And no 
 machine can fulfil the law of its own 
 
 [61] 
 
RULING CLASSES IN A DEMOCRACY 
 
 being without evolving a Boss. Here 
 is the law of development of this spe 
 cies of political creature: First a soci 
 ety; then a faction; then a gang; then 
 a clique ; then a ring ; then a Big Four, 
 or Five, or Six; then a Boss. 
 
 There are States in this country where 
 a single man has owned virtually all 
 the places, from the mayoralty of the 
 biggest town down to the postmaster- 
 ship of the smallest village. There are 
 cities in this country where the public 
 franchises, the public pay-roll, and the 
 public offices have been for years prac 
 tically under the control of a secret so 
 ciety, and this secret society under con 
 trol of a chief as autocratic as Rob Roy 
 or Robin Hood. This is a ruling class 
 with a vengeance. This is democracy 
 deformed. 
 
 It would not be so bad, perhaps, if it 
 were an intelligent, benevolent, public- 
 
 [62] 
 
RULING CLASSES IN A DEMOCRACY 
 
 spirited despotism. But, usually, this 
 kind of rule is marked by shrewd igno 
 rance, crass selfishness, bold dishonesty. 
 Its dark consummate flower was William 
 M. Tweed, of New York, who reigned 
 over the city for seven years; stole 
 $6,000,000 or more for himself, and 
 $60,000,000 or more for his foUowers; 
 was indorsed at the height of his cor 
 ruption by six of the richest citizens of 
 the metropolis; had a public statue of 
 fered to him by The New York Sun as 
 a "noble benefactor of the city"; and 
 summed up his career, at the time of 
 his commitment to the penitentiary, in 
 the following conversation with the 
 warden : 
 "What is your occupation?" "States 
 
 man." 
 
 "What is your religion?" "None." 
 It is an error to assume, and a crime 
 to assert, that rulers of this type are 
 
 [63] 
 
RULING CLASSES IN A DEMOCRACY 
 
 common in our country. The Tweeds 
 are not normal; they are exceptional. 
 They have not yet become endemic, 
 though in certain localities they seem 
 almost epidemic. They have not in 
 fected the higher levels of national gov 
 ernment, but they have sometimes made 
 themselves felt there. And their pres 
 ence, the power that they wield through 
 the poor man whom they cajole and de 
 ceive, and through the rich man whom 
 they threaten and serve, the possibilities 
 of wider and deeper corruption which 
 they suggest, ought to remind us that 
 the democratic method of selecting rul 
 ers, although, (or perhaps because,) it 
 is the highest and most reasonable, 
 needs to be all the more closely watched, 
 safeguarded, and defended against its 
 own inherent dangers. 
 
 What, then, is the safeguard of de 
 mocracy in the choice of the ruling 
 
 F641 
 
RULING CLASSES IN A DEMOCRACY 
 
 classes? We have certainly put all our 
 eggs into the basket of popular suf 
 frage. How shall we watch and protect 
 that basket? 
 
 Education is the only possible safe 
 guard which is in harmony with our 
 principles and has the power to defend 
 our institutions without enslaving them. 
 I know not how this truth could be 
 expressed more lucidly than it was 
 stated in the charter of the University 
 of Georgia in 1785: 
 
 As it is the distinguishing happiness of her 
 governments that civil order should be the result 
 of choice and not of necessity, and the common 
 wishes of the people become the law of the land, 
 their public prosperity and even existence very 
 much depend upon suitably forming the minds 
 and morals of their citizens. . . . This is an in 
 fluence beyond the reach of laws and punish 
 ments, and can be claimed only by religion and 
 education. 
 
 "Platitudes!" some votary of novelty 
 exclaims. Then so are virtue and honour 
 
 [65] 
 
RULING CLASSES IN A DEMOCRACY 
 
 and patriotism platitudes. It is by for 
 getting platitudes that men and nations 
 are ruined. Platitudes are truths that 
 are flat, level, and therefore fitted to use 
 as foundations. It is by building on 
 such foundations that social and politi 
 cal fabrics are made firm, square, and 
 enduring. 
 
 "The first need of our country," said 
 Lord Rosebery in his Rectorial Ad 
 dress before the University of Glasgow 
 in 1900, "is the want of men. We want 
 men for all sorts of high positions 
 first-rate men, if possible; if not, as 
 nearly first-rate as may be." 
 
 But what means of producing first- 
 rate men has been discovered, except 
 education? I do not mean that kind of 
 education which adorns a chosen few 
 with the tinsel gewgaws of useless ac 
 complishments. I mean that nobler edu 
 cation which aims to draw out and dis- 
 
 [66] 
 
RULING CLASSES IN A DEMOCRACY 
 
 cipline all that is best in manhood to 
 make the mind clear and firm by study, 
 the body strong and obedient by exer 
 cise, the moral sense confident and in 
 flexible by disclosing the eternal prin 
 ciples upon which it rests. 
 
 What means except education can 
 produce that other kind of men, whom 
 Lord Rosebery did not mention, but 
 who are no less essential to the welfare 
 of a democracy men who are capable 
 of recognizing first-rate men, and 
 choosing them for the ruling classes? 
 
 It is of little use for a republic to have 
 higher institutions of learning produc 
 ing men of wisdom and power, unless 
 it has also a system of general, nay, of 
 universal, education producing popular 
 respect for humane wisdom and right 
 eous power. The university at the sum 
 mit, reaching as high as human intelli 
 gence can go, the common school at the 
 
 [07] 
 
RULING CLASSES IN A DEMOCRACY 
 
 basis, spreading as wide as human nat 
 ure itself, and between them the best 
 attainable system of grammar schools 
 and high schools and academies, and 
 branching out from them an ever-de 
 veloping organization of technical and 
 professional institutions these are the 
 defences of the republic. 
 
 It was the opinion of Thomas Jeffer 
 son that the best service he rendered to 
 his countrymen was in the thought 
 which he gave to the unfolding of this 
 doctrine, and the work which he did to 
 put it into practice in Virginia. Cer 
 tainly there was no other way in which 
 he showed more truly that he was a 
 democrat. 
 
 Suppose, for example, that we are 
 compelled to meet practically one of 
 the dangers which are inherent in gov 
 ernment by democracy. Suppose that 
 by the extension of the suffrage the 
 
 [68] 
 
RULING CLASSES IN A DEMOCRACY 
 
 power of choosing rulers has come into 
 the hands of a mass of ignorant voters 
 like the negroes in some of the South 
 ern States. They are coherent in their 
 action, because they are bound together 
 by racial and social ties; incoherent in 
 their judgment, because their only real 
 unity lies in the absence of knowledge 
 and fixed principle. This coherent mass 
 of incoherency, like a cargo of loose 
 wheat in the hold of a ship, will imperil 
 the equilibrium of the state in every 
 hour of storm and stress. 
 
 The privilege of suffrage bestowed on 
 ignorance is not a protection of natural 
 rights; it is a detriment to them. It is 
 like a diamond hung around the neck 
 of a child, an invitation to kidnappers; 
 like a can of dynamite in the hands of 
 a fool, a prophecy of explosion. But 
 how is the difficulty to be removed, the 
 danger to be averted? Only two meth- 
 
 [69] 
 
RULING CLASSES IN A DEMOCRACY 
 
 ods are possible: the restriction of the 
 suffrage : the education of the ignorant. 
 
 The restriction of the suffrage is a 
 temporary expedient. It may be wise, 
 it may even be indispensable under cer 
 tain conditions. Certainly there can be 
 no objection to it, if it be accomplished 
 through laws which are alike for all and 
 uncoloured by prejudice. But at best it 
 goes no further than that process which 
 physicians call the encystment of a tu 
 mour. It shuts the evil up in a sac, but 
 does not take it away. The man who 
 does not know enough to be trusted 
 with a vote can never be a pleasant or 
 a safe neighbour. The man who is too 
 ignorant to choose his own rulers will 
 never be an easy citizen for anyone to 
 rule. 
 
 But education, though a slow remedy, 
 is thorough-going. It reaches the root of 
 the disease. Wisdom and justice alike 
 
 [70] 
 
RULING CLASSES IN A DEMOCRACY 
 
 demand that the permanent cure should 
 be used even while the temporary pal 
 liative is applied. A wise and loyal de 
 mocracy will never restrict the suffrage 
 by an educational qualification, without 
 providing, at the same time, the educa 
 tional privileges which will give all its 
 citizens an opportunity to rise above the 
 level of the restriction. 
 
 The amount of money to be expended 
 by a democracy in public education is 
 to be measured by the standard of in 
 telligent manhood which it sets for its 
 citizens. The standard, I say, for, after 
 all, in these matters it is the silent ideal 
 in the hearts of the people which moulds 
 character and guides action. What is 
 your ideal of a right American? The 
 answer to that question will determine 
 whether you think we ought to do more 
 or less for popular education. 
 
 For my part, I reckon that, as the en- 
 
 [71] 
 
RULING CLASSES IN A DEMOCRACY 
 
 lightenment and discipline of manhood 
 is the best safeguard of a democracy, 
 so it ought to be the object of our 
 chief care and our largest expenditure. 
 
 If our naval and military expenses 
 ever surpass or even equal our educa 
 tional expenses, we shall be on the 
 wrong track. If we ever put the for 
 tress and the fleet above, or even on a 
 level with, the schoolhouse and the uni 
 versity, our sense of perspective will be 
 out of focus. If we ever spend more to 
 inspire awe and fear in other peoples 
 than to cultivate intelligence and char 
 acter in our own, we shall be on the 
 road to the worst kind of bankruptcy, 
 a bankruptcy of men. 
 
 We want the common school more 
 generously supported and more intel 
 ligently directed, so that the power to 
 read and think shall become the prop 
 erty of all, and so that the principles 
 
 [721 
 
RULING CLASSES IN A DEMOCRACY 
 
 of morality, which must be based on 
 religion, shall be taught to every Amer 
 ican child. We want the door between 
 the common school and the university 
 wide open, so that the path which leads 
 upward from the little red schoolhouse 
 to the highest temple of learning shall 
 be free, and the path that leads down 
 ward from academic halls to the low 
 liest dwelling and workshop of instruc 
 tion shall be honourable. We want a 
 community of interest and a coopera 
 tion of forces between the public-school 
 teacher and the college faculty. We 
 want academic freedom, so that the in 
 stitutions of learning may be free from 
 all suspicion of secret control by the 
 money-bag or the machine. We want 
 democratic universities, where a man is 
 honoured only for what he is and what 
 he knows. We want American educa 
 tion, so that every citizen shall not only 
 
 [73] 
 
RULING CLASSES IN A DEMOCRACY 
 
 believe in democracy, but know what it 
 means, what it costs, and what it is 
 worth. 
 
 " O throned Freedom, unto thee is brought 
 
 Empire ; nor falsehood, nor blood-payment 
 
 asked ; 
 Who never through deceit thine ends hast 
 
 sought, 
 
 Nor toiling millions for ambition tasked ; 
 Unlike the fools who build the throne 
 
 Of fraud and wrong and woe ; 
 For man at last will take his own, 
 
 Nor count the overthrow ; 
 But far from these is set thy continent, 
 
 Nor fears the Revolution in man s rise ; 
 On laws that with the weal of all consent, 
 
 And saving truths that make the people wise. 
 For thou art founded in the eternal fact 
 That every man doth greaten with the act 
 Of freedom ; and doth strengthen with the 
 
 weight 
 
 Of duty ; and diviner moulds his fate, 
 By sharp experience taught the thing he lacked, 
 God s pupil ; thy large maxim framed, though 
 
 late, 
 
 Who masters best himself best serves the 
 State." 
 
 [74] 
 
Ill 
 
 PUBLICOMAlXriA 
 
 IT is a strange thing to see how deeply 
 certain people of our time have been 
 smitten with a form of insanity which 
 we may call, for want of a dictionary 
 word, publicomania. The name is rather 
 ugly, and altogether irregular, being of 
 mixed Latin and Greek descent. But 
 it is no worse than the thing it describes, 
 which is, in fact, a sort of mongrel 
 madness. It has some kinship with the 
 Roman Grandio s passion for celebrity 
 which Seneca satirized, and not a lit 
 tle likeness to the petty ostentation 
 of Beau Tibbs at which Goldsmith 
 laughed kindly in London a century 
 ago. 
 
 f75] 
 
PUBLICOMANIA 
 
 But in our own day the disease has 
 developed a new symptom. It is not 
 enough to be pointed out with the fore 
 finger of notoriety: the finger which 
 points must be stained with printer s 
 ink. The craving for publicity is not 
 satisfied with anything but a paragraph 
 in the newspapers ; then it wants a col 
 umn; and finally it demands a whole 
 page with illustrations. The delusion 
 consists in the idea that a sufficient 
 quantity of this kind of notoriety 
 amounts to fame. 
 
 It is astonishing to observe how much 
 time, ingenuity, money, and vital ener 
 gy, people who are otherwise quite sane, 
 will spend for the sake of having their 
 names and unimportant doings chroni 
 cled, in a form of print which can be 
 preserved only in private and very in 
 convenient scrap-books. In England, 
 where they have a hereditary aristocracy 
 
 [76] 
 
PUBLICOMANIA 
 
 and a Court Journal, the mania seems 
 less difficult to understand. But in this 
 country, where the limits of the "smart 
 set" are confessedly undefined and inde 
 finable, changing with the fluctuations 
 of the stock-market and the rise and fall 
 of real estate, it is impossible to con 
 ceive what benefit or satisfaction rea 
 sonable beings can derive from a tem 
 porary enrolment among the assistants 
 at fashionable weddings, the guests at 
 luxurious banquets, or the mourners at 
 magnificent funerals. 
 
 Our wonder increases when we con 
 sider that there is hardly a detail of pri 
 vate life, from the cradle to the grave, 
 which is not now regarded as appropri 
 ate for publication, provided only the 
 newspapers are induced to take an in 
 terest in it. The interest of the public is 
 taken for granted. Formerly the intru 
 sion of reporters into such affairs was 
 
 [771 
 
PUBLICOMANIA 
 
 resented. Now it is their occasional neg 
 lect to intrude which causes chagrin. 
 
 If we could suppose that all this was 
 only a subtle and highly refined mode of 
 advertisement, it would be comparative 
 ly easy to account for it. There would 
 be method in the madness. But why in 
 the world should a man or a woman care 
 to advertise things which are not to be 
 sold a wedding trousseau, the decora 
 tions of a bedroom, a dinner to friends, 
 or the flowers which conceal a coffin? 
 We can see well enough why a dealer 
 in old silver should be pleased at having 
 his wares described in the newspapers. 
 But what interest has Mr. Newman 
 Biggs in having the public made aware 
 of the splendour and solidity of his 
 plate ? 
 
 Of course one must recognize that 
 there is such a thing as public life. It 
 is natural and reasonable that those who 
 
 [78] 
 
PUBLICOMANIA 
 
 are engaged in it should accept public 
 ity, and even seek it within proper lim 
 its, so far as it may be a necessary con 
 dition of success in their work. Authors 
 and artists wish to have their books read 
 and their pictures looked at. Statesmen 
 and reformers desire to have their poli 
 cies and principles discussed, in order 
 that they may be adopted. Benefactors 
 of mankind wish at least to have their 
 schools and hospitals and libraries re 
 ceived with as much attention as may 
 be needed to make them useful. 
 
 But why the people who are chiefly 
 occupied in eating and drinking, mar 
 rying and giving in marriage, should 
 wish to have their lives turned inside 
 out on the news-stands passes compre 
 hension. They subject themselves to all 
 the inconveniences of royalty (being, as 
 Montaigne says, "in all the daily ac 
 tions of life encircled and hemmed in 
 
 [79] 
 
PUBLICOMANIA 
 
 by an importunate and tedious multi 
 tude"), without any of its compensa 
 tions. They are exposed by their own 
 fantastic choice to what Cowley called 
 "a quotidian ague of frigid imperti 
 nences," and they get nothing for it 
 but the disadvantage of being talked 
 about. The result of their labours and 
 sufferings is simply to bring them to 
 the condition of a certain Dr. William 
 Kenrick, of whom old Samuel Johnson 
 said, "Sir, he is one of those who have 
 made themselves public without mak 
 ing themselves known." 
 
 But if we are inclined to be scornful 
 of the vagaries of publicomania, this 
 feeling must surely be softened into 
 something milder and more humane 
 when we reflect upon the unhappy state 
 of mind to which it reduces those who 
 are afflicted with it. They are not as 
 other men, to whom life is sweet for its 
 
 rsoi 
 
PUBLICOMANIA 
 
 own sake. The feasts to which they are 
 bidden leave them hungry unless their 
 presence is recorded in the Daily Eaves 
 dropper. They are restless in their 
 summer rest unless their comings and 
 goings are printed in the chronicle 
 of fashionable intelligence. Their new 
 houses do not please them if the news 
 paper fails to give sufficient space to 
 the announcement that they are "at 
 home." It is a miserable condition, and 
 one from which all obscure and happy 
 persons should pray to be delivered. 
 
 There is, however, consolation for true 
 lovers of humanity in the thought that 
 the number of people who are afflicted 
 with this insanity in an incurable form 
 is comparatively small. They make a 
 great noise, like Edmund Burke s com 
 pany of vociferous grasshoppers under 
 a leaf in the field where a thousand 
 cattle are quietly feeding; but, after 
 
 [81] 
 
PUBLICCMANIA 
 
 all, the great silent classes are in the 
 majority. The common sense of man 
 kind agrees with the poet Horace in his 
 excellent praise of the joys of retire 
 ment: 
 
 "Secretum iter, et fallentis semita vitae." 
 
 One of the best antidotes and cures of 
 the craze for publicity is a love of 
 poetry and of the things that belong 
 to poetry the beauty of nature, the 
 sweetness and splendour of the com 
 mon human affections, and those high 
 thoughts and unselfish aspirations which 
 are the enduring treasures of the soul. 
 It is good to remember that the finest 
 and most beautiful things that can ever 
 come to us cannot possibly be news to 
 the public. It is good to find the zest of 
 life in that part of it which does not 
 need, and will not bear, to be advertised. 
 It is good to talk with our friends, 
 
 [82] 
 
PUBLICOMANIA 
 
 knowing that they will not report us; 
 and to play with the children, knowing 
 that no one is looking at us; and to eat 
 our meat with gladness and singleness 
 of heart. It is good to recognize that 
 the object of all true civilization is that 
 a man s house, rich or poor, shall be his 
 castle, and not his dime museum. It is 
 good to enter into the spirit of Words 
 worth s noble sonnet, and, turning back 
 to "the good old cause," thank God for 
 those safeguards of the private life 
 which still preserve in many homes 
 
 " Our peace, our fearful innocence, 
 And pure religion breathing household laws." 
 
 OF THE 
 
 ( UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF 
 
 [83] 
 
IV 
 
 THE HERITAGE OF AMERI 
 CAN IDEALS 
 
 No banquet of an ancestral character 
 can be held in the United States of 
 America, whether under the banner 
 of St. George, or of St. Nicholas, or of 
 the uncanonized saints of Plymouth 
 Rock, without a more or less oratorical 
 recognition that our American stock is 
 the product of a happy mixture. 
 
 The Puritan strain in our American 
 social life is too well known to need de 
 scription. Personal independence, relig 
 ious intensity, ethical earnestness miti 
 gated by commercial activity this 
 strain has made its mark deep on our 
 American history. 
 
 [84] 
 
THE HERITAGE OF AMERICAN IDEALS 
 
 The Dutch influence has not been so 
 deep, but perhaps it has been broader. 
 Free education. and religious toleration 
 came to this country from Holland. 
 The Quakers could not live in the air 
 of New England in the seventeenth 
 century, but they found the atmosphere 
 of Xew Amsterdam more hospitable. 
 William Penn, who set the example of 
 giving to the consciences of others the 
 same freedom that he claimed for his 
 own, had a Dutch mother. Religious 
 liberty (which, take it all in all, is the 
 most precious possession of America) 
 is a watchword translated from the 
 Dutch. It was William of Orange 
 who put it in immortal language 
 when he said, "Conscience is God s 
 province." 
 
 The Cavalier influence has been a 
 strain of grace, of dignity, of amenity; 
 a sentiment of chivalry; a feeling of 
 
 [85] 
 
THE HERITAGE OF AMERICAN IDEALS 
 
 national pride and honour permeating 
 all of our social life ; and it has actually 
 been one of the most powerful factors 
 in consolidating the Republic. In the 
 Federal Convention, "the Virginia 
 plan" first held forth the idea of a 
 strong nation as distinguished from 
 a loose confederation. It was around 
 the personal character of Washington 
 that all the scattered forces of possible 
 American citizenship first centred and 
 crystallized. Without that great soldier- 
 cavalier the Colonies hardly could have 
 freed themselves; without that greater 
 citizen-cavalier the States never could 
 have united themselves. 
 
 The streams that have entered into 
 our American life come from springs 
 very wide apart from the Puritans 
 whom James I. was persecuting, and 
 from the courtiers whom he was pat 
 ronizing; from the Dutchmen whom 
 
 [86] 
 
THE HERITAGE OF AMERICAN IDEALS 
 
 Charles II. was fighting, and from the 
 Covenanters whom he was trying to 
 convert at the .pistol s point ; from the 
 Scotchmen who had captured the north 
 of Ireland, and from the Huguenots 
 who had been driven out of the south 
 of France. 
 
 Yet with all these differences of an 
 cestral stock, Americans have a common 
 and undivided heritage of ancestral 
 ideals. They are the fruits of that un 
 derlying unity of convictions, hopes, 
 and purposes which made our fore 
 fathers one people. A love of liberty 
 strong enough to harmonize different 
 ways of conceiving it; a reverence for 
 the rights of humanity deep enough to 
 reconcile different ways of defending 
 it; and a faith in God high enough to 
 make room at last for all modes of ex 
 pressing it these essential qualities of 
 manhood made the best men of the 
 
 [87] 
 
THE HERITAGE OF AMERICAN IDEALS 
 
 Northern and the Middle and the 
 Southern Colonies able to understand 
 one another, and worked out through 
 years of tribulation and triumph those 
 inherited ideals which are the true riches 
 and strength of America. 
 
 We have an inherited ideal of Amer 
 ican manhood. We are not waiting for 
 this ideal to arise ; we are not expecting 
 that it will be discovered and identified 
 for us by any of those British authors 
 who come over here looking for "the 
 typical American." We do not even rec 
 ognize it very clearly in Mr. Rudyard 
 Kipling s extraordinary portrait: 
 
 "Enslaved, illogical, elate, 
 
 He greets the embarrassed gods, nor fears 
 To shake the iron hand of fate, 
 Or match with Destiny for beers. 
 
 (f Lo, imperturbable he rules, 
 
 Unkempt, disreputable, vast, 
 And in the teeth of all the schools 
 I I, shall save him at the last." 
 [88] 
 
THE HERITAGE OF AMERICAN IDEALS 
 
 This verse, like much of Mr. Kipling s 
 writing, has the charm of audacity, but 
 it is hardly a happy description of our 
 ancestral ideal of American manhood. 
 We look back to that ideal as it was 
 realized in the days of the Revolution, 
 and we see that its typical representa 
 tives were neither enslaved nor illogical, 
 neither unkempt nor disreputable. The 
 men who made this country, and led it 
 from the beginning, were men of intel 
 ligence as well as of independence, men 
 of dignity as well as of daring, men of 
 sobriety as well as of self-confidence. 
 Lowell was wrong when he called Lin 
 coln "the first American." Lincoln was 
 a great, an unsurpassably great, Amer 
 ican, but he was not the first. Washing 
 ton, Franklin, Jay, Adams, Jefferson 
 
 these were all Americans before Lin 
 coln. 
 
 The differences in manner, speech, and 
 
 [89] 
 
THE HERITAGE OF AMERICAN IDEALS 
 
 dress among our ancestors do not ob 
 scure the fundamental resemblance of 
 their manhood. Along the Yankee line 
 we see such names as Hancock, Ells 
 worth, Sherman, Putnam, Greene, and 
 Lincoln. Along the Cavalier line we 
 trace the records of a Washington, a 
 Madison, a Pinckney, a Randolph, a 
 Lee. Along the Dutch line we see such 
 men as Schuyler, Livingston, DeWitt 
 Clinton, Van Buren. These men come 
 of different stock, but they are not 
 strangers, they are not aliens, they are 
 of the same breed ; and while that breed 
 lasts we shall not need to ask any for 
 eign critic to identify the typical Amer 
 ican. He has arrived. He is no bully 
 with his breeches tucked in his boots; 
 he is no braggart with a wild, bar 
 baric yawp. This typical American is 
 a clear-eyed, level-headed, straightfor 
 ward, educated, self-respecting gentle- 
 
 [90] 
 
THE HERITAGE OF AMERICAN IDEALS 
 
 man with frank manners and firm 
 convictions, who acts on the principle 
 that 
 
 " The rank is but the guinea s stamp, 
 A man s a man, for a that." 
 
 We have also inherited an ideal of 
 American government. The men who 
 met in Independence Hall in 1776 had . 
 a very distinct conviction in their minds, 
 and they had the capacity to express it 
 in clear language. They believed that 
 "government derives its just powers 
 from the consent of the governed." 
 They believed that all men are born 
 equal, not in personal gifts, but in 
 their rights to life, liberty, and the pur 
 suit of happiness. They believed that 
 taxation without representation is not 
 government, but tyranny; that the sub 
 jection of an unwilling people to for 
 eign jurisdiction is tyranny; that the 
 exaltation of the military over the civil 
 
 [91] 
 
THE HERITAGE OF AMERICAN IDEALS 
 
 power is tyranny. All these things 
 they believed, and to maintain them 
 they pledged their life, their property, 
 and their sacred honour. 
 
 That proclamation heralded the birth 
 of a new ideal of government. It con 
 tained three vital principles free con 
 sent, equal rights, and legal self-control. 
 It recognized in simple manhood, as 
 Lowell so well said, "a certain privilege 
 and adequacy," and it trusted manhood 
 for the defence and development of its 
 own rights. That was a daring trust 
 a trust which astounded the old world. 
 Such an ideal of government involved 
 not only an inspiration but also a re 
 straint. When our forefathers adopted 
 it, a little more than a hundred years 
 ago, they knew that it involved a sepa 
 ration from the old world; but they 
 regarded that separation as a benefit; 
 they believed that as this new ideal of 
 
 [92] 
 
THE HERITAGE OF AMERICAN IDEALS 
 
 government was separated from old 
 ideals it would have a better chance to 
 develop into something higher, purer, 
 and stronger. They trusted that ideal 
 well enough to follow it, believing that 
 it would bring them prosperity, fame, 
 and good renown. And so it did. 
 
 There are serious objections to such 
 an ideal, of course. From the theoretical 
 side, for instance, the famous historian 
 Lecky tells us that democracy is a fal 
 lacy and that its failure will be proved. 
 From the practical side a "statesman" 
 like Mr. Cecil Rhodes tells us that if 
 we wait for the consent of inferior races 
 before we take possession of their terri 
 tory, we shall miss the chance of trade. 
 These objections, and others like them, 
 have always been urged against the 
 ideal of republicanism which was set 
 forth by our ancestors. At times they 
 have even seemed to produce a kind of 
 
 [93] 
 
THE HERITAGE OF AMERICAN IDEALS 
 
 vacillation and weather-cockiness in cer 
 tain sections of the public mind. 
 
 But, on the whole, the American peo 
 ple have followed, with a few inconsist 
 encies, their inherited ideal of govern 
 ment with marvellous fidelity and still 
 more marvelous success. Those incon 
 sistencies were the cause of our most sig 
 nal failures until we rectified them by 
 emancipating the slaves and opening 
 citizens rights to the Indians. 
 
 There cannot possibly be any more 
 optimistic view of the Republic to-day 
 than that which recognizes in the tri 
 umphant success of our democracy the 
 vindication of that ideal which was 
 conceived by our ancestors. Without 
 militarism it has made the power of 
 America felt around the globe. With 
 out colonies or dependencies it has en 
 abled America to outstrip, in her export 
 trade, the colonial empires. Without 
 
 [94] 
 
THE HERITAGE OF AMERICAN IDEALS 
 
 conquering subject races America ex 
 panded her population, in a hundred 
 years, from three millions to seventy- 
 five millions. 
 
 The ideal of a nation conceived in lib 
 erty and dedicated to the proposition 
 that all men are born with equal rights, 
 is to-day the most potent and prosper 
 ous ideal in all the world. All that this 
 country needs is to be true to it, and 
 she will lead mankind for many cen 
 turies to come. 
 
 But was there an ideal of the future 
 glory and world-power of America 
 among those which we inherited? Did 
 our forefathers know anything about 
 it? Did it come within their horizon? 
 There are those who tell us that the 
 builders of the Republic were too short 
 sighted to behold this vision. We are 
 asked to believe that their eyes were not 
 opened in regard to the greatness of 
 
 [95] 
 
THE HERITAGE OF AMERICAN IDEALS 
 
 America as a nation, and that therefore 
 their counsels are inapplicable to the 
 days of our prosperity. We are asked 
 to believe that they did not dream of 
 the future greatness of the country 
 which they founded, otherwise they 
 would have founded it differently. I do 
 not believe it. 
 
 The representative of Spain at the 
 Paris Convention in 1783, Count Aran- 
 da, wrote to his monarch, in regard to 
 America, as follows: "This federal Re 
 public is born a pygmy. The day will 
 come when it will be a giant, a Colossus, 
 formidable even in these countries. Lib 
 erty of conscience, the facility for es 
 tablishing a new population on immense 
 lands, as well as the advantages of 
 a new governmnet, will draw thither 
 farmers and artisans from all the na 
 tions." That was a Spanish vision of 
 jealousy and fear. Is it likely that our 
 
 [96] 
 
THE HERITAGE OF AMERICAN IDEALS 
 
 forefathers were too blind to behold 
 that same vision in joy and hope? No; 
 they saw it, and they saw also how it 
 would be realized. Not on the old plan 
 of the Roman Empire, hitherto domi 
 nant throughout the world, that of an 
 nexation without incorporation; but on 
 the new plan of the American Republic, 
 the plan of liberation, education, assimi 
 lation. 
 
 Turn to the letter which Washington 
 wrote to the Earl of Buchan: "It is my 
 sincere wish that united America shall 
 have nothing to do with the political 
 intrigues or the squabbles of European 
 nations. To administer justice and re 
 ceive it from every power with whom 
 they are connected will, I hope, be al 
 ways found the most prominent feature 
 of the administration of this country; 
 and I flatter myself that nothing short 
 of imperious necessity can ever occasion 
 [97] 
 
THE HERITAGE OF AMERICAN IDEALS 
 
 a breach with any of them. Under such 
 a system, if we are allowed to pursue 
 it, the wealth of these United States, 
 the agriculture, the mechanic arts, and 
 the population will increase with that 
 degree of rapidity as to baffle all calcu 
 lation and must surpass any idea your 
 Lordship can hitherto have enter 
 tained." 
 
 Turn to those noble words of the Fare 
 well Address, in which the greatest 
 American said: "It will be worthy of 
 a free, enlightened, and at no distant 
 period a great, nation to give to man 
 kind the magnanimous and too novel 
 example of a people always guided by 
 an exalted sense of justice and benevo 
 lence." That is our ancestral ideal of 
 national glory and expansion not mili 
 tary conquest, but world-wide influence 
 not colonies in both hemispheres, but 
 friends, admirers, and imitators around 
 
 [98] 
 
THE HERITAGE OF AMERICAN IDEALS 
 
 the globe not a flag planted in what 
 ever place the hand of power chooses to 
 plant it, but a flag that, wherever it 
 floats, is the symbol of freedom and 
 equal rights for all. Democracy can 
 never be extended by force, as you 
 would fling a net over a flock of birds; 
 but give it a chance and it will grow, as 
 a tree grows, by sending down its roots 
 into the heart of humanity and lifting 
 its top toward the light and spreading 
 its arms wider and wider until all the 
 persecuted flocks of heaven find refuge 
 beneath its protecting shade. 
 
 The ideal of American manhood, the 
 ideal of American government, the ideal 
 of American glory and influence these 
 three are the ancestral ideals that have 
 been the strength and prosperity of 
 America through the nineteenth cen 
 tury. Will they endure through the 
 twentieth century? 
 
 [99] 
 
THE HERITAGE OF AMERICAN IDEALS 
 
 Already we hear, in certain quarters, 
 a prediction that they will be, at least in 
 part, abandoned. More than this, there 
 is even a demand, frankly voiced by 
 some, that they should be cast aside in 
 so far as they interfere with a new ideal 
 of military and naval supremacy and the 
 extension of territory by force of arms. 
 This demand was clearly expressed by 
 the Professor of History in Harvard 
 University, writing in Harper s Maga 
 zine some six years ago. Speaking of 
 the impossibility of applying the old 
 ideals of government to the newly ac 
 quired territories, he says: "The only 
 alternative is the rule of the few, and 
 those few exercising power conferred 
 by a distant administration. But that 
 system means a change in American 
 standards of government and human 
 rights. We must give up our fine con 
 tempt for other nations which rule with 
 
 [100] 
 
THE HERITAGE OF AMERICAN IDEALS 
 
 an iron hand; we must abandon the 
 principle that all just government de 
 pends on the consent of the governed; 
 we must look on the colonial status as 
 permanent and not a stage on the way 
 to Statehood; we must begin to settle 
 difficult questions of religion and wor 
 ship by orders from Washington; we 
 must surround our colonial governors 
 with body-guards to arrest insurgent 
 leaders; we must either yield part of 
 our protective policy or give up the pol 
 icy for which our forefathers fought 
 in the Revolution, that colonies exist for 
 their own benefit and not for the ad 
 vantage of the mother country; we 
 must give up our principle of free in 
 tercourse between the parts of our em 
 pire or else we must admit the Chinese 
 to the continent." 
 
 This is a plain statement, made by one 
 who approves the change which he pre- 
 
 [101] 
 
THE HERITAGE OF AMERICAN IDEALS 
 
 diets. I think it is true, though I doubt 
 whether the American people have yet 
 begun to realize its truth, or to weigh 
 the price which must be paid in order 
 that the United States may enter into 
 an unembarrassed competition with 
 these great nations whose motto is, 
 "Conquer and Divide." 
 
 I am idealist enough to believe that 
 when this realization comes; when un 
 der the pressure of circumstances which 
 must ultimately, and at no distant time, 
 arrive, we see more clearly the size and 
 meaning of the sacrifice which is in 
 volved in giving up at least two of our 
 inherited American ideals; then the 
 third ideal American manhood will 
 make its power felt to save and to re 
 store the other two. 
 
 " Land that we love ! Thou future of the world ! 
 Thou refuge of the noble heart oppressed ! 
 Oh. never be thy shining image hurled 
 From its high place in the adoring breast 
 [102] 
 
THE HERITAGE OF AMERICAN IDEALS 
 
 Of him who worships thee with jealous love ! 
 Keep thou thy starry forehead as the dove 
 All white, and to the Eternal Dawn inclined ! 
 Thou art not for thyself, but for mankind, 
 And to despair of thee were to despair 
 Of man, of man s high destiny, of God." 
 
 [103] 
 
THE POWERS THAT BE 
 
 SAUL in Israel, Nebuchadnezzar in 
 Babylon, Nero in Rome, William the 
 Silent in Holland, Philip II. in Spain, 
 George III. in Great Britain, Wash 
 ington and Lincoln in America all 
 the powers that be, or have been, were 
 ordained of God. And yet in every 
 case the forces that have created them, 
 and the causes that have exalted them, 
 are to be sought in the character of the 
 nations over which they have ruled. 
 God ordains the power, but He ordains 
 it to fit the people. A bandit-chief for 
 a tribe of brigands, a tyrant for slaves, 
 an inquisitor for bigots, a sovereign 
 tax-collector for a nation of shop-keep- 
 
 [104] 
 
THE POWERS THAT BE 
 
 ers, a liberator for a race of freemen. 
 The ruler is but the exponent of the 
 inmost thoughts, desires, and ambitions 
 of the ruled; sometimes their punish 
 ment, and sometimes their reward. 
 
 Therefore it may be said (subject to 
 those limitations and exceptions that are 
 always understood among intelligent 
 people when they speak in broad terms) 
 that as a general law, the people are 
 responsible for the character of their 
 rulers. 
 
 There are some complications which 
 obscure the operation of this law in a 
 monarchy, an empire, or an oligarchy. 
 A hereditary crown, a sword trans 
 formed into a sceptre, a transmitted 
 title, gives an opportunity to usurp or 
 extend unrighteous power. And yet 
 even here, a keen, clear eye can often 
 discern the people in the soveriegn. Na 
 poleon raised his empire of conquest 
 
 [105] 
 
THE POWERS THAT BE 
 
 cemented with blood, on a prepared 
 foundation in the heart of France filled 
 with the lust of military glory. George 
 III. obtained the power to nominate his 
 own ministers to carry out his policy of 
 colonial oppression, from a national con 
 science dulled by commercial rapacity 
 and a fat-witted spirit of contemptuous 
 indifference for the rights of others. 
 
 But in a republic the truth emerges 
 distinct and vivid, so that a child can 
 read it. The rulers are chosen from the 
 people by the people. The causes which 
 produce the men, and raise them to of 
 fice, and clothe them with authority, are 
 in the heart of the people. Therefore in 
 the long run, the people must be judged 
 by, and answer for, the kind of men 
 \ s ^ who rule over them. 
 
 When we apply this law to the begin 
 ning of the history of the United States 
 it gives us ground for gratitude and 
 
 [106] 
 
THE POWERS THAT BE 
 
 noble pride of birth. George Washing 
 ton is the incarnation of the spirit of 
 1776, and the conclusive answer to all 
 calumniators of the Revolution. No 
 wild fanatic, no reckless socialist or an 
 archist, but a sober, sane, God-fearing, 
 liberty-loving gentleman, who prized 
 uprightness as the highest honour, and 
 law as the bulwark of freedom, and 
 peace as the greatest blessing, and was 
 willing to live and die to defend them. 
 He had his enemies who accused him of 
 being an aristocrat, a conservative, a 
 friend of the very England he was 
 fighting, and who would have defamed 
 and cast him down if they could. But 
 the men of the Revolution held him up, 
 because he was in their hearts, their 
 hope and their ideal. God ordained him 
 as a power, because the people chose 
 him as their leader. And when we hon 
 our his memory, we honour theirs. "We 
 
 [107] 
 
THE POWERS THAT BE 
 
 praise famous men and our fathers that 
 begat us." 
 
 But shall our children and our chil 
 dren s children have the same cause to 
 thank and esteem us? Shall they say of 
 us, as we say of our fathers, "They were 
 true patriots, who loved their country 
 with a loyal, steadfast love, and desired 
 it to be ruled by the best men"? 
 
 That depends on one thing. Not on the 
 chance of war, the necessity of revolu 
 tion, the coming of a national crisis. The 
 obligation of patriotism is perennial 
 and its occasion comes with every year. 
 In peace or war, in prosperity or in ad 
 versity, the true patriot is he who main 
 tains the highest standard of honour, 
 purity, and justice for his country s laws 
 and rulers and actions. The true patriot 
 is he who is as willing to sacrifice his 
 time and strength and property to re 
 move political shame and reform polit- 
 
 [108] 
 
THE POWERS THAT BE 
 
 ical corruption, as he would be ready to 
 answer the call to battle against a for 
 eign foe. The true patriot is he who 
 works and votes, with the same courage 
 that he would show in arms, in order 
 that the aspirations of a noble people 
 may be embodied in the noblest rulers. 
 For, after all, when history completes 
 the record and posterity pronounces the 
 verdict, it is by the moral quality of 
 their leaders and representatives that a 
 people s patriotism must be judged. 
 
 It is true that the sharp crisis of war 
 flashes light upon this judgment. In the 
 crisis of liberty, Washington stands 
 foremost as the proof that the Revolu 
 tion was for justice, not for selfishness; 
 for order, not for anarchy. In the crisis 
 of equality, Lincoln stands foremost as 
 the proof that the war for the Union 
 was not a war of conquest over the 
 South, but a war to deliver the captive 
 
 [109] 
 
THE POWERS THAT BE 
 
 and let the oppressed go free. Those 
 two men were the central figures in the 
 crises; but the causes which produced 
 them, and supported them in the focus 
 of light, while men of violence raged, 
 and partisans imagined a vain thing, 
 were hidden in the people s life and 
 working in secret through years of 
 peace and preparation. 
 
 And when the third crisis comes the 
 crisis of fraternity, in which it shall be 
 determined whether a vast people of all 
 sorts and conditions of men can live to 
 gether in liberty and brotherhood, with 
 out standing armies or bloody revolts, 
 without unjust laws which discriminate 
 between the rich and the poor, and crush 
 the vital force of individuality, and di 
 vide classes in liberty and fraternity, 
 with the least possible restraint and the 
 greatest possible security of life and 
 property and freedom of action when 
 [no] 
 
THE POWERS THAT BE 
 
 the imminent crisis comes in which this 
 hope of our forefathers must be de 
 stroyed or fulfilled, the leaders who 
 shall wreck or rescue it, and the ulti 
 mate results of that mighty conflict, 
 will simply represent the moral charac 
 ter and ideals of the American people. 
 
 Now the causes which control the de 
 velopment of national character are 
 threefold: domestic, political, and re 
 ligious: the home, the state, and the 
 church. 
 
 The home comes first because it is the 
 seed-plot and nursery of virtue. A noble 
 nation of ignoble households is impossi 
 ble. Our greatest peril to-day is in the 
 decline of domestic morality, discipline, 
 and piety. The degradation of the poor 
 by overcrowding in great tenements, 
 and the enervation of the rich by seclu 
 sion in luxurious palaces, threaten the 
 purity and vigour of old-fashioned 
 [in] 
 
THE POWERS THAT BE 
 
 American family life. If it vanishes, 
 nothing can take its place. Show me a 
 home where the tone of life is selfish, 
 disorderly, or trivial, jaundiced by ava 
 rice, frivolized by fashion, or poisoned 
 by moral scepticism; where success is 
 worshiped and righteousness ignored; 
 where there are two consciences, one for 
 private and one for public use; where 
 the boys are permitted to believe that 
 religion has nothing to do with citizen 
 ship and that their object must be to 
 get as much as possible from the State 
 and to do as little as possible for it; 
 where the girls are suffered to think 
 that because they have no votes they 
 have therefore no duties to the common 
 wealth, and that the crowning glory of 
 an American woman s life is to marry 
 a foreigner with a title show me such 
 a home, and I will show you a breeding- 
 place of enemies of the Republic, 
 [lit] 
 
THE POWERS THAT BE 
 
 To the hands of women the ordinance 
 of nature has committed the trust of 
 training men for their country s service. 
 A great general like Napoleon may be 
 produced in a military school. A great 
 diplomatist like Metternich may be de 
 veloped in a court. A great philosopher 
 like Hegel may be evolved in a univer 
 sity. But a great man like Washington 
 can come only from a pure and noble 
 home. The greatness, indeed, parental 
 love cannot bestow; but the manliness 
 is often a mother s gift. Teach your 
 sons to respect themselves without as 
 serting themselves. Teach them to think 
 sound and wholesome thoughts, free 
 from prejudice and passion. Teach 
 them to speak the truth, even about 
 their own party, and to pay their debts 
 in the same money in which they were 
 contracted, and to prefer poverty to 
 dishonour. Teach them to worship God 
 
 [113] 
 
THE POWERS THAT BE 
 
 by doing some useful work, to live hon 
 estly and cheerfully in such a station as 
 they are fit to fill, and to love their coun 
 try with an unselfish and uplifting love. 
 Then they may not all be Washingtons, 
 but they will be such men as will choose 
 a Washington to be their ruler and 
 leader in 
 
 " The path of duty and the way to glory." 
 
 / 
 
 And in the conflict between corporate 
 capital and organized labour, if come it 
 must, they will stand fast as the sol 
 diers, not of labour nor of capital, but 
 of that which is infinitely above them 
 both the commonwealth of law and 
 order and freedom. 
 
 -^^But the character of the people is not 
 only moulded by the tone of domestic 
 and social life, it is also expressed and 
 influenced by the tone of political life, 
 by the ideals and standards which pre- 
 
 [114] 
 
THE POWERS THAT BE 
 
 vail in the conduct of public affairs. 
 And here, it must be confessed, our 
 country discloses grave causes for anxi 
 ety. Our political standards have un 
 doubtedly shifted from that foundation 
 on which Washington placed them in 
 his first inaugural, "the principles of 
 private morality." Take, for example, 
 the appearance of governors of sover 
 eign States who excuse and defend the 
 destruction of life and property which 
 would be called murder and arson if it 
 were the work of individuals, because 
 it is committed by great labour-unions 
 which control public sentiment and 
 votes. Take for the great example the 
 system of distributing public office as 
 party spoils. 
 
 Without doubt, the Spoils System is an 
 organized treason against the Republic 
 and a transgression against the moral 
 law. It is a gross and sordid iniquity. Its 
 
 [115] 
 
THE POWERS THAT BE 
 
 emblem should not be the eagle, but the 
 pelican, because it has the largest pouch. 
 It shamelessly defies three of the Ten 
 Commandments. It lies, when it calls a 
 public office a spoil. It covets, when it 
 desires to control that office for the 
 benefit of party. It steals, when it con 
 verts that office from the service of the 
 commonwealth into a gift to "reward" 
 a partisan, or a sacrifice to "placate" a 
 faction. 
 
 It is an idle amusement for clever cyn 
 ics in the newspapers, and amiable citi 
 zens in their clubs, to vituperate the 
 Ring and the Boss, while they approve, 
 sanction, or even tolerate the vicious 
 principle, "To the victors belong the 
 spoils." This principle is the root of the 
 evils which afflict us. There can be no 
 real cure except one which is radical. 
 Police investigations and periodical at 
 tempts to "drive the rascals out" do not 
 
 [116] 
 
THE POWERS THAT BE 
 
 go deep enough. We must see and say 
 and feel that the whole spoils system 
 from top to bottom is a flagrant immo 
 rality and a fertile mother of vices. The 
 Ring does not form itself out of the 
 air; it is bred in the system. A Boss is 
 simply a boil, an evidence of bad blood 
 in the body politic. Let the bad blood 
 out and he will subside. 
 
 Who are responsible for the civic cor 
 ruption of some of the American States 
 and cities ? The corporations from whom 
 the Boss gets his wealth in payment for 
 his protection ; the office-seekers, high or 
 low, who go to the Boss for a place for 
 themselves or for others; and the citi 
 zens who, by voting or not voting, have 
 year after year filled our legislative 
 chambers with men who were willing to 
 do the bidding of the Boss for a con 
 sideration. If there is to be a radical and 
 permanent cleansing, it can only be by 
 
 [117] 
 
THE POWERS THAT BE 
 
 breaking up and eradicating the whole 
 system of irresponsible and haphazard 
 appointment to office, and by substitut 
 ing for it the system of appointment 
 for merit and fitness, under wise and 
 just rules, which throw the civil service 
 of nation, State, and city open, on equal 
 terms, to every citizen who can prove 
 that he is qualified to serve. 
 X Think for a moment of what we have 
 gained and what we have still to gain 
 in this direction. There are 290,000 
 places in the Civil Service of the United 
 States. Of these places, 154,000 have 
 been classified under the rules. Since 
 1900, 59,000 have been added to the 
 classified list. There are still 136,000 
 places which are outside of the classified 
 service. It should be the desire and ob 
 ject of every patriotic American to re 
 move these places as rapidly and as com 
 pletely as possible from all chance of 
 fllSl 
 
THE POWERS THAT BE 
 
 occupation or use by the spoils system. 
 Burn the nests, and the rats will evacu 
 ate. Clean the sewers, and the malaria 
 will abate. 
 
 But w r hat have religion and the church 
 to do with all these things? Just this: a 
 free church in a free state should exer 
 cise a direct influence upon the moral 
 tone of domestic and political life. If 
 not, it is an impotent and useless parody 
 on Christianity. The church is set as a 
 light in the world. Do not let that light 
 be put into a dark lantern and turned 
 backward upon the Scribes and Phari 
 sees. Set it on a candlestick that it may 
 give light unto all that are in the house. 
 Let the church shed the light of warn 
 ing and reproof upon the immoral citi 
 zen who enjoys the benefits of citizen 
 ship and evades its responsibilities; the 
 dishonest merchant who uses part of his 
 gains to purchase political protection 
 
 f 1191 
 
THE POWERS THAT BE 
 
 and his good reputation to cover the 
 transaction; the recreant preacher who 
 denounces the corruptions of govern 
 ment "down in Judee" and ignores the 
 same corruptions in the United States; 
 the lawyers who study the laws in order 
 to defend their clients in evading them ; 
 and the officials who profess to serve 
 the state, and then add, "The state 
 that s me." But it is not only to expose 
 and condemn the evil that the light of 
 religion is needed. It should also shine 
 to reveal and glorify the good. Let it 
 fall upon the true heroes of the repub 
 lic, the brave soldiers, the loyal citizens, 
 the pure statesmen, that all men may 
 know that the church recognizes these 
 men as servants of the most high God 
 because they are in deed and in truth 
 the servants of the people. 
 
 It is to be remembered that the Amer 
 ican church bore a noble part in the be- 
 
 [120] 
 
THE POWERS THAT BE 
 
 ginning of our national life, inspiring, 
 purifying, and blessing the struggle 
 for justice and liberty. It is not to be 
 forgotten that she has a duty, no less 
 sacred, in the conflicts of these latter 
 days; to encourage men in the main 
 tenance of that liberty which has been 
 achieved and in the reform of all evils 
 which threaten the purity of private 
 and public life; to proclaim that our 
 prosperity does not depend upon the 
 false maxims of what are called "prac 
 tical politics," but, as Washington said, 
 upon "religion and morality, those 
 great pillars of human happiness, those 
 firmest props of the duties of men, and 
 citizens." 
 
 With politics, so far as they have to 
 do with the strife of parties and the 
 rivalry of candidates, the church has 
 no concern. But with "polit- ethics" - 
 the moral aspect of the life of the state 
 
 [121] 
 
THE POWERS THAT BE 
 
 she must deal frankly and fearlessly. 
 When she evades or neglects this office 
 of public prophecy, when she gives her 
 strength to theological subtlety and ec 
 clesiastical rivalry and clerical milli 
 nery, and stands silent in the presence 
 of corruption and indifferent to the 
 progress of reform, her own bells will 
 toll the death-knell of her influence, her 
 sermons will be the funeral discourses 
 of her power, and her music will be a 
 processional to the grave of her lost 
 honour. But when she proclaims to all 
 people, without fear or favour, the ne 
 cessity of a thorough-going conscience 
 and a divine law of righteousness in 
 every sphere of human life, the rever 
 ence of men will crown her walls with 
 praise. 
 
 [122] 
 
VI 
 THE FLOOD OF BOOKS 
 
 world is cumbered with books," 
 complained the wise man, two thousand 
 years ago. "There are books here in Je 
 rusalem and in Thebes and in Baby 
 lon and in Nineveh; even in Tyre and 
 Sidon among the Philistines, no doubt 
 one would find books. Still men go on 
 scribbling down their thoughts and ob 
 servations, in spite of the fact that there 
 is nothing new under the sun. Where 
 are the readers to come from, I won 
 der? For much study is a weariness of 
 the flesh, and of making many books 
 there is no end." 
 
 But what would the writer that was 
 king say if he were alive to-day, when 
 
 [123] 
 
THE FLOOD OF BOOKS 
 
 the annual output of books in this coun 
 try alone is about five thousand, and 
 when the printing-press multiplies these 
 volumes into more than five million 
 copies ? Doubtless he would be much as 
 tonished, and perhaps even more dis 
 pleased. But I conjecture that he would 
 go on writing his own books, and that 
 when they were done he would look for 
 a publisher. For each age has its own 
 thoughts and feelings; and each man 
 who is born with the impulse of author 
 ship thinks that he has something to say 
 to his age; and even if it is nothing 
 more than a criticism of other men for 
 writing so much and so poorly, he 
 wants to say it in his own language. 
 
 Thomas Carlyle, talking volubly on 
 the virtues of silence, represents a role 
 which is never left out in the drama of 
 literature. 
 
 After all, is it not better that a hun- 
 
THE FLOOD OF BOOKS 
 
 dred unnecessary books should be pub 
 lished than that one good and useful 
 book should be lost? Nature s law of 
 parsimony is arrived at by a process of 
 expense. The needless volumes, like the 
 infertile seeds, soon sink out of sight; 
 and the books that have life in them 
 are taken care of by the readers who 
 are waiting somewhere to receive and 
 cherish them. 
 
 Reading is a habit. Writing is a gift. 
 Both may be cultivated. But I suppose 
 there is this difference between them: 
 the habit may be acquired by any who 
 will; the gift can be developed only by 
 those who have it in them to begin with. 
 How to discover it and make the best 
 of it, and use the writing gift so that 
 it shall supply the real needs and pro 
 mote the finest results of the reading 
 habit, that is the problem. 
 
 I do not know of any ready-made so- 
 
 [125] 
 
 
THE FLOOD OF BOOKS 
 
 lution. The only way to work it out is 
 for the writers to try to write as well 
 as they can, and for the publishers to 
 publish the best that they can get, and 
 for the great company of readers to 
 bring a healthy appetite, a clean taste, 
 and a good digestion to the feast that 
 is prepared for them. If anyone par 
 takes not wisely but too much, that is 
 his own fault. 
 
 No doubt a good many people are 
 drawn to writing by slight and foolish 
 motives, and they do their work fool 
 ishly and slightly. Every human occu 
 pation has a certain proportion of silly 
 and superficial workers, to whom the 
 work seems less important than the pay. 
 But in the guild of letters there are also 
 men and women of the better sort, to 
 whom each year brings sincere delight 
 in their work for its own sake. 
 
 Scholars have been sifting and arrang- 
 
 [126] 
 
THE FLOOD OF BOOKS 
 
 ing the results of their studies in great 
 libraries. Observers of men and man 
 ners have been travelling and taking 
 notes in strange lands and in the for 
 eign parts of their own country. Teach 
 ers of life and morals have been trying 
 to give their lessons a convincing and 
 commanding form. Critics have been 
 seeking to express the secrets of good 
 work in arts and letters. Students of 
 nature have been bringing together the 
 records of their companionship with 
 birds and beasts and flowers. Story 
 tellers have been following their dream- 
 people through all kinds of adventures 
 to joyful or sorrowful ends. And 
 poets, a few, have been weaving their 
 most delicate fancies and their deepest 
 thoughts into verse. 
 
 In what different places, and under 
 what various conditions these men and 
 women have been working! Some of 
 
 [127] 
 
THE FLOOD OF BOOKS 
 
 them in great cities, in rooms filled 
 with books; others in quiet country 
 places, in little "dens" of bare and 
 simple aspect; some among the tran 
 quillizing influences of the mountains; 
 others where they could feel the inspira 
 tion of an outlook over the tossingi lim 
 itless plains of the ocean; a few, per 
 haps, in tents among the trees, or in 
 boats on the sea, though, for my part, 
 I find it difficult to understand how 
 anyone can actually write out-of-doors. 
 The attractions of nature are so close 
 and so compelling that it is impossible 
 to resist them. Out-of-doors for seeing 
 and hearing, thinking and feeling! In 
 doors for writing ! 
 
 It is pleasant to reflect upon the great 
 amelioration which has been made in 
 the "worldly lot" of writers, by the in 
 crease and wider distribution of the pe 
 cuniary rewards of authorship. It is not 
 
 [128] 
 
THE FLOOD OF BOOKS 
 
 necessary to go back to the age of Grub 
 Street for comparison. There has been 
 a change even since the days when Low 
 ell wrote, "I cannot come [to New 
 York] without any money, and leave 
 my wife with 62^ cents, such being 
 the budget brought in by my secre 
 tary of the treasury this week"; and 
 when Hawthorne s friends had to make 
 up a purse and send it to him anony 
 mously, to relieve the penury caused 
 by the loss of his position in the Cus- 
 tom-House at Salem. Nowadays, peo 
 ple who certainly do not write better 
 than Lowell and Hawthorne, find life 
 very much easier. They travel freely; 
 they live in a comfortable house some 
 of them have two with plenty of books 
 and pictures. The man who would be 
 grudge this improvement in the condi 
 tion of literary workers must have, as 
 Dr. Johnson would say, "a disposition 
 
 [129] 
 
THE FLOOD OF BOOKS 
 
 little to be envied." It is no more than 
 the world has done for the doctors and 
 the lawyers. Have not the profits of 
 book-making, on the material and com 
 mercial side, advanced even more rap 
 idly? The wages of printers and paper- 
 makers and bookbinders are larger. 
 The fortunes of successful publishers 
 are increased. Why should not the 
 author have a share in the general 
 prosperity? 
 
 Besides, it should be remembered that 
 while there has been a certain enlarge 
 ment in the pay of literary workers, it 
 has not yet resulted in opulence among 
 men of letters as a class. The principal 
 gain has been along the line of enlarged 
 opportunities and better remuneration 
 for magazine, newspaper, and editorial 
 work. Setting these aside, the number 
 of people who make a good living by 
 writing books is still very small. I will 
 
THE FLOOD OF BOOKS 
 
 not even attempt to guess how many 
 there are; it might precipitate a long 
 correspondence. But it is safe to say 
 that there are not fivescore in America. 
 What a slight burden is the support of 
 a hundred authors among 80,000,000 
 people! Your share in the burden is a 
 little more than one-millionth part of 
 an author. What is that compared with 
 the pleasure that you get out of new 
 books, even though you are one of those 
 severe people who profess to read none 
 but old ones? 
 
 When I hear that the brilliant writer 
 of "The Mountain of Derision" has 
 just built a mansion at Laxedo, or that 
 the author of "The Turning Point" is 
 driving a four-in-hand through the 
 White Mountains, it does not cause me 
 a single pang of discontent. My con 
 tribution to that mansion, according to 
 the present rate of royalty, was about 
 
THE FLOOD OF BOOKS 
 
 forty cents, and to the support of the 
 equipage I have given perhaps thirty 
 cents. In each case I received good 
 value for my money, pleasant and, I 
 trust, not unprofitable hours. This ex 
 pense irks me far less than the extra 
 two dollars a ton that I shall probably 
 have to pay for coal this winter. 
 
 But I would not be understood as 
 agreeing to the general proposition that 
 the possession of four-in-hands and the 
 like is necessary, or even favourable, to 
 the production of good literature. Of 
 course, if a man has extraordinary luck, 
 he may find some competent person to 
 take care of his luxuries for him, while 
 he gives himself to the enjoyment of 
 his work, and lives almost as comforta 
 bly as if he had never become rich. 
 But, as a rule, it may be taken for 
 granted that plain living is congenial 
 to high thinking. A writer in one of the 
 
 [132] 
 
THE FLOOD OF BOOKS 
 
 English periodicals a couple of years 
 ago put forth the theory that the in 
 crease of pessimism among authors was 
 due to the eating of too much and too 
 rich food. Among other illustrations he 
 said that Ibsen was inordinately given 
 to the pleasures of the table. However 
 that may be, it is certain that the liter 
 ary life, at its best, is one that demands 
 a clear and steady mind, a free spirit, 
 and great concentration of effort. The 
 cares of a splendid establishment and 
 the distractions of a complicated social 
 life are not likely, in the majority of 
 cases, to make it easier to do the best 
 work. Most of the great books, I sup 
 pose, have been written in rather small 
 rooms. 
 
 The spirit of happiness also seems to 
 have a partiality for quiet and simple 
 lodgings. "We have a little room in the 
 third story (back)," wrote Lowell in 
 
 [133] 
 
THE FLOOD OF BOOKS 
 
 1845, just after his marriage, "with 
 white curtains trimmed with evergreen, 
 and are as happy as two mortals can 
 be." 
 
 There is the highest authority for be 
 lieving that a man s life, even though 
 he be an author, consists not in the 
 abundance of things that he possesses. 
 Rather is its real value to be sought in 
 the quality of the ideas and feelings 
 that possess him, and in the effort to 
 embody them in his work. 
 
 The work is the great thing. The 
 delight of clear and steady thought, 
 of free and vivid imagination, of pure 
 and strong emotion; the fascination of 
 searching for the right words, which 
 sometimes come in shoals like herring, 
 so that the net can hardly contain them, 
 and at other times are more shy and 
 fugacious than the wary trout which 
 refuse to be lured from their hiding- 
 
 [134] 
 
THE FLOOD OF BOOKS 
 
 places; the pleasure of putting the fit 
 phrase in the proper place, of making 
 a conception stand out plain and firm 
 with no more and no less than is needed 
 for its expression, of doing justice to 
 an imaginary character so that it shall 
 have its own life and significance in the 
 world of fiction, of working a plot or 
 an argument clean through to its in 
 evitable close: these inward and un- 
 purchasable joys are the best wages of 
 the men and women who write. 
 
 What more will they get? Well, un 
 less history forgets to repeat itself, 
 their additional wages, their personal 
 dividends under the profit-sharing sys 
 tem, so to speak, will be various. Some 
 will probably get more than they de 
 serve, others less. 
 
 The next best thing to the joy of work 
 is the winning of gentle readers and 
 friends who find some good in your 
 
 [135] 
 
THE FLOOD OF BOOKS 
 
 book, and are grateful for it, and think 
 kindly of you for writing it. 
 
 The next best thing to that is the 
 recognition, on the part of people who 
 know, that your work is well done, and 
 of fine quality. That is called fame, or 
 glory, and the writer who professes to 
 care nothing for it is probably deceiv 
 ing himself, or else his liver is out of 
 order. Real reputation, even of a mod 
 est kind and of a brief duration, is a 
 good thing; an author ought to be able 
 to be happy without it, but happier 
 with it. 
 
 The next best thing to that is a good 
 return in money from the sale of a 
 book. There is nothing dishonourable 
 in writing for money. Samuel John 
 son, in the days of his poverty, wrote 
 Easselas to pay the expenses of his 
 mother s funeral. 
 
 But to take, by choice, a commercial 
 
 [136] 
 
THE FLOOD OF BOOKS 
 
 view of authorship, to write always 
 with an eye on the market, to turn out 
 copious and indifferent stuff because 
 there is a ready sale for it, to be guided 
 in production by the fashion of the day 
 rather than by the impulse of the mind, 
 that is the sure way to lose the power 
 of doing good work. 
 
 The best writing is done for its own 
 sake. In the choice of a subject, in the 
 manner of working it out, in the details 
 of form and illustration, style, and dic 
 tion, an author cannot be too jealous 
 in guarding his own preference, ideal, 
 inspiration, call it what you will. 
 Otherwise his book will lack the touch 
 of personality, of independence, of 
 distinction. It is here, perhaps, that 
 a large part of the modern output of 
 books fails to come up to the best 
 standard. 
 
 But when a piece of work has been 
 
 [137] 
 
THE FLOOD OF BOOKS 
 
 done, freely, sincerely, thoroughly, 
 done as well as the writer can do it, 
 then it is safe. The new methods of pa 
 per-making and printing and binding, 
 the modern system of publishing and 
 advertising, the admirable skill of the 
 artists who are now engaged in design 
 ing illustrations and book-covers and 
 types, certainly cannot hurt the quality 
 of a book, and may do something to 
 help its sale. For this the honest au 
 thor, having finished his work as nearly 
 as possible to his own satisfaction, and 
 disposed of it for the best price obtain 
 able, should be duly grateful. 
 
 Amid the making of many books, 
 good literature is still produced, as it 
 was in the days of Thackeray and 
 Dickens, Carlyle and Ruskin, Tenny 
 son and Browning, Irving and Haw 
 thorne and Lowell and Emerson, out 
 of the hearts of men and women who 
 
 [138] 
 
THE FLOOD OF BOOKS 
 write because they love it, and who do 
 their work in their own way because 
 they know that, for them, it is the best 
 way. 
 
 [139] 
 
VII 
 
 BOOKS, LITERATURE, AND 
 THE PEOPLE 
 
 LET us begin by trying to distinguish 
 between the people and the public. 
 
 The public is that small portion of the 
 people which is in the foreground at 
 the moment. It is the mirror of pass 
 ing fashions, the court of temporary 
 judgments, the gramophone of new 
 tunes. 
 
 The people is a broader, deeper word. 
 It means that great and comparatively 
 silent mass of men and women on which 
 the public floats, as the foam floats on 
 the wave. It means that community of 
 human thought and feeling which lies 
 behind the talk of the day. 
 
 [140] 
 
BOOKS, LITERATURE, AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 There are many publics, for they 
 change and pass. But the people are 
 one. 
 
 In the realm of letters, as elsewhere, 
 I hold to the principles of democracy. 
 The people do not exist for the sake of 
 literature: to give the author fame, the 
 publisher wealth, and books a market. 
 On the contrary, literature should exist 
 for the sake of the people: to refresh 
 the weary, to console the sad, to hearten 
 up the dull and downcast, to increase 
 man s interest in the world, his joy of 
 living, and his sympathy with all sorts 
 and conditions of men. 
 
 It is to be desired, no doubt, that the 
 relation of American literature to the 
 people should be made closer, deeper, 
 and more potent, that it may not only 
 express, but really enrich the common 
 life, and so promote the liberty of the 
 individual from the slavery of the su- 
 
 [141] 
 
BOOKS, LITERATURE, AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 perficial, and wisely guide and forward 
 the community in the pursuit of true 
 happiness. But while we desire a fur 
 ther advance in this direction, it is well 
 for us to remember that no advance 
 is possible without a recognition of 
 the ground already gained. Pessimism 
 never gets anywhere. It is a poor wag 
 on that sets out with creaking and 
 groaning. Let us cheerfully acknowl 
 edge that the relations of literature to 
 the people are probably better to-day 
 than they have ever been before in the 
 history of the world. 
 
 Freedom is a great gain. Open libra 
 ries are signs of progress. 
 
 Books are easier of access and posses 
 sion, at the present time, than any other 
 kind of food. They have become in 
 credibly cheap, partly through the 
 expiration of copyrights, and partly 
 through the reduction in the cost of 
 
 [142] 
 
BOOKS, LITERATURE, AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 manufacture. I cannot think that the 
 loss involved for certain classes in either 
 of these processes is to be weighed for 
 a moment against the resulting advan 
 tage to the people. The best books are 
 the easiest to get, and, upon the whole, 
 they have the widest circulation. Nota 
 bly this is true of the most beautiful, 
 powerful, and precious of all books 
 the English Bible, which is still the most 
 popular book in the world. 
 
 Another good thing in which we must 
 rejoice is the liberation of books from 
 various kinds of oppression. The In 
 dex Librorum Prohibitorum still exists, 
 but it is no longer what it used to 
 be. The only officers of the Inquisition 
 in the modern world of letters are the 
 librarians; and, taken all in all, they 
 exercise their power with mildness and 
 beneficence. 
 
 The influence of party politics on the 
 
 [143] 
 
BOOKS, LITERATURE, AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 fate of books is almost extinct. The 
 days of literary partisanship, when the 
 Edinburgh Review scalped the con 
 servative writers, while the Quarterly 
 flayed the liberals, are past. 
 
 The alleged tyranny of modern maga 
 zine editors is a gentle moral suasion 
 compared with the despotism of the 
 so-called patrons of art and letters in 
 earlier times. Let anyone who thinks 
 that there is too much literary log-roll 
 ing in the present day turn back to the 
 fawning dedications of the Renaissance 
 and the age of Queen Anne, and he 
 will understand how far authorship has 
 risen out of base subserviency into in 
 dependence and self-respect. 
 
 Certainly the condition of the realm 
 of letters is better, its relation to the 
 people is closer, and its influence on the 
 world is greater than ever before. 
 
 But this does not mean that there are 
 
 [144] 
 
BOOKS, LITERATURE, AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 no evils to be removed, no dangers to 
 be averted, and no further steps to be 
 taken in advance. 
 
 Books are now sold in the dry-goods 
 shops. No one can fairly object to that. 
 But is there not some objection to deal 
 ing in books as if they were dry-goods? 
 
 A book can be bought for a nickel. 
 There is no harm in that. But is there 
 not considerable harm in advertising 
 nickel-plated writing as sterling silver? 
 
 All that is necessary, at present, to sell 
 an unlimited quantity of a new book is 
 to sell the first hundred thousand, and 
 notify the public. The rest will go by 
 curiosity and imitation. Is there no dan 
 ger in substituting popularity for per 
 fection as the test of merit? 
 
 Five thousand books are published 
 every year in England, and nearly as 
 many more in America. It would be a 
 selfish man who could find fault with an 
 
 [145] 
 
BOOKS, LITERATURE, AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 industry which gives employment and 
 support to such a large number of his 
 fellow men. But has there not come, 
 with this plethora of production, an 
 anaemia of criticism? That once rare 
 disease, the cacoethes scribendi^ seems 
 to have become endemic. 
 
 The public must like it, else it would 
 not be so. But have the people no in 
 terests which will be imperilled if the 
 landmarks of literary taste are lost in 
 the sea of publication, and the art of 
 literature is forgotten in the business 
 of book-making? 
 
 Everyone knows what books are. But 
 what is literature? It is the ark on the 
 flood. It is the light on the candlestick. 
 It is the flower among the leaves; the 
 consummation of the plant s vitality, 
 the crown of its beauty, and the treas 
 ure-house of its seeds. It is hard to de 
 fine, easy to describe. 
 
 [146] 
 
I 
 
 BOOKS, LITERATURE, AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 Literature is made up of those writ 
 ings which translate the inner mean 
 ings of nature and life, in language of 
 distinction and charm, touched with the 
 personality of the author, into artistic 
 forms of permanent interest. The best 
 literature, then, is that which has the 
 deepest significance, the most lucid 
 style, the most vivid individuality, and 
 the most enduring form. 
 
 On the last point contemporary judg 
 ment is but guesswork, but on the three 
 other points it should not be impossible 
 to form, nor improper to express, a defi 
 nite opinion. 
 
 The qualities which make a book sala 
 ble may easily be those which prevent 
 it from belonging to literature. A man 
 may make a very good living from his 
 writings without being in any sense a 
 man of letters. He has a perfect right 
 to choose between the enrichment of the 
 
 [147] 
 
BOOKS, LITERATURE, AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 world by working along the line of his 
 own highest ideal, and the increase of 
 his bank account by running along the 
 trolley-car track of the public fancy. 
 He has the right to choose, but his 
 choice places him. 
 
 On the other hand, the fact that a book 
 does not sell is not in itself a sufficient 
 proof that it is great. Poor books, as 
 well as good ones, have often been un 
 successful at the start. The difference 
 is that the poor ones remain unsuccess 
 ful at the finish. The writer who says 
 that he would feel disgraced by a sale 
 of fifty thousand copies cheers himself 
 with a wine pressed from acid grapes, 
 and very unwholesome. There is no rea 
 son why a book which appeals only to 
 the author should be considered better 
 than a book which appeals only to the 
 public. 
 
 Neither is there any reason why a pub- 
 
 [148] 
 
BOOKS, LITERATURE, AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 lisher of popular books should go to the 
 opposite extreme and say that "there is 
 no use under heaven for the critic; the 
 man who buys the book is the real critic, 
 and so discriminating is he that a pub 
 lisher cannot sell a bad book." If this 
 standard prevails, we shall soon hear 
 the proud and happy publisher saying 
 of a book in its hundredth thousand, as 
 Gregory the Great is reported to have 
 said of the Scripture, that "he would 
 blush to have it subjected to the rules 
 of grammar." 
 
 The true cause for blushing lies in the 
 fact that criticism has been so much 
 confused with advertisement; that so 
 many of the journals which should be 
 the teachers of the public have become 
 its courtiers; that realism in its desire 
 to be dramatic has so often turned to 
 the theatre instead of to real life, and 
 thus has become melodramatic; that 
 
 [149] 
 
BOOKS, LITERATURE, AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 virility (which is a good word in its 
 place) has been so much overworked, 
 and used as a cloak to cover a multitude 
 of sins ; and that the distinction between 
 books and literature has been so often 
 overlooked and so largely forgotten. 
 
 The public is content with the stand 
 ard of salability. The prigs are con 
 tent with the standard of preciosity. 
 The people need and deserve a better 
 standard. It should be a point of honour 
 with men of letters to maintain it by 
 word and deed. 
 
 Literature has its permanent marks. 
 It is a connected growth, and its life- 
 history is unbroken. Masterpieces have 
 never been produced by men who have 
 had no masters. Reverence for good 
 work is the foundation of literary char 
 acter. The refusal to praise bad work, 
 or to imitate it, is an author s personal 
 chastity. 
 
 [150] 
 
BOOKS, LITERATURE AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 Good work is the most honourable and 
 lasting thing in the world. Four ele 
 ments enter into good work in litera 
 ture: 
 
 An original impulse not necessarily 
 a new idea, but a new sense of the value 
 of an idea. 
 
 A first-hand study of the subject and 
 the material. 
 
 A patient, joyful, unsparing labour 
 for the perfection of form. 
 
 A human aim to cheer, console, puri 
 fy, or ennoble the life of the people. 
 Without this aim literature has never 
 sent an arrow close to the mark. 
 
 It is only by good work that men of 
 letters can justify their right to a place 
 in the world. The father of Thomas 
 Carlyle was a stone-mason, whose walls 
 stood true and needed no rebuilding. 
 Carlyle s prayer was: "Let me write my 
 books as he built his houses." 
 
VIII 
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND CUR 
 RENT LITERATURE 
 
 IN literature the inner life of man 
 finds expression and lasting influence 
 through written words. Races and na 
 tions have existed without it; but their 
 life has been dumb and with their death 
 their power has departed; they have 
 vanished into thin air. What do we 
 know of the thoughts and feelings of 
 those unlettered tribes of white and 
 black and yellow and red, flitting in 
 ghost-like pantomime across the back 
 ground of the world s stage? What 
 ever message of warning, of encourage 
 ment, of hope, of guidance they may 
 have had for us remains undelivered. 
 
 [152] 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND LITERATURE 
 
 They are but phantoms, mysterious and 
 ineffective. But with the art of litera 
 ture, life arrives at utterance and last 
 ing power. The Scythian, the Etruscan, 
 the Phoenician are dead. The Greek, the 
 Hebrew, the Roman still live. We know 
 them. They are as real and potent 
 as the Englishman, the American, the 
 German. They touch us and move us 
 through a vital literature. 
 
 Religion is a life the life of the hu 
 man spirit in contact with the Divine. 
 Therefore it needs a literature to ex 
 press its meaning and perpetuate its 
 power. 
 
 It is the fashion nowadays to speak 
 scornfully of "a book religion." But 
 where is the noble religion without a 
 book? Men praise the "bookless Christ" ; 
 and the adjective serves as a left-hand 
 ed criticism of his followers, who revere 
 the Bible as their rule of faith and 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND LITERATURE 
 
 practice. True, he wrote no volume; 
 but he absorbed one literature, the Old 
 Testament; and he inspired another, 
 the New Testament. 
 
 How wonderful, how supreme is the 
 Bible as an utterance of life in litera 
 ture! With what convincing candour 
 are the hopes and fears, the joys and 
 sorrows, the deep perplexities and clear 
 visions of the heart of man under the 
 divine process of education disclosed in 
 its pages! What range! What history, 
 biography, essays, epigrams, letters, 
 poetry, fiction, drama all are here. The 
 thoughts breathe with inspiration, the 
 figures live and move. And most of all, 
 the central figure, Jesus Christ, long 
 expected, suddenly revealed, seen but 
 for a moment, imperishably remem 
 bered, trusted, and adored, stands out 
 forever in the simple words of a few 
 brief chapters, the clearest, most en- 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND LITERATURE 
 
 during, most potent personality in the 
 world s history. 
 
 I do not hold with the saying that "the 
 Bible is the religion of Protestants." If 
 that were true, Protestants would be 
 in the position of mistaking the expres 
 sion for the life, the lamp for the light, 
 the stream for the fountain. But I hold 
 that without the Bible, Christianity 
 would lose its vital touch with the past, 
 and much of its power upon the present. 
 It would be like a plant torn from its 
 roots and floating in the sea. 
 
 Christianity owes an immense part of 
 its influence in the world to-day to the 
 place of the Bible in current literature. 
 What other volume is current in a sense 
 so large and splendid? What book is so 
 widely known, so often quoted, so deep 
 ly reverenced, so closely read by learned 
 and simple, rich and poor, old and 
 young? Wherever it comes it enriches 
 
 [155] 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND LITERATURE 
 
 and ennobles human life, opens com 
 mon sources of consolation and cheer, 
 helps men to understand and respect 
 one another, gives a loftier tone to phi 
 losophy, a deeper meaning to history, 
 and a purer light to poetry. Strange 
 indeed is the theory of education that 
 would exclude this book, which Hux 
 ley and Arnold called the most potent 
 in the world for moral inspiration, 
 from the modern school-house. Stranger 
 still the theory of religion which would 
 make of this book a manual of ecclesi 
 astical propagandism rather than the 
 master- volume of current literature. 
 
 "Beware of the man of one book," 
 says the proverb. The saying has two 
 meanings. The one-book man may be 
 strong, and therefore masterful; he 
 may also be narrow, and therefore dan 
 gerous. The Bible exercises its mightiest 
 and most beneficent influence, not when 
 
 [156] 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND LITERATURE 
 
 it is substituted for all other books, but 
 when it pervades all literature. 
 
 Christianity needs not only a sacred 
 Scripture for guidance, warning, in 
 struction, inspiration, but also a con 
 tinuous literature to express its life 
 from age to age, to embody the ever- 
 new experiences of religion in forms 
 of beauty and power, to illuminate and 
 interpret the problems of existence in 
 the light of faith and hope and love. 
 
 Close this outlet of expression, cut off 
 this avenue of communication, and you 
 bring Christianity into a state of stag 
 nation and congestion. Its processes of 
 thought become hard, formal, mechan 
 ical; its feelings morbid, spasmodic, 
 hysterical; its temper at once oversen 
 sitive, and dictatorial. It grows sus 
 picious of science, contemptuous of art, 
 and alienated from all those broader 
 human sympathies through which alone 
 
 [157] 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND LITERATURE 
 
 it can reach the outer world. Insulated, 
 opinionated, petrified by self-compla 
 cency, it sits in a closed room, putting 
 together the pieces of its puzzle-map 
 of doctrine, and talking to itself in a 
 theological dialect instead of speaking 
 to the world in a universal language. 
 
 Books it may produce books a-plen 
 ty! Big fat books of dogmatic exposi 
 tion; little thin books of sentimental 
 devotion; collections of sermons in in 
 numerable volumes; pious puppet-show 
 story-books in which the truth or false 
 hood of certain dogmas is illustrated by 
 neatly labelled figures stuffed with saw 
 dust and strung on wires. And these an 
 insulated Christianity, scornful of what 
 it calls mere literary art and unsancti- 
 fied charm, would persuade us to accept 
 as a proper religious library. But John 
 Foster spoke the truth in his essay, "On 
 Some of the Causes by which Evangel- 
 
 [158] 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND LITERATURE 
 
 ical Religion has been Rendered Un 
 acceptable to Persons of Cultivated 
 Taste," when he calls these books "a 
 vast exhibition of the most subordinate 
 materials that can be called thought, in 
 language too grovelling to be called 
 style." Certainly they are not literature, 
 nor is it either to be wondered at or 
 much regretted that they are not cur 
 rent. They do not propagate religion; 
 they bury it. 
 
 Very different are the works by which 
 the vital spirit of Christianity has been 
 expressed, the vivifying influence of 
 Christianity extended in the world of 
 modern thought and feeling. There 
 are sermons among them, like the 
 discourses of South and Barrow and 
 Liddon and Bushnell; and religious 
 meditations like the Confessions of 
 St. Augustine and The Imitation of 
 Christ; and books of sacred reasoning 
 
 I 1591 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND LITERATURE 
 
 like the Provincial Letters of Pascal, 
 and Butler s Analogy of Natural and 
 Revealed Religion; and divine epics and 
 lyrics like those of Dante and Milton 
 and George Herbert and Cowper and 
 Keble. 
 
 But there are also books which are 
 secular in form, neither claiming nor 
 recognizing ecclesiastical sanction, pre 
 senting life in its broad human inter 
 est, and at the same time inevitably 
 revealing the ethical, the spiritual, the 
 immortal as the chief factors in the di 
 vine drama of man. 
 
 Christian literature includes the best 
 of those writings in which men have 
 interpreted life and nature from a 
 Christian stand-point. The stand-point 
 does not need to be always defined or 
 described. A man who looks from a 
 mountain-peak tells you not of the 
 mountain on which he stands, but of 
 
 [160] 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND LITERATURE 
 
 what he sees from it. It is not necessary 
 to name God in order to revere and 
 obey him. I find the same truth to life 
 in King Lear as in the drama of Job: 
 and the same sublime, patient faith, 
 though the one ends happily and the 
 other sadly. The Book of Ruth is no 
 more and no less Christian, to my mind, 
 than Tennyson s Dora. There is the 
 same religion in The Heart of Mid 
 lothian as in The Book of Esther. The 
 parable of the rich man lives again 
 in Romola. In Dr. Jekyll and Mr. 
 Hyde St. Paul s text, "The flesh lust- 
 eth against the spirit," is burned deep 
 into the memory. 
 
 No great writer represents the whole 
 of Christianity in its application to 
 life. But I think that almost every 
 great writer, since the religion of Jesus 
 touched the leading races, has helped 
 to reveal some new aspect of its beau- 
 
 [161] 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND LITERATURE 
 
 ty, to make clear some new secret of its 
 sweet reasonableness, or to enforce some 
 new lesson of its power. I read in 
 Shakespeare the majesty of the moral 
 law, in Victor Hugo the sacredness of 
 childhood, in Goethe the glory of re 
 nunciation, in Wordsworth the joy of 
 humility, in Tennyson the triumph of 
 immortal love, in Browning the courage 
 of faith, in Thackeray the ugliness of 
 hypocrisy and the beauty of forgive 
 ness, in George Eliot the supremacy 
 of duty, in Dickens the divinity of 
 kindness, and in Ruskin the dignity of 
 service. Irving teaches me the lesson 
 of simple-hearted cheerfulness, Haw 
 thorne shows me the intense reality of 
 the inner life and the hatef ulness of sin, 
 Longfellow gives me the soft music of 
 tranquil hope and earnest endeavour, 
 Lowell makes me feel that we must 
 give ourselves to our fellow men if we 
 
 [162] 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND LITERATURE 
 
 would bless them, and Whittier sings 
 to me of human brotherhood and di 
 vine fatherhood. Are not these Chris 
 tian lessons? 
 
 I do not ask my novelist to define and 
 discuss his doctrinal position, or to tell 
 me what religious denomination he be 
 longs to. I ask him to tell me a story 
 of life as it is, seen from the point of 
 view of one who has caught from Chris 
 tianity a conception of life as it ought 
 to be. I do not ask him even to deal 
 out poetic justice to all his characters, 
 and shut the prison-doors on the bad 
 people while he rings the wedding-bells 
 for the good. I ask him only to show me 
 good as good and evil as evil ; to quicken 
 my love for those who do their best, and 
 deepen my scorn for those who do their 
 worst; to give me a warmer sympathy 
 with all sorts and conditions of men 
 who are sincere and loyal and kind; to 
 
 [163] 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND LITERATURE 
 
 strengthen my faith that life is worth 
 living even while he helps me to realize 
 how hard it is to live; to leave me 
 my optimism, but not to leave it stone- 
 blind; not to depress me with cheap 
 cynicism, nor to lull me with spurious 
 sentimentalism, but to nourish and con 
 firm my heart in Sir Walter Scott s 
 manly faith, that "to every duty per 
 formed there is attached an inward sat 
 isfaction which deepens with the diffi 
 culty of the task and is its best reward." 
 
 The use of fiction either to defend or 
 to attack some definite theological dog 
 ma seems to me illegitimate and absurd. 
 I remember a devout and earnest broth 
 er who begged me to write a story to 
 prove that Presbyterians never held the 
 doctrine of infant damnation. I would 
 as soon write a story to prove that 
 Bacon wrote Shakespeare s plays. 
 
 But that fiction may serve a noble 
 
 [ 164 ] 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND LITERATURE 
 
 purpose in renewing our attraction to 
 virtue, in sharpening our abhorrence 
 of selfishness and falsehood, in adding 
 to the good report of the things that 
 are pure and lovely, in showing that 
 heroism is something better than "ec 
 centricity tinged with vice," and, at its 
 deepest, in making us feel anew our 
 own need of a divine forgiveness for 
 our faults, and a divine Master to con 
 trol our lives that is true, beyond a 
 doubt; for precisely that is what our 
 best fiction from Waverley down to 
 The Bonnie Brier Bush and Senti 
 mental Tommy has been doing. Name 
 half a dozen of the great English 
 novels at random Henry Esmond, 
 David Copper field, The Cloister and 
 the Hearth, Lorna Doone, Romola, 
 The Scarlet Letter and who shall dare 
 to deny that there is in these books an 
 atmosphere which breathes of the vital 
 
 I 1651 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND LITERATURE 
 
 truths and the brightest ideals of Chris 
 tianity? 
 
 It must be admitted that there are 
 many books, current at present, of 
 which this cannot be said. Some of 
 them breathe of patchouli and musk, 
 some of stale beer and cigarettes, some 
 of the gutter and the pest-house, many 
 do not breathe at all. But I do not see 
 in this any great or pressing danger. 
 The chemists tell us that the paper on 
 which these books are printed will not 
 last twenty years. It will not need to 
 last so long, for the vast majority of 
 the books will be forgotten before their 
 leaves disintegrate. Superficial, feeble, 
 fatuous, inane, they pass into oblivion; 
 and the literature which abides is that 
 which recognizes the moral conflict as 
 the supreme interest of life, and the 
 message of Christianity as the only real 
 promise of victory. 
 
 [166] 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND LITERATURE 
 
 There are three mischievous and peril 
 ous tendencies in our modern world 
 against which the spirit of Christianity, 
 embodied in a sane and manly and lova 
 ble literature, can do much to guard us. 
 
 The first is the growing idolatry of 
 military glory and conquest. It is one 
 thing to admit that there are certain 
 causes for which a Christian may law 
 fully take the sword, it is another thing 
 to claim, as some do, that war in itself 
 is better for a nation than peace, and to 
 look chiefly to mighty armaments on 
 land and sea as the great instruments 
 for the spread of civilization and Chris 
 tianity. The forerunner of Christ was 
 not Samson, but John the Baptist. The 
 kingdom of heaven cometh not with 
 observation, nor with acquisition, nor 
 with subjugation. If all the territory 
 of the globe were subject to one con 
 quering emperor to-day, no matter 
 
 [167] 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND LITERATURE 
 
 though the cross were blazoned on his 
 banner and his throne, the kingdom of 
 heaven would not be one whit nearer. 
 "Not by might, nor by power, but by 
 my spirit, saith the Lord." That is the 
 message of Christianity. A literature 
 that is Christian must exalt love, not 
 only as the greatest, but as the strong 
 est thing in the world. It must hold fast 
 the truth bravely spoken by one of 
 America s foremost soldiers, General 
 Sherman, that "war is hell." It must 
 check and reprove the lust of conquest 
 and the confidence of brute force. It 
 must firmly vindicate and commend 
 righteousness and fair-dealing and 
 kindness, and the simple proclamation 
 of the truth, as the means by which 
 alone a better age can be brought nigh 
 and all the tribes of earth taught to 
 dwell together in peace. It must repeat 
 Wordsworth s fine message: 
 
 [168] 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND LITERATURE 
 
 " By the soul 
 Only the nations shall be great and free." 
 
 The second perilous tendency is the 
 growing idolatry of wealth. Money is 
 condensed power. But it is condensed 
 in a form which renders it frightfully 
 apt to canker and corrupt. A noble lit 
 erature, truly in harmony with the spirit 
 of Christ, will expose, with splendid 
 scorn and ridicule, the falsehood of the 
 standard by which the world, and too 
 often the church, measure what a man 
 is worth by his wealth. It will praise and 
 glorify simple manhood and woman 
 hood. It will teach that true success is 
 the triumph of character, and that true 
 riches are of the heart. 
 
 The third perilous tendency is the 
 growing spirit of frivolity. A brilliant 
 British essayist in writing a life of 
 Robert Browning lately took occasion 
 to remark that the nineteenth century 
 
 [169] 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND LITERATURE 
 
 had already become incomprehensible to 
 us because it took life so seriously. This 
 was probably not intended as a com 
 pliment; but if the nineteenth century 
 could hear the criticism it would have 
 good reason to feel flattered. An age 
 that does not take life seriously will get 
 little out of it. One of the greatest ser 
 vices that Christianity can render to 
 current literature is to inspire it with a 
 nobler ambition and lift it to a higher 
 level. 
 
 I remember an old woodsman in the 
 Adirondack forest who used to say that 
 he wanted to go to the top of a certain 
 mountain as often as possible, because 
 it gave him such a feeling of "heaven - 
 up-histedness." That is an uncouth, 
 humble, eloquent phrase to describe the 
 function of a great literature. 
 
 " Unless above himself he can 
 Erect himself, how mean a thing is man I " 
 [170] 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND LITERATURE 
 
 I want the books that help me out of 
 the vacancy and despair of a frivolous 
 mind, out of the tangle and confusion 
 of a society that is buried in bric-a- 
 brac, out of the meanness of unfeeling 
 mockery and the heaviness of incessant 
 mirth, into a loftier and serener region, 
 where, through the clear air of serious 
 thoughts, I can learn to look soberly 
 and bravely upon the mingled misery 
 and splendour of human existence, and 
 then go down with a cheerful courage 
 to play a man s part in the life which 
 Christ has forever ennobled by his di 
 vine presence. 
 
 [171] 
 
IX 
 THE CHURCH IN THE CITY 
 
 THE very things that make the church 
 most needed in the city are the things 
 that make it hard for the church to 
 survive there. The throng and pressure 
 of multitudinous life, the intensity of 
 business competition and social emu 
 lation, the extravagance of wealth and 
 the exigencies of poverty, the scarcity 
 of time and the superabundance of pas 
 time, the presence of crowds and the 
 absence of fellowship, the avarice-chill 
 and the amusement- fever, the vitality 
 of vice and the nervous prostration of 
 virtue, the rush and whirl and glare and 
 busy emptiness of a life at top speed 
 
 [172] 
 
THE CHURCH IN THE CITY 
 
 in these things the church finds its op 
 portunity, its call, and its danger. 
 
 If the city church is to fill its place, 
 and do its proper work, and survive, it 
 must have two things : first, a clear idea 
 of the mission to which Christ has ap 
 pointed it; second, a firm purpose to 
 fulfil that mission and not to die while 
 there is work to do. 
 
 The church in the city is not to be 
 conformed to the fashion of the sur 
 rounding world. It is a great mistake 
 to suppose that men and women want 
 from the city church what they can get, 
 and do get, anywhere else in the city 
 glitter and bustle and display and rival 
 ry and superficial entertainment. They 
 want something very different; and 
 that something is religion; and religion 
 means inward purity and peace and 
 joy, the sense of God s nearness, the 
 comfort of Christ s love, the strength 
 
 [173] 
 
THE CHURCH IN THE CITY 
 
 that comes from spiritual food and fel 
 lowship. 
 
 It may seem inconsistent to say this 
 after what I have already said of the 
 city. But the truth generally resides in 
 apparent contradictions. The character 
 istics of city life intensify the necessity 
 of religion. The peril of the city church 
 lies in the temptation to make itself an 
 annex and an imitation, rather than a 
 refuge and a contrast. The church must 
 always be separate from the world, in 
 the sense that the church has something 
 distinct and different to offer. Not a 
 Sunday lecture-hall, a sacred concert- 
 room, an ecclesiastical millinery-shop, 
 a baptized social club, or a disguised 
 money-making corporation none of 
 these things does the city need from the 
 church, but "a house of prayer for all 
 nations"; a place where divine truth 
 seems clearer, and human brotherhood 
 
 [174] 
 
THE CHURCH IN THE CITY 
 
 dearer, and heaven a little nearer, than 
 anywhere else in the roaring town. 
 
 Separate from the world the church 
 must be; but never shut off from the 
 world. Not blind to the facts of city 
 life, not insensible to its necessities, not 
 indifferent to its peculiar and pressing 
 problems, but wide-awake to all these 
 things, close to the business and bosoms 
 of the men and women for whose ser 
 vice it exists. The church must move 
 forward with the tide of modern prog 
 ress, keeping abreast of the develop 
 ment of the city in order that it may 
 meet the city s need. The model de 
 scribed in the book of Genesis is a good 
 model for a Noah s ark. But Noah has 
 been dead for some time. The church is 
 not an ark, but a life-boat. In building 
 a life-boat you will do well to follow the 
 most modern lines and use the latest 
 equipment. The aim of the church is 
 
 [175] 
 
THE CHURCH IN THE CITY 
 
 not to keep on doing the same thing 
 forever in the same way, but to improve 
 the way as often as may be necessary 
 to keep on accomplishing the same 
 thing. 
 
 The problem of denominationalism 
 meets the city church. On this corner 
 is a house of worship that is called 
 Presbyterian, on the next one that is 
 called Episcopalian, on the next one 
 that is called Baptist or Methodist, and 
 so on. What does this mean but that 
 good people have different tastes and 
 predilections in matters of form and 
 formula? It does not mean that they 
 are enemies. Let each church be true 
 to its own type, and recognize that the 
 city has room and need for all types. 
 And if the types become less crude, less 
 angular, less extreme, by virtue of 
 friendly contact; if each learns some 
 thing from the others, that also is natu- 
 
 [176] 
 
THE CHURCH IN THE CITY 
 
 ral and profitable. I should be ashamed 
 if I could not worship gladly in any 
 church where Christ is confessed as 
 Lord; and I should be sorry if I had 
 not some memories which make the 
 church of my father and mother a 
 little sweeter, a little more home -like, 
 than any other. What the city demands 
 of all the different kinds of churches is 
 loyalty to type, liberty of growth, and 
 largeness of heart and mind in common 
 service. 
 
 The problem of institutionalism meets 
 the city church. My personal conviction 
 on that question can be put into a sen 
 tence. The church may well have a soup- 
 kitchen, if it is needed; but the church 
 ought never to be a soup-kitchen. That 
 kind of beneficence which ministers to 
 bodily need and has no word for the 
 soul, that kind of social service which 
 is carefully devitalized from all spir- 
 
 [177] 
 
THE CHURCH IN THE CITY 
 
 itual purpose, belongs, if anywhere, to 
 the state, not to the church. When the 
 church gives a cup of cold water to a 
 little child, it must be done in the Mas 
 ter s name. When the church ministers 
 to the sick, the afflicted, the imprisoned, 
 it must seek in them what the Master 
 sought their souls, to save them from 
 sin. Bread? Yes, let the church deal 
 bread to the hungry, but never fail to 
 give a blessing with the bread. 
 
 The problem of success meets the city 
 church. Its work is costly, its situation 
 is trying, its necessities are immediate. 
 A city church will not run long on the 
 momentum of the past, nor survive 
 many years on the strength of a repu 
 tation. It must succeed or die. Yes, but 
 what does it mean for the church to 
 succeed ? Only this : to win the affection, 
 confidence, support, and loyalty of the 
 people, by doing its own work and ful- 
 
 [178] 
 
THE CHURCH IN THE CITY 
 
 filling its own mission. The church can 
 succeed only by deepening, strengthen 
 ing, purifying, the influence of religion 
 in the city. Success on any other basis 
 fashionable, financial, sensational 
 means, for the church at least, a living 
 death. 
 
 True, you sometimes see a city church 
 which is distinctly separate from the 
 world, rigidly opposed to its fashions, 
 very strict in discipline, and very or 
 thodox in doctrine, slowly shrivelling 
 up and dying out. Why? Because 
 it has refrained from being conformed 
 to the fashion of the world? No! But 
 because it has forgotten to be trans 
 formed by the renewing of its mind. 
 Because it has kept the righteousness of 
 the kingdom, and left out the peace and 
 the joy in the Holy Ghost. Because its 
 long prayers and strict rules and correct 
 doctrines have become dry, dull, and 
 
 [179] 
 
THE CHURCH IN THE CITY 
 
 mechanical. It has lost the note of spir 
 itual gladness and power. It is losing 
 its hold on the city, not because it is too 
 religious, but because it is not quite 
 religious enough to rejoice in God, and 
 let its joy shine through. The right 
 kind of a church for the city is one 
 which, however simple its worship, how 
 ever small its congregation, is manifest 
 ly filled with the spirit of consolation, 
 love, and good cheer. Everyone who en 
 ters it feels at once, "These people are 
 glad to be Christians, and glad to have 
 me with them, and truly it is good 
 to be here." Such a church will sur 
 vive, and in the best sense of the word 
 succeed. 
 
 Somewhere I have read or heard a 
 German story of a certain poor man 
 who always used to go about his work in 
 such a spirit of joy and contentment, 
 with such beautiful visions shining in 
 
 [180] 
 
THE CHURCH IN THE CITY 
 
 his eyes, that he was called "the dream 
 er." When he married, his home seemed 
 to be full of the same ideal peace and 
 gladness. His wife and children were 
 visited by the same visions. When a 
 friend asked how it came to pass, the 
 man confessed that he carried around 
 with him all the time the dream that he 
 was a king, and that his wife was the 
 queen, and that the boys and girls were 
 princes and princesses. They all shared 
 the dream, and they lived it out pleas 
 antly together, so that every pleasure 
 was a royal entertainment and every 
 meal was a royal feast. Thus their com 
 mon life was lifted up and beautified. 
 
 The dream of the poor man is the real 
 ity of religion. The message of the Gos 
 pel is that men and women are all sons 
 and daughters of God. The church that 
 brings this message and makes us feel 
 its truth, amid the noise and turmoil 
 
 [181] 
 
THE CHURCH IN THE CITY 
 
 and weariness and oppression of city 
 life, is the right kind of a church for 
 the city. It delivers us from bondage. 
 It shows us how to be happy. It helps 
 us to be good. 
 
 [182] 
 
X 
 
 PROPERTY AND THEFT 
 
 THE relation of Christianity to com 
 munism has become a question for 
 thoughtful people to consider seriously, 
 if they wish to preserve their intellect 
 ual candour and self-respect in adher 
 ing to the religion of Jesus. The reason 
 for this is curious and interesting. 
 The communists of the earlier type 
 were for the most part sturdy, and 
 sometimes violent, opponents of Chris 
 tianity, and indeed of all religions, 
 except such as they themselves occa 
 sionally invented. With this kind of 
 communism, men who sincerely pro 
 fessed to hold the Christian faith had, 
 of course, no question of relation to 
 
 [183] 
 
PROPERTY AND THEFT 
 
 consider. It was already settled that it 
 must be war. 
 
 But in recent times a new type of 
 communism has arisen, which has laid 
 aside the red cap and put on the white 
 cravat. It discusses the problem of 
 the organization of society on ethical 
 and religious grounds. The real social 
 unit, says modern communism, is not 
 the individual, but the community, and 
 a person is only a fraction, who can 
 have no right to possess anything which 
 the community needs or wants. The 
 law which pretends to confer such a 
 right upon an individual the law 
 which says, for example, that under 
 certain conditions you may become the 
 rightful owner of a piece of land, 
 which you may use, or sell, or leave to 
 your heirs, and which shall not be taken 
 from you without due compensation 
 such law is essentially immoral and irre- 
 
 [184] 
 
PROPERTY AND THEFT 
 
 ligious, because it protects and rewards 
 a form of selfishness. All things really 
 belong to all men; and the man who 
 wishes to gain a title to any portion of 
 the earth, however small, is in effect 
 willing to rob his fellow-men of that 
 which God has given to them all in 
 common. The idea of private property 
 has something fundamentally unright 
 eous about it. The teachings of the 
 Bible are against it. The spirit of Jesus, 
 who was really a great socialist, is alto 
 gether in favour of common ownership. 
 If those who profess to follow him 
 were truly in sympathy with his doc 
 trine and willing to apply it to every 
 day life, they would confess that what 
 we now call property is only another 
 form of theft, and would do their best, 
 at all hazards, to abolish an institution 
 so selfish, unjust, and unchristian. 
 Thus modern communism, at least in 
 
 [185] 
 
PROPERTY AND THEFT 
 
 one of its manifestations, instead of pro 
 fessing hostility to Christianity, claims 
 alliance with it, and justifies itself by 
 an appeal to the moral and religious 
 authority of the Bible. Not very long 
 ago a candidate for the mayoralty of 
 New York City (an honourable man, 
 and one who polled sixty-seven thou 
 sand votes) affirmed that every man 
 who owned his home was practically a 
 robber of the community, and sup 
 ported the accusation by quoting the 
 Old Testament. A preacher, of wide 
 fame and influence, declared from the 
 pulpit that the early Christian church 
 at Jerusalem was distinctly communis 
 tic, and that this is "the animus of the 
 New Testament." Assertions like these, 
 which are not exceptional, but are fre 
 quently made by men of undoubted 
 sincerity and probity and benevolence, 
 are certainly not to be ignored by in- 
 
 [186] 
 
PROPERTY AND THEFT 
 
 telligent Christians who value their own 
 spiritual integrity. 
 
 If property is theft, according to the 
 teachings of Jesus, then the church it 
 self, like the temple of old, has become 
 a den of thieves. If the animus of the 
 New Testament is distinctly communis 
 tic, then every honest Christian is bound 
 either to give up his faith in the holy 
 scripture or to obey its doctrine not 
 only in the letter, but in the spirit, and 
 to work with those who are seeking to 
 establish a new order of society in which 
 private possessions shall be unknown. 
 
 No man can get any comfort or 
 strength out of his religion if he sus 
 pects himself of disloyalty to it in his 
 daily transactions. 
 
 The sense of the terrible inequalities 
 of human life under present condi 
 tions, the increased knowledge of the 
 privations and sufferings of the poor, 
 
 [187] 
 
PROPERTY AND THEFT 
 
 the misery that is condensed in great 
 cities, the hardship that embitters toil 
 in lonely and desolate regions, the dim 
 consciousness of the manifold want 
 and woe that men and women and 
 little children are enduring in this tan 
 gled world, press heavily upon sensi 
 tive spirits in these days. If all this 
 wretchedness were the fruit of a false 
 social order, contrary to the law of 
 God and the spirit of Christ; if the 
 Bible revealed a remedy for it all in the 
 doctrine of communism, which Chris 
 tians were too ignorant or selfish or 
 cowardly to accept or apply, then it 
 would be no wonder that the people 
 who play traitor to their own religion 
 should find that it no longer brings 
 them inward peace and joy. They would 
 deserve to be ill at ease, anxious, full of 
 fears and forebodings. They would de 
 serve to be of all men most miserable. 
 
 [188] 
 
PROPERTY AND THEFT 
 
 But suppose that, after all, it should 
 be true that human poverty and want 
 and wretchedness do not spring from 
 any single fault in the social order, but 
 from a deeper source: the selfish and 
 wilful evil that dwells in the heart of 
 man. Suppose that the remedy which 
 Christianity reveals should turn out to 
 be something very different from com 
 munism: not the abolition of private 
 property, but the use and control of it 
 by the spirit of fair play and wise love. 
 Then the church, still feeling the press 
 ure of human misery upon her heart, 
 and confessing her want of greater 
 wisdom and larger love in seeking to 
 lighten the burdens of men, could yet 
 face her problem with courage and a 
 steady mind. She need have no sense 
 of fatal inconsistency in declining the 
 alliance which communism claims. She 
 could try to follow the spirit of Christ 
 
 [189] 
 
PROPERTY AND THEFT 
 
 more faithfully, without surrendering 
 her leadership to the men who demand 
 a social revolution. 
 
 This is the situation, then, which the 
 new type of communism forces us to 
 face. Those who are sincere in accept 
 ing Christianity as the true religion, 
 and the Bible as its rule of faith and 
 practice, must meet the question fairly 
 and consider it seriously. Was Jesus 
 a communist at heart? Are the laws 
 which enable men to own their homes, 
 and to save money for their children, 
 an offence to him? What does the 
 Bible really teach about property and 
 theft? 
 
 Two cases are quoted from the Bible 
 to prove that it has at least a partial 
 leaning toward the communistic theory. 
 
 The first is the Hebrew Year of Jubi 
 lee, which is used as an argument for 
 the nationalization of land. 
 
 [190] 
 
PROPERTY AND THEFT 
 
 Now, when we study the Old Testa 
 ment carefully we find that there is not 
 a word of historic record to show that 
 the Year of Jubilee ever went into 
 practical operation; nor is there a sin 
 gle passage to indicate that this pecu 
 liar institution, given to a peculiar peo 
 ple under peculiar circumstances, was 
 ever intended to be an example for all 
 nations at all times. To claim that it 
 was, would be as unreasonable as to 
 argue that the Jewish method of 
 slaughtering animals should be imposed 
 on all butchers. 
 
 But waiving these objections, and 
 looking at the Year of Jubilee as a 
 possible model for legislation in our 
 times, we see that it was simply an 
 iron-clad law of entail, more rigid than 
 England has ever known. It provided 
 that the land should always remain in 
 the families among whom it had been 
 
 [191] 
 
PROPERTY AND THEFT 
 
 divided at the conquest of Canaan. It 
 could neither be alienated by an indi 
 vidual, nor confiscated by the state. If 
 a man was forced to sell his land by 
 stress of poverty, the utmost that he 
 could dispose of was a title to the usu 
 fruct for as much of the fifty years as 
 might remain before the next Jubilee. 
 At any time he might redeem it; and 
 at the end of the fixed period every 
 man inevitably "returned unto his pos 
 
 session." 
 
 Suppose a company of Irish immi 
 grants arriving in Judea under the 
 operation of this law: they could have 
 bought city property, for that was spe 
 cially exempt from its provisions; they 
 could have rented farms from the native 
 aristocracy ; but not one of those Hiber 
 nians, nor one of their children, nor one 
 of their grandchildren, could ever have 
 acquired a share in one square inch of 
 
 [192] 
 
PROPERTY AND THEFT 
 
 the soil of the country. Any man who 
 admires this system is at liberty to say 
 so; but it is hardly probable that any 
 one will try to put it into practice, nor 
 does it look much like what we com 
 monly understand by the nationaliza 
 tion of land, which is to make the 
 earth as free as the air and the light 
 to all men. 
 
 The second case which is quoted from 
 the Bible in favour of communism is the 
 example of the early church at Jerusa 
 lem. It is described in the second and 
 fourth chapters of the Book of Acts. 
 The characteristic feature of it is, that 
 the believers in Christ "were together 
 and had all things common; and sold 
 their possessions and goods, and parted 
 them to all, as every man had need." 
 
 But surely this does not imply a denial 
 of the rights of private property. For 
 if an individual could not really own 
 
 [193] 
 
PROPERTY AND THEFT 
 
 anything, how could there be any buy 
 ing or selling? If the fact of birth 
 gives everyone an equal claim upon all 
 the good things of the world, how could 
 these Christians, a mere handful in the 
 city, defend their funds against the 
 Jews and the heathen? What right had 
 they to confine their benefactions, as 
 they did, to their fellow-believers, in 
 stead of sharing all things with their 
 brother-men? It would be an unfort 
 unate thing for the widows and or 
 phans of our great cities if the modern 
 churches should adopt the strict plan 
 of the Jerusalem Christians. For, in 
 point of fact, their experiment was 
 simply the exercise of the right of 
 every man to do as he chooses with his 
 own; and they chose to live together 
 and help each other. It was a fraternal 
 stock company for mutual aid and pro 
 tection. No man was bound to come into 
 
 [194] 
 
PROPERTY AND THEFT 
 
 it unless he wished; but if he did come 
 in, he was bound to act honestly. 
 
 Read what St. Peter said to that hypo 
 crite, Ananias, about his land: "While 
 it remained, was it not thine own? And 
 after it was sold, was it not in thine 
 own power?" It would be difficult to 
 imagine a stronger statement of the 
 rights of property under the most try 
 ing circumstances. Of course it is pos 
 sible for any band of men who like the 
 Jerusalem system to re-establish it to 
 day; but its result of pauperism in the 
 primitive church was not particularly 
 encouraging, nor would it bring us one 
 step nearer to the communistic ideal of 
 general ownership and distribution by 
 the state. 
 
 There are some other cases which are 
 not frequently quoted by modern com 
 munists, but which have a direct bear 
 ing upon the doctrine of the Bible in 
 
 f 195 ] 
 
PROPERTY AND THEFT 
 
 regard to the rights of private prop 
 erty. There is the case of Naboth and 
 his vineyard. 
 
 Naboth was a landholder. He had in 
 herited a field from his ancestors. It be 
 longed to him, and therefore no one else 
 had a right to build on it or to cultivate 
 it. The vines which he had planted there 
 were his own. He could eat the grapes, 
 or make wine out of them, or give them 
 to the village children. The "unearned 
 increment" which had come to that field 
 from the building of the royal palace 
 in the neighborhood was a part of Na- 
 both s property. He could do with it as 
 he liked keep it, or rent it, or sell it. 
 
 Ahab was a king. He represented the 
 state. He was the anointed of the Lord, 
 and he wanted that vineyard. He had 
 not the nerve to take it by violence, nor 
 the cleverness to squeeze Naboth out 
 with a tax. So he tried to buy it, and 
 
 [196] 
 
PROPERTY AND THEFT 
 
 failing, took to his bed and turned his 
 face to the wall. But Queen Jezebel was 
 a woman of larger resources. She con 
 trived a plan to get rid of Naboth; 
 and then she invited her husband to go 
 down and enjoy the confiscated prop 
 erty. And as he stood in the vineyard, 
 trembling with uncertain pleasure, that 
 man of iron, Elijah the prophet, found 
 him, and cursed him in the name of 
 the just God, promising that his race 
 should perish in shame because of the 
 evil that he had done. 
 
 It was not merely because Ahab had 
 connived at the death of a man. Many 
 a king of Israel had done worse with 
 out incurring a special revelation of 
 divine wrath. But Ahab had violated a 
 sacred right of property. He had tram 
 pled upon a principle of justice which 
 made that poor man s vineyard his own, 
 to have and to hold against all comers, 
 
 [197] 
 
PROPERTY AND THEFT 
 
 whether they were greedy kings or en 
 vious beggars. There is not the slight 
 est hint that Naboth was wronging 
 anybody in owning that land ; but there 
 is the plainest teaching that in trying 
 to take it away from him against his 
 will the King was a thief ; and for that, 
 God promised that he should die among 
 the dogs, that he should perish as a 
 landless vagabond. 
 
 It must be admitted that the Old 
 Testament holds out scanty encourage 
 ment to the advocates of communism. 
 But perhaps we shall find something in 
 the New Testament to support the no 
 tion that private property is unjust and 
 ought to be speedily abolished. 
 
 What shall we say then of Jason of 
 Thessalonica, and Lydia of Philippi, 
 and Titus Justus of Corinth, and Philip 
 of Csesarea, who all received the apos 
 tles into their own houses? Were these 
 
 [198] 
 
PROPERTY AND THEFT 
 
 people engaged in perpetuating a cruel 
 and oppressive distinction between the 
 rich and the poor? 
 
 Turn to the gospels. There was a man 
 in Bethany named Lazarus, who had a 
 house in which he sheltered the Christ 
 whom the community had rejected. 
 There was a man named Zaccheus, who 
 was rich and who entertained Jesus at 
 his own house. Is there any suggestion 
 that the Master disapproved of these 
 property owners? There was a man 
 named Joseph of Arimathea, who had 
 a garden and a new sepulchre in which 
 he made a quiet resting-place for the 
 body of him whom the people had de 
 spised and crucified. Was he a selfish 
 robber? 
 
 Christianity never would have found 
 a foothold in the world, it never would 
 have survived the storms of early per 
 secution, had it not been sheltered in its 
 
 [199] 
 
PROPERTY AND THEFT 
 
 infancy by the rights of private prop 
 erty, which are founded in justice, and 
 therefore are respected by all lovers of 
 righteousness, Christian or heathen. It 
 is difficult to see how the religion of 
 Jesus could have sanctioned these rights 
 more emphatically than by using them 
 for its own most holy purposes. 
 
 But someone may say that this is only 
 the lower side of Christianity; that there 
 is a higher side which enforces charity 
 and unselfish benevolence and universal 
 brotherhood; and that in the develop 
 ment of these things the lower side is 
 destined to disappear, and communism 
 will become the order of society. Truly, 
 it would be difficult to exaggerate the 
 emphasis which is laid not only by 
 Christ and His apostles, but also by the 
 Old Testament writers, upon the duties 
 of kindness and generosity and compas 
 sion for the needy. But these teachings 
 
 [200] 
 
PROPERTY AND THEFT 
 
 are perfectly consistent with those other 
 instructions of the Bible which enjoin 
 diligence in business, and fidelity to 
 contracts, and respect for the property 
 of others. 
 
 The Bible teaches that God owns the 
 world. He distributes to every man ac 
 cording to his own good pleasure, con 
 formably to general laws. Under the 
 operation of these laws a man may ac 
 quire such a title to certain things that 
 for any other man, or community of 
 men, to attempt to dispossess him with 
 out full compensation is robbery. Nor 
 is there any difference in this respect 
 between the property of the rich and 
 the property of the poor. If it be fairly 
 acquired by honest industry, lawful in 
 heritance, or just exchange, the one is 
 as sacred as the other. I read to-day that 
 the savings-banks of New York State 
 held $1,250,000,000 of deposits. Most 
 
 [201] 
 
PROPERTY AND THEFT 
 
 of this money has been laid up by peo 
 ple who work for wages. And if the 
 bulk of this capital should go, as it 
 probably will, into the purchase of 
 homes for families, the law of God still 
 declares that it must neither be stolen 
 nor confiscated, nor even coveted, by 
 private robber or public thief. 
 
 There is a fundamental and absolute 
 difference between the doctrine of the 
 Bible and the doctrine of communism. 
 The Bible tells me that I must deal my 
 bread to the hungry; communism tells 
 the hungry that he may take it for him 
 self. The Bible teaches that it is a sin 
 to covet; communism says that it is the 
 new virtue which is to regenerate so 
 ciety. Communism maintains that every 
 man who is born has a right to live ; but 
 the Bible says that if a man will not 
 work neither shall he eat; and without 
 eating, life is difficult. Communism 
 [202] 
 
PROPERTY AND THEFT 
 
 holds up equality of condition as the 
 ideal of Christianity; but Christ never 
 mentions it. He tells us that we shall 
 have the poor always with us, and 
 charges us never to forget, despise, or 
 neglect them. Christianity requires two 
 things from every man that believes in 
 it: first, to acquire his property by just 
 and righteous means; and, second, to 
 "look not only on his own things, but 
 also on the things of others." 
 
 This condemns the reckless greed of 
 the gold-worshippers, and the cruelty 
 of conscienceless corporations, and the 
 dishonesty of law-dodging sharpers; 
 but it condemns equally the communis 
 tic theories which propose to sweep 
 away or disregard the rights of private 
 ownership. When the communist says 
 that the public lands which are still held 
 by the state ought to be retained, or 
 distributed according to a new system, 
 
 [203] 
 
PROPERTY AND THEFT 
 
 he is simply propounding an economic 
 theory which may or may not be sound. 
 But when he says that the real estate 
 which has become private property 
 ought to be practically confiscated, by 
 taxation or in any other way, he is sim 
 ply teaching us to call theft by a longer 
 name. It is not a question of expedi 
 ency; it is a question of righteousness. 
 I have entire confidence in the sincere 
 philanthropy and generous motives of 
 many of the men who have been drawn 
 into a partial approval of communistic 
 doctrines. I have a profound sympathy 
 with them in hatred of all tyranny and 
 oppression, in hearty desire for the 
 amelioration of society and the relief of 
 all unnecessary suffering. Surely that 
 is at least one of the objects of Chris 
 tianity, to improve the present condi 
 tion of humanity, to make the whole 
 world not only better, but also happier. 
 
 [204] 
 
PROPERTY AND THEFT 
 
 If there are any men and women who 
 live in fat contentment with their own 
 physical comfort, and shut their ears to 
 the cry of the distressed, they are not 
 true disciples of the compassionate Je 
 sus, and the Bible promises that they 
 shall have a heavy reckoning at the day 
 of judgment. 
 
 But it does not seem likely that the 
 evils of society can be cured by moving 
 along the line of communism. History 
 warns us that every experiment in that 
 direction has been a failure. Free corn 
 filled Rome with hungry idlers. The 
 communistic poor laws of 1815 made 
 England howl with want and shame 
 and crime. There is no reason to sup 
 pose that men in the mass are any more 
 wise or kind or benevolent than they 
 are as individuals. The idea of an all- 
 absorbing, all-controlling, all-disburs 
 ing state is a Frankenstein monster. 
 
 [205] 
 
PROPERTY AND THEFT 
 
 Even to coquet with it in theory is to 
 increase the miseries of society. 
 
 It is in the interest of no separate 
 class, but of all mankind, that we hold 
 fast to the old-fashioned doctrine of 
 the rights of property coupled with the 
 duties of charity. The asylums and 
 hospitals of New York City now draw 
 the greater part of their support from 
 the Christian benevolence of between 
 three and four thousand persons. What 
 will become of those institutions if the 
 springs which feed them are destroyed? 
 Does anyone think that the Board of 
 Aldermen, or the Labour Party, or the 
 city at large would do the work better? 
 
 The advocates of communism, in their 
 revision of the Bible, would give us an 
 improved version of the parable of the 
 Good Samaritan. They would tell us 
 that when the proud Levite and the 
 selfish Priest had passed by the wounded 
 
 [206] 
 
PROPERTY AND THEFT 
 
 man, a kind communist came down that 
 way and began to whisper in the suf 
 ferer s ear: "My friend, you have been 
 much in error. You were a thief your 
 self when you were amassing your pri 
 vate wealth; and these gentlemen who 
 have just relieved you of it with need 
 less violence have only begun, in a hasty 
 and unjustifiable manner, what must 
 soon be done, in a large and calm way, 
 for the benefit of the whole commu 
 nity." Whereupon, we are to suppose, 
 the man was much enlightened and 
 comforted, and would have become a 
 useful member of society, if he had 
 lived. 
 
 But Christ says that it was a Samari 
 tan, a man of property, riding on his 
 own beast and carrying a little spare 
 capital in his pocket, who lifted up the 
 wounded stranger, and gave him oil and 
 wine, and brought him into a place of 
 
 [207] 
 
PROPERTY AND THEFT 
 
 security, and paid for his support. And 
 to everyone who hears the parable 
 Christ says: "Go thou and do likewise." 
 Here is the open secret of the regenera 
 tion of society in the form of a picture. 
 
 If we want it in the form of a phi 
 losophy, we may get it from St. Paul 
 in five words: 
 
 "Let him that stole, steal no more" 
 that is reformation; "but rather let him 
 labour" that is industry; "working 
 with his hands that which is good" 
 that is honesty; "that he may have" 
 that is property; "to give to him 
 that needeth" that is charity. 
 
 [208] 
 
XI 
 
 THE CREATIVE IDEAL OF 
 EDUCATION 
 
 IN that admirable book, The American 
 Commonwealth, by Mr. James Bryce, 
 the chapter on colleges and universities 
 comes immediately after the chapter on 
 Wall Street. There is a singular con 
 trast between them: for, while the one 
 represents the nearest approach to pes 
 simism in an uncommonly cheerful 
 book, the other marks the highest note 
 of optimism to which a British writer 
 can allow his impressions to rise. The 
 Wall Street chapter closes with the 
 melancholy remark that the habits of 
 speculation, constitutional excitability, 
 
 [209] 
 
CREATIVE EDUCATION 
 
 and high nervous tension seem to have 
 passed into the fibre of the American 
 people. But the chapter on colleges and 
 universities ends with the hopeful ob 
 servation that, "while of all the institu 
 tions of the country they are those of 
 which the Americans speak most mod 
 estly, and indeed deprecatingly, they 
 are those which seem to be at this mo 
 ment making the swiftest progress, and 
 which have the brightest promise for 
 the future." 
 
 In regard to the habit of modest and 
 deprecating speech, we have a faint 
 suspicion that the author s experience 
 of academic anniversaries may have 
 been limited. Perhaps he was here in 
 the dull season. Perhaps he went only 
 to Boston or Chicago. 
 
 But in regard to the recognition of 
 our educational growth as one of the 
 brightest and most promising features 
 
 [210] 
 
CREATIVE EDUCATION 
 
 of the American commonwealth, there 
 can be no doubt that it is an accurate 
 observation and a wise judgment. No 
 other expansion of the republic can be 
 compared, in magnitude or in meaning, 
 with the expansion of education. No 
 other assurance of protection against 
 those perils of American life which are 
 popularly symbolized by Wall Street, 
 can be compared with the fact that 
 democratic communities have recog 
 nized the wisdom and the necessity of 
 building up those safeguards of na 
 tional sanity, integrity, and liberty 
 which are typified, in their highest de 
 velopment, by the university. 
 
 It is to education that we look for pro 
 tection against the spirit of 
 
 "Raw haste, half-sister to delay " 
 
 against the blind and reckless temper 
 of gambling against the stupid idol- 
 
 [211] 
 
CREATIVE EDUCATION 
 
 atry of mere riches, either in the form 
 of servile flattery or in the disguise of 
 equally servile envy. Education must 
 give us better standards of success and 
 higher tests of greatness than gold can 
 measure. Education must clarify public 
 opinion, calm and allay popular excita 
 bility, tranquillize and steady American 
 energy, dispel local and sectional preju 
 dice, and strengthen the ties which 
 bind together all parts of our common 
 country. 
 
 Now, these are great expectations. 
 We cannot hope to have them realized, 
 even in part, unless we give to our 
 whole educational effort, which is really 
 bound together from the primary school 
 up to the university, the highest aim, 
 the true direction, the right movement. 
 What, then, is the true ideal of edu 
 cation in a great democracy like the 
 United States? 
 
 [212] 
 
CREATIVE EDUCATION 
 
 It is not a sufficient answer to this 
 question to observe that since education 
 is derived from the Latin e-duco, its 
 true purpose must be the bringing out 
 of what is in man. This definition is 
 simple, but not satisfactory. There are 
 many things in man, and there are vari 
 ous methods of bringing them out. The 
 question is, What are the best things, 
 and which is the best method of devel 
 opment? 
 
 There is, for example, a method of 
 bringing out the grain of wood by a 
 combination of stain and varnish. It is 
 a superficial way of enhancing the 
 natural difference between pine and 
 poplar and black walnut. Sometimes 
 it is used as a device for disguising 
 the difference between cherry and ma 
 hogany. Is this a true type of edu 
 cation? 
 
 There is also a method of bringing 
 
 [ 213 ] 
 
CREATIVE EDUCATION 
 
 out the resources of the earth by work 
 ing it for the largest immediate returns 
 in the market. Farms are exhausted 
 by overcropping; pastures desolated 
 by overstocking; mines worked out for 
 a record yield. Fictitious values are 
 evolved and disposed of at transitory 
 prices. Much that is marketable is 
 brought out in this way. Is this a true 
 type of education? 
 
 There is also a method of bringing 
 out the possibilities of a living plant by 
 culture, giving it the needed soil and 
 nourishment, defending it from its 
 natural enemies, strengthening its vi 
 tality and developing its best qualities. 
 This method has been used, in the ex 
 periments of Mr. Luther Burbank, in 
 a way that seems almost miraculous, 
 changing the bitter to the sweet, the 
 useless to the useful, and proving that 
 by a progressive regeneration one may 
 
 [214] 
 
CREATIVE EDUCATION 
 
 hope in time to gather grapes of thorns 
 and figs of thistles. Is this a true type 
 of education? 
 
 These three illustrations of different 
 methods of "bringing things out" rep 
 resent in picture the three main educa 
 tional ideals which men have followed. 
 Back of our various academic schemes 
 and theories, back of the propositions 
 which are made by college presidents 
 for the adoption of new methods or the 
 revival of old methods, back of the 
 fluent criticisms which are passed upon 
 our common schools and universities, 
 lies the question of the dominant aim 
 in teaching and learning. What should 
 be the ideal of education in a democ 
 racy the decorative ideal, the market 
 able ideal, or the creative ideal? 
 
 I speak of the decorative ideal first, 
 because, strangely enough, it is likely 
 to take precedence in order of time, and 
 
 [215] 
 
CREATIVE EDUCATION 
 
 certainly it is pre-eminent in worthless- 
 ness. Barbarous races prefer ornament 
 to decency or comfort in dress. Alex 
 ander von Humboldt observed that the 
 South American Indians would endure 
 the greatest hardships in the matter 
 of insufficient clothing rather than go 
 without the luxury of brilliant paint to 
 decorate their naked bodies. Herbert 
 Spencer used this as an illustration of 
 the preference of the ornamental to the 
 useful in education. 
 
 The decorative conception of educa 
 tion seems to be the acquisition of some 
 knowledge or accomplishment which is 
 singular. The impulse which produces 
 it is not so much a craving for that 
 which is really fine, as a repulsion from 
 that which is supposed to be common. 
 It is a desire to have something in the 
 way of intellectual or social adornment 
 which shall take the place of a mantle 
 
 [216] 
 
CREATIVE EDUCATION 
 
 of peacock s feathers or a particularly 
 rich and massive nose-ring. 
 
 This ideal not only rejects, contemns, 
 and abhors the useful, but it exhibits its 
 abhorrence by exalting, commending, 
 and cherishing the useless, chiefly be 
 cause it is less likely to be common. It 
 lays the emphasis upon those things 
 which have little or no relation to 
 practical life. It speaks a language of 
 its own which the people cannot un 
 derstand. It pursues accomplishments 
 whose chief virtue is that they are com 
 paratively rare, and puts particular 
 stress upon knowledge which is sup 
 posed to bestow a kind of gilding or 
 enamel upon the mind. This ideal is apt 
 to be especially potent in the beginning 
 of a democracy, and to produce a crop 
 of "young ladies finishing schools" and 
 "young gentlemen s polishing acade 
 mies" singularly out of proportion to 
 
CREATIVE EDUCATION 
 
 the real needs of the country. In its 
 later development it brings forth all 
 kinds of educational curiosities and 
 abortions. 
 
 In this second crop of the decorative 
 school of culture we find those strange 
 phenomena of intellectual life which are 
 known under the names of ^Estheticism 
 and Symbolism and Decadentism and 
 the like. Their mark is eccentricity. 
 Their aim is the visible separation of 
 the cultured person from the common 
 herd. His favourite poet must be one 
 who is caviar to the vulgar. His chosen 
 philosopher must be able to express 
 himself with such obscurity that few, 
 if any, can comprehend him. He must 
 know more than anyone else about the 
 things that are not worth knowing, and 
 care very passionately for the things 
 that are not usually considered worth 
 caring about. He must believe that 
 
 [218] 
 
CREATIVE EDUCATION 
 
 Homer and Dante and Milton and the 
 Bible have been very much overrated, 
 and carefully guard himself, as Oscar 
 Wilde did in the presence of the ocean, 
 from giving way to sentiments of vul 
 gar admiration. His views of history 
 must be based upon the principle of 
 depreciating familiar heroes and white 
 washing extraordinary villains. He 
 must measure the worth of literature 
 by its unpopularity, and find his chief 
 joy in the consciousness that his tastes, 
 his opinions, and his aspirations are un 
 like those of common people. 
 
 But the favourite sphere of decorative 
 culture is the realm of art. For here 
 it finds the way to distinction easiest 
 and most open. The degradation and 
 torpor, the spirit of ignorance and blind 
 perversity which fell upon the arts of 
 design and expression in the middle of 
 the last century, and which still pre- 
 
 [219] 
 
CREATIVE EDUCATION 
 
 vail to a considerable extent among 
 those whom Matthew Arnold used to 
 revile as the Philistines of England 
 and America, made it necessary to be 
 gin a reform. Certain artists who were 
 very much in earnest (call them pre- 
 Raphaelites, or men of the new renais 
 sance, or Impressionists, or musicians 
 of the future, or what you will) took 
 up the work, and won, together with a 
 great deal of ridicule, a large reward 
 of fame. In their wake has followed the 
 motley throng of aesthetes, great and 
 small, learned and unlearned, male and 
 female and neuter; the people who talk 
 about art because they think it is fine; 
 who discover unutterable sentiments in 
 beds and tables, stools and candlesticks ; 
 who go into raptures over a crooked- 
 necked Madonna after they have looked 
 into their catalogues and discovered 
 that it was painted by Botticelli; and 
 
 [2201 
 
CREATIVE EDUCATION 
 
 who insist with ecstatic perversity that 
 the worst of Wagner is better than the 
 best of Beethoven. It is the veriest 
 simian mimicry of artistic enthusiasm, 
 a thing laughable to gods and men. 
 
 True art large, generous, sincere 
 "the expression of noble emotions for 
 right causes" is a noble and ennobling 
 study. But art as a fashion, with its 
 cant, its affectation, its blind following 
 of the blind, is a poor inanity. There is 
 no use for it in a democracy nor in 
 deed anywhere in this world which was 
 created by the Great Lover of Truth 
 and Hater of Shams. The intellectual 
 poseur, the shallow and self-satisfied 
 aesthete is the last person who is entitled 
 to set up a claim to the possession of 
 the true theory and the ripe result of 
 education. 
 
 At the opposite extreme from the 
 decorative ideal lies the marketable 
 
 [221] 
 
CREATIVE EDUCATION 
 
 ideal of education. Its object, broadly 
 stated, is simply to bring out a man s 
 natural abilities in such a way that he 
 shall be able to get the largest return 
 in money for his work in the practical 
 affairs of life. Nothing is of value, ac 
 cording to this ideal, which is not of 
 direct utility in a business or a profes 
 sion. Nothing counts which has not an 
 immediate cash value in the world s 
 market. 
 
 "Send my boy to high-school and col 
 lege!" says the keen man of business. 
 "What good will that do him? Seven 
 years at the dead languages and higher 
 mathematics will not teach him to make 
 a sharp bargain or run a big enter 
 prise." He thinks he has summed up 
 the whole argument. But he has only 
 begged the question. The very point at 
 issue is whether the boy is a tool, to be 
 ground and sharpened for practical use, 
 
 [222] 
 
CREATIVE EDUCATION 
 
 or a living creature, whose highest value 
 is to be realized by personal develop 
 ment. 
 
 The influence of this cash-value theory 
 of culture may be seen in many direc 
 tions. 
 
 It shows itself in certain features of 
 our common-school system, not in the 
 places where it is at its best, but in the 
 places where it is controlled by poli 
 ticians, sectarians, or cranks. It is far 
 too mechanical. The children are run 
 through a mill. They are crammed with 
 rules and definitions, while their ideas 
 and feelings are left to take care of 
 themselves. Their imagination, that 
 most potent factor of life, is entrusted 
 to the guidance of the weekly story- 
 paper, and their moral nature to the 
 guidance of chance. The overworked 
 and underpaid teacher is forced, by a 
 false system of competition, to pack 
 
 [223] 
 
CREATIVE EDUCATION 
 
 their little minds as full as possible of 
 rules which they do not understand, and 
 definitions which do not define, and 
 assorted fragments of historical, geo 
 graphical, chemical, mechanical, and 
 physiological knowledge, which are sup 
 posed to have a probable market value. 
 It would be a good thing if the cities 
 and towns of America would spend 
 twice as much as they are spending to 
 day for common-school education. It 
 would be a good thing if we could have 
 twice as many teachers, and twice as 
 intelligent, especially for the primary 
 grades. And then it would be a good 
 thing if we could sweep away half the 
 "branches" that are now taught, and 
 abolish two-thirds of the formal exam 
 inations, and make an end of compe 
 titions and prizes, and come down, or 
 rather come up, to the plain work of 
 teaching children to read intelligently 
 
 [224] 
 
CREATIVE EDUCATION 
 
 and write clearly and cipher accurately 
 the foundation of a solid education. 
 The marketable ideal of culture makes 
 itself felt, also, to a considerable extent, 
 in some of the higher institutions of 
 learning. We can trace its effects in the 
 tendency to push the humanities aside, 
 and to train the young idea, from the 
 earliest possible period, upon the trellis 
 of a particular trade. Every branch, 
 every tendril which does not conform to 
 these lines must be cut off . The impor 
 tance of studies is to be measured by 
 their direct effect upon professional 
 and industrial success. The plan is to 
 educate boys, not for living, but for 
 making a living. They are to be culti 
 vated not as men, but as journalists, 
 surveyors, chemists, lawyers, physicians, 
 manufacturers, mining engineers, sell 
 ers of wet and dry goods, bankers, ac 
 countants, and what not. 
 
 [225] 
 
CREATIVE EDUCATION 
 
 In obedience to this theory, the atten 
 tion of the student is directed from the 
 outset to those things for which he can 
 see an immediate use in his chosen pur 
 suit. Literature is spoken of in aca 
 demic circles as a mere embellishment 
 of the solid course; and philosophy is 
 left to those odd fellows who are going 
 into the ministry or into teaching. The 
 library is no longer regarded as a spir 
 itual palace where the student may live 
 with the master-minds of all the ages. 
 It has taken on the aspect of a dis 
 pensary where useful information can 
 be procured in small doses for prac 
 tical purposes. Half -endowed technical 
 schools spring up all over the land, like 
 mushrooms after a shower. We have 
 institutes of everything, from stenog 
 raphy to farriery; it remains only to 
 add a few more, such as an Academy 
 of Mesmerism, a College of Mind 
 
 [226] 
 
CREATIVE EDUCATION 
 
 Healing, and a Chiropodists Univer 
 sity, to round out the encyclopaedia of 
 complete culture according to the com 
 mercial ideal. 
 
 Let no one imagine that I mean to 
 say a word against trade schools. On 
 the contrary, I would speak most heart 
 ily in their support. So far as they do 
 their work well they are an admirable 
 and needful substitute for the earlier 
 systems of apprenticeship for the vari 
 ous trades. Democracy needs them. 
 They are really worth all the money 
 that is put into them. But the error lies 
 in supposing that they can take the 
 place of the broader and higher educa 
 tion. By their own confession they move 
 on another level. They mean business. 
 But business is precisely the one thing 
 which education does not mean. It may, 
 doubtless it will, result in making a 
 man able to do his own special work 
 
 [227] 
 
CREATIVE EDUCATION 
 
 in a better spirit and with a finer skill. 
 But this result is secondary, and not 
 primary. It is accomplished by for 
 getting the specialty and exalting the 
 man. 
 
 True education must begin and con 
 tinue with a fine disregard of pecuniary 
 returns. It must be catholic, genial, dis 
 interested. Its object is to make the 
 shoemaker go beyond his last "Sutor 
 ultra crepidam" and the clerk beyond 
 his desk, and the surveyor beyond his 
 chain, and the lawyer beyond his brief, 
 and the doctor beyond his prescription, 
 and the preacher beyond his sermon. 
 
 Special training, with an eye fixed on 
 some practical pursuit, works directly 
 the other way, and against the interests 
 of a true democracy. It deepens the 
 lines which separate men. It divides 
 them into isolated trades which become 
 close corporations, and into rival guilds 
 
 [228] 
 
CREATIVE EDUCATION 
 
 which defend themselves by blocking 
 all avenues of intercommunication. 
 
 But the right culture for a democracy 
 is that which opens the avenues of mu 
 tual comprehension, and increases the 
 common ground of humanity. It broad 
 ens and harmonizes men on the basis of 
 that which belongs to all mankind. If 
 it elevates certain persons above their 
 fellows, it does not therefore separate 
 them from the race, but joins them to 
 it more broadly. It lifts them as the 
 peaks of a mountain-range are lifted, 
 with a force that spreads the base while 
 it raises the summit. The peaks are the 
 unifying centres of the system. And the 
 springs that rise among the loftiest hills 
 flow down joyfully through the valleys 
 and the plains. 
 
 The right ideal of education in a de 
 mocracy is the creative ideal. It does not 
 seek to adorn men with certain rare ac- 
 
 [229] 
 
CREATIVE EDUCATION 
 
 complishments which shall be the marks 
 of a Brahminical caste. It does not 
 seek to train men for certain practical 
 pursuits with an eye single to their 
 own advantage. It seeks, by a vital 
 culture, to create new men, and new 
 kinds of men, who shall be of ever- 
 increasing worth to the republic and 
 to mankind. 
 
 Creation, as it is now interpreted, is a 
 process of development. If this inter 
 pretation be true, the result is none the 
 less creative. Species originate, whether 
 their origin be swift or slow. 
 
 Education is the human analogue of 
 creation. Its beginning is the unfolding 
 of something which already exists. But 
 its aim, its motive, its triumphant result, 
 is the production of something which 
 did not exist before. 
 
 The educated man is a new man. It is 
 not merely that he knows more. It is 
 
 [230] 
 
CREATIVE EDUCATION 
 
 not merely that he can do more. There 
 is something in him which was not there 
 when his education began. And this 
 something gives him a new relation to 
 the past, of which it is the fruit, and to 
 the future, of which it is the promise. 
 It is of the nature of an original force 
 which draws its energy from a new con 
 tact with the world and with mankind, 
 and which distributes its power through 
 out life in all its channels. 
 
 This, it seems to me, is the real object 
 and the right result of education; to 
 create out of the raw stuff that is hid 
 den in the boy a finer, stronger, broader, 
 nobler type of man. 
 
 In using this language I am not deal 
 ing in glittering generalities. The bet 
 ter manhood of which I speak as the 
 aim of education is no vague and nebu 
 lous thing the dim delight of sensa 
 tional preachers and virile novelists. It 
 
 [231] 
 
CREATIVE EDUCATION 
 
 has four definite marks: the power to 
 see clearly, the power to imagine viv 
 idly, the power to think independently, 
 and the power to will nobly. These are 
 the objects that the creative ideal sets 
 before us, and in so doing it gives us 
 a standard for all educational effort, 
 from the kindergarten to the univer 
 sity; a measure of what is valuable in 
 old systems and of what is desirable 
 in new theories; and a test of true suc 
 cess in teaching and learning. 
 
 I care not whether a man is called 
 a tutor, an instructor, or a full pro 
 fessor; nor whether any academic de 
 grees adorn his name; nor how many 
 facts or symbols of facts he has stored 
 away in his brain. If he has these four 
 powers clear sight, quick imagination, 
 sound reason, and right, strong will I 
 call him an educated man and fit to be 
 a teacher. 
 
 [232] 
 
CREATIVE EDUCATION 
 
 I use the word "sight" to denote all 
 those senses which are the natural inlets 
 of knowledge. Most men are born with 
 five, but comparatively few learn the 
 use of even one. The majority of peo 
 ple are like the idols described by the 
 psalmist: "Eyes have they, but they see 
 not: they have ears, but they hear not: 
 noses have they, but they smell not." 
 They walk through the world like blind 
 men at a panorama, and find it very 
 dull. There is a story of an English 
 woman who once said to the great 
 painter Turner, by way of comment on 
 one of his pictures: "I never saw any 
 thing like that in nature." "Madam," 
 said he, "what would you give if you 
 could?" 
 
 The power to use the senses to their 
 full capacity, clearly, sensitively, pene 
 tratingly, does not come by nature. It 
 is the fruit of an attentive habit of 
 
 [233] 
 
CREATIVE EDUCATION 
 
 veracious perception. Such a habit is 
 the result of instruction applied to the 
 opening of blind eyes and the unseal 
 ing of deaf ears. The academic studies 
 which have most influence in this direc 
 tion are those which deal principally 
 with objective facts, such as nature- 
 study, language, numbers, drawing, 
 and music. 
 
 But the education of perceptive power 
 is not, and cannot be, carried on exclu 
 sively in the study and the class-room. 
 Every meadow and every woodland is 
 a college, and every city square is full 
 of teachers. Do you know how the 
 stream flows, how the kingfisher poises 
 above it, how the trout swims in it, how 
 the ferns uncurl along its banks? Do 
 you know how the human body bal 
 ances itself, and along what lines and 
 curves it moves in walking, in running, 
 in dancing, and in what living charac- 
 
 [234] 
 
CREATIVE EDUCATION 
 
 ters the thoughts and feelings are writ 
 ten on the human face? Do you know 
 the structural aspect of man s temples 
 and palaces and bridges, of nature s 
 mountains and trees and flowers? Do 
 you know the tones and accents of 
 human speech, the songs of birds, the 
 voices of the forests and the sea? If not, 
 you need creative culture to make you 
 a sensitive possessor of the beauty of 
 the world. 
 
 Every true university should make 
 room in its scheme for life out-of-doors. 
 There is much to be said for John Mil 
 ton s plan of a school whose pupils 
 should go together each year on long 
 horseback journeys and sailing cruises 
 in order to see the world. Walter B age- 
 hot said of Shakespeare that he could 
 not walk down a street without know 
 ing what was in it. John Burroughs has 
 a college on a little farm beside the 
 
 [235] 
 
CREATIVE EDUCATION 
 
 Hudson; and John Muir has a univer 
 sity called Yosemite. If such men cross 
 a field or a thicket they see more than 
 the seven wonders of the world. That 
 is culture. And without it, all scholastic 
 learning is arid, and all the academic 
 degrees known to man are but china 
 oranges hung on a dry tree. 
 
 But beyond the world of outward per 
 ception there is another world of inward 
 vision, and the key to it is imagination. 
 To see things as they are that is a 1 
 precious gift. To see things as they 
 were in their beginning, or as they will 
 be in their ending, or as they ought to 
 be in their perfecting; to make the ab 
 sent, present; to rebuild the past out 
 of a fragment of carven stone ; to fore 
 see the future harvest in the grain of 
 wheat in the sower s hand; to visualize 
 the face of the invisible, and enter into 
 the lives of all sorts and conditions of 
 
 [236] 
 
CREATIVE EDUCATION 
 
 unknown men that is a far more pre 
 cious gift. 
 
 Imagination is more than a pleasant 
 fountain; it is a fertilizing stream. 
 Nothing great has ever been discovered 
 or invented without the aid of imagina 
 tion. It is the medium of all human 
 sympathy. No man can feel with an 
 other unless he can imagine himself in 
 the other man s place. 
 
 The chief instrument in the education 
 of imagination is literature. The object 
 of literary culture is very simple. It is 
 to teach a man to distinguish the best 
 books, and to enable him to read them 
 with inward vision. The man who has 
 read one great book in that way has be 
 come a new creature and entered a new* 
 world. But in how many schools and 
 colleges does that ideal prevail? We are 
 spending infinite toil and money to pro 
 duce spellers and parsers and scanners. 
 
 [237] 
 
CREATIVE EDUCATION 
 
 We are trying hard to increase the 
 number of people who can write with 
 ease, while the race of people who can 
 read with imagination is left to the care 
 of chance. I wish that we might reverse 
 the process. If our education would but 
 create a race of readers, earnest, intelli 
 gent, capable of true imaginative effort, 
 then the old writers would not be for 
 gotten, and the new ones would get a 
 wiser welcome when they arrive. 
 
 But the design of education is not 
 accomplished unless a man passes be 
 yond the power of seeing things as they 
 are, and beyond the power of interpret 
 ing and appreciating the thoughts of 
 other men, into the power of thinking 
 for himself. To be able to ask, "Why?" 
 and to discover what it means to say, 
 "Because" that is the intellectual tri 
 umph of education. 
 
 "To know the best that has been 
 
 [238] 
 
CREATIVE EDUCATION 
 
 thought and said in the world," is what 
 Matthew Arnold calls culture. It is an 
 excellent attainment. But there is a step 
 beyond it, that leads from culture into 
 manhood. That step is taken when the 
 student, knowing something of the best 
 that other men have thought and said, 
 begins to think his own thoughts clearly 
 through and to put them into his own 
 words. Then he passes through instruc 
 tion into education. Then he becomes a 
 real person in the intellectual world. 
 
 The mere pursuit of knowledge is 
 not necessarily an emancipating thing. 
 There is a kind of reading which is as 
 passive as massage. There is a kind of 
 study which fattens the mind for ex 
 amination like a prize pig for a county 
 fair. No doubt the beginning of in 
 struction must lie chiefly in exercises of 
 perception and memory. But at a cer 
 tain point the reason and the judgment 
 
 [239] 
 
CREATIVE EDUCATION 
 
 must be awakened and brought into 
 voluntary play. As a teacher I would 
 far rather have a pupil give an incor 
 rect answer in a way which showed that 
 he had really been thinking about the 
 subject, than a literally correct answer 
 in a way which showed that he had 
 merely swallowed what I had told him, 
 and regurgitated it on the examination 
 paper. 
 
 It seems to me, then, that a teacher 
 should give his pupils rules in such a 
 form that they can use them to work out 
 their own problems. He should instruct 
 them in languages so that words may 
 serve to express clearly and accurately 
 their own thoughts. He should teach 
 them science in order that they may 
 form habits of accurate observation, 
 careful induction, and moderate state 
 ment of laws which are not yet fully 
 understood. And if his instruction goes 
 
 [240] 
 
CREATIVE EDUCATION 
 
 on to philosophy, history, literature, 
 jurisprudence, government, his aim 
 should be to give his pupils some stand 
 ards by which they can estimate the 
 works and ways, the promises and pro 
 posals of men to-day. Pupils thus edu 
 cated will come out into the world pre 
 pared to take a real part in its life. 
 They will be able to form an opinion 
 without waiting for an editorial in their 
 favourite newspaper. They will not 
 need to borrow another man s spectacles 
 before they can trust their eyes. 
 
 "My mind to me a kingdom is," 
 
 wrote the quaint old courtly poet, Sir 
 Edward Dyer. But how many there 
 are, in all classes of society, who have 
 no right to use his words. Discrowned 
 monarchs, exiled and landless, desolate 
 and impotent, wearied with trivial cares 
 and dull amusements, enslaved to mas- 
 
 [241] 
 
CREATIVE EDUCATION 
 
 ters whom they despise and tasks which 
 promise much and pay little what pos 
 session is there that they can call their 
 own, what moment of time in which 
 they are not at the beck and call of 
 other men, either grinding stolidly at 
 their round in the treadmill or dancing 
 idiotically to the uncomprehended mu 
 sic of some stranger s pipe? We often 
 say of one whom we wish to hlame 
 slightly and to half excuse, "He is only 
 thoughtless." But there is no deeper 
 word of censure and reproach in human 
 speech, for it signifies one who has re 
 nounced a rightful dominion and de 
 spised a kingly diadem. 
 
 The great dream of education as a 
 loyalist of the democracy is that "the 
 king shall have his own again" that 
 no prince or princess of the blood royal 
 of humanity shall be self-exiled in the 
 desert of thoughtlessness or chained in 
 
 [242] 
 
J 
 
 CREATIVE EDUCATION 
 
 the slavery of ignorance. A lofty 
 dream, a distant dream, it may be, but 
 the only way toward its fulfilment lies 
 through the awakening of the reason. 
 Not to leave the people in a dull servi 
 tude of groping instincts, while the 
 * chosen few look down on them from the 
 cold heights of philosophy; but to dif 
 fuse through all the ranks of society an 
 ever-increasing light of quiet, steady 
 thought on the meaning and the laws 
 of life that is the democratic ideal. 
 Slowly or swiftly we may work tpward 
 it, but only along that line will the peo 
 ple win their heritage and keep it: the 
 power of self-rule, through self-knowl 
 edge, for the good of all. 
 
 But one more factor is included in the 
 creative ideal of education, and that is 
 its effect upon the will. The power to 
 see clearly, to imagine vividly, to think 
 independently, will certainly be wasted, 
 
 [243] 
 
CREATIVE EDUCATION 
 
 will be shut up in the individual and 
 kept for his own selfish delight, unless 
 the power to will nobly comes to call 
 the man into action and gives him, with 
 all his education, to the service of the 
 world. 
 
 An educated man is helpless until he * 
 is emancipated. An emancipated man is 
 aimless until he is consecrated. Conse 
 cration is simply concentration, plus a 
 sense of duty. 
 
 The final result of true education is 
 not a selfish scholar, nor a scornful critic 
 of the universe, but an intelligent and 
 faithful citizen who is determined to 
 put all his powers at the service of his 
 country and mankind. 
 
 What part are our colleges and uni 
 versities to play in the realizing of this 
 ideal of creative education? Their true 
 function is not exclusive, but inclusive. 
 They are to hold this standard of man- 
 
 [244] 
 
CREATIVE EDUCATION 
 
 hood steadily before them, and recog 
 nize its supreme and universal value 
 wherever it is found. 
 
 Some of the most thoughtful men in 
 the country have not been college-bred. 
 The university that assumes to look 
 down on these men is false to its own 
 ideal. It should honour them, and learn 
 from them whatever they have to teach* 
 College education is not to be separated 
 from the educative work which per 
 vades the whole social organism. What 
 we need at present is not new colleges 
 with a power of conferring degrees, 
 but more power in the existing colleges 
 to make men. To this end let them have 
 a richer endowment, a fuller equip 
 ment, but, above all, a revival of the 
 creative ideal. And let everything be 
 done to bring together the high school, 
 the normal school, the grammar school, 
 the primary school, and the little-red- 
 
 [245] 
 
CREATIVE EDUCATION 
 
 schoolhouse school, in the harmony of 
 this ideal. The university shall still 
 stand in the place of honour, if you will, 
 but only because it bears the clearest 
 and most steadfast witness that the end 
 of education is to create men who can 
 see clearly, imagine vividly, think stead 
 ily, and will nobly. 
 
 [246] 
 
XII 
 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE 
 
 MANY fine things have been said 
 in commencement addresses about 
 "Culture and Progress," "The Higher 
 Learning," "American Scholarship," 
 "The University Spirit," "The Wom 
 an s College," and other subjects bear 
 ing on the relation of education to life. 
 But the most important thing, after 
 all, the thing which needs not only to 
 be said, but also to be understood, is 
 that life itself is the great school. 
 
 This whole framework of things vis 
 ible and invisible wherein we mysteri 
 ously find ourselves perceiving, reason 
 ing, reflecting, desiring, choosing, and 
 
 [247] 
 
THE SCHOOL OF LIFE 
 
 acting, is designed and fitted, so far 
 at least as it concerns us and reveals 
 itself to us, to be a place of training 
 and enlightenment for the human race 
 through the unfolding and develop 
 ment of human persons such as you 
 and me. 
 
 For no other purpose are these won 
 drous potencies of perception and emo 
 tion, thought and will, housed within 
 walls of flesh and shut in by doors of 
 sense, but that we may learn to set them 
 free and lead them out. For no other 
 purpose are we beset with attractions 
 and repulsions, obstacles and allure 
 ments, tasks, duties, pleasures, persons, 
 books, machines, plants, animals, houses, 
 forests, storm and sunshine, water fresh 
 and salt, fire wild and tame, a various 
 earth, a mutable heaven, and an intri 
 cate humanity, but that we may be in 
 structed in the nature of things and 
 
 [248] 
 
THE SCHOOL OF LIFE 
 
 people, and rise by knowledge and sym 
 pathy, through gradual and secret pro 
 motions, into a fuller and finer life. 
 
 Facts are teachers. Experiences are 
 lessons. Friends are^uides. Work is a 
 master. Love is an interpreter. Teach 
 ing itself is a method of learning. Joy 
 carries a divining rod and discovers 
 fountains. Sorrow is an astronomer and 
 shows us the stars. 
 
 What I have lived I really know, and 
 what I really know I partly own; and 
 so, begirt with what I know and what 
 I own, I move through my curriculum, 
 elective and required, gaining nothing 
 but what I learn, at once instructed 
 and examined by every duty and every 
 pleasure. 
 
 It is a mistake to say, "To-day educa 
 tion ends, to-morrow life begins." The 
 process is continuous: the idea into the 
 purpose, the purpose into the action, 
 
 [249] 
 
THE SCHOOL OF LIFE 
 
 the action into the character. When 
 the mulberry seed falls into the ground 
 and germinates, it begins to be trans 
 formed into silk. 
 
 This view of life, as a process of edu 
 cation was held by the Greeks and the 
 Hebrews the two races in whose deep 
 hearts the stream of modern progress 
 takes its rise, the two great races whose 
 energy of spirit and strength of self- 
 restraint have kept the world from 
 sinking into the dream-lit torpor of the 
 mystic East, or whirling into the blind, 
 restless activity of the barbarian West. 
 
 What is it but the idea of the school 
 of life that sings through the words of 
 the Hebrew psalmist? "1 will instruct 
 thee and teach thee in the way which 
 thou shalt go. I will guide thee with 
 mine eye. Be ye not as the horse or as 
 the mule, whose mouth must be held in 
 with bit and bridle lest they come near 
 
 [250] 
 
THE SCHOOL OF LIFE 
 
 unto thee." This warning against the 
 mulish attitude which turns life into a 
 process of punishment, this praise of 
 the eye-method which is the triumph 
 of teaching these are the notes of a 
 wonderful and world- wide school. 
 
 It is the same view of life that shines 
 through Plato s noble words: "This 
 then must be our notion of the just 
 man, that even when he is in poverty 
 or sickness, or any other seeming mis 
 fortune, all things will in the end work 
 together for good to him in life and 
 death ; for the gods have a care of any 
 one whose desire is to become just, and 
 to be like God, as far as man can attain 
 his likeness by the pursuit of virtue." 
 
 Not always, indeed, did the Greek use 
 so strong an ethical emphasis. For him 
 the dominant idea was the unfolding 
 of reason, the clarifying of the powers 
 of thought and imagination. His ideal 
 
THE SCHOOL OF LIFE 
 
 man was one who saw things as they 
 are, and understood their nature, and 
 felt beauty, and followed truth. 
 
 It was the Hebrew who laid the heavi 
 er stress upon the conception of right 
 eousness. The foundations of his school 
 were the tablets on which the divine 
 laws, "Thou shalt" and "Thou shalt 
 not," were inscribed. The ideal of his 
 education was the power to distinguish 
 between good and evil, and the will to 
 choose the good, and the strength to 
 stand by it. Life, to his apprehension, 
 fulfilled its purpose in the development 
 of a man who walked uprightly and 
 kept the commandments. 
 
 Thus these two master-races of an 
 tiquity, alike in their apprehension of 
 existence from the .standpoint of the 
 soul, worked out their thought of vital 
 education, along the lines of different 
 temperaments, to noble results. ^Eschy- 
 
 [252] 
 
THE SCHOOL OF LIFE 
 
 lus and Ezekiel lived in the same cen 
 tury. 
 
 Reason and Righteousness: what more 
 can the process of life do to justify 
 itself than to unfold these two splendid 
 flowers on the tree of our humanity? 
 What third idea is there that the third 
 great race, the Anglo-Saxon, may con 
 ceive, and cherish, and bring to blossom 
 and fruition? 
 
 There is only one the idea of Ser 
 vice. Too much the sweet reasonable 
 ness of the Greek ideal tended to fos 
 ter an intellectual isolation; too much 
 the strenuous righteousness of the He 
 brew ideal gave shelter to the microbe 
 of Pharisaism. It was left for the An 
 glo-Saxon race, quickened by the new 
 word and the new life of a divine 
 Teacher, to claim for the seed an equal 
 glory with the flower and the fruit; to 
 perceive that righteousness is not rea- 
 
 [253] 
 
THE SCHOOL OF LIFE 
 
 sonable, and reason is not righteous, 
 unless they are both communicable and 
 serviceable; to say that the highest re 
 sult of our human experience is to bring 
 forth better men and women, able and 
 willing to give of that which makes 
 them better to the world in which they 
 live. 
 
 This is the ultimate word concern 
 ing the school of life. I catch its inspir 
 ing note in the question of that very 
 noble gentleman, Sir Philip Sidney, 
 who said: "To what purpose should our 
 thoughts be directed to various kinds 
 of knowledge, unless room be afforded 
 for putting it into practice, so that 
 public advantage may be the result?" 
 These then are what the education of 
 life is to bring out Reason, Right 
 eousness, and Service. 
 
 But if life itself be the school, what 
 becomes of our colleges and universi- 
 
 [254] 
 
THE SCHOOL OF LIFE 
 
 ties? They are, or they ought to be, 
 simply preparatory institutions to fit us 
 to go on with our education. Not what 
 do they teach, but how do they prepare 
 us to learn that is the question. I 
 measure a college not by the height of 
 its towers, nor by the length of its ex 
 amination papers, nor by the pride of 
 its professors, but chiefly by the docility 
 of its graduates. I do not ask, Where 
 did you leave off? but, Are you ready 
 to go on? Graduation is not a stepping 
 out; it is either a stepping up gradu 
 ad gradum a promotion to a higher 
 class, or a dropping to a lower one. The 
 cause for which a student is dropped 
 may be invincible ignorance, incurable 
 frivolity, or obstructive and constrictive 
 learning. 
 
 "One of the benefits of a college edu 
 cation," says Emerson, "is to show a 
 boy its little avail." Hamilton and Jef- 
 
 [255] 
 
THE SCHOOL OF LIFE 
 
 ferson and Madison and Adams and 
 Webster were college men. But Frank 
 lin, Washington, Marshall, Clay, and 
 Lincoln were not. 
 
 A college education is good for those 
 who can digest it. The academic atmos 
 phere has its dangers, of which the 
 greatest are a certain illusion of infalli 
 bility, a certain fever of intellectual 
 jealousy, and a certain dry idolatry of 
 schedules and programmes. But these 
 infirmities hardly touch the mass of 
 students, busy as they are nowadays 
 with their athletics, their societies, their 
 youthful pleasures. The few who are 
 affected more seriously are usually 
 cured by contact with the larger world. 
 Most of the chronic cases occur among 
 those who really never leave the pre 
 paratory institution, but pass from the 
 class to the instructor s seat, and from 
 that to the professorial chair, and so 
 
 [256] 
 
THE SCHOOL OF LIFE 
 
 along the spiral, bounded ever by the 
 same curve and steadily narrowing in 
 ward. 
 
 Specialists we must have; and to-day 
 we are told that a successful specialist 
 must give his whole life to the study 
 of the viscosity of electricity, or the 
 value of the participial infinitive, or 
 some such pin-point of concentration. 
 For this a secluded and cloistered life 
 may be necessary. But let us have room 
 also in v our colleges for teachers who 
 have been out in the world, and touched 
 life on different sides, and taken part 
 in various labours, and been buffeted, 
 and learned how other men live, and 
 what troubles them, and what they 
 need. Great is the specialist, and pre 
 cious; but I think we still have a use 
 for masters of the old type, who knew 
 many things, and were broadened by 
 experience, and had the power of vital 
 
 [257] 
 
THE SCHOOL OF LIFE 
 
 inspiration, and could start their pupils 
 on and up through the struggles and 
 triumphs of a lifelong education. 
 
 There is much discussion nowadays of 
 the subjects which may be, or must be, 
 taught in a college. A part, at least, 
 of the controversy is futile. For the 
 main problem is not one of subjects, 
 but of aim and method. "Liberal stud 
 ies," says Professor S. H. Butcher, one 
 of the finest living teachers of Greek, 
 "pursued in an illiberal spirit, fall be 
 low the mechanical arts in dignity and 
 worth." There are two ways of teach 
 ing any subject: one opens the mind, 
 the other closes it. 
 
 The mastery of the way to do things 
 is the accomplishment that counts for 
 future work. I like the teacher who 
 shows me not merely where, he stands, 
 but how he got there, and who encour 
 ages and equips me to find my own 
 
 [258] 
 
THE SCHOOL OF LIFE 
 
 path through the maze of books and 
 the tangled thickets of human opinion. 
 Let us keep our colleges and univer 
 sities true to their function, which is 
 preparatory and not final. Let us not 
 ask of them a yearly output of "fin 
 ished scholars." The very phrase has a 
 mortuary sound, like an epitaph. He 
 who can learn no more has not really 
 learned anything. What we want is 
 not finished scholars, but well-equipped 
 learners ; minds that can give and take ; 
 intellects not cast in ajnpiild, bi]t *yipg- 
 ters of a method ; people who are ready 
 io go forward wisely toward a larger 
 
 The chief benefit that a good student 
 may get in a good college is not a 
 definite amount of Greek and Latin, 
 mathematics and chemistry, botany and 
 zoology, history and logic, though this 
 in itself is good. But far better is the 
 
 [259] 
 
THE SCHOOL OF LIFE 
 
 \power to apprehend and distinguish, 
 /to weigh evidence and interpret facts, 
 to think clearly, to infer carefully, to 
 imagine vividly. Best of all is a sense 
 of the unity of knowledge, a reverence 
 for the naked truth, a perception of 
 the variety of beauty, a feeling of the 
 significance of literature, and a wider 
 sympathy with the upward-striving, 
 dimly groping, perplexed and daunt 
 less life of man. 
 
 I will not ask whether such a result 
 of college training has any commercial 
 value, whether it enables one to com 
 mand a larger wage in the market 
 place, whether it opens the door to 
 wealth, or fame, or social distinction; 
 nor even whether it increases the chance 
 of winning a place in the red book of 
 Who s Who. These questions are trea 
 sonable to the very idea of education, 
 which aims not at a marketable prod- 
 
 [260] 
 
THE SCHOOL OF LIFE 
 
 uct, but at a vital development. The 
 one thing certain and important is that 
 those who are wisely and liberally dis 
 ciplined and enlightened in any college 
 enter the school of life with an advan 
 tage. They are "well prepared," as we 
 say. They are fitted to go on with their 
 education in reason and righteousness 
 and service under the great Master. 
 
 I do not hold with the modern epi 
 gram that "the true university is a 
 library." Through the vast wilderness 
 of books flows the slender stream of 
 literature, and often there is need of 
 guidance to find and follow it. Only a 
 genius or an angel can safely be turned 
 loose in a library to wander at will. 
 Nothing is more offensive than the 
 complacent illusion of omniscience be 
 gotten in an ignorant person by the 
 haphazard reading of a few volumes of 
 philosophy or science. 
 
 [261] 
 
THE SCHOOL OF LIFE 
 
 There is a certain kind of reading that 
 is little better than an idle habit, a sub 
 stitute for thought. Of many books it 
 may be said that they are nothing but 
 the echoes of echoing echoes. If a good 
 book be as Milton said, "the precious 
 life-blood of a master-spirit, embalmed 
 and treasured," still the sacred relic, as 
 in the phial of St. Januarius at Naples, 
 remains solid and immovable. It needs 
 a kind of miracle to make it liquefy and 
 flow the miracle of interpretation and 
 inspiration wrought most often by 
 the living voice of a wise master, and 
 communicating to the young heart the 
 wonderful secret that some books are 
 alive. Never shall I forget the miracle 
 wrought for me by the reading of Mil 
 ton s Comus by my father in his book- 
 lined study on Brooklyn Heights, and 
 of Cicero s Letters by Professor Pack 
 ard in the Latin class at old Princeton. 
 
 [262] 
 
THE SCHOOL OF LIFE 
 
 The Greeks learned the alphabet from 
 the Phoenicians. But the Phoenicians 
 used it for contracts, deeds, bills of 
 lading, and accounts; the Greeks for 
 poetry and philosophy. Contracts and 
 accounts, of all kinds, are for filing. 
 Literature is of one kind only, the in 
 terpretation of life and nature through 
 the imagination in clear and personal 
 words of power and charm. And this is 
 for reading. 
 
 To get the good of the library in the 
 school of life you must bring into it 
 something better than a mere bookish 
 taste. You must bring the power to 
 read, between the lines, behind the 
 words, beyond the horizon of the 
 printed page. Philip s question to the 
 chamberlain of Ethiopia was crucial: 
 "Understandest thou what thou read- 
 est?" 
 
 I want books not to pass the time, 
 
 [263] 
 
THE SCHOOL OF LIFE 
 
 but to fill it with beautiful thoughts 
 and images, to enlarge my world, to 
 give me new friends in the spirit, to 
 purify my ideals and make them clear, 
 to show me the local colour of un 
 known regions and the bright stars of 
 universal truth. 
 
 Time is wasted if we read too much 
 looking-glass fiction, books about our 
 own class and place and period, stories 
 of American college life, society novels, 
 tales in which our own conversation is 
 repeated and our own prejudices are 
 embodied Kodak prints, Gramophone 
 cylinders! I prefer the real voice, the 
 visible face, things which I can see and 
 hear for myself without waiting for 
 Miss Arabella Tompkins report of 
 them. When I read, I wish to go 
 abroad, to hear new messages, to meet 
 new people, to get a fresh point of 
 view, to revisit other ages, to listen to 
 
 [264] 
 
THE SCHOOL OF LIFE 
 
 the oracles of Delphi and drink deep of 
 the springs of Pieria. The only writer 
 who can tell me anything of real value 
 about my familiar environment is the 
 genius who shows me that after all it 
 is not familiar, but strange, wonderful, 
 crowded with secrets unguessed and 
 possibilities unrealized. 
 
 The two things best worth reading 
 about in poetry and fiction are the sym 
 bols of nature and the passions of the 
 human heart. I want also an essayist 
 who will clarify life by gentle illumina 
 tion and lambent humour; a philoso 
 pher who will help me to see the reason 
 of things apparently unreasonable; a 
 historian who will show me how peoples 
 have risen and fallen ; and a biographer 
 who will let me touch the hand of the 
 great and the good. This is the magic 
 of literature. This is how real books 
 help to educate us in the school of life. 
 
 [265] 
 
THE SCHOOL OF LIFE 
 
 There is no less virtue, but rather 
 more, in events, tasks, duties, obliga 
 tions, than there is in books. Work it 
 self has a singular power to unfold and 
 develop our nature. The difference is 
 not between working people and think 
 ing people, but between people who 
 work without thinking and people who 
 think while they work. 
 
 What is it that you have to do? To 
 weave cloth, to grow fruit, to sell bread, 
 to make a fire, to prepare food, to 
 nurse the sick, to keep house? It mat 
 ters not. Your task brings you the first 
 lesson of reason that you must deal 
 with things as they are, not as you im 
 agine or desire them to be. Wet wood 
 will not burn. Fruit trees must have 
 sunshine. Heavy bread will not sell. 
 Sick people have whims. Empty cup 
 boards yield no dinners. The house will 
 not keep itself. Platitudes, no doubt; 
 
 [266] 
 
THE SCHOOL OF LIFE 
 
 but worth more for education than 
 many a metaphysical theory or roman 
 tic dream. For when we face these 
 things and realize their meaning, they 
 lead us out of the folly of trying to live 
 in such a world as we would like it to be, 
 and make us live in the world which is. 
 
 The mystic visions of the dreamy 
 Orient are a splendid pageant. But for 
 guidance I follow a teacher like Soc 
 rates, whose gods were too noble to 
 deceive or masquerade, whose world 
 was a substantial embodiment of divine 
 ideas, and whose men and women were 
 not playthings of Fate or Chance, but 
 living souls, working, struggling, fight 
 ing their way to victory. 
 
 I do not wish to stay with the nurse 
 and hear fairy tales. I prefer to enter 
 the school of life. In the presence of the 
 mysteries of pain and suffering, under 
 the pressure of disaster or disease, I 
 
 [267] 
 
THE SCHOOL OF LIFE 
 
 turn not for counsel to some Scythian 
 soothsayer with her dark incantations 
 and her vague assurances that the evil 
 will vanish if I only close my eyes, but 
 to such a calm, wise teacher as Hippoc 
 rates, who says: "As for me, I think 
 that these maladies are divine, like all 
 others, but that none is more divine or 
 more human than another. Each has 
 its natural principle, and none exists 
 without its natural cause." 
 
 This is intellectual fortitude. And 
 fortitude is the sentinel and guardian 
 virtue; without it all other virtues are 
 in peril. Daring is inborn, and often 
 born blind. But fortitude is implanted, 
 nurtured, unfolded in the school of life. 
 
 I praise the marvellous courage of the 
 human heart, enduring evils, facing 
 perplexities, overcoming obstacles, ris 
 ing after a hundred falls, building up 
 what gravity pulls down, toiling at 
 
 [268] 
 
THE SCHOOL OF LIFE 
 
 tasks never finished, relighting extin 
 guished fires, and hoping all things. 
 I like not the implication of Byron s 
 line "fair women and brave men" 
 for women are not less brave than men, 
 but often more brave, though in a dif 
 ferent way. Life itself takes them in 
 hand, these delicate and gracious creat 
 ures; and if they are worthy and will 
 ing, true scholars of experience, edu 
 cates them in a heroism of the heart 
 which suffers all the more splendidly 
 because it is sensitive, and conquers 
 fear all the more gloriously because it 
 is timorous. 
 
 The obstinacy of the materials with 
 which we have to deal, in all kinds of 
 human work, has an educational value. 
 Someone has called it "the total deprav 
 ity of inanimate things." The phrase 
 would be fit if depravity could be con 
 ceived of as beneficent. 
 
 [269] 
 
THE SCHOOL OF LIFE 
 
 No doubt a world in which matter 
 never got out of place and became dirt, 
 in which iron had no flaws and wood no 
 cracks, in which gardens had no weeds 
 and food grew ready cooked, in which 
 clothes never wore out and washing was 
 as easy as the soap-makers advertise 
 ments describe it, in which rules had 
 no exceptions, and things never went 
 wrong, would be a much easier place to 
 live in. But for purposes of training 
 and development it would be worth 
 nothing at all. 
 
 It is the resistance that puts us on our 
 mettle: it is the conquest of the reluc 
 tant stuff that educates the worker. I 
 wish you enough difficulties to keep you 
 well and make you strong and skilful! 
 
 No one can get the full benefit of the 
 school of life who does not welcome the 
 silent and deep instruction of nature. 
 This earth on which we live, these heav- 
 
 [270] 
 
THE SCHOOL OF LIFE 
 
 ens above us, these dumb companions 
 of our work and play, this wondrous liv 
 ing furniture and blossoming drapery 
 of our school-room all have their les 
 sons to impart. But they will not teach 
 swiftly and suddenly; they will not let 
 us master their meaning in a single 
 course, or sum it all up in a single 
 treatise. Slowly, gradually, with infinite 
 reserves, with delicate confidences, as if 
 they would prolong their instruction 
 that we may not forsake their compan 
 ionship, they yield up their significance 
 to the student who loves them. 
 
 The scientific study of nature is 
 often commended on merely practical 
 grounds. I would honour and praise it 
 for higher reasons for its power to 
 train the senses in the habit of veracious 
 observation; for its corrective influence 
 upon the audacity of a logic which 
 would attempt to evolve the camel from 
 
 [271] 
 
THE SCHOOL OF LIFE 
 
 the inner consciousness of a philoso 
 pher; for its steadying, quieting effect 
 upon the mind. Poets have indulged 
 too often in supercilious sneers at the 
 man of science, the natural philoso 
 pher 
 
 "a fingering slave, 
 One that would peep and botanize 
 Upon his mother s grave." 
 
 The contempt is ill founded; the sneer 
 is indiscriminate. It is as if one should 
 speak of the poet as 
 
 A man of trifling breath, 
 One that would flute and sonneteer 
 About his sweetheart s death. 
 
 Is there any more danger of narrow 
 ing the mind by the patient scrutiny of 
 plants and birds than by the investiga 
 tion of ancient documents and annals, 
 or the study of tropes, metaphors, and 
 metres? Is it only among men of science 
 that we find pettiness, and irascibility, 
 
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THE SCHOOL OF LIFE 
 
 and domineering omniscience, or do 
 they sometimes occur among historians 
 and poets? It seems to me that there are 
 no more serene and admirable intelli 
 gences than those which are often found 
 among the true naturalists. How fine 
 and enviable is their life-long pursuit 
 of their chosen subject. What mind 
 could be happier in its kingdom than 
 that of an Agassiz or a Guyot? What 
 life more beautiful and satisfying than 
 that of a Linnaeus or an Audubon? 
 
 But for most of us these advanced 
 courses in natural science are impossi 
 ble. What we must content ourselves 
 with is not really worthy to be called 
 nature-study; it is simply nature-kin 
 dergarten. We learn a little about the 
 movements of the stars and clouds; a 
 few names of trees and flowers and 
 birds ; some of the many secrets of their 
 life and growth; just the words of one 
 
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THE SCHOOL OF LIFE 
 
 syllable, that is all. And then if we are 
 wise and teachable, we walk with Nat 
 ure, and let her breathe into our hearts 
 those lessons of humility, and patience, 
 and confidence, and good cheer, and 
 tranquil resignation, and temperate 
 joy, which are her "moral lore" les 
 sons which lead her scholars onward 
 through a merry youth, and a strong 
 maturity, and a serene old age, and pre 
 pare them by the pure companionship 
 of this world for the enjoyment of a 
 better. 
 
 The social environment, the human 
 contact in all its forms, plays a large 
 part in the school of life. "The city in 
 structs men," said Simonides. 
 
 Conversation is an exchange of ideas: 
 this is what distinguishes it from gos 
 sip and chatter. The organization of 
 work, the division of labour, implies 
 and should secure a mutual education 
 
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THE SCHOOL OF LIFE 
 
 of the workers. Some day, when this 
 is better understood, the capitalist will 
 be enlightened and the labour-union 
 civilized. 
 
 Even the vexed problem of domestic 
 service is capable of yielding educa 
 tional results to those who are busy 
 with it. The mistress may learn some 
 thing of the nature of fair dealing, the 
 responsibilities of command, the essen 
 tial difference between a carpet-sweep 
 ing machine and the girl who pushes it. 
 The servant may learn something of 
 the dignity of doing any kind of work 
 well, the virtue of self-respecting obe 
 dience, and the sweet reasonableness of 
 performing the task that is paid for. 
 
 I do not think much of the analogy 
 between human society and the bee-hive 
 or the ant-hill, which certain writers 
 are now elaborating in subtle symbolist 
 fashion. It passes over and ignores 
 
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THE SCHOOL OF LIFE 
 
 the vital problem which is ever press 
 ing upon us humans the problem of 
 reconciling personal claims with the 
 claims of the race. Among the bees and 
 the ants, so far as we can see, the com 
 munity is all, the individual is nothing. 
 There are no personal aspirations to 
 suppress; no conscious conflicts of duty 
 and desire; no dreams of a better kind 
 of hive, a new and perfected formicary. 
 It is only to repeat themselves, to keep 
 the machine going, to reproduce the 
 same hive, the same ant-hill, that these 
 perfect communisms blindly strive. But 
 human society is less perfect, and 
 therefore more promising. The highest 
 achievements of humanity come from 
 something which, so far as we know, 
 bees and ants do not possess: the sense 
 of imperfection, the desire of advance. 
 Ideals must be personal before they 
 can become communal. It was not until 
 
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THE SCHOOL OF LIFE 
 
 the rights of the individual were per 
 ceived and recognized, including the 
 right to the pursuit of happiness, that 
 the vision of a free and noble state, 
 capable of progress, dawned upon man 
 kind. 
 
 Life teaches all but the obstinate and 
 mean how to find a place in such a state 
 and grow therein. A true love of others 
 is the counterpart of a right love of 
 self; that is, a love for the better part, 
 the finer, nobler self, the man that is 
 
 "to arise in me, 
 That the man that I am may cease to be." 
 
 Individualism is a fatal poison. But 
 individuality is the salt of common life. 
 You may have to live in a crowd, but 
 you do not have to live like it, nor sub 
 sist on its food. You may have your 
 own orchard. You may drink at a hid 
 den spring. Be yourself if you would 
 serve others. 
 
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THE SCHOOL OF LIFE 
 
 Learn also how to appraise criticism, 
 to value enmity, to get the good of be 
 ing blamed and evil spoken of. A soft 
 social life is not likely to be very noble. 
 You can hardly tell whether your faiths 
 and feelings are real until they are at 
 tacked. 
 
 But take care that you defend them 
 with an open mind and by right reason. 
 You are entitled to a point of view, but 
 not to announce it as the centre of the 
 universe. Prejudice, more than any 
 thing else, robs life of its educational 
 value. I knew a man who maintained 
 that the chief obstacle to the triumph 
 of Christianity was the practice of in 
 fant baptism. I heard a woman say that 
 no one who ate with his knife could be 
 a gentleman. Hopeless scholars these! 
 
 What we call society is very narrow. 
 But life is very broad. It includes "the 
 whole world of God s cheerful, fallible 
 
 [278] 
 
THE SCHOOL OF LIFE 
 
 men and women." It is not only the fa 
 mous people and the well-dressed peo 
 ple who are worth meeting. It is every 
 one who has something to communicate. 
 The scholar has something to say to me, 
 if he be still alive. But I would hear 
 also the traveller, the manufacturer, the 
 soldier, the good workman, the forester, 
 the village school-teacher, the nurse, the 
 quiet observer, the unspoiled child, the 
 skilful housewife. I knew an old Ger 
 man woman, living in a city tenement, 
 who said: "My heart is a little garden, 
 and God is planting flowers there." 
 
 "ZZ faut cultiver son jardin" yes, but 
 not only that. One should learn also to 
 enjoy the neighbour s garden, however 
 small; the roses straggling over the 
 fence, the scent of lilacs drifting across 
 the road. 
 
 There is a great complaint nowadays 
 about the complication of life, espe- 
 
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THE SCHOOL OF LIFE 
 
 cially in its social and material aspects, 
 It is bewildering, confusing, over 
 straining. It destroys the temper of 
 tranquillity necessary to education. The 
 simple life is recommended, and right 
 ly, as a refuge from this trouble. 
 
 But perhaps we need to understand a 
 little more clearly what simplicity is. It 
 does not consist merely in low ceilings, 
 loose garments, and the absence of bric- 
 a-brac. Life may be conventional and 
 artificial in a log cabin. Philistines have 
 their prejudices, and the etiquette of 
 the cotton-mill is often as absurd and 
 burdensome as that of the manor-house. 
 
 A little country town, with its inflexible 
 social traditions, its petty animosities 
 and jealousies, its obstinate mistrust of 
 all that is strange, and its crude gossip 
 about all that it cannot comprehend, 
 with its sensitive self-complacency, and 
 its subtle convolutions of parish poli- 
 
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THE SCHOOL OF LIFE 
 
 tics, and its rivalries on a half-inch 
 scale, may be as complicated and as 
 hard to live in as great Babylon itself. 
 Simplicity, in truth, depends but lit 
 tle on external things. It can live in 
 broadcloth or homespun; it can eat 
 white bread or black. It is not out 
 ward, but inward. A certain openness 
 of mind to learn the daily lessons of 
 the school of life; a certain willing 
 ness of heart to give and to receive that 
 extra service, that gift beyond the strict 
 measure of debt, which makes friend 
 ship possible; a certain clearness of 
 spirit to perceive the best in things and 
 people, to love it without fear and to 
 cleave to it without mistrust; a peace 
 able sureness of affection and taste; a 
 gentle straightforwardness of action; a 
 kind sincerity of speech these are the 
 marks of the simple life. It cometh 
 not with observation, for it is within 
 
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THE SCHOOL OF LIFE 
 
 you. I have seen it in a hut. I have seen 
 it in a palace. And wherever it is found 
 it is the best prize of the school of life, 
 the badge of a scholar well-beloved of 
 the Master. 
 
 FINIS 
 
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