THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 i 
 
THE ARTS 
 OF LIFE 
 
 BY 
 
 RICHARD ROGERS BOWKER 
 
 mmmmm^ 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
 
 1900 
 
-3^ 
 
 COPYRIGIj[T, ipoo, BY RICHARD ROGERS COWKER 
 AI-::. RIGHTS RSSJSRVJiD , 
 
31n l^fe ipame 
 
 AND WITH THE NAMES OF 
 PAUL THE WORLD- APOSTLE, 
 DARWIN, SPENCER, GLAD- 
 STONE, WORLDS-MEN ALL, 
 THIS ESSAY OF RECONCILI- 
 ATION IS INSCRIBED 
 
 9625G2 
 
Digitized by the Internet Arciiive 
 
 in 2007 with funding from 
 
 IVIicrosoft Corporation 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/artsoflifeOObowkrich 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGB 
 
 PROEM : GROWTH vii 
 
 FOREWORD I 
 
 FIRSTS AND LASTS II 
 
 OF EDUCATION 49 
 
 OF BUSINESS 97 
 
 OF POLITICS 151 
 
 OF RELIGION 219 
 
 THE END . 291 
 
PROEM 
 
 GROWTH 
 
 (On reading Schliemann's " Troy " and Tylor's " Primi- 
 tive Culture'*) 
 
 . . . Ah, old Troy / long buried, long forgot ! 
 Below, another Troy ; below, Troy older / What 
 Below, who telleth ? Such is aye man^s lot — 
 
 Building on his earth-hid past, 
 The last forever to last / 
 Ah, the leaves in Timers blast. 
 
 How they whirl and flutter and fall. 
 And cover the old with their pall. 
 And nourish the new with their all ! 
 
 Behold Lifers history ! 
 Behold Death^s mystery / 
 Behold Earth^ s prophecy / 
 
 In every new lives all the old; 
 
 The present builds on all pasts' mould. 
 
 So the beads of Tim^s rosary are told. 
 
 And still the man repeats the race : 
 The baby* s faltering, awkward grcue 
 Pit-pats in the primeval pace. 
 vii 
 
PROEM 
 
 E'en in our common, daily talk^ 
 The ghosts of generations stalk, 
 And hand in hand the ages walk. 
 
 And ever creeping forth from night, 
 And ever groping toward the light, 
 And ever seeking for the right, 
 
 Man^s story from his birth 
 Re-tells the history of his earth 
 His water-andfire-baptiztd earth, 
 
 Stratum on stratum piled. So men, 
 Thoughts, words, ways, deeds, — again, 
 Again, again, and yet again / 
 
 Graves engulf graves. The old, dead past 
 
 Coffins its pasts in rock-ribs fast. 
 
 And yet — and yet — // lives, the past / 
 
 Thus grows dear Earth toward starry skies 
 And buries cities — but new cities rise. 
 So the great race of man grows wise. 
 
 Vlll 
 
FOREWORD 
 
FOREWORD " - ' '' ' - 
 
 !lFE is an art. 
 
 There is born into this world, 
 we know not whence, or how, The Infant 
 or why, an infant Being. Out ^^^^s 
 of this plastic clay is to grow, 
 touch by touch, the divine image, the lovely 
 statue of the Soul. Coarse clay or fine clay 
 it may be, but coarse or fine it is to be formed, 
 or de-formed. Created in the unknown gene- 
 sis of elemental being, kneaded in the influ- 
 ences of all the ages that have made ready 
 for it, rough -cast in the mould of its human 
 parentage, it comes — to life. A life, in life ! 
 The hands that shape it first are not its own. 
 But presently it becomes conscious, willing, 
 responsible, into whose own care is put the 
 shaping of its Self. Always human influences 
 are about it, to help or to harm, to in-spirit or 
 to de-face, and in its turn it becomes an influ- 
 ence, shaping as it is shaped. Around it is 
 Nature, willing to give what each will take, 
 and above it the infinite of the Heavens, from 
 which comes light, to those whose eyes are 
 open to that light. To him who will, this shap- 
 ing of life becomes an art, and the highest of 
 arts, in which all of us have part in the forming 
 3 
 
- THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 7t ^ «/? <>/, ;' 'of each other soul, but in which also, and above 
 
 '" ' ' all, each soul is the master-artist of its Self. 
 
 We have not so willed ; we have not set 
 
 The Art of ourselves so to do. With all our learning, 
 
 Living ^g ha.vQ failed to learn living. With all our 
 
 science, we have neglected the science of 
 
 our own lives. With all our art, we have 
 
 ignored the art which lifts all other arts to 
 
 their supreme purpose and in which all 
 
 other arts should fruit. 
 
 The supreme flower is a human character. 
 Character The unfolding rose, perfect among flowers, in 
 Fwf^"^ full beauty of form and glory of color and ra- 
 diance of scent, is but its type. To produce 
 the perfect rose is an art. Nature gives us 
 the wild rose and the eglantine, the scentless 
 flower, the scented leaf, of these roses of the 
 field. The gardener knows plant-life, selects 
 and brings together, studies the seedling or 
 the graft, and according to the needs of the 
 growing plant gives it light and air and 
 warmth and soil and care. And with the 
 shapings of his art, comes at last the rose 
 perfect after its fashion, the rose among roses. 
 The supreme jewel is a human soul. The 
 The Soul diamond is but its symbol, in perfect cutting 
 jewe?^"^^""^ giving forth from its every-sided facets, with 
 
 4 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 all beauty of sparkle and of color, the light 
 which it takes unto itself. The cutting of the 
 diamond is an art. He who will cut a great 
 jewel trains himself in much knowledge of 
 jewels, studies with infinite patience his jewel 
 in the rough to know in what form it will 
 best shine, concentrates his knowledge, his 
 skill, his very life in conscious and conscien- 
 tious toil at his task, spends months upon a 
 facet and a lifetime in completing the perfect 
 work. And nothing less fine than diamond 
 itself can cut the diamond, — so human de- 
 velopment answers only to human character. 
 
 A human life, each human life, may be and 
 should be, in the same sense, a work of con- a Life an 
 scious and purposed art. It is the supreme ^^* Work 
 defect of our civilization that we fail here. 
 To the rearing of animals, to the perfecting 
 of a piece of inanimate machinery, to the 
 learning of a profession, we give time and 
 thought and care and training which we do 
 not give, in the highest human relations, to 
 ourselves, or our children, or our friends, or 
 the passing human beings who are a part of 
 our lives and of whose lives we make part. 
 Each day is a frame into which we may in 
 large measure paint such pictures as we will ; 
 5 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 each life, and most of all one's own life, is a 
 marble from which we may in some measure 
 carve forth our ideal. Sometimes we say this 
 about our children ; less often we think it 
 about ourselves ; almost never do we get it 
 into actual working realization for either. 
 
 A girl goes to Paris to " study art," who has 
 The Study never thought at home of studying herself, 
 ° * ® or her home, or her friends, with any rela- 
 
 tion to the creative opportunities of the high- 
 est art, the modeling of souls, which are 
 literally at her hand. The mistress of an 
 "artistic" house forgets to apply to people 
 the care she lavishes upon things : her table, 
 her dinner, her toilet, is a work of art, but 
 for her own development she has no care ; 
 her wines are of select vintage, but her con- 
 versation is the stale beer of gossip ; she 
 plays sonatas on the piano, but jangles hu- 
 man chords out of tune. The master of a 
 profession studies daily the progress of his 
 art, but fails to apply more than casual 
 thought to the profession of living. 
 
 It is a strange contradiction that we give 
 
 Our Service to imperfect being a service in this art of 
 
 fect^Behiff ^^^® which we fail to give to being which has 
 
 in it the potentialities of perfection. Upon 
 
 6 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 a child who is deaf and dumb and blind has 
 been lavished the concentrated skill of the 
 most able people, consciously artists, devel- 
 oping from this deprived and denied life, at 
 any cost, the fullest fruition of which there 
 is capability within it. This process has 
 been watched by thousands of sympathizing 
 people, and its fair flower is one of the tri- 
 umphs of the true Christliness of our day 
 and generation. The education of the blind, 
 of the deaf and dumb, of the half-witted, is 
 more a matter of studied art than the educa- 
 tion of our full-facultied millions of children. 
 Our care for the insane is better than our 
 care for the sane. The sanitation of prisons 
 and asylums is better than that of most houses 
 in which people live who have money enough 
 to live " well.'* If we would but study our 
 own race with the close observation we should 
 give to an inhabitant of Mars, should the 
 developing telescope discover such a being, 
 and on such study build our living, what 
 revelation and revolution would come into 
 human life ! 
 
 The wise Greeks, training the body to 
 health, and the soul to joy, knew life as an art. The wise 
 The games of Greece were the school of the ^^®®^s 
 7 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 nation. Here Nature was aided to do her 
 best, and the joy of a whole people approved 
 a perfect boy like Sophocles, and helped to 
 round his manhood into that wholeness of 
 life of which afterward the Roman poet sang. 
 Selecting the best in Nature, the Greeks 
 produced the Ideal. The abiding art of Phi- 
 dias, sublime in its simplicity, came from the 
 simple and rounded wholesomeness of Greek 
 life, in which the world before Christ flow- 
 ered. But it was the flower of the physical 
 and intellectual life, not of the life spiritual. 
 Afterward, among the Galilean hills, there 
 
 The perfect was sown the seed of a new flowering of life. 
 
 Liife That seed has not yet had its full blossoming 
 
 into the flower of perfect life. The Christian 
 world has yet to take into its deeper and 
 broader and richer and higher life much 
 that the Greeks knew. Their temples were 
 built white in the sunshine, leading in earth- 
 lines to the shrine of the golden goddess. 
 Ours spring from the gloom of high arches, 
 pointing by heaven-lines, in spires that pierce 
 the lower clouds, to the abiding-place of One 
 above all and beyond all. To us life cannot 
 be complete. But it can be abundant. We 
 also must study Nature to produce the Ideal, 
 and realize our statue in mankind. 
 8 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 Whoso masters life is the happy man. The 
 Master of Life, in blessing his disciples, Life more 
 prayed that they might have " life more abundantly 
 abundantly." That other men may have 
 more of life, lovers of their race have toiled 
 and martyrs have laid down their lives ; and 
 to those men and women who wish to fulfill 
 life, to have life more abundantly for them- 
 selves and to obtain more abundant life for 
 others, the study of the arts of life is the 
 highest of studies. In fullness of life, life is 
 worth the living. 
 
 9 
 
FIRSTS AND LASTS 
 
FIRSTS AND LASTS 
 
 [HE most important fact that a 
 man can make part of his being The first 
 is this, that the first steps of fjgi^i^^^g 
 right living in the personal life 
 are in line with the ultimates of 
 the universe. For all things work together 
 for good and make for righteousness, — in 
 the home, in the nation, for mankind, — only 
 as individual lives work out their own salva- 
 tion by accepting the personal responsibility 
 of the individual, within the limitations of his 
 environment. It is simpler to say that the 
 firsts and lasts in the arts of life are faith, 
 duty, content. The one is the scientific, the 
 other the religious form of the like truth. 
 For faith, duty, content are as much scien- 
 tific needs as religious virtues. 
 
 For faith, " the evidence of things not 
 seen," is the product, as regards the world of Faith 
 nature, of " the scientific use of the imagina- 
 tion." Through it we come to know that 
 the same law which brings the apple to the 
 ground holds the whirling earth in its place, 
 and that in the moral as in the natural world 
 effect follows cause, alike in the mysterious 
 13 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 succession of human life from generation to 
 generation, and in the flow of human influence 
 from spirit to spirit. Thus a scientific faith, 
 based on knowledge, is the binding quality 
 which, in the finite mind, links the human 
 atom in the universe, so that it vibrates in 
 harmony with that *' music of the spheres " 
 of which Plato dreamed. 
 
 And duty is simply the rightful application 
 Duty of the scientific fact that each atom, being 
 thus linked in the universe, counts. In 
 practical life there is no court which can 
 judge more justly, or effect its decrees more 
 surely, than the great court of the people 
 which is voiced in "public opinion;" and 
 public opinion, like the universe, is made up 
 of individual atoms. It is not for any man 
 to say whether he will count one, — he must 
 count one, for good or for ill, — but in what 
 direction and to what purpose he will count. 
 It is thus that crimes can be punished and 
 evils prevented which no laws can reach. It 
 is thus also by one man's doing his duty, 
 whether other people do or do not do theirs, 
 that wealth can be rightly gained and gov- 
 ernment be rightly ordered and the healing 
 of the nations be assured. 
 
 And content is the recognition of and re- 
 14 
 
FIRSTS AND LASTS 
 
 conciliation with human limitations — the Content 
 limitations of humanity in the human soul ; 
 the limitations of the particular man in his 
 particular place. It is for that art of life, called 
 religion, which deals with the spirituality of 
 man, to discern the greater limitations. But 
 apart from the knowing or unknowing of the 
 First Cause, there are everywhere limitations 
 that forbid an ultimate generalization and a 
 complete definition. " Every rule has its ex- 
 ception," says the proverb ; and a principle, 
 pushed to an ultimate analysis beyond its 
 proper limitations, becomes too often a reduc- 
 tio ad absurdum. The endeavor to find a 
 single basis of philosophy or adequate state- 
 ment of human relations in such words as 
 idealism or materialism, as predestination or 
 free-will, as utility or self-interest, is and must 
 be in measure fruitless, in measure worse, and 
 more often than not it resolves itself into 
 disastrous quarrel of nomenclature. Human 
 life, and human lives, are relatives, not ab- 
 solutes, in relation to the final things. 
 
 But as regards the every-day things, they 
 are absolute enough for practical purposes of A sufficient 
 every-day living. Despite the predestina- free-will 
 tion recognized by science in heredity, in 
 environment, in circumstance, science finds 
 15 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 in self -culture of motive a sufficient basis for 
 free-will, and " your own conscience " recog- 
 nizes always a middle ground of practical, 
 personal responsibility. Heredity and cir- 
 cumstance are limitations within which every 
 volition nevertheless counts. The cases are 
 few in which man may not discern an ought 
 and an ought not. 
 
 One of the best things that a man can do 
 The Ideas for himself and for his kind is to bring clearly 
 Life ^ '"^® into his own conscious acceptance and into 
 that of other men the ideas which should 
 inspire and control life. It is true that it 
 takes a long time to get a thought, through 
 our minds, into our being. To assimilate 
 new motives of action into daily life is no 
 miracle of a moment. But sooner or later 
 this is done. Ideas rule motives, and motives 
 rule life. Thought, will, action, are the suc- 
 cessive steps through which the human spirit 
 fulfills itself. After a time, perhaps after a 
 generation has passed away, the idea which 
 was at first intellectually apprehended be- 
 comes livingly apprehended ; the muscles 
 respond to it almost without volition, as to 
 heat or light. It is in the life-blood of the 
 new generation. This is progress. And to 
 i6 
 
FIRSTS AND LASTS 
 
 make sure of progress, the soldier should see 
 the flag he is to follow and for which he is 
 to stand. 
 
 The direction of an age comes to it often 
 from the closets of its students or from the The Func- 
 graves which seem to have sealed their scho°ar^^ 
 speech. Thence the book, the still small 
 voice which speaks from silence into silence, 
 carries thought into the wills of men. This 
 is the use of a real book : it kindles a flame, 
 that from its light other lights may be lighted 
 forever. It is the final function of the scholar 
 to inform his fellow men how they may help 
 or hinder progress. In those far towers of 
 outlook whence the quiet generals of thought 
 command the battlefields, not of war but of 
 peace, the truest service is done. This is 
 the business in the world of the scholar, to 
 divert men from the discouragement and 
 waste of ill-directed effort and to enlist them 
 in line with the coordinating forces of nature 
 and human development ; to reduce the use- 
 less and destructive activity thrown ignorantly 
 or carelessly counter to progress, and to 
 stimulate common endeavor in the line of 
 ascertainable advance. With this purpose, 
 by the aid of the scientific method on which 
 he relies to verify progress, history, the 
 17 
 
A leading 
 Thought as 
 ruling 
 Motive 
 
 THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 study of the past, becomes to the scholar, as 
 sociology, a science of the present which 
 gives the key to the future. He is enabled 
 to study and discern his own age, as he has 
 studied those gone by. The thinker who can 
 reach the ideas which sway his time, to the 
 correction of those which are ill and the pro- 
 motion and diffusion of those which are good 
 in tendency, gives to progress an intelligent 
 impetus that speeds the world. And in edu- 
 cing these ideas and bringing them into 
 the domain of will, he makes sociology an 
 art, and performs a work with which that of 
 the politician does not compare. He is the 
 true leader, — not statesman only, but worlds- 
 man. 
 
 Thus an age is fashioned in its ideas. 
 Commonly at the root of these there may be 
 found, in a great age, a leading thought, 
 which produces the ruling motive. This is 
 the soul of the age, and moulds its life and 
 history as the human soul conforms the body 
 to be the outward expression of itself. The 
 search for it makes history a study in psy- 
 chology. It may be the splendid inspiration 
 of one great man ; it may be the outgrowth 
 of a school ; it may be the voicing of the 
 vague yearnings of the mass ; it may be un- 
 i8 
 
FIRSTS AND LASTS 
 
 voiced, yet potent. However it be produced, 
 it gives to the age its character. 
 
 Upon the strength and positiveness of its 
 guiding thought the greatness and influence The Age- 
 of an age depend. The positive idea of the *^°^S^* 
 Protestant era, the supremacy of the indi- 
 vidual conscience, made its age glorious, and 
 gave birth to liberty. The development of 
 science marks ours as the scientific age. 
 According as we find or do not find in sci- 
 ence a positive and permeative thought, we 
 may hope or fear for the age in which we 
 live. And this is above all important. For 
 if we cannot hope for our age, it is hard to 
 work in it. 
 
 If, then, ideas rule, and a great age has its 
 guiding idea, the first step of the reconcilia- Ours a 
 tion of the individual man with all about him, ^j^^^"^® 
 the key to much that constitutes individual 
 happiness, is that he should recognize this 
 idea, and feel himself part of the great age. 
 And surely all auguries prophesy the coming 
 century as a supreme era. The poets would 
 have us sing with them a golden age, which 
 never was ; science foresees it in the future, 
 if we will work, in hope, for its coming. The 
 students of centuries speak with no uncer- 
 19 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 tain voice : the world has never truly turned 
 backward. 
 
 In five hundred years there has been a 
 
 Five Hun- progress unexampled in all the previous past. 
 
 dred Years ^ grand progression it has been — Colum- 
 bus followed by Magellan ; and Gutenberg 
 by Luther ; and Copernicus by Galileo and 
 Kepler and Newton ; and Bacon by Darwin 
 and Spencer ; and Watt by Stephenson and 
 Fulton and Hoe ; and Franklin by Henry 
 and Morse and Bell and Edison ; and Peel 
 by Gladstone, and Washington by Lincoln. 
 The wedding of the old and new continents 
 and the perfecting of the world into a rounded 
 whole, the declaration of our earth's true 
 relations with the universe; the enlargement 
 of knowledge by the inductive reasoning ; 
 the Protestant emancipation of thought ; the 
 impetus given to intellectual activity by the 
 invention of printing and to material activity 
 by the application of steam ; the second uni- 
 fication of the world by means of the rail- 
 road, the steamboat, the newspaper, the tele- 
 graph, and the telephone ; the political growth 
 which has developed a true government by 
 the people, — would seem to culminate in 
 the age upon which we are entering as that 
 of most importance in the world's long his- 
 20 
 
FIRSTS AND LASTS 
 
 tory. Knowledge is groping toward unity, 
 and the race is becoming one. It is grand 
 to breathe the air of such an era. 
 
 It is, then, the question of questions whe- 
 ther, in this scientific age, in these times of Principles 
 transition and doubt, some permanent prin- T^ansSon 
 ciples may be discerned in social and reli- 
 gious relations making for progress and faith. 
 And the signs of the times make answer, 
 — that in our day various lines of historic 
 progress, especially the development of in- 
 ventions which bring natural forces into line 
 with human progress, and the unitizing of 
 knowledge by means of the comparative 
 method, combine and culminate to make the 
 world and humankind for the first time prac- 
 tically one. That this process has been ac- 
 companied, necessarily, by such sundering of 
 old ties, in social, political, and religious rela- 
 tions, as to leave humankind in the danger- 
 ous disintegration of atoms combined only 
 in the unstable equilibrium of explosives — 
 " every man for himself, and the devil take 
 the hindmost " — which presents the dark 
 side of the picture. That in this centrifugal 
 condition of things, the centripetal force 
 needed is to be found in the new importance 
 
 21 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 developed by science for the doctrine of the 
 conservation and correlation of forces, which 
 becomes in philosophy the necessary and 
 eternal relation of cause and effect, and in 
 morals the like doctrine of personal respon- 
 sibility. 
 
 It is all important, then, to consider what 
 A common may be and will be the practical applications 
 Ground ^£ ^j^jg newly emphasized doctrine to current 
 
 problems in the arts of life, in education, 
 business, politics, and religion. It may be 
 that, as regards government, this doctrine is 
 potent to meet dreaded results of universal 
 suffrage, and that as regards religion, its 
 professional apostles must fulfill more com- 
 pletely the present tendency to join with 
 morality and science in emphasizing good 
 life as the primal basis, — a common ground 
 on which those may meet who believe in a 
 revealed God, or who discern only Nature's 
 good ; who see no farther than this life of 
 passing opportunities, or who look for a life 
 to come. 
 
 The conditions which have made possible 
 
 The Es- the modern kind of progress are to be traced 
 
 Christianity ^^ ^^^ giving of that catholic religion which 
 
 offered equal terms to all men, wheresoever 
 
 22 
 
FIRSTS AND LASTS 
 
 upon the earth. The very essence of Chris- 
 tianity is the equal and direct never-to-be- 
 delegated responsibility of all men, that is, 
 of each man, as children of the All-Father, 
 through that individual conscience by which 
 the good of Nature becomes the God in 
 man. This central thought, sown in the par- 
 ables of the Master, brought into practical 
 life through the vision of Peter, and devel- 
 oped into full significance in the preaching 
 of Paul, contained two elements, an oppor- AnOpportu- 
 tunity and a responsibility, whose interac- Resp^ns^ 
 tion has resulted in the modern world. In bility 
 asserting the immediate relation of men to 
 God, and the consequent supremacy of indi- 
 vidual conscience, as against traditionary 
 superstition and the despotism of priestly 
 mediation, Christianity freed intellect as well 
 as soul, and compelled men to liberty of 
 thought. In proclaiming the actual brother- 
 hood of man on this wide earth, it furnished 
 motive and occasion for completing our know- 
 ledge of the world and realizing the union of 
 mankind, and called each man to his respon- 
 sibility for the race. And it is this oppor- 
 tunity of liberty and this responsibility of 
 unity which have produced to-day. 
 
 This religion was not spared the conven- 
 23 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 The Con- tionalizing tendency which attacks all human 
 Tzlng^"*^" processes, and the germ of liberty lay dor- 
 Tendency mant a thousand years while a priestly 
 hierarchy, surviving in Christianity despite 
 Christianity, usurped the offices of individual 
 religion and the authority vested only in in- 
 dividual conscience. The other phase of the 
 central doctrine could be better bent to the 
 purposes of priestship, and remained active. 
 The Church gladly acknowledged responsi- 
 bility for the race, because it offered spiritual 
 occasion for material conquests ; and Colum- 
 bus, carrying the cross at his prow, achieved 
 the first step towards the material unity of 
 mankind. But liberty was reasserted only by 
 revolution ; it was left to those Reformers 
 whom we know best in Luther, by defying a 
 church which was not Christianity and set- 
 ting conscience again upon its throne, to 
 rescue for a new world the opportunity of 
 liberty of thought. 
 
 The first link in the chain of unity was the 
 The Chain moral unity of mankind fully preached by 
 o nity p^^i . ^j^^ second was the material unity of 
 which the first practical step was the dis- 
 covery by Columbus, and the latest has been 
 the invention of the telephone. The wed- 
 24 
 
FIRSTS AND LASTS 
 
 ding of the " old " and the " new " continents 
 was followed by the rounding of the world 
 into perfected unity, through the circum- 
 navigation by Magellan. Exploration, which 
 raged as a fever, was followed by coloniza- 
 tion, and thus began the fusion of races and 
 of social conditions. Commerce, the great 
 unionist, sought out every corner of the earth. 
 And now the effect of the freeing of thought, 
 in mastering the forces of Nature for the 
 use of man, began to find application to this Progress in 
 progress in material unity : he who put the unitv^*^ 
 magnetic needle in its box had made ocean 
 exploration possible ; the development of the 
 chronometer and other instruments of navi- 
 gation made ocean voyaging sure. It was left 
 to Watt, in making the steam-engine prac- 
 tical, and to those inventors represented 
 by the names of Stephenson and Fulton, in 
 applying it to locomotion by land and sea, 
 to achieve the next steps in material unity, 
 by enabling man to transport himself at will, 
 against time and tide, to any part of the 
 world. The photograph performs the oppo- 
 site service of bringing any part of the world 
 before the eye, and thus contributes to our 
 familiar realization of the unity of earth and 
 of man. Printing, the great stride forward 
 25 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 to intellectual unity, in its development of 
 the book and newspaper, has assisted material 
 unity as well. Finally, the telegraph, cir- 
 cling the earth, and the telephone, annihilat- 
 ing distance and time, have completed the 
 work, so that in our era man for the first 
 time feels the throb of all humanity. The 
 nations are neighbors and kinsfolk. Man 
 has to-day all the wide earth for his environ- 
 ment ; the most frequent act of every-day life 
 is predicated on the previous concurrence of 
 the world at large. All the world contributes 
 to the breakfast-table of each civilized man, 
 and the whole earth is brought within the 
 compass of his room in his morning paper. 
 Codrdinate with all this is the unification 
 The Unifi- of knowledge. The freeing of thought led at 
 Knowledge ^^^^ ^^ Steps in this direction. Copernicus' 
 work on the true relations of the sun and 
 planets was published' soon after the early 
 stirrings of the Reformation in Germany ; but 
 it was left to the next century to make the 
 grand advance, when Galileo laid the founda- 
 tion for experimental physics and reasserted 
 the true relations of the earth ; when Bacon 
 emphasized the inductive method and pro- 
 claimed the essential unity of knowledges and 
 their revealing inter-relations ; when Kepler 
 26 
 
FIRSTS AND LASTS 
 
 calculated the uniform laws of planetary mo- 
 tion; when Newton discovered the binding 
 law which makes the universe one. These 
 grand achievements prepared the way for that 
 comparative method which, presupposing and The com- 
 proving the principle of unity, underlies now Method 
 every department of physical and metaphysi- 
 cal research, and affords the distinguishing 
 characteristic of modern science. " The estab- 
 lishment of the comparative method of study 
 has been the greatest intellectual achieve- 
 ment of our time. It has carried light and 
 order into whole branches of human know- 
 ledge which were before shrouded in dark- 
 ness and confusion. It has brought a line of 
 argument which reaches moral certainty into 
 a region which before was given over to ran- 
 dom guesswork." The new chemistry finds 
 that all molecules obey one law, and hints 
 that the ultimate atoms of all substances may 
 be the same ; physics teaches in the correla- 
 tion of forces that there is one force, however 
 protean in shape ; physiology finds in its doc- 
 trine of bioplasm one foundation for all bodily 
 life, and in the biological sciences in general 
 — botany, zoology, and their like — the in- 
 dividual invention of "systems" of classifica- 
 tion has given place to comparative research 
 27 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 for the one plan by which it is found Nature 
 has wrought out all. And this passion of 
 science for a complete generalization, upward, 
 and for an ultimate analysis, downward, finds 
 its culmination in the doctrine of evolution, 
 which links together all creation into an or- 
 ganic whole, from the nebular mist of inchoate 
 stars to the infinite variety of our human 
 earth ; from the simplest germ of the cell to 
 the highest splendor of humanity. The word 
 "universe" has new meaning for us in the 
 fresh wonder of these turnings of the one. 
 Finally, we have reached out by similar 
 The Unity Steps into social unity. There is a growing 
 of Society sympathy with all mankind and all its past. 
 The same comparative method that has done 
 so much to disclose the unity of nature and 
 of knowledge helps us also to the unity of 
 society. Comparative philology has given us 
 a light which shines clear into hitherto im- 
 penetrable darkness, and leads us up to the 
 unity in diversity of tongues and races. Com- 
 parative politics, sociology, the new science 
 of history — as much an advance on Schlegel's 
 philosophy of history as was that on the bare 
 chronicles of kings and battles — relate the 
 civilized man in new ties of likeness, and 
 therefore of kinship and concern, with the 
 28 
 
FIRSTS AND LASTS 
 
 most savage. We recognize all men as men, 
 and no longer hold slaves. Comparative reli- 
 gion is doing true service in bringing the good 
 to light from the old mythologies and heathen 
 religions, and not only disclosing a general 
 worship of a true Supreme Being, but show- 
 ing evil and its incarnation as the shadow of 
 good. Religious development links this life 
 with a future life in logical if not proven 
 unity. And even Positivism, in proclaiming 
 its idea of humanity, emphasizes usefully the 
 Christian doctrines of unity and responsi- 
 bility. 
 
 Such are the considerations that suggest 
 gratification with our age, but this is at once The darker 
 tempered and clouded with conditions that ^^^® 
 lead many to despair. The opening of the 
 world has sundered men from the useful re- 
 strictions of their local environment. The 
 development of society has substituted a com- 
 plex for a simple life, and, in endeavoring to 
 improve upon Nature, has introduced a train 
 of ills. The widening of knowledge has led 
 to no little perplexity of thought and action, 
 and the coordinate growth of the critical 
 spirit seems, to some, to dampen delight in 
 life and sap faith. The unity of man seems 
 29 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 The pessi- 
 mist View 
 
 The Solu- 
 tion of Dis- 
 courage- 
 ment 
 
 to have been accomplished at the expense of 
 the disintegrated atoms. 
 
 To the extreme pessimist, indeed, these 
 difficulties rob life of worth, and make the 
 life of the oyster, ending in a Nirvana, a happy- 
 refuge from modern progress. In this view, 
 the world has grown wiser only to grow 
 worse ; the more we know, the less we be- 
 lieve ; the more rules of life we discover, the 
 less we regard them. To such, civilization is 
 scarcely less than a crime, and science a sin. 
 The savant is no better off than the savage ; 
 the twentieth century after Christ will have 
 little more to show, when the balances are 
 struck, than the twentieth century before 
 Him. Every age is as ill off as its prede- 
 cessors ; as between God and the Devil, the 
 latter is the supreme Deity and has the best 
 of it. 
 
 Now much of this discouragement is dis- 
 couraging, yet the key to its solution is found 
 in the very elevation of the race. Each age 
 sets itself a higher standard than the standard 
 from which it started, and, judging itself by 
 its failure from the higher, rather than by its 
 advance from the lower, finds reason to think 
 ill of itself. It is the same process by which 
 the "upper" classes of society attribute to 
 30 
 
and Misdi- 
 rections 
 
 FIRSTS AND LASTS 
 
 the "lower" classes wants which these do 
 not feel, and so predicate an unhappiness of 
 which they are by no means conscious, and 
 which, therefore, does not for them exist. The 
 ideal of our civilization is to prolong life and 
 diffuse comfort. In reaching toward that 
 ideal, there have been much mistaken legisla- Mistakes 
 tion and much misdirected kindness : we have 
 prolonged lives that are sickly and miserable, 
 permitting them to propagate sickness and 
 misery; and Christian charity, mistakenly 
 applied, has increased pauperism. We see 
 men unhappy, working at noisome work and 
 under ill conditions, and on their behalf we 
 envy the Greek and the savage. But for the 
 Greek of history toiled the slave of whom 
 history does not tell : the marble of the Par- 
 thenon came from quarries where men labored 
 in despair, and the gold for Athen^ from toil 
 as sad and difficult as our own. The savage 
 suffered cold and storm and pestilence ; the 
 savage starved ; the savage died before his 
 time. We think of the past from the pomp 
 that gets into the books ; we know the pre- 
 sent from the misery at our doors. And we 
 forget, also, that even among the most miser- 
 able there are few to whom life is not the 
 greatest of boons and its prolongation the 
 31 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 greatest blessing. Civilization accepts that 
 view, and can verify progress even in its dis- 
 couragements. But these are not for that 
 reason to be ignored. 
 
 Old-time 
 Relations 
 
 Centrifugal 
 Tendencies 
 
 A chief difficulty is illustrated by the per- 
 sonal relationship among individuals. The 
 simple living of earlier times held men to- 
 gether by ties which were closer and stronger 
 because they were few. The community was 
 small, and the individual had scarce any rela- 
 tions beyond it. The few people whom each 
 knew, he knew all about ; there was a di- 
 rect relationship that had its bad side in the 
 prying gossip of small places, but its good 
 side in a strong feeling of association and 
 responsibility. There were " fireside indus- 
 tries." The family was not yet disassociated 
 from the neighborhood, and scattered abroad. 
 A man was '* tied to the apron-string " of his 
 mother-home, safe within the somewhat nar- 
 row limits of that circumscribing radius. 
 Modern ways have changed all that : and 
 with increase of the number of relationships 
 their vitality seems to have been decreased. 
 
 Particularly there is evident a weakening 
 and sundering of the old ties which bound 
 men effectively together into small organ- 
 32 
 
FIRSTS AND LASTS 
 
 isms, useful in their intermediary function 
 in the state — the family, the neighborhood, 
 the trade guild, the self-governing political 
 unit. The disintegration of these concentra- 
 tive organisms is very marked in this gener- 
 ation and in our own country. The weaken- 
 ing of family and household ties, which were 
 the basis and furnished the intermediary 
 body of early institutions, caused in part by 
 a wider marriage system which has mingled 
 qualities and produced better individual re- 
 sults, has dissipated a strong social and po- 
 litical bond into a mere genealogical senti- 
 ment. Collateral family relationship, in 
 particular, has no longer much force. This 
 is largely the result of the breaking of local 
 ties by the increased facilities of locomotion. 
 The boy transplants himself, or the young 
 man takes his bride, a thousand miles from 
 the old home and its countless ties of local 
 association, and by similar processes a nation 
 is formed while neighborhoods are dissolved. 
 The modern division of labor produces a 
 double result in the same .direction. It makes The Divi- 
 us dependent upon more people, as workers. Labor 
 but it separates us from them as men. The 
 " hand," in a great manufactory, doing one 
 thjng that has but indirect relation to the 
 33 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 want of his fellow man, is cut off from any 
 relationship with the man who will use his 
 work ; and the employer and the employed 
 are separated also by as many steps. The 
 selection, by this division of labor, of the 
 most effective men for the great posts has 
 also overburdened them with many responsi- 
 bilities, until, it may be, having too many 
 interests to oversee, the captain of industry 
 is separated from and overlooks some. 
 
 And in our country, the results of the 
 The Results civil war, of the succeeding inflation, of the 
 of War speculative dealing in fictitious values so 
 
 long rampant, of the wonderful development 
 of trade in general, suddenly elevating to un- 
 accustomed riches considerable numbers of 
 men and isolating a few of enormous fortune, 
 have also set men loose from the environ- 
 ment to which before they were attached. 
 Politically, also, since the war for the Union, 
 men are less citizens of a State, but, over- 
 looking the narrower bounds, more citizens 
 of the Nation. The tendency of Protestant- 
 ism itself is to dispense with intermediary 
 relations, to have nothing between a man 
 and his God. Thus society has become a 
 fluent mass of individualized atoms. 
 
 34 
 
FIRSTS AND LASTS 
 
 But it is precisely as the atoms become 
 fluent that the centripetal force successfully Centripetal 
 meets the centrifugal tendency : the waters of Principles 
 the sea are the most abiding thing in Nature. 
 And where physical and incidental bonds of 
 unity fail, it is to higher principles of moral 
 gravitation that we look. The higher the re- 
 lation the more does it emerge from the do- 
 main of predestination, of blind chance, into 
 that of the conscious choice of men. Pro- 
 gress is made through men : at this last, the 
 Divine has no other agent than the Human. 
 This throws upon mankind, upon the indi- 
 vidual man, upon the higher man, the re- 
 sponsibility of promoting progress, and of 
 tempering the dangers which accompany its 
 advance. 
 
 For progress, like other forces, follows the 
 wave line. The principle of limitations is The Wave 
 again seen in the workings of the causes pJogr^^gs 
 which make for progress. They work well 
 so far : after a certain development, or if 
 pushed too far, they work ill, they become 
 inefficient, they are counterbalanced or cease. 
 Thus human development pursues the wave 
 line ; the drop of water goes down as well as 
 up to meet the crest, but the motion is on- 
 ward ; an improvement in machinery throws 
 35 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 some one for the time out of work; wars 
 that achieve liberty maim and kill and wreak 
 demoralization : success has too often re- 
 quired sacrifice. 
 
 We have arrived at a supreme age, in which 
 Progress the world has become one and the race one, 
 verifiable ^^ action and in thought ; and in this su- 
 preme age we find many sad things and 
 many discouraging things. In this analytic 
 time, the thinker applies the cruel dissecting 
 knife to himself, and touches the universe at 
 no point but he draws the life-blood. Never- 
 theless, progress is verifiable. We have been 
 passing through a critical and destructive 
 period, social, industrial, and scientific, to 
 arrive at a great constructive age. The early 
 man, in even greater degree than the present 
 savage, had inherited from nature certain in- 
 stincts and a crude knowledge which fitted 
 him admirably to his simple environment. 
 If his life was that of the beast, he had the 
 instinct of the beast for his protection. Both 
 the ancient savage and the crude man of to- 
 day rely safely, in the main, upon their rea- 
 sonless instincts. A low order of life, which 
 trusts to and follows Nature, is to that extent 
 healthy. But modern man may not be con- 
 tent with this infirm and narrow life. 
 
 36 
 
FIRSTS AND LASTS 
 
 The mission of man is not to submit to 
 Nature, but to master her. He must emerge Emergence 
 from the state of nature into civilization. But ^ation^^^^^" 
 between the two there is dangerous ground. 
 In the higher order of life, reason takes the 
 place of instinct, but the instincts are apt 
 to lose their force before the reason is fully 
 trained to do their work better or as well. 
 The savage had a keenness of sense, espe- 
 cially in hearing, that gave him a great ad- 
 vantage over the white man in certain fea- 
 tures of war-making, until the latter invented 
 the spyglass and the telegraph. " Artificial 
 and conventional have taken the place of nat- 
 ural advantages as the ruling and deciding 
 force," and in " that artificial life which we 
 call civilization," it is by recourse to the arts 
 of life that we live. Throughout, " God bal- 
 ances the new evils peculiar to human life 
 by infinitely greater weights in the scale of 
 the good which is also peculiar to human 
 life." 
 
 This is the characteristic of a transition 
 period. Man has been educated out of his Twilight 
 instincts, and reason has not yet its full ap- '^^^^^ 
 plication. He is as a sailing vessel stripped 
 of sails and made into a steamer, with no one 
 on board who knows fully how to manage 
 37 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 the new mechanism. Mankind is between 
 lights, and twiUght is the most difficult light 
 for the eyes. We are not quite out of the 
 dark ages. Man has earned his way to the 
 new light, but in acquiring its privileges, its 
 responsibilities at first sight stagger him. 
 He is in the dangerous domain of half-know- 
 ledge, like the amateur student of medicine 
 who knows symptoms but not remedies, and 
 torments his imagination with hosts of dis- 
 eases which he has no power to cure. It is 
 a real difficulty, and unfortunately the seamy 
 side is most seen by those within the problem. 
 When the spinning-jenny was invented in 
 England the cotton spinners rose in revolt ; 
 how should they know that it would presently 
 give them two loaves of bread where before 
 they had one or none. Again, the newspaper, 
 that great organ of progress, has its bad side 
 in spreading the inflaming details of crime and 
 the infection of commercial panic ; yet even 
 the light compels betterment, though it 
 brings to sight the things of evil. 
 
 The progress of man is therefore from a 
 Progress crude, reasonless, but effective practice, an 
 Knowledge i^iheritance of his animal nature, through half- 
 knowledge and groping analysis, into full 
 knowledge and the appUcation of science. 
 
 38 
 
FIRSTS AND LASTS 
 
 The crude endowments of nature are analyzed 
 by science, and the vital element educed 
 for more economical use. Thus even " old 
 wives' fables " and nostrums are being turned 
 to account : the old empirics used seaweed 
 for certain diseases ; modern science finds 
 therein the potash which was its remedial 
 element, and gives it in less wasteful form. 
 
 These several lines of thought conjoin and 
 culminate in seeking and finding that central The One- 
 thought which marks and moulds the age. *^ 
 It is the thought that, alike in space and in 
 time, in the material, the moral, the spiritual 
 world, the atom is bound to every other atom 
 by a one-law which pervades the universe, 
 which is the soul of all things. ^*No man 
 liveth to himself and no man dieth to him- 
 self." Nature, still more civilization, means 
 not that men should be independent of each 
 other, but vastly interdependent, in an infin- 
 ity of relations. 
 
 Science speaks thus with no uncertain 
 voice, to the listening and reverent ear. The free 
 Man makes pro-gress, forward, but in the ^^^^ 
 wave line, with real or seeming retro-gres- 
 sions. It is by a free path that the atom 
 obeys law : as the drops of water, making up 
 39 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 the fluent and fluid seas, tossed at the sur- 
 face into changing waves by the law of the 
 winds, obey in the great currents the laws of 
 heat, in the greater tides the attraction of 
 the moon, and through their steadfast depths 
 that greatest law of gravitation which binds 
 them together in the eternal ocean. Thus 
 The ^ the central and centrifugal forces, many yet 
 
 Forces^^ one, balance each other, in physics and in 
 morals, to keep each atom, though in free 
 motion, in its proper place, in an interde- 
 pendence which in morals means a responsi- 
 bility of each for all. Each atom counts, 
 everywhere, forever. There can be no con- 
 tradictions — between laws, or between law 
 and fact : the law and the fact confirm, con- 
 form to, are part of, each other. Natural laws 
 are universal, immutable, — *'thou canst not" 
 as well as "thou shalt not." The law of death 
 is part of the larger law of life, using what 
 we know as evil as the corrective, the pur- 
 gative, which by selective development pre- 
 pares the best to survive. So science teaches 
 us to build on the past, in the present, for the 
 future — to be reverent, to be content, to do 
 our duty, to have faith. 
 
 Thus, in these modern days, science, 
 though too often unheeded, calls to us, in our 
 40 
 
FIRSTS AND LASTS 
 
 individual lives, to come up higher, to make The Call of 
 life an art. Arrived at a great age, we are ^*=^^"*^® 
 called to make ourselves great in accord with 
 it. Science sets the man of to-day in the 
 center of this world, as the culmination of the 
 forces of Nature, as the product of all the his- 
 toric forces, and tells him that the known 
 earth, animate and inanimate, is subject unto 
 him, that at last he modifies the world more 
 than the world modifies him. It tells him also 
 that there is no effect without cause, and no 
 cause without effect ; that each individual 
 human life must be infinitely effective ; and 
 that each life can be developed in fullest frui- 
 tion only by conscious art founded upon in- 
 telligent science. The large forces and the 
 little are the same. First principles are final 
 principles. Man is come into a high place, 
 to which all roads of the past converge ; be- 
 fore him all roads of the future open forth. 
 All the kingdoms of the earth are before him. 
 He must choose. His choice is the result of 
 his character. His character should be the 
 result of art. 
 
 Throughout all this we recognize that a 
 human life is a product, and the highest of Faculty and 
 products, an art-work. Art presupposes ^^^^^^^y 
 faculty and facility, the original gift and the 
 41 
 
Arts 
 
 THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 purposed training. For the gift we are not 
 responsible, for its training we are. In this 
 last, we make choice of means, as the artist 
 must. This art, like others, is founded on 
 science, on knowledge. Science underlies 
 the art of living and the arts of life, as it 
 underlies all art. And to cultivate life as an 
 The Life art, we must cultivate the arts of life. First of 
 all is the duty of health — wholeness of body. 
 This presupposes mind-health and will-health, 
 saneness of mind and rightness of morals. 
 That is our affair — and the physician should 
 be but the interpreter for us of the laws of 
 nature ; the watchman who guards health, not 
 the detective who cries " stop thief," when it 
 is gone ; whose business is to prevent disease 
 rather than to cure it. To this end is the art of 
 education, by which also the mind is stocked 
 with knowledges and trained in methods for 
 its command of life ; and the teacher should 
 be the guide to show the paths to the moun- 
 tain tops, as those who have gone before 
 have blazed them. Then the art of business, 
 of earning a living, of applying to the affairs 
 of every day the best equipment that can 
 be had for it, of making business itself the 
 roadway to higher arts of life, not the end of 
 the path in a drainage bog. Then the art of 
 42 
 
FIRSTS AND LASTS 
 
 government, the care of men in their larger 
 relations as the state. Above all, the art of 
 religion, the art of making the human di- 
 vine. All these find their fruition in per- 
 sonal character and in social life, in the home, 
 the family, society, where love lightens duty 
 while knowledge guides it, where conversa- 
 tion becomes an art and an uplifting, where 
 a man is refreshed and recreated by converse 
 with his fellow men. 
 
 The vital progress of man has yet to come 
 up to the progress of his intellectual and A new 
 material environment, and his inspiration is Ethics°" ^" 
 found in an ethical teaching of science the 
 most positive which man has yet discovered 
 for himself. The idea of the infinity of in- 
 fluence and eternity of duration of the effects 
 of infinitely small cause gives a most awe- 
 ful yet inspiring meaning to human responsi- 
 bility, and if not new is announced by science 
 with such startling emphasis that it becomes 
 virtually a new sanction of ethics. We are 
 taught that every breath alters the relations 
 of the universe forever, and this physical 
 parable, interpreted into ethics and made 
 practical in life, makes each man infinitely 
 responsible for every moment, thought, word 
 43 
 
Form 
 
 temporary, 
 
 Influence 
 
 eternal 
 
 Sanction 
 
 and 
 
 Safeguard 
 
 THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 and act of his life. Each man is a trustee 
 for the race, and he carries within himself 
 the sure reward or penalty. 
 
 In this vast evolution, all organism, of 
 matter or of mind, is a sequence of changes. 
 The form is temporary, the influence eternal. 
 The cell dies, but direction survives. Man is 
 a bundle of pasts, consciously making the 
 future, — the sum of all the ages, the fount of 
 the far future. Thus science supplies a sanc- 
 tion and a safeguard, in this thought of the 
 eternity of influence, more weighty than all 
 the awful Calvinism of an Edwards. It is 
 the greatest sanction, to morals and right 
 being, for earth and heaven, possible to be 
 put before men. It is the voice of a logical 
 God. The thought is terrible, were its re- 
 sponsibility not tempered by the opportunity 
 it presents. 
 
 A sanction and a safeguard, both. For 
 men require both. In that righting book 
 which has done so much for progress, " The 
 Wealth of Nations," Adam Smith empha- 
 sizes the fear of the workman of losing work 
 as the chief motive for doing work well ; in 
 that illuminating book, "Unto this Last," 
 curious in its misapplications of high truth, 
 Ruskin characterizes this opinion as illustrat- 
 44 
 
FIRSTS AND LASTS 
 
 ing " the most entirely damned state of soul 
 possible to man," opposing to this safeguard 
 the sanction of honest motive voiced in the 
 word of Venice that "the merchant's law be 
 just, his weights true, and his contracts guile- 
 less." They are not opposed : it is sanction 
 that uplifts ; it is safeguard that protects from 
 falling, — as Nature herself hedges about the 
 strongest of human passions with the great 
 motive of love of family and the awful threat 
 of physical penalty. 
 
 And the scheme of science looks to com- 
 plete use of all the influences that make man The Scheme 
 and of all the powers that are in him— his full ?uif oevel- 
 and harmonious development. He does best opment 
 who observes all the laws of his system : the 
 observance of the law of balance leads alike 
 to the best production and the highest happi- 
 ness. There must be differentiation of func- 
 tion, but this is not opposition ; the head and 
 the body, the brain and the muscles, are 
 each the better off for the full health of the 
 other. "To each his work," but to each as 
 part of a great whole. And to each "life 
 more abundantly." 
 
 We have found, indeed, often, that an 
 abnormal development of individual function Abnormal 
 has been associated with intensity of action ; ^"^ction 
 45 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 the brilliant, short life of high plane con- 
 trasted with the steady, lasting life of low 
 plane. But science again denies that "with 
 higher average of life " is necessarily asso- 
 ciated " lower average of health." Her voice 
 is that the part is better in the health of the 
 whole ; that wholeness is health. The high 
 peak of the mountain needs broad base on the 
 earth. There is Elizabeth Barrett ; but there 
 is also Robert Browning. And above all, 
 there is Shakespeare. 
 
 The call to men of this age, then, is to 
 " The Fu- combat the difficulty that the scientific idea 
 F^afthl""^ is so far only intellectually, not livingly, ap- 
 prehended. The thought is not yet in our 
 blood ; it has yet to rule our life. But this, 
 also, is a part of progress. It is for the 
 leaders, leading, to bring about the intellec- 
 tually wrought conversion of the passing 
 generation, that the coming generation may 
 be born in the light and trained in grace. 
 The great aim should be to bring the race 
 up to that intellectual and spiritual strength 
 in which truth is sufficient unto itself, that 
 the individual man, putting aside humbly the 
 mysteries that defy solution, content him 
 with doing his duty in faith, God's law unto 
 himself. The idea of science is alike selfish 
 
 46 
 
FIRSTS AND LASTS 
 
 and altruistic, for in right living is the high- 
 est personal happiness and the fair promise 
 of the noblest result in the far future. 
 Satisfied with real things, not with sham ; 
 taking character as the highest good because, 
 also, it is most productive of good ; seeking the 
 greatest life for the most men — the present 
 lives also for the future, and to the Sphinx 
 of civilization Science gives answer : " The 
 future — and faith ! " 
 
 47 
 
OF EDUCATION 
 
OF EDUCATION 
 
 IHE first of the arts of life is edu- 
 cation, the leading forth of the Education 
 human faculties, in the child, fution''°" 
 the youth, the man, as Na- 
 ture makes ready. As Nature 
 evolves, man should educate. Education must 
 be in even step with evolution. In leading 
 the child we must follow Nature. When 
 Miss Sullivan, whose own sealed eyes had 
 been opened to the light, was sent to open 
 the sealed soul of Helen Keller, after she had 
 studied all Dr. Howe had told of Laura Bridg- 
 man, Mr. Anagnos asked, in test of her, how 
 she would teach the child. " I do not know," 
 she said; "I will let the child teach me." 
 She had proved her fitness, for she voiced 
 the watchword of true education. In teach- 
 ing the child, we must learn from Nature, 
 from child-nature. Thus the human atom is 
 fitted into its place in the great universe. 
 Looking forward to the successive stages 
 of development, the experience of parents, 
 or teachers, should become pre-vision and 
 pro-vision for the children. It is thus the 
 race climbs, as each generation rises one 
 step higher on the accumulations of past ex- 
 51 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 perience. If it does not rise, it falls ; and 
 so nations decline, and fall, and are blotted 
 out. 
 
 In the beginning the child has no personal 
 Experience responsibility ; its birth follows the birth of 
 the^ChUd ^^^ hdhe at a considerable distance. It is only 
 well toward maturity that this becomes com- 
 plete : indeed it is a prime purpose and test of 
 education to produce personal responsibility. 
 But education begins with birth, nay before 
 birth. The highest product, man, is slowest 
 in pre-natal development and in shifting for 
 itself after birth. Thus the experience gained 
 by the parents is stored in the child, to an 
 extent broadly dividing man from his fellow 
 animals. Nature is here a banker, and ad- 
 vances to each generation the parental care 
 it is expected to pay back through the gen- 
 eration succeeding. 
 
 The first duty of parentage, thus, is of 
 The Duty of educating self to educate the child ; and this 
 Parentage j^ust properly begin before the birth of the 
 child, that the infant, the unknowing, may be 
 met with knowledge. When a fern comes 
 from the ground, it appears as a queer little 
 wad, which presently unfolds and unrolls ac- 
 cording to the laws of fern-kind into full 
 52 
 
OF EDUCATION 
 
 frondage, as the gardener fore-knows it will 
 do, but as few others could foresee. The 
 child has a like development, according to 
 the laws of humankind, which it is the busi- 
 ness of the parent to fore-know. These laws 
 can be learned, and the dim and partial know- 
 ledge of instinct or of half-remembered ex- 
 perience is by no means a substitute to excuse 
 the parent from the responsibility of intelli- 
 gent study. 
 
 For here, even as elsewhere. Nature may 
 not distinguish between ignorance and crime. Fatherhood 
 The laws of life are, above all, inexorable. 
 The inevitable doom for their transgression 
 is hard — alike whether it be innocent or pur- 
 posed. Of all relations, that whose conse- 
 quences are visited, for good or ill, unto the 
 third and fourth generation, — nay, through- 
 out all generations to come, — is least fore- 
 known. The man scarcely faces fatherhood 
 as a conscious end. As a college boy, no 
 training is too costly, no self-denial too diffi- 
 cult, no studious care and temperance of body 
 too hard, through weeks, months, and years, 
 for the winning of the race whose immediate 
 outcome is but the triumph of a day. But 
 when he enters the lists of a man's responsi- 
 bilities, intoxicate with love, or choosing in 
 53 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 colder motive the fulfiller of life, he gives to 
 marriage no such care of knowledge, or of 
 training, or of foreseeing, in body or in mind, 
 and he perchance foredooms her who is dear- 
 est to him and those who shall be nearest to 
 him, of his flesh and his blood, to defeat and 
 shadow and despair in that race of life which 
 he has lost for them before it is begun. The 
 Motherhood wife, indeed, consciously faces motherhood, 
 in the sweet prophecy of the little life which 
 she enfolds, yet, too late, she also finds her- 
 self unknowing, unprepared. In this great 
 mystery of the tenderest, the holiest, the 
 most far-reaching of all the relations of life, 
 the relation between the youth who is to be 
 father and the maiden who is to be mother, 
 our modern teaching and all our loving care 
 have so far failed to find how, without rend- 
 ing the veil of modesty and mystery, to give 
 to these two, with each other, the fore-know- 
 ing which we provide in our stock-raising for 
 the brute beasts or which Nature implants 
 in them as instinct. But to this need, which 
 science, with its doctrines of heredity, more 
 and more emphasizes, the answer will come 
 as the need is fully seen. 
 
 Those are among the greatest benefactors 
 54 
 
OF EDUCATION 
 
 of the race, who, from Pestalozzi, with his The Refor- 
 divinings and his so human mistakes, and Educati'^n 
 Froebel, with his noble devotion, have labored 
 to teach the teachers this first of the arts of 
 life, by investigating what these laws of de- 
 velopment are. These are the Columbus, 
 the Galileo, the Newton, the Luther, of the 
 child's world ; Protestants for childhood, they 
 have prepared and preached a Reformation 
 in which, here also. Nature, freedom, individ- 
 uality, are vindicated. For there have been 
 terrible mistakes. Nature tells the child to 
 touch, to observe, to test, to ask questions, 
 to imitate ; but a belittled Pope bulled and 
 bulHed in the household. It was "dont 
 touch ; " " do as Papa or Mamma (or more ig- 
 norant nurse) says, and don't ask Why ; " 
 " keep quiet ; " " little folks should be seen 
 and not heard ; " and for imitation what ex- 
 ample could be worse than the fallible frailty 
 of brutal Infallibility.? The child's Why, 
 that divining-rod which is Nature's gift to 
 the little explorer, brought no answering 
 spring of living water from the parental rock. 
 "Because," was a finality, and crushed the 
 childish mind. And when to this chill frost 
 upon the wee, outreaching, tender plant, there 
 was added the scarce lesser wrong of revers- 
 55 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 ing Nature's order, of teaching the science 
 before the art, grammar before speech, it was 
 only because Nature is strong and well in- 
 trenched, that children learned despite their 
 teachers. That within the passing generation 
 we have come to see our mistakes, to inquire 
 of Nature, to follow her better way, is per- 
 haps that for which the future should be, and 
 will be, most thankful to us. The great ad- 
 vance that has been made may best be seen by 
 using as the milepost on the path of progress 
 that most useful of teachers of a generation 
 ago, Herbert Spencer's " Education," which 
 teaches us also how much we have yet to 
 learn and to do. 
 
 The end of education is to make a whole 
 The Human man, full-rounded, in soul, in mind, in body, 
 n-umty. Health, wholeness, holiness, are from the 
 same root, in fact as in word. The hale or 
 whole man, integer vitae, is the man of phy- 
 sical perf ectness, of moral and spiritual fulfill- 
 ment, of intellectual completeness. A sound 
 body is a first need, because the higher 
 must build and have basis on the lower. A 
 sense of right, of the moral order, is the next 
 need, as the guide of life. Intellectual de- 
 velopment is the complement of these. 
 
 56 
 
OF EDUCATION 
 
 The ship must have sound hull and right 
 ballast, true compass and straight rudder, if 
 it is to take cargo and bring it to port. A 
 true education regards this human tri-unity 
 and interweaves these several strands in the 
 loom of life. Thus it equips the man and 
 develops character. 
 
 If, thus, the ideal and aim of humanity is 
 fullness of life, a first care must be for a a sound 
 sound body. " To be a good animal " — this ^^^^ 
 is the safest foundation for good morals and 
 good mind. He is most a man who has the 
 greatest quantity and best quality of life for 
 the longest time, who has most life through- 
 out most years. To lose years by too early 
 death, or months by induced disease, or 
 weeks by invited illness, or hours by distract- 
 ing pain, and to lose money (alas, to most 
 men a more marketable motive !) by the pos- 
 itive methods of long doctor's bills or the 
 negative methods of enforced idleness — all 
 such forfeiture of life is indeed too often sins 
 of the parents visited upon the children, sins 
 of careless omission and brutish ignorance 
 and even reckless defiance of known law that 
 are no less crimes because statute law cannot 
 reach them. Alas, that the innocent must 
 57 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 suffer ! For Nature heals, but she cannot 
 forgive. Yet through this suffering unmer- 
 ited, merited punishment comes at last to the 
 guilty also, in sad harvest of misery and of 
 sorrow and of loss. Physical education is 
 thus the sine qua non before moral and be- 
 fore intellectual education; and the parent 
 must set himself to know the laws of animal 
 life and of its environment, in which last such 
 miserable pettinesses as plumbing are, sad to 
 say, not safely to be passed by. 
 
 Indeed, as a question of morals, a first 
 The Physi- duty is the physical duty of health. " Health 
 HeaUh ^ °^ is the religion of the body." " Breaches of 
 the laws of health are physical sins." The 
 modern view of health is wholesomeness. 
 The old truth, sana mens sano corpore, we 
 now read more widely and wisely : Sana 
 menSy sanum corpus. A sound body is quite 
 as much, if not more, conditioned in a sound 
 mind, as a sound mind upon a sound body. 
 A right discipline of mind, a wholesome men- 
 tal attitude, often forestalls bodily ills and, 
 in a sense, prevents pain. The mind con- 
 trols a machine in which it lives, called the 
 body. "While this machine is to him," 
 man lives. It is his business, his duty, to 
 preserve this machine in working order. If 
 58 
 
OF EDUCATION 
 
 it stops, his mortal life is ended. If some 
 parts break, or rot, or wear, his body is crip- 
 pled ; if other parts, his mind is obscured, 
 loses control, is "lost." This body, like all 
 flesh, has in it the possibilities of decay, 
 and " germs " innumerable and forces mani- 
 fold menace it from within and from with- 
 out. 
 
 To the diseased mind, studying disease, it The 
 seems rather hopeless to try to live. A re- ^^J^^^y^ 
 tired physician, in the morbidity of idleness, 
 occupied himself by " having diseases." 
 But to the sane mind, whole, wholesome, 
 holy, it is the principle of life that conquers. 
 The single and sufficing security against 
 disease germs is in the vital soundness, or 
 wholeness, which resists their attack in ad- 
 vance, — like an alert garrison in a strong 
 fort, whose well-defended walls an enemy can 
 neither scale nor shatter. Vitality resists, 
 survives ; death is swallowed up in victory of 
 life. Life re-sur-rects itself, rights itself 
 again over all. The wise machinist's care is 
 to prevent his machine from breaking, rather 
 than to repair it after breaking. Regimen, 
 the rule of good, is better than remedy, the 
 cure of ill. Drugs are but repair make- 
 shifts; the wise physician, the master-ma- 
 59 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 chinist of the body, sets himself to keep the 
 body whole. 
 
 The good engineer is he whose engine is 
 Health not least out of service and who has least cost of 
 from Dis- repairs, because he fore-sees, provides against 
 ease strain by looking to his fuel, water, oil, and 
 
 keeping his machinery in running order. 
 And this he does not do by studying broken- 
 down engines and developing a morbid fear 
 of accident : he must simply know weak 
 points, curves and crossings, " look out '* and 
 " take care." So health is not learned, by 
 child or adult, from disease, by introspective 
 study of morbid conditions, but from the 
 laws of life, by outlook and care-taking. 
 We need to know the human machine as 
 the engineer knows his engine, to provide 
 against strain by looking to our food, regi- 
 men, and storage of vitality : but the studies 
 of anatomy and physiology should give con- 
 fidence in life-power, not fear of death. 
 The true physician is an apostle of life, a 
 minister to the mind, a physician of the soul 
 — with the cheerful presence that brings 
 life and light and not discouragement and 
 gloom. In epidemic the dauntless mind 
 keeps the body sane, and escapes contagion. 
 The heat of fever is overcome by coolness of 
 60 
 
OF EDUCATION 
 
 mind. Courage conquers in the face of death. 
 An Arab tradition tells that where plague 
 kills one, fear kills ten. 
 
 The like is true even with the tottling 
 child. A child is naturally happy, in body Brave 
 as in mind. Its little bodily troubles pass ^°ker 
 by as fleeting clouds, if over-anxiety does brave 
 not emphasize them to the mind. It tries 
 to walk : it falls. The wise mother, brave 
 and not fearful, takes this as matter-of- 
 course : so, then, does the child. Up, with 
 a smile, even if it hurts a bit — and try it 
 again 1 That is Nature's way of teaching to 
 walk — there is nothing to cry about ! The 
 unwise mother, over-anxious, catching the 
 weakling to her arms, concentrates its at- 
 tention upon the hurt, congesting the blood 
 there by the mental act, invents or magni- 
 fies for the child sense of fear and pain, and 
 so thwarts provident Nature. Thus, the 
 "cry-baby!" Brave mother makes brave 
 child, and it is the fearless who conquers. 
 Achilles, Arthur, Siegfried, Parsifal, the 
 fearless, the guileless, can be conquered only 
 by guile or by their own sin. 
 
 And Nature means us to be healthy — 
 whole of body. The head of a babies' hospital 
 witnesses that most children are born well. 
 6i 
 
 \ 
 
Nature 
 means us 
 to be 
 healthy 
 
 Sowing 
 Seeds of 
 Death 
 
 THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 The apple bloom is always sweet, though the 
 tree be gnarled. Despite ills of heredity and 
 distortions from pre-natal life, infants have 
 commonly a working capital of life and health. 
 Nature does her best to give each of her 
 children a fair chance. It is by ill treatment 
 that they are made ill. It is ignorance, or 
 carelessness, or viciousness, that fore-dooms 
 so many to early death, or to death-in-life, — 
 the lack of knowledge, or of thought, or of 
 love. It is too often by the parent that the 
 seeds of death are sown. Swathed and 
 pinned, jounced and churned, the wee folk 
 are denied the free and quiet development of 
 Nature. And as their bodies are pinched, so 
 are their tempers thwarted by ignorant par- 
 ents. Nature indeed teaches the infant to 
 do valiant battle for life, and often it suc- 
 ceeds and survives against all disadvantage. 
 But what waste of life we might and should 
 avoid! It is not possible to all to dower 
 their children with the best conditions of 
 life, — alas, ignorance or poverty forbids ! — 
 but what shall be said of those who, having 
 before them all possibilities, give instead of 
 bread a stone — those mothers and fathers 
 in homes of education, of wealth, of ease, 
 who, careless of the lives given to their care, 
 62 
 
OF EDUCATION 
 
 bring upon them, too late for cure, the curse 
 of broken law ? 
 
 Happy the child to whom a fair start in life 
 is given, by wise parents and wise teachers Physical 
 — for whom the call of nature for food is ^Inf °^" 
 met in even regularity, making abstinence 
 and long waiting more possible in adult life 
 when stress comes, with the sufficient, nutri- 
 tious, and varied diet nature demands for the 
 growing body ; for whom fit clothing, ruled 
 not by foolish fashion but by natural sense, 
 supplies protection and warmth, so that food, 
 needed for growth, is not wasted for mere 
 heating of the body ; for whom warm housing, 
 in its turn, saves waste and harmful exposure, 
 while open-air outing, pleasurable exercise, 
 and natural sport give to the body, and later 
 to the mind, what we rightly call free play. 
 As the child becomes youth these habits of 
 childhood make self-reliance more easy, and 
 give the right trend for adult life. Thus it 
 is made ready to master, unfearing but cau- 
 tious, its physical self and the physical forces 
 of external nature, — water, in swimming and 
 rowing; animals, in riding and driving; 
 weapons, in eye-and-hand practice ; mechan- 
 ical forces, in the wheel and the ball. This 
 physical training is in itself moral discipline, 
 
 63 
 
Education 
 
 THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 as is all Tightness, the evident answer of ef- 
 fect to cause. 
 
 The moral education of infancy and child- 
 Moral hood is still more a matter of parental re- 
 sponsibility, a more difficult matter also be- 
 cause it demands not only knowledge but 
 virtue, and that most difficult of virtues, self- 
 restraint. The child adopts the motives of 
 its elders, and its ethics are the ethics of 
 home exemplars. And nowhere is that fine 
 law of Nature, that demand creates supply, 
 more finely illustrated : in many a household 
 "a little child shall lead them," its elders, 
 into what we accurately call exemplary con- 
 duct. The parent is the god of the child. 
 From father and mother, by imitation, it gets 
 its first standards of conduct, its first motives 
 of ethics, its first religion. Whether we will 
 or no, the child has its direction given it at 
 the start by its parents, as the rifle gives aim 
 to the bullet. Injustice to a child is the 
 most cruel of wrongs. The revolt in a child's 
 heart when wrong is done it, when it is pun- 
 ished for what it did not mean to be wrong, 
 or for what it did not do, or because the 
 parent is out of temper, warps its being, and 
 gives it the first impulse of rebellion against 
 
 64 
 
OF EDUCATION 
 
 law, against Nature, against God. Nay, this 
 does worse ; for it confuses the very idea of 
 law, confounding it with brute force and 
 causeless will. The parental responsibility 
 for physical and moral education therefore 
 cannot be evaded by the parent, or dele- 
 gated to the Genius of Ignorance in however 
 neat a white cap, or even to the most just 
 and skilled of teachers. The parent cannot 
 shirk this duty, for it is the foundation duty 
 of parenthood. Likewise in the nurse and in 
 the teacher, character is the first requisite. 
 As a little child catches a brogue from a 
 nurse while it learns to talk, so it will catch 
 character, and develop in love or in hate. 
 The teacher of morals must himself be the 
 exemplar of justice. 
 
 The true moral education goes back of the 
 Mosaic Decalogue, " Thou shalt not," to " Thou 
 Nature's One-Law, sterner yet more kindly, ^^^^^ "°* 
 "Thou canst not." It is for the child to 
 learn, by reiterated experience, — as that 
 fire burns, that a mother's word is kept, that 
 edge-tools cut, that a lie hurts, — that effect 
 follows cause, that transgression involves re- 
 tribution, that law rules. The universe is 
 morally ordered, under the rule of law. 
 This is the first principle of moral education. 
 
 65 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 Every school must be a school of law and 
 every teacher a lawgiver. 
 
 Nature is relentless, and awards sure 
 Nature is penalty for broken law. This also the child 
 relentless j^^g^. ig^rn, in practice rather than by pre- 
 cept. The one thought of parental discipline 
 should be, not punishment, but cor-rection, 
 righting the child. All penalty should be 
 the logical and necessary result of the child's 
 act ; if it willfully breaks a toy, it loses the 
 use of that toy and of other toys that it might 
 break ; if it is rude to playmate or mother, it 
 must suffer for the time the loss of compan- 
 ionship — and so on, through the calendar of 
 child-crimes. The one aim of moral educa- 
 tion should be to produce self-government in 
 accord with natural law. 
 
 The child, just at home, just in play, just 
 
 The Law of at school, becomes the just man, recogniz- 
 
 ness^^^°"^" ^^S ^^^ regarding Law. As the great law 
 
 of justness, of righteousness, is learned by 
 
 its children, a nation becomes stanch and 
 
 strong and great, for all history teaches that 
 
 the rise and the fall of nations result from 
 
 conditions — of simple and steadfast virtue 
 
 at the beginning, of luxurious unmorality or 
 
 immorality at the end — that are above all 
 
 moral conditions. Names mean little. A na- 
 
 66 
 
OF EDUCATION 
 
 tion is not Christian unless its citizens are in 
 deed followers of the Christ. A nation is 
 not moral unless its citizens recognize cause 
 and effect, right and wrong, in private and 
 in public affairs. If our churches teach 
 our boys to play at war, and our ministers 
 condone unrighteousness ; if our economists 
 preach that trade is war and that each nation 
 is in commerce the enemy of each other; 
 if our workingmen teach that a man must 
 surrender his moral judgment or be denied 
 work as an enemy, — we may prate peace, 
 but war comes. And through the home, the 
 school, the church, the state, all teaching 
 must be based on the fact that health of 
 body, rightness of soul, are the physical and 
 moral foundation on which true living must 
 rest, and without which mere truth of intel- 
 lect is of no avail. For education must above 
 all teach how to live^ in wholeness of life, 
 and it is on such education that a democracy 
 must rest and a republic endure. 
 
 We speak of physical, intellectual, moral 
 education ; but from the beginning Nature The Inter- 
 develops each in an interweaving of all. E^ucatfon^ 
 Nature has no sharp lines : she does not 
 separate landscapes, classes, knowledges, — 
 (>7 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 she merges one into another. Thus physical, 
 moral, intellectual education go hand in hand. 
 The physical education of the sense-organs 
 is the start of intellectual, as well as of moral 
 education. Of itself the child learns motion 
 — to use its limbs, to balance its body, to 
 creep, to stand, to walk, to climb. The child, 
 like all animals, is inquisitive. It puts things 
 in its mouth and to its nose ; it tou'ches what 
 is within reach of the hand ; it is interested 
 to see and hear what is within range of 
 eye and ear. Thus it learns for itself tastes, 
 smells, forms, sounds — in a word, facts. 
 These facts it puts together, compares — and 
 at once sense-observation is supplemented 
 by thought-observation. With comparison 
 Thinking thinking begins. That which yields to the 
 ^^^"^ hand, that which does not ; that which is 
 
 within reach of the hand, that which is not ; 
 that which shines to the eye, that which does 
 not — give thoughts of hard and soft, near 
 and far, light and shade. Qualities are dis- 
 tinguished. The object present is compared 
 with the object past. With association, mem- 
 ory begins. Here already are the rudiments 
 of intellectual education. The child also, 
 like many animals, is imitative. It seeks to 
 match with the voice what it hears with the 
 68 
 
OF EDUCATION 
 
 ear. Thus it learns speech and learns song, 
 as art, not as science. It delights in pictures 
 and forms, and likes to make them, and thus 
 begins to learn drawing and modeling. It 
 counts and arranges objects, and thus mathe- 
 matics and classification begin. Meantime, 
 the child learns, naturally, — that is by pro- 
 cess of nature, — other kinds of lessons. By 
 sour tastes, noxious smells, the burn of a fire, 
 the hurt of a fall. Nature gives warning, and 
 tells it to avoid ill, to respect gravitation. 
 From the persistent relation and succession 
 of facts, the notions of fitness and unfitness, 
 cause and effect, right and wrong, begin. 
 Here again are the very rudiments of moral 
 education. All this is Nature's doing — she 
 does this for the infant savage, indeed she 
 does much of it for the infant animal. 
 
 But Nature, always prodigal, does this at 
 unnecessary cost and waste. A wise teach- A wise 
 ing saves and safeguards. It puts the world- sav^^s^^"^ 
 experience of the race at the service of the Waste 
 newcomer. It is not well that a child should 
 be burned by the fire or bruised by a fall ; 
 this is costly and wasteful. Moreover the 
 senses must be righted. The child sees the 
 trees tossing in the wind, and thinks the 
 trees churn the wind ; the savage sees the sun 
 
 69 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 obscured by a cloud or by eclipse, and thinks 
 the cloud or an unseen demon has devoured 
 it ; the ancients saw the sun set, and thought 
 it sank in the ocean and went under the 
 earth ; the moderns still see the earth as the 
 great center of the heavens, surrounded by 
 shining points of light. The larger vision, 
 the wider experience, must correct these 
 natural errors of the uneducated senses. 
 Also, there are two sides of the objects and 
 forces of nature. Water cleanses and solves 
 for us ; fire warms us and cooks our food ; 
 gravitation holds all things together. Yet 
 water drowns ; fire burns ; gravitation crushes. 
 The ministrants of life become the ministers 
 of death. To safeguard against ill, to utilize 
 the good, without cruel experience, is also an 
 achievement of teaching. 
 
 As we face intellectual education, several 
 
 Intellectual questions as to the purposes, methods, and 
 
 Education j-esults of " schooling " at once confront us. 
 
 Is there in the child's mind an order in which 
 
 the faculties develop.-* Should all children 
 
 then be taught the same things in the same 
 
 order or should each child come to its own in 
 
 its own way } Should education equip the 
 
 child with knowledge, that is, facts, or with 
 
 70 
 
OF EDUCATION 
 
 discipline, that is, training ? Is there an 
 order in which knowledges have worth, and 
 does this order correspond to the develop- 
 ment of faculties ? Is the educated man after 
 all better equipped for actual life than the 
 " self-made man " ? All these questions con- 
 verge to a single focus and have one answer, 
 if we can answer the all-embracing question, 
 "What is true education ? " For a true edu- 
 cation is in fact that which, keeping pace 
 with the general order of development of the 
 child-mind, answers the need of each child, 
 by giving facts in their true relations, know- 
 ledge disciplined into wisdom, in the order in 
 which knowledges are of most worth, and 
 thus affording all, and more than, the advan- 
 tages of the self-made man, without waste 
 and loss. 
 
 At the age of maturity. Nature notifies 
 by certain external signs that sexuality, hith- The Facul- 
 erto passive, has become active. None the of^Ac-e™^ 
 less the several faculties, intellectual as well 
 as physical and moral, have their times when 
 they come of age. Nature provides for de- 
 velopment of the child in due order, and a 
 true education follows Nature's order. To 
 blunt Nature's keenness, and to thwart her 
 methods, — as to teach grammar before lan- 
 71 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 guage, — is the greatest mistake possible to 
 education and " civilization," the sin against 
 the holy spirit of child-life. We find that 
 faculties develop in the child-mind in due 
 order, an order uniform in succession though 
 not parallel in time, and of consistent and ra- 
 tional evolution, in the case of every child, not 
 bereft of its complement of senses and facul- 
 ties, born into the world. The child asks in 
 succession " What .? " " How > " " Why ? " — 
 the question of fact, the question of relation, 
 the question of cause. None of us indeed live 
 "What, How, long enough to know all the " What ? " but 
 ^^^ ^ it is not long before the child begins to ask 
 
 " How .? " and to learn of method and rela- 
 tion. At last it asks ** Why ? " and begins 
 to learn of cause. " What is it ? " " What is 
 it like ? " "What made it } " are the child's 
 touchstones. The basis of intellectual edu- 
 cation is, in this sense also, physical educa- 
 tion : the senses, not the reason, are first 
 called upon ; the first requisite is that the 
 child shall see, hear, touch, taste, smell, i. e,, 
 observe truly. This truth of sense-observa- 
 tion, in itself a moral education, becomes in 
 due course accuracy of thought-observation, 
 in obtaining and coordinating the data for 
 sound judgment, — so that the early need of 
 72 
 
OF EDUCATION 
 
 the child is also the final need of the man of 
 large affairs, in business organization or in 
 concerns of state. 
 
 The child, like the man, needs facts first. 
 Facts are the food, the fuel of the mind. The storing 
 The engine must carry its store of coal, of ^^^^s 
 water, of oil : otherwise its direction is of no 
 avail. A wise teaching selects facts, sup- 
 plies more facts, and puts them in proper 
 relation. These facts, the child compares, 
 by likeness and difference, associates, assim- 
 ilates, organizes — until in this very setting ^ 
 forth of related facts in due order, the mind 
 is trained to reproduce them in like related 
 order as material for new judgments. The 
 " meaning " of facts becomes evident. In 
 due course the senses are supplemented by 
 " instruments : " the eye is trained to keen 
 distinctions of color and tint by help of prism 
 and color-films, the ear by tuning-fork and 
 water-glasses. Facts are put together and 
 taken apart : analysis and synthesis prove 
 each other. In this way, facts are not 
 dumped into the brain as a heap of rubbish — 
 nor is the child required to swallow diction- 
 ary or directory, to clutter the brain-chambers 
 with useless knowledge, as names of forgotten 
 kings, days of battles, numbers of troops. 
 73 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 To the mind as to the body, that food should 
 be supplied which can be properly digested. 
 Nature invites this method of learning by 
 Learning by association — it is her method. The domain 
 Association ^^ knowledge, the kingdom of Nature, is an 
 organized kingdom — ordered, coordinated : 
 not, as childhood used to be taught, a scrap- 
 heap of facts. One thing not only follows 
 another, but follows from another. Beasts, 
 birds, fishes, and plants, sounds and colors, 
 have correlations within and across their 
 kingdoms ; the mental process of organization 
 finds correspondence in nature. The child 
 no longer need learn a hundred names of 
 fishes, a hundred of birds, a hundred of 
 beasts, as isolated facts ; it can be taught, in 
 half the time, how the fish, developing after 
 its kind into many kinds, in likeness and un- 
 likeness, develops presently into the bird, 
 and this into the beast, the mammaHa, man ; 
 and as the learning mind itself develops into 
 adult life, it is brought face to face with that 
 wonderful and culminating fact in biology, 
 that each human life in its pre-natal history 
 follows the same order. Thus knowledge is 
 taught by that principle of association which 
 is the primal law of memory. To fit a newly 
 seen bird or plant into its place is to know it 
 74 
 
OF EDUCATION 
 
 better than by name. As, in the words of 
 Agassiz and Goode, a great museum is a col- 
 lection of labels illustrated by specimens, so 
 a well-educated intelligence is a collection 
 of mental relations illustrated by individual 
 facts. Thus, though knowledges increase, 
 mastery of them is easier, because the key of 
 the treasure-house is one key, not many keys. 
 Classification is the labor-saving tool of the 
 mind. Thus knowledge of facts becomes 
 disciplined into wisdom, good sense. And 
 the pupil of to-day learns more, in less time, 
 with half labor, than the child of the genera- 
 tion addressed by Herbert Spencer's book on 
 " Education." 
 
 In the memory-chambers of the brain, the 
 senses in fact store impressions, one by one. Memory 
 until these senso-graphs rival the collections L^brar^'^^^* 
 of a great library, gallery, and museum. Each 
 collection starts with a few things. As books 
 begin to come into a library, they may be put 
 upon the shelves as they happen to come. 
 But presently, as more come, there must be 
 arrangement — the librarian can no longer 
 put his hand upon each book separately. If 
 he has had no library education, he may put 
 together all the books whose titles begin with 
 "A," "An," or "The." Or, he may try a 
 75 
 
tion 
 
 THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 more sensible alphabetizing by titles, without 
 these meaningless tags. Or, he may arrange 
 his books according to the names of authors. 
 But, if he is to have a real working-library — 
 one where people come not to " get a book " 
 but to get knowledge — he finds he must 
 Classifica- have a classification by subjects, either di- 
 rectly on his shelves, or indirectly in a subject- 
 catalogue. Each subject becomes at last a 
 special library. Soon the librarian finds that 
 some books are out-of-date and seldom called 
 for. These he puts on less accessible shelves, 
 and brings to the front the " live " books, to 
 be of easy access to the seeker. Last year's 
 newspaper, the ephemeral book, is stowed 
 away out of sight and " out of mind." Col- 
 lection becomes but a means for selection. 
 At last, the great library, recognizing that 
 it can never be complete, supplements itself 
 by knowledge of other libraries, through cat- 
 alogues, bibliographies, indexes, — and its 
 final triumph, in the "evaluation" of books, 
 is to produce at once the best book of its 
 subject, or to tell where it can be had. 
 
 So in a well-ordered mind, the senses store 
 
 datttf arranged by the method of association 
 
 in a subject-classification, and these can be 
 
 called for at will, combined and applied to 
 
 ^6 
 
OF EDUCATION 
 
 practical use. The brain is closely analogous The Brain a 
 to a photographer's store-room, connected ^central " 
 with a telephone " central." We know almost and Photo- 
 nothing of the physical nature of the brain ito?e-room 
 senso-graphs, nor do we know the limits of 
 brain-capacity to receive and store such im- 
 pressions. The phrenologists assign specific 
 parts of the brain as the seat of specific func- 
 tions, and physiologists locate the nerve- 
 centres of the several senses ; but of the real 
 records in brain-cells, we are and may always 
 be ignorant. But we know that observation 
 and memory differ with individuals, with 
 ages, with specialization, above all with the 
 training that educes habit. One sees and 
 memorizes much ; another little. The child- 
 mind is of clear plates, sensitized by heredity 
 for this or that kind of impression; the 
 matured mind takes and gives, washes out, 
 re-sensitizes ; the aged mind seems some- 
 times to lose control, and faded plates, long 
 since forgotten in the back store-rooms, come 
 out unbidden. One person observes and re- 
 members faces ; another names ; some both. 
 There is a natural selection : we remember 
 only for a day or a week what we had for 
 breakfast or dinner, but for years a face, a 
 voice, an odor, a kindling thought, a key-fact. 
 77 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 The memory becomes trained to forget some 
 things, to remember others. Education should 
 exercise this perspective, in the cultivation of 
 habit. The eye, the ear, the inward sense, 
 need to be trained to note, to consider, to 
 record, worthily. There should be inten- 
 tional differentiation between observing and 
 remembering. The modern newspaper makes 
 the mistake of attempting record of all the 
 pettinesses of a day — an impossible and 
 worthless task. The modern education must 
 see and shun this serious error. Selection, 
 not collection, should be its aim. 
 
 And in true education each life must be 
 Individual- trained after its own pattern. Each child 
 dien ^^'^" ^^s ^^^ ^^g^^ ^° ^^ treated as itself, by parent 
 and by teacher. The farmer does not treat 
 alike potatoes, corn, wheat ; sheep, cow, 
 horse. The gardener will not bed together, 
 nor treat alike, his roses, his lilies, his or- 
 chids — nor will he treat alike one kind of 
 rose and another. Each must be nurtured 
 after its kind. But human seedlings do not 
 come to us ready-labeled, like pots from the 
 florist ; each life must be studied, to know 
 the needs of its own character. Nature 
 divines for us. In the light of general laws, 
 the law of each child's life — temperament, 
 78 
 
OF EDUCATION 
 
 tastes, capacities, trend — must be separately- 
 discerned and studied. No two children^ 
 born of the same parents, are the same, or 
 even alike, and this unlikeness is even more 
 marked in the school than in the family. 
 And throughout all education this unlikeness 
 in likeness must be kept in mind by the 
 teacher, in leading forth the faculties of the 
 taught. All teaching should be individual Teaching 
 in its personal application, though in its pur- individual 
 pose the same. While children of the same 
 age study the same subject, as a part of gen- 
 eral education, each must do his part in his 
 own way. This the wise teacher, e-ducating, 
 recognizes. The "grade" system needs to 
 be tempered to individual temperaments. 
 Instead of putting into one class the boy of 
 ten who is eight years old for arithmetic and 
 twelve years old for spelling, and the boy of 
 ten who is eight for spelling and twelve for 
 arithmetic, a " class " for arithmetic, by due 
 arrangement of hours, should include those 
 of certain advancement in that study, what- 
 ever their mere age, and the grade certifi- 
 cate should be given for each study and not 
 by an impossible average which ignores 
 differences. To reduce a class to physical 
 uniformity by cutting the feet off tall boys 
 79 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 and making them foot-stools for the short 
 ones, would not be good practice. Natural 
 selection should here also be recognized and 
 emphasized ; and " over-education," that is, 
 mis-directed education, prevented. It is not 
 wise to try to grow a lily from a rose, nor a 
 rose from a lily. 
 
 Self-preservation "is the first law of 
 The Order nature," and next in order of need is self- 
 o Nee s maintenance, "earning a living." As the 
 family precedes and is the unit of the neigh- 
 borhood and the state, preparation for par- 
 entage, rearing a family, should be assured 
 before that for citizenship, the communal 
 and political relation. In some measure 
 Nature provides for all these in the instincts 
 of the animal kingdom. Last, and pecul- 
 iar to man, comes aesthetic development, for 
 the gratification of individual tastes. This, 
 Spencer shows, is the order in which know- 
 ledges are of most worth, an order which 
 schooling should regard in developing the 
 child into the man. And this is likewise the 
 order of a natural education, an education 
 following Nature and developing according 
 to her laws. 
 
 For the instincts of Nature, fulfilled by 
 80 
 
OF EDUCATION 
 
 a wise physical training, provide first for The Order 
 the preservation of life and health ; and for Jion ^^^^" 
 the occupations of the great body of man- 
 kind, "manual training," the development 
 of bodily strength and skill, of the eye, the 
 hand, the physical powers, is now requisite ; 
 and all this is physical or sense-education. 
 Moral education must of course pervade all, 
 but it is of paramount necessity in the rela- 
 tions of parentage and citizenship, the home 
 and the state, in which the sense of right, 
 moral development, should be supreme. And 
 intellectual education, the storing and train- 
 ing of the mind, beginning in the first rela- 
 tions with elementary knowledge of natural 
 facts, and with the simpler processes by which 
 art supplements nature, as drawing, writing, 
 reading, measuring, figuring, — becomes of 
 increasing importance in the later relations, 
 with physiology, biology, sociology, philology, 
 history, politics, economics, psychology, phi- 
 losophy ; until, in final processes of culture, 
 it teaches not only science but the fine arts 
 which become personal "accomplishments" 
 and gratifications. Thus a true education 
 conforms in every respect with the several 
 orders of development — within the child's 
 mind, without in the requirements of life, 
 8i 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 answering to that evenness of supply and 
 demand with which Nature always balances 
 her books. It proceeds from the simple to 
 the complex, from the near to the far, from 
 the like to the unlike, from nature to art, in 
 the true procedure of the universal law of 
 development. 
 
 The basic education, of physical sound- 
 The Kinder- ness, moral rightness, and intellectual true- 
 garten j^^gg -^^ perception of fact, is the field, after 
 
 the mother's care, of the "child-garden." 
 This supplements the care of parents, but 
 can never supplant it. Here Nature's meth- 
 ods of play and of imitation are used as the 
 royal road to learning. After the nursery 
 comes thus the kindergarten, in which, in the 
 sunshine of play, the human plant is to grow. 
 The kindergartner sees in the child literally 
 a plant that is to be brought to flower. All 
 plants need light, warmth, air, water, soil — 
 the kindergarten recognizes that the light of 
 truth, the warmth of love, must come to the 
 unfolding of the little life. The true pur- 
 pose of the kindergarten is to put the child 
 in touch with Nature ; to let Nature take it 
 by the hand and lead it forth, each little life 
 after its own order of being or temperament ; 
 to encourage the small seeker after truth to 
 82 
 
OF EDUCATION 
 
 ask questions of Nature and listen to the an- 
 swers for itself. It is at once a praise of the 
 kindergarten and a criticism of the " graded 
 school," that the too methodic teacher con- 
 siders the child of the kindergarten too prone 
 to ask questions, too individual, not readily 
 " drilled," ** uneasy under school rote." But, 
 on the other hand, the kindergarten is not 
 merely for play, or a place where the child 
 is to "have its own way." It must, above 
 all, learn Nature's way, kind but also just, 
 sweet but also stern, by no means "go as you 
 please." So, in the games patterning real 
 life, in drawing, modeling, weaving, basket- 
 work, in the song that tells its story or points 
 its clear but unobtrusive moral, the child 
 must be getting not only simple knowledge 
 and simple skill, but that moral discipline cari- 
 catured in the makeshift of " drilling." As a 
 "fad," without high purpose and sound method, 
 the kindergarten is a caricature of education. 
 That play is in itself natural education, and 
 can be made the greatest of aids in teaching, The Teach- 
 is one of the most important discoveries in ^"^ °^ ^^*^ 
 the history of educational development, — 
 the great contribution of Froebel. Nature's 
 indications are often given in the child's own 
 choice of play, for true play patterns the real 
 
 83 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 affairs of life, with happy instinct, and gives 
 a real education. The simplest games of 
 children are well-nigh universal, found the 
 world around, passing from one child-genera- 
 tion to another, without written record or 
 purposed teaching, as the Vedic hymns or 
 the epics of Homer were passed on in the 
 childhood of the world. The ball, the top, 
 Toys the hoop, all are object-lessons in the proper- 
 
 ties of matter and the laws of motion, giving 
 in happy play dexterity to hand and accuracy 
 to eye, and laying the foundation for a later 
 knowledge of the science of motion. The 
 reins, the toy-wagon, the miniature boat or 
 locomotive, are means of unconscious train- 
 ing. The boy's knife, the girl's scissors, 
 the box of tools, are an introduction to prac- 
 tical mechanics. The doll is a lesson in the 
 altruism of motherhood. Presently the child 
 begins to collect, and a collection of kinds 
 of leaves, of woods, of insects, of feathers, 
 of birds, of minerals, of postage-stamps, of 
 coins, becomes to the keen parent, the alert 
 teacher, a royal road to botany, to zoology, to 
 geology, to geography, to history. Here, as 
 elsewhere. Nature points the best way, and 
 the easiest way. In choosing his play, the 
 lad indicates the "calling" Nature gives 
 84 
 
OF EDUCATION 
 
 him. And if, by wise sympathy of parent 
 and teacher, honor, fairness, kindness, manli- 
 ness, are made part of the public opinion of 
 children in play, "honor bound" and "no 
 fair '* become watchwords in life as well, and 
 a solid foundation is laid for the civic virtues 
 most needed in business and in the state. 
 
 The child who, in the kindergarten, has 
 learned to use touch, sight, hearing, rightly ; "Primary ^^ 
 to speak carefully ; to do simple handy work, 
 as in modeling, drawing, and weaving; to 
 play wholesomely, — has the first and best 
 outfit for human life, though he has not yet 
 learned his letters. For these are but the 
 symbols needed to record his thoughts and 
 his speech. Mankind thought and talked 
 before it wrote and read ; so also in the child 
 — use, art, comes before rule, science. It 
 is later in the years of training that the child- 
 mind should attempt to master the artificial 
 features necessary in education. To read, to 
 spell, to write, are not natural endowments, 
 but artificial acquirements. The child draws, 
 makes pictures of objects, naturally; but the 
 degenerate pictures now arbitrary letters, 
 conventionally associated with sounds, have 
 no longer relation with natural objects and 
 8s 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 can be learned only " by rote." These let- 
 ters mastered, the child applies them phoneti- 
 cally, but must be " corrected " backwards to 
 Learning the arbitrary idiosyncrasies of English or- 
 Enghsh thoepy and orthography. Of all tongues, 
 English is perhaps the least logical, and its 
 " rules " in grammar are in great part an ef- 
 fort to classify arbitrary and unrelated facts. 
 Reading, writing, and spelling can indeed be 
 learned in English, not in scientific analysis, 
 but only as a hard-and-fast act of memory. 
 Yet when the elements of orthoepy and or- 
 thography are acquired, there is then a natu- 
 ral way of development in unison, as each 
 learner in turn reads while others write and 
 perforce spell. Grammar comes last of all. 
 It may be that the typewriter and some form 
 of phonography will find place in our schools ; 
 the Morse signs can be learned as play, 
 and the phonetic symbols of Bell's "visible 
 speech," the only alphabet logical and natu- 
 ral, give a remarkable discriminative power 
 in hearing and recording language, even of 
 unknown tongues. Likewise in the field of 
 mathematics, arithmetic and algebra, both ar- 
 tificial forms of numerical expression, pro- 
 perly follow instead of preceding the more 
 natural geometry. 
 
 S6 
 
OF EDUCATION 
 
 Each child should receive, in each period 
 of schooling, "an all-round education," com- An Educa- 
 plete so far as it goes, so that no time or pi^^e^so^far 
 force has been lost or wasted when the child, as it goes 
 at any age, is withdrawn from school to ac- 
 tive or passive life. And the order of studies 
 indicated by the order of evolution of facul- 
 ties still proves the same as the order of com- 
 parative usefulness ; development continues 
 to answer to need. In any stage of civiliza- 
 tion all need, first of all, to observe, to think, 
 to talk ; next, to read, to write, to measure, 
 and to reckon. The child should be taught 
 first the prime facts nearest home, in nature 
 or in history, and as it learns to use tools — 
 whether figures, words, or things — should 
 master the simple before passing to the com- 
 plex. The prime factors in every-day rela- 
 tions of adult life with Nature and with affairs, 
 with other men and in personal conduct, 
 America plans to give to every child, within 
 the years of compulsory education. Statute 
 law, making sure that the child of ignorant 
 or heedless or selfish parents shall not lose 
 the chance it can have only once in life, pro- 
 vides this primary education for all children, 
 and " compels them to come in." 
 
 Now the human being has the tools of 
 
 87 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 The larger knowledge, SO that it can work its way into 
 Knowledge j^rger knowledge. These avenues of elemen- 
 tary education lead forward and open upward 
 for the fit student ; and our free high schools 
 and colleges should give to the youth who by 
 proof of fitness earns the right of way, those 
 opportunities for which he cannot yet pay 
 except in promise of future service, but which 
 if the door is not thus opened must be lost. 
 
 Primary education is that of primary, of 
 "Secondary universal, importance. A less number of 
 Education " (.]^ii(jj-gn ^re sure of the next advantage, sec- 
 ondary education, which is of secondary im- 
 portance — the widening of the horizon of 
 the individual mind by the teaching of facts 
 outside the individual experience and there- 
 fore to be had only through books or lectures : 
 the knowledge of other lands, physical and 
 descriptive geography ; of other times, his- 
 tory, not in dates and names, but of vital 
 facts ; of the wider facts of nature ; of other 
 languages. This is properly " common- 
 school education," and most if not all chil- 
 dren should have it, with the extension of 
 that manual training which gives to the body 
 parallel development of knowledge and disci- 
 pline. 
 
 88 
 
Education " 
 
 OF EDUCATION 
 
 After this, and only after this, comes the 
 " higher education," in high schools and col- " Higher 
 leges, ^_which fewer children can have, for 
 which many children have little capacity and 
 little need, which consists largely in the 
 analysis and generalization of facts into 
 knowledge of the general underlying laws, 
 the science underneath the art, as the rules 
 of grammar and the equations of analytical 
 mechanics. The higher studies, in which 
 the larger generalizations marshal innumer- 
 able facts, otherwise useless in their isolation, 
 into sequence and order, under the rule of 
 the greater laws, afford the final discipline of 
 the scholar. Key-facts, opening vast cham- 
 bers of knowledges, are stored in the well- 
 ordered mind ; no one can ever master all the 
 books in a great library, but the student be- 
 comes trained to know where and how to get 
 what he wants. History, seen as sociology, 
 in its great sweep of progress through the 
 ages, has its mile-posts : we do not need to 
 measure foot by foot. Biology, the study of 
 life, has its great law of evolution : physics, 
 the study of forces, has its great law of cor- 
 relation and conversion ; each of the great 
 realms of thought is illumined by the light 
 of greater law. This is still general educa- 
 
 , 89 
 
specialized 
 Education 
 
 Elective 
 Studies 
 
 THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 tion, in which, while the individual tempera- 
 ment of the child or youth must be consid- 
 ered, in method and practice, the purpose of 
 the teacher is to impart an all-round acquaint- 
 ance with the general field of knowledge, so 
 far as the pupil goes. 
 
 Last of all, for the fit, should come the 
 specialized education, the trade-school for the 
 artisan, the art-school for the artist, the dis- 
 tinctive school in the university for the stu- 
 dent aiming at a profession. The special 
 must be built on the broad foundations of 
 the general, both in knowledge and in train- 
 ing. 
 
 With specialization, the principle of " elec- 
 tion " of studies comes into play — and not 
 before. The college, whether called academy 
 or " 
 as 
 
 thing," that the youth may be prepared to 
 touch life on all sides and in any calling ; the 
 special school, in the university proper, to 
 teach as fully as may be " everything about 
 something," that the man may be specialized 
 for his specific work in life. Thus, the col- 
 lege professor of chemistry teaches his sub- 
 ject as a part of general education, the typi- 
 cal facts and general laws which every one 
 90 
 
 " university," has for its business, to teach 
 far as may be *' something about every- 
 
OF EDUCATION 
 
 should know, the merchant in dealing with 
 products, the lawyer in dealing with cases, 
 the preacher in dealing with analogies ; the 
 university professor of chemistry teaches his 
 subject as a specialty, that his student may 
 become a chemist or apply chemistry as a 
 physician or a mining engineer. It is not 
 until the student has rounded general educa- 
 tion as a college "graduate" that he is best 
 qualified to make choice of " elective studies." 
 Otherwise, he voyages on unexplored seas 
 without chart or compass, steering as best he 
 can. A premature choice elects not between Premature 
 specialties of knowledges but between " softs ^^°^^® 
 and hards," as when " patristic Greek " at 
 Harvard was taken not by budding theolo- 
 gians but by those who ** went in " for athlet- 
 ics. But when the college has "graduated" 
 the youth into manhood and made him ready 
 to accept the responsibility of choice and 
 life-aim, selection should be invited, not only 
 of studies but of teachers, as in the German 
 universities. The "born teacher," answer- 
 ing to the need of each child, whom children 
 "love to hear," should indeed be selected 
 throughout the common schools as well as 
 for the kindergarten and the university, but 
 it is only as we reach the latter that so far it 
 91 
 
Education 
 tested by 
 Results 
 
 Culture 
 
 THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 has been safe to give natural selection by 
 students' choice free play. 
 
 Our "higher education" should produce 
 definite results in higher morals and higher 
 character, and it is self-impeached when it 
 gives us tricksters or hoodlums. The happy 
 effervescence of young manhood has need to 
 bubble itself off in sports and fun, but the 
 self-restraint which comes with the true dis- 
 cipline of the scholar should prevent that 
 over-stepping of the bounds of sanity and 
 decency which gives to common uneducated 
 brutality an example and excuse. The stu- 
 dent body in our upper schools should be 
 self -organized, self -governed, under restraint 
 of its own pubHc opinion, alert to the respon- 
 sibilities of an aristocracy of scholarship, and 
 thus prepared to bring into the body politic, 
 year by year, clean, new blood capable of the 
 highest service to the democracy from which 
 its opportunity has come. 
 
 The final education completes the whole 
 man, with the " culture " which is as the 
 flower to the fruit, the delight side of life, 
 literature, music, art, the enjoyment of Na- 
 ture. Here also the faculties are to be led 
 forth, e-ducated, trained, to fullness of appre- 
 ciation, an appreciation not of technical skill, 
 92 
 
OF EDUCATION 
 
 as when a painter admires the handling of 
 a pigment, but of qualities of inspiration. 
 This makes of life a garden in which, after 
 the work-a-day toil of the field, there is 
 rest. 
 
 But "schooling" is not all of education. 
 All life is education — outside of school and All Life is 
 after school-days as well. The example of Education 
 parents, the influence of companions, the 
 abiding bonds of friendship, the touch-and- 
 pass of incidental acquaintanceship, are all 
 agencies of unconscious education through- 
 out our lives. But on the men and women 
 of education there is laid a duty of conscious 
 education, of cultivating the art and the arts 
 of life, that should lead them and those with 
 them upon ever higher planes of knowledge 
 and discipline and character. The state 
 recognizes this in providing the public li- 
 brary, which shall supplement and extend 
 through adult life the opportunities of the 
 school. But it is above all for the scholar, 
 self-impelled, to develop his individual life, 
 and thus his part of the common life, in full 
 responsiveness to everything that is highest 
 in life, *' to hitch his wagon to a star," to find 
 in affairs, in social life, in politics, in religion, 
 alike, at once opportunity to apply all with 
 93 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 The Self- 
 educated 
 
 Rest and 
 Re-creation 
 
 which life has endowed him and new endow- 
 ment for Hfe to come. 
 
 It should put to shame those who have 
 enjoyed and not fulfilled the opportunities 
 of schooling and the discipline of education 
 that men and women, denied these opportu- 
 nities and this discipline, have often devel- 
 oped by the education of daily life a standard 
 of noble character and uplifted living, far 
 above that of many who have wasted their 
 talents and belittled themselves. There 
 have been artists who, lacking hands, have 
 drawn pictures with their toes ; there are 
 workers who, lacking tools, have overcome 
 all disadvantages, made their own tools, and 
 achieved their perfect work. All honor to 
 such as these ! but let us not argue that lack 
 of education, of hands, or of tools, has made 
 them what they are. 
 
 In education, for the youth and through 
 adult-life as well, a great factor is rest and 
 re-creation. Our busy age neglects what it 
 most needs. We have gone daft for amuse- 
 ment — it is a vice of the times ; but that is 
 not re-creation. Nor is idleness, rest. Here 
 also the happy mean is between the extreme 
 which we reject and the extreme to which 
 our pendulum swings. The victim of ** cram," 
 94 
 
OF EDUCATION 
 
 with head-splitting ache and eyes red from 
 the blood-congestion in his brain, his head in 
 a towel and his feet in hot water, is no worse 
 and no better than the hero of sport, his 
 head cracked by blow or kick and with black 
 eye and bruised body from the athletic field. 
 We need to learn to rest. For we of to-day 
 not only "murder sleep," but murder waking 
 rest. The diversion of our busy thoughts 
 into quiet is an unknown art. We cannot 
 fold our hands or infold our spirits with 
 quiet. The art of rest must be one of our 
 educative arts of life. 
 
 Thus in education, the law of Nature holds. 
 Each right step, in the individual life, is Harmony 
 found to be in harmony with the great laws cSioi?*^"" 
 of the universe. All is in tune. Education 
 has been so wrong in the past, so far from 
 Nature's way, especially in its relations with 
 democracy, that to many there is despair 
 as to right education. But it is only within 
 the past generation that mankind has reached 
 that place in progress where real education 
 is rightly discerned. Our progress since has 
 been indeed wonderful and encouraging. 
 Let us not fail of heart in this work for the 
 future. 
 
 95 
 
OF BUSINESS 
 
OF BUSINESS 
 
 JGNORANT or educated, self- 
 taught or schooled, the boy or Facing the 
 girl, the man or woman, " be- ^^^^^ 
 gins life," — faces the world. 
 " The world," it is said, " is all 
 before him where to choose." At first, this 
 does not seem true. The world of present 
 and personal possibilities is but a part of 
 the great world. Yet it is the open door. 
 Every road leads everywhere. A boy with 
 an "aim in life," and will-power behind the 
 aim, has good chance for any goal. The 
 girl's choice, of old, was passive ; she had to 
 wait for her world till a man should open the 
 door for her. But to-day her world also is 
 within her choice ; she also may have aim, 
 and need not wait the happening man. Now- Choice of 
 adays, boy or girl alike may each measurably ^"^y-ness 
 decide what his or her busy-ness, work in the 
 world, shall be. Free-will steers predesti- 
 nation, and purpose builds in and out from 
 environment, as the rudder of the great ship, 
 answering to will, controls and directs the 
 predestinating forces of steam and wave. 
 
 It is a prime usefulness of education that 
 it enables the youth to make a fit choice. 
 99 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 Education It used to be assumed that education was 
 and Success ^ hindrance to *' success in life." The great 
 merchant was to begin by sweeping out the 
 store. The weakling was the proper candi- 
 date for college, whence a living might be 
 assured for him in the church or other 
 "learned profession." A college education 
 was thought a handicap against " practical " 
 achievement. This superstition is one of the 
 husks the world has thrown off. The free 
 play of competition has entered all the pro- 
 fessions, and all are the better for it. The 
 theological seminary can no longer send out 
 spiritless souls to inspire spirituality, nor the 
 medical colleges weak characters to tell men 
 Competition how to get strong. Competition demands 
 cwe'^of choice of tools. A man should first know 
 Tools to what " calling " he is called, by nature, 
 
 by his own nature. We need clay for bricks, 
 oak for a ship's keel, willow for baskets, cast 
 iron for stoves, wrought iron for shovels, the 
 finest steel of finest temper for edge tools. 
 There are men of like materials. Competi- 
 tion — not that for money, but that of qual- 
 ities — is the test of the modern world. It 
 rejects alike tool steel in place of clay, or 
 clay in place of cast iron. So it rejects from 
 commercial success men of too soft nature, 
 100 
 
OF BUSINESS > . ,.,,,,,,,, 
 
 of weak will, and from spiritual Success lil6n * ^ ' '^ ^ ' ' ' 
 of too hard nature, of reckless self-will. First 
 of all, then, a man should seek to know what 
 he is good for. The tragedies of human life 
 are largely from the failures of mis-place- 
 ment. Yet ever it is the finer material that 
 is of the wider range. Steel can be used in 
 place of bricks, but clay cannot be used in 
 place of steel. A wise education should have 
 taught the youth of what use his material 
 may best be in the world. 
 
 In the period of education, all relations are 
 personal. Life-activities are concentrated on The World 
 the internal development of the human being fhS-jack- 
 — the youth is to make the most of himself, built 
 Now relations become social, external — the 
 man is to make the most of the world. He 
 has been dealing with the laws of personal /y 
 
 development ; he deals now with the laws of ' 
 
 social development. He is to do service for 
 others, and thus earn his living. Thus the 
 busy world, the world of business, is a great 
 House-that-Jack-built, ordered under the reign 
 of law, in which one service fits in with an- 
 other. The science of trade is indeed called 
 economics^ house-rule, and we must master 
 its laws to practice at best advantage the / 
 
 lOI 
 
..,.., , THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 • ' ' ' art ot business. " Know thyself — know the 
 
 world," "know laws — know facts," are can- 
 ons of success. Knowledge is indeed power. 
 
 There is a discussion as between the 
 " Old " and "old " and the " new " schools in economics, 
 Schools in because the old advanced laws and applied 
 Economics these to facts, while the new seeks facts and 
 generalizes these into laws. The difference 
 is of method only. The old political econo- 
 my is deprecated as philosophic rather than 
 historical and theoretic instead of practical, 
 emphasizing a narrow self-interest instead of 
 the larger good. The old political economy 
 indeed thought first of things ; the new eco- 
 nomics thinks first of men — and this is bet- 
 ter. But there is no more need of a new 
 economics than of a new religion. The truly 
 philosophic becomes the historic; true the- 
 ory becomes actual practice ; and an enlight- 
 ened self-interest zs altruistic in high degree. 
 The aim of economics is gain. But greed is 
 not gain. Selfishness and self-interest are 
 not the same. For men cannot live to best 
 result except in the light of the larger good. 
 Here economics shades into ethics, and can- 
 not be separated from it. 
 
 I02 
 
OF BUSINESS 
 
 In the beginning a man earned his living 
 simply, each man for himself. He was inde- Independent 
 pendent of all but Nature. He tilled or killed ^^"^ 
 food for himself, tended his own flock, wove 
 his own clothes, built his own hut. He de- 
 fended himself against the forces of Nature, 
 wild beasts, and hostile man. When Nature 
 denied rain, sunshine, warmth, to his little 
 field or his little flock, he soon starved. He 
 had small store, and the wide world could not 
 help him. The stronger man made him his 
 slave, his dependent. With civil organiza- 
 tion, that is, civilization, through the tribe, 
 the nation, and now in world-relation, inde- 
 pendence gave way to inter-dependence. In- inter- 
 dependence, dependence, inter-dependence, ^pendent 
 has been the line of progress. Man ex- 
 changes. Primitive barter has given place 
 to complex commerce. To-day men are 
 interdependent, each man upon each other 
 man, throughout the world. Foresight 
 safeguards. Manufacture transforms. Capi- 
 tal stores. Transportation equalizes. The 
 weather bureau telegraphs the storm and 
 the farmer saves his hay. A forest com- 
 mission, preserving trees, prevents droughts 
 and famines. Irrigation fertilizes deserts. If 
 Nature denies rain and warmth for crops in 
 103 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 India or Ireland, the sunshine that is else- 
 where in the world, stored in bounteous 
 crops, will be brought to their service, pre- 
 venting starvation. The cotton of the sub- 
 tropical south, the wool of the temperate 
 north, kept from harvest to winter, manu- 
 factured into cloth, transported the world 
 over, clothe the world. The man who 
 dressed in skins has a shirt ; he who had 
 one has two, and can wash and be clean. 
 This is the grand result of the economic 
 Free Play of evolution of society, made possible by the 
 Competition ^^^^ ^j^^ ^£ competition, under which each 
 
 human particle finds its part in that differ- 
 entiation of function which develops the 
 social organism in a vast interdependence of 
 all parts. But there is another result. In 
 the fluid sea, in the fluent quicksands, where 
 gravitation is not offset by cohesion, heavy 
 things sink. So in economic freedom, the 
 men who do not swim, sink. It is this law 
 that has compelled man to build boats and 
 made him master of all seas. It is this law 
 which compels men to struggle for life and 
 a living, in a struggle which makes strong. 
 All the same, the man who is sinking must 
 have a friendly hand into the boat. This hu- 
 manity owes him, for his sake — and for its 
 104 
 
OF BUSINESS 
 
 own sake. Otherwise he may overturn the 
 boat in his struggles as he goes down. Or- 
 ganization, obtaining the beneficences, must 
 also mitigate the malversations, of natural 
 law. This is an economic as well as a moral 
 responsibility. A system which makes the 
 few rich, but the many poor, cannot last. 
 The winds of heaven soon overturn the tree 
 whose roots are not as broad as its top. 
 
 To earn his living, to make the best of 
 things, a man must work. He may work The Earth 
 with his hands or his head, his muscle or his o^Vroduc- 
 brains. If he receives by gift, this means tion 
 that some one before him has worked, and 
 saved. The first step of work is when men 
 take from the earth the material on which 
 further work is to be done — by tilling fields, 
 or digging in mines, or tending flocks that 
 feed on the earth, or catching fish in the sea. 
 Mother Earth is indeed the mother of wealth ; 
 land is the source of production. There is 
 no " material " value which does not origi- 
 nate from it. The land is the domain of a 
 sovereign — in a kingdom, of the king ; in 
 our Union, of each State as representing the 
 people. The sovereign gives title to owners 
 of land, and by "right of eminent domain" 
 105 
 
Rent 
 
 THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 may by just method take it back from an 
 owner for the need of the public. To " own " 
 land is thus merely to hold the right to use 
 it and transfer the title. 
 
 To obtain product the soil must be 
 Land and " worked : " labor must be applied to land. 
 Some land is better than other : with the 
 same labor, it gives product of more value, 
 two bushels of potatoes instead of one. The 
 owner may let the land be used by a tenant. 
 The farmer does not get less or more for the 
 potatoes, but the owner gets more " rent.'* 
 Rent, then, does not increase the price of 
 products, but measures the value of the land. 
 Land is also needful to house upon. Its 
 rent, then, increases with the proximity of 
 people. This increase is called the " social 
 increment." Rent comes, therefore, from 
 nature - value or social increment. The 
 higher value of "desirable" land is not be- 
 cause of the owner or the worker, but from 
 Nature or from the people. Thus the doc- 
 trine of sovereignty, of eminent domain, over 
 land, in the interest of all the people, is a doc- 
 trine as fundamental in economics as in the 
 theory of the state, and a land tax within the 
 limits of rent is the economic method for 
 reclaiming for the people the value which 
 io6 
 
OF BUSINESS 
 
 Nature or the social organization, and not 
 the individual owner or worker, has put there. 
 
 The farmer is the man on whom all of us 
 depend for our food, for our clothes, in part The Farmer 
 for our shelter. Nearly half of all workers 
 are busy in farm-life. With him are the 
 woodsman, the miner, the quarryman, the 
 hunter, the fisherman, — each doing his part 
 singly to extract from Nature the raw mate- 
 rial which all men need. The farmer is the 
 man most dependent on Nature, least de- 
 pendent on men, on whom men most depend. 
 He lives close to Nature, in the fresh air, 
 in the sunshine, is his own master, — but 
 has, in the nature of things, the least help 
 from the social organization. Yet labor- His Help 
 saving implements, improved seeds, fertil- ^^om Society 
 izers, help him to do more work at less 
 cost ; the weather bureau forewarns him bet- 
 ter than his guess ; the railroad gives him 
 the world's market ; the trolley brings him 
 closer to his neighbors ; the public library 
 lends him books ; education lifts his life, 
 though it may decrease his content. If 
 crops fail elsewhere, he gets the better 
 price; if crops are abundant, the storing, 
 packing, canning industries save his sur- 
 107 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 His Work 
 by Himself 
 
 His econo- 
 mic Gain 
 
 plus ; if his own crops fail, they in turn sup- 
 ply him with food. As a better banking 
 system is developed, local banks will give 
 him more cheaply the credit he needs, until 
 his savings make him his own capitalist. 
 Still, at the mercy of Nature, seed by seed 
 and day by day, he must till his crops and 
 tend his stock, doing his own work by him- 
 self and seeing its fruition. But there is no 
 longer the isolation which of old dulled him 
 and drove his wife crazy ; and his life is worth 
 living as never before. Competition from 
 the West — whose rich lands and broader 
 farms, permitting labor-saving machinery on 
 a large scale, have produced better crops 
 more cheaply — has reduced farming in New 
 England, where Massachusetts grew in 1890 
 only 1800 bushels of wheat against ii9,cx)0 
 bushels in i860; but the farmers of New 
 England will be the better off from raising 
 garden product by "high farming." Thus 
 even the farmer, most of all subject to the ups 
 and downs of Nature, finds economic gain at 
 the last in changing conditions from which 
 at first he seems to benefit least and which 
 in some cases seem to make his lot and his 
 life the harder. Though hard work conceals 
 the poetry of his calling, his is the vocation 
 108 
 
OF BUSINESS 
 
 of the golden age, to which all men desire to 
 return ; for he deals with life and is its min- 
 ister, the alchemist who transmutes dead 
 earth into golden grain, and the grass of the 
 field into food of the beasts that are the com- 
 panions and servitors of man. And in this 
 work he finds or should find that inspiration 
 of love and service which in highest degree 
 only living things can call forth. 
 
 To the raw material from the farm, the 
 forest, the mine, the quarry, the waters, Manufac- 
 manufacture or handiwork adds value by ^^^^ 
 changing its form, through successive steps, 
 in which the product of one process becomes 
 the material of the next, up to the finished 
 product. Here modern organization and the 
 division of labor reach their largest develop- 
 ment ; the worker in the home, the shop, the 
 mill, gives place to the operative in the great 
 factory, and the individual becomes a minor 
 yet an essential and integral part of a huge 
 organism. At once the master and the slave The Opera- 
 of his machine, less free than the farmer, **^® 
 less dependent on Nature and more on man, 
 sheltered from the weather, more sure of 
 return, with shortening hours and bettering 
 pay as labor gets its increasing share of pro- 
 duct, doing but a particle of the completed 
 109 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 work, — his life has its good and its ill, bal- 
 ancing more and more to the good, except 
 as trade depressions, corporate mismanage- 
 ment, " strikes," or other causes or condi- 
 tions mostly beyond his individual power to 
 control or to mitigate, throw him back upon 
 his savings or his "luck." The division of 
 labor necessary to get each part done well 
 and at least cost, is carried so far that the 
 " hand " in a great factory cannot see the use 
 or the worth of his work, and cannot come 
 in touch with the men who direct his labor 
 or who buy his product. He cannot feel his 
 relation with human affairs. But all these 
 workers, each doing his own part, are neces- 
 sary in the great House-that-Jack-built, and 
 to each is due credit and honor for his work 
 well done and opportunity to make the most 
 out of his life. 
 
 The transportation industries add value, 
 Transporta- not by change of form, but by change of 
 place, bringing goods to a place where they 
 are more wanted, and carrying passengers 
 where they want to go, and also by help of 
 telephone and telegraph transporting intelli- 
 gence and saving cost of time and distance in 
 travel. Their workers, like the farmers, work 
 each by himself, yet like the operative each 
 no 
 
 tion 
 
OF BUSINESS 
 
 is part of a great organism, which depends 
 on the alertness and accuracy of each man. 
 Day and night, in rain and shine, the rail- 
 road man, the seafarer, in tense strain, hav- 
 ing lives and wealth in his keeping, does his 
 duty, serving all the world. His work is 
 entirely the result of modern invention and 
 organization, without which it would not 
 exist. 
 
 Those engaged in manufactures, a quarter 
 of all workers, and in transportation, an The Wage- 
 eighth of all, make up with farm-hands, un-. ^^^'^^'^^ 
 skilled laborers, and household servants, the 
 great body of wage-earners, who get stated 
 pay, either for their time or *' by the piece." 
 The " industrial classes," with the farmers, 
 count up seven-eighths of all who " earn 
 their living " by work, and the welfare of 
 seven-eighths of the population is directly, 
 and of the whole community is indirectly, 
 bound up with their prosperity. Their work 
 is the foundation of all business, as they are 
 the basis of the state. 
 
 He who saves from his earnings is at once 
 a capitalist. Capital, like land, is a material. The Capi- 
 not human, factor in production, yet also, *^^^^^ 
 like land, it is good only for and by human 
 III 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 use. Unlike land, it has human origin, in 
 the virtue of frugality, of which miserliness 
 is the counterfeit vice. And it is capital, 
 savings, which makes human progress pos- 
 sible. The seed which the farmer saves to 
 sow is capital ; and when famine compelled 
 the New England settlers to eat their seed- 
 corn, their capital was gone, they had no- 
 thing to go on with, death stared them in 
 the face. 
 
 Capital is in fact the seed from which 
 Capital the all industry proceeds ; a man's breakfast, his 
 dustry "" clothes, his house, his tools, the steam- 
 engine, the factory, the material on which 
 he works, are the pre-requisites for pro- 
 duction. Without these, he is a hungry 
 savage. With them, all civilization helps 
 him do his work. The only panacea for the 
 " labor difficulty " is that in times of prosper- 
 ity and good wages frugality should save and 
 store for the laborer the capital on which to 
 live while he is out of a job, — whether be- 
 cause of the new machine, or the bettered 
 method, or the slackness of work, — and it is 
 to the advantage of the community that wages 
 should be high enough to give him margin 
 for this saving. If a man has not saved, he 
 must let his labor to those who have saved, 
 
 112 
 
OF BUSINESS 
 
 or borrow from them money to buy these 
 helps, by aid of which he can pay out of his 
 increased productivity interest for the use of 
 capital and still have more earnings left for 
 himself. 
 
 Capital adds value to things by storing 
 them till they are wanted, as food for winter Capital adds 
 and ice for summer, and it adds value to ^^^^ 
 men by giving them the wherewithal, as 
 tools and material, to work to best advan- 
 tage. It is therefore the friend and not the 
 enemy, not the destruction but the salva- 
 tion, of labor. No one borrows capital unless 
 he expects to gain by the loan. Because it 
 is measured in money and deposited through 
 banks, we think of capital as money only ; 
 but interest is paid really for the use of the 
 things which money buys. The miser gains 
 no interest from the money he uselessly 
 hoards, nor can money in banks earn interest 
 until it is loaned out for use, nor can "stocks '* 
 and "bonds" pay unless their proceeds are 
 put to paying use. 
 
 Capital is paid by a share of product, but 
 a decreasing share. As wages rise, interest Capital paid 
 falls. For with increased product, higher ^^ Interest 
 wages and larger profits, there is more mar- 
 gin for savings, the wealth of the world, its 
 113 
 
and Interest 
 
 THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 saved capital, increases even beyond indus- 
 trial development, there is less proportionate 
 demand, and the pay for capital falls. It is 
 only where property is insecure or where 
 there is risk of loss, as in new communities 
 Insurance or in new enterprises, that an insurance pre- 
 mium, added as it were in interest, seems to 
 make interest high, for on secure investments 
 the price of ** securities " rises until the per- 
 centage of return is close to the usual rate of 
 interest. The decrease in interest pinches 
 the widow and orphan, who must live upon 
 the '* fixed income " of past savings, as well 
 as the drone in the human hive who lives 
 on his father's earnings, but it gives better 
 chances to the world's workers. Except 
 when capital is " a drug in the market " be- 
 cause of bad times and lack of business, a 
 low rate of interest helps business ; and 
 banks, sound, safe, and well managed, shops 
 through which capital in the form of money 
 is gathered in and let out for use, are, like 
 other good stores, a gain to the community, 
 tending to reduce the cost of loans as all 
 shops tend to reduce prices. 
 
 The industrial organization is a great army 
 of peace, which must be officered. The 
 114 
 
OF BUSINESS 
 
 privates, or hand-workers, must work under The Direc 
 
 tor " ' 
 try 
 
 direction; and it is the captain of industry, toroflndus- 
 
 the director, the brain-worker, who leads his 
 men to success. By directing work to best 
 purpose, he makes the most of labor and 
 gives workers their best chance, and benefits 
 the world. Colt, arranging for his revolver 
 the interchangeability of parts, set an ex- 
 ample which soon gave to American me- 
 chanical products a commanding position in 
 foreign markets; the standardizing of sizes 
 and shapes, as of wire, bolts, screws, and 
 nuts, by intelligent cooperation of the di- 
 recting class, has been of untold practical 
 and money value to the world. What the 
 director does for the moment, the inventor 
 does for all time, — saving labor and better- 
 ing the laborer. The welfare of labor has 
 kept steady pace with the progress of inven- 
 tion, for with each laborer saved there has 
 been new opportunity for two. 
 
 Brains also must have its pay; and the 
 intellectual and moral qualities of intelli- The Pay of 
 gence, ingenuity, courage, enterprise, integ- ^^^^^s 
 rity, deserve and get high pay. It is the 
 combination of all, in rare men, that gets the 
 best pay — in the double reward of money 
 return and of developed personal character ; 
 115 
 
Profit 
 
 The Direc- 
 tor's Share 
 of Product 
 
 THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 for neither intelligence without integrity nor 
 integrity without intelligence can win abid- 
 ing and entire success. It used to be said 
 that rent, wages, and "profit," — the pay for 
 land, labor, and capital, — make up the cost 
 of product. But capital is paid for by inter- 
 est, and profit is truly the difference between 
 cost and price. Out of this difference the 
 director, as also the inventor, gets his pay. 
 He does not add to the cost of product, but 
 lessens it ; utilizing capital, saving labor, in- 
 creasing product, decreasing cost, he saves 
 alike for the capitalist, the laborer, and the 
 consumer. Usually, the director commutes 
 this pay from profit into a stated salary, and 
 the inventor into an " outright " or " royalty " 
 payment, and because also the employer of 
 labor usually supplies or obtains the capital, 
 or the capitalist employs the director at a 
 salary, the interest which is the pay of capital 
 and the residual profit from which direction 
 gets its pay have been generally confused. 
 
 But it is always on the ability to make profit, 
 through the administration or the machinery 
 which reduces cost, that the director's pay 
 depends. When he mis-directs production, 
 so that cost exceeds price, the business fails, 
 and there is no place for him. As cost de- 
 ii6 
 
OF BUSINESS 
 
 creases, and rivals adopt his or better methods 
 and machinery, competition reduces prices, 
 and profit lessens towards nothing, until a 
 new improvement again reduces cost. Thus 
 the director gets a decreasing share of pro- 
 duct ; yet the enormous growth of business 
 with industrial development so aggrandizes 
 the total returns as to assure to an able 
 manager a large and increasing salary — 
 which is not taken from the producer or con- 
 sumer but benefits both. With each improve- 
 ment the good organizer or administrator by 
 so much makes himself unnecessary, but the 
 possibilities of improvement are so inexhaust- 
 ible that at each step forward he becomes 
 of increasing instead of decreasing impor- 
 tance. 
 
 Modern development has indeed evolved 
 in this field a new kind of calling, the ex- Theexecu- 
 ecutive profession. The skilled executive 
 applies his brains — his native powers and 
 his utilized experience — to ever-new prob- 
 lems in the course of daily business, until 
 he develops the capability of applying him- 
 self successively or simultaneously to many 
 kinds of business, as a lawyer or a doc- 
 tor takes up his varied "cases." This is 
 the modern " man of business : " a great 
 117 
 
 tive Profes- 
 sion 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 banker, a business lawyer, the head of an 
 industrial corporation, the president of a 
 university, the bishop of a diocese, gains 
 success from qualities which these all have in 
 common and which they apply in differing 
 environments, rather than to special qual- 
 ities connected with the specific environment. 
 These men are in great measure interchange- 
 able. They will master a new set of facts, of 
 circumstances, as a lawyer will master a new 
 case. This kind of success involves indeed 
 a great danger in personal character. The 
 bishop becomes more a secular than a spirit- 
 ual person. The banker, dealing with money, 
 hardens to men and loses qualities of soul. 
 
 There is still another element in produc- 
 The social tion — usually forgotten or concealed, but in 
 Production some respects the most important of all. 
 This is the contribution of the social organ- 
 ization. The settler in savage wilds must 
 waste a great part of his time and force in 
 defending himself against beasts or savage 
 man, in making his clearing, in building his 
 road, in a thousand disadvantages of unor- 
 ganized life. This waste from productivity, 
 civilization, the social organization, saves. 
 As government, it assures to him the peace- 
 Ii8 
 
OF BUSINESS 
 
 ful use of all his powers for productive pur- 
 pose, and gives him numberless facilities, for 
 which it gets pay in taxes. As a public cor- Taxes 
 poration, it builds him a turnpike and gets 
 pay in tolls, or a railroad which replaces 
 road, wagon, and horse, and gets pay in 
 freight ; or supplies him gas replacing the 
 house-made "dip" at great cooperative sav- 
 ing. The voluntary payment for tolls, freight, 
 and light is itself proof that it would cost the 
 user more to build his own road, transport 
 his own goods, make light for himself — 
 despite all grumblings at high charges ; but 
 the compulsory payment of the road tax, the 
 water rate, the school tax, the pay of police, 
 and other communal expenses increasing 
 public facilities or promoting the common 
 weal, obscures their economic value. The 
 school tax, for instance, gives better human 
 tools and saves cost of prisons. Thus taxes Taxes may- 
 are a part of cost, and with the increase of f^cTcasc °^ 
 public facilities perhaps an increasing part of Price 
 cost, though again these, rightly levied and 
 applied, may decrease price. Productive 
 taxes, as these may be called, are among 
 the best investments of the community and 
 of the business man. But there is nothing 
 that more needs watching as a factor in cost, 
 • 119 
 
Mis- 
 directed 
 Taxation 
 
 THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 for because of its compulsory character no 
 factor is so liable to abuse. In mis-directed 
 or "crooked" taxation, taxes do increase 
 prices, and are at last paid by those who can 
 least afford to pay them. Thus a tax on 
 mortgages raises the rate of interest to the 
 borrower, as surely as the price of telegrams 
 is raised to the sender by the penny stamp 
 he is required to put on. The degenerate 
 countries of Latin Europe, as Spain and Italy, 
 are kept in grinding poverty — prices and 
 all cost of living and working increased, in- 
 dustry thwarted, export and therefore im- 
 port trade blocked — because of excessive 
 taxes. Confiscating sometimes half the crop 
 or the wage, levied upon production and ex- 
 change, these taxes are not used to increase 
 public facilities, but to withdraw for wasteful 
 armies and navies men from production and 
 capital from use, to pay interest on huge 
 public debts, and to bar every gate towards 
 prosperity. The commercial greatness of 
 England has been developed in great part by 
 confining taxes to their productive use. 
 
 Product 
 pays all 
 
 Product pays all — rent, wages, interest, 
 taxes, profit. Of these five elements, rent 
 and wages and taxes, all being pay for labor 
 
 I20 
 
OF BUSINESS 
 
 or labor-saving facilities, tend constantly to 
 increase ; interest and profit to decrease. The 
 pay of labor increases as modern invention 
 and improvement develop machines or 
 methods by which, from the same expendi- 
 ture of human labor, product is increased. 
 Rent, the pay for the use of the more pro- Rent and 
 ductive land, is the equivalent of so much wfth^Wages 
 labor saved from wasteful expenditure on 
 poorer land, which needs more labor to pro- 
 duce like product. A fall in rent, in fact, 
 usually betokens loss : in the case of New 
 England, lands thrown out of cultivation by 
 the opening of more productive lands at the 
 West, or of shops in a city left vacant by the 
 offering of better facilities elsewhere, a loss to 
 the proprietor offset by economic gain to the 
 community ; in the case of mistaken improve- 
 ments or of trade depression, a loss to all. 
 Taxes, as the pay for public facilities, are the 
 equivalent of so much labor saved from pri- 
 vate expenditure, as for roads, water, watch- 
 ing ; though, when wrongly levied so as to 
 increase cost or check trade, or wastefully 
 expended otherwise than in the increase of 
 public facilities, they may be a large factor in 
 increasing price. Thus both rent and taxes 
 follow the law of labor-pay and increase with 
 
 121 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 wages, and though a part of cost do not nor- 
 mally increase price. The rise of wages 
 keeps pace with increase of product and de- 
 crease of price ; for labor gets an increasing 
 share of product as interest and profit dimin- 
 ish. But as " time wages " rise, " piece- 
 wages " fall, in a perpetual process of bal- 
 ancing the return for the day's work, because 
 by help of inventions a worker can do more 
 and more piece-work within the day and its 
 pay. 
 
 With higher wages, increased prosper- 
 As Prices ity, greater savings and lower prices, the 
 riie ^^^^^ whole world wants more and buys more ; 
 greater purchasing power means increased 
 demand. Thus there can be no over-pro- 
 duction of the things that are wanted : it is 
 mis-directed production of things not wanted, 
 or the interference with the purchasing power 
 of the people by mis-directed distribution, 
 that brings about " bad times " and the un- 
 healthy state where prices fall below cost and 
 industry is checked. The whole trend of 
 industrial evolution is to pay more for men 
 and less for things, and thus results the 
 seeming contradiction that as prices fall, 
 wages rise. 
 
 122 
 
OF BUSINESS 
 
 The employment of one man by another, 
 partnerships, cooperative associations on a Cooperation 
 large scale, have been steps in industrial rationr^°" 
 organization, utilizing the cooperation of 
 labor for the common good. Those who had 
 savings loaned them as capital for such busi- 
 ness, conducted by others, or intrusted them 
 to a super-cargo or ship-captain as " ventures " 
 in foreign trade. But as savings and wealth 
 increased, there was evolved a new coopera- 
 tion of capital in the joint-stock company, or 
 corporation, through which investors might 
 delegate the responsibility of direction to 
 directors or managers chosen by themselves. 
 At first each shareholder was liable, as a 
 partner, for all the joint debts. To abate 
 this risk, the state was invoked, and laws 
 were passed authorizing " limited liability " 
 companies, in which the sharer was relieved 
 of pecuniary responsibility beyond his share. 
 Thus the modern corporation is a creature 
 of the state, an artificial person, " having no 
 soul," that is, without personal responsibility, //" 
 
 and " never dying," that is, without prospect / 
 
 of the property changes, sometimes remedial 
 and wholesome, wrought by death. 
 
 A personally directed business, other con- 
 ditions being even, has advantage over a 
 123 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 corporate business ; but perpetuity, the limi- 
 The Rivalry tation of liability, and ready transferability of 
 tion°'^^°'^^" ownership, inviting large aggregation of cap- 
 ital which in turn made possible and neces- 
 sary the highest directive ability, over-bal- 
 anced this natural advantage. With increase 
 of business, the extra expenses of corporate 
 management were offset by great directive 
 skill ; and private concerns doing a smaller 
 business at larger proportionate cost were 
 supplanted by the competition of public com- 
 panies. But now rival corporations entered 
 the field, and "railroad wars," "gas wars," 
 and other " cut-throat competition," under- 
 selling below cost, demoralized investment 
 and industry. Without state interference, 
 this suicidal course would have found its end 
 in the bankruptcy of the mis-directed and 
 losing company and the survival of the wiser 
 and stronger under bettered conditions. But 
 the natural results of "over-capitalization,*' 
 " stock- watering " or mis-direction were pre- 
 vented by the corporate privilege and by the 
 devices of "receiverships" and "re-organi- 
 zation," too often pretexts for new spolia- 
 tion. To forestall or mitigate this corporate 
 competition, " pools " were devised to divide 
 business or regulate prices — but these 
 124 
 
OF BUSINESS 
 
 proved only a temporary and inadequate 
 makeshift. 
 
 Combinations into "Trusts," so called and 
 mis-called because arranged through trustees, " Trusts 
 were formed to surmount this competition. 
 The government had set an example in the 
 Post-office monopoly, against which compe- 
 tition was prohibited by law as a misde- 
 meanor, and this first unification of a great 
 industry had been of such benefit to the 
 great body of the people that its pecuniary 
 losses were condoned or overlooked. The 
 consolidation of local railroads into through- 
 line systems, initiated by the elder Vander- 
 bilt, to the great benefit of traffic and travel, 
 was a long stride toward the unification of 
 industries. The pioneer Trust, unifying the 
 oil industry, having neither governmental 
 privilege nor municipal franchise, obtained 
 monopolistic control by purchase of lands, 
 by obtaining railroad discriminations, by per- 
 secution of business rivals, and by corruption 
 and domination of legislatures — with the 
 mixed result that it gave the public a staple 
 product of better quality at lowered price and 
 produced overweening fortunes, one of them 
 the greatest burden of wealth in the whole 
 world, at vast cost of public demoralization. 
 125 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 This unification of industries has now ex- 
 tended into most fields, particularly those of 
 municipal franchises, often with great possi- 
 bilities of benefit — economically, within the 
 industry, in the prevention of waste from mis- 
 directed competition and commercially to the 
 public in standardizing and bettering product 
 within or below former price. 
 
 But these possible advantages are ob- 
 Their Evils scured, if not offset, by evident and great 
 disadvantages. Trusts have too often sought 
 first of all to maintain or increase prices, 
 sometimes in face of a natural reduction in 
 prices which, effective despite their efforts, 
 has given a trust credit it has not deserved. 
 Moreover, the separation of the " hand " from 
 the head is carried to an extreme in which 
 consciousness of and conscience for human 
 relations are eliminated. Worst of all are the 
 great public demoralizations — politically by 
 the corruption of public and business life and 
 financially by the conscienceless methods of 
 " promoters " and the reckless manufacture 
 by bankers of ** watered" securities to the 
 full margin of present or prospective in- 
 come. Thus the creatures of the state have 
 become captors of the state, demoralizing 
 public conscience and private standards. 
 126 
 
OF BUSINESS 
 
 Men upright in personal relations, when re- i \ 
 
 lieved of personal responsibility, will permit ^ 
 
 a corporation of which they are shareholders 
 or directors to do what they would not do 
 for themselves ; and a corporate manager is 
 too often expected to dull his conscience into 
 acquiescence in bribery by the soothing fal- 
 lacy that as a trustee for those who have 
 committed money to his keeping, he had 
 better give over a part to highwaymen than 
 risk the loss of all. 
 
 The evils that the state has done the state 
 must undo — not by a state socialism which The Rem- 
 may prove more tyrannous than the tyrants ^fe Pubh- 
 it would overthrow, but by " turning on the 
 light " of publicity upon the creatures of 
 public privilege, and in cases of public fran- 
 chises by recovering to the people through 
 the sovereign right of eminent domain or of 
 taxation, values which the public create and 
 to which they have just right. State-created 
 corporations should be state-regulated. Or- 
 ganized under public authority, they are t/^so 
 facto open to public inspection and respon- 
 sible to public opinion. Publicity through 
 public accountants, as in the national banking 
 system, is a chief safeguard, in a fulfillment 
 by state authority of the system partially 
 127 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 developed by the New York Stock Exchange 
 in '* listing " securities, so that stockholders 
 and the public may have the full facts as to 
 organization, valuation, and administration. 
 A private business is no one's business but 
 Public Re- the owner's, but he is personally liable and 
 sponsibihty responsible ; the public business of a corpo- 
 ration, freed from private liability, must ac- 
 cept public responsibility. The law of New 
 York requires that corporate shares may be 
 paid-in only in cash or property, dollar for 
 dollar, but in the absence of public account- 
 ing for property value, huge stock-jobbing 
 operations, financed by men personally of 
 good repute, fleece the public. When the 
 public knows all, when the dangers from 
 limited liability and delegated responsibility 
 are met by full publicity, when social ostra- 
 cism waits the man whose fortune or power 
 is won at cost of conscience, when a due 
 share of return to the public is required for 
 public privilege, the ills which corporations 
 have brought upon the state may find cure 
 without sacrifice of the benefits they bring 
 and without further surrender of personal 
 rights and opportunities to a still huger 
 state-created machine of socialism. 
 
 128 
 
OF BUSINESS 
 
 As private enterprise and individual cooper- 
 ation have been made more difficult by the Labor Com- 
 emergence of directing ability, especially in ^"^^^°^^ 
 the development of great corporations, the 
 individual worker has felt the more need to 
 combine with other workers to "hold his 
 own." The first impulse in such combina- 
 tions is a policy of restricting work. For a 
 first effect of saving labor — by wiser direc- 
 tion, a better method, a new machine — is 
 to throw some man out of work, to make him 
 for the moment useless, to "take the bread 
 out of his mouth." Here, as elsewhere, 
 Nature's readjustments for the race are at the 
 cost of displacement to the individual. But 
 it is poor solace to a starving man to tell him 
 that next year he will have more bread than 
 he wants. This is why labor has always 
 been against labor-saving machinery ; why it 
 drove Arkwright from his home, broke up the 
 spinning-jenny of Hargreaves, and mobbed 
 Jacquard ; why in face of the proved fact that 
 in the long run invention helps labor, it has 
 in the short run opposed inventions. Here is 
 the key to the conflict, mistakenly called 
 between labor and capital, which is really a 
 protest of self-defense by the laborer against 
 the director of industry who saves labor and 
 129 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 lessens work. Thus organized laboi', natu- 
 rally enough, first sets itself to increase work, 
 to get work and wages for more workers, and 
 therefore seeks to restrict apprenticeship, re- 
 strict hours, restrict over-time, restrict even 
 the amount one man may do in an hour. The 
 stated and valid reason for an eight-hour day 
 is to give the laborer useful and uplifting lei- 
 sure ; the immediate motive of the labor or- 
 ganizations is to get more days' work for its 
 members, and of the laborer to get a higher 
 rate per hour and then work over-time. 
 Yet restriction is a policy of short-sight. 
 The Policy The best service is done by the ship captain 
 who brings the largest cargo safe to port by 
 the most direct route in the fewest days — 
 though his crew gets fewer days' pay. The 
 world is the richer. This is real prosperity. 
 If the captain is swept overboard in the 
 storm, and the rudder breaks, and the cargo 
 shifts, and at last ship and cargo and crew 
 go down together, the need for new captain, 
 new crew, new ship, new cargo " makes 
 trade brisk." But all that has gone down is 
 loss to the world and to each laborer in it. 
 This is adversity in masquerade. It is at 
 this cost that war and cyclone and the Black 
 Death have made "business good" and 
 130 
 
 of Restric 
 tion 
 
OF BUSINESS 
 
 "wages high." Restriction is the natural 
 impulse of self-defense against progress — as 
 the owners of cows opposed Stephenson's 
 railroad. The story of the lad Humphrey ff 
 Potter, tying a string to the engine valves 
 that he might have time to play, and throw- 
 ing himself out of a job, is the eternal type 
 of labor-saving progress. But progress can- 
 not be "downed." The invention comes into 
 use; the next generation has its work done 
 by the machine, but gets higher pay for 
 tending that. 
 
 The mainspring of business is the desire 
 of each worker, whether with hands or brain, The " Open 
 to market his labor or product to the best ^°°'" 
 advantage, to get for it the most money or 
 the most reward. This leads him to desire 
 the widest market for himself, and the nar- 
 rowest for his rival. The makeshift of re- 
 striction is thus a first impulse alike of the \\ 
 labor union, the merchants' guild, the trading 
 nation. Each wants the "open door" for 
 itself — but a shut door against its competi- 
 tors. Each wants its "home market" and 
 the foreign market too, forgetful that the 
 foreign market is simply the aggregated 
 home markets of other peoples. This policy 
 becomes the war theory of trade and is the 
 131 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 True Trade 
 Peace not 
 War 
 
 The true 
 Value of 
 Trades 
 Unions 
 
 easy road to actual war, industrial or between 
 nations. But a true commerce is the evan- 
 gel of peace ; in true trade, each person gains, 
 else he would not trade ; " a good bargain is 
 one in which both gain." A man needs not 
 only to work at his best, but to get from his 
 neighbor work at the neighbor's best ; then 
 all are best off. If he is good at shoemaking 
 and his neighbor at tailoring, he sells shoes 
 and buys clothes. It does n't pay to set a 
 man to do a boy's work, nor a boy to do a 
 man's work. When the carpenters* union 
 in New York sought to prevent work on 
 wooden sashes or mouldings made outside 
 the city, and the masons to prevent work on 
 stone dressed outside the jurisdiction of the 
 union, they not only declared war against 
 fellow-workers in the lumber regions of 
 Michigan and the quarries of Vermont, but 
 by preventing labor-saving in manufacture 
 and transportation, they increased the cost 
 of building and limited their own field of 
 work. 
 
 As an injustice to one is an injury to all, 
 conversely a benefit to all is a good to each. 
 The true and great value of trades unions is 
 not in " downing " the outside workingman 
 as a "scab," or waging always costly and 
 132 
 
OF BUSINESS 
 
 often wasteful strikes, or imposing restric- 
 tions upon industry and production, but in 
 raising the standard of workmanship among 
 its members, so that the union " card " is a cer- . 
 tificate which outside workmen become ambi- // 
 tious to gain, as their best recommendation ; 
 in organizing methods of adjusting wages 
 and of arbitration ; in promoting improve- 
 ments within the trade ; and in providing as 
 benefit associations for members thrown 
 temporarily out of work without fault of their 
 own, or in cases of sickness, infirmity, and 
 death. Thus the individual has the benefit 
 of the organization in "holding his own" 
 by the methods of peace and not of war. 
 The extraordinary rise in the pay of house- 
 servants, without trade union help, shows 
 that it is by natural laws of supply and de- 
 mand rather than by artificial pressure that 
 increase of wages is brought about. 
 
 Restriction is garbed always in guise of 
 the upholding of the standard of wages or " The For- 
 of living, or the protection of guild rights, U^^" 
 or the promotion of home industry; but it // 
 overlooks always " the forgotten man " who is 
 its victim, and it is too short-sighted to fore- 
 see how its boomerang returns to its own 
 hurt. The free workingman becomes a 
 133 
 
the Trader 
 
 THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 "scab," and smuggling is promoted as a 
 criminal industry. " The forgotten man " 
 is always to be remembered in a full account- 
 ing of human affairs. 
 
 The trader is another man who gets " pro- 
 Exchange : fit " by virtue of his direction, not of produc- 
 tion, but of exchange. The merchant or 
 shop-keeper does for the community the 
 service of facilitating barter by enabling any 
 buyer to get what he wants, where and when 
 he wants it, by purchase with money. This 
 is a great economic gain over the direct bar- 
 ter of labor or " swap " of goods, as when the 
 farmer had to find a shoemaker who wanted 
 potatoes before he could get a pair of shoes. 
 A trader who supplies to the trading public 
 what it wants earns a fair profit for his time, 
 skill, and good judgment ; one who mistakes 
 the public demand and thus promotes mis- 
 direction of production pays the penalty in 
 " failure " and " forced sale " of his goods at 
 a price which will induce buyers to buy at a 
 "bargain" — requiring the seller to sell at 
 loss and inducing the buyer to buy what he 
 does n't need. It is not wholesome morally 
 to get something for nothing or wholesome 
 economically to have price below cost. But 
 134 
 
OF BUSINESS 
 
 within the margin of profit, competition be- 
 tween shops, in meeting the public demand 
 and selling at the lowest charge for the ser- 
 vice rendered, fulfills the law of progress. 
 
 The same causes and conditions which in 
 production have developed trusts, with their Department 
 good and their evil, have in this field devel- ^^°^®^ 
 oped the *' department stores " of " wholesale 
 retailers." These command manufacturers, 
 import through their own foreign buyers, 
 lower prices by dispensing with the profits of 
 numerous middlemen, unify retailing by 
 bringing all kinds of goods together under 
 one roof, to the great time- labor- and money- 
 saving of the public ; and demoralize trade 
 and ruin more conservative traders by '* bar- 
 gain-counter " sales not less demoralizing 
 to the feverish throng of women buyers 
 to whose cupidity these gambles appeal. 
 Against them restrictive legislation even 
 more fatuous and futile than that directed 
 against trusts has been proposed, but the 
 only cure for the evils which for the time 
 accompany their real service to the public is 
 to be found in a wholesome public opinion 
 and private good sense, that will restrain 
 buyers from patronizing shops which cater 
 recklessly to public greed, and from buying 
 135 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 at any price what they don't want. These 
 great marts of trade are the modern equiva- 
 lent of the ancient market-place, centralizing 
 again the retail trade cumbrously distributed 
 among petty shops, as the great factory has 
 centralized to advantage the varied product 
 of household industries ; and the small shop- 
 keeper, earning a precarious living and often 
 bankrupt, may find safer place in the great 
 organization, in an interdependence which is 
 surer than his independence. The neigh- 
 borhood shops, which keep a local store of 
 goods for immediate demand, as the baker, 
 the butcher, the grocer, are more Hkely to 
 hold their own against centralized competi- 
 tion, because they better serve the neighbor- 
 hood need. 
 
 There are other classes of workers who do 
 The Profes- not add value to things but to men, doing 
 personal instead of material service — from 
 the "learned professions" down to the 
 household servant. The ministry to souls 
 and bodies — of the preacher inspiring spir- 
 itual and moral development, of the lawyer 
 promoting justice, of the doctor keeping the 
 physical machinery in repair, of the teacher 
 educating youth, of the author and the artist 
 136 
 
 sions 
 
OF BUSINESS 
 
 uplifting and delighting by literature and 
 art, of the journalist and the librarian 
 spreading intelligence — is all a part of the 
 world's work, in these ancillary callings. 
 And household service, though not often 
 does it " make drudgery divine," is division 
 of labor with good economic gain, since, by its 
 humbler toil, it frees the time and strength 
 of those of higher capacity to do their larger 
 service in the world. The able men of the 
 professions command high remuneration be- 
 cause the service is great and the ability 
 rare, and they must do their work, which is 
 masterful over them, at much sacrifice of 
 personal convenience. It is the doctor him- Personal 
 self who must answer the call of duty at any ^^^^^ 
 hour of day and night ; it is the lawyer in 
 person whose ability or eloquence his client 
 urgently demands, in proportion as he rises 
 to success and fame ; while the administra- 
 tor of large affairs may so organize his busi- 
 ness as to require his personal presence and 
 his hand at the helm only at the convenient 
 time or on critical occasion. On the other 
 hand, the "professions" are over-crowded, 
 and the average pay reduced, by the multi- 
 tudes of half-fit people who throng into 
 them, and in dull routine miss the great 
 137 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 opportunities these callings present. For, 
 next to the statesman and the corporate ex- 
 ecutive who handle large affairs of state or 
 business in lines of " light and leading," the 
 professional man, dealing in vital personal 
 relations with his fellows, has calling and 
 election to uplift those about him into the 
 larger life, to give " life more abundantly," 
 ' to earn a reward paid not only in mere 
 
 money but in richness of personal life. 
 
 Here, too, is for the most part the work of 
 The eco- woman, in the profession of wife and mother, 
 tions of^ " help-meet of man. Her economic service is 
 Woman not less rich because it is a service of love, 
 and is not of money reward. A man's 
 mother has invested in her service for her 
 son, in the frugality and denial which has 
 earned for him his education, a capital which 
 gives him his value ; and his wife often 
 earns the better half of his salary by her 
 personal service of devotion to him and by 
 her administration of his household. The 
 world will be better off when, without loss of 
 dignity or affection, a wife may receive credit 
 for at least the salary a husband pays to his 
 clerk. A household " budget " for the month 
 or year, in place of breakfast wrangles over 
 bills and wherewithal to pay them, would 
 
OF BUSINESS 
 
 redeem many an unhappy home. A sound 
 business basis is as necessary for the affairs 
 which the wife administers as for those of 
 the husband, and forethought is the more 
 important. A truer relation of woman with 
 economics is one of the great gains of pre- 
 sent social development, as the economic 
 subservience of woman becomes a thing of 
 the past, and the economic interdependence 
 of the sexes is more and more recognized. 
 
 With the immense accumulation of wealth 
 from increased production and free exchange, The Distri- 
 its distribution, as measured in money, has ^eaith°^ 
 become the economic problem of our time. 
 Wages have risen, labor gets an increasing 
 share of product, laborers and probably most 
 men the world over are better off in the 
 means of life than ever before ; yet the vast 
 forces put by the industrial and social organ- 
 ization of to-day into the hands of the few 
 make them wealthy and powerful to a degree 
 that inevitably provokes social discontent. 
 The poor are not growing poorer. But the 
 rich are growing so much richer — for a man 
 with a hundred times the average wealth is 
 no longer counted rich, but must multiply 
 that again a hundred fold — that the contrast 
 139 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 is greater, the social gap wider, with every 
 
 decade. 
 
 This overtopping condition of wealth is nei- 
 The modern ther happy for the individual nor wholesome 
 Plutocrat £^j. ^j^g g^^^g^ j^ jg ^^^ ^ fortune that makes 
 
 a man fortunate. Croesus was not happy 
 either as tyrant or plutocrat. Dante's In- 
 ferno had no fate more sad than those in our 
 modern life — of men, though their fortunes 
 may reach from the hundred toward the 
 thousand millions, who bear the curses of 
 those whom their methods have ruined and 
 from the homes their *' operations " have 
 made desolate; who live in terror of legal 
 inquisition or bodily assault ; who are forced 
 into corruption to protect their fortunes and 
 cannot do the good they would gladly use 
 their fortunes for ; whose overwrought nerves 
 or destroyed stomachs replace the joys of 
 life with tortures as of the damned ; whose 
 sons are set against them by the curse of 
 money ; whose remains must be sealed under 
 mountains of stone against the speculation 
 of those who prey on the dead instead of 
 on the living ; who face death and the life to 
 come with souls dead and hearts cold from 
 lust of gain and brutality of power — horrors 
 all recorded in the careers of one or another 
 140 
 
OF BUSINESS 
 
 Dives of to-day. Greatest of all is the tra- 
 gedy of the good man struggling in vain 
 against this blighting bane. Heavy indeed •> 
 
 is the burden of riches, though few fear 
 being rich. The shepherd complains that he 
 must watch a hundred sheep, but envies the 
 man who must care for a million dollars. 
 Yet an Astor could use, as he said, only a 
 fair salary for taking care of his fortune — a 
 fortune which to his present heirs would seem 
 small. 
 
 The solution of this problem of distribution 
 is more and more seen to be in the truth that Reclama- 
 it is as much by help of the social organiza- xaxatLn 
 tion and machinery as by the productive or 
 directive power of any one man that these 
 colossal fortunes are evolved. The remedy 
 is not in futile attempts to check production 
 or saving, or to repress organization, but in 
 making sure that a just proportion of product 
 is returned to the people through taxation. 
 Taxes on production, on trade, on utilized 
 savings, on improvements, as buildings per- 
 haps made beautiful by lavish outlay, are 
 fines limiting private wealth-making and pub- 
 lic welfare. Taxes on unused wealth, as 
 vacant land or hoarded gold, on the rent of 
 land, on superior incomes, on corporate privi- 
 141 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 leges and returns, on property passing at 
 death to owners who have not earned — these 
 are contributions reclaiming for the people 
 the values given by bounty of Nature or cre- 
 ated by help of the community. " Unto 
 each, his own " — to the worker, his share in 
 product ; to the trader, his profit ; to the 
 saver, the benefit of his stored capital ; but 
 also to the people, return of the usufruct of 
 the gifts of Nature and their share of the 
 wealth all the people have helped to create. 
 This is the antipodes of socialism and com- 
 The Anti- munism, the logical result of that interlock- 
 Soc^V°m ^^^ ^^ freedom for each and interdependence 
 of all which is the vital spirit of democracy. 
 It is thus that while the poor are made 
 richer, the rich will not be made poorer. It 
 is thus that — in forest preserves, in parks 
 and playgrounds, in better roads and cleaner 
 streets, in water supply and drainage, in 
 schools, libraries, museums, and music, for 
 general education and re-creation rather than 
 mere personal amusement, in baths and pub- 
 lic conveniences — the people will get as a 
 common benefit, returns from the social in- 
 crement which will give to the democracy 
 as a public right what European sovereigns 
 lavish upon their subjects as a gift, without 
 142 
 
OF BUSINESS 
 
 surrender, to the delusive paternalism of the 
 socialistic state, of the private rights which 
 are the bulwark of a free society. It is thus 
 that the free man, earning his own living to 
 best advantage, will be able to pay his own 
 way, and yet enjoy the higher standard 
 of life made possible through the common- 
 wealth. 
 
 Men work and save that they may use. 
 At the last, all production is for the con- Use and 
 sumer. Consumption is thus, in economics, ^^^^^ 
 "the end of the whole matter." But con- 
 sumption may be use, in the true sense, or it 
 may be waste, the false use. There is thrift 
 in spending as well as in saving. It is by 
 the consumption of food or fuel that work is 
 done ; but our " drink-bill " wastes us a bil- 
 lion dollars annually. The rich man who 
 gives a *' ;^ 10,000 ball" is praised for "mak- 
 ing work " and " circulating money " by his 
 extravagance and waste ; but the capitalist 
 who invests ^10,000 in an industrial corpo- 
 ration or deposits it in a bank to be loaned 
 for use, utilizes this in work and wages to / 
 
 far better purpose, " turning over " his capi- ^ 
 
 tal again and again. The one lets water run / 
 
 to waste over the dam ; the other utilizes it 
 143 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 to turn the mill-wheels of trade. The loss 
 from fire, from the careless treatment of 
 food, from the social waste of crime and pau- 
 perism, from the industrial waste of unem- 
 ployed labor, all in some degree preventable 
 in a well-ordered community, are alike injuries 
 to the commonwealth, amounting to many 
 times the total taxation or the aggregate 
 saving. In a great city, the waste of aque- 
 duct water is often equal to the use, and this 
 is almost true of wealth throughout the 
 nation. The poor could be twice as well-to- 
 do, and the rich no poorer, if waste were 
 prevented and consumption made productive ; 
 and this can in large measure be accomplished 
 by individual temperance and frugality, by 
 thrift in the home, by watch and ward over 
 public affairs — the civic virtues which indeed 
 democracy needs in economics and in gov- 
 ernment alike. 
 
 Because money is the medium of trade 
 Money and and the measure of wealth, men mistake the 
 symbol for the reality ; forget that money is 
 not a good-in-itself, an end, but a means 
 only ; and, lacking it, desire it for itself. 
 The miser, hoarding gold, is the fool of this 
 world, because for a thing useless in itself he 
 144 
 
 its Use 
 
OF BUSINESS 
 
 gives up everything worth having. Barrels 
 are useful to measure and transport apples, 
 and making or trading barrels is a useful 
 business. So with money. Both are useful 
 only for use. When the farmer must gather 
 his apples and " move the crops," if barrels 
 or the money to buy them be *' short," he 
 loses his crop. If he has not saved seed, or 
 ploughs, or barrels, he must get them, and 
 this he does by borrowing money, at the 
 South *' on the crop," at the West by pledge 
 of his land or on his " credit," which means 
 the belief, faith, confidence in him that he 
 will pay. 
 
 A bank is a money-shop which lends the 
 borrower money on his promise-to-pay, at Banks as 
 a cost, in "discount" or "interest," lower ^ops^' 
 than the increased price he would have 
 to pay the seedsman or plough-maker or 
 cooper for goods "on long time." The 
 bank has this money on "deposit" from 
 those who have saved wealth, just as the 
 seedsman has collected seed from those who 
 have saved seeds, and the bank makes a 
 profit as the seedsman does by getting a 
 price somewhat higher than it has to pay. 
 This price must cover the risk of loss by 
 bad debts. If there is plenty of seed in store, 
 145 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 and competing seed-shops, but not too many 
 for the trade, and the farmer is " sure pay," 
 he gets his seed cheap. So also with " easy 
 money," a safe banking system with local 
 banks, and " good credit," the price of money, 
 the rate of interest or discount, is low. 
 
 The farmer may sell his crop of apples to a 
 The Round picker, and he to the store-keeper, and he to 
 of Credit ^^iq commission agent, and he to the wholesale 
 fruit-dealer, yet the apples are not transferred 
 nor money passed till they are picked, bar- 
 reled, and shipped to the city. So in a like 
 round, the bank sells the use of money to the 
 farmer, taking his bond or promise-note, puts 
 the amount to his account, permits him to 
 draw checks, and receives at last what has been 
 paid him for the apples, without handling 
 money at all except when the holder of a check 
 asks gold or currency for it. But the apples 
 or money must be there, when the receipt 
 promising to deliver the apples or the " bill '* 
 promising to pay gold is presented. This is 
 the " course of trade " when the West has to 
 "move the crops," and borrows money from 
 the East to do it ; happily the West also has 
 now money to lend to the East when it is 
 needed for Eastern mills. This is the round 
 which corresponds in economics to the 
 146 
 
OF BUSINESS 
 
 wonder-workings of water throughout nature, 
 as from the ocean the sun draws vapor to 
 make the clouds, and these shed rain upon 
 the earth to water bounteous crops, and the 
 forests gather drops for the brooks, and 
 these make the streams which are dammed 
 to turn the wheels of mills and slake the 
 thirst of cities, and at last the rivers return 
 to the sea in the completed cycle. General 
 confidence, safe banking with banks through- 
 out the country wherever needed, sound cur- 
 rency, laws just to loanerand borrower alike, 
 good credit, — these lower the rate of inter- 
 est and help every man to earn a surer and 
 easier living. 
 
 Here also moral qualities are at the foun- 
 dation, and business proves to be built on 
 right and faith. Not money, but the love of Business 
 money, and the lust of its power, is the root ^gh°and 
 of all evil. The man who uses money to get Faith 
 power to get more, with no end but money- 
 getting in view, blinds the eyes of his soul. 
 For in the personal life, neither money, nor 
 wealth, nor power, is a good-in-itself or in 
 itself a pleasure. 
 
 " Business is business," it is said, and there 
 is no place in it for sentiment or morals or 
 147 
 
Human 
 
 Qualities 
 
 count 
 
 Panics and 
 hard Times 
 
 THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 Christianity. This is the half-truth which is 
 more misleading than the lie. Money in- 
 deed seeks the cheaper market, as water runs 
 down hill ; thus equilibrium, the level of 
 prices, is preserved. But in dealing not 
 with things, but with human beings and the 
 makers of things, human qualities count, and 
 " morals " in the long run win. There is 
 indeed no " sentiment " in the fact that a 
 great railway corporation cannot afford to 
 employ a drunkard, yet that rule has been 
 one of the most efficient motives toward 
 the virtue of temperance. Morality is knit 
 into the very fibre of business. The cheat 
 prospers for the time, but not for the life- 
 time. A lying salesman can't sell twice on 
 the same road. England has lost much of the 
 China trade in cottons because Manchester 
 stuffs were so loaded with clay that '* Amer- 
 icans," by contrast, became the name for 
 honest goods. And "panics," *'hard times," 
 and all the ills they bring, come not so 
 much because Nature denies her bounty or 
 work and trade cease, as because fear takes 
 the place of hope, public confidence is fol- 
 lowed by distrust, wealth is withdrawn from 
 use and hoarded unused in terror of loss. 
 This is often but the reaction from " booms " 
 148 
 
OF BUSINESS 
 
 and speculation into which a community 
 has been led, through its own spirit of reck- 
 less greed, by ** confidence men " who call 
 themselves "promoters." Steadfastness in 
 well-doing and resistance of the temptation 
 of gaining without work, of getting with- 
 out giving value, are the moral qualities 
 which safeguard business and the common- 
 wealth. 
 
 For most men, and for many women, the 
 greater part of their working hours is spent ideal Re- 
 in the every-day relations of business life. Jfractical^ 
 These relations, not less vital because they Life 
 concern the problem of earning a living, 
 are rarely cultivated in full view of the great 
 opportunity they present. Not only should 
 a merchant with his clerks, a manufacturer 
 with his workmen, provide fair hours and 
 good light and fresh air and due warmth 
 and reasonable rest and facilities of work; 
 vastly beyond these are the courtesy and 
 helpfulness and sympathy and justice and in- 
 spiration which those who have may give 
 to those who want, securing in turn the 
 loyalty and devotion of service which are 
 their response. Coordination rather than 
 subordination should be the spirit of business 
 organizations. The golden rule may make 
 149 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 golden days under leaden skies, if the day's 
 work of wearying routine have over it the 
 light of human sympathy and helpfulness 
 and cheer. And in turn " it pays " to have 
 a cheerful mill, or store, or office, for de- 
 crease of friction means increase of work ; 
 and the man cheerfully ready to dare and do 
 may be worth twice the salary of another 
 whose first thought is always that " it can't 
 be done." Throughout all the relations and 
 circumstances of the business life, morals 
 tell. 
 
 Last of all, the art of business, as an art 
 The Fnii- of life, has its fruition in the development of 
 Business character, through the discipline of affairs 
 and in that earned leisure wherein re-creation 
 has its full meaning. The strenuous life of 
 the world finds its complement, its fulfillment, 
 in the serene life of the spirit. Business is 
 to most men the great school for the forma- 
 tion of character — that which abides in and 
 is the man. Thus business should provide, 
 no less by the discipline of life than by the 
 earning of a living, the foundation of personal 
 development and social life. It is the trunk 
 of the tree from which should blossom forth 
 the flower and the fruit of life. 
 
 150 
 
GF POLITICS 
 
OF POLITICS 
 
 'OLITICS is the science and art 
 of government, or, in a closer Government 
 sense, the relation of the citizen 
 with government. Government 
 is the organ of the social organ- 
 ization, the embodiment of the social order, 
 the largest generalization of the faculties and 
 activities of humankind, in an association of 
 all for the good of each — the community, the 
 common-weal, the common-wealth, the state, 
 the nation. It is a natural evolution, and 
 among some animals, as the beaver, the ant, 
 the bee, a high degree of communal life, in- 
 volving a quasi government, is developed in 
 obedience to instinct. As in economics and 
 society man fulfills his private relations with 
 his fellows, so in politics he fulfills his public 
 relations. The art of politics concerns every 
 man and woman in the community, whether 
 in sharing the active duties of the citizen, or 
 in helping to make public opinion, or in ful- 
 filling that highest and most honorable of 
 callings, under a true politics, the service of 
 the state as a representative of the people. 
 For the greatest nation, like all organiza- 
 tions, is made up of atoms — the individual 
 153 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 Public Opin- citizens. The aggregate, or average, of their 
 tromng*^°"" opinions makes public opinion, which, by- 
 Factor more or less direct action, is in modern 
 states finally the controlling factor. In pol- 
 itics as in gravitation, in the destiny of a 
 nation as in the shaping of the universe, 
 each atom counts. In the court of the pub- 
 lic each man is a juror. Even the citizen 
 who, in a representative government, fails to 
 go to the polls, exercises responsibility and 
 influence negatively, and his abstinence may 
 give the "casting vote" its power. No mod- 
 ern man can evade his responsibility for the 
 state of which he is a part. Each man is to 
 have his fair chance. But he, and all others, 
 get this chance only as he, and all others, do 
 their individual duty. 
 
 It is of first importance in politics as an 
 The Citi- art of life that the citizen should truly know 
 and Dutf ^* and rightly face his right and duty, and do 
 his part in his government, and appreciate 
 its relations with him. For he shapes it and 
 it shapes him. It is delusive to assume that 
 government arose from " social compact " in 
 a primitive and lofty age, and has degener- 
 ated under the usurpations of despotic mon- 
 archs, and takes care of itself and is bound 
 to come out right when again it becomes a 
 154 
 
OF POLITICS 
 
 "free democracy." A government, like a 
 man, is a growth, made by many influences 
 — in the large view a growth upward, but 
 ever needing alert watchfulness to keep it to 
 the highest standard of its actual possibili- 
 ties. A monarchy may be among the most 
 liberal, a democracy among the most de- 
 spotic, of governments. In government, as 
 in all else, the letter may be one, and the 
 spirit other. 
 
 To know a government, we must ask indeed 
 not only what is the form in which it has Form and 
 historically developed, but more vitally where frnment^°^ 
 is the sovereignty and who are masters, what 
 is the public service and how it is controlled, 
 what are the functions and ends of the gov- 
 ernment. The form may be of monarchy, 
 aristocracy, democracy ; simple or highly dif- 
 ferentiated into executive, legislative, judicial 
 relations ; with or without councils, one, two, 
 or more, and departmental divisions ; defined 
 by a written constitution, or only by custom, 
 tradition, the national spirit. The sovereignty . 
 may be theoretically with a king or with the 
 people ; and the mastery practically with a 
 usurper or the king's advisers or a parliament, 
 or with a party, a cabal, a plutocracy, a " ring," 
 or a " boss." The public service may be of 
 155 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 capable, experienced, trained, skilled states- 
 men and employees, or of " politicians " who 
 have made that word of honor into a by-word, 
 and of " heelers "" out of a job." The ser- 
 vants may be deliberately, wisely, discrimina- 
 tively selected by the masters, and promptly 
 and easily controlled ; or the house politic 
 may be given over to the servants, ruling the 
 masters from below. The purpose and func- 
 tion of a government may be to protect each 
 man in his rights and liberties and do no 
 more, or to conduct and control the business 
 as well as political affairs of the social or- 
 ganization. To know what our government 
 really is, all these questions must be faced 
 and answered. The large workings of large 
 laws at once reveal themselves, but in and 
 with and of these is the influence of the indi- 
 vidual — the atom which, responsive to grav- 
 itation, makes up the motion of the mass. 
 
 The simplest government of early times 
 Kinship and was that of the family or home by the parent, 
 hoo^d ^°^' ^^^ natural head. This is the primal molecule 
 of society, uniting the personal atoms. As 
 in chemistry, molecules of like kind form a 
 simple substance, and molecules of unlike 
 kinds, placed in chemical association, become 
 
 156 
 
OF POLITICS 
 
 organized into a complex substance from 
 which the higher organization proceeds, so 
 from the social molecule two types of gov- 
 ernment were evolved, the first based on kin- 
 ship, the family, the rule of race, tribal gov- 
 ernment ; the later based on neighborhood, 
 the home, the rule of place, local government. 
 The early pastoral peoples, living in tents, 
 wandering with their herds, fighting if need 
 be for fresh feeding-grounds, mobilized, war- 
 like, aggressive, led by the patriarch or by 
 the head-man who succeeded, developed a 
 centralized, military government, in its na- 
 ture hereditary or successive, aristocratic, de- 
 spotic. As men became more and more fixed 
 in one place, tilling their own fields, dwelling 
 in their own homes, settled, peaceful, defen- 
 sive, battling only with nature or for their 
 own rights, there was developed the localized, 
 civil government, in its nature selective or 
 elective, democratic, free. Our English 
 speech reflects these types indeed in two Two Types 
 sets of words : the one relating to the family ^" Language 
 or kin — as king or kinman, kingdom ; cap- 
 tain, chieftain, meaning head {caput) man ; 
 soverain, meaning the superior {superanum) 
 or supreme man ; emperor, meaning com- 
 mander {imperator)y empire ; realm, regal, 
 157 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 royal, from reXy the ruler ; nation, those born 
 {natus) of one nativity ; the other relating to 
 the home or land — as town, meaning a 
 fenced place or inclosure {toun) ; burgh (from 
 burrow), a place of shelter, burgher ; city, citi- 
 zen, civil, civic, from a form {civis) cognate 
 with quieSy meaning a quiet or rest place, the 
 hive or home ; domicile, a little or private home 
 (domus), domain, dominion ; state {status) or 
 estate. The struggles of these two types 
 have produced many of the great conflicts 
 of history, and in most cases the resultant 
 between the two forces, under the various 
 conditions of each nation, gives that nation 
 to-day its actual and distinctive form of gov- 
 ernment. So, in speech, the two sets of 
 words have mingled, although in our Amer- 
 ican Union the word " state," retained for 
 the territorial units, and the word " nation," 
 used for the centralized power, have much 
 of their distinctive significance. 
 
 The dominance of the race-idea survived 
 Race- and in the characteristics of the Arab tribes, the 
 ernmentT" Jewish nation, the Latin races, the Scotch 
 and Irish clans ; of the place-idea in Greece, 
 Russia, Germany, Holland, England, Amer- 
 ica. The children of Israel, a nomad people, 
 losing identity and patriarchal government 
 158 
 
OF POLITICS 
 
 when settled in the land of Egypt, were 
 roused from the sleep of serfdom by their 
 greatest of leaders and trained anew, under 
 their theocratic government, by their wander- 
 ings in the wilderness and by the ruthless 
 command to destroy the heathen of their new 
 land, to become the great representative of 
 the race-idea, homeless, yet a nation in the 
 midst of nations. In modern history, espe- 
 cially, types cross and forms mingle : France, 
 racial and military, has the semblance of a 
 republic ; Germany, a birthplace of freedom, 
 and Russia, land of the democratic mir and 
 of local self-government, are to-day ruled by 
 despotic monarchs in conflict with the peo- 
 ple ; England, a democracy, has the form of 
 monarchy and empire ; America, a democratic 
 republic, restricts immigration and denies its 
 presidency to those of alien birth. But, in the 
 large historic view, the nations first-named 
 have been the " subjects " or clannish devo- 
 tees of a tribal or personal government, con- Conquerors 
 querors for the sake of conquest, marauders n?s^s^°^°" 
 for the value of the prey : the countries last- 
 named have been the homes of free men, 
 revolting against tyrants in defense of their 
 homes and rights, organized in village com- 
 munity, town, city, state, for local home-rule 
 159 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 by the people, colonists rather than conquer- 
 ors, establishing self-governing colonies and 
 waging war and annexing territory chiefly 
 to maintain or safeguard them. Splendid 
 were the flashing triumphs of the Caesars, 
 the Moors, Napoleon, Spain, but their glories 
 faded before the staying power of the home- 
 land peoples, amalgamating and assimilating 
 many races in a fatherland of adoption and 
 planting colonies of peaceful dominion. Rus- 
 sia when emancipated, Germany freed, Eng- 
 land bulwarked by self-governing colonies, 
 and in danger only when strength overrides 
 justice and strangles development, America 
 if she can preserve the spirit of free demo- 
 cracy, rejecting alike plutocracy and social- 
 ism, — these mark the survival of the fittest 
 in government and enter the twentieth cen- 
 tury as leaders of the world. 
 
 As the Greek cities, at first the residence 
 The Greek of the head of a family or a king of tribes, 
 grew to be the home of a settled citizenry, 
 the city (Greek po/is, whence our word " poli- 
 tics "), though still made up by £-ens or fam- 
 ilies, became itself the state. Their history 
 caused Aristotle to consider government a 
 cycle of changes, first monarchy, the rule of 
 " one," degenerating into tyranny ; this over- 
 i6o 
 
 Cities 
 
OF POLITICS 
 
 come by aristocracy, the rule of a "best" 
 class, in turn degenerating into oligarchy, its 
 abuse by the " few ; " that overborne by de- 
 mocracy, the rule of the people, in its turn 
 degenerating into anarchy, the " no-rule " of 
 the mob, and suppressed by the strong hand 
 of a new monarch. But the Athenian demo- 
 cracy was never the rule of a majority of all, 
 but a government of classes, into which the 
 suburbans, "men of the mountains" a few 
 miles north, and " men of the shore " a few 
 miles south from Athens, forced their way 
 only after long struggle, and which always 
 excluded not only slaves but many free 
 dwellers within the walls. And ancient gov- Ancient 
 ernment in all its forms was a collectivism, Jcoiig^v-* 
 in which the citizen was the servant of the ism 
 state rather than the state the agent of the 
 citizen. Within the city, and among the 
 cities leagued together, there was delegated 
 government, in which various functions were 
 delegated to many officials and councils ; but 
 representative government, by which distant 
 peoples could take part in action at a polit- 
 ical centre, was unknown to the ancients, 
 and the great city of Rome, developing from 
 the type of the Greek city into the dominion 
 of an empire, fell before the demoralization 
 i6i 
 
tonic Tribes 
 
 THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 of its democracy and the weight of its vast 
 possessions, into imperialism, decadence, and 
 death. 
 
 When the Teutonic tribes, developed in 
 The Teu- the democratic system of their village com- 
 munities, but still retaining their tribal mo- 
 bility and their allegiance to their war-leaders, 
 overwhelmed Rome, the grants of estates 
 made by kings to their barons, conditioned 
 on military service, developed the feudal sys- 
 tem which made possible the transition to 
 the modern state. A hierarchy of nobles, 
 among whom the king was chief baron, began 
 to wrest from the sovereign charters or con- 
 cessions limiting or defining personal sover- 
 eignty and recognizing rights of self-govern- 
 ment and home-rule. Beginning with Magna 
 Charta, truly the great writing of Anglo- 
 Saxon liberty, this process of limitation of 
 the central power, of separation of functions, 
 of analysis, answering to a centrifugal force 
 in government, has evolved in England a 
 democracy preserving the semblance of a 
 monarchy, limited by a constitution unwritten 
 save in " the common law." Thus the polit- 
 ical rights of man have been affirmed, and 
 the freeman has succeeded, in fact if not in 
 name, the subject. 
 
 162 
 
OF POLITICS 
 
 In New England the process was the re- 
 verse. The settlers, freemen presently in The New 
 name as in fact, banded settlements into pj^o^cess^ 
 colonies, leagued these into federations, 
 united states into a nation, surrendering at 
 each step to the central government a dele- 
 gated authority over its local constituents. 
 This process of synthesis, obeying a centrip- 
 etal force in government, has developed in 
 our democratic republic a trend toward an 
 autocracy, unrecognized by law and irrespon- 
 sible, which makes possible party domination, 
 the " boss " and the plutocrat in politics. As 
 England, a monarchy, has become more 
 democratic, America, a republic, has become 
 more despotic. Public opinion, in England, 
 responsive to a "question" asked in the 
 Commons, controls Parliament and the 
 Crown ; but a party boss, in America, com- 
 pels a legislature or an executive to defy the 
 popular will, trusting to forgetfulness at the 
 next election, as no prime minister could do. 
 Russia, developed like America by aggrega- 
 tion from its local communities, the demo- 
 cratic mivy has become centralized by like 
 process into the most despotic autocracy of 
 the age, and the centrifugal force re-asserts 
 
 163 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 itself in seething though suppressed revolu- 
 tion. 
 
 The simplest form of direct democratic 
 Direct de- government, " of the people, by the people, 
 Government ^^^ ^^^ people," is the New England town 
 meeting. In the village community, as in 
 Athens of old, the voters themselves meet, 
 debate, vote their decisions, and select men 
 to execute them. That is possible and ade- 
 quate only for neighborhood affairs, known 
 directly to all. This is not representative, 
 but direct government ; free and full discus- 
 sion is invited ; the minority is expected to 
 make itself usefully heard. But the town 
 meeting cannot meet continuously or often ; 
 it cannot decide on matters outside its neigh- 
 borhood, in which other people are con- 
 cerned. The select-men come to represent 
 it between whiles ; it presently elects re- 
 presentatives to join with those from other 
 places in deciding matters common to all. 
 Thus representative government begins. 
 Representa- When the representatives meet, it is, at the 
 ment'°^^^"" ^^^^ Stage, as a deputized town meeting. But 
 the deputies have not the common interest 
 nor the specific knowledge from which to 
 act. Committees are appointed to make 
 164 
 
OF POLITICS 
 
 specific inquiries and recommend action. 
 As questions become more numerous and 
 more complex, the representative is less able 
 to decide for himself : " government by com- 
 mittee " begins. Meanwhile, large questions 
 develop, on which men divide into parties ; 
 and "government by party" crosses govern- 
 ment by committee. As a legislature, or 
 " general court," or congress, or parliament 
 makes decisions for the people in the form 
 of "laws," it is necessary to have adminis- 
 trative officers to execute these decisions, 
 and as questions arise of interpretation or 
 application of a constitution, written or tra- 
 ditional, or of a law, it is necessary to have 
 judicial officers to determine them. Thus 
 the legislative, executive, and judicial func- 
 tions of government are differentiated. 
 
 As the scope of government broadens, 
 geographically and otherwise, beyond the Territorial 
 village and township functions, there results functions 
 finally another differentiation based on terri- 
 torial grounds. The villages or towns, or in 
 the South the landed estates which formed 
 its unit of settlement, are aggregated into the 
 county or shire, originally a semi-tribal kind 
 of government which we have inherited from 
 England. The State, originating from the 
 165 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 early colonies or amalgamations of them, or 
 developed from " territories " as these were 
 settled, represents the sovereignty of the 
 people and is supreme, except as the united 
 States have delegated their larger powers, 
 especially in foreign relations, to our federal 
 nation. Thus have come into being the 
 complexities and cross-lines of our govern- 
 ments, unparalleled elsewhere, amidst which 
 the individual citizen is too often confused 
 in his duties or misled by selfish or errant 
 leaders. This complexity is increased by 
 the development of the modern city. 
 
 As the modern city has evolved from the 
 Municipal village, the town, its complex conditions pre- 
 Government ^^^^ intricate questions of business adminis- 
 tration which neither the people at large nor 
 legislative bodies can effectively handle. A 
 municipality does not need to pass laws, but 
 only to make and enforce regulations, in 
 their nature specific and technical. Alder- 
 men, councils, municipal legislatures and 
 assemblies, with general functions, have in 
 practice proved useless bodies in cities, 
 prone to degenerate into corruption. Suc- 
 cessful municipal government follows the 
 type of corporate industrial organizations, 
 organized to do business. The citizens are 
 i66 
 
OF POLITICS 
 
 the shareholders, whose function is to decide 
 large lines of policy and to obtain capable 
 executive ability to execute their will. In a 
 great city, questions of street construction 
 and maintenance, sewers, water supply, fire 
 prevention, lighting, police, sanitation, build- 
 ings, bridges, and the like, are engineering 
 and administrative problems requiring the 
 highest technical experience and skill, ut- 
 terly different from questions of domestic 
 policy or foreign relations which are the 
 concern of State and nation, and altogether 
 apart from state or national party divisions. 
 The proper method of municipal government The proper 
 is one which makes it easy for the people to ^®*^°^ 
 decide, by popular vote, what they will do 
 and pay for collectively and what they will 
 leave to private enterprise, and then to pro- 
 vide for capable business skill to adminis- 
 ter the collective enterprises. In England 
 municipal development is more or less under 
 the centralized and continuous control of a 
 national ** Board of Trade ; " in America the 
 " charters " of cities presume " home-rule," 
 but party interference from state legislatures 
 is rather the rule than the exception. 
 
 Thus in the modern evolution of govern- 
 ment there has come to be a gradation of 
 167 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 Gradation of governments within one country, from the 
 merits'^" national or general government representing 
 the citizens in relation to foreign powers and 
 in general domestic interests, to the local or 
 municipal government which administers as 
 to the necessities or conveniences of neigh- 
 borhood life, with intermediate governments 
 of which in America the most notable is the 
 State, sovereign within its territory, but dele- 
 gating external and interstate authority to 
 the federation of the United States. It is of 
 the very essence of good government that 
 each grade of government should have its 
 functions and purposes clearly differentiated 
 from other grades, and that the intermediate 
 grades should not be multifarious and con- 
 fusing, to the perplexity of the voter-citizen. 
 The criss-cross of administrative districts in 
 England, and the multiplicity of elective 
 officers in America, are serious obstacles to 
 intelligent participation in and control of 
 government by the individual. 
 
 Nation ? 
 
 The question " What is a nation ? " is in 
 
 Whatis^a itself not of simple answer, for it requires 
 
 recognition of the complex and subtle forces 
 
 which make each nation what it is. Rivers 
 
 were of old the boundary lines of countries, 
 
 1 68 
 
OF POLITICS 
 
 but with steam the waterways are highways, 
 uniting and not dividing, and the physical 
 seat of a nation is rather the valleys of great 
 river systems, from source to sea, bounded 
 by the mountain barriers. Thus Germany 
 must have from France its other side of the 
 Rhine, to complete the German fatherland. 
 But neither place nor race alone to-day 
 makes or determines a nation. A modern 
 authority defines the state as the politically 
 organized people of a particular land. Race- 
 tendency, the heat line, climate, the physical 
 environment, the standard of comfort, the 
 education of the people, literature and art, 
 the character and influence of leaders, belief, 
 customs, — all these make the life and direct 
 the growth of a nation, in short make the 
 nation. Conquest or federation may indeed 
 bring within the dominion of a nation terri- 
 tory and peoples not truly a part of it, as 
 Pd'land captured by Russia and Hungary 
 linked with Austria, or partition may sepa- 
 rate natural compatriots, as Belgium from 
 France. The ideal nation is of one people 
 speaking the same tongue, having the same 
 customs, dwelling in one fatherland as in 
 Germany, or assimilated into an adopted 
 country as in America. The kind and 
 169 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 amount, the quality and quantity, of govern- 
 ment proper to each community develop 
 from these conditions, and their careful study 
 is the first requisite of the art of politics, of 
 politics as an art of life, oi practical politics 
 in fact. 
 
 Under all forms of government, "sover- 
 Sovereignty eignty," or supremacy, is the defining test of 
 state or nation. For the doctrine of sover- 
 eignty, though originating from race and 
 personal government, has been applied in 
 fullest extent to place and democratic govern- 
 ment — in fact marks the culmination and 
 union of both. It is founded on the theory 
 of absolute rule by an infallible ruler who 
 has supreme right over the lives and pro- 
 perty of his "subjects." "The king can do 
 no wrong " and therefore cannot be sued ; he 
 owns all the land and can therefore exercise 
 right of " eminent domain ; " he can require 
 his people to defend him, even with their 
 lives and all their fortune, and can therefore 
 draft them into military service and levy war 
 taxes to the full of their wealth. No person 
 in civilized countries now believes in this 
 "divine right" of kings — except the Em- 
 peror of Germany, and his people do not 
 agree with him. Yet it remains the theo- 
 170 
 
OF POLITICS 
 
 retic basis of statehood, tempered in England 
 by traditional and evolutionary limitations, 
 and transferred with independence to our own 
 States. With us there is no personal govern- 
 ment and " each man is a sovereign." But 
 "the people," that is, all the people together, The People 
 are sovereign, and have all rights over each ^°'^®^®^i^ 
 person, and they exercise this sovereignty 
 through the State, except so far as the States 
 have unitedly delegated or transferred this 
 sovereignty to the federated nation. The 
 State, and not the United States, is sover- 
 eign over, that is, finally owns, all the land 
 inside its boundaries, and within the provi- 
 sions of the constitution requiring adequate 
 compensation can take private land for public 
 use, either for itself or for such ^uast-pnhlic 
 use as by a railroad corporation. Neither a 
 State nor the United States can be sued by 
 a citizen, who must have recourse to the de- 
 vice of suing a government official through 
 whom any wrong has been done. Citizens 
 may be required, by draft, to expose their 
 lives for the common defense, though not for 
 external war, by either state or federal gov- 
 ernment ; and each, within its constitutionally 
 prescribed field, may levy taxes to any neces- 
 sary extent. This nation has indeed carried 
 171 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 The Ex- the doctrine of sovereignty to its extreme 
 Sovereignty extent, by assuming that sovereignty can be 
 acquired by purchase, as in the case of the 
 Philippines, and considering those who do 
 not agree to the transfer as "rebels " against 
 constituted authority. In our domestic af- 
 fairs, we are protected against abuse of this 
 sovereign power by the specific limitations 
 of a written constitution, determining the 
 limitations of the power both of State and 
 nation, as by the right of habeas corpus, the 
 provision that property shall not be taken 
 save by due process of law, and the limita- 
 tion of militia duty to home defense. In a 
 federated or federal government, sovereignty 
 is thus partitioned by agreement, and the 
 central power becomes usually the seat of 
 sovereignty in its foreign relations with other 
 sovereignties. 
 
 As sovereignty can be enforced to the ex- 
 Not Force treme, it is commonly assumed that both 
 Order the ^^^ ^^^ government rest in the last analysis 
 Basis upon force, or immediately upon fear of force. 
 
 But this is like saying that health rests upon 
 fear of disease. It is acquiescence in the 
 social order which makes government possi- 
 ble and is its foundation. All communities 
 are more or less self-governing : most peo- 
 172 
 
OF POLITICS 
 
 pie behave themselves, mind their own busi- 
 ness, respect the rights of their fellows, and 
 do not require the attention of the police. 
 Otherwise, the task of government would be 
 well-nigh impossible, and anarchy would be 
 in sight. Even barbarous tribes find the 
 self-restraint which is the first condition of 
 their progress, in the rudimentary but all- 
 powerful government of customary law, 
 habit, and superstition ; while the peoples of 
 higher moral development and organization 
 find statutory law and punishment necessary 
 chiefly for that minority constituting the 
 criminal class. The great body of men do 
 not transgress laws, if they are laws of nature 
 and of " common sense," but respect them 
 unwritten. Thus government becomes more 
 and more a formalized adjustment of complex 
 relations growing up with the complexities 
 of civilization. These adjustments can be 
 made only by general agreement, and thus 
 in the progress of the world the best and 
 most stable form of government has come to 
 be that which develops self-government in Self-gov- 
 the highest degree and promotes a wholesome ^^^^^'^^ 
 public opinion to which the administrators are 
 quickly responsive. England lost her Ameri- 
 can colonies, and has had chronic trouble 
 173 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 with Ireland, because she failed to afford 
 them adequate measure of home-rule, while 
 she has succeeded in maintaining relations 
 with Canada and Australia by developing 
 their self-government ; and her dangers in the 
 East are because the iron hand still rules in 
 India and outbreaks follow the disregard of 
 the natural government of the native peo- 
 . pies. As that education is best which de- 
 velops a man to self-government, in accord 
 with natural law, so it would seem that form 
 of government is best which develops a self- 
 governing community, in accord with natural 
 law. 
 
 Under any and every form of govern- 
 Selection of ment, and not least in the highly organized 
 ficers^ ^^" communities where self-government is most 
 developed, there must be selection of those 
 who are to do the actual work of adminis- 
 tration. Every engine, however truly built, 
 requires an engineer to run it, every machine 
 some one to keep it in repair. No engine is of 
 use without a good engineer, and no machin- 
 ery of government without good administra- 
 tors. A good engineer may do more with 
 a poor engine than a poor engineer with a 
 good engine ; a fit monarch may be better 
 174 
 
OF POLITICS 
 
 than an unfit president. An all-important 
 question in the art of government is how 
 the selection of its administrators shall be 
 made. 
 
 Now the process of natural selection must 
 vary according to what is to be selected. In The Process 
 simple pastoral life, the man of greatest ex- °^ Selection 
 perience, of length of years, the patriarch, 
 was the fit ruler. In fighting times, under 
 hereditary rule, if the king's heir did not 
 prove himself a good fighter, he was replaced 
 by force of arms or displaced by polite de- 
 vice, and the great captain, the real com- 
 mander, succeeded to the real headship. But 
 under the complex relations of modern gov- 
 ernment these simple processes are not ade- 
 quate. In a given form of government, the 
 best government is government by the best, 
 the most fit, men. If aristocracy were as 
 good as its word, if class government were 
 government by the best class, it would have 
 earned' the right to survive. But it has not 
 so proved. Carlyle put forth a simple and 
 sufficing recipe for good government in 
 "Find your Hero and obey him." This The Hero 
 again is the best government, the rule of ^®"P® 
 the best. But first, to catch your hare, or 
 your Hero — how shall that be done } It is 
 I7S 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 in this first question that the rub comes, and 
 this simple recipe fails. Carlyle was quite 
 ready indeed to name the Hero, — but his 
 choice was not always beyond impeachment. 
 It becomes evident that the Hero must some- 
 how be selected, or elected, and Democracy 
 is, on the whole, the best instrument yet 
 devised to that end. 
 
 If, indeed, Democracy were but a count of 
 Democracy noses, there might be more reason to despair 
 orNoseT^* of it. But humankind is not organized on 
 that basis. The Declaration of Independ- 
 ence, in asserting that all men are created 
 equal, means equal before the law. Other- 
 wise it would put Democracy and all govern- 
 ment on a false basis, not in accord with 
 fact. For men do not wear hats of the 
 same size, nor can any Declaration or other 
 means bring them to that equality. They 
 diifer in quality as well as in quantity of 
 brains ; and education, which can do much, 
 cannot overcome born differences. If every 
 man is as good as another and a little better, 
 it is anarchy, no-headedness, that is in sight. 
 Who shall be rulers, and who ruled — this 
 is as much a question to Democracy as to 
 any form of government. It is fraternity, 
 the brotherhood of man, that forms an actual 
 176 
 
OF POLITICS 
 
 basis for Democracy. And in government, 
 as in the family itself, as in all forms of or- 
 ganization, there must be division of labor, 
 according to capabilities. As the ruler is no 
 longer the chief fighter, he can no longer 
 fight himself into rule ; the ballot has been 
 devised to select him. 
 
 An essential of Democracy is therefore the 
 free play of that leadership which always ex- Leadership 
 ists among men, no matter how few. "There 's 
 naught men crave so much as leadership." But 
 leadership, like most attributes of humanity, 
 is a relative quality : there is no set line be- 
 tween leaders and led. Each man is a leader 
 to some of his fellows, and looks to others or 
 to some other, avowedly or unconsciously, as 
 his leader. Thus a democratic state is built 
 together. The communist, seeking equality 
 of property and person, seeks first a leader 
 toward his destructive millennium who will 
 preach down leadership while he fulfills it. 
 It is a fact that this natural and necessary 
 leadership is often more actively asserted, 
 particularly in modern city life, by lower 
 than by upper men, and this reversal is one 
 of the failures of Democracy. 
 
 There is no doubt that Democracy has had 
 its failures. But no system of government 
 177 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 Democracy devised by and for humanity has been with- 
 Type^ ®^* out failures — and, on the whole, greater 
 failures. This is but saying that humanity 
 is not perfect. Kings never governed so 
 wisely but that, sooner or later, they must 
 be discrowned ; emperors but that their em- 
 pires must be sundered. The hybrid rule of 
 aristocracy was but an unstable equilibrium 
 that presently became the rule of the one or 
 the rule of the many. Democracy, after all, 
 is the resultant of the political law of gravi- 
 tation. It is an early form of government ; 
 it is also, in the evolution of civilization, the 
 highest and perhaps the final type. It is 
 the only type in which the pyramid stands on 
 its base, not on its apex. 
 
 For all modern states of high development 
 Develop- approach with more or less rapidity demo- 
 SlmVcrlcy^ cratic rule. In Germany, the Emperor, hold- 
 ing to his theory of personal sovereignty in 
 face of events, fights a losing battle against 
 parliamentary government, and the signs of 
 the times point to the resurrection of demo- 
 cracy in Russia, following the emancipation 
 of the serfs and an increasing freedom of 
 thought and of speech, redeeming that great 
 land from autocratic power. In England, 
 constitutional monarchy survives because it 
 178 
 
OF POLITICS 
 
 is no other than a democracy. The Crown 
 has no will against the people's will — that 
 were high treason, were it still worth while 
 to cut off kings' heads. The Lords can do no 
 more than move arrest of judgment, and set 
 the Commons to think twice. Because Eng- 
 land has developed into a democracy which 
 is not also a republic, let us not haggle about 
 names : let rather this democracy and that 
 democracy compare notes, to see what in the 
 other's system may better its own. 
 
 And the tendency is not only toward De- 
 mocracy, but toward the extreme of universal Universal 
 suffrage. There are fond mothers who wish S^^^'^^g® 
 the universe were so constructed that chil- 
 dren might learn to swim before they dare 
 the water, and timorous statesmen wish that 
 universal suffrage might not come until the 
 people are trained to it. Nature insists on 
 the heroic method ; it is her way because it 
 is the only way. It is for parents, by alert 
 care, to prevent danger; it is for the educated, 
 in like manner, to assist the ignorant against 
 their ignorance. Undoubtedly, there is dan- 
 ger. The sudden revolutions of republican- 
 izing, not yet republican, France, illustrate 
 the danger. The history of our Southern 
 States since the civil war illustrates the dan- 
 179 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 ger. It is real. But it is not overwhelming. 
 Responsibility can only be learned through 
 responsibility. And it is never illiteracy 
 that has the casting vote : that belongs with 
 the men who, thinking, lead. If they will 
 — of course, if they will ! If they will not, 
 it is not for them to cast stones. 
 
 Suffrage has been associated historically 
 Woman with the more active, the male sex. As the 
 rage passive sex has become more active, woman 
 suffrage has become a practical question. 
 Since women have claimed and won the right 
 to earn their living, to hold property, to run 
 the state, their right to vote seems indeed a 
 logical sequence. It is perhaps a question 
 whether it is worth while to add to woman- 
 kind this burden of responsibility, to add to 
 the suffrage this increase of machinery, by 
 a duplication which might avail little and 
 would cost much. With the woman of con- 
 science, of education, of high purpose, add- 
 ing her vote to that of the best men, must 
 come also to the polls the woman of degra- 
 dation, of ignorance, ready to sell her vote 
 as she sells herself. The influence of woman 
 in politics need be no less vital because she 
 does not take mechanical part in voting ; if 
 she, as mother, wife, sister, daughter, calls 
 1 80 
 
OF POLITICS 
 
 to the manhood of the nation to come up 
 higher, it responds. There could be no war 
 in a nation where women opposed war, save 
 when, for the defense of homes and honor, 
 men and women alike responded, each in 
 their way, to the nation's need. 
 
 The form of government evolved for our 
 day is thus a democracy of universal suf- Precautions 
 frage, responsive to responsible leaders. The Democracy 
 method of government must accordingly pro- 
 vide against unintelligent and hasty action 
 by the crowd under intoxication of brute im- 
 pulse or bad leadership, and provide for the 
 selection and direction of fit and true leaders. 
 A wide and wholesome education, that shows 
 the real relations underlying mere surface 
 relations, is thus the first need of Democracy. 
 America early recognized this fact by her 
 system of common schools. The founders 
 of the American Constitution, whom experi- 
 ence has proved to be among the wisest of 
 men, prescribed many checks against hot- 
 blooded action by the people, some of which 
 have proved most effective and others singu- 
 larly ineffective. Sir Henry Maine speaks 
 of the safeguards over the amendment of the 
 Constitution, requiring now the concurrent 
 i8i 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 action of a hundred legislative chambers or 
 the people of nearly fifty States ; of the func- 
 tions of the Supreme Court ; of the denial to 
 the States of power to impair the obligations 
 of contracts — as " like those dams and dikes 
 . . . controlling the course of a mighty river 
 which begins amid mountain torrents, and 
 turning it into one of the most equable water- 
 courses in the world." Contrariwise, the 
 Checks electoral college does not elect : it proves 
 
 ernment^" ^^^ ^^ awkward device that complicates mat- 
 ters. The executive was intended to be in- 
 dependent of Congress ; but the power of 
 confirmation vested in the upper house, 
 through the spoils system, " courtesy of the 
 Senate," tenure-of -office laws, soon developed 
 dependence. The Senate itself, contrived 
 to prevent bad laws, has served to obstruct 
 good ones : it has become not an aristocracy 
 conserving, but a plutocracy opposing, which 
 is not good. The upper house, in many 
 state legislatures, is the stronghold of corrup- 
 tion. The alternative method of electing 
 United States senators by state legislatures, 
 adopted in preference to direct election by 
 the people of the State, has promoted the 
 election of state legislators on national party 
 lines, and every three years has subordinated 
 182 
 
OF POLITICS 
 
 questions of state business to the choice of 
 a senator. The representatives were not to 
 take office at once, lest they should be too 
 hot from the people : but it has more than 
 once happened that the people in an election 
 showed cool common sense which they could 
 not apply in Congress till another year of 
 down-hill legislation had passed. Congress 
 itself is so alarmed as to the bad things that 
 it may do that it ties and twists itself up in 
 red-tape rules which prevent it from doing 
 good and needed things. The supreme judi- 
 ciary, devised to steady the government and 
 right Congress, has reversed its decisions 
 from a packed bench, and has been accused, 
 in its legal-tender decisions, of telling Con- 
 gress it can do what it pleases with the Con- 
 stitution. It has been said that our checks 
 on government check government. 
 
 In the evolution of government, and espe- Parties 
 cially of democratic government, political 
 " parties " have been developed as the means 
 of expressing the will of the people. In a 
 sense, they have existed under all govern- 
 ments ; in the grand prophetic books of the 
 Bible can be heard the clash of opposing 
 parties in Israel, one for alliance with Egypt, 
 
 183 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 the other for alliance with Assyria, while the 
 prophet-statesman Isaiah, the reformer and 
 "mugwump" of his time, pleaded for a 
 patriotic self-reliance " whose strength is to 
 sit still." The " fathers of the Republic," as 
 is seen in the original provision of the Con- 
 stitution by which the one second in the vote 
 for President should become Vice-President, 
 looked forward to a unanimous and millennial 
 patriotism, in which parties should be no 
 more. But the unanimous election of Wash- 
 ington and the "era of good feeling" in 
 which Madison was elected with but one dis- 
 senting vote were soon followed by party 
 dissensions which tore that theory to tatters. 
 Patriotism rests on common agreement ; 
 parties spring from mutual disagreement. 
 Patriots disagree as to what principle or 
 policy is patriotism — hence parties. So long 
 A natural as voters differ as to what is best for the 
 state, parties exist. They are a natural evo- 
 lution, not an artificial invention — as those 
 think who would " abolish " parties to cure 
 their evils. Parties are the means by which 
 the people themselves, self-organized, shape 
 their own issues, by formulating the princi- 
 ples and naming the candidates for or against 
 whom voters are to vote. The alternative 
 184 
 
 Evolution 
 
OF POLITICS 
 
 of having issues shaped by government offi- 
 cials, as for the French plebiscite, gives a 
 bureaucracy or a ministry undue power, and 
 is contrary to democratic method. The re- 
 fer endunij or direct vote of the people in place 
 of decision by representatives, and the direct 
 initiative by the people in proposing laws, 
 would in no wise dispense with parties. The 
 use of parties is to enable each voter to say, 
 in a way easy to him, what he wants his gov- 
 ernment to do. The more fully we recognize 
 that parties are our natural methods of de- 
 ciding political issues, the better should their 
 function be fulfilled. 
 
 When, on any subject, a whole community 
 is of one mind, there can be no " party ques- Non-party 
 tion." If the great body of the people wills Decisions 
 to have something done, it is done ; machin- 
 ery cannot stand in the way ; it gets done, 
 despite all. Such questions solve themselves : 
 they cannot become "issues." For "the 
 common defense " parties unite and division 
 disappears ; even in foreign wars, of expan- 
 sion or conquest, the public mind is apt for 
 the time to decry as "traitors" those who 
 oppose what they think "criminal aggres- 
 sion." An administration seldom fails to get 
 a practically unanimous vote, in Congress or 
 
 185 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 Parliament, for war supplies ; difference be- 
 tween countries belittles and overwhelms 
 differences within country. It is only when 
 two contestants are of unknown or fairly 
 mated strength that there is a struggle. A 
 nearly even division is the sine qua non of 
 party : otherwise the overwhelming majority 
 has its way. This is why there are usually 
 two great parties, and no more, and these 
 nearly equal in voting strength. 
 
 Parties furnish the means to enable some 
 Political men to vote on one side, other men to vote 
 Campaigns ^^ ^j^^ q^j^^j. ^-^^^ ^f ^ question in dispute. 
 
 Thus an " issue " is made. When a vote is 
 taken, on a principle or policy at issue, the 
 voting must be for or against, " yes " or " no." 
 On a constitutional amendment, voters do 
 vote " yes " or ** no " at the polls, but on most 
 questions they record themselves on either 
 side by naming on their ballots the nominees 
 who take the same view that they take. In 
 a natural, normal, " ideal " party system, two 
 parties, confronting each other in candid and 
 honest disagreement, state each in its " plat- 
 form " the principles it represents and the 
 policy it proposes, and nominate fit men 
 pledged to enact or execute the will of the 
 people expressed in their election. A politi- 
 i86 
 
OF POLITICS 
 
 cal campaign is then a great educational 
 process for all the people, a common school 
 of statesmanship, in which by pubUc meet- 
 ings, through the press, and in personal de- 
 bate, each voter may inform himself, *'make 
 up his mind," and cast his conscience vote. 
 
 But parties may fail of their purpose, and 
 need to be supplanted or re-formed. As the Re-form of 
 Constitution permits amendment by which ^^^^^^^ 
 the framework of our government may be 
 modified, so our party system permits change 
 in the policy or personnel of government. 
 When the great parties ignore or evade the 
 real question on which people want to vote, 
 or becloud the paramount issue of the hour 
 by multifarious confusion of issues, or when 
 they treat party as not a means but an end, 
 or subordinate patriotism to party-ism, over- 
 throw from without or reform from within 
 becomes necessary to one or both. 
 
 Then a new party or third party may be 
 needed, to do the work of the chemical re- Third-party 
 agent which re-arranges molecules and effects Movements 
 new combinations in matter. The early 
 statesmen, the politicians of later days, 
 evaded the issue of slavery until their eva- 
 sion nearly lost us our country ; and with 
 the watchword of liberty, the Republican 
 187 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 party supplanted the Whig party and saved 
 the Union at the awful cost of civil war. 
 The early Abolitionists preferred to "throw 
 away their votes " as a protest party, because 
 what was to their minds the most vital of 
 issues was ignored, and thus to open the 
 way for a party which would face the issue 
 which the great parties evaded. So also the 
 present Prohibitionists, the labor men, the 
 Irish Nationalists in the English Parliament 
 — fanatics willing to be political martyrs in 
 a great cause ! Thus a third party, reckless 
 of present success, builds for the future, hop- 
 ing by its initiative to become one of two 
 great parties, or to bring one of the existing 
 great parties to accept its views. As a 
 ** dominant minority," holding the balance 
 of power, able by alliance with one of the 
 great parties or by opposition to give the 
 "casting vote," such a party may become a 
 most effective element in active politics, 
 wholesome or destructive, vitalizing or cor- 
 rupting, far beyond its numerical strength. 
 Or, when a great party fails to realize in its 
 policy its declared principles, or loses pur- 
 pose and seeks only to perpetuate its power 
 as an " organization " or " machine," or nom- 
 inates men untrue to its principles or unfit to 
 i88 
 
OF POLITICS 
 
 represent the people, then also a " reform " 
 vote by those dissatisfied with their own 
 party, and not in agreement with the oppos- 
 ing party, has its use. Thus the " scratch- 
 ing" Republicans of 1879, "voting in the 
 air" to clear the air — not the assassins but 
 the physicians of their party — using absten- 
 tion as a warning silence ! Thus the Inde- 
 pendents or "mugwumps" of 1884, uniting 
 with their opponents to elect a Democratic 
 President in protest against what they 
 thought an unfit nomination ! Thus the 
 "gold Democrats" of 1896, helping to elect 
 a Republican President in the interest of 
 "honest money" and "sound currency!" 
 A third party is, in theory as in fact, always 
 a makeshift to supplant or to reform one of 
 two great parties, a bridge by which to cross 
 to firmer ground. 
 
 Disintegration of the party system sets in 
 when one party becomes so large that its "Groups 
 victory seems sure, inviting corruption, jeal- 
 ousies and divisions, or where both parties 
 break into "groups." For years the domi- 
 nant party in New York city was divided 
 into "halls," one of which allied itself with 
 the common enemy when it could not get its 
 terms from the ruling faction of its own 
 189 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 party. In European legislative bodies, 
 "groups" of the Right, the Center, and the 
 Left, in shifting and shifty alliances, control 
 policies and make or unmake ministries, un- 
 til too often principles are forgotten in bar- 
 gains for place. Some observers count this 
 a normal development of the party system, 
 but it seems rather to show the deadness of 
 decadence — to be revivified into wholesome 
 two-sided division when the breath of a live 
 question fans the coals. For government 
 by "groups" becomes a government by 
 cabal, and belittles the influence of the in- 
 dividual by confusing the effect of his vote. 
 The abuse of parties is to make them not a 
 The Misuse means but an end, to put party before patriae 
 of Parties party-ism first, patriotism second. This is 
 that law of death which nature makes part 
 of the greater law of life. Party crystal- 
 lizes into organization, and the organization 
 seeks to perpetuate itself. The statesmen, 
 the voters, who would realize principles into 
 action, find the machinery no longer their 
 instrument but their master ; the chief engi- 
 neer has usurped the captain's place, and 
 is running the ship to suit his pirate crew 
 instead of bringing his passengers into the 
 haven where they would be. The "profes- 
 190 
 
OF POLITICS 
 
 sional politician " is not free from the nar- 
 rowing tendencies of the professional mind. 
 As the doctor boasts the skill of his operation 
 rather than the saving of life, the lawyer 
 thinks of the precedents for his case rather 
 than the wide principles of justice, the min- 
 ister emphasizes joining the church rather 
 than living the Christ-Ufe, so he has in mind 
 the saving of the party rather than the sav- 
 ing of the country. Thus he avoids facing 
 the paramount issue on which voters want 
 to vote, lest the majority should be against 
 his party ; confuses the mind and throws 
 dust in the eyes of the public by phrasing 
 political platitudes, raising multitudinous 
 issues, avoiding specific proposals of party 
 action, and abusing the "record" of the 
 other party instead of asserting the princi- 
 ples of his own ; and nominates men who 
 represent the absence of principle but who 
 wear the party uniform and shout for loyalty 
 to the old flag. Washington, in his Farewell 
 Address, warned his countrymen against the 
 misuse of parties as " potent engines by 
 which cunning, ambitious, and unscrupulous 
 men will be enabled to subvert the power of 
 the people, and usurp for themselves the 
 reins of government ; destroying, afterward, 
 191 
 
of Parties 
 
 THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 the very engines which had lifted them to 
 unjust dominion." This is prophecy of the 
 modern party "boss," over-lording his own 
 party, and supported by his fellow of the op- 
 posing party through the "cohesive influ- 
 ence of public plunder" or the necessary 
 alliance of political powers, — a situation 
 met at last by revolt of the body of the peo- 
 ple against the usurpers of popular rights, 
 the more dangerous the longer it is deferred. 
 In a Greek democracy or a New England 
 Continuity town meeting, where all may meet together, 
 parties may make and break, as the issue 
 comes, holding together so long as the need 
 remains and no longer, whether it be for a 
 century or a day. But in a great nation of 
 over fifteen million voters, and polling nearly 
 fourteen million votes, where there is more 
 or less geographical or other difference as 
 to what should be the paramount issue, 
 where a party must include seven million 
 voters, living three thousand miles apart, a 
 party cannot be organized in the twinkling 
 of an eye, or in a single campaign. A high 
 degree and wide range of organization is 
 required to make clear the principles on 
 which, and designate the men for or against 
 whom, this enormous number of votes is 
 192 
 
OF POLITICS 
 
 to be cast. Our parties must have geo- 
 graphical unity and historical persistence; 
 sectional feeling, the passion of the moment, 
 is happily inadequate to their formation. 
 With all its disadvantages, this is practically 
 one of our most important national safe- 
 guards. 
 
 Yet it is on the fluency of parties that 
 their usefulness and the safety of the state Fluency 
 depend. As the ocean tides sway the drops Parties 
 of water, so parties should attract by their 
 principles the suffrages of voters, and thus 
 give flexibility, and the means of purification, 
 to government. Rome fell before internal 
 corruption and external attack because her 
 government lacked adaptiveness and righting 
 power ; only the overwhelming by new and 
 cleaner blood could wash out her stains. Our 
 government may endure the longer, because 
 we can use parties, one against another, to 
 alter or reverse policy within our constitu- 
 tional forms without revolution and to purge 
 the state of corruption. Parties fall, the 
 Republic survives. To accomplish this, we 
 must be alert to prevent corruption within 
 parties, to re-form them on vital issues, to 
 overwhelm them when corrupt. It is in this 
 way, by the free and prompt transfer of votes, 
 193 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 whether one by one, or through a third party, 
 that our nation is kept safe and alive. The 
 successive reversals of party success in the 
 four Presidential elections of 1884 to 1896 
 proved how safely and successfully this can 
 be done. But there is yet a simpler way in 
 which the individual citizen may have his 
 influence in the body politic, — by his part in 
 the forming of public opinion. A shower of 
 letters in the morning mail on the desks of 
 legislators has carried or defeated many a 
 measure, and a president has been influenced 
 on the larger questions of policy by the huzzas 
 of the crowd. The good citizen who would 
 have good government must see to it that 
 the visible and audible expressions of public 
 opinion represent the higher and not the 
 lower thought of the nation. 
 
 Under democratic government, it is of 
 
 National first importance that real issues should be 
 
 Is^ues^*^ put cleanly and clearly to popular vote. 
 
 Our differentiation into national, state, and 
 
 local governments, as well as our division 
 
 into parties, affords this opportunity. The 
 
 broad field of national party should see clear 
 
 lines drawn on the "paramount issue" in 
 
 national affairs, as slavery, or a protective or 
 
 194 
 
OF POLITICS 
 
 revenue tariff, or the standard of money, or 
 the annexation of territory. A local contest 
 is on quite other lines, and chiefly as to ques- 
 tions such as how far the town or city shall 
 undertake public works, or what should be 
 its policy as to the liquor traffic. Yet, since 
 national party organization must have its 
 roots in district or local organization, it is 
 usually through the local machinery of na- 
 tional parties, both in America and England, 
 that local issues are shaped ; and party names Party Cries 
 and cries are used to influence votes on 
 whether or not to build a new road or start 
 a new school. A curious result has been 
 that in two of our States voters of the same 
 party name may take exactly opposite sides 
 of a state issue, as when in one State the 
 Republican party was for and the Democratic 
 party against prohibition, while in another 
 in the same campaign the relations were re- 
 versed. This incidental evil of the party 
 system is thus in a measure its own correc- 
 tive, for it should teach voters to vote irre- 
 spective of party name on real issues, first 
 on local and finally on national questions, 
 and thus promote fluency of parties and re- 
 sponsiveness within them to public opinion. 
 If the people, by help of parties, are to 
 195 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 Issues 
 should be 
 few and 
 simple 
 
 Deposition 
 by popular 
 Vote 
 
 decide what they will have done, by electing 
 men who will enact or execute their will, it 
 is evident that the issues put before them 
 should be few and simple. Only those, 
 therefore, need be elected who are as legis- 
 lators or executives to define or execute a 
 political policy. Those who are to adminis- 
 ter justice, as judges, sheriffs, district attor- 
 neys; those who are to do routine public 
 business, as assessors, clerks, "civil ser- 
 vants" in general, whose functions are all 
 essentially non-partisan, may better be se- 
 lected by appointment, or by business exam- 
 ination, or by agreement among parties, 
 rather than by competitive election at the 
 polls. Intelligent choice cannot be made 
 by the voter for scores of offices. The 
 courts of highest judicial function which 
 interpret constitutions and laws are removed 
 by the federal constitution from popular 
 election, lest calm and wise judgment be 
 biased by party controversy, and partisan 
 appointments of judges by the executive 
 have been violations of its spirit. 
 
 We lack for our democracy a feature which 
 
 Athens had crudely in its ostracism — a 
 
 method of deposition by popular vote either 
 
 of an elected or appointed officer, by which 
 
 196 
 
Transition 
 
 OF POLITICS 
 
 two-thirds or three-fourths of the voters, a 
 number far beyond party divisions, could 
 deprive an unworthy or unrepresentative offi- 
 cer of his place and deny him reelection, so 
 that the people of a State could recall their 
 senator, or of a city could remove their 
 mayor or any officer so unworthy as to have 
 lost public confidence to that extent. 
 
 It is too often true that the everlasting 
 "yea" and the everlasting "nay," as Car- Periods of 
 lyle has it, can be much beclouded and con- 
 fused in that foggy present where no stars 
 shine clear. There are transitional periods 
 when parties represent nothing. The past 
 issue is past, the next issue they cannot or 
 will not see. The ins are in, and the outs 
 are out : that is the difference. The ins 
 want to keep out, the outs to put out, their 
 adversaries. Leaders who fought the old 
 battles fear new grounds. They desire to 
 "keep out of politics" the vital issues. 
 Sooner or later the spark drops, the flame 
 burns : the dead past is bid bury its dead ; 
 there are new issues, new formings of the 
 old, new men. Meantime, however, the vi- 
 tality of parties wanes, they become corrupt, 
 they become machines for resisting instead 
 197 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 of promoting progress. This explains why, 
 after a great issue had been solved by a 
 great war, the American people set itself 
 
 Administra- to petty tasks of administrative reform. 
 
 tive Reform ggfoj-e a locomotive can make progress, 
 broken rails must be mended, bridges re- 
 built, the tracks cleared of cows. This is 
 not inspiring work : there is nobody to op- 
 pose it — except the owners of cows. Passen- 
 gers lay by, and wait for " the other people " 
 to do the work. After the wreckage of the 
 civil war, this was precisely the task left to 
 the American nation : reconstruction, reha- 
 bilitation, the clearing away of the spoils sys- 
 tem, which last was much resisted by those 
 having vested rights in spoils. The war 
 party lost enthusiasm in this work, and the 
 sutlers displaced generals as leaders. 
 
 Civil service reform was the first need to 
 
 The spoils set parties on the right track again. The 
 
 System « spoils system " made parties ends, not 
 
 means. Its working tended to prevent par- 
 ties shaping themselves anew to new issues. 
 Civil service reform was not a party issue, 
 because there was no other side. No valid 
 defense of the spoils system could be made 
 on which a party could "go to the people." 
 That is true of most measures affecting gov- 
 198 
 
OF POLITICS 
 
 ernmental machinery : men will disagree as 
 to where they want to go, but they will not 
 disagree that if they are to go anywhere the 
 locomotive must be kept in good working 
 order. Accordingly, struggles for adminis- 
 trative reform are not between parties but Conflicts 
 within parties, and chiefly within the party parties 
 which, being in possession, can accomplish 
 reform. The contest is between the men 
 who see the real use of parties, that is, to 
 meet questions, and the men who prefer in 
 their own interest or inertia to keep things 
 as they are and leave disturbing questions 
 undecided. It is a misfortune when the nom- 
 ination of unfit men turns the popular vote 
 from public to personal issues, or when cor- 
 ruption makes necessary a vote upon the 
 mere machinery of administration, or when 
 the machinations of politicians confuse the 
 citizen with multifarious or beclouded issues. 
 This is but clearing away of weeds instead 
 of growing crops. Yet when the growth of 
 weeds chokes the land, it becomes the first 
 business of life to root out the weeds. But 
 this must be a continuing process, in politics 
 as in farming. Mere machinery is of little 
 avail. Underneath all, public opinion rules ; 
 that alone is the final check. Every machine 
 199 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 must have vitalizing force behind it ; every 
 system of spies presuppose an honest man 
 somewhere. The people judge the judg- 
 ments and rule the rulers. The supreme 
 court is that of the whole people. Here 
 again we reach universal suffrage, and can- 
 not evade it. 
 
 When we ask what government is to do, 
 What Gov- two theories, of individualism and collectiv- 
 must and ^^^* confront US. Government musl keep 
 may do order, safeguard persons and property, define 
 
 the marital and parental responsibilities on 
 which the social order is based, determine 
 property and contract rights and administer 
 civil justice, prevent and punish crime, fix 
 the political relations of citizens within the 
 state and represent them with foreign powers. 
 These have been called the constituent func- 
 tions, those which constitute government : 
 they simply prevent interference with the 
 individual and make sure he is let do {laissez 
 faire) as he will. Government may also con- 
 cern itself with the administration of trade 
 and industry, of commerce and navigation, 
 of labor, of coinage and banks, of highways, 
 canals, and railroads, of postal, telegraph, and 
 telephone facilities, of water and light sup- 
 200 
 
OF POLITICS 
 
 ply, of education, of sanitation and quaran- 
 tine, of charity, of forestry and fisheries, and 
 through sumptuary laws of the conduct and 
 habits of the people. These have been called 
 the ministrant functions, and they may be ex- 
 ercised in various degrees, — regulative, con- 
 structive, operative, — until in the extreme 
 they culminate in the socialist organization, 
 in which each worker is an industrial soldier 
 working in state industries under order of 
 government officials. These two extremes 
 represent the two extreme theories of gov- 
 ernment. According to one, government is 
 to do nothing — laissez faire : it is chiefly to 
 prevent wrong by policing it. According to 
 the other, government is to do everything : 
 as the highest type of organized human coop- 
 eration, it must be paternal, constructive, 
 and accomplish everything. 
 
 In governments, as actually existing and 
 working, particularly in the several States of Variant 
 the American Union and their great cities. Govern- °^ 
 almost every variety of combination within ments 
 these extremes is indeed to be found — and 
 this, in foreign countries, without regard to 
 the form of government. England, a mon- 
 archy in form, is historically the champion 
 of laissez faire or non-interference govern- 
 20 1 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 ment ; yet it owns and operates telegraph, 
 telephone, postal savings-bank, and parcel 
 post systems, and has been pushed by its 
 democracy through trades unions into ex- 
 tremes of factory legislation. Some English 
 City and cities sell water, gas, electricity ; others oper- 
 E^terprises ^^^ street-tramways ; others afford free libra- 
 ries, museums, baths, music, recreation for 
 their citizens ; London has a free ferry. Ger- 
 many and Austria own and operate all their 
 railways : France and Russia some ; Italy has 
 taken state possession of all and again put 
 their operation under private corporations — 
 but a private company supplies through-car 
 facilities throughout the continent of Europe. 
 Spain works the tobacco factories as a govern- 
 ment monopoly, for purposes of revenue ; Nor- 
 wegian cities monopolize the liquor traffic in 
 the interests of temperance. Germany pro- 
 vides compulsory insurance and old-age pen- 
 sions for workingmen. The United States 
 favors or taxes specific industries by means 
 of a protective tariff. The State of New York 
 owns and operates its great canal. It engages 
 its prisoners in trades, though laws originat- 
 ing from the trades unions prevent sale of 
 their products. All American cities maintain 
 streets, bridges, parks, libraries, hospitals, wa- 
 
 202 
 
OF POLITICS 
 
 ter-supply ; some produce, others purchase, 
 gas or electricity. New York city has a poor 
 fund from which free coal has been supplied. 
 In the last analysis, the most vital issue 
 in politics, in most times and the world over. Individual- 
 is this between individualism and coUectiv- colectivism 
 ism, the question whether the individual cit- 
 izen shall do all possible for himself or the 
 collective power of the state shall do all pos- 
 sible for him. These lines in government 
 correspond somewhat to those between " Pro- 
 testant " and ** Catholic " in religion ; " Be- 
 ing a Catholic, I am naturally a socialist," 
 said one man. The struggle underlies all his- 
 tory, for this collective power may be wielded 
 by a monarch or in a Republic as well as 
 under socialism, in which society undertakes 
 to arrange the life of each citizen for the 
 collective good, or under communism, in 
 which each citizen is compelled to surrender 
 his goods or his earnings for the common use. 
 The collectivist view is that the state or sov- 
 ereign is wiser for each citizen than he can 
 be for himself, and that government should 
 have the largest functions ; the individualist 
 view is that, since the state is made up of 
 individuals, and can be no wiser than they, 
 each citizen can best decide what he can do 
 203 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 best, and so government should be confined 
 to the least functions. 
 
 From a stage of government in which a 
 Tyranny and king was actually sovereign, when the king's 
 Anarchy ^-jj ^^g j^^^ which he made, executed, and 
 interpreted, when he chose his advisers and 
 servants and cut off their heads as he pleased, 
 when he granted " monopolies " and licensed 
 all work and trade, up to the constitutional 
 and democratic governments of our own 
 times, there has indeed been a development 
 in which the large workings of large laws, 
 the counteraction between the centripetal 
 and centrifugal forces in social organization, 
 have been persistently evident, amidst all 
 diversities of detail. The continuing strug- 
 gle is that between collectivism, the power 
 of the state, whether concentrated in kingly 
 power or organized as democratic socialism, 
 and individualism, the right of an individual 
 to a free path in his affairs so long as he re- 
 gards the rights of others. Tyranny is the 
 abuse of one, anarchy is the caricature of 
 the other. This conflict of the ages, re-form- 
 ing in the past, is not less the question of 
 the future, under re-formed democracy, and 
 indeed is the natural line of cleavage be- 
 tween the parties in democracy. 
 204 
 
OF POLITICS 
 
 Under any form of government, public 
 opinion as to what government sliould do fol- American 
 lows closely upon what, in its historical de- Deveiop- 
 velopment, that government actually does do. ment 
 Regulative functions are in fact so merged 
 into operative functions that in many fields 
 they are confused in the public mind. 
 Americans are so used to the post as a part 
 of government, for which large deficits are 
 to be paid, that they overlook comparison 
 with the not less complicated express, tele- 
 graph, and through-car service, admirably or- 
 ganized and self-supporting in private hands. 
 It is not seen that the government may coin 
 money and regulate banks without doing, as 
 now, a banking business. In America, the 
 coordination of national, state, and munici- 
 pal or other local governments has rather 
 subordinated the question of what govern- 
 ment shall do, to the question which govern- 
 ment shall do it. The line of party cleavage 
 between those, originally Federalists, after- 
 wards called National Republicans or Whigs, 
 and now Republicans, who favored a strong 
 central nation and a " broad " construction 
 of our written constitution, and those ori- 
 ginally Anti-Federalists , afterwards called 
 Democratic Republicans, and now Demo- 
 205 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 crats, who favored state rights and the lib- 
 erty of the individual, under a ''strict" con- 
 struction of the constitution, also divides in 
 general those who would have most done 
 and those who would have least done by the 
 several governments, the collectivists and 
 the individualists. But the march of events 
 has often compelled the waiver of party 
 principle, as when Jefferson, without consti- 
 tutional warrant, purchased the Louisiana 
 territory from France for the nation. 
 
 In fact, neither extreme plan is in actual 
 Neither operation, or, absolutely applied, works. We 
 works™^ may let well enough alone, but we will not 
 let ill alone : the sense of brotherhood 
 makes us to that extent our brother's 
 keeper. But a government may be fraternal 
 without being paternal. The schoolmaster 
 proves the cheapest policeman. Christianity, 
 humanity, bid us care for the sick, and if 
 need be through the state. On the other 
 hand, government fails when it undertakes 
 to regulate everything by law or to monopo- 
 lize or direct business. Some things laws 
 cannot do. They are indeed nothing unless 
 a public opinion supports them. They are 
 nothing when they oppose themselves to 
 human nature, to the laws of the universe. 
 206 
 
OF POLITICS 
 
 "Prohibition does not prohibit." "Protec- 
 tion does not protect." To attempt too 
 much by governmental machinery either 
 makes the machinery our master or breaks 
 it down. 
 
 A free, popular, democratic government 
 should indeed fulfill the greatest good to the Degenerate 
 greatest number, and must abide by that democracy 
 test. For in a degenerate democracy, which 
 does not accomplish this, but results in con- 
 centrating wealth and comfort in the pluto- 
 cratic few, in which under a seeming indi- 
 viduaHsm a real despotism has developed, 
 the pendulum is sure to swing toward a col- 
 lectivism tending toward socialism and finally 
 toward communism, the use of the power of 
 the state to control business, "give every 
 man work," and distribute the social earn- 
 ings among all the citizenry. This trend is 
 strengthened on the one hand by the pro- 
 fessional tendency of an office-holding class 
 of "spoilsmen" to extend its operations into 
 the commercial as well as the political field, 
 and on the other hand, by the discontent 
 among those who fail to get work as well as 
 those who want money without work. 
 
 But the development of modern government 
 has been in the struggle of the individual for 
 207 
 
The Rights 
 of the Indi- 
 vidual 
 
 Socialism 
 
 THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 his own rights. The ancient monarchy was 
 absolute; the modern monarchy is limited. 
 The Greek aristocracy constituted the state ; 
 the English aristocracy only controlled the 
 state. In the Greek democracy the citizen 
 served the state: in American democracy 
 the state serves the citizen. The evolution 
 of government culminates thus in the Re- 
 public of Democracy, the servant and not 
 the master of the people, preserving the pub- 
 lic peace, protecting the right of the citizen 
 to live his own life, responsive to public 
 opinion, of local home-rule, differentiated 
 functions and federated national ty, a govern- 
 ment truly of, by, and for the people. The 
 citizen is not for the state, but the state for 
 the citizen. 
 
 Socialism is the re-action, or retrogression, 
 which seeks to make Democracy no longer 
 individual, but a collectivism. The citizen 
 is not to live his own life, to mind his own 
 business, to control his own affairs, to be 
 his own master, but is to surrender his in- 
 dividuality to a collective control of private 
 as well as public affairs, for his own good 
 and for the good of all. The citizen is again 
 to serve the state. It is an honest nostrum 
 for the cure of evident present ills of demo- 
 208 
 
OF POLITICS 
 
 cracy. But to cure those ills we have, we 
 are to " fly to others that we know not of." 
 The argument for socialism is a roseate as- 
 sumption that because some things, as roads 
 and streets, are effectively managed by the 
 state, — though roads may be ill made and 
 streets ill cleaned, — therefore the state 
 should manage all and subordinate the citi- 
 zen. The possibilities of the "boss" in a 
 socialistic state are beyond imagining, for 
 there are other motives than money. So- 
 cialism is the offer of a social Catholic and 
 infallible church to give peace of mind to 
 the perplexed Protestant willing to surrender 
 his liberty of action to a state Pope called 
 the People. It transfers tyranny from mon- 
 archy to democracy. It is the backward 
 swing of the pendulum. 
 
 In all government the question how it 
 shall be used is doubly dependent upon the Taxation 
 question how it shall be paid for. As money 
 has become more and more the lever of private 
 affairs, taxation has become more and more 
 the problem of government. With progress, 
 the security of the person being assured, the 
 security of property becomes prominent. It 
 is evident that many questions, sure to be 
 209 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 the live issues of ourselves and our immediate 
 descendants, are questions of property, to be 
 settled by taxation. The payment of the 
 national debt, the banking system, the cur- 
 rency question, the revenue and tariff issue, 
 the land question, the restriction of corpo- 
 rations, communism itself, to all these gov- 
 ernment must make answer in terms of tax- 
 ation. On what, on whom, how and to what 
 extent shall taxes be laid — to these simple 
 but not very easy problems the questions of 
 the present and the immediate future resolve 
 themselves. Taxes are a payment by the 
 people which may be the most productive 
 and useful or the most wasteful and harmful 
 of investments, according to the methods by 
 which and the purposes for which they are 
 used. 
 
 Those values which result not from the 
 Social labor of individual brains or hands, but from 
 
 natural resources or social development, 
 would seem to belong not so much to individ- 
 uals but to the community, either for com- 
 mon, that is, any one's use, or for use by the 
 state or the sovereign as the embodiment 
 of the common-wealth. Thus the sovereign 
 owns all the land, and titles to individual 
 holdings trace back to "grants," and are 
 
 2IO 
 
 Values 
 
OF POLITICS 
 
 subject to rights of "treasure trove," of sub- 
 surface values, and in general of "eminent 
 domain.** The heroic defense in England of 
 " commons,'* rights to pasturage, to hunting, 
 to fisheries, has been against encroachments 
 by grantees — not against the sovereign 
 rights. A chief problem to be solved through 
 taxation is how to retain for the people these 
 social values without encroaching on individ- 
 ual rights and earnings, or taking from citi- 
 zens the stimulus to individual effort. Henry Henry 
 George's assertion was that this whole pro- pf^n^®' 
 blem centered on the land and would be solved 
 by a "single tax" which takes for the com- 
 munity the rent of the land, its yearly return 
 from natural superiority or social develop- 
 ment, and leaves to the private owner right 
 of possession and the yearly return from his 
 labor in tilling it or his capital in improving 
 it with buildings. Nature gives not only to 
 some land, but to some brains, greater pro- 
 ductive capacity than others, and while 
 patent and copyright laws, as provided by 
 the constitution, and the security guaranteed 
 to private property, assure to him the fruits 
 of his brain labor, "income taxes " and legacy 
 and succession duties are a means of reclaim- 
 ing for the community some portion of the 
 2H 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 larger wealth which the cooperation of the 
 community has enabled the richer man to 
 acquire, as in the year of jubilee the Jews 
 were required to make restitution. 
 
 This *' social increment," in non-republican 
 Return to States, as even in democratic England, be- 
 the People ^omes in large measure the income of the 
 sovereign, who in free gift or from motives 
 of policy, returns it in some measure for the 
 use of the people. Thus the palaces and the 
 parks of monarchs become the museums and 
 playgrounds of the people, in many of " the 
 effete despotisms of Europe," and music and 
 other entertainment, like \hQpanem et circen- 
 ces of decadent Rome, are sops to Cerberus. 
 Republican France has taken over from the 
 Empire the traditions of a state-supported 
 opera, theatre, and school of music, with free 
 performances on public holidays, and the suc- 
 cess of these as educational institutions has 
 led many Americans to look favorably upon 
 this degree of socialism. Certainly, in a de- 
 mocratic republic, the people should come 
 to their own, and be not less "well off" than 
 under less popular forms of government, and 
 when the fruits of the social cooperation ac- 
 crue rather to a plutocracy than to the peo- 
 ple, there is sure to be social discontent. 
 
 212 
 
blems 
 
 OF POLITICS 
 
 The remedy is perhaps in recovering for ex- 
 penditure on behalf of the people, through 
 taxation, the benefits of the social increment, 
 and leaving the people otherwise untaxed, so 
 that they have money to use for private and 
 self-supporting enterprises of social improve- 
 ment or entertainment. 
 
 There are some things worth doing which 
 must be done, if at all, by government, be- Large Pro- 
 cause no less extensive form of social organ- 
 ization can cope with the large problem in- 
 volved. An imaginative astronomer has 
 indeed seen on the planet Mars evidence of 
 a human life and of a world-cooperation, gov- 
 ernment on the grandest scale, in a great 
 system of canals, necessary in the drying-up 
 stage of the life-history of that planet, to 
 supply water from its polar to its torrid 
 regions. A great river flows through thou- 
 sands of miles ; millions at its mouth are 
 dependent upon thousands at its source. If 
 forests are destroyed, droughts and floods 
 follow. No less organization than the power 
 of the nation can cope with affairs of this 
 magnitude. There was like justification for 
 the first Pacific railroad, built across the 
 continent during the civil war, and for the 
 Erie canal in the early history of New York 
 213 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 State. So, too, in our cities, adequate breath- 
 ing-spaces can be provided, in great and 
 small park reservations, only through the 
 governmental machinery of the municipality 
 on whose behalf the State exercises its right 
 of eminent domain. In water-supply, the 
 same large treatment is needed. Educa- 
 tion is a necessary equipment for the citizen 
 in a democracy, and as some parents could 
 not or would not supply it to their children, 
 the State provides it for all and compels all 
 to come in. The undertaking of postal as 
 well as educational service by most govern- 
 ments is an outgrowth of both lines : mail 
 communication is a matter of education, but 
 is also concerned with vast distances and 
 wide public interests. All these are very 
 practical questions to us and to those who 
 shall come after. 
 
 It may indeed be said that in government, 
 Opportun- as in all human affairs, in the complexities 
 and cross-currents of modern life, it is easier 
 to state principles than to apply them. All 
 governments are the evolutionary results 
 of a process of adaptation. Every step is 
 a resultant of, a compromise between the 
 forces of inertia and of change. Each states- 
 man is in a sense an "opportunist," biding 
 214 
 
 ism 
 
OF POLITICS 
 
 the right moment to bring his principle into 
 play. There is continual conflict between 
 those advocates of principle who desire al- 
 ways to act now, radically and perhaps rashly, 
 and those advocates of policy who would wait 
 "the more convenient season " which perhaps 
 may never come. Between this Scylla and 
 Charybdis, the statesman, the citizen, must 
 always be making his difficult choice. There 
 are times when the highest principle is the 
 timely expediency. 
 
 As men come together and the world be- 
 comes one, it is seen that the brotherhood of The true 
 man is the goal of a true and wide patriotism. Patriotism 
 Yet patriotism, the largest of virtues, may 
 be de-humanized into the most deadly of vices. 
 " Our country, right or wrong ! " is a war-cry 
 of savagery, not of civilization. " Our coun- 
 try — may it always be right ! " is the peace- 
 word which prevents war. That parties, 
 differing in domestic affairs, should perforce 
 unite in any quarrel, however unjust, with 
 foreign peoples, is a superstition directly in- 
 citing party leaders to foreign wars when 
 domestic dominance is in jeopardy. The 
 bravest patriotism is that of the citizen who 
 dares stay his country from wrong-doing in 
 215 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 face of that wild overwhelming of public 
 opinion — " By Jingo, we will ! " — with which 
 the savagery latent in humankind breaks out 
 in each generation. The horrid argument 
 that wars " better business," — which means 
 for the time the diverting of workers from 
 productive pursuits into a consuming army, 
 the lessening of their number by killing and 
 maiming, the waste of material and destruc- 
 tion of property, and the misdirection of 
 transportation and other industries to un- 
 productive purposes, — means also that the 
 fire which reduces a city to ashes amid a 
 holocaust of human lives is for the common 
 weal. This is the devil's logic of half truth 
 — and this sowing of tares indeed brings bit- 
 ter harvest 
 
 As the wide earth has been " settled,*' as 
 The Out- the migratory tendency therefore becomes 
 less tribal and more individual, as travel, 
 commerce, education, civilization, the unifi- 
 cation of the world, break down the barriers 
 of race ; as, on the other hand, men, less 
 " subject " to the forces of nature or to brute- 
 force of men, are their own masters, come to 
 their own, own themselves — the evolution 
 of manhood develops toward self-governing 
 democracy, and makes for peace. Thus at 
 216 
 
 come of 
 Democracy 
 
OF POLITICS 
 
 the close of the great century of progress, 
 despite outbreaks of war and conquest and 
 injustice among the nations of the earth, 
 national relations have broadened into inter- 
 national relations, a court of arbitration for 
 all nations is growing from a hope to a ful- 
 fillment, and an injustice to one man con- 
 vulses the whole world. A true Democracy, 
 in world-wide brotherhood, will lead mankind 
 toward an age of golden peace. 
 217 
 
OF RELIGION 
 
OF RELIGION 
 
 'ELIGION, binding anew the 
 
 material with the spiritual, ful- Religion the 
 fills man, making him whole. Art'^fLife 
 It is therefore the supreme art 
 of life. To heal men, to make 
 them whole, to call them to health, whole- 
 ness, holiness — for these words are all one 
 word — has ever been the end of religion. 
 The man of whole life, integer vitaey sang the 
 Roman poet, fears not, and is conqueror. 
 Religion sanctions and sanctifies life, is its 
 binding force. What, then, is religion } 
 
 To this, the question of the ages, sect 
 makes answer with creed, Christianity with What is 
 Christ, the Jew with his One and Only Je- R«ii&i°"? 
 hovah, Buddhists with the Noble Path and 
 Mahometans with the teachings of Al Koran ; 
 priest, ritualist, puritan, each after his man- 
 ner ; while the reverent agnostic asks if he 
 may not also be religious. The man of twi- 
 light times — **and in his soul was twilight" 
 — our far forefather, like the savage of to- 
 day, saw in the lengthening shadows of the 
 setting sun, in the voices of the dark and 
 of the storm, in dawn and cloud and stream 
 and wood, in the mysteries of nature and of 
 
 221 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 death, something beyond this material and 
 present life, and imaged a Great Spirit, in an 
 unseen world where dwelt the spirits of the 
 dead, in worship or fear of whom he ruled 
 his life, guided by medicine-man or primitive 
 priest. Here was the early development of 
 the religious instinct, from which in the pro- 
 gress of mankind was evolved, despite con- 
 fusion of creed and of ceremonial, a wider 
 recognition of Supreme Law and a higher 
 thought of God. Throughout the earlier re- 
 ligions, — nature-worship, rites to ancestors, 
 idolatry, the multifarious gods of India, the 
 personification of manifestations and of at- 
 tributes in Egyptian, Greek, Teutonic mytho- 
 logy, — modern thought finds evidence of a 
 recognition, if dimly or not at all by the peo- 
 ple, yet oftentimes clearly by the priests, of 
 a Supreme Spirit, the Only God of Abraham, 
 Rewarder of good to the spirits of the dead, 
 in some cults combated by a World Spirit 
 or Evil One, who was in most theogonies a 
 lesser deity to be overcome by the Good in 
 the final judgment. In these three concepts, 
 of a quasi human God, of an after-life of men 
 in an unseen world, of the relation of the 
 ethical aspects of life to the Unseen, a mod- 
 ern evolutionist sees the essential features 
 
 222 
 
OF RELIGION 
 
 of religion. But a wider thought of religion Universal 
 would not exclude the essentially religious Concepts 
 spirit, denied by temperament or habit of 
 intellect the conviction of a personal God, 
 whose perception of an after-life is in hope 
 rather than in belief, which nevertheless 
 recognizes in the universe a moral order, a 
 Power that makes for rightness, in coordina- 
 tion with the higher or spiritual nature of 
 man and affording a spiritual or supera-mate- 
 rial sanction for right conduct. 
 
 That this world is ruled by righteousness 
 is a thought so deep in the race that it is The Rule of 
 found at the roots of language. Our very ^^^^^ 
 words "morals" and '* ethics" mean customs, 
 that is to say, customs are based on a sense 
 of rightness and fitness, and from them our 
 code of morals or ethics, our practice of right, 
 has developed. In the wider sense, religion 
 is the recognition of the supremacy of the 
 higher life, the spiritual, over the lower life, 
 the material, which gives spiritual sanction to 
 right living and sanctifies life. For the soul, 
 the spirit, must have its supreme place in 
 life. 
 
 Thus religion, as an art of life, is the art 
 which cultivates spirituality, which develops 
 223 
 
The su- 
 premacy of 
 Spirit 
 
 The work- 
 ing Ground 
 of all Re- 
 ligions 
 
 THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 character on the spiritual side, which uplifts 
 duty by love. Conscience is the chisel by 
 which the divine touch carves from the mar- 
 ble of human being the lovely statue of the 
 perfected soul. It is the building upward and 
 outward, by good thoughts and good works, 
 from the lower self into the higher, the image 
 of God, the ideal. Thus we realize, in the 
 higher Christianity, the ideal which was the 
 aim of the Greeks, but which they achieved 
 in physical rather than spiritual perfection. 
 It is for us to know, to have, to rejoice in 
 both. Spirit rules body, God self, good evil, 
 right wrong, in a working and resultful opti- 
 mism which is faith. Morals is the bed-rock 
 of religion. 
 
 The geologist may not get near to the 
 molten center of this earth, or the religious 
 thinker penetrate the mysteries of the First 
 Cause, but each nevertheless has sufficient 
 field in the working ground of all mankind. 
 In that eternal round, the Unknown, God, 
 Humanity, the Unknown, it is not given us 
 to know the infinite answer to the infinite 
 questions, Whence .-* Whither ? Why } — but 
 the Here, that is our affair. And on this 
 ground of morals, in the analysis of working 
 religion as an art of life, there is a widening 
 224 
 
OF RELIGION 
 
 agreement among all religions and all sects. 
 At last Christians begin to learn that if God 
 is our Father, and Jesus the Elder Brother 
 to us all, then we must all be brothers one to 
 another — through Christian sect and non- 
 Christian majority ; and to learn this is to 
 make much the essentials and to make little 
 the differences of religion, to live a true per- 
 sonal life in harmony and godly love. 
 
 And it is only on this basis that religion 
 and morality have meaning. They together The Uplift 
 are one, and make together the supreme art °^ ^°^® 
 of life. The idea of duty, the conception of 
 love — in these, life flowers. Herein the 
 fierce warfare of every man for himself is 
 tempered into love in fellowship, in friend- 
 ship, race-love. Herein the strongest pas- 
 sion of the body is redeemed and transfigured 
 into love in marriage, sex-love. Herein sins 
 themselves are transfigured into stepping- 
 stones that lead heavenward, in God-love. 
 Man is religious in essence : on the ethical 
 idea all religion builds, on the idea of spirit- 
 uality all religion soars, as the cathedral is 
 crowned by its spire. Duty and love — these 
 are feet and wings of the man spiritual. The 
 religion which says. We cannot know God, 
 worships the race and woman ; the religion 
 225 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 which says, We do not know, accepts the 
 command that man love his neighbor as him- 
 self. 
 
 There is one confession to which the Chris- 
 The Limita- tian, the positivist, the agnostic must alike 
 M^S^^ come, in negative agreement of human Hmi- 
 tations. The Hindoos rested the earth on 
 the tortoise, and the tortoise on the elephant, 
 and so on and so on. But — beyond ? The 
 human mind stops here. Inspiration cannot 
 tell it the secret, because there is no faculty 
 which can know. The Infinite confounds us. 
 One of two opposites must be true — but 
 the human mind cannot conceive of either. 
 There must have been beginning of Time, 
 or no beginning. There must be end of 
 Space, or no end. There must always have 
 been Matter, or Matter must have been cre- 
 ated out of nothing. The child asks. Who 
 was God's father } We ask the same ques- 
 tions as the child. For us there is no an- 
 swer ; there can be none. Infinity is exten- 
 sion of which every point is a center: the 
 finite mind rejects this as a mathematical 
 contradiction. 
 
 The human mind cannot tAink a begin- 
 ning, or no beginning : it cannot tMnk an 
 226 
 
OF RELIGION 
 
 end or no end, Yet one of these must be The Un- 
 true. Eternity, Infinity, a First or uncaused thinkable 
 Cause, it can name, but it cannot conceive 
 of them, or their absence, or their contraries. 
 These be mysteries. The eye cannot see 
 sound, neither can man reason of things be- 
 yond reason. That we cannot think either 
 of two alternatives, one of which must be 
 the truth, is a sufficient commentary on the 
 limitations of thought, and the final proof of 
 humility. Beyond, reason goes not : here 
 the Christian rests his doubt, the unbeliever 
 his challenge. If we cannot know God, 
 neither can we deny his being. It is the 
 fool who saith in his heart : There is no God ; 
 what knowledge hath he by which he may 
 deny } The pantheist quibbles with himself : 
 his Soul of Nature is not less unthinkable. 
 
 Yet in these days it is often the wise man, 
 the unselfish and earnest thinker, who can- Credo or 
 not truly say, "I believe." His credo has ^P®^° 
 become spero. He will hope. He cannot by 
 searching find out God : he hesitates to sur- 
 render reason to an elusive, perhaps delusive, 
 faculty beyond reason : he will only reason 
 about and recognize the limits of his reason, 
 and, with hope, set himself to apply the past 
 227 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 to a present which is making the future — 
 whether the future be his or not his, infinite 
 or finite. For such a man there can be no 
 hesitancy of fear ; there is no place here for 
 the coward. The man of science must see 
 what his sight shows him. He must beheve 
 not in Belief but in Truth. He must inquire 
 of facts, not threaten them with fear of con- 
 sequences. Here true service comes only 
 from that unshrinking sight which discerns, 
 and that unfaltering will which asserts, de- 
 spite prejudice or tradition, those elements 
 of permanent result that are to make the fu- 
 ture. Shrinking conservatism may not stay 
 him ; it is not for him to bury his face in the 
 darkened temples of the gods and cry out 
 against the worshiper under the sunlight or 
 the starlight of the revealing heavens. He 
 shall try faith, that faith be found faithful, 
 and live. 
 
 Indeed, in the wide sense, it is the province 
 
 The Search- of the scientific investigator to assure faith. 
 
 Faifh"'^^^ He has no fear lest, fighting for good, in line 
 with truth, he haply be found fighting against 
 Him who is Giver of Good and Author of 
 Truth. There is nothing more skeptical, 
 more irreligious, more essentially atheistic, 
 than that religion, falsely so-called, now pass- 
 228 
 
OF RELIGION 
 
 ing away, which flings Nature in the face of 
 God, which makes its God illogical, inhuman, 
 ungodly, a creator at odds with his creation, 
 a contradiction of terms. There is nothing 
 more promotive of real and abiding faith, 
 more religious in binding men with good, 
 more vitally godly, than that science which 
 presents one harmony of Nature and of Gos- 
 pel, working together, through convertive 
 evil, into higher good ; which leads to a re- 
 conciling faith that when it finds God finds 
 Him law-abiding, humane, truly divine, a logi- 
 cal God. Bravery is the best evidence of 
 faith. 
 
 Science, we hear over and over, is skepti- 
 cal and disastrous. If it be skeptical, it is The Sane- 
 disastrous, for no people that believes not science 
 ever does greatly. It is faith that moves 
 mountains. But this earnest questioning that 
 seeks the True and the Good in religion, in 
 morals, or in knowledge, — this is not skepti- 
 cism, in the ill sense in which the word is 
 commonly heard. Skepticism is the essence 
 of negation. It is the chronic condition of 
 corrosive doubt, doubt not simply of God but 
 of good. In the "religious" philosophy that 
 gives evil, or its incarnation, the practical 
 supremacy in life, it finds its strongest type. 
 229 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 But when Science, in a spirit not of doubt 
 but of seeking, brings to us with her ques- 
 tionings the strongest sanction natural ethics 
 can receive, she brings to us also new stimu- 
 lus of faith. That sanction is the simple 
 fact of the eternity of influence. Every mo- 
 tion alters in its degree the relations of the 
 universe forever. In this sense nothing dies, 
 nothing is lost. Responsibility is infinite. 
 Science confirms the sanction of religion ; 
 the one approves what the other has fore- 
 said. 
 
 There can be no greater mock of a real 
 Fatalism religion, a true God, a living faith, than the 
 irreUgious fatalism which finds its culmination on the 
 one hand in the dull serenity of the Maho- 
 metan devotee, on the other in the lurid pre- 
 destination of a Jonathan Edwards. The 
 logical result is fatal ease of conscience — 
 the sensuality of the Turk, or that reckless 
 indifference to unavoidable sin, the dreadful 
 results of which among his flock drove Ed- 
 wards from his Northampton parish after 
 "the Great Awakening" had done its awful 
 work. Ever the human soul revolts against 
 the metaphysical chains which deny its free- 
 dom. Predestination we know indeed, in 
 230 
 
OF RELIGION 
 
 science, as heredity, environment, circum- 
 stance, which make tendency ; but tendency 
 is not all — there is something within which 
 can direct, convert, utilize tendency. We 
 know it ; we feel it ; we build all practical life 
 upon it. "Sir," said Dr. Johnson, "we know 
 our will is free, and there 's an end on 't." 
 " Reconcile the foreknowledge and the fore- 
 ordination of God with the free will of man } 
 Your own conscience," — answered Mr. 
 Apollo Lyon to the would-be Devil-puzzler. 
 It is this, in the finality, on which all prac- 
 tical religion is based. 
 
 In progress, much comes, much goes, much 
 remains. The old " evidences " of the Chris- The old 
 tian faith, which through the centuries have Evidences 
 raised more doubts than they have solved, 
 give place to a larger faith and a wider hope. 
 One by one they have gone, but in their 
 place greater has come. The consensus gen- 
 tiunty the majority vote for Christ, so to speak, 
 was an argument that meant much until it 
 was met by the arithmetical fact of the wider 
 vogue of the earlier Buddha and of the later 
 Mahomet. The Christian who builded on 
 this ground found it swept away as sand, 
 and his faith with it. So long as all reli- 
 gions but Christianity were "heathen," — 
 231 
 
Evidences 
 
 THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 works of the devil, — so long it was evident 
 that the devil had the better of God in His 
 world. 
 
 But modern investigation, in the true spirit 
 The new of science, has opened our eyes. We witness 
 the evolution of religion, from a lower to a 
 higher thought of God, from a lower to a 
 higher conception of good, from a lower to 
 a higher ethical standard. And evolution 
 itself teaches us that as all appetites, func- 
 tions, and instincts prefigure something in 
 the objective environment which answers to 
 their subjective demand, as hunger implies 
 food, and thirst drink, the eye light and the 
 ear sound, sex-love woman for man and man 
 for woman, so there must be answer to 
 man's spiritual instinct, his appetite for reli- 
 gion, his thirst for God, his desire for a 
 future life. Thus science confirms and 
 broadens faith. In all religions we see God, 
 adapting Himself through human leadership 
 to humankind, according to the need of tribe 
 and time. In the great books of the great 
 faiths we read Gospels only less noble than 
 those of our own Bible, the Book of Books. 
 Even in the stocks and stones of the savage 
 we find symbols of a Great Spirit, a God 
 dimly seen by dim men. In due time came 
 232 
 
OF RELIGION 
 
 the Christ, son of God, God in man, divine 
 or human, to vouchsafe to the higher races 
 of mankind at once the simplest and highest 
 of religions, the essence of all religion, in 
 whose Light we have Life. 
 
 So, also, the letter, " which killeth," is no 
 longer the foundation of faith. A reverent The Use of 
 criticism, tracing the evolution of our reli- "^^^^^™ 
 gion from the fierce Jahveh of the nomad 
 Israelites to the loving Father of all men, 
 has brushed away much legendary tradition, 
 much repulsive teaching of a rude race, and 
 taught us to reject the human weaknesses of 
 the writers and to reverence all the more 
 the spiritual strength which has made our 
 Bible the Book of Books. And with " verbal 
 inspiration " has been swept away also the 
 confusion of creeds built upon contradictory 
 proof-texts, erroneous translations, and verbal 
 misconceptions ; the whole fabric of verbal 
 religion has indeed been whirled away into 
 thin air. 
 
 Even the miraculous birth, the immaculate 
 conception, which has in our own day been The mystic 
 carried yet a step further as a foundation- ^^'^^^ 
 stone of one great church, is seen in a new 
 light. In the dim and shadowy days of our 
 233 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 far fathers, before writing, every hero was 
 miraculously born ; and in later ages, about 
 Buddha, as Founder of a Faith, centered the 
 very legends associated with the birth and 
 childhood or our own Jesus. This discov- 
 ery destroyed nothing. To the true disciple 
 it confirmed faith, because it showed how 
 the ever-recurring yearnings of humanity, 
 forming themselves into loving legends, wove 
 this wreath of miracle with which to greet 
 the son of God, or son of man, who was to 
 bring God down to man, to lift man up to 
 God. 
 
 The miracle of this Birth, be it truth or le- 
 All Birth is gend, is patterned indeed by every birth, the 
 Miracle ^^jj^ miracle of new being. That the seed of 
 a flower, the acorn of a tree, should contain 
 within its tiny self the laws, principles, and 
 tendencies which define it as itself, which 
 from one or another set of cells of starch de- 
 velop the simple blade of green grass, the 
 tasseled ear of corn with its mathematically 
 arranged kernels, the white and shining lily, 
 the exactly patterned color of the pansy, the 
 parti-colored tulip, the spired poplar, or the 
 spreading oak, — this would pass belief were 
 it not the common experience of our daily 
 life. Said Linnaeus, as he watched a blossom 
 234 
 
OF RELIGION 
 
 unfold : " I saw God in His glory passing 
 near me, and bowed my head in worship." 
 So, too, the egg of insect or of bird, — of the 
 queen bee, with its passionate instincts de- 
 veloped in the chrysalis; the duck, whose 
 young take to the water from their shells ; 
 the pigeon, homeing true from fields far and 
 unknown, — each is a mystery and a miracle. 
 And at last these culminate in the final mir- 
 acle of the human life, — bodily form and 
 spiritual character fashioned from the parent 
 forms of generations and ages before, min- 
 gling and commingling in forms ever new 
 and ever old. All birth is miracle. 
 
 Life, indeed, has two gates from the un- 
 known, and both are miracles. The gate The Gate of 
 which opens on mysterious hinges for birth ^®^*^ 
 is patterned by the mystic gate of death. We 
 depart into, as we came from, the Unknown. 
 As to immortality, it is not given us to know. 
 The Christian minister, at the bedside of the 
 dying or beside the grave of the dead, can 
 only hope. He may not verify or prove. 
 And Paul, in that glorious outburst of reli- 
 gious fervor in which the human imagination 
 reaches its highest flight, does not prove im- 
 mortality : his splendid analogy falters at the 
 very heart of the question, for it is because 
 235 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 the spiritual body lacks that bridge in the 
 material life with the natural body which the 
 risen grain has in its seed that the doubter 
 questions. As we tread in the mists of morn- 
 ing a great bridge suspended above a mighty 
 river and see the curve of the cables sweeping 
 down from the seen tower, left uncompleted 
 to our vision in the veiling cloud, we scarcely 
 need the witness of returning travelers to 
 prove to us that there is a tower on the far- 
 ther shore to which the chain ascends in com- 
 pleted curve. Yet without this evidence we 
 cannot say that analogy is proof, or confound 
 the doubter who says that this may be a 
 ** cantilever " balanced on one tower only and 
 ending in the mists. On this bridge of life, 
 over which all must pass, and on which there 
 is no returning, we can but press on to a goal 
 of hope. 
 
 Yet natural religion points to what revealed 
 The Resur- religion asserts. The story of the Resurrec- 
 tion, be it vision or allegory or literal truth, 
 voices and answers to the great hope of our 
 race. It is, in a sense, no greater miracle than 
 those wonder-workings of risen and ascending 
 life which we see about us every day ; yet to 
 the earnest doubter, like questioning Thomas, 
 the proof may not suffice for an event so con- 
 236 
 
 rection 
 
OF RELIGION 
 
 trary to our experience of life. The reason 
 that "they would not believe though one rose 
 from the dead " is that questioning minds 
 would require corroboration and cumulative 
 proof that the witness of whom Jesus speaks 
 in the parable ^^</ risen from the dead. That 
 which required most proof, they might say, 
 had least. But though to orthodox believers 
 the Resurrection may be the central fact of 
 Christianity, it is not the sole fact, and the 
 teachings of Jesus, before the Crucifixion, 
 harmonized in our recognition of the imper- 
 fect media through which they have come 
 down to us, are in themselves a sufficing gos- 
 pel. And when the great Apostle to the Gen- 
 tiles, whose mission was to include within 
 Christianity all mankind, cries, in confusion 
 of the Sadducees who had the same incer- 
 titude as to a future life that appears in the 
 Old Testament : " If Christ be not risen, 
 your faith is vain. . . let us eat and drink, for 
 to-morrow we die," he limits Christianity by 
 basing it on a single fact which many minds 
 cannot accept, in the cardinal error of the 
 sectary who asserts that if his truth is not 
 the truth, there is no truth. 
 
 There are two immortalities — one certain, 
 one possible, — the one of influence, the other 
 237 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 The two im- of identity. We know, for science assures us, 
 mortalities ^^laX OUT deeds live forever. Let us heed and 
 hope — for the inspiration of both is the same. 
 And if we ask why, if human life is immortal, 
 animal life is not? why the intelligent and 
 kindly dog or horse, the companion of man, 
 may not survive as well as the man brute, 
 again the answer is, it is not given us to know. 
 If there is truth in the theory of selective im- 
 mortality, that a soul which earns spiritual- 
 ity earns also a future life of the spirit, while 
 the evil or the brutish may die, this all the 
 more is inspiration and sanction for right 
 living. 
 
 The lesser miracles of the ministry are not 
 The Mira- without their correspondence in the large 
 tire °* ^^" i^iracle of living. The water made wine, be 
 it fact or phantasy, is not more wonderful than 
 the chemist's daily miracle. An atom of car- 
 bon from our hearth, an atom of hydrogen 
 from a drop of water, an atom of nitrogen 
 from a particle of air, these together, no more, 
 make the molecule of prussic acid which, by 
 another miracle, instantly destroys life. An 
 atom of oxygen to each makes them again 
 earth, water, air ! So, too, the miracles of 
 healing are not without witness in our day. 
 238 
 
OF RELIGION 
 
 Daily we see the spirit dominating the body, 
 working in it evil or good, the will command- 
 ing the nerves and they in turn the mus- 
 cles, courage resisting contagion, fear inviting 
 cholera, cowardice producing physical effects 
 on the eve of battle, a thought bringing the 
 blush to the cheek or congesting the blood in 
 other parts of the body, the spiritual elevation 
 of the martyr defying pain, visions as of Our 
 Lady of Lourdes stimulating recovery, and 
 the mind-cure, despite all vagaries, doing real 
 service to humankind by teaching the sub- 
 jecting of subordinate matter to supreme 
 spirit. 
 
 It is indeed not as wonder-workings, but 
 as exceptions to law, that miracles challenge Miracles as 
 modern belief. Early man, unknowing of ^'^Law^^'^^ 
 law, was widely credulous : he saw the un- 
 seen, spake with the dead, and expected 
 Deity to reverse nature. But credulity is 
 not belief. Belief requires proof, and re- 
 views evidence. We can even reverse the 
 seeming evidence of the senses. Incredulous 
 at first that the world is round, that the earth 
 moves, that the blood courses through our 
 bodies, that one form of life is evolved by far 
 steps from another, that the forces of nature 
 and the sensitivities of the body are but 
 239 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 modes of motion, man came to belief in each 
 of these seeming contradictions because each 
 ranged itself at last in line with law. The 
 modern mind accepts with rightful readiness 
 evidence in accord with " established facts ** 
 and the observed order of nature, and as 
 rightly it requires more and cumulative proof 
 of what is contrary to experience, a seeming 
 exception to law. But as to this order of 
 nature, we do not know all ; we have much 
 to learn. 
 
 The very possibility of human life depends 
 Exceptions on two facts, quite exceptional and seemingly 
 L'fY^^^"*^^^ out of the order of nature. Water as it freezes 
 expands instead of contracts with cold, so 
 that ice floats and by forming on the surface 
 protects the fluid beneath, else our rivers 
 would freeze solid from the bottom, and in 
 winter the flow of the earth's blood would 
 cease. Though oxygen and nitrogen com- 
 bine in wide range of chemical equivalence, 
 air is a merely mechanical mixture of these 
 two elements, so that the lungs absorb the 
 oxygen freely, without the waste of force 
 necessary to dissociate it from a chemical 
 combination. The wonderful law of the dif- 
 fusion of gases by which the products of com- 
 bustion from our lungs and our chimneys are 
 240 
 
OF RELIGION 
 
 in turn harmlessly re-absorbed into the air 
 seems an exception contrary to the great law 
 of gravitation. A Shakespeare, a Napoleon, 
 an Edison, is an exception in the order of 
 nature not to be accounted for ; nor can any 
 lesser Shakespeare, the creator of any liter- 
 ature, explain whence or how his thoughts 
 came. 
 
 The order of nature is itself a miracle, a The Order 
 wonder-working, and seems not so only be- Miracie^^ * 
 cause we do not think. It is often above 
 and beyond sense. So the searcher for truth 
 may not believe the miracles of the Bible ; 
 he may say with sincere judgment that they 
 are to him not proven ; but he cannot deny 
 them. The Christian and the agnostic may 
 in this measure agree. 
 
 But what basis remains then for "reli- The 
 gion " in such agreement, — an agreement on rIi^^o^^^ 
 mysteries, in an Origin forever unknowable, 
 in a First Cause revealed without absolute 
 certainty, in an Immortality which is a hope 
 never proven, in a Gospel which partakes of 
 the fallibility of man, in a Christ who may be 
 God and may be man, in miracles and evi- 
 dences which may prove all or nothing. In- 
 deed, there remains the essence of all reli- 
 241 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 gions, in the simplest, the purest, the noblest, 
 the highest form in which religion has been 
 vouchsafed to the most spiritual races of man- 
 kind. Thou shalt love God — or the Good, 
 O skeptic ! — with all thy heart and soul and 
 mind, and thy neighbor as thyself. This is 
 the law and the prophets. Here is broad 
 ground on which we may agree with all lovers 
 of good, and within which each may work 
 out his own beliefs, provided he damn no 
 other's. 
 
 For belief itself is in large measure a mat- 
 Tempera- ter of temperament, of innate tendency and 
 BeUef^ mental equipment. There are those to whom 
 
 it is not given to believe, however much they 
 desire to do good and to know God. Shall 
 the blind be condemned because they see 
 not .-* A loving God will not deny mercy to 
 His creatures whom He has not endowed with 
 the gift of belief. The student of science, 
 who is above all a student of the divine order, 
 develops his mental powers nevertheless in 
 the direction of proof, and God has not per- 
 mitted Himself to be proved. Proof stops 
 short of the First Cause. God is veiled. 
 Let the Christian then lament the limitations 
 which keep the man of science on one side of 
 the veil, but let him not condemn the man 
 242 
 
OF RELIGION 
 
 nor impeach God. Let him regret imperfec- 
 tions, if he will, but let him not dare to pass 
 sentence as of God. On the other hand, sus- 
 pense, not skepticism, is the attitude of sci- 
 ence. Reverence is its true virtue, denial is 
 its caricature. Goethe's Mephisto is the 
 spirit that denies. Moreover, the man of 
 science, above all men, knows the meaning of 
 art. He preaches the cultivation of habit. 
 Let it be, therefore, his habit of mind to cul- 
 tivate himself toward that art of life which 
 we call religion. 
 
 For science itself meets the same limita- 
 tions as religion. The problem of a First Limitations 
 Cause, of the beginnings of time and space °^ Science 
 and matter, of the finite and the infinite, are 
 also its problems. No man living ever hopes 
 that any human being will ever see an 
 "atom;" yet it is absolutely visible to the 
 eye of faith. It is counted, sized, weighed ; 
 it is the foundation of scientific reasoning. 
 The atom, indivisible, must have size, yet 
 can have no size. So also the " ether ; " infi- 
 nitely tenuous, it must be infinitely dense. 
 Both are contradictions to our sense. What 
 is true of the infinitely little is true of the 
 infinitely great. The beam of light which 
 243 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 tells to the man of science the story of the 
 stars appeals to his faith rather than to his 
 sight. Between the human organism which 
 sees, hears, smells, tastes, and feels, and the 
 organism of nature, the physical universe, 
 there is a great gulf fixed, and the vibra« 
 tions which come from one to the other, the 
 angels of the world physical, can be caught 
 and interpreted only by those mind-faculties 
 
 — the metaphysical, intellectual, or spiritual 
 
 — which are themselves a mystery of mys- 
 teries, a miracle of miracles. Scientific rea- 
 soning is in itself a process of faith, building 
 bridges from the seen to the unseen. 
 
 Why then has there been conflict between 
 Science science and religion ? For two reasons — 
 
 J?^^^ ^^^^' one of habit, and one of essence. It is the 
 process of the man of science to doubt, to 
 question, to deny, to reject; thus only he 
 obtains his fine metal, Truth. It is the 
 method of the professor of religion to " be- 
 lieve without question ; " in his habit of 
 mind, to question is to deny, and denial is 
 the crime against the Holy Spirit which is 
 the unpardonable sin. To the man of sci- 
 ence, this is intellectual dishonesty, moral 
 blindfoldness, treason to Truth, an impeach- 
 ment of God. The virtue of virtues of the 
 244 
 
 tion 
 
OF RELIGION 
 
 one is the vice of vices of the other. Sci- 
 ence is here in the right : a real God, who is 
 Truth, must honor the searching which He 
 has implanted in His own, and the ministers 
 of religion who have preached a gospel of 
 blindness instead of His Gospel of Light, 
 these are they who have sinned against the 
 Holy Spirit of Truth, 
 
 But there seems to be between the faith 
 of science and the faith of religion one The Gulf 
 abyss, of profound depth, reaching to the sciencrand 
 very center of all things and of all thoughts. Religion 
 Science is sure, religion is not sure, in the 
 continuity and exactness of the evidences. 
 The seeker in science finds that in the physi- 
 cal universe like causes produce like effects, 
 and he reads the history of the past, the con- 
 ditions of the present, the prophecy of the 
 future, in clear, sure light. The omnipre- 
 sent, eternal force of nature never fails in the 
 physical justness, exactness, of its effects ; it 
 is on this that scientific reasoning builds its 
 certain conclusions. The man of science 
 asks why, if religion is true, this is not true 
 of religion } Why does theology speak with 
 uncertain witness .•* Why has religion pro- 
 duced conflicts, sects, wars, martyrs } Why 
 has Christ's teaching, if it is the final Truth, 
 245 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 not prevailed in Christendom and among all 
 mankind ? 
 
 And we face here also the practical work- 
 The Pro- ing problem that ever confronts man — the 
 blem of Evil pj-oblem of evil. Men of science will say 
 that in science there is no evil. Why then 
 this awful dilemma in religion ? If God is 
 omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, why 
 does evil exist in the moral world .? Why 
 should a God, all-knowing, all-loving, all- 
 powerful, permit in His world and among 
 His creatures, these seeds of ill.? Why 
 should there be implanted in mankind pas- 
 sions, many and raging, to yield to which is 
 the swift act of a moment, but which reap 
 their harvest in the misery of a whole life 
 and in the misery of lives to come ? Why do 
 good motives produce ill ? Why are the sins 
 of the fathers vfsited upon the children in- 
 stead of upon the sinner ? Why does an 
 omnipotent God permit evil in conflict with 
 His good } 
 
 The tradition of Adam's fall is a trivial 
 Religious solution which common-sense religion ac- 
 cepts only as a parable. The blind theology 
 of an Edwards, building a diabolic ogre of 
 divine Justice, which wreaks infinite ven- 
 246 
 
 Difficulties 
 
OF RELIGION 
 
 geance as the fit punishment of the rejection 
 of infinite love, shutting its eyes and sealing 
 its lips against the logical denial writ into this 
 contradictory image of God, offers but an 
 ostrich-like solution. And the doctrine, as 
 old as the Manichseans, as new as the Chris- 
 tian Scientists, that evil or error is that 
 which is not good or God, whether the doc- 
 trine takes the form of belief in a dual prin- 
 ciple in the government of the universe, or 
 of denial of the reality of evil because it is 
 not of God, is not less unsatisfying to 
 logical thought. The darkness is but the 
 absence of light, the shadow conditioned on 
 the interposition of our earth itself before 
 the sun, our source of light ; yet it is a fact 
 inherent in the constitution of the universe 
 and the great negative factor in each day's 
 life. To define darkness with Edwards as 
 produced by the sun, or with the Manichaean 
 as caused by the earth, or with Eddy as non- 
 existent because not of the sun, is equally an 
 imperfect solution. To say that God, know- 
 ing all, knows not evil, and therefore that 
 evil does not exist, is to deny a fact of life 
 with juggle of words. Men know evil and 
 pain and darkness ; if God does not, then 
 men know more than God, and God is not 
 247 
 
dent 
 
 THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 all-knowing. Neither the In-justice of the 
 All-good in the Edwards theology, nor the 
 Ignore-ance of the All-knowing in the Eddy 
 theology, solves the problem of evil. 
 
 But we have lines of leading. We know 
 Evil an Inci- that the choice of good, as against the temp- 
 tations of evil, makes for good and produces 
 character. The unspeakable anguish, through 
 five years of isolation from all mankind, of 
 the living martyr on Devil's Isle, the victim 
 of colossal and unmitigated injustice, an 
 agony in itself evil and only evil, is redeemed 
 in the shining service to justice, to his coun- 
 try, to the world, which the faith, the cour- 
 age, the patriotism, the devotion of that 
 heroic soul have emblazoned on the black 
 background of an infamous wrong never to be 
 forgotten or forgiven. We see also that evil 
 is sometimes not in itself pain, but a lower 
 viewed from a higher condition, the shed 
 chrysalis of the caterpillar seen from the 
 wings of the butterfly. The family life in 
 the humble cottage or in the tenement of the 
 slums, deprivation as seen from the richer 
 and fuller and freer life, has nevertheless its 
 redeeming delight. We know also that the 
 whole process of development, evolving good, 
 involves evil. We ask why God could not 
 248 
 
OF RELIGION 
 
 have created perfect man in a perfect world, 
 and we answer our question from our daily- 
 experience that the highest result comes 
 from upward struggle. The mountain-top, 
 in its fullest glory, must have achievement. 
 The cloud of evil veils the sunshine of good. 
 Also, the man of science is here guilty of 
 an imperfect generalization. He is himself Science has 
 sure only in the elementary field in which he ^^^ ^ 
 can fully know or completely control all the 
 causes and conditions of his result. Thus 
 elementary chemistry may almost be ac- 
 counted an exact science and a certain art. 
 But where he passes into complex condi- 
 tions, as from inorganic to organic chemistry, 
 he is no longer sure, for he no longer knows 
 or controls all the conditions. A problem 
 of evil begins to confront him. He starts a 
 process of fermentation, and his bread or his 
 beer turns sour. He administers a drug to 
 the human system, and the results confound 
 him. Thus doctors, who are men of applied 
 science, notoriously disagree ; and the fading 
 conflicts of religion are not more virulent 
 than the animosities between schools of med- 
 icine. Science also has had its conflicts, 
 sects, wars, martyrs — nor have its martyrs 
 always been killed by the church. The Co- 
 249 
 
Science as 
 Discoverer 
 and Inter- 
 preter 
 
 THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 pernican view of the universe, the undula- 
 tory theory of light, the circulation of the 
 blood, the doctrine of evolution, — these are 
 but a few of the battlefields of science. 
 
 In very fact, science, like religion, is but 
 an interpreter of facts existent in the uni- 
 verse long before the interpreter existed, 
 and has been not less slow and uncertain 
 in reaching toward first truths. It is only 
 within the past century that we have really 
 read out from Christ's Gospel the full mean- 
 ing of the brotherhood of man, and so abol- 
 ished slavery ; it is only within the past gen- 
 eration that we have read out from God's 
 Nature the force of electricity, which we 
 begin to find is perhaps the dominant force 
 of forces, and applied it to human use. 
 Truth has not varied ; the face of Nature 
 and of Nature's God remain the same, yes- 
 terday, to-day, and forever ; but man, the im- 
 perfect instrument of perception, of interpre- 
 tation, has been opening his inward eyes and 
 his unfolding mind. 
 
 We come thus to some light upon the 
 
 problem of evil. It is the light of law, the 
 
 mining Law j^^ q£ Mature, a divine law, which is the 
 
 essence of the universe. It may be that we 
 
 err in speaking of God as omnipotent, in the 
 
 250 
 
 Predeter- 
 
OF RELIGION 
 
 sense that He is superior or acts contrary to 
 law. In the nature of things, by definition, 
 two and two make four, a straight line is the 
 shortest distance between two points, a cause 
 produces result. This nature of things God 
 cannot, or does not, change. It is predesti- 
 nation. It is within and by means of law 
 that the Great Law-giver is potent, over all 
 things material and spiritual, which proceed 
 from this law. And it is the law of His laws 
 that His creation is not a perfected, but a 
 perfecting, universe. We can conceive of an A Perfect- 
 earth without mountains and valleys, with- ^^g Universe 
 out threatening cliffs or yawning chasms, 
 or treacherous quagmires, or barren "bad 
 lands," an earth all an even plain or undulat- 
 ing park land, with fairly distributed forest, 
 with showers at exact intervals feeding rivers 
 that run evenly into a stormless sea, an earth 
 without darkness and bitter cold, or glare of 
 light and scorching heat, an earth inhabited 
 only by animals, the friends of man, and by 
 perfected man himself, the conflict of the 
 camivora forever over, and all life supported 
 on the spontaneous fruits of the field, with- 
 out waste or loss, sorrow or pain, disease or 
 death. But against this harping heaven the 
 human imagination has always been in revolt. 
 251 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 Somehow, we prefer a world which throbs, 
 an earth with mountains and valleys, with 
 difficulties and dangers, with ups and downs, 
 material and spiritual, in which the throes of 
 birth are followed by the pangs of death, and 
 life succeeds. As no mortal has ever designed 
 a new form of leaf or flower that is beautiful, 
 so no mortal has ever designed, even to his 
 own suiting, a working world without the im- 
 perfections of this. 
 
 But in this imperfect world, law itself 
 The Tra- works out evil. Though justice reigns, in- 
 ge yo VI jygtj(,g exists. Evil is a fact. We cannot 
 rid ourselves of the fact by calling it a shadow 
 and a seeming, except as good also, with all 
 things, is a seeming. The law of gravitation, 
 which binds the solid rocks together, dashes 
 to cruel death or yet more cruel death-in-life, 
 the innocent child who toddles over the face 
 of the cliff. The lightnings, the winds, the 
 floods that keep the earth pure and sweet as 
 the habitation of man, doom to disaster and 
 death the most provident and the most virtu- 
 ous. The tragedy of CEdipus, innocently 
 fore-doomed to woe unutterable ; the tragedy 
 of Gretchen, surrendering self to exalting 
 love ; the tragedy of Tess, betrayed by duty 
 itself into the toils of lust, — these are im- 
 252 
 
OF RELIGION 
 
 mortal, because from generation to genera- 
 tion, such cruel facts repeat themselves in 
 life. The individual is crushed, betrayed, 
 doomed, by the very forces which conserve 
 the race. 
 
 Yet these are but the spots on the sun's 
 face. The order of nature is not, in general, Life out of 
 cruel. Life, indeed, feeds on death ; man ^^^^^ 
 destroys life for his own food, as the animals 
 below him have in their turn destroyed. But 
 such death is not a cloud that foredooms life 
 with blackening shadow. Self-preservation is 
 doubtless a controlling instinct, but the life 
 of the animal is lived in hours of delight af- 
 ter its kind. The lurid pictures of the earth 
 as a great killing-ground, in which poor, 
 hunted things dwell forever in terror of their 
 lives, is as unnatural a generalization as ta 
 judge human happiness from the story of an 
 CEdipus or a Tess. Races, classes, are happy 
 in their "station of life," however they may 
 lack those conditions necessary to give their 
 analyst his happiness. The last of a dying 
 race, of man or beast, may not in personal 
 being be unhappy. Most individuals have in 
 their lives more joy in being than pain in 
 suffering. And few, even in the most miser- 
 able of human lives, are without hope in the 
 253 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 world. What wrecks of humanity have in- 
 deed been floated off the rocks by buoyant 
 helpfulness of other men, and brought in 
 safety into the haven of peace. Not evil, but 
 good, survives. 
 
 When, therefore, we balance facts, the ex- 
 The Bal- istence of evil in this world is not a negation, 
 Faas°^ a denial, of the goodness of God, though it 
 
 may limit His omnipotence of goodness. It 
 remains to the human mind a problem, and 
 one of the insoluble problems. We come to 
 think of it, in the chemistry of being, as the 
 chemist comes to think of those wonderful 
 re-agents which, from the simplest life-giving 
 elements, combine atoms into a complex sub- 
 stance, which may be at once the deadly foe 
 of life and the most preventive or curative of 
 remedies against disintegration and death. 
 Alcohol, ether, carbolic acid, are such sub- 
 stances. They are the servants of man, but 
 also they slay. The drunkard whose first 
 thirst for drink comes from the hospital med- 
 icine, the patient dying upon the operating 
 table, the child, or the suicide, who swallows 
 from the bottle of disinfectant, — these vic- 
 tims, innocent or self-doomed, as it may be, 
 cannot cause us to forget the great good that 
 has come to humankind from the application 
 254 
 
OF RELIGION 
 
 of these gifts of nature, discovered by man in 
 God's universe. 
 
 Finally, to every man who faces facts, the 
 facts show that the dominant power in this The Domi- 
 human world, whether called God, or Law, R^ghteous- 
 or Fate, or Nature, is a power that makes for ness 
 righteousness, and that to obtain the full 
 good of life, literally to make the best of it, 
 we must put our thinking, willing, and doing 
 in line with that power. The development 
 of life is a moral, not an immoral, or an un- 
 moral, development. There are episodes in 
 a life when neither reason nor science gives 
 clear guiding, where to do evil that good 
 may come seems the wise course, — yet every 
 man knows that these are at worst excep- 
 tions to the law of life. To "go it while 
 you're young" in the pursuit of happiness 
 is seen to be "a poor bargain with the devil." 
 Happiness, in the lowest sense, is in the long 
 run a matter of morals, of morale, in the 
 highest sense. Those moments of infinite 
 rapture, in the old-fashioned novel, which 
 seem an eternity, constitute as a matter of 
 fact a very short eternity, and are indeed 
 but a small part of life. A happy life is lived 
 through years of ups and downs, each of 
 
 255 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 which years has three hundred and sixty-five 
 days of twenty-four hours each. A health- 
 ful body, a content mind, an aspiring soul, 
 make full happiness. If the body is health- 
 ful by heredity, a true regimen in line with 
 " righteousness " keeps it so ; if by heredity 
 it is unhealthy, the same regimen will at 
 least better its condition, and to that extent 
 induce happiness. 
 
 The questions of the origin of man arc in 
 The practi- this reading "academic." Whether for mil- 
 of^Ufe^^^"* lions of years this earth, appointed among 
 myriads of stars for the habitation of man, 
 has been a-making for him, under the direct 
 personal guidance of a God in whose image 
 man is made, or whether, under the large 
 law which rules the universe, a time has 
 come on this earth, as it comes on greater 
 stars, when development blossoms into hu- 
 manity, the fact remains the same, — that 
 here is man, environed by circumstances 
 which in part control him and which in part 
 he controls. His problem — and the pro- 
 blem of each of his race — is the same in 
 either course. And this is measurably true 
 also as to his destiny. We say rightly of 
 many lives that they are ill requited, ill ad- 
 justed, unless they are continued into another 
 256 
 
OF RELIGION 
 
 world, where wrongs of to-day may be trans- 
 lated into the eternal right. Yet, if all hope 
 of that future life is put aside, we discern 
 clearly enough that the way in this life is *' to 
 make the best of it," and that to go contrary 
 to rightness is to invite more ill. The same 
 living which best fits a man for a life with- 
 out end best fits him for a life which ends in 
 this world. 
 
 But if religion is true, why is it not one t 
 if Christianity is the Truth, why is the Truth why is not 
 divided against itself } Religion has in fact ^^e*P°" 
 been too often an antagonism instead of a 
 communion. It has been an art of polemics 
 rather than of irenics : the last word is 
 scarcely to be found in the theological dic- 
 tionaries. The American maiden who told 
 the Pope that he must like her country be- 
 cause it was the most religious in the world 
 — for it had most "denominations," was not 
 without historic basis for her notion. Men 
 have seemed to seek whereon they might dis- 
 agree. Three great religions still divide the The three 
 world. Buddhism is divided into a multitude nglons^^" 
 of sects, on lines of division geographic, meta- 
 physical, ritualistic, from the papalism of the 
 Grand Lama of Thibet to the reforming sim- 
 257 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 plicity of the truer followers of the Buddha. 
 Mohammedanism has its lines of cleavage, on 
 the genealogies of the Caliph successors of 
 " the Prophet of God ; " and in the schools, 
 endlessly subdivided, of the four great Imans 
 who have expounded the Koran ; and it finds 
 its protestant reformers in the Wahabee 
 zealots. Religion has been indeed the blood- 
 iest battlefield of mankind. Christianity has 
 warred against Islam, and not conquered; 
 and within itself is the confounding of " the 
 peace of the church." What witness, then, 
 does history bear to the truth of religion, of 
 Christianity itself ? Is it not disproof ? No, 
 for the light is not less light when refracted 
 into colors which each man sees for himself. 
 The differences are not in the nature of God, 
 but in the nature of man. 
 
 There are not many Gods, many Christs, 
 
 The real many religions. The one God, most of us 
 
 Reunion believe, has developed through the ages the 
 
 supreme race of man. But of this race are 
 
 many races, diverse, with minds and spirits 
 
 of many kinds. The human mind is one, 
 
 but its expression in speech, even though it 
 
 may have been one in the beginning, tends 
 
 to infinite variety. As men know more 
 
 of speech, they come to know each other's 
 
 258 
 
OF RELIGION 
 
 speech and to see, in all speech, laws or forms 
 or words common to all or to many. Thus 
 God, expressed to these diverse races and 
 many minds, is and will always seem of many 
 forms, seen under conditions which are con- 
 ditions of the seeing, not of the Seen. Thus 
 doctrines, or statements of what each kind of 
 man thinks about God, become the founda- 
 tions of sects. And because it is the wont 
 of men to talk about their differences rather 
 than about the agreements that go without 
 saying, they build fences about their own 
 fields of religion and think of these, instead 
 of the great and beautiful plain which under- 
 lies them all. But those of far sight and 
 fair eye are coming more and more to see 
 how lovely is the land without the fences. 
 
 Christ brake bread and drank wine with 
 his chosen friends, with every-day bread and Sect Forma- 
 wine of his time, in that brave and touching ligations 
 scene of the Last Supper : from this has 
 come the gorgeous ceremonial of the Roman 
 Mass, translated into the liturgy of the 
 Church of England ; the doctrines of Tran- 
 substantiation of the Host and the Blood ; 
 the separatist exclusion of close Communion ; 
 the practice of excommunication ; and the 
 superstition of thirteen at table. Christ 
 259 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 dedicated himself to his work, at the hands 
 of another, with the lovely symbol of water : 
 from that has come the sacerdotal rite of 
 Baptism, wrangles innumerable over im- 
 mersion and sprinkling, over the baptism of 
 infants and the doom of the unbaptized, con- 
 fusions of Anabaptists and Pedobaptists, and 
 a hundred sectaries amongst sects. Christ 
 spoke of God as his Father, and in warfares 
 over Trinity and Unity, in creeds where 
 words were used to conceal the absence of 
 thought, the brotherhood of man was long 
 forgotten. Christ charged his friends to 
 continue his work, and the simple organiza- 
 tion which they adopted has been made the 
 basis of hierarchies, episcopates, presbyteries, 
 monastic orders, and endless varieties of 
 church government, which in strong forms 
 and in strong hands became tyrannies, and in 
 weak forms and in weak hands a confusion 
 of tongues. 
 
 Against this tendency of all religions to a 
 
 The formal and physical crystallization, it has ever 
 
 religious been the mission of the religious reformer 
 
 to protest, in defense of a more spiritual and 
 
 less conventional devotion. So Christ against 
 
 the Pharisaic Jews, Buddha in Brahmanism, 
 
 Mahomet with his idolatrous compatriots 
 
 260 
 
OF RELIGION 
 
 and against a debased Judaism and Christian- 
 ity. In like manner, over against this ex- 
 treme and that vagary, there have arisen, 
 from time to time, reformers within the 
 Christian church, seeking to turn it from spe- 
 cific errors or to bring it back to primitive 
 simplicity. Thus Paul among the Judaiz- 
 ing Christians. Thus Luther. Thus Calvin. 
 Thus Edwards. Thus Wesley. Each in his 
 turn did his great work for God in his world. 
 Each of these later men in his turn swung 
 the pendulum too far in his own direction, 
 and made a new sect, " a new wound in the 
 body of Christ, a new rent in his seamless 
 garment." Then came the Friends, bearing The Friends 
 testimony of the Inner Light, putting aside 
 communion and baptism because these had 
 come between man and God, and in the spirit 
 of the meek and simple Christ, seeking to 
 dwell at peace with all men, in the simplest 
 of religious democracies. These were the 
 true individualists. But their very contrast 
 of simplicity became a form ; they too became 
 a sect, persecuted even unto death by other 
 sects. Catholic and Protestant alike ; and no 
 sooner were they crystallized by this outward 
 pressure into a definite church body than 
 they too " split," on the rock of the Trinita- 
 261 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 rian controversy, into orthodox and Hicksite. 
 But to all Christians the Friends brought 
 a true thought, which has been a leaven 
 throughout all the churches. 
 
 Within the nineteenth century there have 
 New Sects not been lacking new sects, seeking each in 
 its own way to bring back the church to 
 what the sectaries sincerely believe to be a 
 true faith or form. The Millerite delusion 
 overswept the whole country, and numerous 
 bands, clothed only in ascension white, waited 
 again and again, on days specified only to be 
 postponed, the second coming of the Lord. 
 The Mormon leader of this century, like the 
 Mahomet of a millennium ago, organized a 
 new church on a new revelation, a super- 
 structure on Christian foundations. The vota- 
 ries of both, whatever the leaders, were sin- 
 cere believers, and found in their faith a true 
 religion. The C/inst-ia.ns, so-called, sought 
 to bring back Christianity to Christ. The 
 Abolitionists found a religion in their holy 
 cause. The Christian Scientists of to-day, 
 emphasizing the healing power associated in 
 the Gospels with Christ, build upon a curious 
 mixture of metaphysics and theology, a prac- 
 tical working religion, with a devotional ser- 
 vice of primitive simplicity, which preaches 
 262 
 
OF RELIGION 
 
 a true gospel of mental and spiritual disci- 
 pline as the conditions of bodily health, and 
 has brought real Christlikeness to many 
 thousands of disheartened and perplexed 
 members of the Christian church. 
 
 It is not reasonable to suppose that all 
 men will come to think alike about God, or Men will not 
 about Christ, or about religion. As long as *^^"^ *^^^® 
 there are differences in the form and doctrine 
 of religion, the Roman church, or its equiva- 
 lent, giving to certain kinds of people a 
 richly symbolized and pictureful expression 
 of religion, relieving them of individual pro- 
 blems by furnishing priestly interpreters of 
 infallible omniscience, may always exist, for 
 it meets one great human need. The religion 
 of individual relationship with God, of indi- 
 vidual struggle and crisis, meets other needs, 
 and is expressed in sects according as one 
 or another feature or doctrine of the reli- 
 gious life is emphasized. Thus the Catholic 
 church, one and indivisible, exists coordinate 
 with individualist sects, reformed and always 
 re-forming, — and this difference may, by the 
 nature of the human mind, continue, perhaps 
 always, to exist. But, beyond all varieties of 
 faith and of form, there is a unity in the 
 brotherhood of man, reverent of its divine 
 263 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 origin, in which more and more all faiths and 
 all forms agree as the essence of religion. 
 "Religions may die; religion lives." 
 
 The Church of the Holy Sepulchre at 
 Jerusalem, built about the rock in which, as 
 The Church Greeks, Armenians, and Romans alike be- 
 Sepukhre^ lieve, the body of Jesus was entombed, con- 
 tains within its walls chapels for each of 
 these orders of Christians. It has been a 
 sad epitome of the history of the church of 
 Christ. Confusion of tongues, diverse ritu- 
 als, conflicting holy days, din of discordant 
 preachers, babble of gossip and contention, 
 treachery and violence, have culminated 
 more than once within Holy Week itself in 
 murder and massacre, until the soldiers of 
 the infidel Turk have been called in to pre- 
 vent war among the Christian disciples of 
 the Prince of Peace, in the very Holy City 
 of the Jews where Christ is not yet owned 
 because his professed disciples know him 
 not. But it is also the parable of the true 
 and possible church, in which each form of 
 religion may have its appointed place, but 
 under whose over-arching dome all Chris- 
 tians may unite in listening to the risen 
 Truth, while Jew and Gentile, believer or 
 agnostic, may find in the peace within some- 
 264 
 
OF RELIGION 
 
 thing that answers to their spiritual need and 
 nearer brings each to the divine. 
 
 If this religion, the rehgion of Christ, the 
 religion which accepts Christliness in all Failures 
 faiths and forms, though it be for all time churches 
 and all times, must change, like all expres- 
 sions of the divine through the human, in its 
 expression, its organization, its methods, to 
 conform with the conditions and answer the 
 demands of each age, of each generation, of 
 each type of mind or kind of soul, meeting 
 with the eternal verities the needs of the 
 passing hour, it behooves Christians to look 
 facts in the face and learn where and why 
 churches have failed. When the holy day 
 becomes merely a holiday, not for re-creation 
 but for amusement only ; when neither the 
 Bible nor other spiritual literature gives gos- 
 pel to men, but the Sunday newspaper takes 
 their place ; when church meetings cannot 
 withstand the competition of the cheap thea- 
 tres in our cities or overcome the inertia of 
 country life ; when heads of churches are no 
 longer men of religion but of affairs, and a 
 spiritual teacher may be cast out because he 
 does not draw to the pews a "paying" con- 
 gregation; when churches have no longer 
 265 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 the religious vitality in their public opinion 
 to reform or to discipline those who pay high 
 prices for pews and hold high place in church 
 politics, but are anti-Christ in daily life; 
 when worship becomes ritual and prayer a 
 form ; when, in short, the church is no longer 
 religious, — there is no longer answer within 
 the churches to that need, dwelling within 
 every soul, however dormant, for the things 
 of the spirit. For "man is a religious ani- 
 mal " and craves spiritual food. No plea of 
 "lack of time " can condone the failure of 
 the churches, for in this hurried world of 
 our day each man works fewer hours to earn 
 a better living than in the olden times " of 
 leisure," and has still " all the time there is." 
 It is still a matter of choice. The dried 
 husks of religion will never invite nor satisfy 
 the hungry souls that flocked to hear a Phil- 
 lips Brooks, for whom time was never lack- 
 ing, morning, or noon, or night, to seek spir- 
 itual food at his hands. 
 
 It may be that religion, like government. 
 The Differ- has suffered, in this period of transition, from 
 
 entiation of ^^iQ lapse of individualist relations which has 
 
 Functions ■, r 
 
 followed the development of great organiza- 
 tions. The chief of a state, the head of a 
 266 
 
OF RELIGION 
 
 great industry, no longer knows citizens and 
 workers in their individual relations, but di- 
 rects the mass. The shepherd of a thousand 
 sheep cannot know his own and call each by 
 its name. The preacher who attracts a thou- 
 sand hearers into a great church-house can- 
 not be the pastor of a thousand souls. The 
 Pope, as the head of the great Roman hier- 
 archy, dispenses religion as it were at whole- 
 sale. The Protestant bishop is an executive, 
 no longer distinctly a godly man, but a man 
 of the world, of affairs, whose conversation is 
 not of religion but of everything else. To 
 this extent, the church has recognized, some- 
 what to the bewilderment of its people, the 
 differentiation of functions or of duties which 
 has developed elsewhere in modern life. 
 
 But few Protestant churches have followed 
 the example of Plymouth Church in provid- Pastor and 
 ing a pastor as well as a preacher. The " min- 
 ister of religion " must be orator, organizer, 
 executive, spiritual adviser, and comforter, 
 in one. But to few men is it given to be all 
 these : Phillips Brookses are rare. The Ro- 
 man church with its superb organization has 
 more availed itself of this principle of differ- 
 entiation. The Puritans of New England 
 had their preacher and their teacher for each 
 267 
 
 Preacher 
 
The true 
 Church of 
 the Living 
 Christ 
 
 THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 church. When a church committee "calls'* 
 a new man, who will "fill the pews " and be 
 "heard of in the newspapers," and disre- 
 gards character and the quality of spiritual 
 sympathy, expecting from him that which 
 he cannot give, it commits a double wrong. 
 And when the theological seminaries, fen- 
 cing out men of large spirituality by narrow 
 creeds, and by unwise beneficences inviting 
 weaklings, spiritually and otherwise unfit, to 
 secure a living in the church, send men out 
 to strangle struggling churches at home or 
 to misrepresent Christianity and misunder- 
 stand paganism in the missionary field, the 
 church is handicapped with a burden no 
 other modern organization carries. 
 
 A live and life-giving church must offer to 
 men a living Christ, whose ** second coming " 
 is visible in the lives of disciples in whom 
 his spirit is ever-present. It proves itself by 
 doing the Master's work, fulfilling in its day 
 his mission to men. A church of Christ 
 should create a Christ-like environment for 
 those within its fold, helping these to be 
 Christians in e very-day life, and should offer 
 in its members a Christ-like example to those 
 without, winning those to become Christians. 
 In such an environment, each disciple is in- 
 268 
 
OF RELIGION 
 
 spired to discipline, to devotion, to achieve- 
 ment toward likeness with Christ, and out of 
 it should come the ideal, yet to be realized, 
 of the Christian state. The primitive church, 
 the Pilgrim fathers, the pioneer reformers in 
 each Puritan movement before it convention- 
 alized into sect, constituted literally a band 
 of brethren in the bond of Christ, a spiritual 
 family, known each of all by his name, united 
 in personal intimacy as well as by common 
 purpose, having all things in common so far 
 as necessary to respond to spiritual or phy- 
 sical need, knowing no distinction of class 
 within and reaching out to welcome into 
 communion men of every class without, creat- 
 ing thus a Christian environment, a possible 
 millennium, in which outward circumstance, 
 however hard the physical lot, ministered 
 unto inward peace. The confessional of the 
 Roman church, the crude relations of the 
 Sunday-school teacher, the formal visitation 
 of " the minister," are sorry substitutes for 
 this heart-to-heart relationship, the touch of 
 soul with soul, possible among such bands of 
 disciples, in a sympathetic environment, by 
 help of which religion is made applied ethics 
 and the spirit is enabled to withstand in the 
 struggles of daily life. 
 
 269 
 
Church 
 
 THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 It is natural that there should be " rites " 
 Rites of the of the church, as of other organizations. 
 Every society accepts or initiates its new- 
 comers or novices with more or less of cere- 
 mony, receives some formal enrollment or 
 pledge, and holds festivals of communion or 
 of commemoration. As the mystic gates 
 from Eternity, through which the spirit incar- 
 nated in body makes entrance and exit, open 
 and close, in birth and death, it is the proper 
 office of religion to give wel-come to the ar- 
 riving and God-speed to the departing soul, in 
 baptismal and funeral rites ; and the wedlock 
 of man and woman, from whose union, the 
 foundation of the home and of human soci- 
 ety, is to come offspring of new life, should 
 also have sanction from the church as a part 
 of the divine order. But the churches, bid- 
 den to seek and to save all men and to rejoice 
 in the faith, have ever committed the dull 
 and deadening error of making entrance or 
 " confirmation " not a dedication but a defini- 
 tion, profession not of desire to live the Christ- 
 life but of intellectual belief in complex and 
 contradictory creed, fencing out more than it 
 gathered in ; of converting the memorial sup- 
 per from a feast to which all are bidden into 
 a sacerdotal ceremony excluding would-be 
 270 
 
OF RELIGION 
 
 guests ; of marking the exit of the believer 
 into eternal life with trappings of woe and 
 lamentations of penitential grief. Christ in- Fences of 
 vited the multitude to flock to him on the ^^*^^^ 
 open hillsides of Judea ; his ministers raise 
 barbed-wire fences of creed and catechism 
 even against the tender lambs who would 
 seek shelter in his arms. The subtleties of 
 the Nicene and the anathemas of the Atha- 
 nasian creed, even the phantasmagoria of the 
 simpler Apostles' Creed, so called, the ** thirty- 
 nine articles " and the " shorter catechism," 
 overlaid upon the religion of Christ, perplex 
 and repel the thoughtful and candid soul, and 
 condemn the pulpit, bound by conscience to 
 expositions against which conscience revolts, 
 to verbal dexterities and logical evasions 
 which are both irreligious and immoral. 
 
 The creeds and articles of the sects are not 
 the only survivals from a dead past which Supersti- 
 afflict the church and must pass away. Sacri- *^P^® ^®^*" 
 fice, ceremonial, intercession, have been the 
 vicarious exercises of religion by which a 
 priestly class, from medicine-man to Roman 
 priest, came between men and God. Fear, 
 lording the savage mind and super-stitious 
 into our own day, imaged a God of Wrath 
 and Death, whose anger was to be appeased 
 271 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 by taking life — the slaughter of enemies, the 
 sacrifice of children, the burnt-offerings of 
 flesh — and ungrudgingly paid taxes, in blood- 
 money or tithes, for hire of those who could 
 ward off His terrors. For to Ignorance the 
 unusual in Nature — the storm, the flying 
 comet, the stroke of death — is the striking 
 fact, unmindful as it is of the sunshine and 
 the starlight in which Nature usually abides 
 and which suggests in the reflecting mind 
 the smile of a God of Love and Life. To us 
 it is not waste, but use, that pleases God ; 
 sacrifice gives place to service. The abnega- 
 tion of monks, as St. Simon on his pillar, or 
 he who in the Russian Lavra lived his useless 
 days immured in earth to his neck, is no 
 Priestcraft longer religious. That power of the priest- 
 hood, the tool of statecraft, to invoke destruc- 
 tion of the disobedient, as when Moses is 
 said to have punished the democratic revolt 
 of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram by causing 
 them, "even to their little ones," to be swal- 
 lowed up by the earth, is passing out of human 
 belief, and with it " the forgiveness of sins " 
 by a vicarious absolution. So, too, that view 
 of prayer which makes it a special appeal to 
 Deity to abrogate His Laws in our favor or 
 against our adversaries, and with it will pass, 
 272 
 
OF RELIGION 
 
 let us hope, the habit of taking His name in 
 vain in so-called prayer to expatiate upon and The Mock- 
 explain the happenings of the day or to parade p^y^j. 
 " the finest prayer ever addressed to a fashion- 
 able audience " or the weary waste of words 
 of the prayer-meeting Pharisee. When, in 
 the Mexican revolution, the revolutionists, 
 under the white banner of Our Lady of 
 Guadaloupe and the "powers ordained of 
 God," with the sacred image of Our Lady 
 of Los Remedios, looked to this same " Mo- 
 ther of God" to invoke victory for each 
 against the other; when, in the Cuban war, 
 Catholic priests and Protestant ministers on 
 either side, American and Spanish, vied in 
 adjuring their common God of peace to over- 
 whelm His, meaning their, enemies; when a 
 community beseeches the Lord of Righteous- 
 ness to " direct and prosper, for the safety, 
 honor, and welfare of His people all the con- 
 sultations " of a body to which it has sent an 
 unrighteous representative ; when a church 
 begs the Law-giver of Nature to "restrain 
 these immoderate rains " and " send us sea- 
 sonable weather," — then prayer becomes a 
 mockery, provoking the inward derision even 
 of the most religious, and is no longer a reli- 
 gious exercise. 
 
 273 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 But despite perversions of rites and of reli- 
 The Exer- gious observances, the exercises of religion 
 ligkm°^ ^®" must remain a part of life so long as the 
 spiritual nature remains a part of man. It is 
 still true that human beings need, and are 
 likely always to need, means of spiritual ex- 
 pression and communion which shall satisfy 
 the hunger of the soul. The exercise of reli- 
 gion implies food and regimen. The spiritual 
 man, like the physical man, needs nourish- 
 ment and discipline, aids internal and exter- 
 nal, to assure wholeness of life. What the 
 great apostle means by faith and works, the 
 uplifting of the soul toward the heights as 
 well as the daily toiling on the plain, are 
 necessary parts of the religious life. Service, 
 worship, prayer, are natural means of spirit- 
 ual development. For service only, the gos- 
 pel of works, that love and duty towards our 
 neighbor which is the best fulfillment of love 
 and duty toward God, though the practical 
 side of religion, is not enough. Mere altruism 
 is not all. Man, as a social being, craves 
 expression in common of his religious or ethi- 
 cal aspirations, as in public worship, as well 
 as individual uplifting, as in private prayer. 
 
 As in social celebration, or on political oc- 
 casion, men gather for the expression of com- 
 274 
 
OF RELIGION 
 
 mon thought or aim, hearing together the Church Lit- 
 inspiring thoughts written aforetime, join- ^^^les 
 ing in song, renewing fidelity to their com- 
 mon cause, gaining new inspiration from the 
 winged words of an " orator of the day," so 
 religion answers a like need in a like way, 
 developing this natural " order of exercises " 
 into rich liturgy, or confining it to Puritan 
 simplicity. When men are not repelled by 
 dry form and rigid creed, but are offered 
 the bread of righteousness and the water of 
 life that answer to the spiritual hunger and 
 thirst in every man, it is not duty that drives 
 them to church but desire that speeds them, 
 as a lover to his beloved. To the feast of 
 the spirit all men come gladly, if they are but 
 rightly bidden ; religion need hold no second 
 place after business, politics, society, amuse- 
 ment. To Phillips Brooks, preaching in 
 Trinity Church at noon-time. Wall Street 
 flocked. 
 
 The great preacher has always his mis- 
 sion and his hearers, and, though from the Preaching 
 pulpit of sect, he preaches to the church 
 catholic, not theology but religion, not doc- 
 trine but devotion, "not creed but Christ." 
 It is not given to all preachers to be, nor to 
 all hearers to hear, a Beecher or a Spurgeon, 
 275 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 yet men have only to be awakened by the 
 enthusiasm, the God-in-us, of a religious re- 
 form or the force, too often crude and fleet- 
 ing, of a " revival " of religion, to " crowd 
 the churches " of humblest pulpits. And it 
 should not be forgotten that every preacher 
 of righteousness, from platform as from pul- 
 pit, is to-day, as of old, a prophet of God, aid- 
 ing in the development of character, personal 
 or national, toward the spiritual life. The 
 spoken word kindles as the written word does 
 not, and every man is the better for join- 
 ing in the assembling of the people together, 
 with uplift of common rejoicing, in " psalms 
 Spiritual and hymns and spiritual songs." In the 
 Songs richer forms of public worship, noble music, 
 
 art, and architecture perform their splendid 
 part as accessories of religion, but are a poor 
 substitute for it when they become the idols 
 of the church. As for doctrine, whereon 
 men agree to disagree, and the study of the 
 scriptures in its light, it may be that this will 
 become the function of smaller organizations 
 of fellow-believers within the greater church, 
 as chapels in a great cathedral, in whose 
 class-rooms the teacher of righteousness ex- 
 pounds to men like-minded with himself their 
 view of truth. 
 
 276 
 
OF RELIGION 
 
 The seeker after God, the student of the 
 spiritual life, who obtains inspiration in the Prayer 
 common joy and instruction from his spirit- 
 ual teacher, needs not the less the private aids 
 of prayer and meditation. As the thought of 
 God changes from a Boss or Joss to be pla- 
 cated and besought for favors, to a Divine 
 Power ruling the universe by laws of right- 
 eousness, there comes a like change in the 
 thought of prayer. True prayer, whether in 
 speech or in silence, public or private, is a 
 communing with the divine, a meditation on 
 divine knowledge, a recognition of divine 
 laws, an aspiration toward divine being, rais- 
 ing the soul into active harmony with the 
 divine order, and is in this sense the more an 
 active part of religion as the vital relation- 
 ship of each soul with the divine is recog- 
 nized as the essence of religion. The office 
 of prayer is not to beg God to stoop to men, 
 but to uplift men toward God. 
 
 Both in public worship and private medita- 
 tion, man finds spiritual food in the sacred Sacred 
 literature of the past and of the present, — Books 
 in the reflections of the divine thought in 
 our own Book of Books, seen not as infallible 
 and perplexing dogma but as the record of a 
 religious yet errant race, in the Bibles of 
 277 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 Other religions, in the holy books of all times, 
 in the uplifting literature of great poets and 
 great thinkers, in all scriptures that make for 
 good. These are the seed-thoughts which, 
 germinating in the meditations of the devout 
 mind, produce the flowers and fruits of spirit- 
 ual blessing. And not least the contempla- 
 Nature tion of Nature and the study of its law, as 
 developed in science, in which shines out 
 the order and law of divine mind, are dis- 
 tinctly, to him who sees and reads aright, an 
 exercise of religion. For there is no vista 
 opening more directly toward the conception 
 of a pre-ordered development under divine 
 thought than that which sees the evolution 
 of the material world from nebulous "star- 
 dust " into suns and planets, becoming in 
 our own earth the home of life, developed by 
 the wonderful principle of natural selection 
 at last into man, paramount through mind, 
 with whose advent there came newly into 
 action the principle also of ethical selection, 
 and who began to coordinate and modify 
 and conquer Nature by mind, to compass 
 the earth and set bounds to merely natural 
 forces, until Nature is no longer the lord of 
 life, but life the lord of Nature. 
 
 278 
 
OF RELIGION 
 
 This we come to see at the last — that the 
 godly life, the Christian life, the religious The godly 
 life, may be lived in sincere unity amidst and ^^^® 
 amongst all these diversities of theological 
 doctrine and ceremonial expression. The 
 Fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man 
 in Christ, are doctrines on which all Chris- 
 tians agree, but there is a still wider basis of 
 agreement on which also non-Christians may 
 stand. The goodly life is the godly life. Right 
 living is at once the condition and the aim of 
 a true religion. We hear talk of the need of 
 a new religion. But we have only to practice 
 the old. Freed from the accretions and con- 
 ventionalities of doctrine and of form that are 
 part of a dead past, the barnacles of the cen- 
 turies, the old religion is found to suffice abun- 
 dantly for the new times. " Do I think Chris- 
 tianity a failure .? — I think it has not been 
 tried ! " said the great Jewish rabbi. To live 
 like Christ has been throughout the Christian 
 centuries a sufficing religion. Wars have been 
 fought over definitions of God ; ceremonial 
 usages have been evolved from Christ's sim- 
 plest acts ; doctrines diverse and contrary have 
 been read into His words as the basis of ana- 
 themas, — but it is the life of the Christ, in 
 its simplest teaching, that has been the suffi- 
 279 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 cient model for all time. The way of the 
 Christ is still the way of life. 
 
 To live the Christ-life amid the complexities 
 " What and perplexities of modern living is indeed no 
 would Jesus ga^sy endeavor. The question, " What would 
 Jesus do ? " is sometimes easier asked than 
 answered. We wish, for instance, to feed the 
 hungry but not to promote pauperism — and 
 so we must have our charity organization so- 
 cieties, and as an act of charity must refrain 
 from an act of love. We seek to uplift our fel- 
 lows by abolishing industrial slavery and or- 
 ganizing free labor, but not to develop a new 
 despotism of trade unionism. We must think 
 not only of the motive but of the effects 
 of what we mean to be Christ-like actions. It 
 requires indeed wide vision to apply the prin- 
 ciple of guidance that we must work in line 
 with the power that makes for righteousness, 
 the work of good — and yet the Christ-life is 
 the key to our living as to all living. 
 
 And when the Christ-life is simply seen, 
 Christ-like- and its teachings simply read, it becomes 
 ChristSnhy^ known to us that this life and these teachings 
 are a Bible of which there have been many 
 translations, however imperfect, in other 
 tongues and in other ages. Thus the fol- 
 lower of Christ finds Christ's likeness in the 
 280 
 
OF RELIGION 
 
 fellowship of the earlier Buddha and sees re- 
 flections of his teachings in the Koran of the 
 later Mahomet. Though to us of Christian 
 faith, Christ, the supreme fulfillment in human 
 form of the divine spirit, is the Way-shower 
 above all who in less measure have been filled 
 with the spirit of God, it becomes evident, as 
 we know more and think more about the reli- 
 gion of others, that any great religious teacher 
 is a leader in the upward path. The Christian 
 may not despise those who follow the teach- 
 ers of their race in paths leading where Christ 
 led, or disdain those who practice a Christian 
 virtue better than himself. The followers 
 of Buddha have no need for societies for the 
 prevention of cruelty to man or beast, nor 
 those of Mahomet for temperance movements 
 and prohibition parties. We need not become 
 Buddhists to learn from Buddha, or Maho- 
 metans to seek what Mahomet may have to 
 teach, nor join each Christian sect to get good 
 from the precept or practice of Romanist, An- 
 glican, Methodist, Quaker, or Christian Sci- 
 entist. 
 
 As the Christ had his forerunner in John 
 and his interpreter in Paul, so in a wider Non-Chris- 
 vision, the earlier Buddha and the later Ma- I?" 3^^^^" 
 
 ' gions 
 
 homet had each his mission in the fulfillment 
 281 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 of religion for the races of mankind. Buddha, 
 seeking through the great renunciation a 
 simpler way and a truer aim, failed, as all hu- 
 man effort must fail, to satisfy with his doc- 
 trine of Nirvana the insatiate desire of the 
 finite mind to solve the problems of infinity, 
 and his followers, as generations passed, di- 
 vided like Christendom into innumerable 
 sects, papal and protestant, idolized the de- 
 stroyer of idols, and formalized a religion 
 which was to free men from forms. But Bud- 
 dha's " noble path " is not the less a way of 
 virtue and of life, and his "silver rule" the 
 other statement of the "golden rule" of 
 Christ. Mahomet, fierce like the prophets 
 of old with holy wrath against the idolatrous 
 practices of his Arab brethren, and against 
 Jews and Christians who had corrupted the 
 pure monotheism of their fathers with super- 
 stitions and idolatries innumerable and with 
 ungodly life, fell before the temptation of 
 world-conquest, and his religion became per- 
 verted into fanaticism, fatalism, and sensual- 
 ity. But the simplicity of the mosque and of 
 the liturgy, in heed of his commands against 
 graven images and idolatries, and the devo- 
 tions of his people in every-day life, are not 
 without their lessons for Christians. 
 282 
 
OF RELIGION 
 
 To him who sees in all times and amongst 
 all nations the workings of God in His world, The Bible 
 it must be evident that the three great reli- 
 gions which, originating within the compass 
 of a thousand years, have divided the alle- 
 giance of the great mass of mankind, must 
 each have a real basis for their triumph ; that 
 neither is true to the exclusion of the others, 
 however supremely true may be our own 
 faith; and that in the truth underlying all 
 and to which all point is the way of life. 
 And in this same light, the Bible, our own 
 Bible, in the " newer criticism " which makes 
 it human as well as divine literature, is no 
 longer an arsenal of weapons from which one 
 adversary may slay another with contradic- 
 tory " proof -texts " and doom whole " denom- 
 inations " to eternal perdition, but the re- 
 cord of a race gifted above all others with 
 the gift of religion, seeking after God, find- 
 ing Him in the terrors of broken law and in 
 the beneficences of law fulfilled, listening to 
 His voice through Moses the great law-giver 
 and that line of statesman who were prophets 
 of his righteousness, until in Christ the Mes- 
 siah came, at last, the fulfillment of the Law 
 and the Prophets. 
 
 In this new light the missionary impulse 
 283 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 The 
 
 missionary 
 Spirit 
 
 The Better 
 Way 
 
 is yet to find its full glory. At first denying 
 to all men but the few the mercy of God, 
 the churches presently sought to pluck "hea- 
 thenism " out of the minds of half-developed 
 men, and replace it with the Christianity of 
 civilization, as defined by each church in its 
 own creed. That could not be done. The 
 result was often disastrous. Creeds con- 
 fused. The Buddhist, taught that Romanists 
 in the sacrifice of the Mass ate the body and 
 drank the blood of Christ, or misled by the 
 atonement imagery, not less sanguinary, of 
 Protestant hymns, considered Christians a 
 kind of cannibals who "ate their God," from 
 whom his reverence for life revolted in hor- 
 ror. The Mahometan, confronted by the 
 doctrine of the Three in One, by devotions 
 before the images of Christ, the Virgin, and 
 the Saints, and by the intoxication of men 
 from Christian countries, was confirmed in 
 his belief of the purity of his own religion, 
 which knew only One God and kept him from 
 idolatry and from drunkenness. The vices 
 of civilization were often transplanted instead 
 of its religion. Fire-water and firearms went 
 with the Gospel of Peace. But now has 
 come a better way — not to destroy but to 
 develop, to find not only the agreements 
 284 
 
OF RELIGION 
 
 among Christians but between Christians 
 and those of lesser light, that these may be 
 led into the clearer shining of the perfect 
 day. The struggle is but begun, yet the 
 result should be sure. Christian missionaries 
 who are truly Christ-like and have truly the 
 missionary spirit, will seek lovingly to inter- 
 pret, instead of hatefully to misunderstand, 
 the ceremonies, beliefs, and aspirations of the 
 twilight peoples and make them bridges to- 
 ward the faith of the perfect day. And in 
 turn Christianity is receiving from other reli- 
 gions their aid towards the higher life. The 
 prayers from Egyptian temples, the teach- 
 ings of Socrates and Plato, the thoughts of 
 Marcus Aurelius, are helps to the devout 
 life. Buddha joins forces with St. Francis 
 of Assisi in teaching us to love our little 
 brothers of the earth. The Orient contrib- 
 utes to our sacred anthology, and its aspira- 
 tions seem not out of place in Christian 
 pulpits. 
 
 All religions are useless, and the exer- 
 cises of religion waste, if they do not show Religion 
 their fruits, harvest after seedtime, in prac- Practical 
 tical every-day life. He who is truly godly 
 or good will not rest short of helping in his 
 285 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 turn to increase good among his fellow-men, 
 and in that sense at least bring them nearer 
 to God, more in accord with divine order. 
 In state as in church, in business as in soci- 
 ety, — that is, in politics, trade, conversation, 
 — religion must be known by its practical 
 applications, in fulfilling the direct aim of 
 religion, righteousness of life. And he who 
 believes not in a "personal" God has not 
 the less, indeed has the more, need to use all 
 helps toward the spiritual life, which uplifts 
 man from strength to strength, as on wings 
 of eagles. 
 
 All religions join with ethics, with philo- 
 Soul sophy, with common sense, in emphasizing 
 
 supreme fQj. ^-j^g soul, the spirit, supreme place in the 
 making of man. And this necessity is shown 
 by contraries. The most awful crime among 
 the most hardened people, as the murder of 
 a mistress from jealousy by a brutal outcast, 
 witnesses to the strength of that personal 
 individuality, dwelling in the body, yet not 
 the body, which binds man to man. Friend- 
 ship, love, hate, — these are relations not 
 physical, but meta-physical, supra-material, 
 spiritual, and they are supreme relations. 
 The thought of the soul fighting with the 
 body for supremacy is as old as life itself ; 
 286 
 
OF RELIGION 
 
 it is a thought in the Bibles of all peoples, 
 and comes home to every man's experience. 
 A modern sculptor has carven a group in 
 which, joined as they touch the earth, the 
 man spiritual with face alight in aspiration is 
 seen struggling against the man physical, of 
 form alike yet different, with face dull in 
 brutishness. If the soul does not conquer, 
 the body will. If the body conquers it 
 dooms the soul to base subjection. If the 
 soul conquers, the body follows its leadership 
 into new life. The one is discord, the other 
 harmony. It is only in the supremacy of the 
 soul that life can be one, that man can live 
 his life in unity with himself and with the 
 Power that makes for righteousness. 
 
 And which shall be conqueror is a question 
 not so much of original gift as of training. The con- 
 Despite heredity, men are born with possi- ^^®"^e S°^^ 
 bilities of good, and may be educated, phy- 
 sically or morally, to withstand and survive 
 the seeds of ill. The soul may be an athlete 
 or a weakling. Many a man, puny in body, 
 with small gift of physical life, has out- 
 stripped in the race of life his fellows of 
 greater physical strength, by careful and 
 well-willed development of a weak physique. 
 So also has the soul choice. It may put itself 
 287 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 in line with the forces of good, or let itself 
 go with the current of evil. It may be edu- 
 cated, developed, quickened ; or it may be 
 dulled, stunted, deadened. There must be 
 training of the soul, by the exercise of spir- 
 itual powers, lest there be atrophy of the 
 man spiritual. It is sometimes true that the 
 uplifting of the soul requires the crucifixion 
 of the flesh — the eternal parable of the 
 Cross. The waters of sensuality drown 
 darkly the breath of spiritual life. Educa- 
 tion is therefore a duty toward the soul. 
 This the modern man too often forgets. 
 The uplift- Being good, godly, to his fellow-man, he 
 ing Spirit neglects to be good, or godly, within himself. 
 Non-godliness, not ungodliness, is the con- 
 dition of present-day living. But the exer- 
 cises of religion are a vital part of life. In 
 some form, the Sabbath, the Bible, worship, 
 prayer, or their equivalents, belong with every 
 well-ordered man and nation. Altruism may 
 forget self, but self should not be forgotten. 
 We owe a duty to ourselves, within ourselves, 
 as well as without ourselves to our fellow- 
 man. Religion redeems not destroys self. 
 And the higher life uplifts the body itself 
 into its most perfect wholeness and peace. 
 Thus the higher and the lower motives con- 
 288 
 
OF RELIGION 
 
 join in the great unity that makes for right- 
 eousness. And whether we think only of the 
 life that now is, or also of the life that is to 
 come, whether the pathway of being seems 
 to any one of us to lead to the shut or to the 
 open door, it is in the supremacy of the 
 higher man, in the fulfillment of the supreme 
 art of life, that life on earth is indeed worth 
 the living. 
 
 289 
 
THE END 
 
THE END 
 
 \0 what purposed end is a human 
 being, are human lives, devel- The Pur- 
 oped through education, trained P°^^ °^ ^'^® 
 by business, organized as gov- 
 ernment, inspired with religion ? 
 " To the glory of God " was the easy but eva- 
 sive answer of the old theology — though it 
 counted more souls damned than elected. 
 The glory of God we now see to be the good 
 of man. If the balance of human living, of 
 all human lives, is not for good, for right, for 
 happiness in the high sense, there is no God, 
 or He is not Good, or He has not Power — 
 this cry Humanity, whatever its creed, utters 
 in its heart of hearts. Thus a human life, 
 overwhelmed by a fate which it may have in- 
 vited or which may have been brought upon 
 it by others, is minded to " curse God and 
 die," save as, with the eye of faith, seeing its 
 present sacrifice in a too narrow environment 
 or in the interests of the larger life, it looks 
 toward a life to come in which each, among 
 all, shall see Good. The arts of life find their 
 flower and fruit in human character — the The End of 
 end of life is a man. Youth builds toward ^'^^ ^ ^^"^ 
 age : " the best is yet to be." What through 
 293 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 the years that are told a man has become, 
 what he is in himself, what he is to his fellow- 
 men, this is the test of life. The artist of 
 the Beautiful should find in Himself his Mas- 
 ter-work. And character, within, finds expres- 
 sion in brotherhood, without. Through men, 
 living, loving, Man has fulfillment. "Hu- 
 manity," said Kant, " is an end, never a 
 means merely." " Thou shalt love thy neigh- 
 bor as thyself," said the Christ. To-day the 
 whole world is become our neighbor, and 
 character, in the individual, is fulfilled finally 
 in the brotherhood of humanity. 
 
 The ideal of life, though voiced in many 
 Ideal and languages and from many lands, has likeness 
 Aim ^"^ throughout humanity, for it patterns good and 
 seeks communion with God. But the work- 
 ing aim of men is variant with time and 
 place and class. The ideal may be God, the 
 aim Mammon. In true living, the working 
 aim should mate the professed ideal, since 
 in all true relations fact and theory, deed and 
 creed, conform. Week-day work and rest- 
 day prayer should be to the same end. The 
 proverbial deacon of the olden time, who 
 sanded the sugar six days in the week and 
 led in prayer the seventh, is in our day 
 294 
 
THE END 
 
 the " trustee " who pursues money or power 
 or pleasure, selfishly and unscrupulously, 
 through the week, and from an expensive 
 pew, by which he " supports the church," 
 "professes religion," that is, the highest 
 character, on Sunday. This is the man in 
 high places, not always conscious of his 
 essential hypocrisy, who to-day prejudices 
 against Christianity, as organized in the 
 churches, the masses who because of him 
 no longer go to church. This contradiction 
 of life-service and lip-service of our day is the 
 same scandal rebuked by Christ in his time, 
 and it must be swept from churches by their 
 own public opinion if the churches are to 
 keep Christian. When a man, a nation, 
 preaches good and pursues evil, prates peace, 
 and makes war, de-moralization brings surely 
 its dire results. For morals is the ad-just- 
 ment of practice with profession, and from 
 immorality de-rangement and dissolution are 
 sure to come. 
 
 In the actualities of human living, three 
 great classes of motives have their resultant The three 
 — the motives of self-interest, the motives of f^^^^ ^°" 
 the common-weal, the motives of the higher 
 life. These correspond with Aristotle's divi- 
 sions of economics, politics, ethics. But mod- 
 295 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 ern thought has discerned that these motives 
 do not, in true living, act separately and dis- 
 cordantly in different fields, but simultane- 
 ously and in unison in the general field of hu- 
 man action. Laws as well as men interact and 
 are interdependent. "Morals precede and 
 dominate economics, as they precede and dom- 
 inate politics and ethics." " Hear, O Israel, 
 the Lord thy God is One God," is a truth 
 throughout all Nature and all thought. Unity 
 dominates, precedes, directs all. And in this 
 Unity, all that is has Union, and should have 
 Unison in united aim. Thus the aim of a 
 man, the end of the personal life, should be 
 to produce that character which, through the 
 social life, contributes most to the well-being 
 of Man. All the arts of life conjoin in the 
 making of man, and throughout every rela- 
 tion of man with man should show their per- 
 fect work. 
 
 In this sense, each relation of a man be- 
 Society yond himself is seen to be vital ; casual rela- 
 tions are causal. Society is as a broad ocean, 
 the common meeting-ground of men, where 
 ship meets ship, signals, and passes on ; 
 where all roads cross ; where the stranger is 
 for the moment the neighbor. On the road, 
 296 
 
THE END 
 
 in the exchange, wherever men meet in 
 groups, signals cross and character should 
 take occasion to show its colors. The draw- 
 ing-room and the dinner-table gather ships' 
 companies for the hour's voyage, who come 
 together and go apart. Mostly the ships 
 drift, and so their companies ; relations, being 
 casual, seem trivial. In our hours of ease, 
 we prefer to float with the tide, to let the 
 sails droop and the rudder go. The man is 
 rare who masters social relations and gets 
 the treasures from the cargo ; the woman is 
 rare who can induce people not only to give 
 but to want the best in society. Yet even 
 in the chance relationships, the artist of life 
 finds flash of opportunity. 
 
 Friendship is the mutual relation by which 
 two human beings give and take each of the Friendship 
 other in a true fellowship. It is the immedi- 
 ate type of the larger fulfillment of human 
 brotherhood. " I have called you friend " is 
 the highest compliment. But how many are 
 the degrees of friendship — how various its 
 processes — at how few or how many points 
 can friends touch ! There are friends with 
 whom we are heart's brother at first sight, at 
 touch of hand, at instant exchange of thought, 
 yet in complete recognition of an eternal 
 297 
 
a Friend 
 
 THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 relationship; there are those with whom 
 relations are of slow growth, but then endur- 
 ing and rounded ; there are those with whom 
 we make contact only in this phase or that 
 The Use of mood of ourselves or of them. The use of 
 a friend is to supplement and complement 
 us — to strengthen us in our strength, by 
 doubling native resolution, to buttress us 
 where we are weak, by ranging another soul 
 alongside in support of us, to uplift and sus- 
 tain us on the high plane of our best endeavor. 
 A man is entitled from his friend to sympa- 
 thy and support for the best that is in him, 
 and he must give in return ; otherwise friend- 
 ship is a poor thing and of no avail. Thus 
 two are more than twice one, in that spirit- 
 ual mechanics which is above mathematics. 
 How much to make England great came 
 from the friendship of Bright and Cobden ! 
 Yet how often, in our disregard of the arts 
 of life, do we fail to give of our best to our 
 friend, or get from him of his best — how 
 often do we let relationship degenerate into 
 dull routine of commonplace ! All art requires 
 effort, all work of the artist personal and pur- 
 posed exertion, — it is only machinery that 
 can grind out, without fresh impulse, its dull 
 product. 
 
 298 
 
THE END 
 
 For that true and pure relation between a 
 man and woman, which adds to friendship Friendship 
 the charm of sex, which is more than friend- ^^^°s^ ^®^ 
 ship and less than love, we have no name, 
 because it hovers forever between both and 
 cannot in itself be defined. For friendship 
 is the final and settled and abiding relation 
 within sex, between man and man, between 
 woman and woman, and love the like relation 
 across sex, between the one man and the one 
 woman. It is the aim of nature that one 
 man should be joined to one woman, in love, 
 whose fruition is the future ; but it seems 
 also an aim of nature that the subtle influ- 
 ence of sex, which adds something of charm 
 and delight in every relation of life, should 
 not be denied its more general outworking in 
 the making of the present, in the unfolding 
 of the woman, in the uplifting of the man. 
 But because Nature, with this motive of pro- 
 viding surely for a future race, has so kneaded 
 into ordinary human clay the lower passion 
 and the higher glory, because this relation is 
 a borderland of twilight, there is in it also 
 the danger of twilight, the confusion of 
 paths. It is only by open-eyed and clear- 
 sighted vision that this difficult path, the 
 nearest to the supreme relation and in some 
 299 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 ways enlightening even beyond the every-day 
 closeness of married life, can be rightly and 
 safely followed. It is a path between the 
 heights of love and the precipices of pas- 
 sion ; it may lead upward or downward ; but 
 walked in trueness and high purpose, its de- 
 nials and limitations are in themselves devel- 
 opment. 
 
 Marriage In the supreme relation between one man 
 
 and one woman, toward which all Nature 
 prepares, the home is founded and the future 
 has birth. The marriage customs of a crude 
 social state, marriage by capture, by pur- 
 chase, through the negotiations of parents, 
 or the machinations of the marriage-broker, 
 polygamy and concubinage, as told us in the 
 older portions of our own Bible, still survive, 
 alas, as in the marriage of an American for- 
 tune with a foreign title or in relations po- 
 litely veiled from formal recognition. But 
 more and more, despite the conventional 
 form of our marriage ceremony, marriage has 
 become the mutual pledge and self-betrothal 
 of the man and the woman, in equal relations, 
 each to the other all in all, for a union abid- 
 ing and supreme, essentially religious be- 
 cause of its up-reaching into the higher life, 
 300 
 
THE END 
 
 and its out-reaching into the eternity of the 
 future. 
 
 In the quickening moment of a true es- 
 pousal, all things seem possible in a new Fulfillment 
 world to which marriage is the portal. Yet Rg^aSon""^ 
 how often the spiritual passion also cools 
 from its divine and creative ardor, the mo- 
 ment of exaltation does not abide in move- 
 ment of spiritual mutuaUty, the emotion 
 lacks fulfillment in motion onward, and man 
 and wife descend too soon from the mount 
 of transfiguration to the dull grind of daily 
 routine, and in " the * of course ' of married 
 life" the quickened again become dead. 
 Here also supreme and abiding achievement 
 can be had only by high and continuing en- 
 deavor. All that all arts of life can bring 
 into lives should come together and find ful- 
 fillment in this supreme relation, — and this 
 can be accomplished only by conscious and 
 purposed and supreme effort, in a loyalty of 
 love which, unsparing of self, reaches by the 
 divine law of reward the highest self -develop- 
 ment and the noblest outward fruition. 
 
 And thus comes the ideal home, that little 
 heaven below, where in happy relations of The ideal 
 parent and child, of brother and sister, all ^°"°® 
 arts of life have their origin, as the new lives 
 301 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 unfold their petals one by one in the garden 
 of a new Eden, the potentiality of an earthly 
 paradise, from which love has cast out the 
 serpent of evil. The home is ever the new cen- 
 ter from which circle out the widening waves 
 that go on and outward forever. It is the 
 microcosm making in radiant multiplication 
 the macrocosm. Here, in little, the develop- 
 ment of the race is reflected and prophesied. 
 From the patriarchal government of the par- 
 ents, out of which proceeds the first educa- 
 tion of the child, there is development into a 
 true commonweal of brothers and sisters, a 
 democracy in which each respects the rights 
 and regards the interests of each other, 
 throughout those little affairs of child-life, 
 large indeed in the closeness of perspective, 
 in which there should be a competition of co- 
 operation in happy harmony, and from which 
 naturally proceeds an ethical and religious evo- 
 lution as justice is fulfilled and transcended 
 by love. 
 
 Charity, in our modern speech, is the rela- 
 
 Charity tion recognizing in those not otherwise in 
 
 relation with us, the needs of our common 
 
 humanity. It is a sad evidence of failures in 
 
 our civilization that the beautiful Greek word 
 
 302 
 
THE END 
 
 which means grace and love, suggests to us 
 organized surveillance against fraud, and re- 
 lief works in mitigation of pauperism. Love 
 is heart-to-heart, charity has come to be at 
 arm's length. Yet it must be seen that love 
 cannot do as it would, without increasing the 
 very ill it would relieve. It meets a woman 
 shivering in the street, with a half-clad baby 
 in her arms, appealing only by her silent mis- 
 ery, and it cries out against the self-restraint 
 "charity" would impose, in deferring help 
 until it can be given with knowledge. And 
 then it learns that money, or fuel, or food, 
 would but make worse a hell in which the 
 offspring of drunkenness or vice is mal- 
 treated or exposed in the hope of thus appeal- 
 ing, without audible beggary, to those whose 
 tender hearts prompt instant help. Thus in 
 the development of the social organization, 
 making on the whole for good, has come the 
 need for personal self-restraint in impulses of 
 love, and the necessity in these transitional 
 times for large and far-reaching organization 
 to mitigate the ills which have come with the 
 good. Crime exists, and must be punished ; Pre-yention 
 pauperism exists, and must be pre-vented for 
 the future. The human feeling requires us 
 to assure to the wrong-doers, and to the de- 
 303 
 
 of 111 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 pendent, every help that can be given to 
 them ; but they cannot rightly be encouraged 
 to propagate their kind or to propagate the 
 conditions that have made their kind. Life 
 may not be made '* easy " for those of moral 
 or physical dis-ease. But this renunciation of 
 the human impulse, lest it be inhuman in its 
 results, lays upon society, upon the thinking 
 and prosperous classes, a higher and greater 
 responsibility. It affords no excuse to the 
 smug Pharisee, content not to be as other 
 men are. The social organization must set 
 itself to remove the causes and better the 
 conditions out of which disease has sprung, 
 and has meantime its deepest and greatest 
 problem in redeeming and resurrecting into 
 quickened life these brothers, dwellers among 
 the dead. Each man is called to be a Re- 
 deemer of men. 
 
 The human and humane sympathy for 
 The Domi- those who suffer, the recognition of the trials 
 of human life, and the ills that beset human 
 living, the " success " in the narrow sense of 
 evil-doers, leads some, in these days, to im- 
 peach the Present as lacking a Power that 
 makes for righteousness. This is the supreme 
 impeachment of a divine order. The old 
 304 
 
 nance of 
 Good 
 
THE END 
 
 atheism, denying God, is of the past. The 
 atheism of to-day is the Winding pessimism 
 which cannot see the good dominant amidst 
 the evils and denies to God present rule in 
 His world; the practical atheists are those, 
 preachers of religion though they be, who 
 would have civilization "not mended but 
 ended," and would replace evolution by revo- 
 lution. But it is as false to cry that whatever 
 is, is wrong, as it is fatuous to believe that 
 whatever is, is right. The true prophet, he 
 of the larger vision, sees through the mists 
 and clouds to the ever-shining sun, and is 
 the Way-shower through darkness into light. 
 He may not falter in his belief in the rule of 
 right and the high destiny of man. 
 
 At the last, then, a man, studying and 
 practicing the arts of life, knows himself as a The End of 
 part of Man, an essential and integral unit and Liie'^'*^ °^ 
 factor in the Universe, the master- work of 
 Nature, the agent of God, in every act acting 
 in unison with universal Law. Evolved from 
 the past, from him is to evolve the future. 
 His Now is part of Eternity, and this earth 
 a part of Heaven. The thought of Evolu- 
 tion, opposing itself alike to the doctrines of 
 special creation in nature, of revolution in 
 305 
 
THE ARTS OF LIFE 
 
 society and government, and of instant " con- 
 version " in religion, has become the great 
 light upon God's universe, which, more than 
 any before given to man, gives us knowledge 
 even of the uses of evil and the great hope of 
 the triumphing of good. In this thought, 
 to each of the sons and daughters of men is 
 committed the destiny of Man. This is the 
 End of the Arts of Life. 
 
 306 
 
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