HAPPINESS 
 
 ESSAYS ON THE 
 MEANING OF LIFE 
 BY CARL HILTY 
 
 TRANSLATED 3 BY 
 FRANCIS G.PEABODY
 

 
 HAPPINESS: BY CARL HILTY 
 
 OF CALIF. LIBRARY, LOS ANGELES
 
 HAPPINESS 
 
 ESSAYS ON THE MEANING 
 OF LIFE BY CARL HILTY 
 
 PROFESSOR OF CONSTITUTIONAL LAW 
 UNIVERSITY OF BERN. TRANSLATED BY 
 FRANCIS GREENWOOD PEABODY 
 PROFESSOR OF CHRISTIAN MORALS IN 
 HARVARD UNIVERSITY, CAMBRIDGE 
 
 NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN CO. 
 
 LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., L. 1903
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1903, BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 Set up and electrotyped January, 1903. Reprinted June, 
 October, 1903. 
 
 Norfoooto 
 Berwick fc Smith Co., Norwood, Man., U.S.A.
 
 CONTENTS 
 ESSAY I 
 
 THE ART OF WORK 3 
 
 ESSAY II 
 
 HOW TO FIGHT THE BATTLES OF LIFE 25 
 
 ESSAY III 
 
 GOOD HABITS 45 
 
 ESSAY IV 
 
 THE CHILDREN OF THIS WORLD ARE 
 WISER THAN THE CHILDREN OF LIGHT 6l 
 
 ESSAY V 
 
 THE ART OF HAVING TIME 73 
 
 ESSAY VI 
 
 HAPPINESS 97 
 
 ESSAY VII 
 
 THE MEANING OF LIFE 127 
 
 NOTES 153 
 
 2130559
 
 PREFACE 
 
 Great numbers of thoughtful people are just 
 now much perplexed to know what to make of 
 thefafts of life, and are looking about them for 
 some reasonable interpretation of the modern 
 world. 'They cannot abandon the work of the 
 world, but they are conscious that they have not 
 learned the art of work. They have to fight the 
 battle of life, but they are not sure what weapons 
 are fit for that battle. They are so beset by the 
 cares of living that they have no time for life 
 itself. They observe that happiness often eludes 
 those who most eagerly pursue it; and that the 
 meaning of life is often hidden from those whose 
 way would seem to be most free. To this state of 
 mind hesitating, restless, and dissatisfied, in 
 the world but not content to be of the world 
 the reflections of Professor Hilty, as published 
 in Switzerland and Germany, have already 
 brought much reassurance and composure ; and 
 their message seems hardly less applicable to 
 English and American life. Here also the fever 
 of commercialism threatens the vitality of ideal- 
 ism, and here also the art of life is lost in the 
 pace of living. Religion to a great many edu- 
 cated people still seems, as Bishop Butler wrote 
 in 1736, "not so much as a subjeff of inquiry.
 
 'This seems agreed among persons of discern- 
 ment" ; and a book about religion might still 
 begin with the words which Schleiermacher 
 wrote in 1 806 : " // may well surprise the wise 
 men of this age that any one should still venture 
 to ask their attention for a subject which they 
 have so wholly abandoned." And yet, in regions 
 of experience which no one fails sooner or later 
 to enter , regions of great joy and sorrow , ex- 
 periences of serious duty and bewildering doubts 
 of the meaning of life, many a mind that has 
 seemed to itself to have outgrown religion looks 
 about for a religion that is real. Such a mind 
 will not be satisfied with a left-over faith ; it 
 will not be tempted by an ecclesiastical omni- 
 science. It demands sanity , reserve, wisdom, and 
 insight, a competent witness of the things of the 
 Spirit. This is the state of mind to which this 
 little book is addressed. 'The author makes his ap- 
 peal not to discussion , but to life. He reports the 
 story of a rational experience. He walks with con- 
 fidence because he knows the way. He accepts the 
 saying of Pico della Mirandola: " Philosophia 
 veritatem quaerit, . . . religio possidet" Let us 
 take life, he says, just as it is and must be, and 
 observe that the doors which lead into its inner 
 meaning open only to the key of a reasonable faith. 
 
 VI
 
 // might be fancied that a writer thus de- 
 scribed must be a recluse or mystic, remote from 
 the spirit of the modern world and judging ex- 
 periences which he does not share. Quite the 
 contrary is the f aft. Thephilosophy of life which 
 he teaches is wrought out of large experience, 
 both of academic and political affairs, and that 
 which draws readers to the author is his capa- 
 city to maintain in the midst of important duties 
 of public service an unusual detachment of de- 
 sire and an interior quietness of mind. His short 
 Essays are the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, 
 told in the language of modern life ; the Imita- 
 tion of Christ, expressed with the academic re- 
 serve of a modern gentleman. 
 
 Some years ago I obtained permission from 
 Professor Hilty to translate for English and 
 American readers a few of these Essays which 
 had found such acceptance in Switzerland and 
 Germany ; and the present volume, containing 
 his first series, has been a pleasant occupation 
 of some vacation days. I have found it necessary, 
 however, to use much freedom in dealing with 
 his idiomatic and epigrammatic style, and have 
 perhaps exceeded the legitimate right of a trans- 
 lator in the attempt to reproduce the tone and 
 temper of the author. Nothing, I think, is here 
 
 Vll
 
 which Professor Hilty has not said ; but there 
 are many shifting* of phrase and many rup- 
 tures of German sentences ; and here and there a 
 passage has been omitted which seemed impor- 
 tant to Swiss readers only. The Essay on Epic- 
 tetus, being rather a compilation and review 
 than an illustration of Hilty' s own philosophy 
 of life, is omitted; as are also the copious and 
 discursive footnotes which enrich the original. 
 I trust that these liberties and omissions may 
 not obscure the qualities of Professor Hilty 's 
 mind its insight , sagacity, humor, and de- 
 voutness which no one who has had the privi- 
 lege of his personal acquaintance can recall 
 without affecJion and gratitude. 
 
 FRANCIS G. PEABODY. 
 
 Cambridge, Massachusetts, Oftober 15, 1902. 
 
 Vlll
 
 NOTE 
 
 Carl Hilty was born February 28, 1833, a * 
 Chur, Switzerland. He was a student at Got- 
 f tingen, Heidelberg, London, and Paris; and 
 an advocate at Chur, 18551 874. In 1 874 he 
 was appointed Professor of Constitutional Law 
 (Staats- und Volkerrecht) in the University of 
 Bern, which position he still holds. Since 1 890 
 he has been a member of the Swiss House of 
 Representatives ( Nationalrat) ; and in 1901 
 he was Re El or of the University of Bern. 
 Among his scientific writings may be named the 
 following: Theorists and Idealists of Democ- 
 racy (Theoristen und Idealisten der Demo- 
 kratie), Bern, 1868; Ideas and Ideals of Swiss 
 Politics (Ideen und Ideale schweizerischer 
 Politik), Bern, 1875; Leftures on the Swiss 
 Political System (Vorlesungen uber die Politik 
 derEidgenossenschaft), Bern, 1 879 ; On Capi- 
 tal Punishment (Ueber die Wiedereinfuhrung 
 der Todesstrafe ) , Bern, 1879; ^ e Neutrality 
 of Switzerland (Die Neutralitdt der Schweiz 
 in ihrer heutigen Auffassung), Bern, 1889 
 (French translation by Mentha, 1889^; The 
 Referendum in Switzerland (Das Referen- 
 dum im schweizerischen Staatsrecht), Archiv 
 fur offentliches Recht, 1887; The Boer War 
 
 IX
 
 (Der Burenkrieg), Bern, 1900. He has also 
 been the editor of the Journal of Swiss 'Juris- 
 prudence ( Politisches Jahrbuch der schwei- 
 zerischen Eidgenossenschaft) since 1886. 
 
 In the midst of this scientific activity Pro- 
 fessor Hilty has expressed his inner life through 
 a series of little books issued at intervals dur- 
 ing the last ten years, as follows : Happiness 
 (Cluck), First Series, 1891, Second Series, 
 1895, Third Series, 1898; On Reading and 
 Speaking ( Lesen und Reden), 1891; For 
 Sleepless Nights (Fur schlaflose N'dchte) 
 \~Brief Readings for each Day of the Tear\, 
 1901.
 
 I. THE ART OF WORK
 
 I. THE ART OF WORK 
 
 HE most important of all 
 arts is the art of work; for 
 if one could thoroughly un- 
 derstand this art, all other 
 knowledge and conduct 
 would be infinitely simpli- 
 fied. Few people, however, 
 really know how to work, and even in an 
 age when oftener perhaps than ever before 
 we hear of "work" and "workers" one can- 
 not observe that the art of work makes much 
 positive progress. On the contrary, the gen- 
 eral inclination seems to be to work as little as 
 possible, or to work for a short time in order 
 to pass the remainder of one's life in rest. 
 
 Work and rest are they then aims in 
 life which are positiv ely contradictory ? This 
 must be our first inquiry; for while every 
 one is ready with praise of work, pleasure in 
 work does not always come with the prais- 
 ing. So long as the disinclination to work is 
 so common an evil, indeed almost a disease 
 of modern civilization, so long as every one 
 as soon as possible endeavors to escape from 
 the work which he thus theoretically praises, 
 there is absolutely no hope for any better- 
 ing of our social condition. Indeed, if work 
 and rest were contradictories, our social con- 
 ditions wouldbe wholly beyond redemption. 
 
 3
 
 For every human heart longs for rest. The 
 humblest and least intellectual know the need 
 of it, and in its highest moods, the soul seeks 
 relief from constant strain. Indeed, the im- 
 agination has found no better name for a 
 future and happier existence than a state of 
 eternal rest. If work, then, is necessary, and 
 rest is the cessation of work, then the saying 
 "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat 
 bread" is indeed a bitter curse and this 
 earth is a "vale of tears. "In every generation 
 there are but few who can on such terms be 
 said to lead a worthy or a human life; and 
 even these can do so only by dooming other 
 human beings to the curse of work and by 
 holding these others fast boundin its slavery. 
 It was from this point of view that the an- 
 cient authors pictured the hopeless slavery 
 of the many as the condition under which 
 the few might become free citizens of a civi- 
 lized State; and even in the nineteenth cen- 
 tury, a considerable part of the population of 
 one great nation, with Christian preachers, 
 Bible in hand, directing them, maintained 
 on the field of battle the proposition that one 
 race should be from generation to generation 
 condemned to be the slave of another. Cul- 
 ture, it is said, grows only under conditions 
 of wealth, and wealth only through accumu- 
 lation of capital, and capital only through ac-
 
 cumulation of the work of those who are not 
 justly paid; that is to say, through injustice. 
 
 Such are the conceptions of society which 
 at once confront us as we approach our sub- 
 ject. The following pages are not, however, 
 to be devoted to any profound consideration 
 either of the relative or of the absolute truth 
 of these conceptions. I suggest, at this point, 
 only the obvious truth, that if, not some peo- 
 ple, but all, would work and work faithfully, 
 the "Social Question," as it is called, would 
 be forthwith solved ; and I may add, that by 
 no other means whatever is it likely to be 
 solved. Faithful work, however, is not to 
 be brought about by compulsion. Even if 
 the physical means of universal compulsion 
 were present, no fruitful work would come 
 of it. It is the desire for work which must be 
 kindled in man ; and this brings us back again 
 to consider the principles which may be ap- 
 plied to this desire. 
 
 The desire for work, we must, first of all, 
 admit, cannot be attained by instruction; or 
 even as our daily experience sadly testi- 
 fies by mere example. It must be reached 
 by reflection and experience; and experience 
 thus reflected on will reveal to any serious 
 inquirer the following facts. Rest, such as is 
 desired, is not to be found in complete in- 
 activity of mind or body, or in as little activity 
 
 5
 
 as possible. On the contrary, it is to be found 
 only in well-adapted and well-ordered activ- 
 ity of both body and mind. The whole na- 
 ture of man is created for activity, and Nature 
 revenges herself bitterly on him who would 
 rashly defy this law. Man is indeed driven 
 out of the paradise of absolute rest, and God 
 gives him the command to work, but with 
 the work comes the consolation that work 
 is essential to happiness. 
 
 True rest, therefore, issues from work. 
 Intellectual rest occurs through the percep- 
 tion of fruitful progress in one's work, and 
 through the solving of one's problems. Phy- 
 sical rest is found in those natural intermis- 
 sions which are given by daily sleep and 
 daily food, and the essential and restful pause 
 of Sunday. Such a condition of continuous 
 and wholesome activity, interrupted only 
 by these natural pauses, is the happiest con- 
 dition on earth, and no man should wish for 
 himself any other outward happiness. In- 
 deed, we may go a step farther and add that 
 it does not very much matter what the na- 
 ture of this activity may be. Genuine activ- 
 ity, which is not mere sport, has the property 
 of becoming interesting as soon as a man 
 becomes seriously absorbed in it. It is not 
 the kind of activity which ensures happiness 
 to us; it is the joy of action and attainment. 
 6
 
 The greatest unhappiness which one can ex- 
 perience is to have a life to live without a 
 work to do, and to come to the end of life 
 without its fruit of accomplished work. 
 
 It is, therefore, wholly justifiable to speak 
 of the "right to work." Indeed, it is the 
 most primitive of all human rights. The 
 unemployed are, we must admit, the most 
 unfortunate of people. There are, however, 
 quite as many of these, and perhaps more of 
 them, in what we call the better classes than 
 among what we call the working classes. 
 The latter are driven to work by necessity, 
 while the former, through their mistaken 
 ways of education, their prejudices, and the 
 imperious custom which in certain classes 
 forbids genuine work, find themselves al- 
 most absolutely and by heredity condemned 
 to this great unhappiness. Each year we see 
 them turning their steps with spiritual weari- 
 ness and ennui to the Swiss mountains and 
 health-resorts, from which in vain they an- 
 ticipate refreshment. Once, the summer was 
 enough to give them at least a temporary 
 restoration from their disease of idleness. 
 Now, they have to add the winter also, and 
 soon the fair valleys which they have con- 
 verted into hospitals will be open all the year 
 to a restless throng, ever seeking rest and 
 never finding it, because it does not seek 
 
 7
 
 rest in work. "Six days shalt thou labor," 
 not less and not more, with this prescrip- 
 tion most of the nervous diseases of our time 
 would be healed, except so far as they are 
 an inherited curse from idle ancestors. With 
 this prescription most of the physicians in 
 sanitariums and insane asylums would lose 
 their practice. Life is not given to man to en- 
 joy, but, so far as may be, to use effectively. 
 One who does not recognize this has already 
 lost his spiritual health. Indeed, it is not 
 possible for him to retain even his physical 
 health as he might under conditions of natu- 
 ral activity and reasonable ways of living. 
 The days of our age are threescore years and 
 ten, and some are so strong that they come 
 to fourscore years ; yet though there be labor 
 and sorrow in these years of work, still they 
 have been precious : thus we read the ancient 
 saying. Perhaps, indeed, this was its original 
 meaning. 
 
 We do well, however, to add at once one 
 limitation. Not all work is of equal value, 
 and there is spurious work which is directed 
 to fictitious ends, and work which is itself 
 fictitious in its form. Much, for instance, of 
 the sewing and embroidering done by culti- 
 vated women, much of the parading of sol- 
 diers, much of what is called art, like the use- 
 less drumming on the piano by persons with 
 8
 
 no musical sense, a considerable part of the 
 sportsman's life, and, not least, the time de- 
 voted to keeping one's accounts, all these 
 are occupations of this fictitious nature. A 
 sagacious and wide-awake person must look 
 for something more satisfying than these. 
 Here also is the reason why factory labor, 
 and, in short, all mechanical occupation in 
 which one does but a part of the work, gives 
 meagre satisfaction, and why an artisan who 
 completes his work, or an agricultural la- 
 borer, is, as a rule, much more contented 
 than factory operatives, among whom the 
 social discontent of the modern world first 
 uttered itself. The factory workman sees 
 little of the outcome of his work. It is the 
 machine that works, and he is a part of it. 
 He contributes to the making of one little 
 wheel, but he never makes a whole clock, 
 which might be to him his work of art and an 
 achievement worthy of a man. Mechanical 
 work like this fails to satisfy because it offends 
 that natural consciousness of human worth 
 which the humblest human being feels. On 
 the other hand, the happiest workmen are 
 those who can absolutely lose themselves in 
 their work: the artist whose soul must be 
 wholly occupied with his subject, if he hopes 
 to grasp and reproduce it; the scholar who 
 has no eye for anything beyond his special 
 
 9
 
 task. Indeed, the same thing is to be said of 
 those people whom we call "one-idea-ed" 
 and who have created their own little world 
 within one narrow sphere. All these have 
 at least the feeling sometimes, no doubt, 
 without adequate reason that they are ac- 
 complishing real work for the world; a true, 
 useful, necessary work, which is not mere 
 play ; and many such persons, by this contin- 
 uous, strenuous, and sometimes even phy- 
 sically unhealthy activity, attain great old 
 age, while idle and luxurious men and wo- 
 men of society, who are, perhaps, the least 
 useful and least productive class of the mod- 
 ern world, must devote much of their time 
 to the restoration of their health. 
 
 The first thing, then, for our modern 
 world to acquire is the conviction and expe- 
 rience that well-directed work is the neces- 
 sary and universal condition of physical and 
 intellectual health, and for this reason is the 
 way to happiness. From this it necessarily fol- 
 lows that the idle class is to be regarded, not 
 as a superior and favored class, but as that 
 which they are, spiritually defective and 
 diseased persons who have lost the right 
 principle for the guidance of their lives. As 
 soon as this opinion becomes general and es- 
 tablished, then, and only then, will the better 
 era for the world begin. Until that time, the 
 10
 
 world will suffer from the excessive work 
 of some, balancing the insufficient work of 
 others, and it still remains a question which 
 of these two types is in reality the more un- 
 fortunate. 
 
 Why is it then that these principles to 
 which the experience of thousands of years 
 testifies, which any one, whether he works 
 or does not work, can test for himself, and 
 which ail the religions and philosophies 
 preach have not made their just impres- 
 sion? Why is it, for instance, that there are 
 still thousands of women who "defend with 
 much passion many passages of Bible-teach- 
 ing, and yet, with astonishing composure and 
 in opposition to an express command of the 
 Bible, take one day at the most, or perhaps 
 none at all, for work, and six for refined 
 idleness? All this proceeds in large degree 
 from an irrational division and arrangement 
 of work, which thus ill-arranged may indeed 
 become a positive burden. 
 
 And this brings me back to the title of 
 my Essay. Instruction in the art of work is 
 possible only for him who is already con- 
 vinced of my first proposition, that some 
 work is necessary, and who would gladly give 
 himself to work if it were not that, to his sur- 
 prise, some hindrance confronts him. Yet, 
 work, like every other art, has its ways of 
 
 ii
 
 dexterity, by means of which one may greatly 
 lessen its laboriousness; and not only the 
 willingness to work, but even the capacity 
 to work, is so difficult to acquire that many 
 persons fail of it altogether. 
 
 The first step, then, toward the overcom- 
 ing of a difficulty is in recognizing the dif- 
 ficulty. And what is the difficulty which 
 chiefly hinders work? It is laziness. Every 
 man is naturally lazy. It always costs one an 
 effort to rise above one's customary condi- 
 tion of physical indolence. Moral laziness is, 
 in short, our original sin. No one is naturally 
 fond of work; there are only differences of 
 natural and constitutional excitability. Even 
 the most active-minded, if they yielded to 
 their natural disposition, would amuse them- 
 selves with other things rather than with 
 work. 
 
 Love of work must, therefore, proceed 
 from a motive which is stronger than the mo- 
 tive of physical idleness. And this motive is 
 to be found in either of two ways. It may be 
 a low motive, as, for instance, a passion like 
 ambition or self-seeking, or, indeed, the sense 
 of necessity, as in the preservation of life; or 
 it may be a high motive, like the sense of duty 
 or love, either for the work itself, or for the 
 persons for whom the work is done. The no- 
 bler motive has this advantage, that it is the 
 12
 
 more permanent and is not dependent on 
 the mere success of work. It does not lose 
 its force either through the disheartening 
 effect of failure, or the satisfying effect of 
 success. Thus it happens that ambitious and 
 self-seeking persons are often very diligent 
 workers, but are seldom continuous and 
 evenly progressive workers. They are al- 
 most always content with that which looks 
 like work, if it produce favorable conditions 
 for themselves, although it does nothing of 
 this for their neighbors. Much of our mer- 
 cantile and industrial activity and, alas! 
 we must add, much of the work of scholars 
 and artists has this mark of unreality. 
 
 If, then, one were to give to a young man 
 entering into lifea word of preliminary coun- 
 sel, it would be this: Do your work from a 
 sense of duty, or for love of what you are 
 doing, or for love of certain definite persons : 
 attach yourself to some great interest of hu- 
 man life to a national movement for politi- 
 cal liberty; to the extension of the Christian 
 religion; to the elevation of the neglected 
 classes; to the abolition of drunkenness; to 
 the restoration of permanent peace among 
 the nations; to social reform; to ballot re- 
 form; to prison reform; there are plenty 
 of such causes inviting us to-day; and you 
 will soon discover an impulse proceeding
 
 from these causes to yourself; and in addi- 
 tion you will have what at first is a great 
 help companionship in your work. There 
 should be no young person, man or woman, 
 to-day among civilized nations who is not ac- 
 tively enlisted in some such army of progress. 
 The only means of elevating and strength- 
 ening youth, and training it in perseverance, 
 is this: that early in life one is freed from 
 himself, and does not live for himself alone. 
 Selfishness is always enfeebling, and from it 
 proceeds no work that is strong. 
 
 I go on to remark that the most effective 
 instrument to overcome one's laziness in 
 work is the force of habit. Why should we 
 use this mighty force in the service of our 
 physical nature and not put it to use in our 
 higher life as well? As a matter of fact, one 
 can as well accustom himself to work or to 
 self-control, to virtue, or truthfulness, or 
 generosity, as he can to laziness, or self-in- 
 dulgence, or extravagance, or exaggeration, 
 or stinginess. And this is to be said further 
 that no virtue is securely possessed until 
 it has become a habit. Thus it is that as a 
 man trains himself to the habit of work, the 
 resistance of idleness constantly diminishes 
 until at last work becomes a necessity. When 
 this happens, one has become free from a 
 very great part of the troubles of life.
 
 There remain a few elementary rules with 
 which one can the more easily find his way 
 to this habit of work. And first among such 
 rules is the knowing how to begin. The 
 resolution to set oneself to work and to fix 
 one's whole mind on the matter in hand is 
 really the hardest part of working. When 
 one has once taken his pen or his spade in 
 hand, and has made the first stroke, his 
 whole work has already grown easier. There 
 are people who always find something espe- 
 cially hard about beginning their work, and 
 who are always so busy with preparations, 
 behind which lurks their laziness, that they 
 never apply themselves to their work until 
 they are compelled; and then the intellec- 
 tual and even the physical excitement roused 
 by the sense of insufficient time in which 
 to do one's work injures the work itself. 
 Other people wait for some special inspira- 
 tion, which in reality is much more likely to 
 come by means of, or in the midst of, work 
 itself. It is at least my experience that one's 
 work, while one is doing it, takes on a differ- 
 ent look from that which one anticipated, 
 and that one does not reach so many fruitful 
 and new ideas in his times of rest as he does 
 during the work itself. From all this follows 
 the rule, not to postpone work, or lightly to 
 accept the pretext of physical or intellectual 
 
 15
 
 indisposition, but to dedicate a definite and 
 well-considered amount of time every day 
 to one's work. Then, if the "old man," as 
 St. Paul calls him, is cunning enough to see 
 that he must in any event do some work at a 
 special time and cannot wholly give himself 
 to rest, he may usually be trusted to resolve 
 to do each day that which for each day is 
 most necessary. 
 
 Again, there are a great many men, oc- 
 cupied in intellectual work of a productive 
 kind, who waste their time and lose the hap- 
 piness of work by devoting themselves to the 
 arrangement of their work, or still oftener,to 
 the introduction of their work. As a general 
 rule, no artistic, or profound, or remote in- 
 troduction to one's work is desirable. On the 
 contrary, it usually anticipates unsuitably 
 that which should come later. Even if this 
 be doubted, the advice is at any rate good 
 that one's introduction and one's title should 
 be written last. Thus composed, they com- 
 monly cost no labor. One makes a beginning 
 much more easily when he starts without 
 any preamble, with that chapter of his work 
 with which he is most familiar. For the same 
 reason, when one reads a book, it is well to 
 omit at the first reading the preface and 
 often the first chapter. For my own part, I 
 never read a preface until I have finished a 
 16
 
 book, and I discover, almost without excep- 
 tion, that when, after reading the book, I 
 turn back for a look at the preface, I have 
 lost nothing by omitting it. Of course, it 
 must be said that there are books of which 
 the preface is the best part. Of these, how- 
 ever, it may also be said that they are not 
 worth reading at all. 
 
 And now I may safely take still another 
 step and add, that, with the exception of an 
 introduction to your work or its central treat- 
 ment, it is best to begin with that part which 
 is easiest to you. The chief thing is to begin. 
 One may indeed advance less directly in his 
 work by doing it unsystematically, but this 
 loss is more than made good by his gain of 
 time. Under this head also should be added 
 two other rules. One is the law: "Take no 
 thought for the morrow : for thejmorrow shall 
 take thought for the things of itself." Man 
 is endowed with the dangerous gift of im- 
 agination, and imagination has a much larger 
 realm than that of one's capacity. Through 
 one's imagination one sees his whole work 
 lying before him as a task to be achieved 
 all at once, while his capacity, on the other 
 hand, can conquer its task only by degrees, 
 and must constantly renew its strength. Do 
 your work, then, as a rule, for each day. The 
 morrow will come in its own time, and with 
 
 '7
 
 it will come the strength for the morrow. 
 The second rule is this : In intellectual work 
 one should, indeed, deal with his material 
 thoroughly; but he should not expect: to 
 exhaust his material, so that there shall be 
 nothing further left to say or to read. No 
 man's strength is in these days sufficient for 
 absolute thoroughness. The best principle 
 is to be completely master of a relatively 
 small region of research ; and to deal with 
 the larger inquiries only in their essential fea- 
 tures. He who tries to do too much usually 
 accomplishes too little. 
 
 A further condition of good work is this, 
 that one should not persist in working 
 when work has lost its freshness and plea- 
 sure. I have already said that one may be- 
 gin without pleasure, for otherwise one, as 
 a rule, would not begin at all. But one should 
 stop as soon as his work itself brings fatigue. 
 This does not mean that one should, for 
 this reason, stop all work, but only that he 
 should stop the special kind of work which 
 is fatiguing him. Change in work is almost 
 as refreshing as complete rest. Indeed, with- 
 out this characteristic of human nature, we 
 should hardly accomplish anything. 
 
 Again, in order to be able to do much 
 work, one must economize one's force, and 
 the practical means to this is by wasting no 
 18
 
 time on useless activities. I can hardly make 
 plain how much pleasure and power for work 
 is lost by this form of wastefulness. First of 
 all, among such ways of wasting time should 
 be reckoned the excessive reading of news- 
 papers ; and to this should be added the ex- 
 cessive devotion to societies and meetings. 
 An immense numberof people, for instance, 
 begin their morning, the best time they have 
 for work, with the newspaper, and end their 
 day quite as regularly in some club or meet- 
 ing. They read each morning the whole of 
 a paper, or perhaps of several papers, but 
 it would be hard, as a rule, to savrwhat in- 
 tellectual acquisition remained the next day 
 from such reading. This, at least, is certain, 
 that after one has finished his paper, he ex- 
 periences a certain disinclination for work, 
 and snatches up another paper, if it happen 
 to be within reach. Any one, therefore, who 
 desires to do much work must carefully avoid 
 all useless occupation of his mind, and, one 
 may even add, of his body. He must reserve 
 his powers for that which it is his business 
 to do. 
 
 Finally, and for intellectual work, with 
 which throughout I am specially concerned, 
 there is one last and important help. It 
 is the habit of reviewing, and revising, one's 
 material. Almost every intellectual work is 
 
 '9
 
 at first grasped only in its general outlines, 
 and then, as one attacks it a second time, 
 its finer aspects reveal themselves, and the 
 appreciation of them becomes more com- 
 plete. One's chief endeavor, then, should 
 be, as a famous writer of our day remarks, 
 "not to achieve the constant productiveness 
 which permits itself no pause, but rather to 
 lose oneself in that which one would create. 
 Hence issues the desire to reproduce one's 
 ideal in visible forms. External industry, the 
 effort to grasp one's material and promptly 
 master it, these are, indeed, obvious con- 
 ditions of authorship, but they are of less 
 value than that higher and spiritual industry 
 which steadily works toward an unattained 
 end." 
 
 The conception of work, thus excellently 
 stated, meets a final difficulty which our dis- 
 cussion has already recognized. For work, 
 under this view, maintains continuity, in 
 spite of and even during one's necessary rest. 
 Here is the ideal of the highest work. The 
 mind works continuously, when it has once 
 acquired the genuine industry which comes 
 through devotion to one's task. In fact, it is 
 curious to notice how often, after pauses in 
 one's work not excessively prolonged, one's 
 material has unconsciously advanced. Every- 
 thing has grown spontaneously. Many dif- 
 20
 
 ficulties seem suddenly disposed of, one's 
 first supply of ideas is multiplied, assumes 
 picturesqueness, and lends itself to expres- 
 sion ; so that the renewal of one's work oc- 
 curs with ease, as though it were merely the 
 gathering of fruit which in the interval had 
 ripened without effort of our own. 
 
 This, then, is a second reward of work, in 
 addition to that which one commonly recog- 
 nizes. Only he who works knows what en- 
 joyment and refreshment are. Rest which 
 does not follow work is like eating without 
 appetite. The best, the pleasantest, and the 
 most rewarding and also the cheapest 
 way of passing the time is to be busy with 
 one's work. And as matters stand in the 
 world to-day, it seems reasonable to antici- 
 pate that at the end of our century some so- 
 cial revolution will make those who are then 
 at work the ruling class; just as at the be- 
 ginning of the last century a social revolution 
 gave to industrious citizens their victory over 
 the idle nobility and the idle priests. Wher- 
 ever any social class sinks into idleness, sub- 
 sisting like those idlers of the past on in- 
 comes created by the work of others, there 
 such non-productive citizens again must 
 yield. The ruling class of the future must 
 be the working class. 
 
 21
 
 II. HOW TO FIGHT THE BAT- 
 TLES OF LIFE
 
 II. HOW TO FIGHT THE BAT- 
 TLES OF LIFE 
 
 ANY people in our day 
 even well-intentioned peo- 
 ple have lost their faith 
 in idealism. They regard it 
 as a respectable form of phi- 
 losophy for the education 
 of the young, but as a creed 
 of little use in later life. Theoretically, they 
 say, and for purposes of education, idealism 
 has much to commend it, but, practically, 
 things turn out to be brutally material. Thus 
 such persons divide life into two parts, in 
 one of which we may indulge ourselves in 
 fine theories and sentiments, and, indeed, 
 are to be encouraged in them; and in the 
 other of which we wake rudely from this 
 dream and deal with reality as best we can. 
 Kant, in one of his briefer writings, dealt a 
 hundred years ago with this state of mind. 
 He examined the phrase which was even 
 then familiar: "That may be well enough in 
 theory, but does network in practice"; and 
 he showed that it expressed an absurd con- 
 tradiction unworthy of a thinking being. 
 
 The logical realism of our day, however, 
 is not concerned with theoretical proposi- 
 tions. It turns, on the contrary, to the hard 
 fact of the struggle for existence, in which 
 
 25
 
 indifference to others and absolute self-in- 
 terest are not only permissible, but, as one 
 looks at the real conditions of life, seem more 
 or less positively demanded. These modern 
 realists say: "The world we see about us is 
 one where only a few can succeed and where 
 many must fail. There are not good things 
 enough for all. The question is not whether 
 such a state of things is right or just. On the 
 contrary, it must be admitted to be a hard, 
 unreasonable, unjust universe. It is not for 
 the individual, however, set without consent 
 of his own in such a universe, to change it. 
 His only problem is to make it certain that 
 in such a universe he is f the hammer, not 
 the anvil/' 1 
 
 Such is the essence of that worldly wis- 
 dom which is the creed of many cultivated 
 people to-day. With it disappears, of course, 
 any need of moral or religious education. 
 Such instruction in schools might as well 
 be abandoned. Indeed, Saint-Just made the 
 original suggestion that instead of such in- 
 struction there should be substituted the 
 daily study of the placards posted on the 
 street corners which announce the police 
 regulations of the government as to the con- 
 duct of life. Under such a theory of educa- 
 tion, young people would grow immensely 
 clever and practical. They would be trained 
 26
 
 to get and to keep. They would be free from 
 every sentiment of honor which might be a 
 hindrance in their path. Most of them, it 
 must be confessed, would, early in life, lose 
 physical, intellectual, and moral vigor, and 
 others would lament, perhaps too late, that 
 their youth had been sacrificed to that which 
 was not worth their seeking. At the best, they 
 would acquire but uncertain possessions to 
 be defended daily against a thousand com- 
 petitors, and these possessions would bring 
 bitterness along with them, both to those 
 who have them and to those who have them 
 not. Peace and happiness would be secured 
 to no one. Such seems to be the issue of this 
 view of life which is now so common among 
 us, and which we call the view of the "prac- 
 tical" man. 
 
 But what is idealism? It is, as I under- 
 stand it, a form of faith, an inward convic- 
 tion. It is absolutely necessary for the per- 
 manence of the world; yet it never can be 
 proved true, and indeed for him who has it 
 needs no proof. Further, no one becomes an 
 idealist by being taughtabout it or by reason- 
 ing concerning it. Nor is this so strange as it 
 might seem, for the very trustworthiness of 
 the human reason itself is proved to us only 
 by experience. The very truths of religion re- 
 mainunprovedunless the moral power which 
 
 27
 
 issues from them provides their proof. That 
 which has power must have reality. No other 
 proof of reality is final. Even our senses could 
 not convince us, if our experience and the 
 experience of all other men did not assure 
 us that we could not unconditionally, but 
 under normal conditions trust them not 
 to deceive. That which brings conviction to 
 one is his experience, and that which rouses 
 in him the desire and the inward disposition 
 to believe in his own experience is the testi- 
 mony of others who have had that experi- 
 ence themselves. 
 
 There is a short treatise, written by one 
 who in his youth was a friend of Goethe's, 
 the Russian General von Klinger, which 
 gives its testimony in a few words concerning 
 this idealism in practical life. It may be found 
 in von Klinger's rarely opened works, under 
 the title: "How it is possible without deceit, 
 and even in constant conflict with evil, to 
 overcome the world." Its contents are sim- 
 ply a series of weighty aphorisms, of which 
 I select a few: 
 
 "First of all," says von Klinger,"onewho 
 would overcome the world must give up 
 thinking of what people call happiness, and 
 must with all his might, without indirect- 
 ness, or fear, or self-seeking, simply do his 
 duty. He must, that is to say, be pure in 
 28
 
 mind and heart, so that none of his actions 
 shall be stained by selfishness. Where jus- 
 tice and right-dealing are called for, there 
 must be in him no distinction of great or 
 small, of significant or insignificant. . . . 
 
 "Secondly, for the protection of his own 
 strength and his purity of conduct, he must 
 be free from the desire to shine, free from the 
 shallowness of vanity and the restless search 
 for fame and power. Most human follies 
 proceed from the restlessness of ambition. 
 Ambition demoralizes both those whom it 
 masters and those through whom it accom- 
 plishes its ends. The boldest and most can- 
 did criticism does not wound so deeply as 
 does the foolish longing for praise. . . . 
 
 "Again, one who is thus pure in motive 
 will permit himself to be conspicuous only 
 when and where his duty demands it. For 
 the rest, he will live a life of seclusion in his 
 family, with few friends, among his books, 
 and in the world of the spirit. Thus heavoids 
 that conflict with others about trifles which 
 to many persons are of such absorbing con- 
 cern. One may be pardoned for eccentricity 
 in such affairs by having no place at all 
 among them. His life does not touch the 
 circle of society, and he asks of society only 
 to let him do his duty, and then to be per- 
 mitted to live in peace. It may be that he 
 
 29
 
 will thus stir others to envy or to hate, but 
 it will be an envy and hate too petty for ex- 
 pression, or at any rate ineffective for harm. 
 He who has thus withdrawn from trifles gets 
 much out of life. Indeed, he gets more than 
 he expects and more than he has intended; 
 for he finally gains that which men in its 
 coarser sense call happiness. . . . 
 
 "To all this," says von Klinger, "I add 
 another point: that one must withhold him- 
 self from all ambition to pose as a reformer 
 and from all signs of that desire. He must 
 not enter into controversy about opinions 
 with people who have nothing but opinions. 
 He must speak of himself only to himself 
 and think of himself only in himself. . . . 
 I have developed," concludes von Klinger, 
 "my own character and my own inner ex- 
 perience as my power and disposition have 
 permitted; and so far as I have done this se- 
 riously and honestly, so far has come to me 
 of itself what men call happiness and pros- 
 perity. I have observed myself more deeply 
 than others and dealt with myself more un- 
 sparingly than with others. I have never 
 played a part, never felt inclined thereto, 
 and have ever expressed the convictions I 
 have reached without fear, and have held 
 them fast, so that I now no more fear the 
 possibility of being or doing other than my 
 
 30
 
 convictions demand. One is safe from the 
 temptations of others only when one can no 
 more tempt himself. I have borne many re- 
 sponsibilities, but at the conclusion of each 
 I have passed the rest of my time in the 
 profoundest solitude and the most complete 
 obscurity." 1 ^ 
 
 The author of these weighty aphorisms 
 was dealing especially with political life. He 
 does not seek for them any philosophical 
 basis. He offers them simply as the result 
 of his stirring and often adventurous career, 
 and as such his testimony is far more valu- 
 able than if it had issued from the closet of 
 a philosopher or a theologian who had slight 
 contact with practical affairs. It is not my in- 
 tention to translate these suggestions into 
 abstract form and make them less real and 
 persuasive. I only desire to annotate them 
 with a few practical comments. 
 
 I. Concerning von Klinger's first propo- 
 sition, it is to be said that true idealism is 
 not the deceiving of oneself concerning re- 
 ality, or the intentional ignoring of reality, 
 or the hiding from reality, or the creating 
 for oneself a world of unreality. Idealism, 
 on the contrary, is reached by a deeper in- 
 terpretation of the world, by victory over it 
 and especially by victory over oneself. For 
 we, too, are an integral part of the world and 
 
 3 1
 
 we cannot conquer the whole unless, first 
 of all, we conquer our own part of it, by 
 strength of principles and force of habit. 
 Hence issues that right judgment of suc- 
 cess which von Klinger lays down. One of 
 our own contemporaries, Thiers, a man who 
 had in high degree attained success, and who 
 at certain points in his life pursued it with 
 excessive zeal, once made this striking re- 
 mark: " Men of principle need not succeed. 
 Success is necessary only to schemers." In 
 other words, agenuine victory over the world 
 is not to be achieved through that kind of 
 success which the French call succes, and 
 which for many men makes the end of effort. 
 He who plays this game of ambition may 
 as well abandon the hope of peace of mind 
 or of peace with others, and in most cases 
 he must forfeit outright his self-respect. 
 
 Real success in life, then, the attainment 
 of the highest human perfection and of true 
 and fruitful activity, necessarily and repeat- 
 edly involves outward failure. Success, to 
 von Klinger, means an honorable career 
 with victory at its close. The work of life is 
 regarded in its wholeness, as a brave and 
 honorable man should wish and hope it to 
 be. Unbroken success is necessary only for 
 cowards. Indeed, one may go further and 
 say that the secret of the highest success in 
 
 32
 
 important affairs often lies in failure. The 
 men who have most completely commanded 
 the admiration of the world, and who are 
 most conspicuous in history, are not those 
 who have reached the goal of life through 
 success alone. Caesar and Napoleon would 
 have been remembered only as examples 
 of tyranny if it had not been for Brutus, 
 Waterloo and St. Helena. The Maid of 
 Orleans would be recalled as a masterful 
 woman like many others had it not been 
 for her martyrdom. Hannibal would be no 
 noble example if Carthage had conquered. 
 A traitor like Charles I. of England is still 
 held in high honor by many persons who 
 cannot endure the memory of the most he- 
 roic character in modern history, Crom- 
 well. Had Cromwell died on the scaffold 
 and Charles on the throne, this estimate of 
 them would have been reversed. The life of 
 the Emperor Frederick III. is another ex- 
 ample and will be a still more impressive 
 one as the better future looks back on it. 
 The greatest example of all, the cross, the 
 gallows of its time, became for all the world 
 a sign of honor and subdued to itself the 
 power of Rome. Looking at Christianity 
 in a wholly human and untheological way, 
 one may believe that its unexampled suc- 
 cess would not have been possible if the 
 
 33
 
 scholars and scribes of that day had wel- 
 comed it. Something of such failure comes 
 with all right ways of life. Without it, life 
 sinks in the rut of commonplace. This kind 
 of failure should not bear the common re- 
 proach of misfortune. It is, on the contrary, 
 the crown of thorns which marks the way 
 of the cross, and proves to be the true crown 
 after all. 
 
 II. Concerning the second aphorism of 
 von Klinger's there is this to add: that no 
 self-seeking person ever reaches the end he 
 most desires. It is surprising to see what one 
 may accomplish when he gives his attention 
 and energy wholly to the doing of one thing. 
 Examples of this kind of success meet us at 
 every turn. What these persons at heart de- 
 sire, however, is not the wealth, or honor, or 
 power, or learning which they reach. They 
 prize these possessions only as the neces- 
 sary prerequisites for happiness. What is it, 
 then, of which they must first of all be con- 
 vinced? It is the truth that happiness does 
 not come through these possessions, that, in 
 fa6t, these possessions are likely to bring un- 
 happiness. When this conviction is attained, 
 then, at last, the self-seeking spirit will per- 
 haps abandon its aim. 
 
 Of all self-seekers, the most unfortunate 
 are to be found among the educated. When 
 
 34
 
 they stand on the lower rung of the ladder 
 which they wish to climb, they are consumed 
 by envy of those above them; and of all the 
 emotions which degrade a man in his own 
 eyes the most humiliating is envy. When, 
 on the other hand, they have climbed to the 
 top, then they are distressed by the constant 
 fear of those who are climbing toward them 
 and whose thoughts and purposes they well 
 know from their own experience. If they seek 
 safety by surrounding themselves by flatter- 
 ers, then they are never safe from betrayal ; 
 for if they seem likely to fall, no one cares 
 to hold them up. If, finally, they shut their 
 ears to these disturbing voices within their 
 hearts and give themselves to self-indul- 
 gence, then they lose the very qualities which 
 are most essential to success. 
 
 Besides all this, the chances of success for 
 the self-seeker are slight. Not one in ten at- 
 tains what he desires, and, even of those 
 whom we call fortunate, few should be so 
 reckoned until they die. It is not necessary to 
 cite examples of such failure. The daily paper 
 reports them to us every morning. Long ago 
 one of the prophets of Israel described this 
 unsatisfying result of life and effort in classic 
 words which we may well repeat: "Ye have 
 sown much, and bring in little ; ye eat, but ye 
 have not enough ; ye drink, but ye are not 
 
 35
 
 filled with drink; ye clothe you, but there is 
 none warm ; and he that earneth wages earn- 
 eth wages to put it into a bag with holes." 
 
 Still further, nothing is so exhausting as 
 this self-seeking effort. The passion which it 
 develops is like an access of fever which burns 
 away one's vitality. The strength of health, 
 on the other hand, renews itself through self- 
 forgetting work; and thrives on unselfish 
 service done for worthy ends. Only in such 
 service are other people sincerely inclined 
 to help. Thus it happens that some people, 
 though they work hard and never retire to 
 the health-resorts, still live to a robust old 
 age, while other people spend half the year 
 or perhaps the whole of it at the baths and 
 remain without rest. The many nervous dis- 
 eases of our time are for the most part caused 
 by the self-centred life, and their real cure 
 must be through a renewal in health of mind 
 and will. 
 
 III. As to von Klinger's third suggestion, 
 it is to be said that the inclination to soli- 
 tude is absolutely necessary not only for 
 happiness, but for the tranquil development 
 of one's spiritual life. The happiness which 
 can really be attained, and which is indepen- 
 dent of all changes, is to be found in a life 
 given to great thoughts and in a work peace- 
 fully directed toward great ends. Such a 
 
 36
 
 life is, however, necessarily withdrawn from 
 fruitless sociability. As Goethe says, "To 
 such a life, all else is vanity and illusion." 
 It is by such a course of life that one by de- 
 grees escapes from the fickleness and moodi- 
 ness of life. He learns not to take people too 
 seriously. He comes to regard with tranquil- 
 lity the shifting changes of opinions and in- 
 clinations. So far as his inclination goes and 
 his duties permit,he would rather shun popu- 
 larity than seek it. 
 
 IV. As to the last of von Klinger's para- 
 graphs, it may be said to contain the philo- 
 sophy of his life. Looking at people as 
 individuals, their lives appear full of con- 
 trasts; but taking them all together, their 
 lives are in fad: much alike. One section of 
 humanity, of high and of low estate, lives 
 either consciously or unconsciously a merely 
 animal life. Such persons simply follow the 
 path which their physical nature indicates, 
 fulfilling their little span of life, and know- 
 ing no other destiny. Another group is ever 
 seeking some escape from this unsatisfying 
 end of life. Dante, in the first canto of his 
 Divine Comedy, very beautifully describes 
 these seekers for the better life; and this 
 search makes in reality the spiritual experi- 
 ence of all great personalities. 
 
 The first step in this way of life is taken 
 
 37
 
 when one becomes discontented with life as 
 it is and longs for something better. One's 
 reason seeks an outlet from the labyrinth of 
 the world and at last from sheer weariness 
 resolves, at any cost, to forsake the world's 
 ways and to seek peace. When one has come 
 to this resolution, then he is on the way to 
 salvation, and experiences that inner happi- 
 ness which one gains who has found at last 
 the way he ought to go. And, indeed, this 
 man is essentially saved ; for he is now open 
 to the unhindered influences of new spiritual 
 forces, against which in his early life his will 
 had set itself. 
 
 Yet, as a matter of fad, he is only ready 
 for his second step. It is the long conflict for 
 supremacy between what the Apostle calls 
 "the old and the new man." Both of them 
 are in him still and his problem is to realize 
 the " new man " and bring it to fulness of life. 
 Many people who are striving for the better 
 life come to this second step and stay there 
 all their days; and this is the reason why so 
 many lives which are rightly directed still 
 give the impression of imperfection, and 
 why they do not seem to contribute much 
 though often more than we think to 
 the ennobling of human relationships. 
 
 There remains the third step of spiritual 
 growth, which, once fairly taken, leads to 
 
 38
 
 the complete interpretation of life. It is the 
 stage of practical activity, the participating 
 in the creation of a spiritual kingdom. Some- 
 times it has been likened to the taking part 
 in a great work of architecture, sometimes to 
 the enlistment in an active war. Nothing less 
 than this life of unselfish service can bring 
 to the individual true content. So long as 
 one lives for himself and is considering, even 
 in the highest and noblest way, his own self- 
 culture, there lingers in him some taint of 
 his original selfishness, or, at best, he but 
 half sees his way. As Goethe has expressed 
 it: "While one strives, he errs." This self- 
 directed effort must, at last, cease. Nothing 
 is more untrue, nothing is more fundamen- 
 tally disheartening, than the maxim of Les- 
 sing which so many have admired, accord- 
 ing to which endless effort after truth is to 
 be preferred to the possession of the truth. 
 One might as well say that endless thirst, 
 or endless cold, was more acceptable than 
 the finding of a refreshing fountain or the 
 warmth of the quickening sun. 
 
 Here then, in this attitude of life, removed 
 from religious or philosophical restlessness, 
 is the path to continuous inward peace and 
 power. It leads, first of all, to humility and 
 to freedom from self-complacency. It is pos- 
 sible to hold to this path through the midst 
 
 39
 
 of all natural ills; it is the best way that life 
 has to offer. What the happiness is which 
 one then finds is hard to communicate to an- 
 other. It comes of ceasing to think first of all 
 of oneself. It has, as Rothe says, "no private 
 business to transact." It does its work tran- 
 quilly, with absolute certainty that, though 
 the issue of its work may be unrecognized, 
 still it is secure. This way of life brings with 
 it courage, and this courage manifests itself, 
 not in feverish excitement, but in an out- 
 ward habit of composure which testifies to 
 inward and central stability. Such a life trusts 
 its way and its destiny. Outward experiences 
 and the judgments of other men have no 
 power to move it. It is, perhaps, not essential 
 that in the education of youth these truths 
 should be urgently pressed, for they may 
 easily appear visionary and in such a mat- 
 ter all appearance of obscurity and unreality 
 is to be deplored. God permits only high- 
 minded souls, like von Klinger, fully to at- 
 tain this way of life. 
 
 We need not discuss whether all this 
 should be called idealism a name which 
 would drive many clever people from its ac- 
 ceptance. Whatever it may be named, it is a 
 faith which has brought to those who have 
 confidently given themselves to it greater in- 
 ward peace than is found in any more familiar 
 40
 
 creed. It needs but slight observation of life 
 or of history to be convinced of this. And 
 yet, I fear, most of my readers may be more 
 inclined to say with King Agrippa: "Almost 
 thou persuadest me," little as Agrippa prof- 
 ited by the success he attained. 
 
 A German poet sums up the richness 
 of this spiritual peace, which men like von 
 Klinger exhibit, in lines which I thus slightly 
 adapt: 
 
 " Outward life is light and shadow. 
 Mingled wrong and struggling right. 
 But within the outward trouble 
 Shines a healing, inward light. 
 
 Not to us may come fulfilment, 
 Not below our struggles cease, 
 Yet the heavenly vision gives us, 
 Even here, an inward peace"
 
 III. GOOD HABITS
 
 III. GOOD HABITS 
 
 HE most important experi- 
 ence which, sooner or later, 
 meets every thoughtful per- 
 son, both in his own intel- 
 lectual development and in 
 his observation of others, is 
 this, that every act, and, 
 indeed, every definite thought, leaves behind 
 it an inclination which is like a material in- 
 fluence, and which makes the next similar 
 thought, or act, easier, and the next dissimi- 
 lar thought, or act, more difficult. This is the 
 curse of evil conduct, that it ever brings 
 forth more evil conduct; and this too is the 
 sure and chief reward of good conduct, 
 that it strengthens the tendency to good 
 and makes permanent what has been gained. 
 Here is the solemn and tragic fact which lies 
 behind all human life, that what we have 
 once done we can never change. There it 
 remains, just as it happened, little as we may 
 be inclined to believe, or to admit, that it 
 is there. And hence it is that history truly 
 written is no entertaining drama, ending in 
 general reconciliation and embrace, but a 
 tragedy which describes the movement of 
 destiny. 
 
 If, then, one begins thus to take life se- 
 riously, he will soon observe that its main 
 
 45
 
 problem does not concern its thought or 
 its faith, still less any outward confession 
 which may leave the soul within quite undis- 
 turbed. The real problem of life is simply 
 and solely one of habit, and the end of all 
 education should be to train people to incli- 
 nations toward good. To choose discreetly 
 between good and evil is not always prac- 
 ticable, for human passions are sometimes 
 too strong; but what may be developed is 
 a prompt and spontaneous instinct for the 
 good; and the ideal of human life is one 
 in which all that is good has become sheer 
 habit, and all that is bad is so contrary to 
 nature, that it gives one even a physically 
 perceptible and painful shock. Failing this, 
 all that one calls virtue or piety is but a 
 series of those good intentions with which 
 the path to evil, as to good, may be paved. 
 
 What, then, are the most important of 
 good habits? I propose to name a few, not 
 in any systematic fashion; for of systems of 
 morals the modern world seems to have had 
 more than enough, and it is much more likely 
 to give some attention to purely practical 
 suggestions based on practical experience. 
 
 The first and chief rule seems to be this, 
 
 that one should try rather to cultivate 
 
 good habits than merely negatively to escape 
 
 from bad ones. It is much easier in the inner 
 
 46
 
 life, as in the outer, to attack positively than 
 to repel defensively; for in aggressive con- 
 dud: every success brings joy, while in mere 
 resistance much of one's effort seems to have 
 no positive result. The main point to be 
 gained is the habit of prompt resolution, 
 directed immediately toward action. What 
 Voltaire said of the history of nations is in 
 large degree true of human life: "I have 
 noticed that destiny in every case depends 
 upon the act of a moment." 
 
 The second principle of good habits is 
 fearlessness. Perhaps this is not possible to 
 acquire in a high degree without a strong re- 
 ligious faith. This I will not discuss. It is, at 
 any rate, certain that fear is not only the 
 least agreeable of human emotions, so that 
 one should at any cost conquer it, but that 
 it is also the most superfluous. For fear does 
 not prevent the approach of that which is 
 feared; it only exhausts beforehand the 
 strength which one needs to meet the thing 
 he fears. Most of the things which we fear 
 to meet are not in reality so terrible as they 
 appear to be when looked at from afar. When 
 they meet us, they can be borne. The imagi- 
 nation is inclined to picture evils as more 
 permanent and persistent than they are really 
 to be. If, as one's trouble approached, he 
 should say to himself: "This is likely to last 
 
 47
 
 about three days," one would in many cases 
 be justified by the event, and, at any rate, 
 would proceed to meet the trouble with a 
 better courage. On the whole, the best de- 
 fence against fear which philosophy can pro- 
 vide is the conviction that every fear is a 
 symptom of some wrong condition in our- 
 selves. If one search for that weakness and 
 rid himself of it, then, for the most part, fear 
 will vanish also. 
 
 Beyond this philosophical defence from 
 fear, however, lie certain spiritual conditions 
 of courage. The chief of these is determining 
 for oneself what are the best blessings of life. 
 First of all, one must acquire as soon as pos- 
 sible the habit of preferring the better things 
 to the worse. He must especially abandon 
 the expectation of possessing at the same 
 time different things which are contradic- 
 tory of each other. Here is the secret of fail- 
 ure in many a career. In my opinion, a man 
 may not only freely choose his aims in life, 
 but he may attain all those aims which he 
 seriously and wholly desires, provided that 
 for the sake of this desire he is ready to sur- 
 render all other desires which are inconsist- 
 ent with it. The best possessions one can 
 have in life, and the things which, with rea- 
 sonable sagacity, are the easiest to get, are 
 these : firm moral principles, intellectual dis- 
 48
 
 cipline, love, loyalty, the capacity for work 
 and the enjoyment of it, spiritual and physi- 
 cal health, and very moderate worldly pos- 
 sessions. No other blessings can be compared 
 with these, and some other possessions are 
 inconsistent with these for instance, great 
 wealth, great worldly honor and power, ha- 
 bitual self-indulgence. These are the things 
 which people commonly most desire, and 
 which they very often attain, but they must 
 always be attained through the surrender of 
 the better things. 
 
 One must, therefore,promptlyandunhes- 
 itatingly determine to surrender the desire 
 for wealth, honor, and luxury, and to take 
 in their place other possessions. Without 
 this determination, there can be no religious 
 or philosophical basis of spiritual education. 
 What seems to be spiritual development 
 ends in unreality, vacillation, at last hypo- 
 crisy. It must be confessed that even the 
 best of men are, as a rule, but half-hearted in 
 making this fundamental resolution. They 
 give up under compulsion one or another 
 fragment of their desires. Few are sagacious 
 enough to foresee the choice which sooner 
 or later must be made, and free themselves 
 while they are still young from their pro- 
 longed perplexity by one quick and sublime 
 decision. 
 
 49
 
 A further obstacle to any worthy life is the 
 desire for praise, or for pleasure. The man 
 who is dominated by either of these motives 
 is simply a slave of the opinions or tastes of 
 others. Both of these desires must be, with- 
 out compromise, expelled, and sympathy, 
 which one has always at his command, must 
 take their place. For, if the lower desires 
 have been cast out and no higher impulses 
 enter, then we have simply an unendurable 
 emptiness in life. " When the unclean spirit," 
 says the Gospel, "is gone out of a man, he 
 walketh through dry places, seeking rest, and 
 findeth none. . . . Then goeth he, and tak- 
 eth with himself seven other spirits more 
 wicked than himself, and they enter in and 
 dwell there: and the last state of that man 
 is worse than the first." 
 
 Thus, at any cost, and even for the sake 
 of one's own soul, one must make it his 
 habit to cultivate love for others, not first of 
 all inquiring whether they deserve that love 
 or not a question which is often too hard 
 to answer. For without love life is without 
 joy, especially when one has outgrown his 
 youth. Lacking love, we sink into indiffer- 
 ence, and indifference passes easily into aver- 
 sion, and one's aversions so poison life that 
 life is no better than death. 
 
 Further, our dislikes must be directed, 
 50
 
 not against people, but against things. Good 
 and evil are too much mingled in persons 
 to be justly distinguished, and each unjust 
 judgment reads upon those who have per- 
 mitted themselves to be unjust and embitters 
 their lives. Therefore, permit neither your 
 philosophy nor your experience to crowd out 
 of your life the power to love. Dismiss the 
 preliminary question of another's right to be 
 loved. Love is the only way of keeping one's 
 inner life in peace, and of maintaining an in- 
 terest in people and in things. Without it, 
 both people and things become by degrees 
 an annoyance and affront. Thus love is, at 
 the same time, the highest worldly wisdom. 
 One who loves is always, though uncon- 
 sciously, wiser than one who does not. If you 
 incline to say with the poet: 
 
 " This is my creed and this will ever be^ 
 To love and hate as others may treat me!" 
 
 live for a while by this creed, and you will 
 learn soon enough how much of hate and 
 how little of love you are likely to receive. 
 I n all the points thus far indicated, and es- 
 pecially in the last, there is no place for half- 
 way conduct. There must be a complete and 
 absolute decision, with no petty and clever 
 computations of consequences. And in ad- 
 dition to these more decisive rules of habit,
 
 there are many smaller ones which go to re- 
 inforce and make practicable the larger prin- 
 ciples. For instance, there is the Gospel com- 
 mand : " Let the dead bury their dead." The 
 dead are the best people to do this work. If 
 one refrain from controversy about what is 
 past and gone, then one may give himself to 
 tasks of positive construclion,and not merely 
 to that destructive work which, even if it be 
 essential, should be subordinate. Many a me- 
 morial has been dedicated to those who de- 
 stroy which should have been reserved for 
 those who fulfil. 
 
 And yet, one must not let himself be 
 cheated. He must not even be thought to 
 be easily duped. He must let the would- 
 be clever people know that he reads their 
 thoughts and knows what they are seeking. 
 One may, as I have already said, read such 
 thoughts quite thoroughly if one be no longer 
 blinded by any selfishness of his own. 
 
 Apart from this degree of self-defence, 
 which is so far necessary, the better plan in 
 general is to see the good side of people and 
 to take for granted that there is good in them. 
 Then it not only happens that they often 
 make the effort to be good and become ac- 
 tually better through one's appreciation of 
 them, but it also happens that one is saved 
 from a personal experience of regret or dis- 
 52
 
 tress. For intercourse with persons whom 
 one recognizes as bad, demoralizes one's 
 own nature, and in the case of sensitive per- 
 sons may go so far as to have even a physi- 
 cal effect. What is bad needs no severity of 
 criticism or of reproach. In most cases it 
 needs only to be brought to the light. Then, 
 even if the man protest that he is not bad, 
 his conscience judges him. Therefore, when 
 one must blame others, he should proceed 
 with great calmness, speak of the matter 
 without disguise and without glossing, but 
 simply and without passion. Passionate re- 
 proaches seldom do good, and good people 
 who lack sympathy are apt to be very trying. 
 There is a kind of virtuous character not un- 
 familiar in some Protestant circles which to 
 those who differ from its convictions seems 
 to have no capacity for love. It is especially 
 aggravating to young people, so that they 
 often prefer the company of the vicious to 
 that of moral but cold-blooded friends. 
 
 Finally, it may not appear possible for 
 you to be equally friendly with everybody. 
 Well, then, discriminate among people, but 
 always in favor of the humble, the poor, the 
 simple, the uneducated, the children, even 
 the animals and plants. Never, on the other 
 hand, if you desire a quiet mind, seek the 
 favor of important people, and never expect 
 
 53
 
 gratitude for condescension to the humble, 
 but count the love they have for you as pre- 
 cious as you do your love for them. 
 
 There are many other of these lesser in- 
 stances of good habits which I might still 
 further mention, and if my reader should 
 recall them, he is not to regard them as un- 
 recognized by me. I only invite him, in the 
 first place, to put to practical use my list as 
 thus far suggested. As he does so, let him 
 notice as he soon must notice that it is 
 much more to his purpose to begin practi- 
 cally with one good habit than to begin by 
 making a complete catalogue of all. The real 
 difficulty in this cultivation of good habits 
 indeed the only difficulty is in ridding 
 the heart of its natural selfishness. For self- 
 ishness is the pra6tical obstacle to good hab- 
 its, though it may pretend to believe in them. 
 No one who understands himself will deny 
 that there is in everyone a curious tendency 
 to moral degeneration. It is often something 
 that literally borders on depravity. Now, 
 this inclination to evil is to be conquered only 
 by a superior force; and the whole problem, 
 both of philosophy and of religion, a prob- 
 lem as old as the world and yet new with each 
 individual, is summed up in the question: 
 " Where shall I find this superior force which 
 shall make me inclined to goodness and shall 
 
 54
 
 renew that spiritual health which is essential 
 for the right conduct of life?" 
 
 To this question, there are still given 
 many different answers. Dante, in the famous 
 twenty-seventh canto ofthePurgatorio,says: 
 
 " When underneath us was the stairway all 
 Run <?Vr, and we were on the highest step y 
 yirgilius fastened upon me his eyes, 
 And said: 
 
 By intelleft and art I here have brought thee" 2 
 
 By the guidance of reason, then, the travel- 
 ler has been led to the Holy Mountain, 
 where at last he hears his guide say: 
 
 " Take thine own pleasure for thy guide henceforth; 
 Beyond the steep ways and the narrow art thou." 
 
 And yet and here we notice a marked in- 
 consistency in the great mediaeval poet and 
 philosopher it is an angel who bears these 
 mortal souls across the sea and brings them 
 to the foot of this mountain, and another 
 angel repeatedly restrains them from re- 
 turning on their way, even when they have 
 passed the Gate of Grace; and by the dia- 
 mond threshold, beyond which none may 
 pass without his bidding, sits a third angel, 
 to whom one may approach only by a miracle 
 of God's grace. In all this journey, then, 
 the "intellect and art" which accompany 
 
 55
 
 the traveller play, we must confess, a very 
 limited role. 
 
 This great question, however, of the moral 
 dynamic is, for the moment, not my theme, 
 and its answer is, I doubt not, to be finally 
 reached only by the way of personal experi- 
 ence. Only this is to be said, once more, that 
 one's self-discipline begins with the disci- 
 pline of the will. First of all comes the defi- 
 nite resolution to pursue one worthy end 
 of life with singleness of mind and to turn 
 from all that is opposed to it. Given this 
 decision of the will, and there follows the 
 capacity to aft. And this search is not in vain, 
 when one determines to make it a universal 
 and an unreserved search, and to recognize 
 the power that is attained as the only possible 
 proof that the right way has been found. 
 Whatever brings with it no sense of sup- 
 porting, calming, ethical power is not true, 
 and whatever does contribute this power 
 must, at least, have some degree of truth in 
 it. In the future, any philosophy of life which 
 proposes to be more effective than our pres- 
 ent philosophy must meet this test. All else 
 leads astray. 
 
 " Why is it that we shrink away 
 When death) our friend^ draws near some day? 
 We see the shadowy presence stand) 
 But not the gift within the hand! 
 
 56
 
 So shrinks from love the human heart 
 As though, like death, love came to party 
 For where love enters, self must die 
 And life find love its destiny. 
 O death of self ! Pass like the night, 
 And waken us from death to light!" 
 
 57
 
 IV. THE CHILDREN OF THIS 
 WORLD ARE WISER THAN THE 
 CHILDREN OF LIGHT
 
 IV. THE CHILDREN OF THIS 
 WORLD ARE WISER THAN THE 
 CHILDREN OF LIGHT 
 
 DO not question the truth 
 of this text, but I cannot 
 fail to observe in it the most 
 familiar defence of worldly 
 wisdom against the spirit 
 of idealism. The objection 
 to idealism which we most 
 commonly hear is this, that it is well enough 
 in theory, but that it does not work in prac- 
 tice; and if it be really true that worldly wis- 
 dom and idealism are irreconcilable, then 
 most people must hold to the first. They 
 have to live on this earth, and to deal with 
 life as it is; they must accept the inevitable, 
 even though it costs them a moment of 
 deep regret to abandon their idealism. This 
 world calls for worldly wisdom; another 
 world may be blessed with light on this 
 stone of stumbling many a life which has 
 already overcome the common temptation 
 of selfishness is still wrecked and lost. 
 
 The first thing that strikes us, then, in this 
 dangerous text is its high appreciation ofwhat 
 it calls the children of this world. Indeed, 
 these people are never so severely handled by 
 Christ as are the priests and the devout Phari- 
 sees of his time. Such sayings as : " The pub- 
 
 61
 
 licans and the harlots go into the kingdom of 
 God before you," are not uttered against the 
 children of this world. The children of this 
 world know what they want and pursue the 
 end they set before themselves with energy 
 and persistence, putting away all that stands 
 between them and it; and this the children 
 of light, at least in their earlier stages of de- 
 velopment, seldom do. Still further, the chil- 
 dren of this world are not wholly impervious 
 to the higher motives of life. Their hearts are 
 not the rock where the good seed falls in vain. 
 They are merely the soil which is choked by 
 other growth, where the seed takes root but 
 cannot prosper. The children of this world 
 may at any rate claim that it is not they who 
 have built the crosses and scaffolds for the 
 servants of the truth. 
 
 We must not then think of the children 
 of this world as absolutely bad or as unap- 
 preciative of the excellent. On the contrary, 
 they are generally better than they pretend 
 to be, and among them are many persons 
 who are, as it were, hypocrites reversed ; who 
 conceal, that is to say, their best thoughts. 
 What they lack is commonly the courage to 
 be good. They do not have a sufficiently sub- 
 stantial confidence in the moral order of the 
 world to guide them in the struggle for exist- 
 ence. And, in fad:, this assurance of the moral 
 62
 
 order does not at first sight appear to be jus- 
 tified. On the contrary, one who deserts the 
 wisdom of the world must anticipate, first of 
 all, that he will be deserted by the world and 
 that he will not improbably pass the greater 
 part of his life in uncertainty whether he 
 has chosen the better path. Such is the testi- 
 mony of all who have practically followed 
 this path and have not merely heard of it or 
 preached about it. Thus, the children of this 
 world are simply the people who prefer to 
 travel the common and well-known road. 
 The unfamiliar path may appear to them in 
 theory very beautiful and sublime, but they 
 do not find it a practicable path to follow. 
 
 It is still more difficult to say who are the 
 children of light. It is true that the Gospels 
 sometimes mention them, but what is the 
 meaning of the light of which the Gospels 
 speak? Whence comes it, and how does it 
 shine into the life of men? Here we touch 
 at once the greatest of human problems. 
 Whence come we ? Whither do we go ? What 
 is our destiny? All that can be said in plain 
 words of the children of light is this: that 
 they are seeking that which is beyond real- 
 ity, and are receptive to the suggestions of 
 the ideal world. The children of light are 
 those who supremely desire something bet- 
 ter than to eat and drink and to-morrow die.
 
 This is the motive which most stirs their 
 hearts and wills, and out of this desire comes 
 to them by degrees, first, faith, and then con- 
 viction. 
 
 This way to the light is in a certain de- 
 gree indicated in the Gospel of Matthew: 
 " Blessed are the pure in heart : for they shall 
 see God"; and it is more precisely described 
 in the Gospel of Luke: "If thy whole body 
 be full of light, the whole shall be full of 
 light" a passage whose exact meaning no 
 one has clearly determined. Beyond such 
 evidence as this one can hardly go; for, if 
 we do, the children of this world, who know 
 nothing of such experiences and regard them 
 as extravagances or worse, will at the best 
 turn away like Felix and the Athenians, say- 
 ing: "We will hear thee again of this mat- 
 ter"; having no more inclination than Felix 
 to be further drawn into such disturbing and 
 unprofitable discussions. The dreams of the 
 children of light, they will say, lead to noth- 
 ing and had better be forgotten. 
 
 It must be sadly confessed that a great 
 part of religious instruction has been singu- 
 larly unfruitful. Indeed, religion cannot be 
 imparted by instruction. It assumes not only 
 a faith in that which is beyond the world of 
 knowledge, but also a faith in the teachers 
 of religion. The teachers of religion, there- 
 64
 
 fore, can, at the best, only produce in one a 
 kind of mental disposition. They can free 
 the mind from disinclination to their view 
 or from positive incapacity to share it, and 
 they can fortify conviction by their teach- 
 ing. This limitation in religious instruction 
 has more than one cause. It sometimes hap- 
 pens because the hearer's way of life is in- 
 consistent with idealism. It is also, and quite 
 as often, caused by a false definition of re- 
 ligion the notion that religion is a matter 
 of doctrine, a kind of science which can be 
 taught and learned. 
 
 Wherein, then, it will be asked, lies the ad- 
 vantage of the wisdom of the light over the 
 wisdom of this world? Surely, the wisdom 
 of the world is a more obvious possession, 
 and guarantees to us more of the good things 
 of life than the children of light can secure. 
 The advantage of the children of light, I 
 answer, is threefold. It is to be found, first, 
 in the assurance that they are the possessors 
 of truth and are made thereby inwardly and 
 wholly at peace. Lessing, in his well-known 
 words, announced that truth was not a thing 
 which men should desire to possess. Hap- 
 piness, he conceived, was to be found in the 
 search for truth, not in its possession. But 
 the possession of the truth brings with it the 
 only true happiness a happiness which is 
 
 65
 
 abundant and unspeakable, and which no 
 man who has in any degree obtained it would 
 exchange for all the other good things of 
 earth. For the fundamental question is not 
 of possessing any definite outward thing, but 
 of the inward happiness attained through 
 that possession. Even the selfish, the en- 
 vious, and the self-indulgent do not regard 
 that which they want to possess as their real 
 aim. It is only in their eyes the essential 
 means to the real end, and that end is their 
 own inward happiness. And this is precisely 
 where they are self-deceived. For there is this 
 solemn fact about the order of the world, 
 which reveals itself to every candid observer, 
 that such people may attain all that they 
 earnestly desire, yet not attain with it their 
 own peace. Their attainment itself, their very 
 success, becomes their punishment. All this 
 may be perhaps somewhat hard to under- 
 stand, but for the moment it may be accepted 
 merely as a working hypothesis, and one may 
 later observe in life whether it is not true. It 
 is by using thus a working hypothesis that 
 even natural science most easily reaches the 
 truth. 
 
 The second advantage which the spirit 
 
 of the truth, as we may paraphrase it, has 
 
 over the wisdom of this world is this : that 
 
 when brought to the test it is in reality much 
 
 66
 
 wiser than worldly wisdom. Nothing but 
 the wisdom of the children of light is in har- 
 mony with the real laws of theuniverse. That 
 is the reason why these seemingly unwise 
 persons still for the most part pass through 
 the experiences of life with less trouble and 
 harm than the wise of this world. The con- 
 sciences of the children of light are undis- 
 turbed, and a troubled conscience embit- 
 ters the best joys. They pass through life 
 also with much less hurry, worry, and fear, 
 both of people and of events. None of these 
 distresses of life is to be escaped except 
 through this frame of mind. Finally, they 
 live more peacefully not only in their 
 own hearts, but also with other people 
 because they live without the passions, ha- 
 treds, and jealousies which make life hard 
 to endure. Even those who do not desire 
 for themselves this habit of mind, and are 
 not indeed capable of it, as soon as they are 
 convinced that the children of light mean 
 what they seem, that their attitude is not 
 merely a cloak to cover the wisdom of the 
 world, and that they are not vain and super- 
 cilious, grow more attached to these "Ideal- 
 ists" than to people like themselves. The 
 affection which goes out toward such per- 
 sons is quite beyond parallel. It is the rever- 
 ence, for instance, felt toward characters like 
 
 67
 
 Nicolaus von Flue, or Francis of Assisi, 
 or Catherine of Siena, or in our own time 
 Gordon Pasha. Thousands, for example, in 
 all lands deeply lamented General Gordon's 
 death and felt it to be a national disaster, 
 although they had not the least notion of 
 following his life. It is a form of sentiment 
 which the most distinguished and most suc- 
 cessful political ruler of our own time does 
 not inspire. Persons like these, just because 
 they have denied themselves what seem to 
 others the good things of life and have aban- 
 doned the competition for them, have be- 
 come the true rulers of their people and the 
 heroes of humanity. Truth, happiness, free- 
 dom from fear and care, peace with oneself 
 and with all men, the sincere respect and af- 
 fection of all, one would think that these 
 might be recognized as beyond a doubt the 
 good things of life, compared with which 
 the accumulation of wealth, the increase of 
 honor, and the resources of luxury have no 
 weight or significance. Indeed, the blessings 
 of the children of light would outweigh the 
 rewards of worldly wisdom, even if these re- 
 wards could be attained with certainty and 
 without the bitterness, anxiety, and rivalry 
 which inevitably accompany them. 
 
 Lastly, these ideal possessions have this 
 further advantage, that when attained, 
 68
 
 they are secure; and that they are within any 
 one's power to attain. One need only desire 
 them seriously and wholly, and cease from a 
 hesi tating dependence on the wisdom and the 
 successes of this world, and then, as many 
 witnesses will testify from their own experi- 
 ence, the blessings of the children of light 
 are surely attained. It may not be through 
 one effort. Indeed, in most cases, it only 
 happens after one or more crises in one's life 
 crises which are in fact not unlike death 
 itself, and in which a man renounces all his 
 early hopes. In such a crisis, however, the 
 worst of the way of light is passed. In every- 
 thing else it is a much easier and more agree- 
 able way than the worldly way, and one is 
 sure to meet much better company. 
 
 Christ has compared his way of life to 
 the bearing of a yoke, and indeed it always 
 is a yoke; but compared with other ways of 
 life, it is a much easier and lighter yoke. 
 That is the testimony of all, without excep- 
 tion, who have ever borne that yoke, and 
 not one single person has ever been found 
 who, at the end of such a life, whatever may 
 have been its outward circumstances, has 
 looked back upon it with regret, or has con- 
 fessed that the way of the world was better 
 and happier. On the other hand, how many 
 there have been since the days of King Solo- 
 
 69
 
 mon who have come to the end of a life 
 which, to the wisdom of this world, seemed 
 successful and free, and have found it only 
 "vanity of vanities." 
 
 One would think that this single fad: 
 of human experience would be decisive. It 
 fails of its effed only, as we know, because 
 the lower wisdom withholds one from that 
 higher wisdom which ventures the larger 
 gain for the higher stake. Yet, I will not re- 
 proach those who follow the lower wisdom. 
 I simply leave it to the reader's own reflec- 
 tion to decide whether, on weighing the case 
 as he best can, and considering the conditions 
 in which human life is ordinarily placed, he 
 will do better to choose the lower or the 
 higher way. For, after all, the most foolish 
 people are beyond question those who fol- 
 low this pilgrimage of life for seventy or 
 eighty years without ever clearly deciding 
 whether to choose the wisdom of this world 
 or the wisdom of light; and to this class of 
 foolish persons, who, for the most part, ac- 
 complish nothing in the world, belong, cu- 
 riously enough, a very considerable number 
 of what we call the cultivated people of our 
 day. 
 
 70
 
 V. THE ART OF HAVING TIME
 
 V. THE ART OF HAVING TIME 
 HAVE no time, that is 
 not only the most familiar 
 and convenient excuse for 
 not doing one's duty; it 
 is also, one must confess, 
 the excuse which has in it 
 the greatest appearance of 
 truth. Is it a good excuse? I must at once 
 admit that within certain limits the excuse 
 is reasonable, but I shall try to show how it 
 is that this lack of time occurs, and how one 
 may, at least in some degree, find the time 
 he needs. Thus my sermon differs from those 
 of the preachers, in having, not three heads, 
 but only two. This I say to propitiate those 
 who may protest that they have no time for 
 reading. 
 
 The most immediate reason, then, for lack 
 of time is to be found in the character of 
 the present age. There is just now a prevail- 
 ing restlessness, aftid a continuous mood of 
 excitement, from which, unless one make 
 himself a hermit, he cannot wholly escape. 
 One who lives at all in these days must live 
 fast. If one could observe the modern world 
 as a bird might look down upon it, and at 
 the same time could distinguish the details 
 of its life, he would see beneath him a pic- 
 ture like that of a restless and swarming ant- 
 
 73
 
 hill, where even the railway trains, as they 
 cross and recross each other by night and 
 day, would be enough to bewilder his brain. 
 Something of this bewilderment is, in fact, 
 felt by almost every one who is involved in 
 the movement of the time. There are a great 
 many people who have not the least idea 
 why they are thus all day long in a hurry. Peo- 
 ple whose circumstances permit complete 
 leisure are to be seen rushing through the 
 streets, or whirling away in a train, or crowd- 
 ing out of the theatre, as if there were await- 
 ing them at home the most serious tasks. 
 The fact is that they simply yield to the gen- 
 eral movement. One might be led to fancy 
 that the most precious and most unusual 
 possession on earth was the possession of 
 time. We say that time is money, yet people 
 who have plenty of money seem to have 
 no time; and even the people who despise 
 money are constantly admonishing us, and 
 our over-worked children, to remember the 
 Apostle's saying, and "to redeem the time." 
 Thus the modern world seems pitiless in 
 its exhortation to work. Human beings are 
 driven like horses until they drop. Many 
 lives are ruined by the pace, but there are 
 always more lives ready like horses to be 
 driven. 
 
 Yet the results of this restless haste are 
 
 74
 
 in the main not convincing. There have been 
 periods in history when people, without 
 the restlessness and fatigue that now pre- 
 vail, accomplished far more in many forms 
 of human activity than men achieve to-day. 
 Where are we now to find a man like Luther, 
 who could write his incomparable transla- 
 tion of the Bible in an incredibly brief space 
 of time, and yet not break down at the end 
 of the task, or be forced to spend months or 
 years in recreation or vacation? Where are 
 the scholars whose works fill thousands of 
 volumes, or the artists like Michael Angelo 
 and Raphael, who could be at once painters, 
 architects, sculptors and poets? Where shall 
 we find a man like Titian, who at ninety 
 years of age could still do his work with- 
 out the necessity of retiring each year to a 
 summer resort or sanitarium? The fact is 
 that the nervous haste of our day cannot be 
 wholly explained by assuming that modern 
 men do more work, or better work, than 
 their predecessors. It must be possible to 
 live, if not without perfect rest, still without 
 haste, and yet accomplish something. 
 
 The first condition of escape from this in- 
 effective haste is, beyond doubt, the resolu- 
 tion not to be swept away by the prevailing 
 current of the age, as though one had no will 
 of his own. On the contrary, one must op- 
 
 75
 
 pose this current and determine to live as a 
 free man, and not as a slave either of work 
 or of pleasure. Our present system of the 
 organization of labor makes this resolution 
 far from easy. Indeed, our whole manner 
 of thinking about money-making and our 
 painstaking provision of money for future 
 generations our capitalist system, in short 
 increase the difficulty. Here is the sol- 
 emn background of our present question, 
 with which I do not propose to deal. We may 
 simply notice that the problem of the use 
 of time is closely involved with the problem 
 of that radical change which civilization it- 
 self must experience before it reaches a more 
 equitable division of labor and a more equi- 
 table distribution of prosperity. So long as 
 there are people, and especially educated 
 people, who work only when they are forced 
 to work and for no other purpose than to 
 free themselves and their children as soon 
 as possible from the burden of work; so long 
 as there are people who proudly say : " Je suis 
 d'une famille ou on n'avait pas de plume 
 qu'aux chapeaux," so long must there be 
 many people who have too little time simply 
 because a few have too much. All this, how- 
 ever, is of the future. The only practical 
 problem for our own age is to maintain a 
 sort of defensive attitude toward our lack 
 76
 
 of time, and to seek less radical ways of for- 
 tifying ourselves. Let me enumerate some 
 of these ways. 
 
 The best way of all to \iave time is to 
 have the habit of regular work, not to work 
 by fits and starts, but in definite hours of 
 the day, though not of the night, and to 
 work six days in the week, not five and not 
 seven. To turn night into day or Sunday into 
 a work-day is the best way to have neither 
 time nor capacity for work. Even a vacation 
 fails of its purpose, if it be given to no oc- 
 cupation whatever. I am not without hope 
 that the time may come when medical sci- 
 ence will positively demonstrate that regular 
 work, especially as one grows older, is the 
 best preservative both of physical and intel- 
 lectual health. I may even add for the sake 
 of women among my readers, that here is the 
 best preservative of beauty also. Idleness 
 is infinitely more wearisome than work, and 
 induces also much more nervousness; for it 
 weakens that power of resistance which is 
 the foundation of health. 
 
 Work, it is true, may be excessive, but 
 this is most obviously the case when one 
 cares more for the result of his work than 
 he does for the work itself. Under such con- 
 ditions, it is peculiarly difficult to exercise 
 moderation, and as an ancient preacher re- 
 
 77
 
 marks with a sigh : "Work is given to every 
 man according to his power, but his heart 
 cannot abide by it." In such cases, however, 
 Nature herself has given us a monitor in that 
 physical fatigue which work itself produces. 
 One need only take account of such fatigue, 
 and not cheat it by stimulants, and then, even 
 without much philosophizing, he will not 
 lack self-control. 
 
 The habit of regular work is further 
 greatly encouraged by having a definite vo- 
 cation which involves positive tasks and 
 obligations. Thus the socialistic romances 
 which draw a picture of the future of the 
 world are quite justified when they describe 
 the universal organization of industry un- 
 der the form of an army, for an army repre- 
 sents that way of life in which order and duty 
 in one's work are most emphasized. Every 
 Swiss citizen knows that, with the exception 
 of occasional excessivedemandsjhe has never 
 been in better health than when serving his 
 term in the army. Every hour in the day then 
 had its regular and sufficient task, and no one 
 was called to consider whether he desired to 
 do things or not to do them, while no one 
 had time to anticipate the tasks of the follow- 
 ing day. Here is the misfortune of many rich 
 people in our day, that they have no defi- 
 nite vocation. As the common saying has it, 
 
 78
 
 \ 
 
 "There is no f must' for them." For many 
 such persons, a specific business would be 
 a redemption from the dilettantism which 
 now threatens their peace of mind. They 
 might well follow the example of that Ba- 
 varian prince who has undertaken the pro- 
 fession of an oculist. I am even inclined to 
 believe that part of the movement toward 
 the higher education which is so conspicu- 
 ous among women in our day is simply the 
 response to this demand of human nature 
 for some definite vocation. 
 
 Another question much discussed in our 
 time concerns the division of one's working 
 day. In great cities with their vast distances, 
 in the case of unmarried persons engaged in 
 more or less mechanical tasks, and in the 
 case of all people who regard their work as 
 a burden to be thrown off as soon as possi- 
 ble, there is some advantage in working con- 
 tinuously and without interruption. This is 
 what we are in the habit of calling the Eng- 
 lish method. It is never possible, however, to 
 accomplish in this way so much intellectual 
 work of a productive character as may be 
 done under the Swiss custom of a pause at 
 midday. No one can continuously, or even 
 with momentary pauses, devote himself for 
 six or eight hours to work of an intellectual 
 character. Even if he allow himself an hour's 
 
 79
 
 interval, the sense of strain remains, together 
 with an abbreviation of time for work in the 
 afternoon. On the other hand, under the 
 Swiss custom, it is perfectly easy to work 
 for ten or eleven hours a day, four in the 
 morning, four in the afternoon, and two or 
 three in the evening, and few of us could ac- 
 complish our work in that eight-hour day of 
 which we hear so much, although we have 
 not the honor of being reckoned as of the 
 class known as "working people." 
 
 The next essential point is not to have 
 too much fussiness about one's work, or, in 
 other words, not to permit oneself elabo- 
 rate preparations as to time, place, surround- 
 ings, inclination, or mood. The inclination 
 to work comes of itself when one has begun 
 his work, and it is even tfue that a kind of 
 fatigue with which one often begins un- 
 less, indeed, it has some positive or physical 
 cause disappears as one seriously attacks 
 his work, and does not simply, as it were, de- 
 fend himself from it. 
 
 "Begin with cheerfulness thy task 
 
 Nor ask how it may end y 
 Farther than all that thou couldst ask 
 Its issues surely tend." 
 
 In short, if one permit himself habitually 
 to stop and ask that indolent part of him 
 which the Apostle Paul calls "the old man" 
 80
 
 what he would like to do, or would prefer 
 not to do, "the old man" is most unlikely 
 to vote for serious work, but betakes himself 
 to excellent religious or moral advice. The 
 bad part of one must be forced to the habit 
 of obeying, without grumbling, the "cate- 
 gorical imperative " of the better part. When 
 one has achieved this amount of soldierly 
 discipline in himself, then he is on the right 
 path, and until he has reached this point, he 
 has not found his way. Here he first learns 
 whether his life is saved or lost. Sometimes 
 a man proposes to himself to collect his 
 thoughts before he begins, or to meditate on 
 the work he is going to do. In most cases, 
 this is merely an excuse for doing nothing, 
 and it is most obviously such an excuse, 
 when, to encourage this preliminary reflec- 
 tion, a man lights his cigar. In short, one's 
 best ideas come while he is working, and 
 often, indeed, while he is working on a 
 wholly different topic. A distinguished mod- 
 ern preacher has remarked with originality, 
 though not with strict accuracy, that there is 
 not a single case mentioned in the Bible in 
 which an angel appeared to a man who was 
 not at work. 
 
 In close connection with this point should 
 be mentioned the habit of using fragments 
 of time. Many people have no time because 
 
 81
 
 they always want to have a large amount of 
 uninterrupted time before they set them- 
 selves to work. In such a plan they are 
 doubly deceived. On the one hand, in many 
 circumstances of life these prolonged periods 
 are difficult to secure, and, on the other hand, 
 the power of work which one possesses is not 
 so unlimited that it can continuously utilize 
 long stretches of time. This is peculiarly true 
 of such intellectual work as is devoted to pro- 
 ductive effort. Of such work it may be said 
 without exaggeration that the first hour, or 
 even the first half-hour, is the most fruitful. 
 Dismissing, however, these large intellectual 
 undertakings, there are to be found in con- 
 nection with every piece of work a great num- 
 ber of subordinate tasks of preparation or 
 arrangement which are of a mechanical na- 
 ture, and for each of which a quarter of an 
 hour or so is sufficient. These minor matters, 
 if not disposed of in small fragments of time 
 which would otherwise be wasted, will ab- 
 sorb the time and power which should be 
 devoted to one's important task. It might, 
 indeed, be reasonably maintained that the 
 use of these fragments of time, together with 
 the complete dismissal of the thought, "It 
 is not worth while to begin to-day, "accounts 
 for half of the intellectual results which one 
 attains. 
 
 82
 
 Another important means forsaving time 
 is the habit of changing the kind of work in 
 which one is engaged. Change is almost as 
 restful as complete rest, and if one acquire 
 a certain degree of skill in his ways of change, 
 a skill which comes from experience rather 
 than from theorizing, one may carry on his 
 work for almost the entire day. Moreover, 
 so far as my experience goes, it is a mistake 
 to plan that one piece of work shall be fin- 
 ished before another is begun. The judicious 
 course, on the contrary, is that which prevails 
 among artists, who are often engaged on a 
 whole series of sketches, and turn, according 
 to the momentary inclination which over- 
 masters them, first to one piece of work and 
 then to another. Here, too, it may be re- 
 marked is an excellent way of maintaining 
 one's self-control. The old Adam in us often 
 persuades the better nature that he is not 
 really lazy, but is simply not in the mood 
 for a certain piece of work. In this state of 
 things, one should forthwith say to himself: 
 "Well, if you do not feel inclined to this 
 piece of work, take up with another." Then 
 one will discover whether the difficulty is a 
 disinclination to a special form of work, to 
 which one might yield, or a disinclination 
 to do any work at all. In short, one must 
 not permit oneself to deceive oneself. 
 
 83
 
 Anotherpoint to be considered is thehabit 
 of working quickly, not giving too much care 
 to outward form, but devoting one's efforts 
 to the content of the task. The experience 
 of most workers will bear me out when I say 
 that the most profitable and effective tasks 
 are those which have been done quickly. I 
 am well aware that Horace advises one to 
 take nine years for the perfecting of verses; 
 but such scrupulousness presupposes an ex- 
 cessive notion of the quality of one's work. 
 Thoroughness is a very beautiful and neces- 
 sary trait, in so far as it concerns truth, for 
 truth cannot be too thoroughly explored; 
 but there is a spurious thoroughness which 
 absorbs itself in all manner of details and 
 subordinate questions which are not worth 
 investigating, or which cannot be wholly 
 known. Thoroughness of this kind is never 
 satisfied with itself. It is sometimes mistaken 
 for great learning; for to many people learn- 
 ing is profound only when wholly detached 
 from practical usefulness, or when an author, 
 for a whole lifetime, has brooded over one 
 book. 
 
 Truth, wherever it may be sought, is, as 
 a rule, so simple that it often does not 
 look learned enough. People feel as if they 
 must add to it something which is not essen- 
 tial to the nature of truth, in order to give 
 84
 
 to truth a respectable and academic look. 
 Among learned people, it is often the case 
 that one must first earn his reputation by 
 some piece of work which is of no use to 
 himself or to any one else, and in which 
 he heaps together the hitherto undiscovered 
 rubbish of some remote century. Lassalle 
 was able to write his famous work on Hera- 
 kleitos without forfeiting his interest in the 
 affairs of modern life, but there are few au- 
 thors with this capacity for practical con- 
 cerns. On the contrary, many authors in 
 their maiden venture of learned work not 
 only have their eyesight ruined by their re- 
 searches, but lose their inward vision, which 
 is a matter of much more consequence. They 
 reach the goal of their ambition and become 
 of no further use. 
 
 A further way of saving a deal of time 
 is to do one's work and be done with it; 
 not to deal with it, that is to say, in a provi- 
 sional or preparatory manner. This kind of 
 immediate thoroughness is in our day ex- 
 tremely rare, and in my opinion much of 
 the blame should be laid to the newspapers, 
 which accustom people to superficial sur- 
 veys of truth. The editorial writer says, at 
 the close of his article, "We shall return 
 to this subject later"; but in fact he never 
 returns. So it is with the modern reader. If 
 
 85
 
 he wants to make use of what he has read, he 
 has to begin the reading of it afresh. His 
 skimming of the subject as the phrase is 
 has had no result, and so the time that 
 he has given to skimming has been lost. 
 This is the reason why people have so little 
 thorough knowledge in our day, and why, 
 though they have studied a subject ten times, 
 on the eleventh occasion when they need it, 
 they must study it again. Indeed, there are 
 people who would be extremely glad if they 
 could remember even the works of which 
 they themselves were the authors. 
 
 With this point is obviously connected 
 the need of orderliness and of the reading 
 of original authorities. The habit of order- 
 liness saves one from the need of hunting 
 for material, and this search for material is 
 not only, as we all know, a great waste of 
 time, but tempts us also to lose pleasure in 
 our work. Further, orderliness permits us to 
 allow one subject to be forgotten, while we 
 apply ourselves to the next. The reading of 
 original sources, on the other hand, gives 
 one the advantage of being sure of his ma- 
 terial, and of having his own judgment about 
 it. There is this further advantage, that the 
 original sources are in most cases not only 
 much briefer, but much more interesting and 
 much easier to remember than the books that 
 86
 
 have been written about them. Second-hand 
 knowledge never gives the courage and self- 
 confidence which one gets from acquaintance 
 with original sources. One of the great mis- 
 takes of modern scholarship, as distinguished 
 from that of the classic world, is as Win- 
 kelmann has pointed out that our learning 
 in so many cases consists in knowing only 
 what other people have known. 
 
 But, after all, we have not yet named the 
 chief element in the art of having time. It 
 consists in banishing from one's life all su- 
 perfluities. Much which modern civilization 
 regards as essential, is, in reality, superfluous, 
 and while I shall indicate several things which 
 appear to me unnecessary, I shall be quite 
 content to have my reader supplement them 
 by his own impressions. For instance, one 
 superfluity is beer. It is superfluous at any 
 time of the day and especially when drunk 
 in the morning, after the fashion made popu- 
 lar by Prince Bismarck. Perhaps the greatest 
 contributors to waste of time in this century 
 are the brewers, and the time will come when 
 people may regard the excessive drinking of 
 beer as they now regard the excessive use of 
 alcohol in other forms. 
 
 I may name as a second superfluity the ex- 
 cessive reading of newspapers. There are in 
 our day people who regard themselves as edu- 
 
 87
 
 cated, and who yet read nothing but news- 
 papers. Their houses are built and furnished 
 in all possible and impossible styles,and 
 yet you will find in them hardly a dozen good 
 books. They get their whole supply of ideas 
 out of the newspapers and magazines, and 
 these publications are more and more de- 
 signed to meet the needs of such people. 
 This excessive, or even exclusive, reading of 
 newspapers is often excused on account of 
 our political interests ; but one has only to 
 notice what it is in the newspapers which 
 people are most anxious to read to arrive at 
 a judgment whether this excuse is sound. I 
 may add that the time of day dedicated to 
 the newspaper is by no means unimportant. 
 People, for instance, who devote their first 
 hour in the morning to the reading of one 
 or two newspapers lose thereby the freshest 
 interest in their day's work. 
 
 Another superfluity is the excessive going 
 to meetings. A man who is much devoted 
 to such gatherings can scarcely find time for 
 serious work. Indeed, it is not necessary for 
 him to do independent work; for he has sub- 
 stituted for his own judgment the judgment 
 of the crowd, and the crowd carries him on 
 its shoulders. A great waste of time occurs, 
 further, among one class of people at the 
 present time, through a pretended devotion
 
 to art. I do not refer to art practised by 
 oneself, but to art as passively accepted ; and 
 I should perhaps make exception in what I 
 say, of the art of music. In other forms of art 
 many persons permit those impulses which 
 should have stirred them to idealism, and 
 to responsiveness toward the beautiful, to 
 evaporate in aesthetic satisfactions. Many 
 women, to speak frankly, are educated to ac- 
 quire mere artistic appreciation; and they 
 cannot, without severe struggles and against 
 great hindrances, find the way back from this 
 mood to any profitable and spiritually satis- 
 fying work. 
 
 Another superfluity is the devotion to 
 social duties and the whole purposeless sys- 
 tem of making "calls." These habits are the 
 mere shadows of genuine friendship, and of 
 the intellectual stimulus through personal 
 intercourse which they were originally in- 
 tended to express. I need not speak of su- 
 perfluous amusements. The theatre, for in- 
 stance, to accomplish its legitimate aim needs 
 so fundamental a reform that there would be 
 really nothing left of its present methods. 
 Finally, and of quite another category among 
 the elements of culture in our time, I may 
 name as superfluous the superficial and pop- 
 ular products of materialism, and with these 
 the debasing French novels and dramas of
 
 the day. People of the educated class in our 
 time, and especially people of the academic 
 circle, ought to have the courage to say of 
 such literature: "We know nothing about 
 it." Then perhaps one might have time to 
 read something each day which was serious 
 and educative; something that tended to 
 strengthen the mind and to bring one into 
 real contact with the intellectual movement 
 of the age. 
 
 And now, lest there should be complaint 
 of time wasted on such reading as this, I 
 shall add but two other points. One of these, 
 stated by Rothe, is the advice that it is most 
 desirable not to take up one's time with 
 the details of one's business affairs. Even if 
 this is not altogether possible, one may, if 
 he wish it, greatly reduce the care of details 
 of administration, and live in a world of 
 larger and happier thoughts. The other 
 point, which has even more practical signifi- 
 cance, is this : Limit yourself to that which 
 you really know and which has been espe- 
 cially committed to your care. For your spe- 
 cial task you will almost always have time 
 enough. An Old Testament saying states 
 it even more plainly: "He that tilleth his 
 land shall have plenty of bread: but he that 
 followeth after vain persons shall have pov- 
 erty enough." As to the things which do not 
 90
 
 concern one's special calling, but which have 
 a certain significance in the world and a cer- 
 tain importance for culture, it may be neces- 
 sary for one, once in his life, to acquire a 
 superficial survey of them by a glance at the 
 best original sources. One should thereafter 
 leave these matters alone and not concern 
 himself with them further. 
 
 Finally, in this enumeration of the things 
 which waste one's time, I may add that 
 one must not permit himself to be over- 
 burdened with superfluous tasks. There are 
 in our day an infinite number of these, 
 correspondence, committees, reports, and 
 not the least, lectures. All of them take time, 
 and it is extremely probable that nothing 
 will come of them. When the Apostle Paul 
 was addressing the Athenians, he remarked 
 that they did nothing else than to hear some 
 new thing. It was not the serious part of his 
 address, or its spiritual quickening, to which 
 they gave their attention, it was its novelty; 
 and the outcome of his sermon was simply 
 that some mocked, and the most friendly 
 said with patronizing kindness: "We will 
 hear thee again of this matter." Indeed, the 
 reporter of the incident finds it necessary 
 to mention expressly, that one member of 
 the Athenian City-Council and one woman 
 in the audience received some lasting good 
 
 9 1
 
 from the Apostle's address. How is it, let 
 me ask you, with yourselves? Have the lec- 
 tures which you have heard been to you in 
 any way positive influences of insight and 
 decision, or have they been merely the evi- 
 dences of the speaker's erudition? 
 
 Such are the ways which in our present 
 social conditions are open to any one to use 
 for saving time. I must add, however, that 
 if one tries to use these ways of saving time, 
 he will make another discovery. For one of 
 the most essential elements of such happi- 
 ness as we can reach on earth lies in not 
 having too much time. The vastly greater 
 proportion of human happiness consists in 
 continuous and progressive work, with the 
 blessing which is given to work and which 
 in the end makes work itself a pleasure. The 
 spirit of man is never more cheerful than 
 when it has discovered its proper work. 
 Make this discovery, first of all, if you wish 
 to be happy. Most of the wrecks of human 
 life are caused by having either no work, or 
 too little work, or uncongenial work; and 
 the human heart, which is so easily agitated, 
 never beats more peacefully than in the natu- 
 ral activity of vigorous, yet satisfying, work. 
 Only one must guard against making of 
 work an idol, instead of serving God through 
 one's work. Those who forget this last dis- 
 92
 
 tinction find themselves in later life doomed 
 to intellectual or physical prostration. 
 
 There are, then, but two possessions which 
 may be attained by persons of every condi- 
 tion, which never desert one through life, 
 and are a constant consolation in misfortune. 
 These are work and love. Those who shut 
 these blessings out of life commit a greater 
 sin than suicide. They do not even know 
 what it is that they throw away. Rest with- 
 out work is a thing which in this life one 
 cannot endure. The best blessing which can 
 be promised is that last blessing of Moses 
 for Asher: "Thy shoes shall be iron and 
 brass ; and as thy days, so shall thy strength 
 be." Better than this one should not desire, 
 and if one has this he should be thankful. 
 Yet, it must be added, this contentedness in 
 continuous work is possible only when one 
 abandons ambition; for ambition is always 
 most deeply anxious not to do work, but as 
 soon as possible to get the result of work, 
 even if that result is illusive. Ambition is the 
 Moloch of our time, to whom we feel bound 
 to sacrifice even our own children, and who, 
 more than all other foes, destroys the bodies 
 and the souls of youth. 
 
 If, still further, one commit himself, as is 
 so often the case, to that philosophy of mate- 
 rialism in which this brief life is the end of 
 
 93
 
 opportunity, so that but a few years are ours 
 for the accomplishment of all which the piti- 
 less and endless struggle for existence and 
 the survival of the fittest permit, then there 
 is an end of all restfulnessand blessedness in 
 work. Under such a view, time is indeed too 
 short, and every art is indeed too long. The 
 true spirit of work, which has no time for 
 superfluities, but time enough for what is 
 right and true, grows best in the soil of that 
 philosophy which sees one's work extending 
 into the infinite world, and one's life on earth 
 as but one part of life itself. Then one gets 
 strength to do his highest tasks, and patience 
 among the grave difficulties and hindrances 
 which confront him both within himself and 
 in the times in which he lives. One is calmly 
 indifferent to much which in the sight of this 
 world alone may seem important, but which, 
 seen in the light of eternity, loses signifi- 
 cance. This is the meaning of that beautiful 
 saying of the philosopher of Gorlitz, which 
 brings to our troubled time its message of 
 comfort : 
 
 "He who, while here^ lives the eternal life 
 Is through eternity set free from strife"* 
 
 94
 
 VI. HAPPINESS
 
 VI. HAPPINESS 
 
 HATEVER the philoso- 
 phers may say, it remains 
 true that, from the first hour 
 of man's waking conscious- 
 ness until that consciousness 
 ceases, his most ardent de- 
 sire is to be happy, and that 
 the moment of his profoundest regret is 
 when he becomes convinced that on this 
 earth perfect happiness cannot be found. 
 Here is the problem which gives to the va- 
 rious ages of human history their special 
 characters. Blithe are those ages when young 
 and progressive nations still hope for hap- 
 piness, or when men believe that in some 
 new formula of philosophy, or of reiigion,or 
 perhaps in some new industrial programme, 
 the secret of human happiness has at last 
 been found. Gloomy are those ages in which, 
 as in our time, great masses of people are 
 burdened with the conviction that all these 
 familiar formulas have been illusions, and 
 when persons of the keenest insight say as 
 they are now saying that the very word 
 happiness has in it a note of melancholy. No 
 sooner, we are told, does one speak of hap- 
 piness than it flees from him. In its very na- 
 ture it lies beyond the sphere of practical 
 realization. 
 
 97
 
 I do not share this opinion. I believe that 
 happiness can be found. If I thought other- 
 wise, I should be silent and not make un- 
 happiness the more bitter by discussing it. 
 It is, indeed, true that those who talk of 
 happiness utter therewith a sigh, as if there 
 were doubt whether happiness could be at- 
 tained. It is still further true that irrational 
 views of happiness seem to be for the pres- 
 ent forced upon us. Only through these im- 
 perfect views can individuals orcommunities 
 approach that degree of spiritual and material 
 development which is the necessary founda- 
 tion for real happiness. 
 
 And here our question seems to involve 
 a serious contradiction. For we have, first of 
 all, to learn from our own experience much 
 that does not bring us happiness. Each in his 
 own way must pass, with the greatest of all 
 poets, through the "forest dark" to the 
 "city dolent," and climb the steep path of 
 the "Holy Mountain," before he may learn 
 how 
 
 " That apple sweet, which through so many branches 
 The care of mortals goeth in pursuit of y 
 To-day shall put in peace thy hungering* " 4 
 
 All this is to be attained, not through in- 
 struction, but through experience. It is a 
 path, and especially the latter part of it, which
 
 each must walk alone. No visible help is on 
 any side, and as one meets each of those ob- 
 stacles which in his own strength perhaps 
 he could not overcome, he is upborne by 
 that 
 
 "... eagle in the sky, with plumes of gold, 
 With wings wide open, and intent to stoop, 
 
 Then wheeling somewhat more, it seemed to me, 
 Terrible as the lightning he descended, 
 And snatched me upward even to the fire" $ 
 
 Thus the suggestions which now follow con- 
 cern themselves merely with the many mis- 
 leading ways which purport to lead toward 
 happiness, and in which each new genera- 
 tion in its restless longing is tempted to go 
 astray. 
 
 The paths by which people journey to- 
 ward happiness lie in part through the world 
 about them and in part through the experi- 
 ence of their souls. On the one hand, there 
 is the happiness which comes from wealth, 
 honor, the enjoyment of life, from health, 
 culture, science, or art; and, on the other 
 hand, there is the happiness which is to be 
 found in a good conscience, in virtue, work, 
 philanthropy, religion, devotion to great 
 ideas and great deeds. 
 
 The outward ways to happiness are, how- 
 ever, all, in one respecl:, disappointing. They 
 
 99
 
 are not paths which are possible for every 
 one to follow, and therefore, for many can- 
 not lead to happiness. Still further, the pos- 
 session of good things which others do not 
 possess cannot but bring with it to any no- 
 ble soul some twinge of conscience. One who 
 enjoys these outward blessings, and recalls 
 the millions of human beings by his side 
 who are perishing for lack of them, must be 
 either thoroughly selfish or profoundly un- 
 happy. It is of such persons that Jesus is 
 thinking when he speaks of the "unright- 
 eous Mammon," and even goes on to say: 
 " How hardly shall they that have riches en- 
 ter into the kingdom." No man, that is to 
 say, can attain to Christian happiness who 
 attains distinction at the cost of others. " One 
 that is proud in heart," says the Book of 
 Proverbs, "is an abomination to the Lord." 
 Thus it was that Francis of Assisi, and 
 many a saint before and after him, resolved, 
 at any price, to break the chains of worldly 
 possessions. It was a logical resolution. 
 Wealth is the gravest of obstacles to the 
 spiritual life, and few men are wholly free 
 from its solicitations or slavery.The posses- 
 sion and administration of a large property, 
 and, indeed, every position of exceptional 
 honor and power, induce with almost abso- 
 lute certainty a hardening of the disposition 
 100
 
 which is the very opposite of happiness. One 
 shudders as he observes how dull life seems 
 to that spiritless throng which in ever-in- 
 creasing numbers visits each year the Swiss 
 mountains to escape the emptiness of their 
 prosperous lives. 
 
 Such is the result of these external ways 
 of seeking happiness. But we do not fare 
 much better when we turn to that form of 
 happiness which lays claim to a nobler and 
 a spiritual source, the happiness of the 
 aesthetic life. For the boundaries between 
 this form of happiness and that of mere ma- 
 terialism are by no means easy to define. 
 ^Esthetic enjoyment often passes over into 
 mere sensualism, as Goethe, the great model 
 of aesthetic interest, has proved to us both in 
 his poetry as in the case of Faust and 
 in his own life. Indeed, the new school of 
 aestheticism runs grave risk of interpreting 
 much in terms of art which is in fad: mere 
 materialism. Those who thus seek happiness 
 should recall the saying of their illustrious 
 predecessor, who possessed in an extraordi- 
 nary degree the capacity to attain whatever 
 happiness in life aestheticism had to offer. 
 "When all is said," remarks Goethe, "my 
 life has been nothing but care and work. I 
 can ev.en say that in my seventy-five years,! 
 have not had four weeks of real happiness. 
 
 101
 
 It has been a continuous rolling up hill of 
 a stone which must ever be pushed again 
 from the bottom." Four weeks of happiness 
 in seventy-five years ! This man of art de- 
 clares that in his view life is nothing else 
 than misery ! There is hardly an honest day- 
 laborer who at the end of his life, full as it 
 may have been of genuine troubles, could 
 give so poor an account of himself. 
 
 The fact is, then, that human nature 
 seems obviously not intended for this kind 
 of happiness. Life is made for activity; and 
 this kind of receptive enjoyment, even in its 
 highest forms, is designed merely to give 
 flavor and change to life, and to be sparingly 
 used; so that those who give themselves too 
 confidently to such enjoyment bitterly de- 
 ceive themselves. Genuine happiness cannot 
 be arbitrarily produced. It issues from obedi- 
 ence to a genuine demand of human nature, 
 and from intelligent activity naturally em- 
 ployed. Here is the rational basis of that faith 
 in human equality and that contentment with 
 the simple joys of life, in which people to- 
 day believe much too little, and which awhile 
 ago people praised with perhaps exagger- 
 ated sentiment. 
 
 Still further, as regards such aesthetic en- 
 joyment, it is to be observed that the level 
 of aesthetic judgments in literature and art 
 1 02
 
 is now so visibly sinking that these resources 
 cannot long satisfy minds that can be called 
 educated, or nations that can be called pro- 
 gressive. The time may soon come when 
 people will weary of this "efflorescence" of 
 science, literature,and art ; and may even wish 
 to exchange it for a taste of healthy barba- 
 rism. The Austrian poet Rosegger has thus 
 described a not impossible future: "We al- 
 ready see each year a great migration of peo- 
 ple passing from the cities to the country and 
 the mountains, and not until the leaves are 
 touched with autumn color returning to the 
 city walls. The time will come, however, when 
 prosperous city-folk will betake themselves 
 permanently to country life; and when the 
 work-people of the city will migrate to the 
 wilderness and subdue it. They will abandon 
 the search for book-knowledge, they will find 
 their pleasure and renewal in physical work, 
 they will make laws under which an inde- 
 pendent and self-respecting livelihood will 
 be ensured to country-dwellers ; and the no- 
 tion of an ignorant peasantry will disappear." 
 However this may be, it is at least certain 
 that we are approaching a period marked by 
 a return to nature, and by a taste for simpli- 
 city, such as existed at the end of the last cen- 
 tury, when Marie Antoinette played shep- 
 herdess with her courtiers at the Trianon. It 
 
 103
 
 is a simplicity which is caricatured by the lux- 
 urious folk who parade each summer through 
 Switzerland in mountain dresses and spiked 
 shoes, and attempt an intimacy with the life 
 of nature. Even these folk, strange as is their 
 attire and laughable as is their mimicry of the 
 life of peasants and mountaineers, find them- 
 selves as happy as their conventional lives 
 permit. 
 
 One other external notion of happiness 
 may be dealt with in a word. It is the hap- 
 piness which is sought in freedom from care. 
 Such happiness is an ideal for those only 
 who have never had the experience of such 
 freedom. For the facl: is that through our 
 cares, when not excessive, and through our 
 victory over cares, comes the most essential 
 part of human happiness. Cares of a reason- 
 able nature do not constitute what we call 
 care. Many a life of the widest experience 
 would testify that the most unendurable 
 experience is to be found, not in a series of 
 stormy days, but in a series of cloudless ones. 
 
 I pass, then, from those who seek for hap- 
 piness in material and outward conditions 
 to those more rational inquirers who seek it 
 in the spiritual life. These persons expecl 
 that happiness will be secured in the doing 
 of their duty, in a good conscience, in per- 
 sonal work of public good, in patriotism, 
 104
 
 or charity, or some form of philanthropy, or 
 perhaps in conformity to the teachings of 
 their Church. And yet, a very considerable 
 part of the drift to pessimism which one ob- 
 serves in our day comes of the experience 
 that no one of these ways leads surely to hap- 
 piness, or, at least, that one does not get in 
 such ways the happiness for which he hoped. 
 Indeed, it is perhaps still further true that 
 a great part of the reckless " Realism," now 
 so prevalent among us, comes not of the 
 conviction that it will make one happy, but 
 only of the despair of finding any other way 
 of happiness. For if it be true that neither 
 our work, nor what we call our virtues, can 
 bring peace to the soul; if outward activ- 
 ity, and charity, and patriotism, are but a 
 mockery of happiness; if religion is for the 
 most part only a form or a phrase, without 
 objective certainty; if all is thus but vanity 
 of vanities, then indeed: "Let us eat and 
 drink, for to-morrow we die." 
 
 I do not join in the condemnation with 
 which the moralists usually meet this view 
 of life. I deny only the conclusions which 
 are drawn from such a view. I recognize the 
 honest purpose of these modern philoso- 
 phers. They represent, at least, a sincere 
 love of truth; they are hostile to all mere 
 phrases. The spirit of the modern world 
 
 105
 
 looks for a happiness which is not mere 
 philosophical composure, but which has ob- 
 jective results. It demands a kind of con- 
 tentment in which every human being may 
 have a share. In all this, the spirit of the age 
 is wholly right, and this demand for objec- 
 tive happiness which it utters is a note which 
 has not been heard for two thousand years. 
 I, too, desire happiness ; but I know that one 
 who would find the way to happiness must, 
 first of all, and without hesitation, throw 
 overboard all the false idols which have 
 tempted him to worship them. As he dis- 
 misses the prejudices which birth, or circum- 
 stances, or habits, have created, he takes one 
 step after another toward true happiness. 
 As the Emperor Maximilian of Mexico, one 
 of the least fortunate persons of our day, 
 rightly said: "The abandoning of an un- 
 truth, or of a prejudice, brings with it forth- 
 with a sensation of joy." Here, then, is our 
 guide along this darkened road, which with- 
 out some such guidance we could not find 
 at all. 
 
 " The happy life lies straight before our eyes, 
 We 3e e it but we know not how to 
 
 First of all, then, we must admit that happi- 
 ness does not consist in the sense of virtue 
 alone. This idol of the incorruptible Robes- 
 
 106
 
 pierre will not serve us. For virtue in its com- 
 pleteness dwells in no human heart. One 
 must have but a meagre conception of vir- 
 tue, or else a very limited intellectual capa- 
 city, who finds himself always self-contented. 
 Even the vainest of men are not in reality 
 contented; their vanity itself is in large de- 
 gree only a sense of uncertainty about their 
 worth, so that they need the constant en- 
 dorsement of others to satisfy them. The 
 maxim says that a good conscience makes a 
 soft pillow, and he who has this unfailing 
 sense of duty done no doubt has happiness; 
 but I have not, as yet, fallen in with such a 
 man. My impression is that there is not one 
 of us who has ever, even for a single day, 
 done his whole duty. Beyond this, I need 
 not go. If one of my readers says to me: "I 
 am the man who has thus done his duty," 
 well, he may be quite right, but I do not 
 care for that man's nearer acquaintance. The 
 farther a man advances in the doing of his 
 duty, so much the more his conscience and 
 perception grow refined. The circle of his 
 duties widens continually before him, so 
 that he understands the Apostle Paul, when, 
 with perfect sincerity, and without false hu- 
 mility, he speaks of himself as the "chief of 
 sinners." 
 
 Are, then, I ask again, philanthropy and 
 
 107
 
 the good deeds public and private which 
 it suggests, the secret of happiness? Love is 
 a great word, and the Apostle is altogether 
 justified when in the familiar passage of his 
 letters he says that among the many things 
 which perish, love abides. But when in the 
 same passage he says that it is possible to 
 speak with the tongues of angels, and give 
 all one's goods to feed the poor, and even 
 give one's body to be burned, and yet not 
 have love, then we comprehend without 
 further explanation what he means by love. 
 For love is a part of God's own being, which 
 does not originate in the hearts of men. One 
 who possesses it knows well enough that it 
 is not his own. Even the pale human reflec- 
 tion of this Divine love brings happiness, 
 but it is a temporary happiness; and always 
 with the perilous uncertainty of a love which 
 anticipates return, so that the happiness de- 
 pends upon the will of others. He, then, 
 who yields his heart absolutely to others, 
 and stakes his happiness on their affection, 
 may some day find the terrible words of the 
 Jewish prophet true : " Cursed be the man 
 that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his 
 arm, and whose heart departeth from the 
 Lord." All this may be one day a spiritual 
 experience, which may convert his love into 
 hate. That apotheosis of hate which marks 
 1 08
 
 the talk of many a social agitator in our day 
 is but the evidence of those bitter disillu- 
 sions of affection which millions have been 
 called to feel. 
 
 Is, then, happiness to be found in work? 
 Work is certainly one great factor of human 
 happiness indeed, in one sense, the great- 
 est; for without work all happiness which is 
 not mere intoxication is absolutely denied. 
 In order to get the capacity for happiness, 
 one must obey the commands: "Six days 
 shalt thou labor," and "In the sweat of thy 
 face shalt thou eat bread." Of all seekers for 
 happiness, the most foolish are those who 
 evade these two conditions. Without work 
 no man can be happy. In this negative state- 
 ment the saying is absolutely true. And yet, 
 it is a greater error to suppose that work is 
 in itself happiness, or to believe that every 
 work leads to happiness. It is not alone our 
 imagination that pictures another ideal, so 
 that one can hardly imagine a heaven, or an 
 earthly paradise, as devoted to unremitting 
 work; it is also true and it is much more 
 to be remembered that only a fool can 
 be wholly contented with the work that he 
 does. One might even say that the wisest 
 see most clearly the incompleteness of their 
 work, so that not one of them has been able, 
 at the end of his day's work, to say of it: 
 
 109
 
 " Behold, it is very good." This mere praise 
 of work, then, is, for the most part, only a 
 sort of a spur, or whip, with which one urges 
 himself, or others, to the tasks of life; so 
 that even those who take pride in describing 
 themselves as "working-people" are much 
 concerned to reduce as far as possible their 
 working day. If work were essentially the 
 same as happiness, these people would be 
 seeking to prolong as much as possible the 
 hours of work. 
 
 Of all seekers for happiness, however, the 
 most extraordinary are those who look for it 
 in the philosophy of pessimism; yet of these 
 there are not a few, and by no means of the 
 baser sort. There is, however, almost always 
 associated with the creed of pessimism a cer- 
 tain false impression of one's own impor- 
 tance. It has an appearance of magnanimity 
 to throw overboard all one's hopes, and to 
 believe that everything, oneself included, 
 is bad. For this, at least, is true, that if all are 
 bad, he who sees that it is so, and admits it, 
 is, after all, the least bad ; and if he is sin- 
 cerely contented that others should regard 
 him as bad, he may be not far from the way 
 to something better. Yet, pessimism as a per- 
 manent habit of mind is, for the most part, 
 only a mantle of philosophy through which, 
 when it is thrown back, there looks out the 
 no
 
 face of vanity; a vanity which is never 
 satisfied and which withholds one forever 
 from a contented mind. 
 
 Finally, of all people who seek for happi- 
 ness, the most unhappy are those who seek 
 it in mere conformity to religious creeds. 
 There are many such people in our day, 
 and they find themselves in the end bitterly 
 disappointed. For all church organizations 
 are inclined to promise more than they can 
 assure, and are like nets to catch all manner 
 of fish . I n a passage from the works of the late 
 Professor Gelzer, he remarks that, for most 
 church-going people, worship is nothing 
 more than "appearing at Court once a week 
 to present one's respects to the throne." He 
 adds that there is the same formal service 
 of man also; for one sometimes does this 
 service,or,as the Bible says," Hath wrought 
 a good work upon me," only for the better 
 maintenance in the future of one's own self- 
 esteem. 
 
 I shall not contradict what so distin- 
 guished a man out of his rich experience has 
 said on this subject. Yet, for my own part, 
 I must still believe that if a human soul 
 worships God even in the most irrational 
 way, and recognizes its dependence on Him, 
 God will not forsake that soul. I must be- 
 lieve, still further, that the feeblest and most 
 
 in
 
 superstitious expressions of religion bring to 
 one who, even with occasional sincerity, per- 
 sists in them, more happiness than the most 
 brilliant philosophy of atheism can offer. Yet 
 this blessing bestowed upon simple soulsby 
 the patience of God is not to be attained in 
 its fulness by those who are capable of larger 
 insight. Such persons have the duty laid on 
 them to free the Christian Religion from the 
 lukewarmness which for two thousand years 
 has afflicted it. Theirs is the duty of dissatis- 
 faction with the forms and formulas of the 
 Church. No mere science of religion should 
 content them; for such a science alone never 
 brought happiness to man, and still offers to 
 a people who do not really understand its 
 teachings, stones instead of bread. So long 
 as people seek contentment in these ways, 
 their path to happiness must abound in dis- 
 appointments; and these^ disappointments 
 become the harder to bear because people, 
 as a rule, do not dare to confess either to 
 themselves, or to others, that they are thus 
 disappointed. They must pretend to them- 
 selves that they are satisfied because they see 
 no path which may lead them back to hap- 
 piness and peace. 
 
 Such, then, are some of the ways by which, 
 with slight modifications and combinations, 
 the human race through all its history has 
 112
 
 sought for happiness ; and if we do not recog- 
 nize these ways in history, we may find them 
 all with more or less distinctness in our own 
 experience. And yet by no one of these ways 
 has the race found the happiness it seeks. 
 What, then, I ask once more, is the path to 
 this end? 
 
 The first and the most essential condition 
 of true happiness, I answer, is a firm faith in 
 the moral order of the world. If one lack 
 this, if it be held that the world is governed 
 by chance or by those changeless laws of na- 
 ture which in their dealings with the weak 
 are merciless, or if, finally, one imagine the 
 world controlled by the cunning and power 
 of man, then there is no hope of personal 
 happiness. In such an order of the world, 
 there is nothing left for the individual but to 
 rule, or to be ruled; to be either the anvil or 
 the hammer; and it is hard to say which of 
 the two would be to an honorable man the 
 more unworthy lot. 
 
 In national life especially, this view of 
 the world leads to constant war and prepa- 
 ration for war, and the text-book of poli- 
 tics becomes The Prince of Machiavelli. 
 From such a condition of war the only pos- 
 sible, though partial, deliverance would be 
 through some vast governmental control, 
 ruling with iron force and comprehending 
 
 "3
 
 in itself all civilized peoples. Such a State 
 would, at lejtst,make war between States im- 
 possible, as it was impossible in the Roman 
 Empire of the Caesars, and as Napoleon I. 
 dreamed that it might be impossible in Eu- 
 rope. Every right-minded man must in- 
 wardly protest against a view which thus 
 robs man in his person of his will and in 
 his politics of his freedom ; and history also 
 teaches, in many incidents, the emptiness 
 and folly of such a view. There are some per- 
 sons who believe that they are forced to ac- 
 cept this social creed, because the conception 
 of the world as a moral order does not seem 
 to them sufficiently proved. To such per- 
 sons, I can only repeat that which is written 
 above the entrance to Dante's hell: 
 
 " Through me the way is to the city dolent; 
 Through me the way is to eternal dole ; 
 Through me the way among the people lost. 
 
 All hope abandon^ ye who enter in ! " 6 
 
 I go on to say, however, that formal proof 
 of this moral order of the world is impos- 
 sible. The ancient Hebrews believed that 
 one could not look upon the face of God 
 and live, and Christianity, in its turn, offers 
 us no formal proof of the character of God. 
 The only path that leads to the proof of 
 God is that which is followed in the Sermon 
 114
 
 on the Mount: "Blessed are the pure in 
 heart: for they shall see God." Here is a 
 proof which any one may test whose heart 
 is pure; while from those who merely rea- 
 son about God's order of the world He hides 
 Himself, and no man may rend by force the 
 veil that covers Him. 
 
 If, then, one begins simply to live as in 
 a moral world, his path to happiness lies 
 plainly before him. The door is open and no 
 man can shut it. Within his heart there is a 
 certain stability, rest, and assurance, which 
 endure and even gather strength amid all 
 outward storms. His heart becomes, as the 
 Psalmist says, not froward or fearful, but 
 "fixed." The only peril from which he now 
 has to guard himself is the peril of regarding 
 too seriously the changeful impressions and 
 events of each day. His desire must be to 
 live resolutely in one even mood, and to look 
 for his daily share of conscious happiness not 
 in his emotions, but in his activity. Then for 
 the first time he learns what work really is. It 
 is no more to him a fetish, to be served with 
 anxious fear; it is no longer an idol through 
 which he worships himself; it is simply the 
 natural and healthy way of life, which frees 
 him not only from the many spiritual evils 
 which are produced by idleness, but also 
 from numberless physical evils which have 
 
 "5
 
 the same source. Happy work is the health- 
 iest of human conditions. Honest sweat on 
 the brow is the source of permanent and 
 self-renewing power and of light-hearted- 
 ness; and these together make one really 
 happy. Indeed, the later discoveries of med- 
 ical science are teaching us that physical 
 health is secured only by a high degree of 
 power of resistance against enemies which 
 life cannot avoid. But this power of resist- 
 ance as one may soon discover is not a 
 merely physical capacity; it is quite as much 
 a moral quality and in large part the product 
 of moral effort. Here, then, are two secrets 
 of happiness which are fundamentally in- 
 separable : Life directed by faith in the per- 
 manent moral order of the world, and Work 
 done in that same faith. Beyond these two, 
 and one other which I shall mention later, 
 all other ways of happiness are secondary, 
 and indeed all else comes of its own accord, 
 according to one's special needs, if only one 
 holds firmly to these primary sources of 
 spiritual power. 
 
 I go on to mention a few of these sub- 
 ordinate rules for happiness which may be 
 deduced from the experience of life. They 
 are mere maxims of conduct to which many 
 others might be added. 
 
 We need, for instance, to be at the same 
 116
 
 time both brave and humble. That is the 
 meaning of the strange word of the Apostle: 
 " When I am weak, then am I strong." Either 
 quality alone does more harm than good. 
 
 Again, one must not make pleasure an 
 end, for pleasure comes of its own accord in 
 the right way of life, and the simplest, the 
 cheapest, and the most inevitable pleasures 
 are the best. 
 
 Again, one can bear all troubles, except 
 two: worry and sin. 
 
 Further, all that is really excellent has a 
 small beginning. The good does not show 
 its best at once. 
 
 Finally, all paths which it is best to follow, 
 are entered by open doors. 
 
 There are, it must be added, some diffi- 
 culties and problems which thoughtful peo- 
 ple should take into account in their inter- 
 course with others. One must not hate other 
 people, or, on the other hand, idolize them, 
 or take their opinions, demands, and judg- 
 ments too seriously. One must not sit in 
 judgment on others, or, on the other hand, 
 submit himself to their judgment. Onemust 
 not court the society of those who think 
 much of themselves. Indeed, I may say in 
 general that, except in certain callings, one 
 should not cultivate acquaintance with great t 
 people, or fine people, with the rich, or the 
 
 117
 
 fashionable, but so far as possible, without 
 repelling them, should avoid their company. 
 Among the best sources of happiness is the 
 enjoyment found in small things and among 
 humble people; and many a bitter experi- 
 ence is avoided by the habit of an unassum- 
 ing life. The best way to have permanent 
 peace with the world is not to expect much 
 of it; not to be afraid of it; so far as one can 
 without self-deception see the good in it; 
 and to regard the evil as something power- 
 less and temporary which will soon defeat 
 itself. 
 
 In short, I may in conclusion say, that 
 one must not take this life too seriously. 
 As soon as we live above it, much of it be- 
 comes unimportant, and if the essentials are 
 secure we must not care too much for the 
 subordinate. Many of the best people suffer 
 from this magnifying of trifles, and espe- 
 cially from their dependence on other peo- 
 ple's opinions; and this lack of proportion 
 makes for such people each day's work much 
 more difficult than it would otherwise be. 
 
 I have said that these practical rules might 
 be indefinitely multiplied. But they are all, 
 as I have also said, in reality superfluous. 
 For if the soil of the heart is fertilized, as I 
 have already described, then these fruits of 
 life grow out of it spontaneously, and serve 
 118
 
 the special needs of the individual. The es- 
 sential question concerns the soil itself, with- 
 out which not one of these practical fruits 
 can grow. Thus I may say in general that 
 I take no great interest in what people call 
 systems of morals, or in the rules of conduct 
 which they prescribe. A system of morals 
 either issues spontaneously from a habit of 
 mind, which in its turn issues from a view 
 of life, attained even through the death of 
 one's old self; or else such a system is noth- 
 ing but a series of beautiful maxims, pleas- 
 ant to hear, good to record in diaries and 
 calendars, but incapable of converting the 
 human heart. 
 
 I do not care to multiply the material for 
 these collections of maxims. I shall only add 
 one last and solemn truth. It is this, that 
 under the conditions of human life unhap- 
 piness also is necessary. Indeed, if one cared 
 to state it in a paradox, he might say that 
 unhappiness is essential to happiness. In the 
 first place, as the experience of life plainly 
 shows, unhappiness is inevitable, and one 
 must in one way or another reconcile him- 
 self to it. The most to which one can at- 
 tain in this human lot is perfect adjustment 
 to one's destiny ; that inward and permanent 
 peace which, as Isaiah says, is like an "over- 
 flowing stream." It is this peace and this 
 
 119
 
 alone which Christ promises to his disciples, 
 and it is this, and no outward satisfaction, 
 which the Apostle Paul expects for his fel- 
 low-Christians, when, at the end of his un- 
 peaceful life, he prays that "the peace of 
 Christ may rule" in their hearts. 
 
 Thus, for real happiness the outward is- 
 sue of events may come to have no high im- 
 portance. Stoicism endeavored to solve the 
 problem of happiness by developing insen- 
 sibility to pain, but its endeavor was vain. 
 The problem of happiness is to be solved 
 in quite another way. One must accept his 
 suffering and unhappiness, and adjust him- 
 self to them. And to this end one is, first of 
 all, helped by considering what unhappiness 
 implies, and by living consistently above the 
 sway of momentary feeling. For unhappi- 
 ness does us good in no less than three ways, 
 ways which are cumulative in their efFe6t. 
 It is, in the first place, a punishment, the 
 natural consequence of our deeds. It is, thus 
 considered, a part of those deeds themselves, 
 and therefore must follow them as surely as 
 a logical consequence follows its premise. 
 Unhappiness is, secondly, a cleansing pro- 
 cess, waking us to greater seriousness and 
 greater receptivity to truth. Thirdly, un- 
 happiness recalls us to self-examination and 
 fortifies us by disclosing what is our own 
 120
 
 strength, and what is God's strength. By no 
 other experience does one attain that spiri- 
 tual courage which is far removed from self- 
 confidence and very near to humility. In a 
 word, it must be said that the deeper life of 
 man and that noble bearing which we remark 
 in some people, and which no one, whatever 
 be his station, can falsely assume, are attained 
 only through faithful endurance of misfor- 
 tune. That word of the Apostle Paul, "We 
 glory in tribulations," is, like many of his 
 sayings, absolutely unintelligible to any one 
 who has not experienced what renewal of 
 power and what profound happiness may 
 be discovered through misfortune itself. It 
 is a form of happiness which one never for- 
 gets if he has once really experienced it. 
 
 This, then, is the riddle of life which per- 
 plexes many a man and turns him from the 
 right way, that good people do not get the 
 good things which might seem to them their 
 due. 
 
 " The prophet host, the martyr throng. 
 
 Reckoned the world as dross, 
 Despised the shame, endured the wrong, 
 
 Counting their gain, their loss; 
 And He, to whom they sang their song, 
 
 Was nailed upon the cross" 
 
 Suffering, then, lies on the road to life, and 
 one must expect to meet it if he would be 
 
 121
 
 happy. Many a person, when he sees this lion 
 in his path, turns about and contents him- 
 self with something less than happiness. And 
 yet it is also true, as experience teaches, that 
 in our misfortunes, as in our enjoyments, im- 
 agination greatly outruns reality. Our pain 
 is seldom as great as our imagination pic- 
 tures it. Sorrow is often the gate which opens 
 into great happiness. Thus the true life calls 
 for a certain severity of dealing, as if one 
 should say to himself: " You may like to do 
 this thing, or you may not like to do it, but 
 you must do it"; and true education rests 
 on these two foundation stones, love of 
 truth and courage for the right. Without 
 them, education is worthless. It is like the 
 kingdom of God which is to be taken by vio- 
 lence, "And the violent take it with force." 
 And thus, of all the human qualities which 
 lead to happiness, certainly the most essen- 
 tial is courage. 
 
 We look back, then, finally, over what has 
 been said, and repeat what a gifted authoress 
 of our time, Gisela Grimm, has said in her 
 drama of Old Scotland : " Happiness is com- 
 munion with God, and the central spiritual 
 quality which attains this communion is cour- 
 age." Other happiness than this is not to be 
 found on earth, and if there were happiness 
 without these traits, it would not be the hap- 
 
 122
 
 piness we should desire. And this kind of 
 happiness is real. It is not, like every other 
 dream of happiness, an illusion from which 
 sooner or later one must wake. It does not 
 issue from our achievements or our compul- 
 sions. On the contrary, when we have once 
 accepted and made our own the view of life 
 which I have described, and have ceased to 
 look about us for some other view, then hap- 
 piness comes to us by the way. It is a stream 
 ofinwardpeace;broadeningaswegrowolder, 
 first enriching our own souls and then pour- 
 ing itself forth to bless other lives. 
 
 This is the goal to which our life must 
 attain, if it hope for happiness, and to this 
 goal it can attain. Indeed, if once the first 
 decision be made, and the first steps taken, 
 then, as Dante says: 
 
 ..." This mount is such, that ever 
 
 At the beginning down below 'tis tiresome. 
 
 And aye the more one climbs, the less it hurts. 
 
 Therefore, when it shall seem so pleasant to thee, 
 
 That going up shall be to thee as easy 
 
 As going down the current in a boat, 
 
 Then at this pathway's ending thou wilt be" 7 
 
 Below at the foot of the mountain the fixed 
 decision is demanded. There one must ab- 
 solutely determine to pay any price which 
 shall be asked for the happiness which is real. 
 No further step can be taken without this 
 
 123
 
 first resolution, and by no easier path has 
 any one attained the happiness he sought. 
 Goethe, the teacher of those who sought 
 happiness in other ways, admitted as I 
 have said that in seventy-five years of life 
 he had had four weeks of content, and no 
 one who has followed him can, at the end of 
 life, when asked what his conscience testifies, 
 make better reply. We, on the other hand, 
 should be able, at the last, to say: "The days 
 of our years are threescore years and ten, 
 and though we be so strong as to come to 
 fourscore years, and though there has been 
 much labor and sorrow, still it has been a life 
 of happiness." 
 
 124
 
 VII. THE MEANING OF LIFE
 
 VII. THE MEANING OF LIFE 
 
 HIS is the question of ques- 
 tions. A man must be wholly 
 superficial or wholly animal 
 who does not at some time in 
 his life ask what is the mean- 
 ing of his life. Yet, sad to 
 say, most men end their lives 
 without finding an answer. Some repeat, in 
 their darker moods, the melancholy confes- 
 sion of a mediaeval philosopher: "I live, but 
 know not how long; I die, but know not 
 when ; I depart, but know not whither. How 
 is it possible for me to fancy myself happy!" 
 Others drive from their minds these morbid 
 reflections which, as they say, "lead to noth- 
 ing," and repeat: "Let us eat and drink, for 
 to-morrow we die." 
 
 Even among what we call cultivated peo- 
 ple, where education has made a profounder 
 view accessible, the number of those who 
 find the meaning of life is by no means large. 
 After some vain and superficial attempts to 
 save themselves they yield at last, and often 
 far too soon, to the pitiful programme of 
 self-indulgence. And what is their next step ? 
 It is to pursue consistently this programme. 
 But there is not long left the health which is 
 necessary for this life of eating and drinking, 
 and then in throngs they make their pil- 
 
 127
 
 grimages, the women at the front, to Pastor 
 Kneipp, or Dr. Metzger, or some other in- 
 fallible healer, hoping for a quick restoration 
 and a second chance to waste their lives. 
 
 Still others there are who have not the 
 means to adopt this plan of life. Many of 
 these seek a substitute for it in some form 
 of social scrambling; or if this fails, com- 
 mit themselves to the new doctrine of eco- 
 nomics, according to which the only real 
 problem of life is the "stomach problem," 
 and which teaches that in satisfying the 
 stomach the social ideals of the race will be 
 also satisfied. 
 
 Still others there are who are more subtle 
 and more critical. They have come to see 
 how impracticable are all these schemes to 
 redeem life from its troubles. Thus, after 
 they have tried many half-way measures, 
 they come at last to the confession of the 
 wisest of kings: "Vanity of vanities, all is 
 vanity." They commit themselves to scepti- 
 cism concerning any meaning in life and to 
 the worship of non-existence. To them the 
 end of life is to be Nirvana, annihilation, 
 the forgetfulness of thatwhich life has been ; 
 and they fancy that they have attained a 
 very noble attitude toward life when, after 
 many years of sharp contention with their 
 healthy human nature, which steadily pro- 
 128
 
 tests against these subtle negations, they are 
 able at last to repeat the words of the Hin- 
 doo sage: 
 
 " Through birth and rebirth's endless round 
 I ran and sought , but never found 
 Who framed and built this house of clay. 
 What misery! birth for ay and ay! 
 
 O builder ! thee at last I see ! 
 Ne'er shalt thou build again for me. 
 
 Thy rafters all are broken now. 
 Demolished lies thy ridgepole, low. 
 
 My heart, demolished too, I ween, 
 An end of all desire hath seen." 8 
 
 Such is the final word of their philosophy. 
 Neither light nor hope is left for human life. 
 He does the best who earliest recognizes the 
 hopelessness of life and hastens to its end. 
 Human nature, however, is so abound- 
 ing in life and so eager for life that except 
 in those transitory and morbid conditions 
 which we have come to describe as fin de 
 sucle moods, it is never long content to inter- 
 pret experience in terms of universal bank- 
 ruptcy. On the contrary, it insists that the 
 problem of philosophy must be in the fu- 
 ture, as it has been in the past, the shedding 
 of light on the meaning of life. It is a prob- 
 lem which philosophy has often answered 
 with mere phrases, which have brought no 
 
 129
 
 meaning or comfort to the troubled heart 
 of man, and it is not surprising that since 
 the climax of this hollow formalism was 
 reached in Hegel, there has been a natural 
 distrust of philosophy. 
 
 And what is it in this speculative phi- 
 losophy which creates this distrust? It is its 
 attempt to regard the universe as self-ex- 
 planatory. Here, even at the present time, 
 is one of the fundamental propositions of 
 most philosophizing, against which no argu- 
 ment may be permitted. It seems an essen- 
 tial assumption of philosophy ; since if other 
 ways of explanation of the universe were 
 superadded, philosophy as an independent 
 science would seem to be superfluous. Is 
 it certain, however, that the subordination 
 of philosophy thus apprehended would be, 
 after all, a great misfortune? What the hu- 
 man mind is concerned about is not the per- 
 petuation of philosophy as a science, but the 
 discovery of some meaning in life itself, its 
 destiny, its past and its future; and one is 
 quite justified in losing interest in any sci- 
 ence which does not in the end contribute 
 to the interpretation and amelioration of hu- 
 man life. We have a right to demand of phi- 
 losophy that she contribute to this end, and 
 that she shall speak also with some degree 
 of simplicity of language, dismissing the at- 
 130
 
 tempt to satisfy with empty and unintelli- 
 gible phrases the hunger of the soul for fun- 
 damental truth. 
 
 And yet, from the time of Plato to that of 
 Hegel, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche, the 
 making of phrases has been the special busi- 
 ness of philosophy. It has created a language 
 of its own, which separates it as by an im- 
 penetrable hedge from the region of men's 
 common talk; and when one translates such 
 language into the familiar speech of his own 
 time, where words have a definite meaning, 
 it is as though he withdrew from a veiled 
 goddess the disguise which gave her all her 
 power and dignity. The fact is that abstract 
 philosophy has never explained to any satis- 
 faction either the existence or the develop- 
 ment of the world; still less has philosophy 
 brought into unity these two conceptions, 
 and interpreted them through a single cause. 
 On the contrary, the history of philosophy 
 has been a history of words, conveying no 
 real interpretation, and it would seem as if in 
 the thousands of years of philosophic spec- 
 ulation either some interpretation should 
 have been attained or that there should at 
 last be heard the confession that philosophy 
 can throw no further light on these funda- 
 mental facts. Here, it would seem, we should 
 reach the end of philosophy, and should as- 
 
 '3 1
 
 sume that the first cause of things is un- 
 knowable. 
 
 Philosophy, however, has seldom con- 
 sented to this confession of impotence. On 
 the contrary, it has repeatedly reverted to 
 some absolute assumption of an adequate 
 cause which lies behind the possibility of 
 proof. Sometimes it is the assumption of 
 a vital Substance, one and unchangeable; 
 sometimes it is the assumption of an infinite 
 concourse of atoms. Yet such conceptions 
 are in the highest degree elusive, and force 
 us to inquire whence such substance, be it 
 simple or infinitely divided, comes, how it 
 becomes quickened with life, and how it im- 
 parts the life it has. The transition from such 
 mere movements of atoms to phenomena 
 of feeling or thought or will, makes a leap 
 in nature which no man has in the remotest 
 degree proposed to explain. On the con- 
 trary, instead of bridging such a chasm the 
 most famous inquirers simply record the 
 melancholy confession: "Ignoramus, igno- 
 rabimus." 
 
 Sometimes, again, philosophy has taught, 
 with many and large words, that the mean- 
 ing of the world resides in an opposition be- 
 tween Being and Not-being. This is no new 
 doctrine and it is at least intelligent and in- 
 telligible. Yet what we really need to know 
 132
 
 concerns Being alone. It is the world that 
 lies before our eyes that interests us. How 
 has this world come to be, we ask, or is it 
 perhaps a mere illusion, the mirage of our 
 own thought, with no reality but that which 
 our own minds assign, as people in their de- 
 spair have sometimes believed it to be? As 
 for Non-existence, what rational interest has 
 this for us? Is it even an intelligible concep- 
 tion ? Does it not rather set before us a con- 
 tradiction which we may conceive, but can 
 never verify, and which has for life itself no 
 significance at all? 
 
 Still other philosophers invite us to turn 
 from the outward world whose final cause 
 thus eludes us, and to consider our own self- 
 conscious nature, the Ego, concerning which 
 no one can doubt and which no philosophy 
 is needed to prove. Yet no sooner does this 
 poor Ego issue from its own self-conscious- 
 ness and, as it were, take a step into the out- 
 ward world, as though to interpret through 
 itself the meaning of life, than it becomes 
 aware that some further and external cause 
 is necessary to explain even the Ego to it- 
 self. 
 
 Finally, philosophy, in its search for the 
 meaning of life, bows to the authority of nat- 
 ural science and proposes to interpret experi- 
 ence through some doctrine of development, 
 
 '33
 
 or evolution, or heredity, or natural selec- 
 tion. All that exists, it announces, comes of 
 some primitive protoplasm, or even of some 
 single primitive cell. Yet still there presses 
 the ancient question how such cells may have 
 been made and how there has been imparted 
 to them their infinite capacity for life and 
 growth. It is the question which the keen 
 and practical Napoleon asked as he stood a 
 century ago under the mystery of the stars 
 in Egypt. Turning to the scholar Monge, he 
 said : " Qui a fait tout cela? " To such a ques- 
 tion neither abstract philosophy nor natural 
 science has as yet given and, so far as we can 
 judge, will ever give any answer. 
 
 To interpret the world, then, by itself or 
 through itself is impossible, for there is in 
 the world itself no final cause. If the mind 
 of man is the final interpreter of the world, 
 then it becomes itself the God it seeks, and 
 the philosophers become the object of a kind 
 of worship. Here, indeed, is the outcome of 
 much philosophy to-day. If, however, the 
 philosophers have any power of observation, 
 they soon discover one positive barrier to 
 this excessive self-importance. It is the hum- 
 bling consciousness of limitation in their own 
 powers and in their own hold on life itself; 
 the inevitable impression, which no human 
 praise can remove, of their own defects; the 
 
 '34
 
 impossibility of finding a meaning even for 
 their own lives within those lives themselves. 
 Here is the weakness of that pantheism 
 which, from the time of Spinoza, has so 
 largely controlled speculative thought, and, 
 from the time of Hegel, Schopenhauer, and 
 Goethe, has been the prevailing creed of 
 cultivated people, so far as they concern 
 themselves with philosophy. No form of 
 philosophy is so demoralizing in its ethical 
 consequences as this. It breeds contempt of 
 moral activity ; it forfeits the right of the will 
 to oppose what is evil and to create what is 
 good. Sooner or later the corollary of such a 
 faith appears in some form of superstition, 
 crude but compelling, like hypnotism or 
 spiritualism, or the vulgar and noisy substi- 
 tutes for religion which are now so conspicu- 
 ous. Thus the cycle of philosophical specu- 
 lation fulfils itself, and returns after centuries 
 to the same point at which it began. The 
 final form of truth may come to be, not the 
 systems of abstract philosophy or of specu- 
 lative theology, which have proved so mis- 
 leading and unsatisfying, but simply a sum- 
 ming-up of the experience of mankind, as 
 it has affected human destiny through the 
 history of the world; and in this experience 
 we have a philosophy better than abstrac- 
 tions, and always within one's reach. 
 
 135
 
 And where do we find this philosophy 
 which discovers the meaning of life not 
 through speculative reasoning but through 
 the interpretation of experience, and which 
 observes in experience a spiritual power 
 creating and maintaining both the world 
 and the individual? This is the view of life 
 which had its origin in Israel and was ful- 
 filled in Christianity. It cannot indeed be 
 called in the technical sense a philosophy, 
 for philosophy would feel itself called upon 
 to explain still further that Cause which it 
 thus reached. Theology as a positive science 
 meets the same fate as philosophy. It can- 
 not prove its God, as philosophy cannot in- 
 terpret the world or human life in or through 
 themselves. What people call ontology, or 
 the proofs of the being of God, is no real 
 science, and convinces none but him who is 
 already pledged. It is in the nature of God 
 to be beyond our interpretations. A god 
 who could be explained would not be God, 
 and a man who could explain God would 
 not be man. The legitimate aim of life is not 
 to see God as He is, but to see the affairs of 
 this world and of human life somewhat as 
 God might see them. It is, therefore, no new 
 thing to question whether theology can be 
 fairly called a science at all. On this point, 
 for instance, the evidence of Christ is in the 
 136
 
 negative, and the theological speculations 
 of Christians are, in fact, not derived from 
 him. They proceed, on the contrary, from 
 the Apostle Paul, who applied to the prov- 
 ing of Christianity the subtlety of theologi- 
 cal training which he had received under 
 Judaism; and even in his case it must be 
 remembered that his teaching was directed 
 to convince those who had been, like him, 
 trained in the theology of Israel. 
 
 It must not be imagined, therefore, that 
 the final Cause of the world which we call 
 God, can be philosophically proved. Faith 
 in God is first of all a personal experience. 
 Nothing should disguise this proposition, 
 though it is the stone of offence where many 
 stumble who are seeking an adequate mean- 
 ing of life. Nothing can be done to help 
 those who refuse this experience. No argu- 
 ment can convince them. There is no philo- 
 sophical refutation of a determined atheism. 
 
 Here is an admission which must gravely 
 affect not only our religious and philosophi- 
 cal relations with others, but even our prac- 
 tical and political life. Here is the funda- 
 mental difference between people of the same 
 nation, or condition, or time, or even family. 
 In other differences of opinion there may 
 be found some common ground, but be- 
 tween faith and denial there is no common 
 
 137
 
 ground, because we are dealing with a ques- 
 tion of the will and because the human will 
 is free. The saying of Tertullian, that the hu- 
 man soul is naturally Christian, is in a literal 
 sense quite untrue. Every man who reflects 
 on his responsibilities recognizes that he is 
 not naturally Christian. He is, at the most, 
 only possibly Christian, as Tertullian per- 
 haps meant to say. He is capable of becom- 
 ing Christian through the experience of life. 
 Atheism and Christianity are equally acces- 
 sible to the nature of man. 
 
 Faith in God, then, is a form of experience, 
 not a form of proof. If experience were as un- 
 fruitful as proof, then faith in God would be 
 nothing more than a nervous condition, and 
 the answer of Festus "Paul, thou art be- 
 side thyself!" would be the just estimate 
 of a faith like that of Paul. Each period 
 of history has in fact produced many a Fes- 
 tus, sedulously guarding his reason and con- 
 science against all that cannot be proved. 
 Other faith, however, than that which pro- 
 ceeds from experience is not expected by God 
 from any man; while to every man, in his 
 own experience and in the witness of history, 
 this faith is abundantly offered. There is, 
 therefore, in the refusal of faith a confession, 
 not merely of intellectual error, but of moral 
 neglect; and many a man who has surren- 
 138
 
 dered his faith would be slow to confess to 
 others how well aware he is that the fault is 
 his own. 
 
 Here, then, is the first step toward the 
 discovery of the meaning of life. It is an act 
 of will, a moral venture, a listening to experi- 
 ence. No man can omit this initial step, and 
 no man can teach another the lesson which 
 lies in his own experience. The prophets of 
 the Old Testament fou nd an accurate expres- 
 sion for this act of will when they described 
 it as a "turning," and they went on to assure 
 their people of the perfect inward peace and 
 the sense of confidence which followed from 
 this act. "Look unto me, and be ye saved," 
 says Isaiah ; " I ncline your ear, and come unto 
 me: hear, and your soul shall live." From 
 that time to this, thousands of those who 
 have thus changed the direction of their wills 
 have entered into the same sense of peace; 
 while no man who has thus given his will to 
 God has ever felt himself permanently be- 
 wildered or forsaken. 
 
 Here, also, in this free act of the will, is 
 attained that sense of liberty which in both 
 the Old and New Testaments is described 
 as "righteousness." It is a sense of initiative 
 and power, as though one were not wholly 
 the subject of arbitrary grace, but had a cer- 
 tain positive companionship with God. It is
 
 what the Old Testament calls a "covenant," 
 involving mutual rights and obligations. No 
 man, however, who accepts this relation is 
 inclined to urge overmuch his own rights, 
 knowing as he well does that his part in the 
 covenant falls ever short and is even then 
 made possible only through his steady con- 
 fidence in God. Grace, unearned and unde- 
 served, he still knows that he needs; yet 
 behind this grace lies ever the initiative of 
 personal " turning," and the free assertion of 
 the will as the first step toward complete 
 redemption. To say with Paul that a man is 
 "justified by faith," or to emphasize as Lu- 
 ther does, even more strongly, the province 
 of grace, is to run some risk of forgetting 
 the constant demand for an initial step of 
 one's own. 
 
 This step once taken, both the world in 
 which one lives and one's own personal life 
 get a clear and intelligible meaning. On the 
 one hand stands the free will of God, creating 
 and directing the world, not restricted by the 
 so-called laws of nature, yet a God of order, 
 whose desires are not arbitrary or lawless. 
 On the other hand is the free will of man, 
 with the free choice before it of obedience 
 or refusal; a will, therefore, which may 
 choose the wrong though it may not thereby 
 thwart the Divine purpose. The evil-doer, 
 140
 
 if impenitent, must suffer, but his evil is con- 
 verted into good. In such a philosophy what 
 is a wisely adjusted human life? It is a life of 
 free obedience to the eternal and unchange- 
 able laws of God; a life, therefore, which at- 
 tains through self-discipline successive steps 
 of spiritual power. Life on other terms brings 
 on a progressive decline of spiritual power 
 and with this a sense of self-condemnation. 
 What is the happy life ? It is a life of conscious 
 harmony with this Divine order of the world, 
 a sense, that is to say, of God's companion- 
 ship. And wherein is the profoundest un- 
 happiness? It is in the sense of remoteness 
 from God, issuing into incurable restlessness 
 of heart, and finally into incapacity to make 
 one's life fruitful or effective. 
 
 If, then, we are at times tempted to fancy 
 that all this undemonstrable experience is 
 unreal, or metaphysical, or purposeless, or 
 imaginary, it is best to deal with such re- 
 turning scepticism much as we deal with the 
 selfish or mean thoughts which we are trying 
 to outgrow. Let all these hindrances to the 
 higher life bequietly but firmly repelled. The 
 better world we enter is indeed entered by 
 faith and not by sight; but this faith grows 
 more confident and more supporting, until 
 it is like an inward faculty of sight itself. To 
 substitute for this a world of the outward 
 
 141
 
 senses is to find no meaning in life which can 
 convey confidence and peace. It is but to em- 
 bitterevery noble and thoughtful nature with 
 restless doubts from which there is no escape. 
 
 Such was religion as it disclosed itself to 
 the early Hebrews. Soon, indeed, that reli- 
 gion was overgrown by the formalism which 
 converted its practical teaching into mere 
 prohibitions or mere mechanism; but behind 
 these abuses of later history lay the primitive 
 simplicity of spiritual liberty and life. Such 
 also was the historical beginning of the Chris- 
 tian religion. The mission of Christ, like that 
 of each genuine reformer, was to recall men 
 to their original consciousness of God; and 
 it is perhaps the greatest tragedy of history, 
 while at the same time the best proof of the 
 free will of man, that the Hebrew people, 
 to whom Christ announced that he was ex- 
 pressly sent, could not, as a whole, bring 
 themselves to obey his call. They were held 
 in bondage by their accumulated formalism, 
 as many a man has been ever since. They 
 could not rise to the thought of a worship 
 which was in spirit and in truth. Had they, 
 with their extraordinary gifts, been able to 
 hear Christ's message, they would have be- 
 come the dominant nation of the world. 
 
 And what is to be said of those Gentile 
 peoples who listened more willingly to the 
 142
 
 message of Christ, those "wild olive trees," 
 as St. Paul calls them, which were grafted 
 on the "broken branches"? They also have 
 had the same history. They also, in their 
 own way, have become enslaved by the same 
 formalism; and they also must regain their 
 liberty through the return of individual souls 
 to a personal experience of the method of 
 Christ. 
 
 Here is the evidence of the indestructible 
 truth and the extraordinary vitality of the 
 Christian religion. To subdue its opponents 
 was but a slight achievement ; for every posi- 
 tive truth must in the end prevail. Its real 
 conflict has been with the forces of accumu- 
 lated opinion, of superfluous learning, of 
 sickly fancies among its friends, and with the 
 intellectual slavery to which these influences 
 have led. Through these obstructions the 
 light and power of genuine Christianity have 
 broken like sunshine through a mist; and 
 with such Christianity have appeared in his- 
 tory the political liberty on which the perma- 
 nence of civilization rests, the philosophical 
 truth which solves the problems of human 
 life, and the present comfort for the human 
 heart, beyond the power of misfortune to 
 disturb. 
 
 We reach, then, a philosophy of life which 
 is not speculative or fanciful, but rests on 
 
 143
 
 the fads of history. This is "the way, the 
 truth, and the life." Better is it for one if he 
 finds this "way "without too many compan- 
 ions or professional guides, for many a re- 
 ligious teaching, designed to show the way, 
 has repelled young lives from following it. 
 As one follows the way, he gains, first of all, 
 courage, so that he dares to go on in his 
 search. He goes still further, and the way 
 opens into the assurance that life, with all 
 its mystery, is not lived in vain. He pushes 
 on, and the way issues into health, not only 
 of the soul but even of the body ; for bodily 
 health is more dependent on spiritual con- 
 dition than spiritual condition on bodily 
 health; and modern medicine can never re- 
 store and assure health to the body if it limit 
 its problem to physical relief alone. Nor is 
 even this the end of the "way" ofChrist.lt 
 leads not only to personal health, but to social 
 health as well; not by continually inciting 
 the masses to some social programme, but 
 by strengthening the individuals of which 
 the masses are made. Here alone is positive 
 social redemption; while the hopes that turn 
 to other ways of social reform are for the most 
 part deceptive dreams. 
 
 Finally, the way is sure to lead every life 
 which follows it, and is willing to pay the 
 price for the possession of truth, into the 
 144
 
 region of spiritual peace. No other way of 
 life permits this comprehensive sense of 
 peace and assurance. Apart from it we have 
 but the unremitting and bitter struggle for 
 existence, the enforcement of national self- 
 seeking, the temporary victory of the strong, 
 the hell of the weak and the poor; yet, at 
 the same time, no peace even for the strong, 
 who have their little day of power, but live 
 in daily fear that this power will fail and 
 leave them at the mercy of the wolves, their 
 neighbors. Meantime, on every page of the 
 world's history, and in the experience of 
 daily life, God writes the opposite teaching, 
 that out of the midst of evil issues at last the 
 mastery of the good; and that, in modern as 
 in ancient time, the meek both inherit and 
 control the earth. History is not a record of 
 despotic control like that of a Roman Caesar, 
 effective and intelligent, but necessarily in- 
 volving a progressive degeneration of his 
 subjects; it is a story of progressive amelio- 
 ration in moral standards and achievements ; 
 and this fact of moral progress is the most 
 convincing proof of the being of God. 
 
 Thus it happens that to one who loves 
 liberty and who reads history, the logic of 
 thought leads to faith in God. Without such 
 faith it is difficult to believe in human prog- 
 ress through freedom, or to view the move-
 
 ment of the modern world with hope. With- 
 out such faith the popular agitations of the 
 time are disquieting and alarming, and the 
 only refuge of the spirit is in submission to 
 some human authority either of Church or 
 of State. Without such faith it would be in- 
 creasingly impossible to maintain a demo- 
 cratic republic like Switzerland in the midst 
 of the autocratic monarchies of Europe. 
 With profound truthfulness the Swiss Par- 
 liament at Aarau opened its session with 
 these simple words: "Our help is in the 
 Lord our God, who hath made heaven and 
 earth." And, finally, without political liberty 
 there would be but a brief survival of reli- 
 gious liberty itself, and it too would be sup- 
 planted by a condition of servitude. A State- 
 Church is a self-contradictory expression. 
 State and Church alike need self-govern- 
 ment for self-development. A free Church 
 and a free State are not only most represen- 
 tative of Christianity, but are beyond doubt 
 the forms of Christian citizenship which are 
 to survive. Not compulsion, nor any form 
 of authority, will in the end dominate the 
 world, but freedom, in all its forms and its 
 effects. The end of social evolution is to be 
 the free obedience of men and nations to the 
 moral order of the world. 
 
 And yet, we must repeat, the secret of true 
 146
 
 progress is not to be found in an achieve- 
 ment of philosophy, oraprocess of thought; 
 but in a historical process,a living experience. 
 To each man's will is offered the choice of 
 this way which leads to personal recognition 
 of the truth and personal experience of hap- 
 piness. To each nation the same choice is pre- 
 sented. No philosophy or religion has real 
 significance which does not lead this way. No 
 man can rightly call it mere misfortune, or 
 confess his unbelief with sentimental regret, 
 when he misses the way and forfeits his peace 
 of mind. His pessimism is not, as he fondly 
 thinks, a mark of distinction; it is, on the 
 contrary, as a rule, an evidence of moral de- 
 fect or weakness, and should stir in him a 
 positive moral scorn. 
 
 What is it, then, which makes one unable 
 to find the way of Jesus? It is, for the most 
 part, either unwillingness to make a serious 
 effort to find it, or disinclination to accept 
 the consequences of the choice. To take up 
 with some philosophical novelty, involving 
 no demand upon the will; to surrender one- 
 self to the pleasures of life; to attach oneself, 
 with superficial and unreflecting devotion, to 
 some form of Church or sect; how much 
 easier is anyone of these refuges of the mind 
 than serious meditation on the great prob- 
 lems of life and the growth of a personal con- 
 
 47
 
 viction! And yet, how unmistakable have 
 been the joy, and the strength to live and to 
 die, and the peace of mind and sense of right 
 adjustment to the Universe, which those 
 have found who have followed with patience 
 the way I have described! In the testimony 
 of such souls there is complete accord. Con- 
 sciously or unconsciously, every heart de- 
 sires the satisfactions which this way of life 
 can give, and without these satisfactions of 
 the spirit no other possessions or pleasures 
 can insure spiritual peace. 
 
 What infinite pains are taken by people 
 in the modern world for the sake of their 
 health of body or the welfare of their souls! 
 For health of body they go barefoot in the 
 daytime or sleep in wet sheets at night; for 
 the good of their souls they go on pilgrim- 
 ages and into retreats, or submit themselves 
 to other forms of spiritual exercise. They go 
 even farther in their pious credulity. There 
 is not a hardship or a folly, or a risk of body 
 or soul, or any form of martyrdom, which is 
 not accepted by thousands in the hope that 
 it will save their souls. And all the time the 
 simple way to the meaning of life lies straight 
 before their feet, a way, however, let us 
 last of all remember, which it is not enough 
 to know, but which is given us to follow. 
 This is the truth which a scholar of the time 
 148
 
 of Luther teaches, though he himself had 
 not fully attained the truth. Not, he writes, 
 by knowing the way but by going it, is the 
 meaning of life to be found. He put into 
 the mouth of Christ his lesson: 
 
 art thou then so faint of heart ', 
 O man of little faith? 
 Have I not strength to do My part 
 As God's word promiseth? 
 
 Why wilt thou not return to Me 
 
 Whose pity will receive? 
 Why seek not Him whose grace can free 
 
 And every fault forgive? 
 
 Why was it hard the way to find, 
 Which straight before thee ran? 
 
 Why dost thou wander as though blind? 
 'T'w thine own choice^ man!" 
 
 I 49
 
 NOTES
 
 NOTE i 
 
 "Friedrich Max von Klinger," says Professor Hilty, 
 "was born in 1752, at Frankfort. His family were 
 poor, and after he had with difficulty pursued his 
 studies at the University of Giessen, he became at first 
 a play-writer fora travelling company. He then served 
 during the Bavarian War of Succession in a corps of 
 volunteers. Later he became reader and travelling com- 
 panion to the Czarevitch Paul of Russia, afterwards 
 the Emperor. He was made Director of the corps of 
 cadets of the nobility, as well as of the Emperor's pages, 
 and of the girls' school for the nobility. Under Alex- 
 ander I. he was also made Curator of the University 
 of Dorpat. In all these relations of life, which were as 
 difficult as can be imagined, in his contact with afors t 
 crown-princes, Czars, noble pages and women of the 
 court, diplomats and professors who, taken together ', 
 are certainly not of the classes most easy to deal with 
 and living at a court thoroughly degraded and be- 
 set by self-seekers of the lowest kind as was the court 
 of Catherine II., von Klinger preserved his candid 
 character and moral courage and gained the high re- 
 specJ of his contemporaries. In Goethe's Wahrheit 
 und Dichtung, he mentions von Klinger as follows: 
 te This maintenance of a sterling character is the more 
 creditable when it occurs in the midst of worldly and 
 business life and when a way of conducJ which might 
 appear to many curt and abrupt, being judiciously fol- 
 lowed, accomplishes its ends. Such was his character. 
 Without subservience (which, indeed, has never been a 
 quality of the natives of Frankfort) he attained to the 
 
 '53
 
 most important positions, was able to maintain himself 
 there and to continue his services with the highest ap- 
 proval and gratitude of his noble patrons. Through 
 all this, he never forgot either his old friends or the 
 paths which he had come? In the later years of his 
 life, Goethe renewed the study of von Klinger^s writ- 
 ings, ' which recalled to me his unwearied activity and 
 his remarkable character? " 
 
 NOTE 2 
 
 Dante, Purgatorio, xxvii, 126, 131. 
 
 NOTES 
 
 Jakob Bohme,from a supplement to his works (His- 
 torische Uebersicht). 
 
 NOTE 4 
 
 Dante, Purgatorio, xxvii, 115. 
 
 NOTES 
 
 Dante, Purgatorio, ix, 19. 
 
 NOTE 6 
 
 Dante, Inferno, Hi, I, 9. 
 
 NOTE; 
 
 Dante, Purgatorio, iv, 88. 
 
 NOTES 
 
 Dhammapada, trans!. Charles R.Lanman,in Hymns 
 of the Faith, A. J. Edmunds, Chicago, i<)O2,page 38. 
 
 154
 
 THE QUEST OF HAPPINESS 
 
 A STUDY OF VICTORY OVER LIFE'S TROUBLES 
 BY NEWELL DWIGHT HILLIS 
 
 Pastor of Plymouth Church, Brooklyn ; author of 11 The 
 
 Influence of Christ in Modern Life" etc. 
 
 Cloth, Decorated Borders, $1.50 net 
 
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 is known it must make life sweeter and more wholesome. 
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 Springfield, Mass. 
 
 It is a book full of help and sympathy, marked by a wide 
 acquaintance with literature and with life, and by a true in- 
 sight into those conditions which make for the truest and best 
 existence. S. P. CADMAN, Pastor of Central Congregational 
 Church, Brooklyn. 
 
 It is a consummate statement of the highest conception of 
 the nature of human life, and of the only methods by which 
 its meaning and possibilities can be attained. Dr. Hillis is not 
 only a great master of style, but a serene satisfaction with 
 God's method of moral government breathes from every page 
 and makes the teacher trustworthy. CHARLES FREDERIC 
 Goss. 
 
 "The Quest of Happiness" is Dr. Hillis's very best book. 
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 "Forewords." They would make an attraftive volume in 
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 gational Church, Montclair, N. J. 
 
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