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GLIMPSES OF TRUTH 
 
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GLIMPSES OF TRUTH 
 
 WITH ESSAYS ON 
 ETICTETUS AND MARCUS AURELIUS 
 
 BY 
 
 RT. REV. J. L. (SPALDING 
 
 33ts{)0p of 
 
 R 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF 
 
 ^4S^ 
 
 CHICAGO 
 
 A. C. McCLURG & CO. 
 1903 
 
COPYRIGHT 
 
 BY A. C. McCLURG & Co. 
 A.D. 1903 
 
 PUBLISHED NOVEMBER 4, 1903 
 
 UNIVERSITY PRESS JOHN WILSON 
 AND SON CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A. 
 
ACS 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH . 3 
 
 EPICTETUS 201 
 
 MARCUS AURELIUS 223 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH 
 
EVERY surmise and vaticination of the mind is entitled to a certain 
 respect, and we learn to prefer imperfect theories, and sentences which 
 contain glimpses of truth, to digested systems which have no one valu- 
 able suggestion. EMERSON. 
 
 The study of proverbs may be more instructive and comprehensive 
 than the most elaborate scheme of philosophy. MOTHERWELL. 
 
 Good maxims are germs of all good ; firmly impressed on the memory 
 they nourish the will. JOUBERT. 
 
 Exclusively of the abstract sciences the largest and worthiest portion 
 of our knowledge consists of aphorisms ; and the greatest and best of 
 men is but an aphorism. COLERIDGE. 
 
 Why spin a story when a phrase will tell what thou hast to say? 
 Why read a book when an aphorism will express the truth a volume 
 may hold? 
 
 Wisdom becomes current and passes most readily from mind to mind 
 when it is coined into proverbs and maxims, which, holding a world of 
 meaning in small compass, delight by their brevity and stimulate by 
 their wealth of implication. The wise seek these focuses of light and 
 warmth with more eagerness, cling to them with more joy, and cherish 
 them with more devoutness than misers gold. 
 
( UNIVERSITY } 
 
 X. r OF J 
 
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 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH 
 i. 
 
 THE delight there is in becoming more and 
 more, whether by acquiring knowledge, 
 or virtue, or insight, or self-control, makes 
 pleasant what else were difficult, tedious, and 
 monotonous. Spiritual growth is the aim and 
 end of life, and nothing that ministers to it 
 can satiate or pall. This makes the happiness 
 of all noble strivers, whether they lay the chief 
 stress on culture of mind, or formation of 
 character, or purification of soul. 
 
 How miserable were not those ages in which 
 the writings of Homer and Plato, of Cicero 
 and Virgil, existed, but had fallen into neg- 
 lect and oblivion. One may or may not deem 
 it a misfortune never to have seen the monu- 
 ments of Greece and Rome; never to have 
 looked from the Acropolis on the Attic plain 
 and its island-studded sea; never from Taor- 
 mina's heights to have gazed on the slopes of 
 
4 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 TEtna, stooping with their crown of lemon and 
 almond trees and vines to the waters that bathe 
 their feet ; but only unraised and sluggish souls, 
 only ignoble and brutish spirits, can consent to 
 die without having drunk the divine words of 
 the greatest and most illumined minds. 
 
 The Greek and the Latin, which we call dead 
 languages, are not dead. They cannot die. 
 They live not only in the literatures which they 
 inform and which the world will not suffer to 
 perish, but they enter as a vital force into the 
 tongues of the modern civilized peoples. They 
 inspire, shape, and control the thoughts of the 
 most living minds. They are a spur to the 
 noblest aspirations; they embody the beauty 
 which never grows old; they fire the most 
 generous and gifted of each newborn genera- 
 tion with a courage and an enthusiasm which 
 keep the race fresh and young. They cannot 
 die. They are immortal, because immortal 
 spirits have breathed into them the truth and 
 beauty which are imperishable. 
 
 Though thou art in the midst of the world 
 and busy with many things, it is none the less 
 thy duty to live within where the soul finds 
 itself in the company of God and eternal truth; 
 and if this secret be hidden from thee thou art 
 doomed to a superficial and vulgar life. Thou 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 5 
 
 hast not yet attained. To-day thou art reborn. 
 Begin thy life anew. " The greatness or small- 
 ness of a man," says Ruskin, " is in the most 
 conclusive sense determined for him at his 
 birth, as strictly as it is determined for a 
 fruit whether it is to be a currant or an 
 apricot. . . . Apricot out of currant great 
 man out of small, did never yet art or effort 
 make." This is an instance of the readiness 
 with which a comparison may be perverted to 
 insinuate what is false. No sane mind ever 
 imagined that education can develop one species 
 from another, an eagle from a dove, an apple 
 from a grain of wheat, and yet Ruskin thinks 
 it necessary to be emphatic in denying what no 
 one affirms. His argument is not merely so- 
 phistical, but harmful, tending as it does to 
 take away hope and heart from students and 
 teachers, who are not to labor for anything else 
 than to make the most of what is given them 
 to shape and fashion. Except by ceaseless striv- 
 ing one cannot know what he may become. 
 Each one, certainly, can attain skill in doing 
 whatever he can accustom himself to persevere 
 in doing. Let him learn to occupy himself 
 gladly and unwearyingly with the things of the 
 mind, and he will become wiser and nobler and 
 go farther than as yet he is able to imagine. 
 
6 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 The difference between great and small men is 
 not absolute. There are many kinds and de- 
 grees of human power and worth; and they 
 who strive faithfully for the best attain it in 
 the measure their talent makes possible. Let 
 the student have boundless trust in the efficacy 
 of self-activity, in the marvellous excellences 
 which the habit of doing patiently and thor- 
 oughly is capable of producing in even the most 
 unpromising subjects. Endowments are gifts 
 of nature; but a faculty is not so much devel- 
 oped as produced by education in the large 
 sense of the word. It does more than unfold: 
 it creates, it confers ability to do what without 
 it we should never have power to do. The vital 
 consideration for one who wishes to get an 
 education is whether he have the will and the 
 courage to take infinite pains for years or for 
 a lifetime, and this he cannot have unless he 
 have infinite faith in the supreme worth of a 
 cultivated mind and a perfect character. 
 
 However great one's talent or skill, some- 
 thing of it is lost if for a little while, even, he 
 cease to improve himself. This is manifestly 
 true of artists, and it is not less so of those 
 whose instrument is more immediately the 
 mind. 
 
 .Where man is civilized art prevails over na- 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. *J 
 
 ture, in government, in commerce, in war, in 
 literature, in the professions, in everything. In 
 the progress he has been making for ages he 
 has so transformed his endowments that what 
 he has produced within himself transcends, 
 directs, and controls that which is born in him. 
 Thus a few thousands of a civilized race hold 
 in subjection millions of barbarians. Thus in 
 law, in medicine, and in the ministry, the great- 
 est students, not the greatest talents, reach the 
 summits; and so in literature also they who 
 take endless pains to educate themselves, and 
 not rude genius, write what becomes a per- 
 manent part of the spiritual treasures of their 
 people or of mankind. Even in the world of 
 fashion they who are best trained and culti- 
 vated, not the best endowed, are the leaders. 
 
 In admiring the abilities of others what we 
 really admire is the industry which has pro- 
 duced them, and which would bring forth like 
 faculties in ourselves, had we the will and the 
 courage to become perseveringly self -active. 
 The question of education resolves itself for 
 each one into learning how to learn. Be atten- 
 tive, observe, inquire, reflect, meditate, compare, 
 weigh, write, not for others, but for your own 
 enlightenment and improvement; and let all 
 this become habitual. The greatest genius, if 
 
8 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 he would accomplish something worth remem- 
 bering, must conform to this law ; and they who 
 appear to have little talent will, if they obey it 
 faithfully, be found in the end to have much. 
 
 Whatever we thoroughly accustom ourselves 
 to becomes pleasant, and often indispensable, 
 however disagreeable it may have been at first. 
 It is this that makes home sweet, country dear, 
 and friends delightful. It is this that gives 
 to study, meditation, and prayer the power to 
 refresh, strengthen, and console. 
 
 When the mature look back to their child- 
 hood and youth they cannot fail to perceive 
 that most of the things which interested and 
 absorbed them had no value or importance 
 other than that wherewith their ignorance and 
 inexperience endowed them. The toys, the 
 games, the sights and sounds which delighted 
 them they now recognize to have had this 
 power only because they themselves were weak 
 and foolish, the victims of illusion. In the 
 same way a cultivated and reflective mind sees 
 how unworthy of rational beings are the pas- 
 times, pleasures, and ambitions of the many. 
 They too are victims of illusion. If he con- 
 sider more closely he finds that he also is be- 
 guiled by a world of vanities and dreams, that 
 he is but a child of larger growth, whose busi- 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. g 
 
 ness, office, reputation, and schemes, if con- 
 templated from the point of view of a higher 
 intelligence, are as insignificant, as ephemeral, 
 as idle as the playthings of children or the 
 amusements and expectations of the ignorant. 
 If all belief in illusion were taken from us life 
 would lose its charm. The estimate each one 
 places on himself is illusive; the importance he 
 ascribes to his thoughts, his words, his works, 
 is fictitious. Were he to perish at once the 
 world would not be more changed than if a 
 mote dropped out of a sunbeam. This is true 
 of the greatest as of the least of mortals. Man- 
 kind would be much what they are had their 
 heroes never lived; and what they are, if we 
 view things in the light of eternity, is but as 
 a silly tale. The race is of yesterday and to- 
 morrow it shall have passed away, leaving no 
 trace behind. Unless it is from God, in Him 
 and for Him, it were better it had never been. 
 
 If we look at things as they are in them- 
 selves, why should we hold that a plant is a 
 higher form of existence than a stone, an ani- 
 mal than a plant, a man than a mere brute? 
 Only faith can supply an adequate answer: 
 faith that mind is superior to matter, that it 
 is more excellent to feel and think, to know 
 and love than simply to exist: and this faith 
 
10 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 is ineradicably implanted in the human heart. 
 We believe that life is the essential good, that 
 the highest life is the highest form of being, 
 and therefore that the Supreme Being, the 
 primal and creative cause of all that exists, is 
 perfect Life. 
 
 Whatever within us is born of strength, 
 whatever awakens a sense of power and vigor, 
 gives pleasure, because we love life and all its 
 potent manifestations. Hence it is delightful 
 to perform deeds of prowess or to see them 
 performed by others. Hence there is a thrill 
 of joy in writing with point and force, in 
 speaking with eloquence and effect, in control- 
 ling and guiding the wills of men, in arousing 
 their energies and impelling them to do more 
 than they believed themselves capable of doing; 
 in inspiring faith, hope, and courage; in en- 
 kindling the flame of a pure and noble love. 
 There is bliss in reading sublime words, in 
 the exaltation of spirit caused by lofty and im- 
 passioned utterances, by deeds of daring, by- 
 imposing pageants, by storm and thunderpeal 
 and the ceaseless roar of mighty cataracts; for 
 all this arouses within us a deeper conscious- 
 ness of the infinite power of life, of the life of 
 Him who breathes in the soul of man and at- 
 tunes it to harmony with the awful and un- 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. II 
 
 imaginable forces which work in endless time 
 and space, and fill the abysmal heavens with 
 light and beauty. 
 
 The intelligent even often express surprise 
 that men of great wealth should not be content 
 with what they have, but continue to accumu- 
 late. Nothing is less surprising, for whatever 
 man sets his heart on must increase or lose the 
 power to please, whether it be money or knowl- 
 edge or virtue or fame. To have or to have 
 done can satisfy no one. To feel ourselves 
 alive we must still acquire, still accomplish. 
 Our passions, like our appetites, are never 
 really sated, but only lulled into a repose which 
 prepares them to crave for more. Since our 
 yearning is infinite, let us yearn for the infinite 
 good which is not material, but spiritual; not 
 money and the things it buys, but truth and 
 love, which are above all price. 
 
 A chief virtue of vital books lies in their 
 power to reveal us to ourselves, to show us 
 that we possess potentialities of ability of which 
 we were not conscious, and so to stimulate us 
 to effort in the direction of our talents. For 
 many a one the reading of such a book for the 
 first time has been the beginning of a new life. 
 Contact with sublime souls is what is most to 
 be desired, above all for youth. It is capable 
 
12 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 of producing in them a higher quality of being, 
 of making them something more and better 
 than otherwise they could have become. 
 
 The aim and end of education is to produce 
 faculty and ability, and its one method is habit- 
 uation. To be habituable is the first require- 
 ment, the infallible proof of talent. What one 
 can accustom himself to, he can learn to know 
 and do. What is power of attention or obser- 
 vation or reflection but a result of the habit of 
 holding the mind to its objects? The multitude 
 of those who pass through schools fail to be- 
 come scholars because they fail to acquire the 
 habit of study. He who is habitually attentive, 
 inquiring, observant, eager to learn and to cor- 
 rect his defects, whether of mind or character, 
 whether of thought and speech or of conduct 
 and deportment, necessarily becomes wiser and 
 nobler, whatever difficulties and obstacles con- 
 front him. He finds teachers in all that he 
 meets, and in the face of poverty and opposi- 
 tion works his way to a knowledge of men 
 and books. 
 
 If we have genuine powers they who throw 
 doubts on our ability stimulate us even more 
 effectually than the expectations and urgency 
 of friends; for real strength, like heroic cour- 
 age, loves the face of foes. 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 13 
 
 Creative force secretes itself. It grows in 
 solitude and hiding; craves silence and ob- 
 scurity; wraps itself in mystery. Where it 
 works the soul bows in awe and holy shame, 
 and from those who live in the glare and noise 
 of the clamorous world, its sacred power de- 
 parts. There hangs about it the darkness that 
 brooded on primal chaos, from which the Eter- 
 nal called forth a universe of light and glory. 
 It lies in the seed germinating under ground; 
 it is enfolded in the love of virginal hearts; it 
 moves in the meditations of sincere minds, who 
 in self-forgetfulness and tranquillity bend all 
 their strength to know truth, that they may 
 follow where it leads. 
 
 The negative exists for the positive. Rest is 
 for the sake of action. If night buries us in 
 darkness, it is that we may be all alive when 
 day breaks. Silence and solitude are for re- 
 freshment of spirit. Continence is for self- 
 control and strength; humility for good sense; 
 abstinence for health. Self-denial is for greater 
 ability to help others, voluntary poverty is for 
 their enrichment; obedience is for the sake of 
 liberty and the common welfare. 
 
 Life never seems so short to me as when I 
 think of the books I know something of and 
 should wish to study more and more. I would 
 
14 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 spend a winter with Plato, another with Dante, 
 another with Shakespeare and Milton, <and 
 months or years with the great historians, 
 story-tellers, travellers, and others who can best 
 impart to me what is known of man and na- 
 ture. Then there is Aristotle, Marcus Aure- 
 lius, Epictetus, Montaigne, Descartes, Bacon, 
 Pascal, Wordsworth, Goethe, Emerson, Kant. 
 And when they have all been read and studied, 
 one would wish to begin anew, feeling that now 
 he is able to drink deeper draughts from these 
 perennial fountains of life and joy; for the 
 great books, once we have learned to know and 
 love them, have for us, like the flowers and the 
 stars, unfailing power to touch, to inspire, to 
 console, to strengthen, and to exalt. They are 
 an unending world of wisdom and beauty, 
 and one has but a day to live. When we 
 are in conscious communion with this spiritual 
 infinity and plenitude, we are certain we are 
 immortal. 
 
 Since the greater and better part of our hap- 
 piness is found in the free play of the imagi- 
 nation, when it is inspired by faith, hope, and 
 love; and since the imagination is hindered 
 and confused by the noise of the crowd and 
 by the conversation even of acquaintances and 
 friends, it follows that the purest delight must 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 15 
 
 be sought in solitude, where the soul is unim- 
 peded, and may at will create for itself divine 
 worlds of goodness and beauty. There has 
 never been a great soul whose power was not 
 derived from the communion with God and 
 Nature which solitude makes possible, as it 
 alone refreshes and recreates the wisest and the 
 purest when they have become weary and ex- 
 hausted. To be near to God is to be in Para- 
 dise. Nature too soothes and helps us to dream 
 and meditate; and its fairest scenes would best 
 perform this service were it not that there the 
 idle talk of men never fails to intrude on our 
 bliss. 
 
 A man of genius is drawn by the very con- 
 stitution of his physical and spiritual being to 
 observe, to reflect, to remark, to compare, to 
 give heed to little things, to discover likenesses 
 and dissimilitudes, which escape the notice of 
 ordinary minds. He quickly accustoms himself 
 to his task and readily acquires habits of self- 
 activity. He need not see much to have large 
 experience, nor know much to be able to di- 
 vine a great deal. A glimpse will show him 
 what full sight fails to reveal to another a 
 word will lead him to new worlds. He is alive 
 and alert even when he appears to be idle or 
 passive. Something of this power which genius 
 
1 6 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 confers on its chosen band the teacher should 
 labor to enable his pupils to acquire; and pos- 
 sibly the best means he can employ is to get 
 them to learn to know and to love the works 
 of men of genius. 
 
 The chief value of a man lies in the thought 
 and love his life embodies and reveals, and 
 not in the office he fills or the money he 
 accumulates. 
 
 The most marvellous monument of a people's 
 genius is its language; and it is inevitable that 
 the nations which have created the noblest lit- 
 eratures should have formed and polished the 
 most excellent instruments for the expression 
 of their faith and love, their thoughts and 
 emotions. When there is question of a poet or 
 an orator, what we find most admirable in him 
 is the power and perfection of his style. What 
 he says loses some essential quality when it is 
 uttered in other words than his own. His man- 
 ner is the living vesture of the truth and beauty 
 which he reveals : it is part of the indefinable 
 personal element without which no writing can 
 be literature. 
 
 However true and profound one's thoughts 
 may be, he may not hope to introduce them into 
 the circles which are capable of recognizing and 
 appreciating their worth, unless he clothe them 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 17 
 
 in a fitting garb of words, habit them in a style 
 which shall commend and give them currency; 
 and this skill they alone acquire who inure 
 themselves to the labor and fatigue which gen- 
 uine writing involves. As the musician who 
 aims at excellence lets no day pass without 
 exercise of his talent, so he who would attain 
 beauty, force, and accuracy of verbal expres- 
 sion must keep his pen in hand day by day, 
 and must not weary of subjecting what he 
 writes to his own pitiless criticism, reading, 
 and correcting again and again, still dissatis- 
 fied when at last forced to confess that it is the 
 best he can do. 
 
 The multitude are busy getting, spending, and 
 procreating; and it is only at rare intervals 
 that one stands aside, and rising above the 
 throng takes as his sole aim, his life-purpose, 
 the focussing and the diffusing of the light of 
 truth, of the glow and fervor of love, the 
 unsating food which nourishes the soul and 
 sustains faith in humanity. The world, busy 
 getting, spending, and procreating, knows him 
 not or heeds him not. He may live in poverty, 
 he may die in ignominy, and his very name be 
 swallowed in oblivion; but he belongs to the 
 divine breed of men who minister to the spirit- 
 ual and essential needs of the race, who keep 
 
1 8 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 alive on earth the consciousness of eternal right 
 and wrong, who breaking through the prison of 
 the senses rise to the vision of immortal life in 
 and with God. 
 
 If the gradual enfeeblement and final extinc- 
 tion of the power to think highly, to resolve 
 nobly, and to love purely were the only curse a 
 base life inflicts, it were none the less more to be 
 dreaded and shunned than poverty, sickness, 
 imprisonment, and the loss of good name and 
 friends. To barter the life of the spirit for the 
 pleasures of sense is to herd with brutes when 
 one might enter the company of the wisest, the 
 fairest, and the holiest. 
 
 He who lives not in struggle and combat with 
 himself, if not with others, leads not a human 
 life; for he who does not face and overcome 
 difficulties and obstacles day by day, makes no 
 progress, grows neither in mind nor in charac- 
 ter. To this law aggregates not less than in- 
 dividuals are subject. A party or a church 
 which is not opposed becomes corrupt and falls 
 to ruin. Christ shows the way of peace to those 
 who take His cross and contend to the uttermost. 
 He came not, however, to bring peace, but a 
 sword, to inspire the heroic and sublime strug- 
 gles in which souls athirst for truth, justice, and 
 love confront without fear a world in arms 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 1 9 
 
 against them. This warfare is the indispensable 
 condition of intellectual, moral, and religious 
 life, and when peace is sought through compro- 
 mise the result is not peace, but decay and 
 death. 
 
 We love the company of those who put us 
 at ease, who entertain and amuse us, who 
 make us self-contented ; but only they are help- 
 ful to us who stimulate us, who rouse us to 
 effort, who make self-complacent thoughts im- 
 possible, who fill us with a yearning for higher 
 things, who inspire a persistent longing to make 
 ourselves wiser, purer, and stronger. 
 
 Profound minds compel us to think. In 
 uttering deeper truth than others, they suggest 
 more; and those are frequently the most stim- 
 ulating whose world view differs from our own. 
 They oblige us to gain a larger comprehension 
 of our position and to grasp with firmer hold 
 the truths which are ours. They persuade us 
 to look again, and help us to more profound 
 intuitions. In following them we grow clear- 
 headed, though abysses yawn and chasms open 
 before our advancing steps, until at length we 
 learn to walk without fear or dread, in a uni- 
 verse which God makes, and makes for those who 
 know and love its truth and beauty. Until we 
 have made ourselves at home in the company 
 
20 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 of one or several of these supreme minds we are 
 but children for whom the darkness is full of 
 terrors, who people the unknown with imaginary 
 shapes and horrors. 
 
 At first view one is tempted to believe that 
 it is the tendency of civilization to make men 
 more alike, since it produces greater uniformity 
 and sameness in customs and manners, in dress 
 and behavior. But the differences among the 
 civilized are deeper and more far-reaching than 
 among savages and barbarians. They are differ- 
 ences of mind and character, of ideas and sen- 
 timents. They are radical, they touch the 
 essence of life; while the uncivilized, however 
 dissimilar they may appear to be, are alike in 
 their common ignorance, in their short-sighted- 
 ness, in their inability to change or make prog- 
 ress in the monotony and dulness of their whole 
 existence. The world they live in is but little 
 removed from that of mere animals. It is a 
 world of appetite and slavish conformity. They 
 look not before and after, but from generation 
 to generation, and from century to century 
 tread the same narrow paths. 
 
 " If religion is not true," says Leopardi, " it 
 is man's greatest evil and the supreme injury 
 which his inquiries, reasonings, and meditations, 
 or his illusions, have inflicted upon him." Let 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 21 
 
 us assume that there is no God and no soul, and 
 that religion consequently has no logical or real 
 foundation. The non-existence of God and the 
 soul leaves nothing but the physical universe, 
 and the deepest thought shows that not even 
 that remains in the absence of conscious being. 
 There is no free will, no right nor wrong, no 
 truth nor justice, but man is wholly swallowed 
 in the swirl of matter. If the brief day of 
 earthly life is the beginning and end of human 
 existence, can it be deemed an evil and a supreme 
 injury for man that during the fleeting moments 
 of his passage from nothingness to nothingness 
 he should cherish faith in the freedom of the 
 will, in truth and justice and in the distinction 
 between right and wrong ? They alone can think 
 so who, like Leopardi, hold that life itself is a 
 curse. 
 
 Old age is a disease to which families and 
 peoples, like individuals, must succumb. Nay, 
 planets and suns, the universe itself, will grow 
 old and perish. To begin to exist is to begin 
 to cease to exist, and brief is whatever comes 
 to end. In this lies the vanity of all things, their 
 shadowlike and unsubstantial nature. It is this 
 that fills the soul with pathos, making it a ghost, 
 haunting a world falling to ruin. It is this that 
 consoles it too, awakening within it the con- 
 
22 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 sciousness that though heaven and earth pass 
 away, it, like God, shall endure. My childhood 
 and youth yielded to time and vanished; the 
 friends that sprang about me as flowers bloom 
 in the spring, faded and fell. Again and again 
 my garden has become a wilderness, but I my- 
 self survive, and shall though a thousand homes 
 should harbor me and then turn to charnel- 
 houses. 
 
 For trouble and misfortune we may find 
 some consolation in reflecting that they are gen- 
 erally less real and grave than imagination 
 would lead us to believe, and that if rightly 
 borne they are rarely without a remedy or some 
 resulting good. When we look back we are 
 aware that the cares and sorrows which threat- 
 ened to overwhelm us passed away without in- 
 flicting fatal injury, but not without leaving us 
 gentler and wiser. So it may be with all the 
 evils which can befall if we are but true. The 
 only ills in which no good can be found are a 
 mind debased, a conscience deadened, a soul 
 which sin has made incapable of faith, hope, 
 and love. 
 
 The more religious and the more philosophic 
 the mind, the less one feels the need of asso- 
 ciating his life and happiness with any other 
 than God; and this growing isolation from the 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 23 
 
 things and beings that are passing away does 
 not diminish love and sympathy and the desire 
 to be of help, but gives them a purer quality and 
 a deeper efficacy. 
 
 Consciousness of defects is largely wanting. 
 The near-sighted believe they see as well as 
 others until experiment forces them to recognize 
 their shortness of vision. They who have no 
 ear for music are not aware of the fact unless 
 it is forced on their attention ; nor do those who 
 lack the sense for beauty feel the deficiency. The 
 miser and the lecher think all men are like them- 
 selves. It does not occur to the savage or the 
 barbarian to imagine that his language is but 
 a jargon. The things to which we are accus- 
 tomed appear to be good enough until we have 
 been made acquainted with better. The old 
 ways satisfy us so long as we have no knowl- 
 edge of the new; and hence a change from a 
 lower to a higher environment arouses dormant 
 energies and brings wider worlds into view. It 
 is the purpose of education to enable us to per- 
 ceive wherein we are lacking and to awaken 
 within us an ever-growing desire to overcome 
 the defects of which the educative process makes 
 us conscious. The result is the self-activity 
 which is the condition and the secret of progress, 
 intellectual, moral, aesthetic, and religious. 
 
24 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 We find what we seek if the seeking be per- 
 sistent, and what we crave be wisdom and right- 
 eousness, purity and peace. 
 
 Become and do the best it is possible for thee 
 to become and do, and it matters not at all by 
 what title thou art known, or how environed and 
 attended. In what bodily form the soul may 
 have dwelt, or in the midst of what circum- 
 stances, is insignificant. All this fades and melts 
 to nothingness. But the divine thought, the 
 heroic temper, the undying hope, are imperish- 
 able and forever precious. Greatness of soul 
 alone, says Pericles, never grows old. 
 
 The crowd will never believe that position 
 and wealth are doubtful goods; but the wisest 
 and the purest know that whatever draws the 
 soul to the surface and binds it in servitude to 
 matter is a hindrance to the truest and highest 
 life. 
 
 We truly pray only for what we persistently 
 work for. 
 
 We can beseech God to give us only what 
 we desire, admire, long for, believe in, and feel 
 the need of. It is easy therefore to pray for 
 health and wealth, but our hearts and words 
 grow faint when we ask our Father in heaven 
 to make us lowly-minded and pure, unselfish 
 and loving, obedient and resigned. 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 2$ 
 
 Youth intoxicates, and lust and greed and 
 hate and ambition; and it is as hard to find a 
 sober man as a true man. 
 
 In politics or war an accident may make one 
 famous; but they whom wisdom and virtue 
 make known live in worlds where chance has 
 no meaning. 
 
 In moments of the highest spiritual exalta- 
 tion the forms of time and space fall from the 
 soul, and man feels himself alive in the light of 
 God's eternal, absolute being. 
 
 He is rich who is able and willing to impart 
 to whomsoever he meets the best wealth 
 truth and wisdom and whatever else is spiritual 
 power. 
 
 To know the best that has been done and said 
 profits little, unless we love and live by it all, 
 replunging day by day into the sweet and puri- 
 fying stream. 
 
 We can never be thankful enough that there 
 is always good work to do. 
 
 True insight is the rarest of gifts the dis- 
 tinctive mark of sanctity and genius. 
 
 The essential goods are good thoughts, good 
 desires, good deeds. That they may be, the 
 universe exists. 
 
 The ideal is not pleasure, but virtue and 
 power. " Life," says Marcus Aurelius, " is 
 more like wrestling than dancing." 
 
26 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 As a man's appetites assert themselves de- 
 spite all obstacles, so his religion, if it be more 
 than a name, will have irresistible sway over 
 him. 
 
 The general tenor of life is the same for all, 
 and superior natures are revealed by their ability 
 to make occasional escapes into the higher world 
 of thought and love. The commonplace pursues 
 us everywhere, and the greatest minds even are 
 driven to utter themselves, except in fortunate 
 moments, in the commonplace. 
 
 Where there is true worth there will be ap- 
 preciation, if not immediately, in the end. But 
 they who are eager to be recognized can neither 
 say nor do aught on which the mark of perma- 
 nent value can be stamped. 
 
 The deeper and more real our knowledge the 
 more wonderful we perceive the objects of 
 thought to be; and so the wise come to under- 
 stand that the beatitude of the All-perfect can be 
 nothing else than self-contemplation the high- 
 est form of self-activity wherein the antithesis 
 between subject and object is transcended and 
 subsumed. 
 
 My faith, hope, love, knowledge, interest, in 
 whatever thing or cause, are determined chiefly 
 by what I myself am. In mere matter there is 
 no faith, hope, love, knowledge, or interest of 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 2/ 
 
 whatever kind ; and the higher we ascend in the 
 scale of being, the higher our faith, hope, love, 
 knowledge, and interest become. 
 
 Whether it be due to youth and immaturity, 
 or to ignorance and stupidity, or to uncontrolled 
 animal instinct and perversity, there are innu- 
 merable human beings who become the more 
 enslaved and worthless the more they are given 
 freedom to do as they please. 
 
 There is an all-pervading transubstantiation 
 of nature into spiritual realities. The waves of 
 sound set in motion by the voice are, as they 
 strike on the ear, but atmospheric vibrations 
 which the soul transmutes into symbols of 
 truth, goodness, and beauty. In the laws of na- 
 ture mind utters itself to mind. That which is 
 borne in upon us from without is akin to us; it 
 has significance and value for us ; it is a message 
 from the Eternal to beings whom He has called 
 into existence that they may become and know 
 and love more and more for ever and ever. Ex- 
 cept for souls by whom it is seen, known, and 
 loved there can be no beauty nor truth nor 
 goodness. 
 
 The beautiful is useful also, its highest use 
 lying in its power to lift man to worlds where 
 he may see within, above, and beyond all that 
 appears, the infinite wisdom and love of God. 
 
28 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 Whatever is is a result of the nature of things 
 and is by God's permission. Let nothing then 
 disturb thee or weaken thy efforts to become 
 obedient, just, loving, and serviceable. 
 
 Self-respect is an essential good. Where it 
 is lacking, nothing by which life may be en- 
 vironed can give true contentment or delight, 
 while whatever heightens it brings joy. Since 
 right conduct is the chief nourisher of self- 
 respect, a virtuous life is the happiest. 
 
 Good name environs and commends a man 
 like a beautiful home, or a becoming dress, 
 or the company of the gracious and refined. 
 It is, the scripture says, a. sweet-smelling 
 unguent. 
 
 Of many of the minor virtues on which hap- 
 piness and success so largely depend, we may 
 say that to acquire them it is sufficient not to 
 despise them. 
 
 The things we believe in, admire, and desire 
 genuinely and perseveringly are at length in- 
 wrought into the substance of our being. " As 
 a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." Abeunt 
 studia in mores. 
 
 Custom rules the world more than opinion, 
 for opinion is born of custom. 
 
 Laws which are not supported and enforced 
 by public opinion are ineffectual, because laws 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 29 
 
 are little else than the authoritative expression 
 and proclamation of public opinion. 
 
 Rights imply duties and are measured by 
 them. One has the right to do what duty com- 
 mands, and in the strict sense no other right. 
 The higher and holier the duties the more sacred 
 and inviolable the rights. The wise and the 
 good lay claim to no right but to be of service, 
 desire no freedom but to obey conscience. 
 
 If thou canst but grow wise and loving 
 enough, men will clamor for thy help as the 
 famishing cry for food. 
 
 No thoughts, hopes, beliefs, aims, or deeds 
 are good unless, if known to others, they in- 
 spire courage and sympathy and consequently 
 aversion from whatever is hurtful to human 
 life. 
 
 As mightiest men have found more comfort 
 in the love of some poor woman than in the 
 worship of the world, so the wisest cherish 
 simple truth more than all wealth and fame. 
 
 Life is the supreme good. Teach me, O 
 heavenly Father, to know and love more and 
 more the truth which shall compel me to live the 
 life which is Thyself; for I can rightly know 
 divine truth and beauty and goodness only in so 
 far as my believing, yearning, and striving in- 
 corporate them in my life. 
 
3O GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 Truth is formal and cold unless emotion 
 clothe it with warmth and evoke its vital power. 
 They who have best wrought this miracle have 
 most surely escaped oblivion; for they have 
 touched the secret spring of the most imperish- 
 able and the most irresistible thing in man, 
 which is sentiment ; and so long as their words 
 shall survive, so long shall that which is deepest 
 and most enduring in our nature respond to their 
 appeal. 
 
 Let those whose life is on the surface have 
 position and wealth ; but live thou within where 
 the soul makes itself a home. 
 
 The cause which makes the universe a 
 cosmos must be, in its inmost nature, intelli- 
 gent and moral. This is a truth of reason ; but 
 I need it not, for a thousand times God has 
 saved me from my ignorance, blindness, and 
 folly, reaching forth as from the inner heart of 
 being a hand of guidance and love. 
 
 One who leads the life which reason and con- 
 science reveal and prescribe feels the unsatis- 
 factoriness of whatever is external, whether it 
 be some object in nature or the artificial world 
 in which ambition, greed, and sensuality are the 
 ruling forces. He gets insight into the fact 
 that in the beginning, midmost, and in the end, 
 the soul, with its abiding universe of truth, 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 31 
 
 goodness, and beauty, is the primal and ultimate 
 reality and value. He understands therefore 
 that if a man lose his soul, his faith, his 
 hope, his aspiration and his love, all gain is 
 loss. 
 
 And so, says Socrates, as Plato reports in 
 Gorgias, bidding farewell to those things which 
 most men account honors, and looking forward 
 to the truth, I shall earnestly endeavor to grow 
 so far as may be in goodness, and thus live, 
 and thus, when the time comes, die. 
 
 The ground of my confidence, the joy I find 
 in believing in God and in His Christ, is en- 
 rooted in the hope that I may still improve ; for 
 if I could be certain that I should never become 
 wiser or more unselfish or more loving I should 
 despair and feel there is no God. Since, then, 
 my capacity for self-improvement is the main- 
 spring of my happiness, I am senseless if I do 
 not strive day by day to grow better, more rev- 
 erent, more self-devoted, more lowly-minded, 
 more loving. 
 
 They who keep climbing will at last find 
 themselves alone where nothing but God's pres- 
 ence has power to cheer and console. Shall we 
 therefore prefer the low levels where men be- 
 guile and delude themselves with the chasing 
 of phantoms?. 
 
32 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 If like God man could know all things, like 
 Him he would have all power, for knowledge 
 is the highest form of power; and since to 
 grow like to God is his one business, it is his 
 duty to seek wisdom and understanding not less 
 than purity and righteousness. 
 
 The divine discontent, while it leaves us 
 strength and will to do the best we can do, 
 drives us so to perform the task that our work 
 shall become an encouragement to many and a 
 light to the yet unborn ; so to act that what we 
 do may not only be in harmony with the eternal 
 laws, but may possess also something of the 
 charm which nothing but a noble personality 
 can give to words and deeds. 
 
 To lose faith in God is to abandon hope ; for 
 however much we laud our prosperities, we 
 know and feel that unless God is, it is all but 
 a comedy of fools and a dance of death. If we 
 cannot lay hold on Him we are aware, even 
 in the midst of those who trust and love us, 
 that we are but decoys to lure to nothingness; 
 useless even for this, since the inevitable end is 
 the extinction of all consciousness. Our ever- 
 widening knowledge of nature and history in- 
 volves us in intellectual and moral difficulties 
 which may be insuperable; but if we could be 
 certain that the universe is self-evolved, and 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 33 
 
 that the fatal process is from the unconscious 
 to the unconscious, all seriousness, all speech 
 of law and right and duty would be as ridicu- 
 lous as the clutter of apes. 
 
 If thou wouldst accomplish something of 
 worth, think not of thyself but of thy work. 
 
 To be a true and unfailing helper and bene- 
 factor one must have ceased to care whether 
 the good he does shall ever be known, or if 
 known whether credit shall be given to him. 
 He must be of service as unselfishly as the 
 flowers bloom and the light diffuses itself, as 
 the waters leap and the birds sing; and his re- 
 ward must be the consciousness of doing right, 
 which is the unfailing source of life and joy. 
 
 The abidingly interesting and attractive are 
 made so, not by their physical but by their in- 
 tellectual and moral qualities. The most beau- 
 tiful woman if she be dull or ignorant or 
 coarse or shrewish quickly loses the power to 
 please and becomes an object of indifference 
 or repulsion. 
 
 The man of action must throw himself into 
 the full stream of life; but the thinker if he 
 is to think to good purpose must withdraw 
 from the turmoil of the world. 
 
 The wise think of the virtues more than of 
 the vices of men ; for the good inspire hope and 
 3 
 
34 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 confidence, while the example of the wicked, if 
 it do not corrupt, produces at least a certain 
 enfeeblement and despondency. 
 
 There is not an atom or a molecule which 
 could have been brought into existence by less 
 than infinite knowledge and power. Within me 
 and without, then, there is infinite knowledge 
 and power. If I am helpless and ignorant, it is 
 because I am hardly alive; and if anything I 
 call mine, as my learning or virtue or property 
 or position, is a good for me, it is so only in 
 so far as it makes me more alive. The absolute 
 reality is life the rest is form and appear- 
 ance; and I am reconciled to death because I 
 feel and am persuaded that it is but the dark and 
 awful gateway to wider worlds and larger life. 
 
 They who have best known how to express 
 the vital and essential truths are the great 
 teachers and the great masters of style. 
 
 My private benefit is no benefit at all. If 
 it is to be a joy and a blessing to me, it must 
 be shared; and though my work bring me 
 but disappointment and care, yet if I feel that 
 for others it shall become the source of inner 
 freedom and strength, for myself also it is 
 converted into wealth and power. 
 
 If thou exalt thyself thou compellest remem- 
 brance of the hideousness of thy baser nature; 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 35 
 
 but if thou art reverent, mild, and helpful, the 
 wise and the good will think only of thy heav- 
 enly descent and destiny. 
 
 As in a herd, when a few wallow in the 
 mire all are made filthy by contact, so are the 
 innocent defiled by evil company. 
 
 Loyalty is to principles, and to persons only 
 in so far as they are symbols and representa- 
 tives of principles. 
 
 Objections to what increases in the multitude 
 the power of reason and conscience are not 
 worth considering unless we are prepared to 
 think that conscious life is a curse. Nor are 
 the objections to the inventions and contriv- 
 ances which enable ever-growing multitudes to 
 gain a livelihood with less labor and toil of any 
 weight. The large and deep view shows us 
 that democratic government, popular education, 
 machinery and capital, all co-operate with reli- 
 gion to lift mankind to higher and broader 
 levels, though the evils incident to the process 
 may at times appear to overbalance the good. 
 
 The harmony which is produced by fear or 
 greed will break into discord so soon as the 
 danger or occasion has passed. A permanent 
 union can be based only on permanent prin- 
 ciple and interests. Hence the only secure 
 foundation of national peace and prosperity is 
 
36 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 religion, morality, and justice; and the greater 
 the freedom and intelligence the greater the 
 need of these conservative forces. 
 
 Egotism and heroism exclude each other. 
 The hero thinks not of himself, but he gives all 
 he has, his very life, for what he loves more 
 than himself. The egotist is bound up within 
 himself. He loves his safety, his ease, his 
 comfort, his .pleasure, and he clings to them, 
 though to do so he have to sacrifice truth, 
 justice, and honor, good name and friends, and 
 whatever else a noble soul holds to be most 
 precious. He has neither patriotism nor reli- 
 gion, neither a great mind nor a generous heart, 
 but tethered like a beast he moves in a narrow 
 circle whose centre is his shrivelled self; and 
 in seeking what may minister to his idolatry 
 he loses both the sense of the worth of life and 
 the power to enjoy its sweetest blessings. 
 
 Life is said to be dull and monotonous, and 
 yet its variety is so endless that it is never the 
 same for any two human beings; and for each 
 one it varies from day to day and from year to 
 year. The sameness lies in our heavy sluggish 
 natures, and if we arouse and make ourselves 
 alive we find infinite entertainment. 
 
II. 
 
 THE power of habit may be seen in those 
 whom it reconciles to things nature 
 shrinks from in undertakers, grave-diggers, 
 butchers, scavengers, and all who work in filth 
 and ordure. It is habit that creates for each 
 one a separate world which he finds pleasant 
 or endurable. It enables those who dwell in 
 the midst of deserts and rocks and everlasting 
 snows to adapt themselves to their surround- 
 ings and love their homes. It is habit that 
 endears the ocean to the sailor, the forest to 
 the savage, the cell to the hermit, the sanctuary 
 to the worshipper, and the book to the student. 
 Whatever kind of life commends itself to man 
 as good and desirable, habit will enable him to 
 lead. If it be a life to which money is indis- 
 pensable, the habit of industry and economy 
 will procure him riches; if it be a life of 
 knowledge and virtue the habit of study and 
 right-doing will secure them for him. Its force 
 extends to the whole circle of human affairs. 
 
38 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 It regulates the course of our daily actions, 
 determines when we shall sleep and when we 
 shall wake, when we shall sit at table and when 
 we shall rise. It decides what work we shall 
 do, what games we shall play. A complete 
 theory of habituation would be the sum of prac- 
 tical wisdom, a comprehensive system of peda- 
 gogics, and a safe guide for whoever occupies 
 himself with education. If a man is perfectible 
 it is because he is habituable. If he is corrupt or 
 perverse it is because good habits have not been 
 formed in him by those who influenced and con- 
 trolled his childhood and youth; for whoever 
 can be led astray is capable under right guid- 
 ance of accustoming himself to a life of honor 
 and virtue. 
 
 The saying, Be great and be miserable, may 
 be true of those whom wealth or position dis- 
 tinguishes, but not of those whom mind and 
 character raise and confirm. 
 
 The meditator even in the midst of the most 
 pleasant company is like an exile who though 
 surrounded by the noblest monuments and the 
 fairest scenes of foreign lands still dreams of 
 home. 
 
 They who live for pleasure live without joy. 
 
 So long as the fountain within flows strong 
 and clear we believe and know and feel that life 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 39 
 
 'is good; for from this inner source when it 
 runs pure and full, faith and hope, love and joy 
 rise as freely as fragrance from the flowers 
 k when they bloom. 
 
 We are capable of taking interest in others 
 :to the extent in which we feel ourselves to be 
 interesting. 
 
 Of all habits that which it is most needful to 
 acquire is the habit of striving consciously and 
 ceaselessly to improve, to surpass one's self, to 
 grow in wisdom and grace, to develop within 
 one's self higher and higher quality and potency 
 of life. 
 
 A habit of carefulness in all things is one of 
 the best results of right education. 
 
 If we are asked why the drunkard, the 
 lecher, the liar, and the thief do not reform 
 we reply that it is because they are the victims 
 of habit; and the same answer is to be given 
 if the question be why the rich are still eager 
 to add to their wealth. 
 
 A man may live content in darkness and 
 captivity if within there shine the light which 
 gladdens the soul. 
 
 One cannot know whether his work shall 
 have been done in vain. Whatever happen, 
 he must continue to strive or he will sink into 
 hebetude and nullity. Let each one therefore 
 
4O GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 do with all his might as though God had 
 poised the world's welfare on his single will. 
 
 Not what is, still less what is known, but 
 what imagination bodies forth makes the world 
 in which each one of us lives, to which nothing 
 but faith, desire, and love give meaning and 
 worth. In losing our illusions, unless some 
 nobler dream take their place, we lose relish 
 for life. 
 
 No power can save fools and sinners from 
 the consequences of their sin and folly; and 
 were this not so, there would perhaps be none 
 but fools and sinners. 
 
 Evil is everything which weakens admiration, 
 reverence, and love. 
 
 Still seek to learn, but let thy first and final 
 aim be to get wisdom and virtue, for if they be 
 lacking, knowledge is vanity. 
 
 From slime to slime along slimy ways, and 
 for the rest mere nothingness in the bosom of 
 the eternally unconscious. This is the atheist's 
 sum of all we are and know. But however 
 men may live, such a creed must forever be 
 incredible. 
 
 The complete attainment of truth, goodness, 
 and beauty is the end of life; faith, hope, and 
 love the means. 
 
 The more unselfish and unenvious we are the 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 41 
 
 larger the world in which we are able to live 
 with sympathy and delight. 
 
 Thy virtues are all the more real the less 
 thou thinkest of them; but thy vices thou 
 canst not study too assiduously. 
 
 The love- winning force of one's religion and 
 piety is no uncertain test of their truth and 
 genuineness. 
 
 Make thyself wise and good, and thou shalt 
 know that there is no joy but in being useful. 
 
 Religion is a food or a medicine. If those 
 who partake of the food are made healthful and 
 vigorous; if those who take the medicine are 
 cured of their ills, we are persuaded that they 
 are wholesome and efficacious; and so when 
 those who accept the doctrines and follow 
 the practices prescribed by religion are wise, 
 chaste, mild, generous, cheerful, brave, and 
 large-minded, their manner of life commends 
 their faith better than arguments. There is, 
 however, a perversity of human nature which 
 shuts out the view of goodness when it is a 
 virtue of those whom we dislike. 
 
 The important thing is not what we know, 
 but what knowledge is a vital element in our 
 thinking and doing. 
 
 The good do right because righteousness is 
 God's will, the command of reason, the law of 
 
42 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 conscience, the purpose, aim, and end of life, 
 since it is life. To do good in the hope of 
 pleasing others is by implication a denial of 
 the supreme worth of truth and virtue. 
 
 Life is cut in two by the line of sex, and by 
 the union of the sexes it is reconstituted and 
 propagated. In the case of man the Christian 
 religion and the consent of the wise teach that 
 except in wedlock this union is defilement and 
 desecration. But even in wedlock it is a per- 
 version and degradation whenever the one pur- 
 pose by which it is sanctified is absent. The 
 incontinence of the married weakens and lowers 
 the race more than prostitution and adultery; 
 for these are condemned and opposed by all the 
 good, while the cowardly and ignoble indul- 
 gences of the wedded are covered by the mantle 
 of respectability and the fiction which sanctions 
 whatever is customary or legal, though it be 
 robbery and murder. 
 
 The weakness which attacks our weakness is 
 more to be dreaded than the strength which 
 challenges us our strength. 
 
 Since thou canst become able to do whatever 
 thou canst accustom thyself to do, occupy thy- 
 self habitually with the best things. 
 
 All things are brought into relief by contrast 
 truth by error, religion by impiety, intelli- 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 43 
 
 gence. by ignorance ; and where this opposition 
 is not found the tendency is to lower and lower 
 levels. What but depravity can arouse and sus- 
 tain enthusiasm for good? How should the 
 heart be stirred to sympathy and beneficence if 
 there were no poverty and wretchedness ? What 
 but unbelief and indifference can awaken and 
 keep alive zeal for the conversion and reforma- 
 tion of men? Be not discouraged then by the 
 evil which is everywhere around thee, but know 
 that it exists to urge thee to a more human, a 
 more godlike life. 
 
 For whole days no illumining thought smiles 
 on me, like a star from the bosom of darkness, 
 and when I turn to the words of the great 
 masters they seem to be flat and unprofitable. 
 This is doubtless the settled state of all who are 
 indifferent to the things of the spirit. They 
 have ears and hear not; eyes and see not. To 
 such as they the Saviour spoke, foreseeing that 
 the heavenly seed would not take root and bear 
 fruit. No divine persuasiveness, no miraculous 
 power can startle them from out the lethargy 
 in which matter has steeped their souls. 
 
 One's own experience is the sole means 
 whereby he can determine for himself whether 
 a thing be true or useful or delectable or beau- 
 tiful. This applies to mathematical truth as to 
 
44 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 the deliciousness of fruit and the fragrance of 
 flowers. Without experience there is no knowl- 
 edge, since the primal element in thought is 
 feeling, which is experience. If one know 
 what he has not felt, accepting it on trust, his 
 knowledge is real only in so far as his faith is 
 grounded on experience. They who have not 
 suffered are ignorant, because the deepest wis- 
 dom is brought home to us through experience, 
 not of what is pleasant, but of what hurts and 
 drives us back on ourselves and God. No one 
 is great in mind or character who has not 
 greatly endured, because endurance is the chosen 
 school of experience. They who are unwilling 
 or unable to bear are unwilling or unable to 
 learn. They who have a rich experience of 
 small things, investigating, weighing, compar- 
 ing, and doing them, with all care and serious- 
 ness, are made wise and strong, because life is 
 made up of minutes and minutiae, which seem 
 not worth considering, but which if rightly 
 taken issue in incredible power and repose. 
 
 Consistency is a virtue of the unprogressive. 
 
 Contentment with one's self is harmful; but 
 to be content with what one possesses is often 
 the surest sign of wisdom. 
 
 " Why," asks Scipio, " shouldst thou desire 
 to be known to posterity, since thou art un- 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 45 
 
 known to those who died before thy birth, who 
 are neither less numerous nor less worthy?" 
 But may not one believe that the noble dead 
 still have consciousness of the spirits akin to 
 their own who yet strive on earth? Or if not 
 so, is there not all the stronger motive to make 
 one's self a man and do deeds which shall be 
 remembered by those who follow? 
 
 As an individual turns from his defects and 
 exaggerates his qualities, so does an age. In 
 the most barbarous the belief has prevailed that 
 they were enlightened; and a few hundred 
 years hence, historians may prove that the 
 nineteenth century was an epoch of decadence 
 in which man's higher powers, his imagination, 
 his conscience, his will, even his intellect de- 
 clined from the vigor of happier times. 
 
 Strong minds cannot long continue in medi- 
 tation, and the many are incapable of serious 
 thought. Hence spiritual truth which moulds 
 our life only when it is wrought into our 
 being by our own self-activity has but slight 
 hold on the masses, who are swayed and domi- 
 nated by interests and passions which concern 
 their present existence alone. If they are to be 
 brought under the influence of ideal aims and 
 ends, these ideals must be associated with their 
 practical affairs. If they are to be religious, 
 
46 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 they must be made to feel that in religion they 
 shall find comfort and strength, peace and joy, 
 hope and courage effectual help in doing the 
 things which now occupy them. Their religion 
 must ally itself therefore with their love of 
 home, of country, of property, of security, of 
 health of mind and body. 
 
 As we believe those who tell us what they 
 have seen in their travels, so we believe in a 
 more living way those who tell us what patient 
 study and meditation have revealed to them. 
 Thus a few lead the whole world to accept as 
 masterpieces the great works of art, poetry, 
 philosophy, and science. 
 
 One should be willing to see his foes and 
 rivals surpass him, if only he be enabled thereby 
 to rise above all envious thoughts. 
 
 No one can teach or govern or influence man 
 or beast in a wholesome way unless he take 
 interest in his work and love the good his labors 
 produce. 
 
 If thou art prevented from doing the thing 
 thou hast proposed, do some better thing. 
 
 If the best is thine faith in God and in the 
 worth of life, wisdom and knowledge, courage 
 and patience, goodness and love of truth, it 
 is impossible thou shouldst envy another his 
 possessions. 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 47 
 
 Greed and sensuality undermine self-respect, 
 because each one feels that the spirit of man is 
 superior to matter and becomes ignoble when it 
 suffers itself to be cowed and enslaved by what 
 is external. 
 
 The dissolute and abandoned, who are accus- 
 tomed to insult and outrage, become insensible 
 to such treatment, but may be touched and helped 
 when approached in the spirit of sympathy and 
 loving-kindness. 
 
 Should one who fills us with admiration and 
 reverence reveal himself as a liar, a lecher, or a 
 thief, the blow would be felt as more painful 
 than if a friend whose approach we had greeted 
 with unfeigned joy should, as we stretch a hand 
 to welcome him, make a brutal assault upon us. 
 
 When we dissect the body, laying bare its 
 whole muscular, nervous, and bony tissue, and 
 exposing to view all the vital organs, it becomes 
 a thing hideous, loathsome, and dead. Now this 
 is what our processes of analysis do for knowl- 
 edge and faith; and when all has been taken 
 apart or dissolved into abstractions, the mind, 
 like the dissected body, becomes a chaos, where 
 nothing seems supreme but confusion. 
 
 To make perpetual vows under the influence 
 of passionate love is as irrational as to assume 
 lasting obligations in a state of drunkenness. 
 
48 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 If our pity, our sympathy, were doubly as 
 strong, they would make life unbearable. 
 
 To give money is an act of doubtful morality, 
 for giving tends rather to harm than to improve 
 the receiver. The most it were wise to do is to 
 care for those whom not even necessity can drive 
 to self-help. 
 
 We know of the world and even of our most 
 intimate friends only the impressions they make 
 upon us. 
 
 The mystery in which each separate thing is 
 involved is the same that veils the universe of 
 which it is part. We comprehend neither sub- 
 ject nor object. 
 
 Live not to enjoy, but to improve thyself, and 
 it shall be well with thee. 
 
 Give to me, O God, the good which is Thyself, 
 which the more it is communicated, the more 
 all-sufficient it is felt to be ; and teach me not to 
 set my heart on aught which can be mine only 
 at another's cost. 
 
 Freedom is better than success; yet hardly 
 shall we find one who is not ready to barter 
 liberty for place. 
 
 Once we realize that the human race, in its 
 visible manifestation at least, is ephemeral, as 
 evanescent as the extinct species of past geo- 
 logic epochs, we are fatally driven by the spirit 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 49 
 
 which is a man's self into unseen worlds where 
 what is true and good and fair abides forever, 
 though the panoramic universe vanish utterly. 
 
 Since it is possible to find happiness in loving 
 wife and children and friends, whether or not 
 we believe them to be immortal, why may we 
 not attain the good of life in loving the human 
 race, though we are certain it shall wholly dis- 
 appear? Reply without fear that the happiness 
 born of the love of what is transitory is but a 
 sort of comfortableness, which is for the mo- 
 ment and without power to still the thoughts 
 and yearnings that wander through eternity and 
 are the utterance of man's true and inmost 
 being. 
 
 The love of children for parents, of brothers 
 and sisters for one another, is due to habits of 
 intimacy and helpfulness, and not to ties of 
 blood. This is seen in the case of those who, 
 adopted in infancy, have been brought up in the 
 belief that their foster parents were their fathers 
 and mothers, or that they were brothers and 
 sisters, when, in fact, they were not akin. The 
 love then, which above all other we persuade 
 ourselves springs from natural affinity, is but 
 a thing of custom. 
 
 Even the fearless may be overcome by terror, 
 as they may be struck helpless by sword or shell. 
 
 4 
 
50 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 The things and persons that provoke and 
 annoy us are but occasions. The cause lies in 
 our weakness and selfishness. 
 
 The happiness of the young is made possible 
 by their ignorance of the miseries of life, of the 
 indifference, cruelty, and injustice of the world 
 an ignorance which instruction is powerless 
 to destroy, which in the noblest, experience itself 
 fails to dispel. 
 
 Thou art able to do good to whomever thou 
 livest with in daily intercourse. Whether to 
 others thou canst hardly know. 
 
 Let the attitude of others toward thee have 
 little influence on thy conduct. Thy desire is to 
 act in obedience to eternal laws, to do perma- 
 nent good, and why shouldst thou be turned 
 aside by the ignorance or the prejudice of those 
 who would hinder thee? If thou art a real 
 man, the lowlier the place the greater the 
 opportunity. 
 
 The most generous deed arouses little enthu- 
 siasm, when it is, by implication even, an appeal 
 to ourselves to be generous. 
 
 How easily even the good become criminal 
 when they are persuaded that nothing but crime 
 can procure what they intensely desire or save 
 them from what they greatly dread! 
 
 Whoever can influence men should strive 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 51 
 
 to make them courageous, enduring, hopeful, 
 simple, self-active, chaste. 
 
 The man and the woman attract each other, 
 but unless they are drawn and held by some 
 higher and more stable force than sexual pas- 
 sion, they soon find that to be bound in wedlock 
 is to be enslaved. 
 
 Woman's deepest and tenderest love is wholly 
 removed from sensual thoughts. It is the love 
 mothers give to their children, daughters to 
 fathers, the best and the noblest to the men 
 they admire, trust, and adore. 
 
 Whatever helps us to turn from ease and 
 pleasure, and to submit to labor and self-denial, 
 whether it be the love of money, or of reputa- 
 tion, or of culture, or of virtue, is wholesome 
 and good. The love of excellence and power is 
 human; enslavement to appetite and instinct is 
 brutish. 
 
 The sage and the saint pass unnoticed; the 
 rich and the high-placed awaken envious 
 thoughts. 
 
 As a small room may be more full of comfort 
 and joy than a palace, so he who in obscurity 
 lives for truth and love is more blessed than 
 one who lacking inner freedom and light is 
 applauded by thousands. 
 , God's will is the welfare and salvation of 
 
53 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 mankind. Human interests, therefore, are 
 supreme. 
 
 The points of view to which we accustom 
 ourselves shape and color so largely the objects 
 which make the world of consciousness possible, 
 that it is inevitable men should hold, as times 
 and circumstances change, various and even 
 opposite beliefs, opinions, and convictions con- 
 cerning religion, philosophy, government, and 
 whatever else is related to their lives. But as 
 there are right and wrong points of view, so 
 there are true and false opinions, beliefs, and 
 convictions. 
 
 A self is one who exists and is an object for 
 himself, who therefore is at once subject and 
 object. The self as object is the self as subject, 
 reinforced and transformed by all that one 
 knows, desires, loves, or hates by the totality 
 of the experience which is made possible by the 
 external world, but which as experience is part 
 of the inner life. It is this that makes self- 
 education feasible. 
 
 The uniformity of nature is uniformity of 
 experience. 
 
 One would not wish to be an inanimate object, 
 however fair ; for if what has no life is of worth, 
 it is so only for the living. One would not wish 
 to be a flower, however beautiful or fragrant; 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 53 
 
 for it can be beautiful or fragrant only for those 
 who have senses. One would not wish to be a 
 mere animal, however noble or strong, for what- 
 ever its courage or strength it cannot be con- 
 scious of the possession of its qualities. It is 
 consciousness, then, that gives value, and in a 
 world in which there should be no conscious 
 being, there could be no truth, no goodness, no 
 beauty. 
 
 Since to be a man is to think and love, they 
 who think and love the highest things are the 
 best. The objection may be opposed that to be 
 a man one must eat and drink, and that they 
 who eat and drink the best things are the best. 
 Yes, if the ideal be eating and drinking, and 
 the perfect good be found in the indulgence of 
 appetite. But to hold this is to believe animality 
 better than humanity, digestion than emotion, 
 desire than love, instinct than reason. 
 
 It is God's world. He takes care of it, and He 
 has made me that I too may have share in the 
 divine work, even as the slightest atom has its 
 place in the harmony of the universe. 
 
 The vast voraciousness of mankind is appall- 
 ing to one whose faith is spiritual. The plains 
 and the seas, the forests and the heavens do not 
 suffice to satisfy appetites, which the more they 
 are indulged the more clamorous they become. 
 
54 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 Men when hungry are as ravenous as beasts of 
 prey. They rob, they murder, they burn cities, 
 they lay waste whole regions; and when they 
 are satiated they set about getting more savory 
 divShes, more delicious wines. If their stomachs 
 urge them on, poverty, shame, and disease have 
 no terrors for them. Feed them and give them 
 copious drink and they are your slaves. Ask 
 them to abstain, and though you promise the 
 divinest joys that may be born of high thoughts 
 and exalted emotions, they will hate and revile 
 you. 
 
 To think and love is life; to see, to hear, to 
 taste, to digest, to excrete, is but existence. 
 They who think are the only noblemen and 
 lords. They are the masters of all they know, 
 have overcome whatever they understand. They 
 dwell apart in a kingdom of their own, where 
 they lead the life of immortals, occupying them- 
 selves with the things that are eternal, loving 
 the beauty which is fadeless and everduring. 
 
 Sight and hearing are nobler senses than 
 touch, more intimately related to intellectual 
 and social life, but they fail to create the con- 
 viction of reality which is born of contact and 
 palpation. They make us victims of hallucina- 
 tion. Visionary means fanciful, dreamlike, un- 
 substantial; and delusion lurks in sound, which 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 55 
 
 distracts, takes captive, and leads astray. But 
 what we grasp and firmly hold we cannot doubt 
 to be real more than we can doubt the reality of 
 our existence. If, however, by analysis or other 
 process, we strive to get at the essence of things, 
 what we touch, no less than what we see and 
 hear, dissolves and vanishes, becoming, if con- 
 sidered subjectively, but sensation; if objec- 
 tively, but appearance. 
 
 Experience cannot transcend itself, and if it 
 seem to do so, a deeper view shows such tran- 
 scendence to be in reality immanence. If we 
 find not God within ourselves we shall find 
 Him nowhere. 
 
 The adage, What we do not know we can- 
 not crave, is true; but it is also .true that the 
 objects of experience are primarily objects of 
 desire or aversion rather than objects of knowl- 
 edge. They are first presented to us as things 
 interesting and serviceable or indifferent and 
 harmful ; and the fact that they must therefore 
 be intelligible is implied, not affirmed, in con- 
 sciousness. Hence, if teaching is not to be 
 without effect, a longing for the things which 
 education promises to give must be awakened 
 in the pupil. More than knowledge must be held 
 out to him; and vulgar success cannot be pror- 
 posed, unless we wish to blight what is finest and 
 
56 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 fairest in him. The love of knowledge for its 
 own sake can be but the final result of the best 
 culture, and to lure the young with the hope 
 of money or office is to lead them astray. The 
 end of life is not thought, but thought fulfilling 
 itself in right deeds. Hence the teacher, if he 
 is an educator, must bring his pupils to realize 
 that the faculties which nothing but education 
 can produce are indispensable to the best life 
 without which the highest joy and blessedness 
 is impossible. 
 
 Education is not a product: it is a process; 
 and the universal failure of schools is attribut- 
 able chiefly to the persuasion of teachers that 
 their business is to turn out products, and not 
 to start, stimulate, and direct processes of self- 
 activity which shall continue as long as life. 
 
 How easily the poet, the philosopher, and the 
 saint pass beyond the confines of the world of 
 things palpable and scientifically demonstrable, 
 into the presence of the eternal and absolute, 
 where, as in their proper home, they dream, 
 love, and adore. 
 
 Neither knowledge nor nescience is absolute. 
 They are correlative and interfused. We do not 
 know the whole of anything; and since what- 
 ever is, is intelligible, there is nothing of which 
 we do not know something, if only this, that to 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. tf 
 
 be at all, it must be in harmony with the laws of 
 mind. What cannot be known cannot and does 
 not exist. All faith, hope, and love rest, how- 
 ever vaguely, on a basis of knowledge. Were it 
 possible to be conscious at all of what can in no 
 way be known, the attitude of reason toward 
 such a being would be that of infinite indiffer- 
 ence and aloofness. 
 
 He who exacts even love for love does not 
 love ; for true love gives all and asks nothing in 
 return but the privilege and blessedness of lov- 
 ing. If I know and love the best, it matters 
 little whether the best know and love me; but 
 if I know and love God, it is because He knows 
 and loves me. 
 
 The power to interest permanently lies not in 
 things, but in persons in their faith and knowl- 
 edge, their hopes and fears, their efforts, suc- 
 cesses, and failures, their courage and love. This 
 is what the highest art bodies forth ; this is what 
 the poet sings, the orator proclaims, the painter 
 portrays, the historian recounts, the story-writer 
 tells. This is the theme of conversation when- 
 ever the divine awakens within us and the soul 
 has free utterance. Facts and laws are as mo- 
 notonous as sleep, as heavy as eating and drink- 
 ing. We are spirits, and what delights us is the 
 spirit's play. 
 
58 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 To know is higher than to feel; to do right 
 is higher than to know; and to compel feeling, 
 knowledge, and conduct into the service of the 
 soul, as through faith, hope, and love, it strug- 
 gles God ward, is the highest within man's 
 reach. 
 
 I seek a principle which shall reconcile me to 
 all things; a principle which shall enable me to 
 accept evil as I accept good, and to be content 
 whatever befall. I can find but this : whatever 
 happens, through whatever agencies, happens by 
 the will or the permission of God, who creates 
 me, knows me, has care of me; and who, since 
 He is all-wise and all-loving, will not permit 
 me to suffer loss or harm unless it be that I may 
 find richer gain or higher good. 
 
 God is with each one, whether or not he seek 
 and know Him, trust and love Him. As man's 
 thought does not create Him, it is powerless to 
 restrain or abolish His action in the world. 
 They who deny His being confess that being 
 when they utter truth, believe in right, and fol- 
 low after goodness. If they rise to heaven, He 
 is there ; if they sink to the depths of hell, He is 
 there. He is greater than our knowledge of 
 Him: greater than our faith or hope or love 
 can intimate, and to think to limit His power 
 and goodness is to blaspheme. What we know 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 59 
 
 best is our own ignorance and unworthiness ; 
 and here too our thoughts are not God's 
 thoughts. 
 
 Since what I am I have become why shall I 
 not hope still to grow Godward? 
 
 Be persuaded that whatever truth or virtue 
 is any man's may be thine. 
 
 Had I the fame of Plato or Shakespeare I 
 should deem it no benefit unless I could account 
 it the approval of God. 
 
 Wisdom is not born of learning, but may be 
 found in simple minds; while they who know 
 many things often lack judgment and sanity. 
 
 Nature is God's manifest and universal fact; 
 to contemn it is blasphemy not less than folly. 
 
 Courage, strength, virility win not admiration 
 merely, but love the love not of women only 
 but of men as well. 
 
 True lovers of peace find it easy to live in 
 peace with their fellow-men. By their very 
 bearing and temper they disarm foes, silence 
 the envious, and shame the contentious and 
 turbulent into acquiescence. 
 
 So long as one is able to inspire hope and 
 courage, so long is it a joy for him to be alive. 
 
 The saddest is not the loss of hope, but the 
 loss of the power to desire aught to feel that 
 there is nothing any human being might say or 
 
60 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 do, which could stir within us even a momentary 
 thrill of pleasure. 
 
 It may be thought that if our belief in the 
 immortality of the soul were real, we should 
 not grieve when death takes those we love. But 
 we sorrow when they leave us to dwell in other 
 lands, though we are certain that there also they 
 shall be alive. The father suffers when his 
 daughter quits his home to follow the man she 
 has wedded, though he knows that she has 
 found happiness. To part from those who are 
 dear is pain even when we feel the separation 
 is for their good. We pity our friends who die 
 less than ourselves for being deprived of the 
 cheer and comfort they gave. Death is sad 
 because life is sweet; and it would still be sad 
 could we have positive proof that the dead re- 
 live in better worlds. 
 
 Unless one be a child or a savage, a youth 
 or a barbarian, it is not possible to take pleasure 
 in what gives pain to any living thing. 
 
 Avarice is a passion of those who, doubting 
 the reality of the spiritual world, incapable of 
 love or devotion, and distrusting their own souls, 
 clutch matter and hold to it unto death with the 
 grip of despair. 
 
 In childhood and youth we look to a father 
 or a mother to reassure and comfort us in our 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 6 1 
 
 doubts and sorrows, feeling certain that they 
 have the will, the knowledge, and the ability to 
 guide and protect us. As we advance in years 
 we still turn to some one in whom we believe 
 there is superior strength, wisdom, and good- 
 ness. The disciple follows the master, the 
 soldier, his captain. Most of our beliefs and 
 opinions rest on the authority of those whom 
 we hold to be wise and good; and when we 
 have attained best insight we put our whole 
 trust in God, in His love and mercy and tender 
 care, throwing all our weight of sin and woe on 
 Him who makes and saves us, and will not suffer 
 us to perish utterly. 
 
 Weeping and lamentation are of no avail; 
 and are therefore meaningless and idle. The 
 worst misfortunes are endurable, if we but 
 have strength of mind and put our trust in 
 God. 
 
 As there are animals which habit makes able 
 to see in the dark, so long and patient medita- 
 tion gives the power to see clear where others 
 are blind. 
 
 If one could have the boundless devotion 
 which the purest and most loving souls have 
 given to the Saviour, but should himself be 
 false and base, the worship of the world would 
 leave him miserable. 
 
62 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 The pretentious are necessarily ridiculous. 
 
 The larger the world we consciously live in, 
 the greater our freedom and tranquillity. 
 
 One is not better for belonging to a power- 
 ful family or nation; but he has greater 
 opportunities. 
 
 One may become indifferent to praise, but 
 hardly to the voice of the faultfinder. 
 
 The good are content when they do good and 
 are not troubled because the credit is given to 
 others. 
 
 What we have grown accustomed to does not 
 appear to us to be ridiculous or absurd, though 
 it often is so. 
 
 The race exists for the individual : the indi- 
 vidual for the race only in so far as it is the 
 indispensable means of producing personalities 
 the final end of the universe which is the 
 work of a supreme Person. 
 
 The creative minds who live in literature are 
 neither young nor old. They are forever in 
 their prime, safe harbored from the follies of 
 youth, the decrepitude of age, and all the acci- 
 dents of disaster-working time. They stand on 
 the threshold of the centuries, to welcome the 
 noblest and the best, as, from generation to 
 generation, they step forth to play their parts 
 on life's stage. 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 63 
 
 At times the weight of years seems to drop 
 from me and again I stand with a boy's eager 
 and all-hoping heart beneath the azure sky of 
 May, while the companions of my youth spring 
 from the earth like flowers to fill the world with 
 light and joy. But when awakening as from a 
 dream I see that the leaves have fallen, that 
 the birds have flown, that the friends of other 
 days have departed, my heart turns to God, 
 to the eternal fountain of everduring life and 
 love. 
 
 Can there be worse folly than to sacrifice 
 freedom, peace of mind, opportunity to live 
 within and to grow godlike, that one may get 
 a title or live in splendor and luxury? Not for 
 this, it may be said, but for greater power to be 
 of help. Never yet, alas ! has this been the true 
 motive of vain and ambitious men, who, whether 
 they have acted in the name of religion or of 
 patriotism, have still sought themselves. 
 
 The questions which concern a man as a 
 member of whatever social organism are super- 
 ficial and uninteresting, in comparison with 
 those which touch the root of his being and relate 
 him to God and eternal things. 
 
 So to live, so to utter one's life in words and 
 deeds, as to be borne from generation to gener- 
 ation, in the grateful memories, in the admiring 
 
64 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 and loving thoughts of the wisest and best, is 
 to have an unending triumph, is the only right 
 apotheosis. 
 
 The young walk in the midst of the many- 
 tinted, rich-glowing clouds of Illusion, which, 
 as experience and insight increase, lose their 
 bright colors and at last turn ashen gray. But 
 the noblest souls, though they see the beauty 
 and the glory fade, lose nor heart nor hope, but 
 gird themselves for more heroic strivings to 
 attain the divine reality, of which they feel these 
 early visions were but shadows. 
 
 It saddens to think of the poverty, discom- 
 forts, and hardships of millions of human 
 beings; but their real misery lies in their igno- 
 rance, sensuality, cowardice, and selfishness, in 
 their indifference to the things of the soul, in 
 their lack of love. 
 
 Untoward happenings are changed to good 
 fortune when they teach courage, forbearance, 
 and wisdom. 
 
 One who is wholly in earnest in the persever- 
 ing pursuit of any worthy object can never be 
 commonplace. 
 
 Unless I may learn of thee or teach thee wis- 
 dom and virtue, I care not for thy company. 
 
 Though divinity and immortality were, like 
 the words themselves, but abstractions, it would 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH, 65 
 
 still be the highest wisdom to live for God and 
 life everlasting. 
 
 Whatever hinders or distracts from the di- 
 vine work of purifying the soul and laboring 
 with all one's strength to be of help, is calamity. 
 Throw the whole stress of thy life on the inner 
 self. 
 
 " And to you, Verus, what seems the noblest 
 end of life?" Quietly and gravely he replied, 
 " The imitation of God." 
 
 The chief end of study is the learning to 
 think, and the best books therefore are those 
 which most effectually impel to exercise of 
 mind. 
 
 As the sense of the worth and sacredness 
 of life diminishes, men abandon themselves to 
 selfish impulses, to the pursuit of wealth or 
 pleasure, looking on all else as illusory. They 
 become hard or sensual, incapable of conceiv- 
 ing or of cherishing noble purposes or ideal 
 aims. Hence an age in which the sense of the 
 worth and sacredness of life is failing is deca- 
 dent, however great the material prosperity and 
 progress. 
 
 In true workers method and order are econo- 
 mies of time. But they also help the idle to 
 persuade themselves that the void and vacancy 
 of their lives are filled ; for those who are busy 
 5 
 
66 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 doing useless things easily imagine, if they have 
 method and order, that they are occupied with 
 what is worth while. 
 
 Great souls cannot content themselves with 
 trifles, but turn from what is ephemeral or 
 nugatory to the unseen world, where all is 
 enduring and real. They look away from the 
 present in which children and the unthinking 
 live, to the future, and strive to have thoughts 
 and do deeds worthy of immortal beings. 
 
III. 
 
 THE love of repose, of order, of a uniform 
 and even course of life would seem to 
 spring from a rational and virtuous disposition, 
 but it is often a result of sloth and selfishness, 
 or of timidity and cowardice ; and it may there- 
 fore be found in those who seek their ease and 
 comfort at whatever cost, who if they are too 
 indifferent to hate, are too indolent to help. 
 They will not trouble themselves to right 
 wrongs or prevent ills, but suffer things to 
 take their way. They little care what happens 
 if only they be not disturbed. They are in- 
 capable of generous emotions and are without 
 noble impulses. If they are clothed with au- 
 thority they correct no abuses, oppose no ob- 
 stacles to the downward tendency of the many 
 when left to themselves. They ignore the cor- 
 ruption which gives them no annoyance; and 
 if it be urged on their attention, they consider 
 those who denounce it as officious or imperti- 
 nent. They would be thought wise and able for 
 doing nothing, and they hold in slight esteem 
 
68 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 the active, energetic, and zealous, whose ex- 
 ample is a rebuke to their own lethargy and 
 inertness. This self-indulgent weakness and 
 love of ease in the men who govern, whether 
 in Church or State, has wrought greater ruin 
 than the scoffings of infidels and the scandals 
 of the vicious: for all understand that unbe- 
 lievers will mock and that scandals must be; 
 but that they who are placed as guardians over 
 treasures of infinite price should fall asleep and 
 slumber on while thieves break in and steal 
 seems a thing monstrous and incredible to those 
 who have faith in God and the soul. When the 
 weak and careless are appointed to do what only 
 the strong and vigilant can perform, confusion 
 or ruin is inevitable. 
 
 When work has become a habit one is lost 
 without it, as the drunkard without his dram, 
 the gambler without his game. 
 
 The divinest things religion, love, truth, 
 beauty, justice seem to lose their meaning 
 and value when we sink into lassitude and in- 
 difference. In such mental state we, together 
 with what is not ourselves, verge in conscious- 
 ness toward the confines where all that is or 
 has been or can be appears shadowy and un- 
 substantial. It is a state altogether different 
 from that of the callous and dull, who have no 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 69 
 
 perception of spiritual truth, no definite notions 
 of anything. It is in fact not a state, but a 
 passing obscuration, a moral syncope, a tem- 
 porary inability to think or love or hope or 
 take delight in aught. It is a signal that we 
 should quit meditation and books, and go out 
 into the open air, into the presence of nature, 
 into the company of flocks and children, where 
 we may drink new health and vigor from the 
 clear and full-flowing fountains of life, afar 
 from the arid wastes of theory and specula- 
 tion; where we may learn again that it is not 
 by intellectual questionings, but by believing, 
 hoping, loving, and doing that man finds joy 
 and peace. 
 
 What a man is he has become. He is born 
 wholly helpless, incapable of surviving for even 
 a brief space without the aid and assistance of 
 beings in whom intelligence has been developed ; 
 and what we consider his natural endowments 
 are for the most part products of art. Nothing, 
 for instance, plays a greater role in life and 
 literature than the love of man for woman 
 the mysterious and all-absorbing passion which 
 bribes or overpowers reason, which thrusts 
 aside the usual motives that influence conduct, 
 which compels those whom it subdues to for- 
 get religion, country, parents, and friends ; driv- 
 
7O GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 ing heroes to forego honor and glory, sages to 
 forsake wisdom, saints to abandon God. This 
 strange fascination, this marvellous attraction, 
 is not, as one might suppose, a thing of sex 
 and the senses : it is romantic, imaginative, 
 poetic; it is all compact of revery and fancy; 
 it is a product of art, not of nature; a result 
 of civilization, not of instinct. It could not 
 exist among savages who go naked. With 
 them it is simply sexual desire little different 
 from that found in brutes. It arises only when 
 the body is clothed and adorned, habited in 
 mystery, and converted into a thing hidden and 
 sacred, which appeals to the imagination and 
 leads it to build, for the divinity which itself 
 has created, a sanctuary wherein it may worship 
 until the winning of the favor of the goddess 
 becomes the supreme end of life, wherein to 
 fail is to be doomed to misery. So the beloved 
 becomes at once an ideal and an idol. But the 
 divine frenzy is born of vesture, of manner, of 
 artifice, of concealment, and of mystery. Take 
 these away and the madness is cured. 
 
 Loosed the girdle and the veil, 
 All the heavenly dream grows pale. 
 
 They who are drawn together by sexual pas- 
 sion or by interest are not attracted by love, 
 but by instinct or selfishness, and when desire 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 7 1 
 
 has been satiated or the advantage sought has 
 been gained, they separate, not without loath- 
 ing or contempt; for it is natural to despise 
 or hate those whom we have made use of 
 whether for gain or lust. 
 
 The most blissful moments are those we pass 
 in adoration, or in writing the thoughts that 
 blossom from the roots of our being, which dip 
 into infinite and everduring worlds. 
 
 From nature we receive little more than dis- 
 positions. For the rest, what we become is the 
 result of circumstances and the co-operation of 
 the will, which is generally determined by en- 
 vironment and chance happenings. All depends 
 on God's providence and grace, but the ways 
 along which He guides us are mysterious and 
 hidden, even after we have passed over them. 
 A mere nothing, whose import we could not 
 have understood, would have changed the whole 
 course of life for any one of us. Things light 
 as straws shape our purposes. If experience 
 teaches anything, it is that we should keep our- 
 selves free of conceit and be slow to judge our 
 fellows. 
 
 How many submit to the restraints of society 
 and comply with its requirements for no other 
 reason than because such a course is safer, more 
 respectable, and more certain to lead to success ! 
 
72 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 Much of our virtue, indeed, is as little part of 
 ourselves as are our clothes, and is as easily 
 divested when the social atmosphere or the 
 moral climate changes. 
 
 However eager men be for the contest, vic- 
 tors and vanquished alike quickly grow indif- 
 ferent once it is over. In the triumph there is 
 less joy, in the defeat less disappointment than 
 either could have believed possible. It is so in 
 trials of strength and skill ; it is so in the great 
 struggles on which the fates of armies and of 
 nations hang. The keenest delight is anticipa- 
 tory. When the issue is decided, when what 
 had been a possibility becomes a fact, our inter- 
 est relaxes, and we turn to the undetermined, 
 which gives free play to the imagination and 
 an open field to hope. So too we find that the 
 death of our dearest friends, the vanishing of 
 our most cherished illusions, without which life 
 had seemed to be meaningless, are not unbear- 
 able. However great the loss, in a boundless 
 universe there is always something left to be- 
 lieve, to strive for, and to love. 
 
 Whatever may be true of the uneducated, they 
 whose pursuits are intellectual should need no 
 other diversion or relaxation than they may find 
 in their studies ; and they whose vocation obliges 
 them to deal with religious truth can consent to 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 73 
 
 pass their time at games and other entertain- 
 ments only when they have lost faith in the 
 reality of the spiritual world. 
 
 Strength, physical, intellectual, and moral, is 
 desirable, if for no other reason, because only 
 the strong can be generous, helpful, and mag- 
 nanimous. The weak shrink into themselves, 
 nurse their sorrows, emphasize their sufferings 
 and wrongs, and so become complaining, selfish, 
 and exacting. They are the centre of their 
 thoughts and indifferent to the interests of 
 others. They understand no ills but their own. 
 If they listen to pitiful stories it is that they 
 get a keener relish for their proper miseries, 
 with which they seem to be in love. They are 
 without gratitude and are incapable of appre- 
 ciating kindnesses. The strong, on the con- 
 trary, if they are not brutal, find happiness in 
 sharing their strength and joy. Their sym- 
 pathies are deep, and they are eager to make 
 others partakers of the blessings bestowed so 
 largely on themselves. 
 
 Self-love, in the true sense, is the love of 
 one's real good of truth, of virtue, of beauty, 
 of God. It is strongest in those who are most 
 alive in their higher nature. It is the opposite 
 of selfish love, of the love which places the 
 chief good in the things which minister to the 
 
74 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 senses or nourish conceit and pride, and not in 
 what constitutes the proper worth and joy of 
 life. 
 
 Why should I desire that others think as I, 
 that they take interest in what interests me? 
 If all were of one mind, if all had the same 
 tastes, life would be less interesting than it is; 
 and then it is plain that they who have not my 
 experience cannot have my thoughts, that they 
 who have not my character cannot have my 
 tastes. Nevertheless I would bring others to 
 accept the truth I know, to admire and follow 
 the beauty and goodness which I see; and this 
 yearning springs from what is best within me, 
 from God's presence in my soul, impelling me 
 to reveal to my brothers Him who is truth, 
 beauty, and goodness. 
 
 The power which habit has over us is shown 
 in the fact that the things we become accus- 
 tomed to in our earliest years, the scenes, the 
 songs, the beliefs, the prejudices even, how- 
 ever much we may recognize that the value we 
 attributed to them was due chiefly to our own 
 ignorance and crudeness, never cease to be dear. 
 
 Having done all thou canst do, await the 
 event with a calm mind. Whatever it be, thou 
 art blameless, and safe therefore from harm. 
 
 If we except the present instant, which is 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 7$ 
 
 gone before we can call attention to it, all time 
 is past, since the future does not exist. What 
 is past has ceased to be; and the whole of life, 
 therefore, is summed in an instant, which if 
 we try to think of it vanishes. It is this 
 that gives insight into the illusiveness, the 
 evanescence, the emptiness, the futility of tem- 
 poral existence, driving the soul back on itself 
 and impelling it to seek escape from annihila- 
 tion in the bosom of the Eternal, in whom, 
 and not in time, it truly lives. Hence the old, 
 though they clearly see that they have but a 
 little while to remain on earth, still continue 
 to plan, to provide, to prolong hope, and to 
 cherish expectation. Though they know it not, 
 they are already dwellers in eternity. 
 
 Only the greatest minds greatly influence us, 
 and not even they unless with much toil and 
 patience we work our way into the heart of 
 their thought and love. 
 
 The good are cautious and irresolute, and 
 therefore the affairs of the world are delivered 
 over to the bold and unscrupulous, who have 
 neither the will nor the ability to accomplish 
 anything of enduring worth. 
 
 The child lives wholly in the present and is 
 influenced solely by what is to happen now. 
 The youth begins to look to the future but 
 
76 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. . 
 
 does not labor with joy for rewards which are 
 distant. It is a mark of maturity when we 
 grow able to live by hope, to toil on through 
 whatever difficulties and obstacles, strengthened 
 by the thought and expectation of what we shall 
 be or have when years will have passed by. But 
 the wisest and the strongest alone understand 
 that right action is its own sufficient blessing, 
 that to do day by day the best one can do is 
 the highest and sweetest life, whatever may 
 come hereafter. 
 
 The welfare and happiness of those around 
 us as servants and neighbors give us small con- 
 cern, and yet we persuade ourselves that we 
 love our country and all mankind; are foolish 
 enough even to imagine that we are capable of 
 making sacrifices to promote the good of those 
 who shall be born a hundred years hence. 
 
 The rich and the office-holders receive greater 
 benefits from society and the institutions by 
 which it is maintained than the multitude; and 
 hence they are voluble in professions of patriot- 
 ism and of respect for law, though in truth they 
 generally love their country less and are more 
 willing to evade the duties of citizenship than 
 the masses of the people, being corrupted by 
 money and by office. 
 
 The wholly sincere are bewildered and lost 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 77 
 
 in the midst of a world of pretence, and would 
 flee from the monstrous all-pervading lie to soli- 
 tude and the presence of God. 
 
 The most perfect beauty, that which bears the 
 divinest charm and is clothed with the sweetest 
 grace, eludes our utmost endeavor to under- 
 stand its nature. We feel its presence, are sub- 
 dued by its power, worship at its shrine, but 
 whether it be found in the human countenance 
 or in a poem or a painting, in a statue or a 
 musical composition, we know not what it is; 
 and could the veil of mystery be lifted the spell 
 would be broken. 
 
 Men are followed and flattered for their 
 money, their position, their power to confer 
 honor or office, for their titles and social dis- 
 tinctions; and when they are sought for them- 
 selves, it is not for their natural, but for their 
 acquired qualities, for their skill in law or 
 medicine, in oratory or music, for their fine 
 manners, their knowledge of polite usages, or 
 their ability to entertain. What is inborn, as 
 a healthful and vigorous constitution or physi- 
 cal beauty, however much it may be cher- 
 ished by its possessors, has of itself small social 
 value. A man is not esteemed or rewarded for 
 his strength, but for the uses he has taught 
 himself to put it to; not for what nature has 
 
78 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 given him, but for what art has made him. 
 Physical beauty may attract individuals of op- 
 posite sex, but it is held to be a danger or a 
 doubtful good unless it be associated with in- 
 telligence, refinement, and moral worth. One's 
 value, then, as a social being depends not on 
 what he has received from nature, but on what 
 education has made of him. 
 
 That man should be able to know and realize 
 his own insignificance; that he, a being of a 
 day, an atom swallowed in immensity, should 
 be capable of thoughts which wander through 
 eternity, of hopes and loves which touch on in- 
 finity, is the most indisputable evidence of his 
 heavenly descent and nature; and we are pre- 
 pared to find that the profoundest minds have 
 best insight into the essential littleness of human 
 life, the deepest sentiment of its utter vanity, 
 when it is considered merely as a fact of 
 time. 
 
 They who lead the life of meditation and as- 
 piration find such peace and joy therein that 
 they little by little lose the power to take in- 
 terest in the ambitions, struggles, and intrigues 
 which are the substance of history. It all be- 
 comes for them but as the meaningless agita- 
 tions of the mobile and noisy crowd. 
 
 The ancient philosophers theorized, specu- 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 79 
 
 lated, and argued : the modern observe, experi- 
 ment, and induce conclusions. This method 
 they apply to everything from matter to sen- 
 sation and thought; but the farther they ad- 
 vance the wider and deeper the realms of 
 nescience open before them. So their larger 
 knowledge clamors for a larger faith. 
 
 They who make us laugh make themselves 
 ridiculous; and therefore we have a secret 
 contempt for jesters, mimics, comedians, and 
 clowns. It is difficult to take seriously those 
 who amuse us. In the courts of feudal lords 
 and kings the providers of merriment were ac- 
 counted fools. However willing we may be to 
 pay for such entertainment, we do not respect 
 the individuals by whom it is furnished. Laugh- 
 ter is at the expense of others, and is generally 
 provoked by what makes them appear awkward, 
 absurd, or inferior. A smile may be full of ap- 
 proval, encouragement, and love ; but laughter is 
 more apt to be unfeeling, mocking, and bitter; 
 or if not so, it bespeaks a vacant mind, and is 
 loudest and most frequent in the company of 
 the rude. The malice there is often found in 
 it is insinuated in the proverb, he laughs best 
 who laughs last. It is senseless to be provoked 
 to merriment by a mishap or a blunder, and to 
 remain serious when we see men forgetting to 
 
80 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 live, that they may give all their time to the ac- 
 cumulating and hoarding of money. One may 
 find it ridiculous too that a man should be 
 thought superior because he lives in a great 
 house or drives in a showy equipage, while 
 another is contemned for the marks toil has 
 put on him; and if the wise may ever mock 
 and jeer, they should be allowed this privi- 
 lege when they behold the servile crowd fawn- 
 ing on successful thieves or applauding lying 
 demagogues. 
 
 Resignation is a virtue which religion and 
 philosophy alike inculcate; but there is need 
 of watchfulness lest it degenerate into indif- 
 ference, sloth, negligence, and insensibility; and 
 this danger hides also in humility, obedience, 
 and patience in all the passive virtues, which 
 if cultivated overmuch beget an indolent and 
 sluggish temper that is easily mistaken for 
 piety. Virtue is essentially strength; and 
 strength becomes weakness unless it exercise 
 itself. 
 
 The stoics teach that the wise man finds his 
 happiness, not in the things that lie without or 
 which are subject to another's will, but within 
 his own mind. It is objected that the disposi- 
 tion which makes this possible is dependent on 
 the causes that affect health of body, and may 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 8 1 
 
 be lost through the unbalancing of reason or 
 the accidents which inflict such pain as to make 
 one incapable of philosophy. This we shall ad- 
 mit, and yet hold that to fix one's heart on 
 what cannot be taken from him while he re- 
 mains himself is the best wisdom. 
 
 The sense of responsibility duty, implying, 
 as it does, moral freedom is the deepest and 
 holiest thing in us. It is God's witness that at 
 the heart of all there lies, not matter and fate, 
 but spirit and liberty. It is born of the con- 
 sciousness of a Power within the soul, whose 
 judgments are absolute, whose approval or rep- 
 robation is on all the thoughts and words and 
 deeds of men. The supreme interests are 
 moral. They are whatever fosters reverence 
 and obedience, hope and courage, love and de- 
 votion; whatever lifts man above the law of 
 physical necessity and places him in a world of 
 freedom and joy, where if evil befall it can only 
 be through his failure to be true to his best 
 insight. 
 
 The Highest in the universe is a person, 
 and the essential thing in personality is moral 
 character. 
 
 Nothing but the self-activity of one's own 
 mind can make him wise or good or beautiful; 
 and hence religion and philosophy strengthen 
 6 
 
82 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 and ennoble only those whom they impel cease- 
 lessly to think and to do. 
 
 It is a noble thing to rouse and impel to 
 generous effort, but it is an evil and a misfor- 
 tune, even though it be the effect of a great 
 and imposing mind and character, to weaken 
 the springs of self-activity in any human being. 
 
 To live deliberately below the truth which 
 we know is to turn from the human self to 
 animal impulse. 
 
 A man nobly useful is hardly to be found in 
 ten thousand. 
 
 As well expect the unthinking to compre- 
 hend ultimate origins and ends as believe that 
 they who live for greed or lust or ambition 
 shall understand Christ's words when He says, 
 Blessed are they who hunger and thirst after 
 righteousness. The animal-minded know not 
 nor love the things of the spirit, and are there- 
 fore unable to teach them. They may repeat 
 formulas, but they cannot make them vital. 
 
 If there are who love me not, nor believe nor 
 think nor feel as I, it is a result of their tem- 
 perament and character; and since I cannot 
 hope to change this, why should I be troubled? 
 
 None are persuaded against their will, and 
 arguments fail to convince when the conclu- 
 sions conflict with prejudices or interests. 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 83 
 
 The wisest and best even may not give utter- 
 ance to their every thought, but to such only as 
 they have considered, weighed, approved, and 
 accepted. The rest are the dust and weeds of 
 the mind. 
 
 When a new truth dawns on us our first 
 and chief joy comes of the thought that we 
 shall communicate it; but when we get posses- 
 sion of material things we feel that to share 
 them is pain. 
 
 Labor to acquire skill in doing the things 
 which are worth while, for to do an ill thing 
 well doubles the fault. 
 
 As the individual advances in life, contend- 
 ing, striving, hoping, yearning, he gradually 
 attains truer insight, more real knowledge, 
 more certain wisdom; and this applies to the 
 race as well. What is hidden from one gener- 
 ation dawns on another and becomes plain to 
 the following. Were there no progress in in- 
 sight and knowledge, there would be none at all. 
 
 They who have strength to bear have strength 
 to forbear. 
 
 They who cease not to strive for the best 
 they believe and know cannot fail. 
 
 Piety is not an end but a means to the 
 attainment of perfect peace and joy, through 
 perfect love. 
 
84 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 Pity is at once sympathy and the desire to 
 relieve. It is not natural to man more than 
 to beasts. It is a virtue he must acquire and 
 cultivate. 
 
 There is no worse hopelessness than to feel 
 that one whom you love cannot be helped be- 
 cause he has betrayed himself and is become 
 helpless. 
 
 They who persevere in the line of their talent 
 accomplish much, while they who continue to 
 do what nature never intended they should do 
 make themselves ridiculous. 
 
 The place does not ennoble you, says Plu- 
 tarch, but you exalt the place by doing what 
 is just and generous. 
 
 No mother ever saw her son crowned with 
 more transcendent might and glory than Napo- 
 leon's ; but it hardly occurs to any one to think 
 her either fortunate or happy. This we reserve 
 for the mothers of men who were as good as 
 they were great. 
 
 Principles lie deeper than interests, and they 
 are more intimately associated with man's prog- 
 ress and well-being. 
 
 The rights of man are prior to the rights of 
 property, and they are more sacred. Property 
 is for the good of man, and to make money 
 the primary aim, and human welfare the sec- 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 8$ 
 
 ondary, is a perversion of reason and con- 
 science. The moral, domestic, and social life is 
 more important than pecuniary profit, since the 
 only true wealth is the life of wise and noble 
 men and women. If material civilization domi- 
 nate religious and ethical civilization, the out- 
 come is decay and ruin. 
 
 What right hast thou to throw the burden of 
 thy weakness and misery on another? If thou 
 art a coward, hide thy infirmity lest it prove 
 infectious. 
 
 If thou dost not take care of thy health no 
 remedies will avail; if thou dost not build thy 
 character all observances will fail. 
 
 Name and fame are worth nothing unless 
 they make us more loving and helpful; and 
 for others our distinctions are valuable only in 
 so far as they become for them a source of 
 joy, strength, and right endeavor. 
 
 They who have authority and wealth may 
 do hurt to the noblest by their favors, but not 
 by their injustice or neglect. 
 
 If thou art wholly in earnest and rightly 
 employed, it will not occur to thee to ask 
 whether others think well or ill of thee. 
 
 Since in the presence of vital truth the mass 
 of mankind are irresponsive and lethargic, there 
 is a kind of relief in the zeal of the unthinking, 
 
86 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 though in an age when we are deafened by 
 their clamorous advertisements of their pana- 
 ceas we may be tempted to think it would be 
 a lesser evil if they too became comatose and 
 voiceless. 
 
 The young are idealists, and we should foster 
 their divine enthusiasm by helping them to 
 believe and feel that this is God's world, where 
 all good is stored for those who make themselves 
 worthy, who know and love, who have faith and 
 hope, who are true and helpful, self-active and 
 untiring. 
 
 If thou art not moved thyself how canst thou 
 hope to move others ? The voice of the preacher 
 is as that of one crying in the wilderness, because 
 it is but an echo from rocks that bound the 
 hollow waste. A phonograph would perform 
 the function as well. 
 
 When appeal to reason is possible, appeal to 
 memory is a mistake; for to think is a higher 
 form of self-activity than to recall. 
 
 The facts which a learned man has informa- 
 tion about are of small value to himself or others, 
 unless he have a disciplined and comprehensive 
 mind, which gives him ability to marshal and 
 set them forth with power and in right order. 
 
 Nothing but the best mental culture gives 
 one the power to maintain effectually the line 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 8/ 
 
 which separates what is true from what is merely 
 plausible. 
 
 Ideas and ideals, not less than peoples and 
 institutions, are in ceaseless conflict, and the 
 most vigorous and energetic, whether or not 
 they be the truest and the highest, survive. 
 There are no permanent facts or possessions. 
 The celestial orbs and all that they contain are 
 combatants on a universal battle-field where, 
 whatever the final outcome, nothing remains 
 unchanged. 
 
 The best reinforcement of life is found in 
 high thoughts and generous deeds. Without 
 them we can hardly call life human. I know an 
 old man who by the labors and savings of years 
 has accumulated a million dollars, but who has 
 never cherished a noble thought nor performed 
 an unselfish service. When I am thrown into 
 contact with him I feel that he is and has been 
 an unreality, the mere semblance of a man. 
 
 Whatever draws thee into solitude is a 
 heaven-sent invitation to seek God and His 
 kingdom within thyself. Remember this when 
 thy friends die or forsake thee. 
 
 If we but knew how to convert all hindrances, 
 obstacles, and discouragements into opportu- 
 nities, how far might we not go toward the goal 
 of a worthy and blessed life ? There is no seem- 
 
88 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 ing evil, whether it be infirm health, or the 
 falling away of friends, or the loss of reputation 
 or of goods, which, if we are true to our- 
 selves, may not be transformed into an occasion 
 and a means of self-improvement. 
 
 When one whom we have cherished and loved 
 drifts from us or lets us fall out of his life, he 
 teaches us that a man's highest good and true 
 salvation are not to be found in friendship, but 
 in giving one's self to God. 
 
 Men are busy with their own affairs, and they 
 will not concern themselves about thee unless 
 they can make thee serviceable to their pleasures 
 or interests. Hold it not a vital matter, then, 
 whether they bear thee good or ill will. 
 
 Good deeds to be excellent must be done in a 
 brave, cheerful, and disinterested spirit, and so 
 wrought they are their own reward. 
 
 If thou think it worth while to remember or 
 to dwell on thy troubles and wrongs, or thy 
 pleasures and successes, thou art not a cour- 
 ageous and loving soul. 
 
 The best place is where God puts us, if there 
 we do His will. Be not anxious about what He 
 has reserved to Himself. What the future shall 
 be He alone knows. Accept what is and put it 
 to the best use. Half our misery would vanish 
 if we refused to entertain forebodings of evils 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 89 
 
 which will never befall us. Vex not thyself with 
 thinking what thou shalt do if thy superiors or 
 others wrong thee. Thou art not the servant of 
 men but of God, and however thy fellows may 
 behave toward thee, it is thy business to con- 
 tinue to act in all things in obedience to eternal 
 principles. 
 
 The more thou dependest on what is outside 
 thyself, the more slave thou art. 
 
 Mere health will often make a man contented ; 
 riches never. 
 
 They who have wrought to best purpose 
 have been wholly intent on their work, heed- 
 less of what was or might be said of it or 
 themselves. 
 
 If thou lovest thyself, love God; for except 
 in, through, and for Him, what thou callest 
 thyself is but a phantasmagory. 
 
 Love is the society of beautiful souls. How- 
 ever young or fair we be, our presence is not a 
 divine boon, cannot inspire joy, hope, and 
 courage, unless the mind be luminous and open, 
 unless the heart be pure and generous. Love 
 aspires looks above, not below. It lives in 
 worlds which the soul creates and would make 
 eternal. Lovers wed in June because, as it is 
 the richest and most beautiful of the months, it 
 is the fittest symbol of the heavenly dream which 
 
90 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 exalts and beautifies them. They alone are 
 unhappy who love not. 
 
 More than man woman must watch over her 
 emotions, for in her more than in him sentiment 
 tends to become folly. 
 
 Why should the wise seek the company of 
 any one if not to learn or impart wisdom, if not 
 to gain or give strength and joy? 
 
 In all company save in that of those we love 
 and wholly trust we are driven to suppress what 
 in us is best. 
 
 Let thy life-work be to create for thyself such 
 a mind and such a heart as to make it impossible 
 for thee to think foolishly, or to speak falsely, or 
 to act unjustly. 
 
 The deed is the test of the genuineness of the 
 thought; for thoughts which we have not lived 
 or earnestly striven to live are but formal. 
 
 If we were wholly pure we might walk un- 
 contaminated through all the contagions of vice ; 
 if we were truly wise no error could mislead, 
 no doubt deter us from the Godward path. 
 
 Virtue is never piecemeal. To have one we 
 must have several. The truthful are brave and 
 loyal; the chaste are loving and faithful. 
 
 All truth, religious, moral, philosophic, scien- 
 tific, and aesthetic, liberates by enlarging the 
 sphere of consciousness and increasing the 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. gi 
 
 power to dwell therein as beings controlled by 
 reason. 
 
 They are wisest who are most honest. 
 
 Self-love is the radical passion, and unless 
 it be transcended and subsumed in self-devo- 
 tion, the individual remains petty, hard, and 
 uninteresting. 
 
 If we are not obeyed it is because we know 
 not how to command. 
 
 Turn from those who insult thee, not in anger 
 or hatred, but from a feeling of self-respect 
 and because thou hast no time to give to ruffians. 
 
 So long as we strive with all our hearts to rise 
 toward God, forgiveness of even the worst 
 injuries is easy. 
 
 Extremes are excessive, and virtue itself may 
 be carried to a point where it merges into vice, 
 as they who travel eastward will, if they go 
 far enough, find their faces turned to the 
 west. 
 
 Success lies along the line of natural gifts; 
 and to cultivate assiduously one's talent is to 
 make failure impossible. 
 
 To win the highest success it is necessary to 
 turn resolutely from most of the things men 
 crave. 
 
 The end of labor is the acquirement of leisure 
 to give one's self to contemplation. 
 
92 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 Chastisement that is not medicinal degrades; 
 unless it improve, it hardens. 
 
 An age in which the love of gain is not merely 
 greed, but ambition, is without ideals and with- 
 out distinction. 
 
 If thou hast love enough, thou hast faith 
 enough. If we could all but know and feel that 
 God is love, that Christ is His love made mani- 
 fest, that the substance of religion is love, that 
 they who love not are more infidel than one 
 who, though he lack faith, strives with all his 
 heart to be of service, if this truth could be 
 made to live within us, we should quickly find 
 means to end our disputes. 
 
 In the presence of irreparable loss, of hope- 
 less failure, of impending death, what consola- 
 tion is there save in religion? 
 
 Do thy work to-day and it shall be well with 
 thee to-morrow. 
 
 If we would make progress we must struggle 
 and toil and cease not from labor; must drain 
 and fill the sloughs through which our sensual 
 nature would drag us; must level the moun- 
 tains which pride and conceit raise in the path 
 of all who are forward bent. There is no ad- 
 vance unless we overcome both nature and our- 
 selves. Only so can we have foretaste of God's 
 almightiness. 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 93 
 
 Religion, which is faith and courage, hope and 
 confidence, strength and righteousness, leads 
 those whom it utterly possesses to power and 
 wealth. Its success is fatal, while they who have 
 power and wealth, but not the spiritual mind 
 which religion alone can give, are doomed to 
 failure and misery. 
 
 Life is short. A little more knowledge, a 
 little more virtue is all we can hope to gain; 
 and for this reason the little more is infinitely 
 precious. 
 
 The transformation of the germ into the per- 
 fect plant or animal does not excite wonder, 
 because we see it taking place everywhere ; and 
 the evolutionary hypothesis being assumed as 
 true, could we behold a universal transformation 
 of the lower into the higher, we should not feel 
 surprise. The mystery of life, however, would 
 remain unfathomable as now, except to faith. 
 
 The test of the vitality of faith is its power 
 to inspire virile conduct. 
 
 Seek not to excuse nor to console thyself with 
 lies. There is no refuge for cowards. 
 
 Even they who are best hedged about with 
 circumstance and pomp are daily placed in situ- 
 ations in which, were the curtain withdrawn, 
 they would appear to be ridiculous or pitiful. 
 
 Small things are most easily preserved and 
 
94 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 handed down: a jewel or a coin will outlast 
 an empire; and a little volume which holds 
 great truth in narrow bounds is apt to prove 
 more vital than huge tomes. 
 
 The promise awakens keener interest than the 
 deed, because we live by hope. However great 
 our achievement, when nothing more is to be 
 expected of us the world turns away. 
 
 A pun is wit of words, whereas true wit deals 
 with ideas. 
 
 They who appeal to appetite and pruriency 
 are interesting only to the depraved. 
 
 Who that is able to live in the imagination, 
 exalted by wisdom and insight, would care to 
 have again a relish for the naive pleasures of 
 childhood and youth? 
 
 Were we compelled to do the things we pur- 
 sue as pastimes they would soon become intol- 
 erable; but the compulsion which drives the 
 wise and good to follow after truth and love 
 grows the dearer the more irresistible it is felt 
 to be. 
 
 The words true poets write are forever mag- 
 netic and phosphorescent. 
 
 Every saintly and heroic deed strikes us as a 
 marvel, and strengthens our confidence in 
 human nature, as miracles heighten our faith 
 in God. 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 95 
 
 Think not of thyself at all; or if this be im- 
 possible think modestly of thyself. 
 
 Seek the wealth which the more it is com- 
 municated the more abundantly it becomes 
 thine the wealth there is in wisdom, courage, 
 and love. 
 
 If reason be not unreason, there is a right and 
 a wrong, severed each from other everlastingly. 
 Cleave, then, with all thy might to moral good, 
 and it is and shall be well with thee. 
 
 The best human life even is so far beneath 
 man's highest thought and truest insight that 
 happiness can be found only in the yearning 
 discontent which urges and impels to heroic 
 striving and battling for better things. 
 
 Accommodate thyself to thy lot day by day, 
 confident it is the best for thee if thou art true. 
 
 The many count their days by the dollars 
 they make; the better few by the increase of 
 truth and love within themselves. 
 
 Worldlings are vulgar, and nothing high or 
 great is to be expected of them. 
 
 Thou wouldst not deliberately praise thyself; 
 but what else is the speaking of aught which 
 may raise thee in the estimation of another? 
 
 To feel no impulse toward something higher 
 than one's self is to fail to lead a human life. 
 
 Neither excuse nor accuse thyself. 
 
96 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 Though there should be reason for thinking 
 that to-morrow thou shalt be accused of capital 
 crime or raised to some exalted dignity, do thy 
 work to-day in all earnestness and composure. 
 
 Stand firm and immovable, says St. Ignatius, 
 as an anvil when it receives blow upon blow. 
 
 They who rightly pray do right; and they 
 who do right pray rightly. 
 
 In the eyes of all the world the prime defect 
 is lack of money. No other is so sure to make 
 one appear ridiculous or contemptible. The 
 safest are they for whom a little suffices. 
 
 In controversies and contests we take sides 
 in obedience to interests and prejudices, and 
 then hunt for arguments to justify our position. 
 
 Beethoven, when his ears had been closed 
 forever to all sound, continued to beat out the 
 celestial harmonies he could never hope to hear. 
 So all genius does its work from inner necessity, 
 heedless of other reward than that which the 
 divine urgency brings. 
 
 The true function of art is interpretation. It 
 translates nature into words and forms of truth 
 and beauty. 
 
 We can no more build a worthy life on a basis 
 of mere physical beauty than we can dwell in 
 comfort in a bower of roses. 
 
 A fair face easily impoverishes both mind and 
 heart. 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 97 
 
 Beauty, says Milton, is God's handwriting, a 
 wayside sacrament. 
 
 No life is so wearisome and disappointing as 
 a life of pleasure. 
 
 The great writers form clusters, and they are 
 in literature what the great constellations are in 
 the heavens. 
 
 If thou wouldst persuade and convince, speak 
 what thy own experience has taught thee 
 ex homine and not ad hominem. 
 
 Man's spiritual being rests on a foundation 
 of faith and hope, which reason outlines and 
 lays, while imagination rears and adorns . the 
 temple. The true home of the most matter-of- 
 fact, even, is built by this visionary power which 
 weaves the vesture that makes life fair and de- 
 lightful, which drapes, shields, and comforts us 
 in youth and in age, in poverty and in riches, in 
 sickness and in health. 
 
 The best are urged irresistibly to improve 
 themselves; and since they feel that their en- 
 vironment, physical and spiritual, is part of 
 themselves, they are urged to ceaseless labors 
 to promote the general welfare, though they are 
 aware all the while that no possible advance can 
 make this earthly existence satisfactory to im- 
 mortal souls. 
 
 ,We are charmed by a fair face and form, 
 7 
 
98 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 until catching the utterance of the life within, 
 we turn away like one on whom a trick has 
 been played. Speak, says Ben Jonson, that I 
 may see thee. 
 
 To be able to take delight in the genius, good- 
 ness, and power of another is the rarest virtue : 
 it is the fruit of noble nature and best culture. 
 
 Ask me for anything you please, says Na- 
 poleon, except time. 
 
 If thou wouldst have strength and joy, learn 
 to be indifferent to everything except to that 
 which constitutes the essential good of life. 
 
 The love of God gives being to everything. 
 Love Him and thou shalt not complain of 
 aught. 
 
 Accustom thyself to the thought that thy 
 rights are of minor importance, the fulfilment of 
 thy duties being the essential thing. 
 
 The knowledge and love of truth, goodness, 
 and beauty, which are God's being, is life at its 
 best. Whatever helps to this, whether it be 
 pleasure or pain, success or failure, is to be 
 welcomed and cherished. 
 
 The sense of inner freedom which is born of 
 the consciousness of earnest striving to upbuild 
 one's being and to fulfil righteousness is the 
 one unfailing source of self-respect. 
 
 Foes are the friends of the educable. They 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 99 
 
 help them to become vigilant, patient, circum- 
 spect, humble, and courageous. 
 
 My heart is more strengthened by the good 
 I have seen in children and in the poor than by 
 the genius of philosophers and poets. 
 
 Religion and virtue are found in the rich and 
 in the poor ; but in the poor they are more spon- 
 taneous and loving, rising without too great 
 difficulty to higher and higher potencies, while 
 in the rich they seem to be delicate and to require 
 special care and nurture. 
 
 Let thy busiest and most fruitful moments be 
 those in which thou hast nothing to do, for they 
 who are never less idle than when seemingly 
 idle utter the words and do the deeds which are 
 a possession for all time. 
 
 As we open doors and windows to the rising 
 sun and close them when it sets, so are we ever 
 ready to welcome the prosperous and to turn 
 from those who fail. 
 
 Be thy progress from faith to knowledge, from 
 knowledge to wisdom, from wisdom to love. 
 
 Sound compels us more than reason. Words 
 the quality of voice, the tone in which they 
 are uttered move us more strongly than 
 argument. 
 
 The love of money is the root of evil; but 
 in it there is this goodness, that it is the most 
 
IOO GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 universal and potent stimulus to industry, 
 without which nothing worth while can be 
 accomplished. 
 
 Whether health or beauty or wealth be a good 
 or an evil for thee depends on what thou art. 
 
 Chance is but a word for our ignorance of the 
 causes by which things are produced and events 
 come to pass. 
 
 They who are long absent from their friends 
 become for them at last as though they had 
 ceased to live. If it be objected that absence 
 cannot pluck love from the heart's memory, that 
 is true also of death. 
 
 The highest service of action is to stimulate 
 thought and love. 
 
 Only those who give themselves to contem- 
 plation grow sublime in action. 
 
 True and helpful is the love which blends 
 with the current of all the high aims and ends 
 of life, and becomes an added impulse to their 
 pursuit and accomplishment. 
 
 The significance and importance of a man lie 
 in the vital truth he sets forth and embodies, 
 whether in deeds or in words. 
 
 The highest courage is to dare to appear to 
 be what one is; for they who so dare must be 
 noble, or else shameless and not to be considered. 
 
 To recognize his master in a crowd his dog 
 
u or THE ' \ 
 
 J DIVERSITY ) 
 
 or 
 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. IOI 
 
 takes a sniff at the calf of his leg, and so learns 
 about as much of him as most men know of one 
 another. 
 
 They who admire us give us purer pleas- 
 ure than they who love us, for they are less 
 exacting. 
 
 Did we but know Thee, O God, we should be 
 consoled for all the ills of life. 
 
 Vital truth to be known must be felt, and it 
 can be felt only by the lowly-minded and the 
 pure of heart. 
 
 Evil passions punish first and worst of all 
 those who cherish them. 
 
 We are ruined by borrowing by borrowing 
 trouble even more than by borrowing money. 
 
 Nothing is cheap the production of which 
 involves the ruin of human souls and bodies. 
 
 They who lose their hearts begin by losing 
 their heads. 
 
 The stronger thou art the more thou owest; 
 the weaker, the greater thy claim on thy fellows. 
 
 The loss of money is gain if it create a truer 
 appreciation of how little of it we need. 
 
 We wonder most where we are most ignorant. 
 
 If thou art indifferent to praise, detraction 
 should not disturb thee. 
 
 The more inferior those with whom we live, 
 the greater our need of humility. 
 
IO2 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 The enemies a man's virtues make him should 
 help him to become more virtuous. 
 
 A pure and simple heart changes life's poisons 
 to medicines. 
 
 Faith is happiness; hope is happiness; love 
 is happiness; true religion, which is the fine 
 flower and fruit of faith, hope, and love, is 
 happiness; and so long as man shall crave for 
 happiness religion shall have influence on him. 
 
 If thy faith in God is real thou shalt see Him 
 in what gives thee pain even more than in what 
 gives thee pleasure. 
 
 He who feels that he cannot suffer harm from 
 any outward wrong or deprivation has the divine 
 mind; is a citizen of an imperishable state, a 
 dweller in worlds where what is good and fair 
 is so forever. Whatever happen, he is safe- 
 sheltered. 
 
 To me nothing seems so desirable as leisure 
 leisure to dream, to think, to meditate, to be 
 alone with God and the soul. 
 
 If thy enemy, intending to do thee harm, has 
 driven thee back on the inner sources of life, 
 know that for thee he is part of God's special 
 providence. 
 
 Right use may be made of all things, both 
 good and evil; and they who have this wisdom 
 possess the secret of right living. 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 10$ 
 
 If thou art censured, examine thy conscience ; 
 if praised, believe it flattery. 
 
 Whatever happen, continue to work. If thou 
 find not the buried treasure, thy labor shall make 
 the soil fertile. 
 
 When one's convictions have been wrought 
 into deeds they become inexpugnable. 
 
 Vigorous minds have strong passions. 
 
 They who are right can afford to pardon, 
 whether victorious or defeated. 
 
 The fire genius kindles sets the world ablaze. 
 
 Originality, Voltaire says, is judicious selec- 
 tion, and Newman holds it to be the power of 
 abstracting for one's self. They are not so far 
 apart, for judicious selection is a kind of 
 abstraction. 
 
 Though thou fail to make others good make 
 thyself so. 
 
 If thy happiness be founded on the opinion 
 others have of thee thou art miserable. 
 
 Suggestive writing is the most helpful and the 
 most pleasing, because it creates best oppor- 
 tunity for discovery. 
 
 If banished from the approval of men, find 
 paradise within. 
 
 Only that for which we have long striven and 
 suffered becomes wholly plain to us. 
 
 A true thought outweighs a fortune. The 
 
IO4 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 world finds this incredible, because its realm is 
 seemingness and lies. 
 
 Our tastes depend on what we are. Flies 
 batten on things men find loathsome. We are 
 akin to what attracts us. 
 
 They who have learned to live in the realms 
 of thought turn from what is popular and there- 
 fore vulgar. The applauding crowd is a bore. 
 There is nothing more appealing in the gospels 
 than the touches which present the Lord and 
 Master, who loved and served the poor and dis- 
 inherited, as shrinking from the acclaiming 
 throng. 
 
 Were every soul of the billion and a half now 
 living to fall asleep at the same moment, nothing 
 would be changed. The sun would send forth 
 heat and light, the stars would keep their places, 
 the earth would whirl onward, the mountains 
 would lift their peaks, the oceans would roll, the 
 rivers flow, the flowers bloom, the birds break 
 into song ; and so would it be though from the 
 world-wide sleep there should be no awakening. 
 As we look backward and behold our planet a 
 molten mass on which life is impossible, so with 
 a glance of the mind we dip into the future and 
 see it a frozen rock from which every vestige of 
 life has forever disappeared. 
 
IV. 
 
 AS it depends on ourselves whether the 
 flowers and the starlit heavens awaken in 
 us emotion and aspiration, so what we are de- 
 termines whether great thoughts and great pur- 
 poses shall illumine and strengthen us. 
 
 The solid globe of earth is not so opaque as 
 the obtuse and indifferent. 
 
 They whose hearts are disenthralled of the 
 love of material things are happy in their sense 
 of inner freedom even more than in their con- 
 sciousness of possessing the power to inspire 
 and uplift. 
 
 The exception proves the rule, because to be 
 an exception it must stand forth in opposition to 
 what is general. If an unselfish and disinter- 
 ested man be a rare man he proves that men 
 are self-seeking. 
 
 It is hard for a rich man to be a friend, for 
 he suspects that not himself but his gold is the 
 magnet; it is hard for him to be a Christian, 
 for he knows that a follower of Christ must use 
 his wealth to make truth and love and righteous- 
 ness prevail. 
 
IO6 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 Women inspire men with the noblest am- 
 bitions and hinder them from accomplishing the 
 best. 
 
 Love is content with little, and can never have 
 enough. 
 
 The holiest purposes and deeds are known to 
 God alone. 
 
 If thou wouldst not debase thyself, nor insult 
 nor wrong any human being. 
 
 Language has higher potency than bread. 
 Bread nourishes the body, language the mind. 
 Words not only replenish but create; not only 
 strengthen but illumine and transform. 
 
 To be incapable of friendship is to be lacking 
 in the essentials of humanity. 
 
 Be self-sufficient, knowing that God is always 
 with thee ; yet be persuaded that the help which 
 man can give to man is infinite when two or 
 three or many unite and devote themselves to 
 some good cause. 
 
 The cock of the walk, says a French writer, is 
 generally a goose. 
 
 The love of man for woman, says Plato, is 
 a thing common and of course, and at first has 
 in it more of instinct and passion than of choice ; 
 but true friendship between man and man is 
 infinite and immortal. 
 
 In the hour of distress and misery, says Lan- 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. IO/ 
 
 dor, the eye of every mortal turns to friendship. 
 In the hour of gladness and conviviality what 
 is our want ? It is friendship. When the heart 
 overflows with gratitude or any other sweet and 
 sacred sentiment, what is the word to which it 
 would give utterance? A friend. 
 
 The company one habitually seeks and keeps 
 reveals character, because we are largely what 
 we make one another loyal or false, honest or 
 insincere, magnanimous or mean, brave or 
 cowardly, chaste or dissolute, hard or loving, 
 religious or impious. In this lies the good of 
 friendship, which is possible only to noble 
 natures. Hence too the deep and all-pervading 
 wretchedness which flows from wedded life 
 when the high are mated with the low, the pure 
 and gentle with the coarse and vulgar. 
 
 The nobler one is the less is he capable of 
 resentment. 
 
 Nothing is interesting unless it be suffused 
 with the light of the mind. 
 
 It is easier to respect one who bores than one 
 who amuses us. 
 
 The solitude which nourishes the soul is the 
 solitude of the self-active. The idle and un- 
 thinking, alone or in company, are miserable 
 and beyond the reach of help. 
 
 The critic, says Sainte-Beuve, is one who 
 knows and teaches others how to read. 
 
IO8 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 Virtues attract no notice; vices awaken 
 curiosity. 
 
 Like crowds that stand waiting for the doors 
 to open, we all wait in expectancy of life till 
 death unbars the gates. 
 
 We complain that man's life is short; but 
 were it unending it would be intolerable. 
 
 Let a generous faith and love keep thee still 
 superior to thy knowledge; for they who suc- 
 cumb to erudition are weaklings and bores. 
 
 Politeness is the child of love. 
 
 There is nothing so delightful, nothing which 
 so surely retains its charm and freshness as the 
 conversation of one who thinks and knows how 
 to talk. 
 
 All noble souls, all great minds are contem- 
 poraries and compatriots. 
 
 The orator's look is part of his eloquence. 
 
 The pure reason is a corrosive. It eats away 
 truth and beauty. It dissects and analyzes till 
 nothing remains. 
 
 Whoever has a luminous mind and a loving 
 heart has the power to delight though he be an 
 hundred years old. 
 
 If thou hast a soul, give it opportunity and 
 command. 
 
 Thy health is important, but it is not a matter 
 for the entertainment of thy friends. 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 109 
 
 From the unhappy we seek escape as from 
 beggars who claim our pity and help. 
 
 Everything depends on the point of view. 
 Place thyself an hundred years backward or 
 forward, and the billion and a half of human 
 beings who people the earth to-day become 
 as unimportant as the leaves the frosts have 
 killed. 
 
 The thought and industry expended in pro- 
 curing more abundant and more luxurious 
 means of living would transform the world into 
 a kingdom of heaven if devoted to the further- 
 ance of a more intelligent and unselfish kind of 
 life. 
 
 An hour with God and with one's own 
 thoughts is worth whole days of pleasant 
 company. 
 
 The power to help still remains when the 
 power to please has departed. 
 
 With attention, mildness, and tact one may do 
 almost anything in the world of men. 
 
 A not unimportant service which the really 
 great do, they render by remaining forever 
 interesting. 
 
 They who do not care to be of help do not 
 care to live; for they who turn away from the 
 power and opportunity to serve neglect what 
 gives to life its purest joy. 
 
I IO GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 Pure delight in another's good is the rarest 
 of joys. 
 
 Think of the rights of others rather than of 
 their duties; but where thou thyself art con- 
 cerned think of thy duties, not of thy rights. 
 
 None but the frivolous would rather be loved 
 than respected. 
 
 The most general cause of failure is unwill- 
 ingness or inability to make right use of leisure. 
 
 The one purpose of business is to get the 
 money of others ; hence, to take a merely busi- 
 ness view of life is to take a selfish and non- 
 human view. 
 
 To think of a success in the joy it gives to a 
 friend, says D'Aurevilly, is to drink one's nectar 
 from a golden cup. 
 
 Nothing is so rare as great men without great 
 faults, and it were not rash to affirm that the 
 only pure and innocent being who has appeared 
 in human form and exercised a world-trans- 
 forming influence is Christ the Lord and 
 Saviour. If there be another it is some disciple 
 and follower of Him. 
 
 The primary truths of the Christian religion 
 are the root principles of right life. 
 
 However much we boast of the sovereignty of 
 the people, of government of, by, and through, 
 and for them, the people know that they can 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. Ill 
 
 do nothing right unless they are rightly coun- 
 selled, led, and governed. As by instinct they 
 look to those who are clothed with authority 
 for guidance and command. In a popular gov- 
 ernment more than in any other, the individuals 
 to whom the general interests are intrusted do 
 infinite harm when they are incompetent, care- 
 less, or corrupt. 
 
 No object of our love could give us aught 
 but pain were we to know that within an hour 
 it would drop out of our lives forever. Hap- 
 piness, therefore, is not to be found in the 
 enjoyment of the present moment, but in look- 
 ing with hope and confidence to the future. 
 
 In doing what I feel to be the command of 
 conscience, in the belief that I have done it 
 thoroughly well, I gain a stronger sense of the 
 worth and goodness of life. But my purest joy, 
 if I be not self-deceived, springs from the con- 
 templation of the highest truth, the divinest 
 beauty, and the absolute good; and this, as I 
 understand it, is communion with God. 
 
 Nor State nor Church can remain vital and 
 vigorous unless it administer the abiding truth 
 in the manner which the conditions of the age 
 render applicable and life-giving. 
 
 The less one knows the more certain he is 
 that what he knows is true. 
 
112 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 The irresolute are necessarily unhappy, for 
 life is effort, and therefore purpose and deter- 
 mination. 
 
 Man knows only infinitesimally ; but he is 
 capable of believing, hoping, and loving in- 
 finitely; and he is most godlike and heroic, not 
 when he understands but when he is uplifted 
 and borne onward by a living, heaven-seeking 
 faith and love. 
 
 The great mainstays of faith and religion are 
 enthusiasm, purity of life, and property. 
 
 Poverty weaves about us a thousand bonds. 
 Its stern and inexorable voice is not, Thou shalt 
 not; but, Thou canst not. If one would have 
 leisure, or visit the fairest lands, or look on the 
 noblest works of art, or meet famous men, or 
 employ the highest skill, or travel in the most 
 health-begetting regions, or have faces brighten 
 with welcoming smiles as he approaches, pov- 
 erty makes it all impossible. It is hardly sur- 
 prising, therefore, that the passion for gold 
 should overmaster us. But once we have gotten 
 wealth, it nearly always happens that we have 
 not only become incapable of enjoying the 
 purest delights, but have grown insensible even 
 to the cheap pleasures which money can buy. 
 
 Compulsion is hated of all the world. The 
 deepest in us protests against it, and bears 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 113 
 
 authentic witness that consciousness of the will's 
 freedom is primary and fundamental. 
 
 Whatever be the method and equipment, the 
 teacher's success depends on the amount and 
 quality of life, of love, and of earnestness which 
 he brings to the fulfilment of his task. If he 
 himself be apathetic, careless, and incapable, 
 though the school building be a palace of art 
 and science, no effective education can be given. 
 
 We hold no man who has died in a worthy 
 cause, however terrible the manner of his death, 
 to have been either unfortunate or unhappy. 
 Nay, we believe his lot blessed, and are certain 
 that he has made the best use of life in sacri- 
 ficing it on the altar of what is permanently 
 right, true, and holy; for in our inmost souls 
 we know and feel that the highest human good 
 is an unselfish, devoted, and heroic spirit. 
 
 Men who have played a great part have rarely 
 disclosed the inmost motives by which their 
 course was determined. Nothing, indeed, is 
 more difficult than to give a true and adequate 
 account of the influences which have controlled 
 one's actions, even in the minor affairs of life. 
 Our motives are as complex and as hard to 
 unravel as human nature itself. 
 
 Give me, says Plato, beauty in the inward soul, 
 and may the inner and the outer man be one. 
 
 8 
 
114 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 Learn to feel as thy own all the good of thy 
 fellow-men, all the joy, success, and power in 
 which they are blameless, and thy life shall be 
 filled with gladness and thy soul with joy. 
 
 The world-wide scandal atheism enacted 
 lies in the contradiction which exists and has 
 always existed between profession and practice 
 saying one thing and doing another. 
 
 When one is at college, however unpleasant 
 the restraint, however ungrateful the task, he 
 is consoled and strengthened by the thought that 
 he is gaining what will be of service in after-life; 
 and so in whatever situation we find confidence 
 and courage, if we feel that we are growing 
 in wisdom and virtue. 
 
 Who here and now lives with eternal things, 
 Drinks peace and joy from life's perennial springs. 
 
 Think not of thyself, but of the work God 
 has given thee to do; not of happiness, but of 
 right-doing; not of what others shall say, but 
 of what duty commands. 
 
 It is never safe to be conspicuous, save in the 
 performance of good, or in the utterance of right 
 words. 
 
 If we could but learn to withdraw ourselves 
 from trifles and to devote our leisure to think- 
 ing and to the company of immortal minds, we 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 115 
 
 should know the peace and repose which is the 
 central feeling of all blessedness. 
 
 With those who have but opinions intercourse 
 is unprofitable. One can neither learn from 
 them nor teach them. 
 
 The companionship of which one never tires, 
 which the longer it continues the more pleasant 
 and helpful it grows, is the work one loves. It 
 deepens and purifies the fountain-head of life 
 and joy, and it neither wears nor wearies. 
 
 Who shall love instruction? Who shall un- 
 derstand words of wisdom? They alone whom 
 experience makes wise. 
 
 A gentleman is one whose mind is luminous 
 and whose heart is pure. 
 
 Whoever is unable to look through language 
 into the realities it symbolizes, unable to make 
 himself the master instead of the servant of 
 words, lacks culture and insight. 
 
 The deepest depravity is in those who prey 
 on men's ignorances and infirmities, who ad- 
 vertise themselves and live in wait for the vic- 
 tims of sin, error, and disease, in the hope of 
 coining their credulity and wretchedness into 
 dollars and cents. In hell there cannot be so 
 revolting a spectacle. 
 
 It is difficult to exaggerate the power of 
 brave, cheerful, happy, hopeful thoughts. They 
 
Il6 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 create for the soul an atmosphere wherein it 
 breathes health, courage, and joy. 
 
 In the degree in which individuals, in which 
 social aggregates grow in intelligence and vir- 
 tue, the less men labor and the more they 
 work. 
 
 The teaching of morality fails to touch the 
 heart. There is in it no inspiration, no power to 
 renew or transform, no creative spirit, no sense 
 of exaltation. It is only when religious faith, 
 hope, and love shine like heavenly lights on the 
 soul, that man's whole nature is refreshed as 
 by the breath of God. In the great crises of 
 individuals and of peoples it is most clearly 
 revealed that without this help from on high 
 human life would fail utterly. 
 
 Keep thy mind and heart fixed on what is 
 absolutely and forever true and fair, and little 
 by little light and love shall suffuse thy whole 
 being. 
 
 A man's joy and strength spring from the 
 things he habitually contemplates and desires, 
 from the quality of his love, which is the root 
 of all virtue and the test of human worth. 
 
 Good-will to men and peace to men of good- 
 will this is the heavenly message ; but there 
 is need of caution lest in becoming all things 
 to all, one lose individuality, forfeit the power 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 1 17 
 
 of complete self-devotion to truth, which is 
 the sole secure and eternal foundation of 
 love. 
 
 There is no one whose opinions and conduct 
 are not determined and controlled by his ideas 
 of pleasure and self-interest; and since these 
 ideas diverge and easily become opposite, toler- 
 ance is wisdom. But when there is question of 
 what we believe to be indispensable to human 
 welfare, we cannot but long and strive, if we are 
 good, to make all men partakers of the divine 
 blessing. 
 
 All existence is what it has become. Become, 
 if thou wouldst be; cease not to grow, if thou 
 wouldst not fall to decay. 
 
 Strength, passion, endurance, and convic- 
 tion move us more than arguments. They con- 
 stitute the orator's charm and endow him with 
 persuasiveness. 
 
 Please if thou wouldst persuade. 
 
 Were ceremony done away the race would 
 sink to lower levels, but woman would be the 
 greatest sufferer. 
 
 They who are conscious of their integrity and 
 worth have no resentments. 
 
 When we look on the lowly graves of great 
 philosophers and poets we are made aware that 
 man's home is in invisible worlds. 
 
Il8 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 We do not pity those we envy, nor hate 
 whom we despise. 
 
 Faith and works, like the sun's light and heat, 
 are inseparable. 
 
 The honest expression of the good-will we 
 bear one another makes no small part of life's 
 happiness. 
 
 We are creatures of impulse, passion, and 
 habit, and were we wholly rational life's burden 
 would be too heavy to be borne. 
 
 Whoever gives right utterance to truth, 
 whether he be poet, philosopher, historian, or 
 essayist, may publish what he has written, not 
 doubting that it will make its way in the 
 world. 
 
 Thou wouldst not wade through sewers. It 
 is more defiling to dip the mind into the scandals 
 on which gossip battens. 
 
 The strenuous life ends in drudgery. 
 
 Give heed to thyself. Hadst thou thy blood 
 from Alexander or Caesar, if thou art worthless 
 thy high descent would but show to what depths 
 thou art fallen. Though thou count thy money 
 by tens of millions, if thou art ignorant, unjust, 
 or impure thy riches will but minister to thy 
 base passions or barbaric pride. 
 
 Happiness is pleasure of which one need never 
 repent. 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 Where there is true piety there is a brave and 
 cheerful spirit, a generous and loving heart. 
 
 The virtuous would seem to think that they 
 have a privilege to make themselves disagree- 
 able, whereas in them ill-temper is doubly a 
 vice. 
 
 The highest rewards are bestowed by what 
 best inspires, exalts, purifies, enlarges, and 
 strengthens the mind. 
 
 To find ourselves in the world of matter we 
 must refer to fixed points, east or west, north 
 or south, zenith or nadir, and whoever has had 
 power so to impress multitudes that when they 
 pray they turn to some spot consecrated by him, 
 has founded for them a religion. 
 
 As the world of which the child is conscious 
 changes into that the youth feels and loves, 
 which, in turn, gives way to that of the mature ; 
 so the aspirations and hopes of a people, of man- 
 kind, are subject to the law of transformation; 
 and as the man cannot return to live in the things 
 of his childhood, neither can a people. 
 
 The better sort are driven back on themselves, 
 away from the noise and strife of the crowd; 
 for only in quietude and remoteness are pure 
 thought and love possible. It were not rash to 
 say that the purpose of education is to accustom 
 us to live in our own minds and consciences. 
 
I2O GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 The finest natures are the most lonely. The 
 genius seeks the solitude where none but high 
 spirits dwell. The saint loves only the company 
 of God and of holy thoughts. Among animals 
 the noblest are the most solitary. Nevertheless 
 human qualities can be awakened and developed 
 in society only; in other words, through com- 
 panionship and the interchange of good offices. 
 The warp and woof of our life are made by 
 society. From it we receive language, from it 
 religion, from it institutions and arts. Of it 
 and in it we are born and grow and become 
 capable of thought and love. One could never 
 rise to intelligence and conduct in isolation, 
 could never learn to be generous or kind or just 
 or helpful, in a word, could never reach man's 
 estate. But one cannot become a man in the 
 true sense, if he live much in the company of 
 his fellows; for unless he often withdraw into 
 himself he can neither know nor love the best, 
 can be neither holy nor wise, can neither rightly 
 live nor rightly die. The noblest keep aloof 
 and cherish solitude, not alone because their 
 thoughts are tyrannical and over-mastering, but 
 because they feel that in society what they best 
 know and most love is as the witchery of sweet 
 music to the deaf, and as blended shadings of 
 softest colors to the blind. 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 121 
 
 Thou art little known. The great world 
 heeds thee not at all. In brief time not so much 
 as the echo of a name shall remain of thee. But 
 the great world itself is hardly more enduring 
 than the crossings and dyings of the tribes of 
 insects. In short while all who now inhabit the 
 earth will have sunk into it and into oblivion. 
 Of God thou art born; live to Him. 
 
 Brief is whatever comes to end. 
 
 They whom failure can discourage or suc- 
 cess make self-complacent are but common men. 
 
 All educators have grave responsibilities, but 
 the gravest have those who form the men that 
 are to counsel, guide, and govern their fellows, 
 not in their temporal affairs, but in the things 
 which concern character and conduct, the 
 welfare of the soul, for whose hurt and loss a 
 universe gained could not compensate. 
 
 It is to his freedom that man owes the power 
 to improve both himself and his environment; 
 and therefore the foes of liberty are the enemies 
 of mankind. 
 
 Where right is identified with conformity to 
 custom, the source of noble life runs dry, while 
 individuals and peoples fall to decay. Custom 
 makes weaklings and cowards, unless it be 
 ceaselessly revitalized by a current of fresh 
 thought and love. 
 
122 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 Incredibly great is the power of affirmation. 
 Whatever the whole world may agree to assert 
 with ceaseless iteration, the world will come to 
 believe to be true. 
 
 No great work is possible where the heart 
 does not go with the head and the hand. 
 
 Do not love me, but be my friend. 
 
 For the good life is good; for the evil it is 
 evil. If, then, thou love thy fellow-men, do 
 what lies in thy power to make them virtuous. 
 
 When we have learned to desire nothing 
 which others can give, we have entered the 
 way of peace. 
 
 It is so impossible to satisfy man with what 
 is sufficient, that we may say the superfluous 
 alone is necessary. 
 
 Inspiration is given only to the ceaselessly 
 self-active. 
 
 Death rather than dishonor is a true saying; 
 but self-inflicted, it is dishonor. 
 
 If thou wouldst be a teacher continue to teach 
 thyself. 
 
 Indigestible and too copious food, more even 
 than excessive drink, destroys love, friendship, 
 and all the peace and charm of domestic life. 
 
 Whoever is a liar, a poltroon, a thief, or a 
 lecher, is plebeian ; since a truthful, fearless, up- 
 right, and chaste spirit alone gives distinction. 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 12$ 
 
 Though belief in the inspiration of the Scrip- 
 tures should perish, faith in the Eternal Father, 
 in Christ as His most perfect earthly embodi- 
 ment, and in the Church as the power which 
 more than all others has the abiding gift to 
 nourish lowly-mindedness, purity of heart, and 
 hunger for righteousness will survive ; for 
 there must always be many, and of the best, 
 whom nor sexual pleasure, nor wealth, nor high 
 place, nor science, nor culture will strongly ap- 
 peal to or satisfy; and they will look above to 
 the Father in heaven, will strive to walk in the 
 footsteps of His Son, and will follow and love 
 the Church which perpetuates His teaching and 
 which keeps His spirit alive even in those who 
 know her not. 
 
 They who have health, wealth, and fame may 
 still be wretched, but the loving and pure of 
 heart are never without consolation. 
 
 Spend not thy time in striving to explain dif- 
 ficulties, but turn thy whole thought to God, to 
 all truth, beauty, and goodness. 
 
 It is impossible to know why God is, since 
 for His being there is no wherefore. He is in- 
 explicable and unfathomable, and so are His 
 works. 
 
 We act as we feel and as we think. Let the 
 educator therefore bend all his strength to cul- 
 
124 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 tivate in his pupils the power of right thinking 
 and right feeling. 
 
 A man is worth, says Marcus Aurelius, just 
 so much as the things are worth about which 
 he busies himself. 
 
 Be not curious about the business or the faults 
 of others, but attend to thyself. 
 
 Learn many things, but concentrate thy 
 strength on some one subject of genuine value 
 and interest. 
 
 Good health and good books, with a taste for 
 reading, are all that is required to make life 
 rich and delightful. 
 
 The best education, says Plato, is that which 
 gives the mind and the body all the force, all 
 the beauty, all the perfection of which they are 
 capable. 
 
 Experience is the source of knowledge, and 
 what is communicated becomes ours only when 
 we have wrought it into our life-experience. 
 
 They who live in the public eye are made 
 unpopular by what they say, more surely than 
 by what they do. 
 
 As wisdom is a defence, says the Bible, so 
 is money a defence; but learning and wisdom 
 excel in this, that they give life to him that 
 possesseth them. And again God loveth none 
 but him that dwelleth with wisdom. 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 125 
 
 There is no rule by which we may determine 
 the worth of an individual or of a people; for 
 the soul of a people, like that of an individual, 
 is infinitely complex, and its value can be rightly 
 estimated only when the thousand circumstances 
 by which it has been constituted and moulded 
 are thoroughly understood and appreciated. 
 
 Give me, O God, a pure heart and true 
 thoughts. 
 
 Even great literature but feebly utters the 
 thoughts and emotions which God and His uni- 
 verse awaken. The written word is like the 
 body, which in giving a habitation to the soul, 
 impedes and confines. To be silently good and 
 heroic is a nobler thing than to express thoughts 
 and sentiments, which, however fine and true, 
 are rarely the voice of one's deepest nature. 
 Thought and feeling are primarily for strength 
 and guidance, not for literary ends. 
 
 A true man is content when he is tolerated 
 by those about him; but in the face of what- 
 ever opposition he will persevere in the way he 
 has chosen and knows to be right. 
 
 Nature forces us to care for food and drink 
 and shelter, but is indifferent to truth, good- 
 ness, and beauty; and when man is abandoned 
 wholly to her sway, he does not rise above a 
 merely animal existence. 
 
J26 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 The farther we advance in science the more 
 clearly we perceive that without faith we should 
 sink into impotence and despair. 
 
 Men differ in their prejudices and passions 
 more than in their thoughts, in which, when 
 feeling and self-interest are eliminated, they 
 easily agree, as may be seen in their readiness 
 to consent to truths which have no application 
 to life. 
 
 If Caesar and his cook have alike been ab- 
 sorbed into the unconscious, of what benefit is 
 it to the one that his name is known, or what 
 disadvantage to the other that he is wholly for- 
 gotten? Fame is as unsubstantial as our other 
 vanities. 
 
 When I recall the many things which have 
 annoyed and worried me, but which are now 
 as though they had never been, my present 
 troubles grow lighter, and I scarcely think of 
 them at all. 
 
 Fame hovers over the brows of those who 
 look beyond her. 
 
 Whoever imagines himself to be of special 
 worth is unimportant. 
 
 We are not impressed by seeing another do 
 what we can easily perform. The wonder- 
 ful is that which lies beyond our reach or 
 comprehension. 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. I2/ 
 
 The emphatic utterance of platitudes most 
 surely wins the applause of the crowd. 
 
 It is not easy to repent of anything that has 
 given us truer insight. 
 
 Man is the most mutable and therefore at 
 once the most perfectible and the most cor- 
 ruptible of beings. 
 
 Our pleasures shorten our lives and make 
 them miserable. 
 
 As it is a father's glory to see himself sur- 
 passed by his sons, so whoever teaches or gov- 
 erns should deem it the highest privilege to 
 gather about him and form a following of men 
 superior to himself. 
 
 There is no new wisdom ; and the best genius 
 itself can do is to give to the old truths the 
 freshness and charm of novelty, that they who 
 need courage, discretion, and enlightenment 
 may be drawn to examine and consider. When 
 left to ourselves, we turn from the teachers of 
 wisdom to the society of those who entice us 
 to a frivolous and aimless existence, and this is 
 inevitable for beings for whom it is easier to 
 sink than to rise. 
 
 Our counsels have weight only when they 
 express what we have meditated, experienced, 
 and habitually practised. Hence in the wisdom 
 of the young there is an element of unreality. 
 
128 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 Repression results in weakness, as disuse 
 atrophies; and weakness is inferiority and 
 servitude. 
 
 When the swiftly flying years have stolen 
 our strength and our friends, that which still 
 makes life's garden fair and fragrant is the 
 memory of the smiles and the flowers we loved 
 when the springtime of childhood and youth 
 bloomed about us. It was then the treasure- 
 house of our hearts was stored with the 
 priceless gifts which we cannot lose while con- 
 sciousness remains. 
 
 Gifts are precious in the degree in which they 
 are tokens of love. 
 
 To live is to act; and if we are not busy 
 doing good, we needs must do evil. 
 
 It is enough to know that a pure, loving, and 
 helpful life is the only right life. Whether it 
 be the only happy life it is not necessary to 
 inquire. 
 
 Strive to make thyself worthy. If thou suc- 
 ceed thou hast the best life can give. 
 
 Nearly all we are and have we owe to our 
 fellow-men; but to God we owe all. Our first 
 duty, therefore, is to love and serve Him, and 
 our second to love and serve our fellow-men. 
 
 To the youth it seems a divine, almost an 
 impossible thing, that he should ever become 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 129 
 
 a fountain-head of wisdom and strength for 
 others; but the foreboding, however vague, of 
 such good fortune, exalts his imagination and 
 spurs him on to persevering effort. 
 
 The desire to please is often all that is re- 
 quired to make one's self agreeable. 
 
 To know where the best may be had brings 
 it within our reach, if we are not ignoble. 
 
 There is no surer mark of mental progress 
 than an increasing unwillingness to deny; for, 
 as knowledge grows, the boundaries of the un- 
 known are seen to widen. The wise, therefore, 
 while they affirm that of which they are certain, 
 are silent where the less enlightened are clamor- 
 ous with assertion. 
 
 Without sacrifice noble life is impossible 
 the sacrifice of vulgar desires and easy ways, 
 that what is difficult and higher may be at- 
 tained. But all sacrifice is meaningless if the 
 beginning and the end is blank unconsciousness. 
 One may possibly hold that there is no truth, 
 but who believes in truth must believe in God. 
 
 They who in every circumstance of doubt or 
 temptation ask themselves what the Saviour 
 would bid, and hearken to the divine voice, be- 
 come not only wise and happy, but holy and 
 blessed. 
 
 In the midst of rich pastures and the pleasant 
 9 
 
130 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 air the animal is content ; but for man faith and 
 thought, hope and love must spring, or a para- 
 dise would become a waste. If he himself be 
 ignoble no circumstance can redeem him from 
 wretchedness. 
 
 The most fortunate are they who most com- 
 pletely upbuild their being to the full measure 
 of their endowments; and whatever hinders 
 this, whether it be money or pleasure or place, 
 or poverty or friends or wife and children, is 
 evil. 
 
 Thoughts, desires, hopes, and longings are 
 food or poison, breed health or disease. 
 
 Introspection leads to conceit or despondency. 
 Have good-will; do what thou canst, and let 
 thy inner being be moulded by ceaseless right 
 endeavor. 
 
 Political liberty is opportunity given to slaves 
 to free themselves from within by cleaving to 
 truth and love. 
 
 Think of the infinitude of things possible but 
 unaccomplished, and thou shalt find no great 
 difference between the work of a mechanic and 
 that of a sublime genius. It is all but a chil- 
 dren's heaping of sand to stay the incoming 
 tide of the great ocean. Free thyself, then, of 
 envy and conceit. 
 v Growth is increase in quantity, development 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 131 
 
 increase in quality of life. The means of growth 
 are food and exercise; the means of develop- 
 ment, use and self-activity. 
 
 The lower a being is bedded, the feebler the 
 impulse to ascend to higher things. The ani- 
 mal, the ignorant, and the indolent are content, 
 while they who live in the mind and in the 
 conscience are self-urged to rise above them- 
 selves. It is not possible to believe that those 
 who are immersed in the mire of degrading 
 passions should understand their condition and 
 remain what they are. The fool knows not his 
 folly, nor the lecher his filthiness. 
 
 Wisdom consists in a large measure in re- 
 fraining from attempting too much, and in not 
 busying one's self with what one was not born 
 to do. 
 
 The young will tolerate no opinions they do 
 not accept, but would set the whole world right. 
 When experience has made them wise they are 
 prepared to listen to all conceivable inanities 
 and absurdities. Oh, give me back my youth 
 with its boundless faith in the might of a single 
 soul that trusts itself and God, and feels the 
 irresistible power of those who wholly believe 
 in Him. On the surface and momentarily it 
 may be a mistaken confidence, but it is 
 grounded on the central heart of being. 
 
132 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 God and the other world, says Kant, are 
 the sole end of all our philosophical inquiries, 
 and did not the ideas of God and the other 
 world involve and embrace morality, they were 
 worthless. 
 
 The ideal of civilization is the making each 
 individual a personality. To the accomplish- 
 ment of this a general spread of culture can 
 contribute little unless it be reinforced by a 
 vital faith and the nobler passions; for no one 
 is a personality unless he is so without circum- 
 stance, in virtue of the eternal principles which 
 are the foundation of right human life. 
 
 It is with opinion as with fashion what 
 pleases to-day will appear ridiculous to-mor- 
 row. Writers, therefore, who give expression 
 but to the passing whim are as ephemeral as 
 milliners. The trade is imperishable; the in- 
 dividuals, like insects, live for a season. 
 
 Could one know the history of mankind in 
 all its details as God knows it, it is a question 
 whether he should most pity and abhor, or most 
 admire and love. 
 
 As great wealth or great prosperity corrupts 
 individuals, so does it undermine states and 
 churches. 
 
 An earthquake which in a moment destroys 
 thousands of lives does not arouse indignation, 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 133 
 
 because it is felt to be due to causes beyond 
 human control. Why then, since it is not in 
 thy power to prevent the crimes and sins which 
 make earth a hell, shouldst thou permit thyself 
 to be disturbed by them ? Take heed rather that 
 thou become the master of thy own passions. 
 To do this thou must not only pray and watch, 
 but work patiently and lovingly for the good of 
 thy fellows. 
 
 What the many crave is in the greatest de- 
 mand ; and they never crave the best, not even 
 the best of sensible things. The common man, 
 however much he be brought into contact with 
 the perfect, loves but the common. 
 
 Here is the whole race of man its best rep- 
 resentatives at the least drawn onward and 
 upward these many thousand years; and yet 
 when the strongest and the most enlightened 
 minds would look into the only permanently 
 interesting issues of life and death, they can 
 but hope and believe. 
 
 Art thou a mere animal born to be the slave 
 of instinct and appetite, and not rather a child 
 of God whom He has put in His world to be 
 guided and governed by reason and conscience ? 
 
 There is no more awful mystery than the 
 power of sin to blunt the moral sense and 
 deaden conscience. Our responsibility is greater 
 
134 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 than we can know, and the attitude of the frivo- 
 lous toward life is irrational. 
 
 However fair, amiable, and innocent one may 
 have been, he loses interest for us once he is 
 dead, unless his life and thought in some way 
 reinforce and illumine our own. The beautiful 
 are remembered as dreams are remembered; 
 the great wrestlers with truth and goodness 
 stamp their impress on the world. 
 
 It is not so much to his qualities as to the 
 way in which they are blended that a man owes 
 his character. The balance and the temper are 
 decisive. Character is completely formed will. 
 
 The more the individual asserts his impor- 
 tance the less seriously is he taken. Had 
 conceit inflated Shakespeare he would be ridic- 
 ulous, as Hugo, in spite of his genius, is often 
 ridiculous. 
 
 Truths uttered in rhythm make a deeper and 
 more lasting impression. The poets were the 
 first teachers of wisdom and shall forever be 
 the most delightful. 
 
 Religious insight is the outcome of the ac- 
 tivity of man's entire spiritual nature, in which 
 God is revealed at once to the mind, to the con- 
 science, and to the heart. 
 
 They who have best insight are most highly 
 favored. It is a privilege too to be able to 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 135 
 
 express what one sees and feels, for so he 
 becomes the benefactor of the sweetest and 
 gentlest souls. 
 
 The end of religious and moral inquiry is 
 not to learn what religion and virtue are, but 
 to make one's self religious and virtuous. 
 
V. 
 
 THE speaker and the writer attract hearers 
 and readers, not so much by the truth they 
 utter as by the pleasure they give. Hence when 
 there is simply question of success, manner is 
 more than matter. The aim should be to say 
 mere nothings charmingly. -One may get at the 
 secret by listening to the prattle of a bright, 
 beautiful, and unspoilt child. How easily fair 
 young girls give delight, though they talk sheer 
 nonsense, and when left to themselves they talk 
 little else. Mature and wise men are carried 
 away by their grace and babble, and they en- 
 snare youths as hunters hares. It is an airy 
 and indefinable illusiveness which takes us all 
 captive the haze that covers mountains far 
 away, the dreamlike colors of sunset skies, the 
 evanescent hues of flowers that fade while they 
 bloom. 
 
 The purest source of the pleasure a writer 
 feels in the moments of highest inspiration lies 
 in the consciousness of the delight he shall give. 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 137 
 
 One might think it desirable to be able quickly 
 to forget what we have suffered. Pain, how- 
 ever, is nearly always a penalty imposed by 
 ignorance and folly; and to bear the smart in 
 mind should be a help to wisdom and virtue. 
 We find, in fact, that the young who best re- 
 member the punishments received are the most 
 docile. Does not the memory of the sufferings 
 we associate with wrong-doing increase the 
 pleasure we derive from doing right? 
 
 He who sees his work grow painfully, al- 
 most imperceptibly day by day, learns the divine 
 wisdom there is in industry and perseverance. 
 If the inventor must fail a thousand times before 
 he succeed, if the discoverer must grope help- 
 lessly and unwearyingly until at last a new 
 truth or a new world dawn upon him, how shall 
 any one hope to do aught that is excellent, un- 
 less he have infinite patience and take infinite 
 pains? 
 
 If thy knowledge weakens moral purpose it is 
 false knowledge, and therefore it is false if it 
 undermines faith in God. 
 
 Desire not to appear to be beautiful or wise 
 or virtuous or aught that may attract admira- 
 tion, but strive earnestly and ceaselessly to be- 
 come all that goes to the making of a fair and 
 noble personality. 
 
138 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 The opinions and words of others concerning 
 thee are no concern of thine; thy one business 
 being so to think and do as to approve thyself 
 to thy conscience and to God. 
 
 The greatest and noblest have been formed 
 by adversity and failure, not by prosperity and 
 success. 
 
 Great love can teach us all that suffering and 
 sorrow can teach. 
 
 As a true man is helped by foes not less than 
 by friends, so is every right cause. 
 
 To seek to stay the advance of any kind of 
 truth is to make one's self an adversary of God 
 and a hinderer of human welfare. 
 
 They who turn from the light of religion 
 quickly lose sight of the rights of man. 
 
 There is in living beings no stable equilib- 
 rium. They grow or they decay, physically, 
 mentally, morally, religiously. They rise or fall, 
 advance or recede. Hence no one is good who 
 is not becoming better, no one is wise whose 
 wisdom is not increasing. Hence too the in- 
 stinctive impulse which drives man to make 
 progress in whatever he sets his heart on, 
 whether it be getting riches or fame or power 
 or knowledge or skill or virtue. 
 
 The ideal is Truth and Love; but in the 
 darkness in which mortal life is shrouded that 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 139 
 
 which is most needful and most precious is 
 Faith and Love. 
 
 They alone are wise who, rising above the 
 world of the senses, accustom themselves to live 
 with truth, goodness, and beauty. That is what 
 Plato means when he says, that to learn how to 
 live one must know how to die. That is the law 
 of progress which is a quittifig of lower things 
 that the higher may be attained, a seeking of the 
 kingdom of God first, not doubting that they 
 who dwell therein have whatever is needful or 
 desirable. 
 
 I had rather be in hell, says Tauler, and have 
 God, than in heaven without Him. 
 
 One who is acquainted with the history and 
 philosophy of life, religion, art, and science, 
 cannot contemplate the universe from the stand- 
 point of the multitude; yet like them he must 
 live by faith, hope, and love, must pursue what 
 he can neither comprehend nor fully possess; 
 and his worth is measured not by his knowledge, 
 but by the faith, hope, and love which are the 
 springs of his life. 
 
 When we recall the dead whom we have 
 known and loved, what we think of is not 
 the body, but the soul, the personality and 
 character. 
 
 The decisive consideration is not what thy 
 
I4O GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 thought or deed or the sum of thy life-accom- 
 plishment is worth, but what thou thyself art in 
 virtue of the faith, hope, and love by which thou 
 livest. 
 
 Again and again my body has perished while 
 I myself still live. Why then shall I not survive 
 when finally it has lost the power to remake 
 itself? 
 
 To think is to look within, as into a vast and 
 unfathomable ocean, which is one's self and yet 
 not one's self, from which silently and as by 
 stealth forms of truth and beauty rise and float 
 a moment, and then pass unperceived except by 
 the most serious and attentive minds. 
 
 He alone is a true and good man who makes 
 the formation of his character the guiding pur- 
 pose of his life. 
 
 Happiness, says Epictetus, lies in ourselves, 
 in true freedom, in the conquest of every ig- 
 noble fear, in perfect self-government, in the 
 power of contentment and peace, and in the tran- 
 quil flow of life, even in poverty, exile, disease, 
 and the very shadow of death. 
 
 They are beautiful on whose countenances a 
 pure, loving, brave, and cheerful spirit has left 
 its impress. 
 
 Title and place are attractive to the immature 
 and vulgar. A noble mind, if he have ambi- 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 141 
 
 tion, is impelled by the love of excellence and 
 power. 
 
 The wise understand that it is only in stoop- 
 ing to the little things of life and nature, and 
 in studying them with patient industry, that 
 the secret of the greatest is learned; and they 
 are therefore lowly-minded, reverent, mild, and 
 serviceable. 
 
 They whom the fear of failure can deter never 
 do the greatest things. 
 
 Should those about us agree to think us mad 
 it would be difficult to keep faith in one's own 
 sanity. So feeble is reason, so little does it suf- 
 fice to steady thought and control imagination, 
 it is not surprising that we should become the 
 victims of numbers, dollars, and votes, of the 
 things that may be weighed and counted, holding 
 them to be the symbols and equivalents of wis- 
 dom and virtue, of truth and love. 
 
 They who imagine that not to do what can be 
 reckoned in currency is to do nothing are the 
 shallowest of men. What brings wisdom and 
 virtue has the highest value, is above all price. 
 For the multitude, however, wisdom and virtue 
 are hardly possible, unless their labor can be 
 weighed against coin. 
 
 The making good use of leisure brings a two- 
 fold reward, happiness and success. It is 
 
142 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 the secret of intellectual and moral heroes, of 
 sages and saints. 
 
 How often I hear it said, the world heeds us 
 not, as though it had ever heeded the wise and 
 good! To Socrates it gave the cup of poison, 
 and to the Blessed Saviour the cross. 
 
 They threaten who are afraid or who doubt 
 their ability. Threaten no one, says Chilo ; that 
 is a woman's trick. 
 
 We cannot act except from moment to mo- 
 ment ; and we cannot act wisely therefore except 
 by doing well the thing the moment assigns. 
 
 Accustom thyself to believe that what thou 
 canst not do justly and honorably thou canst not 
 do at all. 
 
 It is not possible to fathom the mystery of 
 evil ; but goodness is plain even to simple minds. 
 Love it then and rejoice with all the good, not 
 suffering thyself to be disturbed or discouraged 
 by the deeds of the godless. 
 
 The faithful performance of the duties thy 
 office imposes gives thee the right to leisure for 
 study and for the diffusion of peace and joy 
 among those thou livest with. 
 
 The three hardest things, says Chilo, are to 
 keep secrets, to make good use of leisure, and to 
 be able to bear injustice. 
 
 If neither wealth nor poverty is to be desired, 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 143 
 
 so neither is great learning nor great ignorance. 
 But if we ourselves are true and loving, the 
 more abundant our knowledge and riches, the 
 more beneficent and the worthier we shall be- 
 come, though doubtless our lives shall be the 
 more filled with care and labor. 
 
 The loss and pain which issue in wisdom and 
 virtue are made gain and joy. 
 
 Obey the laws, if only to keep thyself from 
 disgrace and trouble. 
 
 The things we most rebel against we accept 
 without a murmur when we plainly recognize 
 that they are near and inevitable. 
 
 So many whom I have known and loved are 
 dead. If I survive, it is to become and do good. 
 
 Religion is not a system of thought to be ac- 
 quiesced in mechanically ; it is a stream of truth 
 and love which must ceaselessly refresh and 
 enliven the whole inner being. Received merely 
 as a formal doctrine it produces no effect. If it 
 is to reform and recreate, it must grow within 
 us as a germ of divine life, which to bear the 
 best fruit must have assiduous care and nurture. 
 
 He who knows that he is born of the Eternal 
 cannot rest content with any temporal condition ; 
 for the fact that it must come to end makes it 
 vain in his eyes. So one who is capable of 
 thought and love cannot be satisfied with sensa- 
 
144 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 tion. They who are at ease, who repose in their 
 possessions and feel not the need of ceaseless 
 striving to rise to higher things are miserable, 
 for they have lost consciousness of God's pres- 
 ence in the soul. 
 
 The finite and the infinite, the temporal and 
 the eternal, are inconceivably diverse, and yet 
 they are so bound together that they constitute 
 a unity of the One and the many, of God and 
 man. 
 
 To the undeceived and confident mind of the 
 youthful student, if his beliefs and opinions are 
 shattered, nothing seems longer true or worth 
 while; but when experience and meditation 
 shall have given him insight, he will know that 
 though whole worlds of beliefs and opinions fail, 
 the essential good of life remains for those who 
 hold to its sacred worth and divine origin and 
 end. 
 
 Nearly everything desirable any one may 
 attain, if he despise not the means. 
 
 Be not over-confident. A word hastily spoken, 
 a deed thoughtlessly done, a whim lightly in- 
 dulged may bring disaster. The wise are 
 watchful. 
 
 A high aim, a worthy purpose followed faith- 
 fully to the end, is success, distinction, and bless- 
 edness, whatever one's worldly fortune. 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 145 
 
 In society one should learn behavior, sym- 
 pathy, forbearance, modesty, tolerance, discre- 
 tion; in solitude he should acquire insight, 
 depth, wisdom, inwardness, independence, free- 
 dom, and peace. In society he should converse 
 with men joyfully, bravely, uprightly; in soli- 
 tude he should live with God in humility and 
 all sincerity. Our fellows are prodigals who 
 quickly take their leave for some far distant 
 land. We see them but a while, and even then 
 their thoughts wander from us. God abides 
 and is still with us though we flee Him; nor 
 can death hide us from His face. In solitude we 
 may make ourselves conscious of His presence 
 and learn to know the blessedness there is in 
 loving Him. 
 
 They alone know the truth who, heedless of 
 the contradictions and disputes with which the 
 world is rilled, hearken to the inner voice, intent 
 solely on doing and loving what is eternally 
 right and good. 
 
 To those who resent hearing truth it will 
 cease to be spoken. 
 
 If thy friend quarrel with thee, he thinks he 
 has good cause though it be only that he is 
 weary of thy company. 
 
 A mere nothing will often change the whole 
 course of life. Consent heedlessly given to what 
 
 10 
 
146 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 seems unimportant may engage us in ways in 
 which we can neither stay with honor nor quit 
 without disgrace. 
 
 Since, when there is question of the best, 
 nor number nor quantity is to be reckoned, be 
 content with loving truth and doing good, 
 however few there be for whom thou art a 
 benefactor. 
 
 Pretenders need recognition. The wholly 
 true lean on God and are self-sufficient. 
 
 What is excellent is so, though millions of 
 eyes, blinded by ignorance or envy or prejudice, 
 should fail to perceive its worth. 
 
 To know and to will that is the key which 
 opens the door to every kind of success. 
 
 So long as we can feel that vital power flows 
 from us, to illumine, strengthen, exalt, and lead 
 Godward even one or two, so long are we cer- 
 tain that it is a blessed thing to be alive. 
 
 Equality is desirable only when men are equal 
 in what is good, or rather in the best things, 
 since no one can believe it well that they should 
 be uniformly ignorant or vicious. 
 
 If thou art wise thou dost not desire that 
 any one should imagine thy words or deeds have 
 worth they do not possess. It can do neither 
 thee nor another good that thou shouldst be 
 esteemed for what thou art not, and it is certain 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 147 
 
 that if thy friends knew thee as thou knowest 
 thyself, they would love thee less or not at all. 
 
 There is no higher wisdom than to strive 
 with all one's strength for the best, indifferent 
 as to the result, since the striving is success 
 and blessedness. 
 
 Not reason but a common consent is the 
 source of nearly all our opinions, and were it not 
 for our prejudices life would lose half its charm. 
 Could the youth see things in the light in which 
 they shall be revealed to him when he is old, all 
 his deep yearning and passionate desire would 
 fail. Whatever draws us irresistibly our re- 
 ligion, our country, our friends, the hope of dis- 
 tinction creates about us an atmosphere in 
 which it is not possible to see clear. " The 
 comfortable opinion men have of themselves," 
 says Halifax, " keepeth up human society which 
 would be more than half destroyed without it." 
 
 To understand that wisdom consists in mind- 
 ing small things one need but consider that it is 
 possible to live only from minute to minute. 
 
 They who are not able to trust their own 
 judgment cannot be true leaders nor inspirers 
 of noble action. 
 
 Human life is essentially a life of thought and 
 love, of hope and joy, of faith and imagination ; 
 and the best that the most powerful and the 
 
148 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 richest can do is to foster and increase this life 
 in themselves and in others. It is the curse of 
 the sensualist that he can neither rightly think 
 nor love, neither have high faith nor divine 
 imaginings. His mind is steeped in matter ; his 
 soul in filth. He may appear to be enviable, but 
 he is self-condemned and outside the pale of true 
 human life. 
 
 If happiness be the ideal, they who have un- 
 selfish purposes and moderate means have 
 greatest reason to think it may be within their 
 reach. 
 
 To have a purpose high or low is the indis- 
 pensable condition of success. There would 
 seem to be more hope of him whose object is 
 evil, than of one who has no fixed aim at all. 
 
 He who aims high, says Emerson, must dread 
 an easy home and a popular manner. 
 
 Genius emerges from the midst of a me- 
 chanical and commercial environment with the 
 greatest difficulty; but if by some happy acci- 
 dent one arrive at the power of perfect expres- 
 sion from out such circumstance, we find him 
 endowed with the truest insight. 
 
 A man of genius may be the most practical of 
 men, but he will love a painting, a poem, a 
 phrase he has made more than any deeds he may 
 have done. When Caesar wrote, " Veni, vidi, 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 149 
 
 vici," he had a higher and more exquisite de- 
 light than when he looked on the rout of his 
 foes. 
 
 The naive pleasure the Greek poets took in 
 individuals and situations the man of genius 
 must now be able to find in pure truth. The 
 idyls of Theocritus are charming, but they touch 
 only the things which attract the finer sort of 
 boys and girls. 
 
 The art of writing and the art of speaking are 
 much the same, and when all is said, they are 
 but the art of pleasing. 
 
 The proper recreation for one whose vocation 
 throws him into practical affairs is the study of 
 philosophy and letters. If he acquire a taste for 
 this it will not only give him the purest pleasure, 
 but it will also enable him to fulfil his routine 
 duties with greater ease and despatch. 
 
 An assumption, as unfounded as it is common, 
 is that education is for the young only. We 
 shall make no real progress so long as we fail 
 to understand that each one's first and chief 
 business, whether he is young or old, is to 
 educate himself. It is only through the ceaseless 
 effort to improve that we can rightly serve God 
 or man, and service is the universal law of true 
 human life, the sole fountain of joy. 
 
 The unintelligence of man is more dishearten- 
 
150 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 ing than his perversity. The wicked may be 
 converted, but the senseless are beyond the 
 reach of the best skill and devotion, all the 
 more incurable because they are unable to per- 
 ceive their need of healing. 
 
 Of all the pleasures man may enjoy on earth, 
 says Petrarch, the cultivation of letters is the 
 noblest, the most lasting, the most delightful, and 
 the most constant. It is the easiest to devote 
 one's self to and the least troublesome to procure. 
 
 Habituation is everything. Unfortunately to 
 what lowers and enslaves we accustom ourselves 
 readily; to what ennobles and liberates, with 
 difficulty or not at all. 
 
 The infinite right is plain, but we are drawn 
 to the boundless wrong. The fundamental 
 question is whether we shall choose the right 
 without a thought of consequences, or prefer 
 what is pleasant or profitable. Here we have 
 the line which separates the children of light 
 from the children of darkness. The mystery is 
 that it all should seem to be so largely a thing of 
 circumstance, of heredity, of moods and tem- 
 perament. But however men may differ in their 
 attempts to explain the difficulty, the final and 
 supreme test is conduct, not intellectual skill. 
 Righteousness is life, and the wages of sin is 
 death. 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 151 
 
 That a self-conscious being should spring 
 from a universe in which at the beginning 
 there was no self-conscious being is inconceiv- 
 able and incredible. If this were possible the 
 law of causation would lose its meaning ; reason 
 its validity. Since the eternally self-conscious 
 One is the origin of all, He is the end of all, 
 and matter and mind have worth in the degree 
 in which they serve His purpose and lead to 
 Him. 
 
 A commonplace is a truth which puts us to 
 shame, and which, therefore, we abhor. The 
 critics, knowing this, treat with finest scorn the 
 moralists and the preachers. 
 
 The greatest and most sacred words have for 
 each one the meaning and content with which 
 they were filled for him in childhood and at 
 home. 
 
 A man loves to talk of himself; a woman 
 of others. He is more egotistic; she more 
 curious. 
 
 In the gospels the enemies of Christ are al- 
 ways men, while the women with whom He is 
 brought into contact are faithful and devoted. 
 
 Truth is like light, which is white but breaks 
 into various colors. It is these colors with their 
 infinite shadings we see, and therefore we neither 
 see nor think alike. 
 
152 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 Wouldst thou live long, have the will to live, 
 exercising thyself in unwearying and disinter- 
 ested striving for truth, righteousness, and love ; 
 for shouldst thou live an hundred years, oc- 
 cupying thyself with lower things, thy life will 
 not have been a human life. 
 
 Wouldst thou be worthy, let not thy mind 
 live where thy body lives in the trough of 
 appetite and desire. 
 
 Let old things which are true abide, and if 
 the new are better, let them prevail. 
 
 To whomsoever the holy dead are of no con- 
 sequence, says Richter, to him the living are of 
 none. 
 
 All are sophists when they plead for them- 
 selves or what they identify with themselves, 
 their vanities and prejudices, their passions 
 and interests. 
 
 The weak and unhappy are superstitious, and 
 superstition is therefore imperishable. 
 
 Were the lives of those we deem most for- 
 tunate completely revealed to us, we should 
 oftener pity than envy. It is ignorance that 
 makes us harsh and bitter toward one another. 
 
 He is wise who knows how to live with all 
 kinds of men in every variety of circumstance 
 and condition without giving or receiving 
 annoyance. 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 153 
 
 The contemptuous have neither religion nor 
 philosophy ; for religion is reverent and humble, 
 and philosophy teaches us to think modestly of 
 ourselves and kindly of others. 
 
 Were life but chance or fate, prudence were 
 folly. 
 
 Reasons for study are plentiful, but they who 
 give them are not teachers unless they have the 
 secret of appealing to the imagination and of 
 awakening a passionate, persistent longing for 
 exercise of mind. We do not what we under- 
 stand to be right or useful, but what interest, 
 curiosity, and desire impel us to do. 
 
 The school should be a place where the young 
 are brought into vital sympathetic relationship 
 with the wisest, greatest, and most delightful 
 men and women, and this acquaintance is best 
 brought about by the personal influence of 
 teachers working through literature. 
 
 The rightly educated are alone ladies and 
 gentlemen. They alone keep the best company 
 and are at home with the noble living and the 
 noble dead. 
 
 A chief purpose in sending children to school 
 is to have them taught the right use of leisure; 
 for on the use we make of the time in which 
 we have nothing to do depends our real success 
 or failure. By our labors we gain a livelihood 
 
154 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 and acquire a certain professional or mechanical 
 skill, but if we are to make the mind luminous, 
 the heart generous, the imagination noble, the 
 work must be done in our moments of leisure. 
 So long as the school is considered mainly a 
 useful institution it will not only fail to edu- 
 cate, but it will fail to prepare its pupils to per- 
 form in a cheerful and worthy spirit the tasks 
 by which they gain the means of living. Un- 
 less they learn to look on leisure as the most 
 precious reward of labor, they will acquire 
 neither knowledge nor virtue. 
 
 Be grateful, if not for the sake of thy bene- 
 factors, for thy own. 
 
 No one can have all the world for his 
 friends, but he whose life is a masquerade will 
 easily have the contempt and scorn of all the 
 world. 
 
 Detraction and calumny, envy and hate, help 
 to maintain the general moral equilibrium, but 
 they who are guilty of these vices are miserable. 
 
 They who want the sense of humor must 
 necessarily often be ridiculous. It is as though 
 one lacked an eye or an ear. 
 
 To the athletes of our colleges and universi- 
 ties we may apply what Diogenes said of a 
 young man who danced exceedingly well 
 " The better, the worse." 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 155 
 
 . The mind of man, says Bacon, is cheered and 
 refreshed more by profiting in small things than 
 by standing at a stay in great. 
 
 Our attitude toward all things is determined 
 by the point of view from which we regard 
 them, as our opinion of a work of art is influ- 
 enced by the setting and light in which it is 
 placed. 
 
 Whoever appeals to men gains the noblest 
 victory when he compels them to think. 
 
 If thou canst not be a great thinker, thou 
 canst at least acquaint thyself with great 
 thoughts. 
 
 Poetry is to the mind what spring showers 
 are to growing corn, and he who has not steeped 
 himself in poetic literature must be formal, hard, 
 and narrow. Hence the study of the great poets 
 has been and will be the highest inspiration to 
 the self-activity from which alone intellectual 
 and moral culture can ripen. 
 
 Love solitude while thou art young, for the 
 old finding themselves in the midst of a waste 
 which the years have made, are driven to seek 
 refuge in company. 
 
 Wealth oppresses and saddens. We have not 
 the courage to get rid of it, and we feel that we 
 are hoarding it for those who care little for us, 
 and on whom it will confer no real benefit. 
 
156 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 We do not envy others the possession of the 
 good for which we do not care. The many are 
 filled with envious thoughts when they behold 
 the few who live in splendor and luxury, in idle- 
 ness and dissipation, but they are content to 
 leave the scholar to his books, the philosopher 
 to his contemplations, the poet to his dreams, 
 and the saint to God. None, it may be, but 
 scholars, philosophers, poets, and saints know 
 that the rich who live for what money can buy 
 are of all men the least to be envied. As we 
 must ascend to get a view of the plain, we must 
 rise into the higher self to understand how little 
 wealth can do to exalt the mind or ennoble the 
 heart. 
 
 To an ape the most attractive thing in nature 
 is an ape. 
 
 No one believes that he shall die, for hope, 
 which never abandons us, whispers not yet. 
 Our life is a thing of time, and in imagination 
 we still lengthen the portion allotted us. Not 
 to-day nor to-morrow nor the day after shall it 
 end; not this year nor the following: and as 
 age comes on apace we console ourselves with 
 thinking of those who have passed the nine- 
 tieth or the hundredth milestone, still vigorous 
 and alert. Yet, though we thus cling to time 
 and long for its continuance, if we are miser- 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 157 
 
 able we find that it drags, and if we are happy 
 we give no heed to its passage. 
 
 They who lose health or wealth or friends 
 move us to pity, but we are insensible in the 
 presence of the ignorance and misery of mul- 
 titudes. What they have never had we easily 
 persuade ourselves they have no right to 
 possess. 
 
 Learning does not make us wise or virtuous. 
 The most it can do is to give us a sense of 
 security, and the feeling that we are on a level 
 with the best. 
 
 Vices are more harmful than crimes; but we 
 punish crime and foster the vices by which it 
 is bred. 
 
 The inextinguishable love of life is revealed 
 not less in the sadness which softens the pleas- 
 ures of memory than in the joy which hope 
 inspires. 
 
 The purest fountain of life flows within the 
 souls of those who are self-active in a noble 
 way, and when the eye has grown dim and the 
 mind has lost its fire there is still a serene joy 
 in remembering what we have wrought in a 
 right spirit. 
 
 There is no blessedness on earth save in hop- 
 ing, believing, and striving. Nor knowledge, 
 nor possessions, nor honors, nor pleasures can 
 
158 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 lift the cloud or lighten the burden for those 
 who, losing heart, cease to make effort to grow 
 in intellectual and moral power. 
 
 Hope is the fountain-head of faith; faith, of 
 love. 
 
 They who seek gratification in what only a 
 depraved mind and a degraded body can offer 
 are like the beasts that batten on carrion. 
 
 The breath is poisonous; the exudations and 
 other excrementitious matter, the elimination of 
 which is ceaseless and indispensable to health, 
 are poisonous. The body is the breeding-ground 
 and burial-ground of myriads of microbes. The 
 vital organs are closely wrapped and concealed, 
 and when they are uncovered we turn away in 
 horror. Yet so incapable are we of seeing 
 things as they are that men have always con- 
 sidered the human body the most beautiful of 
 objects, and Nature's masterpiece. They have 
 been content to be its slaves, and the more com- 
 pletely they have been able to gratify its whims 
 and to minister to its appetites, the more for- 
 tunate and civilized they have held themselves 
 to be. 
 
 The purest souls are the most capable of 
 love. 
 
 He who throws the whole stress of his think- 
 ing, loving, and doing on the power and truth 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 159 
 
 and goodness of God, walks secure, certain that 
 not death itself can harm him. He rests on an 
 everlasting foundation, and shall not fear though 
 worlds be shattered. But atheism destroys mag- 
 nanimity, as Bacon says, and deprives human 
 nature of the power to exalt itself above human 
 frailty. 
 
 Light can blind not less than darkness, and 
 the inrush of all our new knowledge has clouded 
 the inner view of innumerable minds. 
 
 The best books are those which give us the 
 clearest insight into our own minds and into 
 the heart of Nature, enabling us to see God in 
 both. 
 
 Truths we habitually meditate become part 
 of our spiritual being, as the food we take be- 
 comes the bone and fibre of our bodies. 
 
 The best God does for us is to give us a 
 nature profoundly religious. They who dwell 
 in the most perfect security are not the philoso- 
 phers, but the devout believers. So long as we 
 are concerned for anything more than for the 
 love of our Father in heaven, we are easily 
 troubled and made unhappy. 
 
 The best is within the reach of all who have 
 the courage and the industry to make them- 
 selves capable of knowing and loving it. It is 
 as accessible to peasants as to kings, to simple- 
 
I6O GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 minded maids as to great scholars. Riches can- 
 not give it nor poverty take it away. 
 
 All laudation partakes of self-laudation. We 
 extol our country, our religion, our party, our 
 friends; whatever, in a word, we identify 
 with ourselves. Our censure too is provoked 
 not so much by faults and vices as by the cir- 
 cumstance that those to whom we attribute 
 them are persons with whom we have no 
 sympathy. 
 
 Even to have seen a man genuinely great is 
 a privilege for which a well-born soul remains 
 forever grateful. Above all price, then, is the 
 intimate acquaintance with the wisest and the 
 best which we may make in the books wherein 
 they have built for their spirits everlasting 
 dwelling places. 
 
 The shallow put their trust in the improve- 
 ment of the environment. They who think un- 
 derstand that it profits not to gain the world, 
 if the soul be not made luminous, loving, and 
 pure. 
 
 The true benefactors are those who minister 
 to the mind; for man is essentially spirit, and 
 but incidentally matter. 
 
 It is doubtful whether any one thinks worse 
 of a sensible man than he thinks of himself. 
 The wise, therefore, are not disturbed when 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. l6l 
 
 they are held in slight esteem or treated as of 
 no importance. 
 
 Thou mayest seek thyself in all things if thou 
 but understandest that thou canst find thyself in 
 God alone, from whom, if thou go astray, thou 
 forsakest the source of life and joy. The in- 
 finite mystery, O Father in heaven, is that we 
 should be Thy children and yet be blind and 
 without love. 
 
 A generous spirit is humiliated when he dis- 
 appoints, for to disappoint is to give pain. He 
 feels that whatsoever he attempt, his fellows 
 have the right to the best he can do; and 
 consequently that it is his duty ceaselessly to 
 upbuild his being, since what he is is the meas- 
 ure of what he can hope to perform. Nothing 
 is more pitiful than the condition of one who, 
 having given great promise and awakened high 
 expectations in his youth, sinks into intellectual 
 and moral somnolency and impotence, becom- 
 ing the semblance of one who might have been 
 a real man. 
 
 It is as difficult as it is undesirable to isolate 
 one's self. We cannot carry with us in our 
 travels our material and social environment; 
 but the spiritual atmosphere, the intellectual 
 and moral climate to which we have accus- 
 tomed ourselves, accompanies us to all places, 
 ii 
 
1 62 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 and when we have made the world of thought 
 and love our home, we are at home everywhere. 
 
 It is well to seek strength and light from the 
 heroes, sages, and saints of the past, but most 
 fortunate are they who are able to drink from 
 the fountain of wisdom and holiness as it breaks 
 forth and flows here and now. 
 
 All that diverts, unless it be a renewal and 
 replenishment of the inner source of life, is dis- 
 sipation and enfeeblement. 
 
 When we strive earnestly to upbuild our being 
 that we may the better serve God and man, new 
 access to health and strength and joy is opened 
 to us day by day. 
 
 As we turn instinctively from all that dis- 
 gusts or nauseates, so let it be our life-purpose 
 to acquire and strengthen the habit of aversion 
 from whatever may darken the mind, weaken 
 the will, soil the imagination, or corrupt the 
 heart. It is a less evil to live in the midst of 
 physical filth than with low thoughts and de- 
 grading passions.. 
 
 As one who sits in his pleasant room sur- 
 rounded by what he most cherishes books 
 and the company of those he loves feels a 
 deeper sense of contentment and peace when the 
 storm rages and the rain beats on the window- 
 panes, so he whose home is within is not dis- 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 163 
 
 turbed by the strife and turmoil which fill the 
 world, but gains in the midst of the noise and 
 conflict a more living consciousness of the 
 blessedness of his lot. 
 
 Property is the most proper of things; and 
 they who have it in abundance make the rules 
 of propriety, while those who have nothing ap- 
 pear to be ridiculous. 
 
 Passion is all-persuasive. It subdues to its 
 own heat and color whatever it touches. Reason 
 fades from its consuming fire as stars before the 
 upglowing sun. It inweaves itself with Nature's 
 laws and silences the voice of conscience. It is 
 the subtlest of sophists, and never lacks for ar- 
 gument or pretext. It evolves into a philosophy 
 which holds self-indulgence or interest or power 
 to be man's chief good. It proclaims itself the 
 impulse of God, stirring within the inmost depths 
 of man's being. It becomes a religion, and 
 makes its own gratification the aim and end of 
 life. It is mightiest in the mighty. 
 
 To lead a human life is to believe, to hope, 
 to think, to admire, to love, and to act in obedi- 
 ence to these inner powers ; and so long as this 
 is one's life, he need not consider whether he is 
 young or old, rich or poor, famous or unknown. 
 
 Our democratic prepossessions incline us to 
 believe that the people know and love the best. 
 
164 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 It is not so. The heavenly kingdom is open to 
 all, but only the few enter therein. For the 
 most, earth is but a feeding and a breeding 
 ground. 
 
 If an animal is beautiful it pleases and satis- 
 fies; but the fairest human body, uninformed 
 and unillumined by a wise, loving, and brave 
 spirit, appears to be a vulgar and unnatural 
 thing. 
 
 Intellectual and moral not less than physical 
 strength is odious when it is used against us; 
 and they who have power must be beneficent if 
 they would escape being hated. 
 
 The irresistible power of words is not given 
 to those who hear and read and do much, 
 but to those who dwell within and love to be 
 alone. When Tauler found that his preaching 
 was greatly admired, but ineffectual, he with- 
 drew into solitude, that he might bathe in the 
 primal source of persuasiveness and reissue a 
 creative soul. 
 
VI. 
 
 THE pleasures of which the senses are the 
 purveyors are common and cheap. They 
 may be had by all, and the satisfaction they give 
 is transitory and superficial. The little com- 
 pany of the noblest alone understand the divine 
 joys which spring from knowing and loving the 
 best that may be known and loved. 
 
 As a lover, despite business and distance and 
 obstacles of whatever kind, still lives in spirit 
 with the beloved, so a free and self-active mind, 
 whatever difficulties and distractions may arise, 
 is ever accompanied by great thoughts. 
 
 In a company of men some one said : I may 
 tell this story since there are no ladies present. 
 No, replied Grant, but there are gentlemen here. 
 
 It is amazing how naturally we respond to 
 noble sentiments, and how easily we yield to 
 base impulses. 
 
 If thou wouldst be wise and helpful, if thou 
 wouldst have peace and joy, cherish above all 
 things simplicity and purity. 
 
1 66 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 To be able to abstract is, in matters of specu- 
 lation, the source of original power; in practi- 
 cal affairs the wellspring of wisdom is to be 
 able to generalize. Our blunders and mistakes 
 arise from our unwillingness to recognize that 
 we are under the reign of law, from our desire 
 to believe that our case is exceptional. Yes, we 
 say, we know that this generally happens, but 
 it will not happen to us. This is the speech of 
 the victims of passion and folly. They who 
 play with fire get burned; but we can do it 
 and escape harm. They who love the danger 
 perish in it; but this does not apply to us. 
 They who despise small things, little by little 
 are brought to ruin; but we need not be so 
 particular. We make exceptions of ourselves, 
 and the ceaseless, slow-acting laws grind us to 
 dust. 
 
 What is the body, with its cellular structure, 
 but the result of countless acts, not in itself 
 alone, but in the whole series of beings from 
 which, through incalculable lapses of time, it 
 has descended, acts repeated until they have 
 become habits? Its nature is its habits. This 
 applies to the mind as well, working in and 
 through the body. It, too, is a synthesis of 
 habits, inherited and acquired; and its educa- 
 tion is carried on by processes of repetition 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. l6? 
 
 whereby its endowments, which themselves are 
 the outcome of habits, are developed into habits 
 of thinking, willing, and doing. Education, 
 then, is the employment by man of Nature's 
 methods for upbuilding and perfecting all that 
 lives. 
 
 The more progress we make the greater the 
 ease and rapidity with which we are able still 
 to advance. 
 
 From Nature we receive little more than the 
 possibility of making men of ourselves. The 
 rest depends on the things we accustom our- 
 selves to think, love, and do. 
 
 There are instances of persons born without 
 arms, who have learned to write, to paint, and 
 to perform other operations with the feet which 
 we commonly suppose the hands alone make 
 feasible. What imparts this skill? Use, habit, 
 the innumerable efforts and repetitions to which 
 their helpless condition has driven these unfor- 
 tunate beings, who thus furnish us new evi- 
 dence of the almost incredible things which are 
 possible to those who have untiring industry 
 and patience. What use will do for hand or 
 foot, it will perform in a far greater degree 
 for the brain, which is an immeasurably finer 
 instrument. 
 
 Faculty is facility, and facility is the out- 
 
168 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 come of infinite repetitions, resulting in an ac- 
 quired nature which makes the thing as easy 
 to do as it is easy for the eye to see. 
 
 We are largely what heredity and environ- 
 ment have made us. If we have lived among 
 the coarse and ignorant, we are coarse and igno- 
 rant. As we learn the language of our com- 
 panions, we acquire their habits. They who 
 buy and sell grow like the things they trade in. 
 It is difficult to meet with the wise and great- 
 hearted, and it is more difficult to rise to planes 
 where companionship with them becomes pos- 
 sible. They cannot interest the indifferent and 
 unintelligent. The vital books may be had by 
 any one, but not the ability to understand and 
 love them. 
 
 The creators of literature are men in whom 
 life's current is deep and strong, and who, had 
 their energies been directed to other forms of 
 activity, would have wrought with the same 
 superior power with which they wrote. 
 
 There lie as many miseries beyond riches, 
 says Izaak Walton, as on this side them. 
 
 It is not difficult to perceive whether the 
 author has sailed round the whole world of 
 intelligible things, visited all the continents and 
 islands, and sounded all the depths the mind of 
 man may fathom, and if we find in him this 
 
f 
 
 GLIMPSES 'OF TRUTH. 169 
 
 comprehensiveness of view, this penetration of 
 thought, we read him gladly, even though we 
 be unable to assent to much he says; for he 
 cannot fail to suggest truths and reveal beauties, 
 of which those who have dipped only here and 
 there into the oceans of things that may be 
 known, are incapable of forming a conception. 
 It is not necessary that he have plodded through 
 the interminable details of history and science; 
 it is enough that he be^ familiar with the best, 
 and have the revealing glance which illumines 
 all it falls upon. 
 
 They who know best how a thing ought to 
 be done how, for instance, a poem or a dis- 
 course should be composed generally fail when 
 they attempt to execute what they teach. 
 
 One who is able to live in memory and im- 
 agination, in all the ages of which history 
 makes record, who has seen people after people, 
 civilization after civilization, rise and flourish, 
 and then sink to decay and death, is not dis- 
 turbed by the vils which prevail around him 
 and slowly undermine and wear away the fabric 
 of religion and society. He understands that 
 when there is a general decline and weakening 
 of faith and will, the efforts of individuals are 
 powerless to arrest the descent to ruin and ex- 
 tinction. He is not, however, discouraged; for 
 
I/O GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. : 
 
 a true man does brave work in the midst of 
 whatever conditions, since it is his nature to be 
 active and strong, and to look to God rather 
 than to results. 
 
 It is not possible to love the company of the 
 despondent, the faultfinding, and the complain- 
 ing, of those who, condemning themselves to a 
 private hell, would have us hear them discourse 
 of its torments. The brave and the wise strive 
 to make us forget their sufferings and sor- 
 rows, even though they be unable to conceal 
 them. 
 
 The love of the weak, like their thought, is 
 feeble. It is selfish too. They have little to 
 give and much to receive. Hence they flatter 
 and cling and become desperate, that they may 
 gain ascendency over the strong and generous, 
 who themselves grow weak when appeal is 
 made to their nobler nature. 
 
 Great souls have nor time nor temptation to 
 dwell on their sorrows and wrongs. 
 
 The higher manifestations of the human spirit 
 are so life-giving that the wisest have ever been 
 willing to forget the faults and weaknesses of 
 those through whom they have received the 
 divine favors. 
 
 To be shameless in sin is to make the evil 
 doubly heinous; for it outrages not the indi- 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 171 
 
 vidual self alone, but the social body whence he 
 draws three-fourths of his life. 
 
 By four things is the world sustained, says an 
 Arab proverb, by the knowledge of the wise, 
 the justice of the great, the prayer of the good, 
 and the valor of the brave. 
 
 The sadness which overcame Gibbon when he 
 had put the final touches to the history on which 
 he had labored for twenty years is felt by who- 
 ever completes a great task. It is the end of 
 so much of life and a symbol of the end of all 
 things, and though he should know that it will 
 bring him fame, yet is he certain that the joy he 
 had in the doing can never be his again. For 
 others his work may be a source of delight, but 
 for himself it is evermore a thing done and dead. 
 
 In the world of men what is true is so inter- 
 woven with what is false that the good who 
 come to the power of discernment hesitate to 
 attempt to unravel the tangle lest they do harm 
 rather than good. 
 
 There is joy in advancing, but to remain 
 stationary, even upon an eminence to which the 
 eyes of all the world are drawn, is wearisome. 
 
 How almost impossible it is to believe that 
 one whom we have known to be wise, strong, 
 and good should be guilty of weaknesses or sins 
 to which we ourselves have no temptation! 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 Language gives body to thought ; style clothes 
 it with grace, distinction, elegance, and beauty, 
 imparts to it color, vivacity, and movement. 
 
 The best literature is the work of mature 
 minds. The writings of the young may awaken 
 admiration, like the feats of the young athletes, 
 but they teach nothing. 
 
 " The greatest errors are committed/' says 
 Bacon, " and the most judgment is shown in 
 the choice of individuals." The prosperity or 
 the decay of states and churches depends largely 
 on the men whom they intrust with power and 
 authority, and the wisdom of those who govern 
 is most manifest in the kind of men they ap- 
 point to office. He is a great man who knows 
 men, and so far as this is possible, promotes the 
 most capable and the most honest to positions 
 of influence and responsibility. 
 
 The foibles and vices of the greatest bear 
 witness to the incurable weakness of man. 
 
 The infallible mark of talent is accustomable- 
 ness. We can become able in the degree in 
 which we are habituable. They who cannot 
 inure themselves to self-activity cannot learn to 
 do the best work. None would be unintelli- 
 gent, and for none would life be uninteresting, 
 were it possible to make the habit of attention 
 and reflection universal. We believe, think, and 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 173 
 
 do what we have grown accustomed to believe, 
 think, and do; and if men are to be brought to 
 believe, think, and do right, it must be the re- 
 sult of processes of habituation. It cannot be 
 accomplished by argument, however conclusive, 
 nor by exhortation, however powerful. 
 
 One may notice a fly wearying itself for 
 hours in trying to get through a window-pane. 
 The thing is impossible for the poor insect, but 
 it can never know that it is so. Of how much 
 human aim and endeavor is not this a symbol? 
 
 Part of the good fortune of youth is its im- 
 pulse to believe in disinterested love, in heroic 
 virtue, in all generous and noble sentiments; 
 and so long as this faith abides with us, years 
 cannot take from us the freshness of the heart, 
 which is the very breath of the young, their 
 crowning joy and glory. 
 
 It is the tendency of reason to discredit and 
 enfeeble the generous emotions which spring 
 from the heart, the conscience, and the imagi- 
 nation, and hence a rationalistic spirit begets 
 a selfish and hard temper. 
 
 Great men are emulous of the great in what- 
 ever age or country they may have lived; the 
 small are busy with efforts to surpass their 
 little neighbors. 
 
 Beautiful is whatever gives spiritual delight, 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 and nothing that ministers to sensual appetite 
 alone is beautiful. 
 
 When we love, the very 'defects of those we 
 love may but serve to endear them to us, as 
 we may see in the love of mothers for their 
 children. 
 
 Time drags more slowly when we watch be- 
 side sleepers. The fact that it has ceased to 
 exist for them seems to lengthen it for us. 
 
 He who makes the great orators his habitual 
 study will become eloquent; he who lives with 
 the great poets will acquire the poetic mind ; he 
 who assiduously meditates the sacred scriptures 
 will become religious and devout. Little by 
 little we are transformed into what we identify 
 ourselves with by long and serious application. 
 
 Brevity is pleasing because it suggests and 
 implies variety, change of thought or scene or 
 occupation, which is indispensable to our con- 
 tentment. There is -nothing, however delight- 
 ful, which long continuance will not deprive of 
 its charm. Love itself cloys, and when the 
 happy couple have gone off on their bridal 
 tour they quickly weary of each other, and 
 would welcome the advent of even a disagree- 
 able acquaintance. 
 
 If we have no enemies we begin to quarrel 
 with our friends, so difficult is it to live in 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 175 
 
 peace. To the truth of this the history of in- 
 dividuals, families, states, and churches bears 
 witness. Emulation and envy never die whether 
 we live in the company of those who love us or 
 are surrounded by foes. Enemies are teachers 
 and benefactors, if we are capable of improve- 
 ment. They make us vigilant; they keep us 
 alert; they increase energy, inculcate prudence, 
 inure to endurance, strengthen courage, counsel 
 prudence, and warn against pride and presump- 
 tion. Since life is a struggle, they help us to 
 live. As a man's friends reveal his character, 
 so do his foes. From enemies we learn patriot- 
 ism, learn the worth of friends, and they hurt 
 us only when they overcome us by rilling us 
 with anger, hatred, and revenge. 
 
 What we have grown accustomed to seems 
 good enough, and they who fall into ways and 
 ruts find it natural to walk therein to the end. 
 
 The vices and infamies of men are the vices 
 and infamies of man, and they degrade us 
 all. 
 
 Cowards are cruel because fear is the most 
 selfish and therefore the most heartless of pas- 
 sions. It makes tyrants and monsters. In the 
 fright in which they habitually live they would 
 protect themselves by striking all the world with 
 terror. Whatever fills us with alarm for our 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 own safety is apt to make us reckless of the 
 dangers and sufferings of others. In the midst 
 of pestilences, in the rout of armies, in ship- 
 wrecks, the victims of panic easily lose the 
 sense of humanity. No small part of the de- 
 pravity of the vicious is due to the state of 
 dread their misdeeds beget in them. The 
 frightened are demoralized : the man dies and 
 the beast survives. In making men brave we 
 make them kind and helpful. 
 
 He whom no failure can dishearten, whose 
 belief in himself no criticism can shake, whose 
 industry no difficulties can slacken, is fore- 
 doomed to rise above the crowd. He will suc- 
 ceed though the object of his desire be nothing 
 more than money and such distinction as money 
 confers. But if the aim and end of his longing 
 and labor be to upbuild his being, he shall be- 
 come great in himself, exalted above the level 
 of the life the many lead, and shall shed, like a 
 fixed star, light and joy upon thousands. 
 
 In life, as in literature, the misfortunes of the 
 brave and the beautiful are commiserated, while 
 the sufferings and the sorrows of the decrepit 
 and uncouth are passed unheeded by. 
 
 The sublimest emotions from which the di- 
 vinest thoughts spring cannot be embodied in 
 fitting words while we are under the spell. 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 177 
 
 What they teach us we can rightly utter only 
 when the fervor and the glow have died away 
 and become a memory. Even so all holiest and 
 highest things are first truly understood and 
 appreciated after they have passed away. 
 
 Joy expands and exalts the imagination; 
 sorrow deepens and purifies the heart. 
 
 Can there be anything more tragical than 
 that one who has divine gifts should suffer 
 himself to be condemned to servitude, and live 
 to get money when he might have been a 
 teacher of truth and a creator of beauty? 
 
 It happens that they whom great misfortunes 
 or sorrows have overtaken and robbed of the 
 possibility of joy are impelled to the service 
 and comforting of others. Despairing of their 
 own happiness, they find relief in devoting 
 themselves to those for whom there is hope. 
 So long as we are of use to some one in 
 whom we can take interest we are not wholly 
 wretched. 
 
 There is nothing deeper in us than the desire 
 to live in others. It lies at the root of the crav- 
 ing for offspring, at the heart of genius bidding 
 it create what shall give delight and strength to 
 many. It is part of the universal aversion to 
 annihilation. 
 
 They who excel are modest. They see the 
 
 12 
 
1/8 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 infinite possible, and what they have attained 
 seems to them a slight thing. 
 
 Ignorance makes us bold; wisdom bids us 
 pause and consider. 
 
 The consciousness that we are not living 
 wholly for ourselves gives courage to bear the 
 ills of life. 
 
 If the young find more exuberant delight in 
 life than the old, they suffer more bitter pain 
 and disappointment; for the old, in losing 
 something of the capacity to enjoy, lose much 
 of the illusion which gives to the ills we are 
 all heirs to their chief poignancy. 
 
 Who hopes fears, and who believes has mis- 
 givings; and yet the bravest and the noblest 
 hope and believe most. 
 
 " None are happy," says Leopardi, " but they 
 who are ignorant of truth." When we consider 
 how few there are who care for truth, who love 
 it as they love their passions, prejudices, and 
 interests, it scarcely seems irrational to think 
 that they feel that a knowledge of truth would 
 make them miserable. 
 
 The greater part of men live from mere habit, 
 they run on like a stream, they tread a beaten 
 path. They are not each day inspired and made 
 anew by fresh thoughts and a living faith; and 
 therefore they are shallow, unhappy, and inferior. 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 179 
 
 Though all pleasure were vanity, all posses- 
 sion emptiness, they nevertheless who seek God, 
 who follow after wisdom and goodness, are the 
 least deceived and the least ignoble. 
 
 One may feel that he has been guided and 
 protected by a special providence in a thousand 
 ways, and yet not be justified in thinking his 
 life has the divine approval; for one may be 
 preserved and favored for what is to be accom- 
 plished through him and not for what he is in 
 himself. 
 
 He who has led a worthy and useful life has 
 built for himself a refuge into which, when he 
 is old, he may retire and live on the memories 
 of the past, while they who have done nothing, 
 or but evil, are oppressed by a sense of their 
 nullity when it is no longer possible for them 
 to accomplish anything. 
 
 A man's ability to detach himself from his 
 private interests and passions, and to contem- 
 plate things from a high point of view, where 
 what is always and everywhere right and fair 
 reveals itself, is the surest evidence of his cul- 
 ture and virtue. 
 
 Opinions lose hold on the people when they 
 cease to be accepted and advocated by able 
 minds. 
 . The powerful and the rich have rarely been 
 
ISO GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 and can hardly be virtuous, and since it is better 
 to be virtuous than to be powerful or rich, it is 
 easy to understand why the lowly, the mild, and 
 the pure in heart should be happier and more 
 blessed than kings and great captains. 
 
 The progress of the mind consists in ap- 
 proaching still nearer to the ultimate elements 
 of things and ideas, in discovering in things 
 and ideas that are held to be simple and irre- 
 ducible something ulterior and still more simple. 
 Thus all advance is from multiplicity toward 
 unity, from variety toward identity. 
 
 We cannot know the whole of any truth, how- 
 ever plain it may seem to be, for every truth is 
 involved in all truth, and since no human mind 
 can grasp the whole system of truth, it follows 
 that no one can comprehend even its slightest 
 part. Faith, therefore, enters as an element 
 into all our knowledge and science. 
 
 It may be possible to make some approach 
 toward seeing things as they are, but to see 
 men as they are we may not hope more than 
 we may hope to know ourselves. 
 
 An original author must create the taste by 
 which he is to be appreciated. He must there- 
 fore have sufficient force of thought and im- 
 agination t6 attract and hold readers, until 
 they accustom themselves to look with his eyes, 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. l8l 
 
 to see and admire what he sees and bodies 
 forth. 
 
 True thoughts expressed in right words are 
 as well-set jewels on the brows of fair women. 
 
 Men actively engaged in affairs have writ- 
 ten great books, Xenophon, for instance, and 
 Thucydides, and Cicero, and Dante, and Shake- 
 speare, and Bacon, and Descartes, and Goethe. 
 
 If we keep calm and unhurried, and continue 
 to be self -active, we shall find time to do what- 
 ever the most trying situations may demand. 
 
 He whose faith is sure, whose love is pure, 
 whose insight is true, is not disturbed or dis- 
 heartened when the course of things is against 
 him. He can do but a man's work, and in doing 
 this in a right spirit and with all his heart he 
 finds peace and repose. 
 
 The wider the knowledge and the deeper the 
 view, the more difficult it becomes to have a 
 good conscience in the midst of a world all 
 awry. 
 
 In the measure in which we are persuaded we 
 are persuasive. 
 
 Speak of those with whom thou hast sym- 
 pathy; of others as little as may be. 
 
 They who have done none of life's drudgery 
 cannot receive its highest rewards. 
 
 The power to know and love pure truth and 
 
182 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 beauty is acquired, and it is necessarily lacking 
 in the multitude who will not or cannot take the 
 pains by which the faculty is produced. 
 
 When we look through an anthology and ex- 
 amine the pages chosen from the best authors, 
 it is disappointing to find how rarely we meet 
 with perfect writing. In the great poets there 
 are lines and passages which could not be im- 
 proved, but nearly all our English prose is 
 defective. 
 
 Style is the essential thing in writing. The 
 thoughts and facts belong or may belong to any 
 one ; but the setting, the coloring, the expression 
 are the author's. They are like the tint, fra- 
 grance, and form of the flower, constituting it 
 a thing of beauty, apart and distinct. It is in 
 style that the creative faculty reveals itself; it 
 is style that makes the artist, whether he be 
 poet or painter, musician or orator. 
 
 When intellectual light and moral energy are 
 rightly stored in the pages of a book they are 
 made sacramental and permanently accessible to 
 inquiring minds and yearning souls. 
 
 Few, even among scholars, are capable of 
 discerning and appreciating beauties of style; 
 but in every civilized age these judges are found, 
 however small their number, and it is they who 
 confer immortality on the chosen band. They 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 183 
 
 are the arbiters of taste, and weave the crowns 
 which do not fade. 
 
 Style is susceptible of many qualities. It may 
 be forcible, lofty, flexible, simple, concise, lucid, 
 cogent, poetic, logical, harmonious, rugged, 
 sparkling, vivacious, sublime. It may take all 
 the moods of the mind, which are infinitely 
 various; but in each one it tends to assume 
 the traits of his predominant thought and mood, 
 and hence we say that style is of the man himself. 
 
 The tongue is the chief instrument of the 
 brain. Had man never learned to speak, he 
 would never have learned to think, would never 
 have organized society, would never have cre- 
 ated the arts and sciences, would never have 
 developed civilization. Like God, he makes all 
 things by his word. 
 
 Simplicity and clearness are the essential 
 qualities of style. Where they are lacking there 
 is no style. Nothing seems easier than to write 
 naturally and lucidly, but nothing is more diffi- 
 cult. It is an art which much patience and pains 
 alone can make one master of; an art which 
 can be retained only by persevering practice and 
 unremitting watchfulness. What is so written 
 must seem to have been produced without effort. 
 It impresses the reader as so inevitable that he 
 imagines any one who had this thought or fact 
 
1 84 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 . 
 
 to express would have clothed it in these words ; 
 but the author found them only after seeking, 
 weighing, and choosing, often indeed failed to 
 discover them until a favoring mood or a happy 
 accident revealed them to him, and he could 
 never have found them at all had he not spent 
 years in the cultivation of his style. 
 
 The religious, moral, and political life of a 
 people, its commerce, studies, and wars, and 
 more possibly than all these, the number and 
 genius of its great writers are the forces by 
 which its language is developed and polished. 
 
 Let those who have the power to persuade 
 their fellows to read and study the vital books 
 devote themselves to this rather than to writing 
 something of their own, even though it have 
 merit ; for it is more important that men should 
 apply themselves to the existing literatures than 
 that they should be supplied with new books. 
 
 To read to find replies to objections or argu- 
 ments against opponents is to turn from the 
 pure light. Hold to thy faith, give little heed 
 to difficulties, study to know and love truth and 
 to embody it in thy life and words. If thou 
 remain steadfast and walk in this way, thou shalt 
 rise to the higher points of view where doubts 
 and darkness fall away. 
 
 If thou suffer thyself to be tossed about by 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 185 
 
 passions and suspicions thou shalt become a 
 disturber and malefactor. 
 
 As an illumined mind spreads light, so a 
 peaceful soul diffuses contentment. 
 
 If thou art busy improving thyself thou shalt 
 not be tempted to meddle with the affairs of 
 others, nor be disturbed when others meddle 
 with thine. 
 
 If the sense of duty be excluded from life, the 
 root of that which gives it meaning and worth 
 is plucked up; and if from duty love be elimi- 
 nated, there remains but a skeleton: the dry 
 bones are all in place, but there is no beauty, no 
 joy, no soul. Now, the love which may be 
 wedded to duty is born of religion. 
 
 The less success satisfies, the less failure dis- 
 courages thee, the greater the hope that thou 
 shalt come to understand the infinite worth of 
 truth and love. 
 
 Agreement is easy when there is question of 
 things for which we do not care. 
 
 Let thy sympathy be as wide as God's, who 
 loves all that He has made. 
 
 To be afraid to die, if religion or patriotism 
 or friendship command, is to hold the life of 
 sensation more precious than that of righteous- 
 ness and love. Hence contempt for death when- 
 ever proper occasion offers has ever been held to 
 
1 86 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 be a mark of noble nature. It is this, and not 
 the physical courage, nor the butchery and ruin, 
 that gives value and honor to the soldier's 
 calling. 
 
 Woman wholly chaste is everywhere safe. 
 An impure spirit cannot breathe the air which 
 environs her. 
 
 If men would but consider the degradation, 
 misery, and hopelessness to which fallen women 
 are doomed, they would keep as far away as 
 from contagion and death. 
 
 The most complete disappointment, the most 
 bitter disillusion befalls those who seek the good 
 of life in the indulgence of appetite and lust. 
 They are like the insane who know their insanity 
 and feel that it is immedicable. 
 
 There is nothing so humiliating as to know 
 what a controlling influence the intestines have 
 on the thoughts and ways of men. Our whole 
 existence centres around eating, drinking, di- 
 gesting, excreting, and begetting. It is miracu- 
 lous that from out such a slough immortal hopes 
 should arise. 
 
 The feebleness of the race is due chiefly to 
 man's incontinence, above all to the inconti- 
 nence of the wedded. 
 
 If the highest man and woman, the most 
 gentle, mild, chaste, loving, patient, and helpful 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 1 8? 
 
 is the best of all we know on earth, enlightened 
 minds shall ever be thankful that the catholic 
 religion has prevailed, and shall cherish the hope 
 that its influence may continue to the end. 
 
 It is not the importance of a truth but the 
 receptive mood and temper that give it power 
 over us. The divinest words of the Saviour 
 have fallen on innumerable minds in whom they 
 have struck no light and awakened no thrill of 
 awe. 
 
 Faith can live only in hearts whose home is 
 above the world of success, fashion, and ap- 
 plause; and they who are greatly influenced 
 by these things are never true followers of 
 Christ. Our trust is in what we love, and what 
 we love is like ourselves. If we are material, it 
 is matter; if spiritual, it is God. We can nor 
 know nor follow the meek and lowly One, if we 
 are fascinated by the pride and pomp of the 
 world. " How can ye believe," He asks, " if ye 
 seek praise one of another?" 
 
 The vulgar envy the rich and the powerful; 
 choice spirits know that only the wise and loving 
 are to be envied. 
 
 Nothing that leaves the mind unraised can 
 be a good for man. 
 
 Lost money or reputation or place may be 
 regained, but time misspent cannot be made 
 
1 88 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 good in all eternity. Never shall it be possible 
 for us to know or to love or to be as much as 
 we might have known and loved and been. 
 
 As self-respect forbids the tolerance of bodily 
 uncleanness in one's self, though it be hidden, 
 so does it command us to turn from sensual 
 desires and deceitful and cowardly thoughts, 
 however deeply buried within the inmost soul. 
 
 No man is good because he is not a trans- 
 gressor, but he alone who strives and loves and 
 helps. 
 
 Teach me, O God, to desire nothing save thy 
 will and the good of my fellow-men. 
 
 The multitude are not deeply in earnest about 
 anything, and unless one is deeply in earnest to 
 get, whether money or position or skill, or to 
 acquire philosophic insight or scientific knowl- 
 edge or virtue or wisdom or a spiritual mind, 
 he is and must remain one of the multitude. 
 
 Concern thyself with the words and actions 
 of others only when duty compels, or when thou 
 mayst find in them a source of light and strength 
 or be of help. 
 
 Modesty is the best evidence of good sense, 
 as to be wise in one's own conceit is the surest 
 mark of folly. 
 
 Lying, stealing, flattery, and dissimulation 
 are the vices of beggars, slaves, and all base and 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 189 
 
 cowardly natures, and they are therefore the 
 most contemptible of vices. 
 
 Strive to be useful and thou shalt become 
 good; seek wisdom and thou shalt gain knowl- 
 edge; seek what is right and thou shalt find 
 what is pleasant; learn to love and blessedness 
 shall be thine. 
 
 When nothing has power to interrupt the 
 course of the thoughts by which we live, not 
 business nor worry nor travel nor infirm health, 
 we possess the secret of self-improvement. 
 
 It is easy to find actors who can play the parts 
 of fools and villains, of seducers and bullies, of 
 drunkards and hypocrites, but one who shall 
 take that of a philosopher, a saint, or a hero is 
 hardly to be discovered; and so in real life one 
 may without difficulty be shallow and worthless, 
 base and heartless, foppish and false, but they 
 alone who contend ceaselessly and falter not 
 make themselves wise, generous, and true. 
 
 Defend me, O eternal Father, not from my 
 enemies, not from poverty, sickness, and death, 
 but from myself, from my weak will and lawless 
 passions. 
 
 The worst fate that can befall a man 
 is to drag minds down instead of exalting 
 them. 
 
 If thou wouldst be remembered, do or write 
 
IQO GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 what shall never cease to give joy and courage. 
 None but helpers live. 
 
 The hearts that are most deeply stirred utter 
 the truest and the most beautiful thoughts, 
 most deeply stirred by the highest and the holiest 
 things. 
 
 Since for God there is neither past nor future, 
 for Him whatever is to be already is. Disturb 
 not thyself overmuch, my little man. 
 
 Cats and dogs find women to love them. Why 
 should a man be filled with conceit if he win a 
 woman's smile? 
 
 Were it not for the conversation they hold 
 with the dead, how lonely the best would be; 
 and since such intercourse may be had by all, 
 why need any one be lonely? 
 
 It is the passion in religious and moral truth 
 that makes it communicable, and when it is set 
 forth as dryly as a mathematical demonstration 
 it has nor meaning nor charm. 
 
 What worse than waste of time is there not 
 in the endless pains taken to make the mys- 
 teries of faith plain to reason ? Should we com- 
 prehend them they would cease to be mysteries 
 and would lose their efficacy. 
 
 It is a weakness with Americans that they 
 cannot have an opinion but they would make it 
 the foundation of a party or a sect. 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 1 91 
 
 No more forever shall it be possible for me 
 to run and leap and swim and dance and spend 
 whole days wandering in fields and woods as 
 erstwhile. But then the blessedness of the 
 inner life was hidden from me, which now, as 
 the years go by, reveals itself to me more and 
 more as the one unfailing source of joy and 
 blessedness, while the delights of the young I 
 recognize to be no better than the skipping of 
 lambs and the play of colts. For this above all, 
 O Father in heaven, am I grateful to Thee: 
 that the soul cannot grow old. The world of 
 my childhood and youth is become as a gar- 
 den which winter has killed, and yet Thy 
 world is more real and pleasant than when 
 the flowers bloomed and all the year was 
 spring. 
 
 Ignorance of the future makes life endurable. 
 However great the pleasures or the honors 
 which may be in store for us, if in knowing them 
 we should be made aware of all the circum- 
 stances preceding, accompanying, and follow- 
 ing, we should experience a sense of disillusion. 
 Hope would lose its charm, imagination its 
 wings, and the motives to noble effort their 
 spring. Were the senses stronger and more 
 acute, sights, sounds, and smells would give only 
 pain. .Were the capacity for emotion greatly 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 increased, the world would become a place of 
 torture. Defects provoke qualities, and the lim- 
 itations which hem the soul stir within it con- 
 sciousness of its immortal origin and destiny. 
 Had man the strength of the lion, he had never 
 developed the mightier power of mind; were 
 the period of the helplessness of childhood short- 
 ened, he would retrograde to barbarism or sav- 
 agery; were labor not required to supply his 
 daily wants, he would content himself with an 
 animal existence. Could the good know what 
 a blessed thing it is to die, they might lose the 
 courage to live. 
 
 There is no situation which may not be made 
 the occasion for the acquirement or exercise of 
 a virtue, whether it be prudence or patience or 
 humility or courage or politeness or sincerity or 
 contentedness. When all happenings are con- 
 templated and made use of in this spirit, the soul 
 is filled with joy and peace. Little by little we 
 come to feel that to live is to grow, and we 
 welcome all that offers opportunity to increase 
 inner strength and worth, hardly caring whether 
 it be pleasant or disagreeable. 
 
 How can a man think himself fortunate in 
 obtaining great wealth or office, if he give heed 
 to the fact that the involvements and obliga- 
 tions are a hindrance to intellectual and moral 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 193 
 
 progress? " Learn to despise exterior things," 
 says A Kempis, " and give thyself to the in- 
 terior, and thou shalt see the kingdom of God 
 come unto thee." 
 
 Fear, like love, creates its object, and it is 
 easy to dread most the things which will never 
 happen. 
 
 A true man is distressed by the wrong he 
 does more than by that he suffers. 
 
 We are impelled by a law of nature to believe 
 the things which are necessary to our peace, 
 and faith in God is indispensable to the tran- 
 quillity and repose which are the central feel- 
 ing of all happiness. 
 
 Be like a bird that chances heedless to alight 
 
 Upon a bough too frail ; 
 Who feels the branches bend, yet sings with all his might, 
 
 Knowing his wings won't fail. 
 
 The poet's ecstasy, the painter's vision, the 
 orator's enthusiasm, the saint's rapture, have 
 no higher worth than a miser's madness or a 
 lecher's craving, if there be no Supreme Spirit 
 who, being the source and end of all things, 
 gives all things meaning and value. 
 
 He who falls from virtue and honor falls 
 from the summit of earthly things, and his 
 degradation is the most complete. 
 
 If thou hast power to destroy thy fellow-man, 
 13 
 
194 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 so has a microbe; but to have the power and 
 the will to save is godlike. 
 
 It is only in solitude that a man belongs 
 wholly to himself. 
 
 Though I weary of everything else, says 
 Petrarch, I never tire of my studies, which 
 from day to day give me more and more 
 delight. 
 
 There are various ways of prolonging life. 
 None is more effectual than the right use of 
 time. 
 
 Work is for man what wings are for the 
 bird, the means whereby he raises himself 
 above the earth and makes Nature his servant. 
 
 Wouldst thou become learned? Hate thy 
 ignorance. Wouldst thou grow wise? Hate 
 thy folly. Wouldst thou become holy? Hate 
 thy sin. 
 
 Death has snatched thy friend from thee; 
 but thou art running to overtake him and soon 
 shalt be with him again. 
 
 He who is capable of entertaining an evil 
 design will have little scruple as to the means 
 by which it may be carried into effect. 
 
 Nothing is interesting but life, and the things 
 each one delights in are the test of the quality 
 of his life. The attraction of opposites is ap- 
 parent merely. Nature's law is like seeks 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 195 
 
 like. Reason craves for unity; the heart for 
 harmony. All things proceed from the One, 
 and are drawn to their source. 
 
 It is a paltry thing to excel one's contem- 
 poraries. They who count must enter the com- 
 pany of the greatest in whatever age, arfd be 
 measured by the standard they have fixed. The 
 crowd of the merely successful belong to the 
 multitude, whom oblivion quickly swallows. 
 
 To live joyfully and free from care would 
 seem to be happiness; but were such a life the 
 lot of man he never would have attained wis- 
 dom and courage, sympathy and love. 
 
 If men were more compassionate, more ready 
 to spare one another pains and labors, would not 
 will and energy and self-trust be weakened? 
 
 Nor knowledge nor wealth nor fame can be 
 felt to be a good unless it be shared. Conscious- 
 ness is a unity in duality, and the self which 
 springs from union and communion with what 
 is other, is free and happy only in quitting itself 
 to find itself in those it loves and helps. 
 
 If nothing happen to fill thee with joy, think 
 of the evil which is absent and might have 
 befallen. 
 
 Wouldst thou know whether thy religion is 
 genuine, whether it is joy and love and right- 
 eousness, examine whether thy life fills others 
 
196 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 with brave and cheerful thoughts, whether it 
 spurs them to unselfish and helpful deeds. 
 
 These are the sayings of the wise men of 
 Greece: The majority are evil; Look to the 
 end; Seize occasion; Haste, if thou wouldst 
 fail; Industry is everything; Know thyself; 
 The mean is best. 
 
 A clean body is the proper shrine of an illu- 
 mined and loving soul. 
 
 Thy watch ticks thirty million times a year. 
 How much mayest thou not hope to accomplish 
 if thou keep diligently at work? 
 
 Be thankful for whatever keeps thee humble, 
 for it helps to save thee from folly. 
 
 The notion that to sweep and scrub and wash 
 and sew is a woman's work, but degrading to 
 a man, is a prejudice inherited from savages 
 and barbarians. Lincoln, as yet little known, 
 accompanied his wife to Louisville and carried 
 their infant in his arms through the streets as 
 they went from shop to shop to make their 
 little purchases. He was abler to bear the bur- 
 den and not ashamed to do any right thing. 
 A true man feels that all honest work is hon- 
 orable to man and woman alike, and he is 
 ready to help, whatever the task that needs 
 doing. 
 
 There is no social state more disgraceful, 
 
GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 197 
 
 says Cicero, than that in which the wealthiest 
 are considered the best. 
 
 Nothing is so vulgar as a sneer. 
 
 They who crawl are trampled on. 
 
 Minerva's owl begins its flight 
 But at the approach of gathering night, 
 And when the shadows longer grow 
 Wisdom's calm face doth fairest show. 
 
 If the mind is rich, the man is rich; if the 
 heart is full of love, life is full of joy. 
 
 As a mighty warrior routs army after army, 
 so a vital book makes mere waste paper of 
 whole libraries. 
 
 We long for what is permanent, yet the 
 beauty which never changes wearies us. Were 
 the flowers to retain their freshness they would 
 lose their charm. Were a fair child to remain 
 what it is it would come to appear to be un- 
 natural. A work of art, if it be near us day 
 by day, ceases to delight us. The immortal 
 minds which from our bookshelves make cease- 
 less appeal to us are neglected. Familiarity 
 breeds contempt and custom makes stale. The 
 good that is at hand we care not for, but ven- 
 ture life and fortune to seek that which lies 
 afar. 
 
 Merely to know what a world of wisdom and 
 beauty is asleep around me in my books is joy 
 
198 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 and strength, even while I leave them unvis- 
 ited, as a mother is happy sitting by the cradle 
 of her slumbering child, though forgetting him 
 her thoughts wander far away. 
 
 They who have nothing to say have often 
 the most irresistible impulse to speak. 
 
 A thief, says Ecclesiasticus, is better than a 
 man that is accustomed to lie. 
 
 To give pleasure is easily within the reach of 
 the young, the frivolous, and the rich; but only 
 the wise and loving give joy. 
 
 Habit need not give greater strength; it is 
 sufficient that it enable us to do the things we 
 ought with greater ease. 
 
 After the joy which springs from right-doing, 
 the purest and sweetest is that which is born 
 of companionship with spirits akin to our own. 
 
 It shall never be well with thee if the con- 
 sciousness of doing well is not sufficient for 
 thy peace. " Well doing ill report a king's 
 portion." 
 
EPICTETUS 
 
EP1CTETUS 
 
 OF the life of Epictetus little need be said. 
 His biography is his character, and this 
 lies open in his books, where the fine spirit of 
 an earnest and noble soul still breathes. He 
 was born in Phrygia, about the middle of the 
 first century. His mother was a slave; his 
 father is unknown. Epictetus is not his name, 
 but is a Greek word which denotes his servile 
 condition. In his youth he became the property 
 of Epaphroditus, a freedman of Nero's, who 
 permitted him to attend the lectures of'Mu- 
 sonius Rufus, one of the most celebrated 
 teachers in Rome. Having acquired freedom, 
 he began himself to give lessons; but he was 
 soon sent into exile, together with the other 
 philosophers, by the Emperor Domitian. 
 
 Settling at Nicopolis, in Epirus (the modern 
 Albania), he opened a school, and continued to 
 teach the doctrines of stoicism to the time of his 
 death, at the age, it is supposed, of nearly a 
 hundred years. He was feeble in body, lame, 
 
2O2 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 poor, and unmarried, living alone until he took 
 an old woman into his house to care for an 
 orphan whom he had adopted. He wrote noth- 
 ing, but talked with his pupils in a familiar 
 way of whatever concerns the conduct of life. 
 Arrian, his favorite disciple, took notes of his 
 conversations, not with a view to publication, 
 but for his own use. When, however, without 
 his knowledge, they had fallen into the hands 
 of several, he edited them himself. Thus we 
 owe to an accident the existence of the " Dis- 
 courses," which form one of the world's vital 
 books. The " Manual " is a collection of aphor- 
 isms taken substantially from the larger work. 
 
 Epictetus was not the founder of a new phi- 
 losophy. Zeno, the originator of the Stoic sys- 
 tem, was his master, and Zeno himself derived 
 his fundamental principles from Antisthenes, 
 the author of the cynic school and the friend 
 of Socrates. 
 
 The Greeks are the creators of philosophy, 
 and their earliest attempt at systematic thought 
 was an effort to understand Nature. But they 
 soon learned that it was necessary to begin from 
 within, since to know anything man must first 
 know himself. Thus the problem of the con- 
 duct of life forced itself upon them. This is 
 the constant preoccupation of Socrates, who 
 
EPICTETUS. 203 
 
 was born five hundred years before Epictetus. 
 He taught that the good is to be sought not 
 in outward things, nor in the indulgence of 
 appetite, but in virtue, which for him, however, 
 is an intellectual rather than a moral habit. 
 His calm and rational temper led him to the 
 belief that man always acts in accordance with 
 his knowledge, does what insight shows him 
 to be useful to himself. He who does, evil does 
 it from a mistake of judgment. Sin is error. 
 Virtue, then, being chiefly knowledge, may be 
 taught, and to teach it is the philosopher's life 
 work. But Socrates moved in a circle from 
 which there was no escape. To know the use- 
 ful is virtue. But what is the useful? That 
 which makes for virtue. 
 
 Antisthenes does not attempt to determine 
 the meaning of the good. He simply declares 
 that virtue is the only good, and, in his view, 
 virtue is the intelligent conduct of life. Right 
 life is the essential good; virtue is its own re- 
 ward, and one need not look to its results. It 
 is, in the midst of whatever vicissitudes, a sure 
 possession. The virtuous man is independent of 
 events, and stands secure against fate and for- 
 tune. The world is full of things he does not 
 need ; he seeks not wealth, nor fame, nor honor, 
 nor pleasure. 
 
2O4 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 Zeno, the Stoic, born in Cyprus about 340 
 B. c., is the heir of the Cynics. The sage, as he 
 conceives the truly wise and virtuous man, is 
 first of all independent of the world, since only 
 on this condition can he be free and find hap- 
 piness in himself alone ; and as what is external 
 is but little subject to human will, he must over- 
 come the world within himself by gaining the 
 mastery over the feelings and desires which it 
 excites. To be self-contained and self-sufficient, 
 to remain unmoved in the presence of good or 
 of evil fortune, imperturbable though the uni- 
 verse be shattered, is the goal he must strive to 
 reach. If he cannot defend himself against the 
 excitations of feeling, he will at least refuse his 
 assent, and thereby prevent them from becom- 
 ing passions. His ideal is apathy, absence of 
 emotion. The course of things may bring him 
 pleasure and pain, but since he holds that the 
 one is not a good, the other not an evil, he re- 
 tains his equanimity. Virtue is his sole good, 
 and the only evil is to permit passion to con- 
 quer reason. This withdrawal of the individual 
 within himself, however it may be modified and 
 supplemented, is an essential element in the 
 Stoic's conception of life. Reason, from his 
 point of view, is not only man's nature, but that 
 of the universe, while the impulses of the senses 
 
EPICTETUS. 2O5 
 
 are irrational. The soul, as part of the World- 
 Reason, must therefore exclude from itself all 
 excitation of feeling. 
 
 To live in harmony with Nature is to rise 
 into a sphere where the senses cease to trouble ; 
 it is to live in communion with the cosmic 
 power, from which all things proceed, in cheer- 
 ful obedience to the eternal destiny, which, 
 being the will of God, is the divine law. The 
 wise man accepts this life as his first and high- 
 est duty. It is the task which Reason imposes 
 upon him. The Stoics, however, holding that 
 man is by nature social, require that he lead a 
 social life. The social ideal of the sage is that 
 of a universal ethical community, and he is in- 
 different to forms of government and to actu- 
 ally existing states. He is a citizen of the 
 world, demands justice and sympathy for all, 
 and refuses to recognize the division of man- 
 kind into Greeks and barbarians. 
 
 The chief stress is laid upon the worth of 
 moral personality, upon the paramount value 
 of the good that lies within, though the duty 
 of co-operating with one's fellow-men for the 
 general welfare is inculcated. The metaphys- 
 ical principle is pantheistic, and involves fatal- 
 ism; but the Stoics, preoccupied exclusively 
 with moral ideas and interests, cared little for 
 

 2O6 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 logical consistency, and stoutly asserted the 
 freedom of the will, holding fast to liberty of 
 choice and to the universality of causation. 
 
 Though of Greek origin, stoicism attained its 
 highest practical significance in Rome, where its 
 doctrines seemed to be suited to the character 
 of the people. Those stern, self-controlled, and 
 brave men were attracted by a system which 
 emphasized the value of independence, courage, 
 and imperturbability. They found in it a source 
 of the moral enthusiasm which the pagan reli- 
 gions had no power to inspire. They were 
 drawn to the society of the philosophers, re- 
 ceived them into their houses, and became their 
 disciples. By daily intercourse with these ear- 
 nest and austere teachers, such men as Scipio 
 and Lselius, as Brutus, Cato, and Cicero, were 
 formed,. The prestige and authority of the 
 preachers of stoicism were heightened by the 
 general corruption which was undermining 
 the state, and the public calamities which were 
 becoming more and more frequent. 
 
 The noblest souls, despairing of the cause of 
 liberty, withdrew from politics, and sought con- 
 solation in a philosophy which taught them how 
 to bear the ills of life and how to die. In 
 Rome, where only what is practical was rightly 
 appreciated, little attention was given to the 
 
EPICTETUS. 207 
 
 metaphysical presuppositions of stoicism, and 
 the great teachers, losing sight of the logical 
 requirements of the system, took what seemed 
 to them true and to the purpose wherever it 
 was found. Indeed, contradiction and incon- 
 sistency did not repel, as we have seen, the 
 early Stoics, and in its Roman development the 
 philosophy became more and more eclectic. 
 
 Epictetus, Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius are 
 the three famous names of this later school of 
 stoicism, and they are all teachers of the con- 
 duct of life, in love with inner perfection, and 
 comparatively heedless of mere speculation. In 
 the midst of the general decadence and threaten- 
 ing collapse of the civilized world, they sought 
 to rouse conscience; and as the pagan religion 
 could do nothing for them, they strove to give 
 a kind of sacredness to human wisdom. To 
 derive profit from their works it is not neces- 
 sary to understand their theories. All that is 
 required is an open mind and a tractable heart. 
 What is speculative disappears in the presence 
 of the practical worth of the truths they utter. 
 To read them aright we need an attentive and 
 devout spirit rather than an acute and curious 
 intellect. 
 
 Of these three teachers of the later stoicism, 
 Epictetus is the noblest character and the great- 
 
208 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 est authority. His life is more completely in 
 harmony with his doctrine. He rises in moral 
 elevation to the level of his maxims and pre- 
 cepts. His purity equals his insight. He is the 
 venerable sage. He is the saint of a philosoph- 
 ical religion, a man who from an abject condi- 
 tion raised himself to the worthiest dispositions 
 of mind and heart, who in the midst of a cor- 
 rupt society remained unstained and faithful, 
 his thought fixed on the highest moral ideals, 
 and following to the end his vocation as a 
 preacher of righteousness a slave, a cripple, 
 a pauper, as his epitaph declares, but dear to the 
 gods. He has drawn for us an ideal of the 
 Stoic sage, in, which his own character is por- 
 trayed. He accuses neither God nor man; he 
 controls desire; he knows not anger, nor re- 
 sentment, nor envy, nor pity ; he fences himself 
 with virtuous shame. He has nothing to con- 
 ceal ; he does not fear exile or death, for wher- 
 ever and however he is there also is God. But 
 it is not enough that he be good in and for 
 himself. He is a messenger sent by Zeus to 
 instruct men concerning good and evil, to point 
 out to them that they walk in wrong ways. 
 He must cry out : " O mortals, whither are ye 
 hasting? Why do ye tumble about, like the 
 blind? The good is not in the body; it is not 
 
EPICTETUS. 2O9 
 
 in wealth, or power, or empire; it lies in your- 
 selves. God has sent you one to teach you by 
 his example. Take notice of me that I am 
 without a country, without a house, without an 
 estate, without a servant: I lie on the ground; 
 have no wife, no children, no coat, but have 
 only earth and heaven and one poor cloak. And 
 what need I ? Am I not without sorrow, with- 
 out fear? Am I not free? Did I ever blame 
 God or man? Did I ever accuse any one? 
 Have any of you seen me look discontented ? " 
 Epictetus is direct, plain, and earnest in his 
 speech. His style is bare of ornament, vigor- 
 ous, and incisive. He is always serious, often 
 stern, and at times pathetic. He does not de- 
 liver finished discourses, is heedless of rhetori- 
 cal ornament, and wholly intent on improving 
 his hearers by inciting them to the love and 
 practice of virtue. He is not so much an orator 
 as a brave, genuine man, whose whole being 
 vibrates in his words, which are vital and elec- 
 tric. They are the honest and fearless expres- 
 sion of what he thinks in his heart, of what he 
 feels and lives. They are the utterance of what 
 is deepest and permanent in man, and there- 
 fore they never lose the power to stimulate and 
 nourish faith in the worth of a life led in obedi- 
 ence to the divine commands. The simple and 
 
2IO GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 straightforward manner in which he speaks the 
 highest truth has made him a favorite not with 
 scholars merely, but with all classes of readers. 
 Whoever is persuaded that life is chiefly con- 
 duct may derive help from him. Only the 
 learned can read Plato with profit, and the few- 
 est of these study him, but an ordinary mind 
 may find in Epictetus a friend and teacher, for 
 his philosophy is of the most practical char- 
 acter and easily understood. Wisdom consists 
 in knowing how to distinguish between what 
 is our own and what is not ours. Our will, 
 our opinions, desires, inclinations, and aversions 
 are ours; the rest body, possessions, honor, 
 and reputation is not ours. The divine law 
 bids us hold fast to what is our own, and make 
 no claim to what is not ours. God in endowing 
 us with free will gives us control over what is 
 ours, but other things He has not placed in our 
 power. A man's business is with himself, with 
 learning to think rightly and to will wisely. 
 Here he is master, here he has full control. Let 
 him give heed to this, and in other things resign 
 himself with a cheerful heart to the guidance 
 of the all-wise Father who rules the whole. 
 Since we cannot determine the course of Nature, 
 it is our duty to accept with courage and resig- 
 nation whatever befalls. Is money, or friend, 
 
EPICTETUS. 211 
 
 or wife, or child taken from us, let us remember 
 that they never were ours; they were but lent 
 to us, and have been returned to the owner. 
 Shall we complain when He asks us to restore 
 what belongs to Him? But it lies with us to 
 have an independent soul and a victorious will, 
 to remain imperturbable, serene, reverent, and 
 thankful, despite disgrace and misfortune, which 
 cannot touch our inmost being or deprive us of 
 freedom and virtue. These are the sole good, 
 and so long as they are ours all else is unim- 
 portant. Will that things happen as they do, 
 and nothing shall happen contrary to thy will. 
 But how shall I bear the wrongs which the 
 wicked inflict ? May not God choose His agents 
 to demand of thee what He has lent? Thou 
 art but a player to whom a role has been as- 
 signed. Take cheerfully whatever character is 
 given thee, whether it be that of a beggar or 
 that of a king. Thy sole business is to act 
 well the part to which God has appointed thee. 
 Think of Him as often as thou breathest, and let 
 thy whole study and desire be to know and do 
 His will. 
 
 For Epictetus a virtuous life is not a means, 
 but an end. The sage does right not from the 
 hope of prosperity and good name, not that he 
 may have health of body and mind, not because 
 
212 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 wise behavior produces a contented and happy 
 temper, but he does what is just, avoids what 
 is base, without thought of reward or punish- 
 ment, impelled solely by a sense of duty. He 
 clings to virtue though virtue be his death-sen- 
 tence, and though he have no expectation of a 
 future life. He makes no sacrifice in abandon- 
 ing all things for virtue, for virtue is his only 
 good. He who wishes to please men, who de- 
 sires to be known and praised even for his 
 virtue, is not a lover of virtue, as he who loves 
 money or pleasure or glory is not a lover of 
 mankind. The wise man's will rolls like a 
 wheel with steady and even motion toward the 
 one eternal goal, to which the universe also is 
 drawn. "If there be any worth in thee, O 
 man, learn to walk alone and to converse with 
 thyself!" 
 
 In the " Manual " Epictetus appears as a 
 stern, uncompromising Stoic. In the " Dis- 
 courses " we find him in the midst of his 
 friends and disciples, where he takes a more 
 human and sympathetic tone. Here he infuses 
 into his morality the glow of religion, which 
 makes it vital and effective. We are not al- 
 ways made to feel that virtue lacks vigor, unless 
 it be hard and repellent, that pride heightens 
 truth, or that insolence is a mark of goodness, 
 
EPICTETUS. 213 
 
 or that harshness is zeal, or modest assertion 
 of opinion a compromise with error. We al- 
 most seem to hear Thrasea declare that he fears 
 to hate even vice too much, lest perchance he 
 come to hate his fellow-men. It is in the " Dis- 
 courses " that he tells us that the true Stoic is 
 " the father of mankind ; that all men are his 
 sons and all women his daughters. He attends 
 to all, takes care of all. Is it from impertinence 
 that he rebukes those he meets? He does it as 
 a father, as a brother, as a minister of the com- 
 mon parent, Zeus." He does not marry, he has 
 no children, he accepts no office, that nothing 
 may interfere with the work which God has 
 given him to do. He is careful of his health 
 and appearance, lest he repel those whom he 
 wishes to attract. Above all, he is clean of 
 heart, for how, if he is himself guilty, shall he 
 reprove others? He watches and labors for 
 men, becomes purer day by day; he rules all 
 his thoughts as the friend, as the minister of 
 the gods, as a partner in the empire of Zeus. 
 He has, besides, so much patience as to appear 
 to the vulgar insensible and like a stone; " for 
 there is this fine circumstance connected with the 
 character of a Cynic : that he must be beaten like 
 an ass, and yet when beaten must love those who 
 beat him as the father, as the brother of all." 
 
214 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 Epictetus does not reject the pantheism of 
 the Stoics nor the polytheism of his age, but 
 whatever his theological opinions, which seem 
 to have been vague, he does not think of God 
 as an indeterminate somewhat, but as a person 
 to whom he is bound by ties of obedience, rev- 
 erence, and love; and though he often speaks 
 of the gods, the Supreme Being is never absent 
 from his mind. He is the creator of the world 
 and the ruler of all things. He cannot conceive 
 that the universe should have come into exist- 
 ence or should continue without God. The 
 glory and harmony of the creation fill him with 
 devout enthusiasm. " What can I, a lame old 
 man, do other than praise God? Were I a 
 nightingale, I should perform the office of a 
 nightingale; were I a swan, that of a swan; 
 but as I am a rational being, I must praise God. 
 This is my work, this I do, nor shall I cease 
 from the task while life is left me. And upon 
 you also I call to intone 'this hymn." With his 
 last breath he hopes still to continue his sacred 
 song : " Nothing but thanks to thee do I utter, 
 because thou hast deemed me worthy to partake 
 with thee of life's feast, to behold thy works, 
 and to follow thy government of the world." 
 Day and night he is mindful of the divine com- 
 mands; his thoughts are raised to Heaven, and 
 
EPICTETUS. 215 
 
 in earthly things he sees God, not as the Creator 
 alone, but also as the Father who watches over 
 His children and has care of even the least 
 among them. 
 
 Epictetus takes what seems to him true and 
 good wherever it be found. He has no respect 
 for mere theory, and prizes only the knowledge 
 which is brought to bear on the conduct of life. 
 The beginning of philosophy, he says, is the 
 turning from intellectual conceit and the recog- 
 nition of one's own helplessness in the most 
 indispensable things. To talk like a Stoic is 
 easy ; to live like one is difficult. He challenges 
 his hearers to show him one whose life is in 
 harmony with his principles. And yet all that 
 is needed is the will. Will, and thou art free. 
 From within come salvation and ruin. If the 
 heart is set upon external things, a god cannot 
 rescue thee. But let us forget the past, he cries, 
 and begin anew. God has placed us in the midst 
 of the battle of life; we have sworn to be true 
 to Him, our king and leader, to defend at what- 
 ever cost the post He has assigned us. "I 
 am thine. Where will'st thou that I live in 
 Rome, or Athens, or Thebes, or on the desert 
 island of Gyara? Only, be mindful of me 
 there." 
 x - Epictetus is not a Christian : he knows noth- 
 
2l6 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 ing of God's anger and mercy, of guilt and 
 punishment, of redemption and forgiveness. In 
 contradiction with his doctrine of providence, 
 he holds to the old Stoic tradition which per- 
 mits suicide, and in certain cases makes it a 
 duty. He who can live content wherever God 
 places him is ready to quit the tabernacle of the 
 soul if the house is too full of smoke. Though 
 not a Christian, he certainly knew something 
 of the Christian religion. He lived in Rome 
 as student and teacher of philosophy from the 
 year 73 to 95, and at this time Christianity had 
 penetrated even the higher circles of Roman 
 society ; and the charge of atheism which caused 
 Domitian to send the philosophers into exile 
 led him also to banish the Christians, many of 
 whom suffered martyrdom while Epictetus was 
 delivering his discourses at Nicopolis. He takes 
 occasion to mention the heroism with which 
 these Galileans, as he calls them, met death. 
 They die without fear, he says, not from igno- 
 rance of the danger, nor from weariness of life, 
 nor from madness, nor yet from philosophic 
 conviction, but from habit. Galileans is not the 
 name by which the Roman writers of this period 
 designate the Christians. They did not call 
 themselves Galileans, and to the Jews they were 
 known as Nazarenes. It is probable, therefore, 
 
EPICTETUS. 217 
 
 that Epictetus found the word in the New Tes- 
 tament writings, where the epithet is not in- 
 frequently applied to the followers of Jesus. 
 Galen, who was educated in the Stoic philos- 
 ophy and who lived but a short time after 
 Epictetus, speaks of the contempt for death 
 shown by " those men who are called Chris- 
 tians." He goes on to say that their doctrines 
 are delivered in parables, which are more easily 
 understood than abstruse arguments, and that 
 their lives are in many respects like to that of 
 the true philosophers. In fact, while the world 
 view of the Stoic differs radically from the 
 Christian, the moral teaching of the pagan phil- 
 osopher and of the follower of Christ is often 
 much the same. Both attach the highest im- 
 portance to religious faith and sentiment; both 
 hold that virtue is the chief good; both em- 
 phasize the principle of liberty, and draw from 
 it that of free personality; both declare that 
 man holds his earthly possessions as a steward 
 of the divine owner, to whom he is responsible 
 for the use he makes of them. 
 
 The early Stoics had taught in a general way 
 that men are the children of God, but in Epic- 
 tetus the doctrine is developed with a fulness 
 which is found in no writer before the birth of 
 Christ. He preaches with fiery zeal that all 
 
2l8 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. . 
 
 men are children of God, and that even slaves 
 must be considered and treated as brothers. 
 For him, as in the Gospel, every human being 
 is one's neighbor. His ideal of the Cynic or 
 perfect Stoic is that of a Christian apostle; his 
 view of celibacy seems to have been taken from 
 St. Paul. The portrait he draws of Hercules, 
 as a conscious son of God and savior of the 
 world, is very like the character of the divine 
 Master as revealed in the New Testament, and 
 unlike that of the traditional Hercules, who 
 stands at the parting of the ways. 
 
 But Epictetus though he certainly knew 
 something of the Christian faith, and though 
 his " Manual " was a favorite book of some of 
 the early Christians, and became, with simply a 
 change of certain words, a kind of rule for St. 
 Nilus and the anchorets of Mount Sinai re- 
 mains a Stoic. For him God is not love, but 
 the eternal destiny, and his enthusiasm for hu- 
 manity is dominated by his resignation to fate. 
 His religion is a philosophical piety founded on 
 self-surrender to the inexorable laws of Nature. 
 He is, nevertheless, one of those who have had 
 the clearest insight into the duties of man, and 
 his utterances have now for eighteen hundred 
 years been a source of patience, courage, and 
 strength to minds of widely varying opinions 
 
EPICTETUS. 219 
 
 and beliefs. He is a genuine man, whose true 
 image looks out upon us from the "Discourses." 
 In reading him we lose sight of his metaphysical 
 theories, and are mindful only of the great prin- 
 ciples which he expresses with rare force and 
 which underlie all right human life. 
 
MARCUS AURELIUS 
 
MARCUS AURELIUS 
 
 THE intimate thoughts of a wise and 
 noble man concerning whatever touches 
 the human heart most nearly are necessarily 
 interesting, and when he who utters them has 
 stood for years at the head of a vast and 
 powerful empire his words receive a new sig- 
 nificance, which is still further heightened by 
 the fact that he writes not for the public, but 
 simply to render to himself an account of him- 
 self. This is what we have in the " Medita- 
 tions" of Marcus Aurelius, the Roman emperor, 
 a man so modest, so sincere, so kindly, so mag- 
 nanimous, that to know him is to conceive a 
 higher opinion of the race which in him attains 
 to such dignity and virtue. He was born at 
 Rome in the year 121 of the Christian era, and 
 died in 180, a few weeks before his fifty-ninth 
 birthday. He was the nephew and adopted son 
 of Antoninus Pius, whom from early manhood 
 he assisted in administering public affairs. He 
 
224 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 became emperor at the age of forty, and reigned 
 nineteen years, twelve of which he passed in 
 Asia Minor, Syria, Greece, Egypt, and the 
 countries on the Danube, putting down rebel- 
 lion or defending the empire against the at- 
 tacks of the barbarians, having at the same 
 time to face various public misfortunes in- 
 undations, famines, earthquakes, fires, and pes- 
 tilence which caused widespread misery and 
 dismay. But though constantly surrounded by 
 grave difficulties and dangers, and compelled to 
 travel to almost every part of the empire, he 
 not only found time to devote himself, as a wise 
 and careful ruler, to even the minor interests 
 and details of government, but also to occupy 
 himself with the study of philosophy and his 
 own improvement. It is the history of his inner 
 life, as recorded in his journal, that has made 
 him immortal, and placed him in the company 
 of the few in whom the lovers of wisdom and 
 perfection find it possible to take genuine de- 
 light. The book has small literary merit. The 
 language is without elegance or distinction. He 
 tells us that he had learned to abstain from 
 rhetoric and poetry and fine writing. He 
 studied simplicity and plainness in all things. 
 He jots down detached thoughts, often merely 
 gives us notes or indications, and his views are 
 
MARCUS AURELIUS. 22$ 
 
 seldom profound or original. He is a Stoic, 
 but does not develop or follow consistently any 
 system of philosophy. He wavers and is un- 
 certain precisely in those things in which a 
 firm-rooted faith is most inspiring and invig- 
 orating. Running all through his " Medita- 
 tions " there is an undercurrent of sadness and 
 despondency. Is it because he is compelled to 
 labor in a vocation for which Nature did not 
 intend him, or is it due to the sight of the cor- 
 ruption and worthlessness of those by whom he 
 was surrounded, indicating plainly to him that 
 the fabric of Roman civilization was falling to 
 ruin, or is it to be attributed to the fatalism 
 which determines and controls his world-view? 
 There was little either in the condition of so- 
 ciety or in his own religious faith to cheer and 
 strengthen ; and yet it is impossible to live with 
 him in his book without feeling that we are in 
 the company of one of the best, wisest, and 
 bravest of men, of one who, placed on the 
 summit of power and splendor, was never for 
 a moment blinded by the glitter and the show, 
 but, looking steadily into the heart of things, 
 remained simple, sincere, modest, self-con- 
 trolled, and loving. We forget that he was an 
 emperor; we care not in what style he utters 
 himself; we are not curious about his meta- 
 15 
 
226 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 physical theories, or disposed to argue and dis- 
 pute; it is enough that we are in his presence, 
 that we hear his words of wisdom and Stoic 
 piety, with the reverence, candor, and devout- 
 ness with which he speaks them. 
 
 He is a born teacher of morals, a born 
 preacher of the surpassing worth of the inner 
 life; and this natural bent was confirmed by 
 his education, of which he has given an account 
 in the first book of the " Meditations," where 
 he mentions with gratitude that he was not sent 
 to a public school, and that his tutors were men 
 of character and learning. " To the gods/' he 
 says, " I am indebted for having good grand- 
 fathers, good parents, a good sister, good 
 teachers, good associates, good kinsmen and 
 friends nearly everything good." He began 
 his studies, as was the custom of the time, with 
 rhetoric and poetry, but at the age of twelve 
 he became a pupil of the Stoics, and adopted 
 their austere practices as well as their dress, 
 leading a life so abstemious and laborious as 
 to injure his health, which remained delicate. 
 Much of his youth was passed in the country, 
 at the villa of Lorium, where, while continuing 
 to read, he engaged in the pleasures of the chase, 
 mingled with the vintagers, and occupied him- 
 self with athletic sports. Here, too, he enjoyed 
 
MARCUS AURELIUS. 22 7 
 
 more exclusively the society and conversation 
 of his mother, from whom, he tells us, he 
 learned piety and beneficence, and abstinence 
 not only from evil deeds, but even from evil 
 thoughts, and simplicity in his way of living 
 far removed from the habits of the rich. By 
 her influence also he was strengthened to pre- 
 serve intact the virginal flower of his youth. 
 Nor does he forget to mention the admirable 
 precepts given by his tutors, who taught him 
 to love work, to deny himself, to endure mis- 
 fortunes without complaint, not to deviate from 
 his purpose, to be considerate of others, not to 
 listen to evil speech, to be grave without affec- 
 tation, and not to seek excuses for neglecting 
 duty. Rusticus, whom he thanks for having 
 made him acquainted with the " Discourses of 
 Epictetus," warned him against the study of 
 what is merely speculative or ornamental. The 
 example of his masters made a greater impres- 
 sion even than their words; and what touched 
 him most was their patience, firmness, equa- 
 nimity, mildness, beneficence, uprightness, and 
 sincerity. In these " Meditations " there is not 
 the faintest trace of vanity. He is lowly-minded 
 and the most modest of men. His candor and 
 truthfulness are perfect. A lie seems to him 
 to be an outrage upon his nature, upon the 
 
228 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 divinity that dwells in him. He strives not 
 only to think and feel, but to love what he 
 speaks. He is present in these thoughts, and 
 we almost seem to have bodily sight of him as 
 he lived and bore himself nearly eighteen hun- 
 dred years ago. 
 
 The habit of recollection, of self-examination 
 was recommended and practised by the Stoics 
 before the time of Marcus Aurelius. " Each 
 day," says Seneca, " we should call our soul to 
 account. This was the custom of Sextius, who, 
 before taking his nightly rest, invariably passed 
 his conduct in review : Of what fault hast thou 
 cured thyself to-day? What passion hast thou 
 combated? In what hast thou become better? " 
 And the philosopher goes on to tell us how each 
 evening, when the light was taken from his 
 room, and his wife, from respect for his pious 
 practice, became silent, he also was accustomed 
 to recall whatever he had done or spoken during 
 the day, without dissimulating or omitting any- 
 thing whatever; and that when he found aught 
 blameworthy, he pardoned himself only on con- 
 dition that the fault should not again be com- 
 mitted. All that concerns a good life was 
 brought into this inquiry the right use of 
 time, the avoidance of the occasions of wrong- 
 doing, human respect, the keeping guard over 
 
MARCUS AUREL1US. 22Q 
 
 one's thoughts and words, mindfulness of the 
 presence of God, of the certainty of death, and 
 of the necessity of being prepared to meet it 
 with courage and dignity. We do not know 
 that Marcus Aurelius practised this daily and 
 methodical examination of conscience, but he 
 certainly habitually meditated the great moral 
 truths, living in ideas, not in material interests ; 
 in principles, not in passions. In his youth even, 
 as we learn from one of his letters to Pronto, 
 he was accustomed to make extracts from the 
 books he read, and to these little volumes, into 
 which he had gathered the fine essence of the 
 best writers, he doubtless often recurred. In 
 this way he cultivated a taste for the brief and 
 pregnant sayings of the Stoic and other philos- 
 ophers, and found in them new incentives to 
 lead a worthy life. A great thought, a winged 
 word may have power not only to rouse the 
 conscience and the will, but it may remain with 
 us as a permanent stimulus to virtuous con- 
 duct. A phrase may fasten itself in the mind 
 as though rivetted with bolts of steel, or it may 
 insinuate itself into the current of our opinions 
 and beliefs, and, blending with it, make the 
 waters of life purer and sweeter. He loved 
 thoughts of this kind, and he has written many 
 which will continue to be a source of joy and 
 
230 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. ' 
 
 strength as long as generous minds and hearts 
 shall be found on earth. What he says has 
 additional charm and power because he says it, 
 because it is the utterance of a genuine man, 
 the purity and nobleness of whose character can- 
 not be called in question, the testimony which 
 his contemporaries bore to his wisdom, mag- 
 nanimity, and goodness being confirmed by the 
 consenting voice of succeeding generations. 
 How pleasant and invigorating it is to read 
 considerations like these : " Such as thy habit- 
 ual thoughts, such also will be the character of 
 thy mind, for the soul is dyed by the thoughts. 
 Dye it then with a continuous series of such 
 thoughts as these; for instance, that where a 
 man can live, there he can also live well. Live 
 with the gods. Hold good to consist in the 
 disposition to justice and the practice of it, and 
 in this let thy desire terminate. The greatest 
 part of what we say or do being unnecessary, 
 if a man takes this away, he will have more 
 leisure and less uneasiness. We ought to check 
 in the series of our thoughts everything that is 
 without a purpose and useless. What more dost 
 thou want when thou hast done a man a ser- 
 vice? Art thou not content that thou hast done 
 something conformable to thy nature, and dost 
 thou seek to be paid for it, just as if the eye 
 
MARCUS AURELIUS. 231 
 
 ./ 
 
 demanded a recompense for seeing or the feet 
 for walking? Have I done something for the 
 general good? Well, then, I have had my re- 
 ward. Let it not be in any man's power to say 
 truly of thee that thou art not simple or that 
 thou art not good, but let him be a liar who- 
 ever shall think anything of this kind about 
 thee. Let men see, let them know a real man 
 who lives according to Nature. If they cannot 
 endure him, let them kill him. Look within. 
 Within is the fountain of good, and it will ever 
 bubble up if thou wilt ever dig." 
 
 Epictetus and Seneca had taught much of 
 what is best in the " Thoughts " of Marcus 
 Aurelius, but in his company we seem to 
 breathe the air of a higher and serener world. 
 He is meek and patient, affectionate and help- 
 ful. In his words there is nothing to recall the 
 hard and haughty spirit of stoicism. He lives 
 with his soul, but he finds the good of life in 
 doing good. He is a worker, not a dreamer. 
 He strives always to behave like a Roman, like 
 a man; he never thinks of himself apart from 
 his fellow-men. What is not useful for the 
 swarm is not useful for the bee. His purpose 
 is to keep himself holy, and to labor for the 
 salvation of men, for the welfare of society. 
 He seeks inner perfection in the midst of courts 
 
232 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 and camps, but neglects no duty which his high 
 office imposes. In his tent, surrounded by bar- 
 barous hordes, he directs his armies, and still 
 has time to write his tender and lofty thoughts. 
 In these he finds the strength to bear the awful 
 burden which is laid upon him. Each morning 
 he reminds himself that he awakens to do a 
 man's work. Philosophy is his mother, while 
 the court is but a stepmother. " Return to phi- 
 losophy frequently, and repose in her, through 
 whom what thou meetest with in the court ap- 
 pears to thee tolerable, and thou appearest toler- 
 able in the court." He is conscious of the 
 temptations and dangers of his exalted posi- 
 tion, and frequently makes them the subject of 
 his " Meditations." " Take care that thou be 
 not made into a Caesar, that thou be not dyed 
 with this dye, for such things happen. Keep 
 thyself, then, simple, good, pure, serious, free 
 from affectation, a friend of justice, a worship- 
 per of the gods, kind, affectionate, strenuous in 
 all proper acts. Strive to continue to be such 
 as philosophy wished to make thee. Reverence 
 the gods, and help men." He encourages him- 
 self in this noble purpose by recalling the ex- 
 ample of Antoninus, his adoptive father his 
 constancy, his evenness in all things, his piety, 
 the serenity of his countenance, his sweetness, 
 
MARCUS AURELIUS. 233 
 
 his disregard of empty fame, and his efforts to 
 understand things. He remembers how he bore 
 with those who blamed him unjustly; how he 
 did nothing in a hurry; how he refused to 
 listen to calumnies; how he was content with 
 little; how laborious, patient, and firm he was; 
 how tolerant of those who opposed his opinions ; 
 how eager to learn. 
 
 Men must have a chief, as the world a ruler, 
 the herd a leader; but this chief is not above 
 the laws. His ideal is that " of a polity in which 
 there is the same law for all, a polity admin- 
 istered with regard to equal rights and equal 
 freedom of speech, and the idea of a kingly 
 government which respects most of all the free- 
 dom of the governed.'' He abhors whatever is 
 arbitrary or unjust, and finds nothing so odious 
 as the character of a tyrant, which he couples 
 with such epithets as black, bestial, animal, 
 stupid, counterfeit, scurrilous, and fraudulent. 
 He admires the martyrs of patriotism who have 
 been the victims of tyrannical emperors. His 
 knowledge of the incredible cruelties of some of 
 his predecessors on the imperial throne seemed 
 to drive him almost to excessive leniency. 
 When he heard of the assassination of Avidius 
 Cassius, who at the head of the armies of Asia 
 had revolted, and against whom he was march- 
 
234 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. " 
 
 ing, he said he was sorry to be deprived of the 
 pleasure of pardoning him. He does not think 
 with the elder Stoics that to be virtuous one 
 must be harsh and unbending. " In mildness 
 and goodness," he says, " there is a higher 
 quality of manliness." His constant aim is to 
 unite benignity with firmness. He does not 
 wish to be too severe even with himself. " It 
 is not right that I should afflict myself, I who 
 have never willingly given pain to any one." 
 He has the tenderness and delicacy of soul of 
 a noble woman. There is a large benevolence 
 and sympathy in his judgment of men, even 
 when they are perverse. He is ever ready to 
 be of help ; he is full of affection and clemency. 
 The temple he built he dedicated to Goodness, 
 a divinity hitherto unknown in Rome. " Love 
 men," he says, " but with a genuine love." 
 " Thou dost not yet love men with all thy 
 heart." " It is not enough to forgive ; thou 
 must love those who do thee wrong." The 
 only revenge he permits is to make one's self 
 unlike the evil-doer. Correct, if thou canst, the 
 wicked ; if not, suffer them : for this, good-will 
 has been given thee. Be like the vine, which 
 bears its fruit and asks no reward. For the 
 rest, to be a blessing to others is to be a friend 
 to one's self. When there is question of doing 
 
MARCUS AURELIUS. 23$ 
 
 good, one should be of those who know not 
 what they c.o a benefactor without thinking 
 that any one is his debtor. What may be 
 called his great precept is : Love mankind ; fol- 
 low God. He has no weak thoughts about his 
 own happiness. It is well enough with him 
 when he lives in accord with universal law, 
 when he fulfils his duties as a child of God and 
 a member of the whole human family. Besides, 
 has he not a sure refuge within his own heart, 
 where at every moment he may live with the 
 thoughts which give peace to the soul? It is 
 not necessary for him to seek the seashore or 
 the mountains to avoid distractions, for it is 
 always in his power to retire into himself, and 
 to find there the things which induce the tran- 
 quil mind those brief and fundamental prin- 
 ciples which, whenever he recurs to them, make 
 him calm and strong, and send him back free 
 from all discontent to his appointed work. Thus 
 he lives in intimate communion with the divin- 
 ity present within him, and seeks in the contem- 
 plation of the laws of reason protection from 
 temptation, discouragement, and weakness. His 
 favorite virtues are justice and truth ; but he is 
 in tune with whatever makes for magnanimity, 
 freedom, strength, and holiness of life. He 
 cares not for fame, or wealth, or power, or 
 
236 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 pleasure. Things are largely what we think 
 they are, and if we but understand that virtue 
 is the only essential good, we shall not deem 
 poverty, or ill health, or pain, or death an evil. 
 One may be a divine man and be unknown, 
 while they who are praised are praised, for the 
 most part, ignorantly or by the false and the 
 fickle. What, after all, is man? The earth is 
 but a point, and the present in which alone we 
 can live but a moment lost between two in- 
 finities. Fame is good when it increases the 
 will and the power to do good, else it is naught, 
 mere sound, and emptiness. The clapping of 
 hands and the clapping of tongues are vanities 
 in which none but the childish take delight. 
 The emotion with which he touches on the 
 favorite theme of dull and gloomy declaimers 
 the hollowness and evanescence of human 
 life and grandeur imparts a certain charm 
 and freshness to his words : " Consider the 
 times of Vespasian! Thou wilt see all these 
 things people marrying, bringing up chil- 
 dren, sick, dying, warring, feasting, trafficking, 
 cultivating the ground, flattering, obstinately 
 arrogant, suspecting, plotting, wishing for 
 somebody to die, grumbling about the present, 
 loving, heaping up treasure, desiring to be con- 
 suls or kings. We see, then, that the life of these 
 
MARCUS AURELIUS. 237 
 
 people no longer exists at all. Again, go to 
 the times of Trajan. All is again the same. 
 Their life, too, is gone." He is full of com- 
 monplaces on this and kindred subjects. He 
 does not weary of them, but hunts for argu- 
 ments and comparisons to express his sense of 
 the worthlessness of fame, of the shortness of 
 life, and the vanity of all things, especially 
 of those which attract with the bait of pleasure 
 or terrify by pain, or are noised abroad by the 
 voices of men. What belongs to the body is 
 a stream, and what belongs to the soul is a 
 dream and a vapor. All pass quickly and are 
 buried in oblivion, both they who remember 
 and they who are remembered. As he grows 
 older his sense of the hopeless sadness of life 
 grows keener. He is still resigned, still obedi- 
 ent to the eternal laws, but he advances into 
 ever-deepening gloom, where no ray of light 
 falls. His health was broken, and the evils 
 which he had worn himself out in trying to 
 overcome were breaking forth again on every 
 side. In the midst of his own family he was 
 unhappy. His wife, though she has doubtless 
 been the victim of calumny, had ceased to sym- 
 pathize with him, and hated his friends. She 
 had grown weary of his philosophy and of the 
 society of philosophers. His austerity, his mel- 
 
238 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 ancholy, his aversion to gayety and splendor, his 
 grave maxims, were offensive to her pleasure- 
 craving nature. Though he gave no heed to 
 the malicious rumors about her, though he con- 
 tinued to love her as " his good and faithful 
 spouse," he was depressed by the knowledge 
 of her lack of heart for him. Commodus, his 
 son and successor, was a cause of still more 
 poignant sorrow than Faustina. He was a 
 mere animal, without intelligence or feeling, 
 and though but seventeen years old at the time 
 of his father's death, he had already manifested 
 something of the dispositions which made him 
 later one of the most brutal tyrants by whom 
 the world has been cursed. 
 
 The emperor has been blamed for not dis- 
 inheriting him and adopting some one worthy 
 to rule; but he had been proclaimed Caesar 
 while yet a boy, and by the time his evil nature 
 had revealed itself Marcus was too infirm to 
 take so decisive a step. In fact, it would have 
 been necessary to murder him, for had he been 
 left alive the military party, already disgusted 
 with the rule of the philosophers, as shown in 
 the revolt of Avidius, would have placed him 
 at the head of the army, and plunged the em- 
 pire into the horrors of civil war. And then 
 what is more natural than that a father should 
 
MARCUS AURELIUS. 239 
 
 believe that time and responsibility would cor- 
 rect the faults of his youthful son? Neverthe- 
 less, Commodus filled him with forebodings and 
 increased his weight of care and pain, which al- 
 ready was too heavy for his declining strength. 
 His friends are dead, the barbarians are in arms, 
 the corruption of morals is spreading, faith in 
 the gods has degenerated into gross supersti- 
 tion, the reforms which he had labored to bring 
 about are superficial and ineffectual, the laws 
 had been made better, but the life of the people 
 continued to become more false and brutal, the 
 army was losing its old-time loyalty and dis- 
 cipline on all sides the signs of decadence 
 were manifest. 
 
 In the midst of a falling world, in the pres- 
 ence of the northern hordes, menacing destruc- 
 tion and ruin, the emperor still meditates, still 
 studies how he may fortify his soul. He does 
 not despise death, but waits for it, content to 
 see it come. It will deliver him from the sight 
 of the corruption by which he is surrounded. 
 His departure will not be from men who have 
 the same principles as himself. " Come quick, 
 O Death! lest perchance I, too, should forget 
 myself/' There will not be lacking those who 
 are glad to see him go, whose lives his very 
 presence condemns : " Let us at last breathe 
 
240 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 freely, being relieved from this schoolmaster/' 
 In dying he will go away from those for whom 
 he strove, prayed, and cared so much, but who 
 nevertheless wish to see him depart, hoping 
 thereby to get some little advantage. " Why, 
 then, should he desire to stay longer ? " It is 
 better to be dead than to live as they. Thou 
 art in the grasp of fatal laws; be not like a 
 pig that squeals and struggles when it is sacri- 
 ficed, but accept with resignation what destiny 
 decrees. Men are but leaves which the wind 
 seizes and scatters on the ground. Thus weari- 
 ness of life grows upon him, until he seems to 
 be without God and without hope in the world. 
 In fact, he had neither a philosophy nor a reli- 
 gion which can satisfy the human heart. He 
 was never able to settle for himself the ultimate 
 problems, the foundations of all ethical princi- 
 ples God, immortality, and the freedom of 
 the will. He speaks as a polytheist, or a theist, 
 or a pantheist, according to his mood. At 
 Athens he founded chairs of philosophy for 
 the Platonic, Stoic, Peripatetic, and Epicurean 
 schools, giving the same honor to the atheist 
 as to the believer in the gods. At times he 
 seems to doubt even that to which he holds 
 most firmly. His grasp of speculative truth is 
 feeble; he is strong and helpful only as a 
 
MARCUS AURELIUS. 241 
 
 teacher of the conduct of life. Outside of this 
 we find in him little but uncertainty and con- 
 fusion. His moral principles even rest on no 
 foundation of dogma, or, if on any, it is that 
 of cosmic pantheism. His theology is as vague 
 and variable as his philosophy. He has no 
 settled convictions concerning the soul and its 
 immortality. When our little boat comes to 
 shore and we get out, he leaves it undecided 
 whether it is to enter on another life or simply 
 to lose all sensation, to cease to be. His 
 thought moves between alternatives. " To go 
 from among men, if there are gods, is not a 
 thing to be afraid of, for the gods will not in- 
 volve thee in evil; but if, indeed, they do not 
 exist, or if they have no concern about human 
 affairs, what is it to me to live in a universe 
 devoid of gods or devoid of providence?" 
 Then he reassures himself and declares that 
 the gods do exist, and that they do care for 
 human things; at least they place the avoid- 
 ance of real evils in a man's power. But death 
 and life, honor and dishonor, pain and pleasure, 
 are neither good nor evil, and therefore they 
 happen alike to all. God is for him the uni- 
 versal reason, the immutable law which governs 
 all things. He is the whole, He is nature it- 
 self; the indwelling force which gives order 
 16 
 
242 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 and beauty to the universe. How this divinity, 
 this inexorable fate, is to be reconciled with 
 providence and with the freedom of the will, or 
 to be made an object of prayer and adoration, 
 he does not attempt to explain. " Out of the 
 universe from the beginning everything which 
 happens has been apportioned and spun out to 
 thee." " Accept everything which happens, 
 even if it seem disagreeable, because it leads 
 to this, to the health of the universe and to the 
 prosperity and felicity of Zeus." Here he joins 
 theism and pantheism, but by Zeus he really 
 means the universe, the universal substance of 
 which the individual has but a very small por- 
 tion. As this universal substance exists neces- 
 sarily, from it by fatal laws the thread of each 
 one's destiny is spun. " Whatever may happen 
 to thee was prepared for thee from all eternity, 
 and the implication of causes was from eternity 
 spinning the thread of thy being." At times 
 he seems to regard the universe as an immense 
 animal, " one living being, having one sub- 
 stance and one soul." But it is perhaps wrong 
 to insist on the theoretical views of a man who 
 had little intellectual curiosity, and cared hardly 
 at all for what is speculative. Still it is im- 
 possible not to recognize that he himself felt 
 that the help which pantheism can offer the soul 
 
MARCUS AURELIUS. 243 
 
 is ineffectual. Even a philosopher can derive 
 small comfort from the thought that his ab- 
 sorption into the mass of matter is for the inter- 
 est of the All, which contains nothing that is 
 not for its advantage. For the multitude such 
 a belief is without worth or meaning. Stoic 
 morality is interesting chiefly on account of its 
 influence upon men like Epictetus and Marcus 
 Aurelius, who found in it a source of strength 
 in the midst of the universal corruption in which 
 Greco-Roman civilization was disappearing. It 
 could never have become a principle of social 
 regeneration. The fatalism on which it rests 
 makes enthusiasm impossible. Its resignation 
 is despondency; its indifference hopelessness. 
 It lacks vitality and joyousness. There is in 
 it no love of life, no belief in progress. The 
 Stoic sage stands alone, conscious of his own 
 virtue, in the midst of a world of liars and 
 hypocrites. He is not angry with men; he is 
 kind even, and glad to be of help; but, in 
 truth, he has little sympathy with them. They 
 are blind and perverse, an infinite number of 
 fools, who are deprived of that which alone can 
 make life bearable. Hence stoicism necessarily 
 fails. It can neither interest nor influence the 
 mass of mankind. It is dry and hard. It in- 
 spires no glad emotion, no immortal hope. It 
 
244 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 does not thrill the soul with the consciousness 
 that Life is lord of Death, that truth and love 
 lie at the heart of being, that whether we live 
 or whether we die we are borne in the arms of 
 the eternal Father, who knows and cares for 
 each, even the least of His children. It cannot 
 make us feel that the loving spirit of God leads 
 us forth into the land of righteousness, that we 
 are reborn into a kingdom of peace and joy 
 and blessedness. It cannot give the faith which 
 overcomes all things, and guides us through the 
 portals of death into everlasting life. It has no 
 words of pardon and comfort for sinners who 
 repent. The power that was to regenerate the 
 world was already active under the eyes of 
 Marcus Aurelius, but was wholly misunder- 
 stood by him. He alludes to the Christian re- 
 ligion once only. " What a soul/' he writes, 
 " that is which is ready, if at any moment it 
 must be separated from the body, and ready 
 either to be extinguished, or dispersed, or to 
 continue to exist; but so that this readiness 
 comes from a man's own judgment, not from 
 mere obstinacy, as with the Christians ! " From 
 his point of view the martyrs were obdurate 
 fanatics and enemies of the empire. Of his 
 humanity and tolerance there can be no doubt, 
 but, unfortunately, there can be just as little 
 
MARCUS AURELIUS. 245 
 
 doubt that he persecuted the Christians, or at 
 the least permitted them to be persecuted. In- 
 tensely moral natures are apt to be narrow and 
 rigid, and though several apologies for the new 
 faith were addressed to him, he either never 
 read them or was incapable of taking a world- 
 view so utterly opposed to that of the Stoic 
 philosophy. They who are placed in high sta- 
 tions are often the last to see the real trend of 
 things, for the possession of power, like the 
 possession of wealth or the indulgence of ap- 
 petite, seems to impede insight; and this kind- 
 hearted and spiritual-minded man had not a 
 suspicion of the true nature of the teaching of 
 Christ. It did not appeal to him as a philos- 
 ophy, and as a religion it seemed to him athe- 
 istic, for it denied the existence of the gods 
 whom he revered and whose worship he thought 
 inseparable from loyalty to the empire. He felt, 
 as all the thoughtful minds of the time felt, that 
 here was a new spirit, which, if it should pre- 
 vail, would lead to the overthrow of the old 
 civilization. He may not have held with Taci- 
 tus that the Christians were convicted of hatred 
 of the human race, but he believed that they 
 were the enemies of the Roman state. The 
 ancients looked upon religion as essentially a na- 
 tional affair. They had no conception of what 
 
246 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 we understand by liberty of conscience. The 
 appeal from Caesar to God was for them mean- 
 ingless, if not impious. When the Christians 
 declared that they were ready to obey all civil 
 and military laws, but reserved to themselves 
 freedom to worship God according to the prin- 
 ciples of their faith, which forbade them to offer 
 sacrifice to idols, they uttered words which their 
 enemies could not understand, words which 
 Christians themselves in later ages have often 
 been unable or unwilling to understand. 
 
 It was but two or three years before the 
 death of Marcus Aurelius that the persecution 
 broke forth at Lyons. The emperor, who be- 
 came prematurely old, was in feeble health and 
 surrounded by dangers and difficulties. The 
 populace, eager to believe the Christians guilty 
 of the most atrocious crimes, attributed what- 
 ever evils befell the state to the anger of the 
 gods against their contemners, and clamored 
 for their punishment. The emperor yielded to 
 the popular fury, and the church of Lyons gave 
 to the world an example of heroism which, if 
 ever equalled, has never been surpassed. It is 
 the very irony of fate that Marcus Aurelius 
 should be counted among the persecutors of the 
 Christians, that his name should be coupled 
 with those of Nero and Domitian. It is doubt- 
 
MARCUS AURELIUS. 24? 
 
 ful whether he himself issued a new edict or 
 simply permitted those of his predecessors to 
 be enforced. Melito, Bishop of Sardis, who 
 addressed a letter to the emperor, leads us to 
 suppose that he had sent forth decrees which 
 resulted in the martyrdom of St. Polycarp, 
 Bishop of Smyrna, ten years before the per- 
 secution at Lyons. 
 
 On the other hand, Tertullian, writing twenty 
 years after the death of Marcus Aurelius, affirms 
 in the most positive manner that he protected 
 the Christians; that if he did not expressly re- 
 voke the edicts of former emperors against them, 
 he at least rendered them ineffective by estab- 
 lishing penalties against their accusers. It seems 
 probable that he was not an active persecutor; 
 but he certainly lived and died with an utter 
 misconception of the religion which even then 
 was the only vital force left to a perishing 
 world. 
 
 He was, nevertheless, one of the most just 
 and clement of men. There is little genuine 
 wisdom and goodness anywhere, and what there 
 is is rarely found in the palaces of kings and 
 emperors. Let us try to imagine a European 
 ruler or an American President of our day who 
 should be busy with the thoughts and aspira- 
 tions of Marcus Aurelius. The mere idea seems 
 
248 GLIMPSES OF TRUTH. 
 
 to be grotesque. He is one in whom the wise 
 have recognized the genuine goodness which 
 has the mark of universality, which, like the 
 best culture, lifts its possessor above party and 
 country, and makes him a blessing for mankind 
 and for all time. 
 
 In reading his " Meditations " we are always 
 in the presence of a magnanimous man, of a 
 great soul whose kindliness and good faith we 
 cannot doubt unless we ourselves lack love and 
 truth. He will remain in literature as one of its 
 great spiritual forces. He has the vital touch 
 which gives immortality, because it reveals a 
 noble and interesting personality. There is in 
 him the indefinable something which makes 
 writing literature. It is doubtless largely sin- 
 cerity, the perfect truthfulness which makes the 
 word the mirror of the man. Much of what 
 he says is said by Seneca and Epictetus, but in 
 it there is an accent of his own which gives it 
 a fresh meaning, a new quality. In these dis- 
 connected " Thoughts/' in spite of repetitions, 
 of incorrectness, and obscurity, there breathes 
 a soul that cannot die, there stands forth a char- 
 acter which all men must deem it a privilege to 
 know. The book is alive with the high and rare 
 qualities which go to the making of a true and 
 noble man. In the little casket found in the 
 
MARCUS AURELIUS. 249 
 
 tent on the Danube where he died there was 
 stored a life which death could not extinguish. 
 The " Meditations " with which he fortified his 
 own spirit in the struggle for better and higher 
 life have consoled and will continue to console 
 kindred spirits in every age; for whatever his 
 doubts and misgivings, his faith in duty and 
 affection, in the supreme worth of righteous- 
 ness, was never shaken. His victories are for- 
 gotten; his efforts to improve the laws, to 
 spread enlightenment, to help the orphans, are 
 hardly remembered; but fame, for which he 
 cared not at all, is his forever, and of our many 
 vanities perhaps the least vain is the fame which 
 rests on words that never lose their power to 
 inspire, to illumine, and to strengthen. The 
 whole earth is the sepulchre of illustrious men, 
 but it is so only when the greatness of soul 
 which shone forth in their lives is kept in im- 
 perishable vigor in some immortal book. 
 
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