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GIFT OF , 
 
THE WORLD BEAUTIFUL. 
 
By the Same Author: 
 
 The World Beautiful. 
 
 Scconti S'crirs. 
 l6mo. Cloth. $1.00. 
 
 White and Gold. $1.25. 
 
 From Dreamland Sent. 
 
 l6mo. Cloth. $1.25. 
 
 Roberts Brothers, Boston. 
 
THE 
 
 World Beautiful. 
 
 BY 
 
 LILIAN WHITING. 
 
 *Tis heaven alone that Is given away; 
 'T IS ouiy God may be had for the asking. 
 
 Lowell 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS. 
 
 1897. 
 

 EDUC. 
 
 PSYCH. 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 Copyright, ISO^, 
 By Roberts Brothers. 
 
 Cs^ <^ "i- > YXN . VU ^^^ 
 
 John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, Mass., U S. A. 
 
TO 
 
 Z\]t Mtmors, anU tf)e 15i)er4iijm3 33tesntce 
 
 OF 
 
 PHILLIPS BROOKS, 
 
 Bishop of 3Iassachusetis, 
 
 AND "THE FRIEND AND AIDER OF ALL WHO WOULD 
 LIVE IN THE SPIRIT," 
 
 These papers are reverently inscribed hy 
 
 LILIAN WHITING. 
 
 383310 
 
COIN'TENTS. 
 
 W^t raorltJ Beautiful. 
 
 Page 
 
 The Duty of Happiness 11 
 
 Nectar and Ambrosia 13 
 
 Believe in the Wings 21 
 
 The Vision and the Splendor 26 
 
 Jtientisfjip. 
 
 The Enlargement op Relations .... 39 
 
 Friends Discovered, not Made .... 47 
 
 A Psychological Problem 57 
 
 The Supreme Luxury of Life 64 
 
 (©ur Social ^albation. 
 
 ^Exclusiveness and Inclusiveness ... 75 
 
 Through Scorning Nothing 86 
 
 The Woman of the World 90 
 
 The Potency of Charm 93 
 
 > Fine Souls and Fine Society 97 
 
yiii Contents. 
 
 ilottis-'iSating. 
 
 Page 
 
 Vice and Advice Ill 
 
 One's Own AVay 116 
 
 Writing in Sympathetic Ink 120 
 
 Success as a Fine Art 125 
 
 A Common Experience 132 
 
 STJat infji'd) is to Come. 
 
 Intimations and Promptings 145 
 
 Through Struggle to Achievement . . 149 
 
 A Question of the Day 159 
 
 The Law of Overcoming 165 
 
 In Newness of Life 171 
 
 The Heavenly Vision 185 
 
THE WORLD BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 The Fairest enchants me, 
 The Mighty commands me, 
 Saying, '^ Stand in thy place 
 Up and Eastward turn thy Face, 
 So thou attend the enriching fate 
 Which none can stay, and none accelerate." 
 
 Emerson. 
 
THE WORLD BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 THE DUTY OF HAPPINESS. 
 
 ^FTER all, it rests with ourselves as 
 to whether we shall live in a World 
 Beautiful. It depends little on ex- 
 ternal scenery, little on those circumstances 
 outside our personal control. Like the 
 kingdom of heaven, it is not a locality, but 
 a condition. It is a spiritual state, and de- 
 pends on our degree of receptivity to the 
 influence of the Holy Spirit. We have all 
 of us met persons whose very presence is a 
 benediction ; who harmonize and tranquillize 
 those about them, and with whom we feel on 
 a higher and serener plane. The world is dis- 
 tinctively the better for these benignant spir- 
 its ; but such lives are not only to be enjoyed, 
 
1*2 The Ti 01 hi Beautiful. 
 
 not only to be recognized and appreciated, 
 but to be lived as well. As the poet has it : 
 
 '* Be thou the true man thou dost seek ! ^ 
 
 If one admires tlie patience, gentleness, 
 sweetness, and unfailing energy of another; 
 if he finds himself renewed and invigorated 
 and inspired by such contact, — why does he 
 not himself so live that he may bring the 
 same renewal and inspiration to others ? The 
 responsibility is on each and all of us to live 
 on the ideal plane ; to realize in outward 
 action, in every deed and word, those quali- 
 ties which we recognize as pertaining to the 
 higher life. For it is these that produce the 
 spiritual. And to live this higher life is to 
 live in happiness, even in holiness. It is 
 the life of peace and love and joy ; it is the 
 life of larger sympathies, and, as a result, of 
 larGjer interests. The more liberal the svm- 
 pathy, the more is tlie interest of life ex- 
 tended ; and the more extended one's range 
 of interests, the more does one multiply the 
 means and resources of happiness. 
 
The Duty of Happiness. 13 
 
 There has been of late a new form of phil- 
 anthropic work which is known by the gen- 
 eral name of "college settlements." It is 
 simply for one individual, or several, to go 
 into the poorer quarters of a city and live 
 as a neighbor to the ignorant, the defective, 
 the very poor, or the degraded. It is less a 
 mission than it is a ministiy, — the natural 
 and informal ministry of right-doing. It is 
 to found a home which shall be a stand- 
 ing object-lesson in better ways of living ; 
 which shall illustrate the beauty of order, 
 of cleanliness, of gentle ways, of generous 
 thoughtfulness, of friendly sympathy. The 
 men and women who are doing this do not 
 keep a house of correction, or a house of 
 refuge, or an asylum of any kind. They 
 keep a home. They do not go out into 
 the highways and the byways to preach or 
 to teach, ostensibly, but they endeavor so to 
 order their lives as to give constantly the 
 indirect teaching of example. Perhaps it is 
 no exaggeration to say that to a greater or 
 less degree they show forth the beauty of holi- 
 
14 The World Beautiful 
 
 ncss. There is a twofold blessing in such liv- 
 ing as this, — it blesses him who gives and 
 him who takes, — and perhaps of all forms of 
 humanitarian work it is the one best calcu- 
 lated to effect good results. 
 
 But if the larger number of people wait to 
 make some specific change in life before en- 
 deavoring to realize their higher ideals in con- 
 duct, if a change of location and general 
 rearrangement and readjustment of method 
 and detail must precede tlie better living, 
 then will it be more than likely to be inde- 
 finitely postponed. 
 
 Why, indeed, should not the principle of 
 the college settlement be carried into living 
 under the usual surroundings ? Why not fill 
 one's usual place in life, do one's usual work, 
 — meet the customary duties, pleasures, cour- 
 tesies, only meeting them from new motives, 
 and inspiring the duties with higher purposes ? 
 It is not only the poor, the ignorant, or even 
 the degraded, who need to have good done 
 them ; who need the sunniness of hope, the 
 sweetness of content, the renewal of courage, 
 
The Duty of Happiness. 15 
 
 the unfaltering devotion to heroism. People 
 are not necessarily rich in happiness or in 
 hope, because they live in more or less luxury 
 of the material comforts and privileges of life. 
 There is just as much need of the ministry of 
 higher ideals to the comfortable as to the un- 
 comfortable, to the intelligent as to the igno- 
 rant, to those who are reaching forward after 
 truth and progress as to those who are reced- 
 ing from them. There is a vast amount of 
 enthusiasm in the world over helping the un- 
 fortunate and defective and degraded classes, 
 and so far as this zeal is genuine and discreet, 
 it is to be commended ; but the righteous as 
 well as the sinner, the moral as well as the 
 immoral, the refined as well as the rude, are 
 not altogether unworthy some degree of both 
 private and public consideration. 
 
 Unfailing though tfulness of others in all 
 those trifles that make up daily contact in 
 daily life, sweetness of spirit, the exhilaration 
 of gladness and of joy, and that exaltation of 
 feeling which is the inevitable result of mental 
 peace and loving thought, — these make up 
 
16 The World Beautiful. 
 
 the World Beautiful, in which eaeh one may 
 live as in an atmosphere always attending his 
 presence. 
 
 Like the kingdom of heaven, the World 
 Beautiful is within ; and it is not only a privi- 
 lege, but an absolute duty, so to live that we 
 are always in its atmosphere. Happiness, like 
 health, is the normal state ; and when this is 
 not felt, the cause should be looked for, just 
 as in illness the causes should be scrutinized 
 and removed. 
 
 Live in the sweet, sunny atmosphere of 
 serenity and light and exaltation, — in that 
 love and loveliness that creates the World 
 Beautiful. 
 
 Nectar Nectar and ambrosia should not 
 and be regarded as refreshment sacred 
 
 "^ ^° ^ ■ only to festive occasions, but as 
 human nature's daily food. It is the natural 
 sustenance of life, not a luxury for an occa- 
 sional holiday. It is the initial business and 
 purpose of life to be happy ; and, lest the mor- 
 
Nectar and Ambrosia. 17 
 
 alist should object to this as a frivolous propo- 
 sition, it may be added that it is that true 
 happiness synonymous with holiness which is 
 meant, — the quality of happiness that mani- 
 fests itself in abounding energy and good-will^ 
 that radiates exhilaration and enthusiasm. 
 This state should be regarded as the normal 
 condition of life ; and when one is below it, 
 he should inquire into the reason, and see if 
 it is not a result of causes which can be re- 
 moved or changed. No one has any more 
 right to go about unhappy than he has to go 
 about ill-bred. He owes it to himself, to his 
 friends, to society and the community in gen- 
 eral, to live up to his best spiritual possibili- 
 ties, not only now and then, once or twice a 
 year, or once in a season, but every day and 
 every hour. The aim of spiritual perfection 
 is one that should never be lost from view. 
 
 For this state of positive exhilaration and 
 enjoyment whose results are abounding energy 
 and radiant good-will, no price is too great to 
 pay. Emerson truly says that life is an ec- 
 stasy, and nothing less is really living. And to 
 
 2 
 
18 The World Beauti/ul. 
 
 achieve this state requires new elements all 
 the time. It may not always require change 
 of location ; material change is of little impor- 
 tance compared to that mental variety which 
 is the secret of advancing life. To lay hold 
 on new ideas, to climb to new spiritual 
 heights, is the change which is growth and 
 development, and which brings one into touch 
 with new atmospheres. 
 
 To go about moping, depressed, blue, out 
 of spirits in general, is to exist but not to live. 
 It is the condition of a mollusk and unworthy 
 a human being. Worry is a state of spiritual 
 corrosion. A trouble either can be remedied, 
 or it cannot. If it can be, then set about it ; 
 if it cannot be, dismiss it from consciousness, 
 or bear it so bravely that it may become 
 transfigured to a blessing. 
 
 A great deal of life is lost in getting ready, 
 as is commonly believed, to live. To scorn 
 delights and live laborious days ; to bind one's 
 self to an unceasing and unchanging routine, 
 as Ixion to his wheel, for the sake of amassing 
 money that some time, in a dim and abstract 
 
Nectar and Ambrosia, 19 
 
 future, one may begin to live, — is simply to 
 attempt building a superstructure without a 
 foundation. Life stretches on like an endless 
 chain, whose initial links we know not, nor 
 yet those to come. But that we are each day 
 the sum of all that we ever have been is a 
 truth as undeniable as any of exact mathema- 
 tics. We cannot skip a single link. One act, 
 one mood, predetermines another. 
 
 *' Man is his own star ; and the soul that can 
 Render an honest and a perfect man, 
 Commands all light, all influence, all fate ; 
 Nothing to him falls early or too late. 
 Our acts our angels are, or good or ill, 
 Our fatal shadows that walk by us still." ^ 
 
 Now, happiness produces happiness. En- 
 joyment may be cultivated, and is, after all, 
 largely a condition of habit. Precisely the 
 same circumstances will yield delight to one 
 and discontent to another, and no process of 
 culture is so admirable as that w^hich fosters 
 the habitual mood of sunny enjoyment. 
 
 No price is too great to pay for the mood 
 of inspiration. Draw out the money in the 
 
 1 Epilogue to Beaumont and Fletcher's Honest Man's Fortunes. 
 
20 The World Beautiful. 
 
 bank, if need be, and invest it in travel, 
 change, books, social life ; so shall its value 
 return to you a thousandfold. 
 
 It will yield an interest on a richer invest- 
 ment than that of bank accounts ; and not only 
 interest, but interest compounded innumerable 
 times and at an accelerated ratio. Acquire 
 the habit of expecting success, of believing in 
 happiness. Nothing succeeds like success ; 
 nothing makes happiness like happiness. 
 
 " The aim — at least in this way alone can 
 I look at human life — is not to make rich 
 and successful, but noble and enlightened 
 men," says Bishop Spaulding. " Hence the 
 final thought in all work is that we work not 
 to have more, but to be more ; not for higher 
 place, but for greater worth ; not for fame, 
 but for knowledge. In a word, the final 
 thought is that we labor to upbuild the being 
 which we are, and not merely to build round 
 our real self with marble and gold and pre- 
 cious stones. This is but the Christian teach- 
 ing whicli has transformed tlie world. The 
 end is infinite, the aim must be the highest. 
 
Believe in the Wings. 21 
 
 Not to know this, not to hear the heavenly 
 invitation, is to be shut off from communion 
 with the best, is to be cut off from the source 
 of growth, is to be given over to modes of 
 thought which fatally lead to mediocrity and 
 vulgarity of life." 
 
 This plane of living is that on which alone 
 true work is done. 
 
 And the nectar and ambrosia are offered us 
 daily. We have only to recognize and receive. 
 Life is the result of a process of selection ; and 
 he only is the true artist who chooses the finer 
 elements and out of them creates his World 
 Beautiful. 
 
 Believe " ]\Jy brother Charles, among the 
 m the difficulties of our early ministry, 
 
 Wings. 
 
 used to say, ^ If the Lord would 
 give me wings, I would fly,' " related John 
 Wesley. " I used to answer, ' If the Lord bids 
 me fly, I would trust Him for the wings.' " 
 
 A more perfect commentary on life than 
 that contained in these words would be hard 
 
22 The World Beautiful. 
 
 to find; perfect in its truth and its applica- 
 bility to daily affairs. There need never be 
 the slightest hesitation in undertaking any- 
 thing that prefigures itself as the higher 
 leading. Between expediency and right pur- 
 pose there is simply no question at all. The 
 streno^th of all the hosts of heaven is with 
 him who is faithful to the right. 
 
 It is sometimes believed that conceit is 
 rather a universal attitude of early life, and 
 that, indeed, in inverse ratio to knowledge is 
 the egotism that masquerades for knowledge. 
 Yet it may be a question whether a still more 
 serious defect of life does not lie in the failure 
 to believe sufficiently in one's own powers, and 
 in failing to develop their full possibilities. 
 The firm conviction that one's own life is of 
 absolutely no consequence to the world ; that 
 it is beyond one's power to make any impress 
 on life ; that beyond the family, and the nearer 
 circle of friends, one's presence or absence, 
 ilhiess or health, death or life, is of no sort of 
 consequence, — is the conviction that is at least 
 as suicidal to worthy eftbrt as could be the 
 
Believe in the Wings, 23 
 
 most flimsy conceit and exaggerated egotism. 
 The deeper truth is that belief in one's pow- 
 ers to contribute something, at least, to the 
 general life, is in no sense an undue estimate 
 of his powers. It is, primarily, confidence in 
 God. It is the humble but sincere desire that 
 He will so shape our course, so direct our 
 faculties, that we can enter, however feebly, 
 into His great purposes. It is the belief so 
 happily expressed by John Wesley, that " if 
 the Lord bids me fly, I would trust him 
 for the wings." 
 
 There is a class of people who are compar- 
 atively valueless to the world because of a 
 certain morbidness which they are pleased to 
 call sensitiveness. In reality it is nothing of 
 the sort. It is self-love, — a refined variety 
 of it, to be sure, but none the less is it the 
 result of a selfishly subjective state, in which 
 they look in and not out, and down and not 
 up, and fail to lend a hand, — not from any 
 real unkindness or unwillingness, but simply 
 because they are looking in, and looking 
 down, and do not see the opportunity. They 
 
24 The World Beautiful 
 
 will tell you tliej are " so lonely " and '^ so 
 blue " and '' so unhappy " and so exceedingly 
 " misunderstood." Well, perhaps they are 
 misunderstood and undervalued. Often it is 
 true ; often they are persons of fine susceptibil- 
 ities (which they mistake for fine sympatliics), 
 and perhaps under different circumstances 
 would reveal qualities of a higher kind than 
 those they manifest. Environment is a very 
 determining influence, and there are probably 
 few of us who might not have been much 
 worthier and nuich happier persons under 
 circumstances quite diflercnt from the existing 
 ones. To have been born to inherited wealth 
 and culture and its extended opportunities 
 would certainly seem to be a factor in ad- 
 vance over that of being born in a log cabin, 
 and learning to read by the light of a pine 
 knot. As a matter of actual record, however, 
 the history of great lives puts a premium on 
 the hardships and the pine knot. 
 
 But, specnlation aside, our business, after all, 
 concerns life as it is, and not as it might be. 
 *' Here, or nowhere, is thy kingdom." There 
 
Believe in the Wings. 
 
 25 
 
 is something supremely trivial iu repining be- 
 cause, indeed, one is, or fancier himself, un- 
 happy. Happiness is a very beautiful thing, 
 — the most beautiful and heavenly thing in 
 the world, — but it is a result, a spiritual con- 
 dition, and is not predetermined by a bank 
 account or by the flattering incense of praise. 
 Appreciation, recognition, is a factor in hap- 
 piness ; but that, too, must be an indirect result, 
 and not a conscious aim. A thoroughly noble 
 work — be it picture or poem, or statue or 
 statesmanship — will inevitably win and com- 
 pel recognition ; but if the worker looked only 
 to that end, he could not do what was worthy 
 the end. When one shouts to hear the echo 
 of his own voice, it is not called eloquence. 
 
 Happiness, then, is a condition attained 
 through worthiness. To find your life you 
 must lose it. It is the law and the prophets. 
 One's personal enjoyment is a very small 
 thing ; one's personal usefulness is a very im- 
 portant one. In one way or another the 
 Lord bids us all to fly, and we have need to 
 trust Him for the wings, and live in that in- 
 
26 The World Beautiful 
 
 tiniate and close relation to Him tliat alone 
 can receive the divine guidance. 
 
 The Vision Tlie Legend Beautiful is familiar 
 ^^ ^ ® to all, — that scene depicted by the 
 
 Splendor. / ^ "^ 
 
 poets pen where the monk in iiis 
 cell beheld the Vision, and questioned whether 
 he should go to give the daily alms to the 
 beggars at the convent gate, or should stay. 
 
 '' Would the Vision there remaiu ? 
 "Would the Vision come again ? 
 Then a voice within his breast 
 Whispered, audible and clear 
 As if to the outward ear : 
 * Do thy duty ; that is best : 
 Leave unto thy Lord the rest ! ' " 
 
 Art and life are continually coming into 
 juxtaposition rather than conjunction ; and in 
 this age of specialties the question more and 
 more besets every earnest mind, Shall art 
 be sacrificed to life, or shall life be sacrificed 
 to art ? Shall one insist upon his artistic iso- 
 lation heedless of the human call, or shall he 
 
Tlie Vision and the S'j)lendor, 27 
 
 respond to the many voices that call to him, 
 and neglect his art ? 
 
 Though this problem confronts chiefly the 
 thinker, the poet, the painter, the author, it is 
 not wholly theirs. In a large degree it is the 
 sphinx-like question to us all. Life and work 
 conflict. " How can you find time to work ? " 
 said a cultivated and very active woman ; 
 " there is so much else to be done." Nor did 
 she mean to imply any sarcasm or to per- 
 petrate a hon mot It was simply the honest 
 expression of an honest opinion. There is so 
 much general activity demanded of every one 
 that to accomplish a special work outside this 
 activity seems sometimes impossible ; and if 
 one sacrifice to the work all his part in the 
 daily drama of life, does he do well or ill ? 
 Should he be artist first and man afterward, 
 or the reverse ? The question is a very prac- 
 tical one. How shall one wait for the voice 
 and watch for the Vision ? 
 
 The solution of this problem lies in abso- 
 lutely one thing, — the perfect triumphant ac- 
 ceptance of the iDower of love and faith. We 
 
28 The World Deaufifiil 
 
 need to re-vitalize these words. Love to man 
 and faitli in God liave been used as mere 
 formalisms, and have thus lost much of their 
 deeper significance. They have been recorded 
 as passive states when they are, instead, active 
 virtues. They form the magnetic atmosphere 
 by means of which the soul receives of the 
 creative magnetism inherent in divine life. 
 And with this constant, overflowing love for 
 humanity that is in spontaneous and sympa- 
 thetic response to his needs ; with this vital 
 and exhilarating faith in the divine power 
 that in some way all shall be wisely over- 
 ruled if we but keep our ''prow turned to- 
 ward good," as Charlotte Cushman said she 
 endeavored to do, — with this exquisite har- 
 mony about and within us, the perplexed 
 problems of the days adjust themselves. 
 
 All men who have been greatest have been 
 in closest touch with life. Shakespeare, 
 Michael Angelo, Dante, Goethe are among 
 those whose names will readily recur as the 
 greatest creative artists, who, nevertheless, 
 lived in touch with the world, and drew from 
 
The Vision and the Splendor. 29 
 
 it such suggestiveness and insight that when 
 the higher vision dawned on them they were 
 able to relate it to the human need. The 
 example of Tennyson is one to suggest much 
 questioning. The greatest poet of the nine- 
 teenth century, he lived for his art, he sought 
 seclusion and isolation. Whether he would 
 have been more or less had he lived nearer 
 humanity, is a question that cannot here be 
 entered into ; and the world is too grateful 
 for what he gave it to seek to discuss any 
 limitations, or imagine him unattended by 
 the muse of solitude. 
 
 There is a vast amount of truth, however, 
 in Dr. Holmes's felicitous assertion : " I do 
 not talk to tell people what I think, but to 
 find out what I think." 
 
 The clergyman, the essayist, the orator will 
 appreciate the subtle truth of this assertion. 
 The most cultivated man can often better find 
 out what he thinks by conversation with even 
 the uncultured mind than by solitude. Con- 
 versation is experimental ; it is also creative, 
 ^ — it stimulates the mind to new energies and 
 to new combinations of ideas. 
 
30 The World Beautiful 
 
 We live not only in an atmosphere com- 
 posed of oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen, but 
 in one which is simply throbbing and pulsating 
 and thrilling Avith vitality. It is life, all life, 
 around us. This atmospheric vitality holds in 
 solution all things. We may draw from it in 
 every conceivable direction, and receive in a 
 measure limited only by our capacity for re- 
 ceiving. Some radical thinker boldly asserts 
 tliat even poverty is a disease, a defective 
 condition, that can be cured by setting about 
 it in the right manner. Tlie adepts of India 
 produce creations of various kinds out of the 
 very air itself ; and their explanation is that all 
 the elements exist in the air, and that he who 
 knows the secret of the laws governing the 
 elements and their combinations can produce 
 endless substances at will. 
 
 At all events, it is certainly true that suc- 
 cess or fiiilure can be predetermined by a 
 mental mood ; that an individual can think 
 prosperity to liimself, so to speak, just as cer- 
 tainly as he can put out his hand and reach a 
 book on the shelf. The secret of life is to 
 
The Vision and the Splendor. 31 
 
 learn how to do this. It is to learn how to 
 bring our own spiritual power, which is cre- 
 ative power, to bear on material conditions. 
 
 It can be done. '' Real power is in silent 
 moments," says Emerson. Circumstances, 
 conditions, surroundings, are as plastic to the 
 stamp of the mind as the clay is to the im- 
 press of the sculptor. 
 
 And this power is made up of two quali- 
 ties, — love and faith. These seem to be best 
 developed through human touch and attrition. 
 So much love, so much force, and so much 
 force born of love, so much power to create 
 the conditions of one's life. 
 
 " No perfect artist is developed here 
 From any imperfect woman," 
 
 said Mrs. Browning in Aurora Leigh. "An 
 artist who lives for his art alone is a second- 
 rate artist," says the young poet, Richard 
 Hovey. Through many-veined humanity the 
 power is won. 
 
 " Do thy duty ; that is hest : 
 Leave unto thy Lord the rest." 
 
 It is the voice of poet and prophet. 
 
32 The World Beautiful 
 
 Adelaide Anne Procter questions : — 
 
 '' Have we not all, amid life's petty strife, 
 Some pure ideal of a nobler life, 
 That ODce seemed possible? " 
 
 And she answers : — 
 
 '' We have, and yet 
 We lost it in the daily jar and fret, 
 And now live idle in a vain regret. 
 But still our place is kept, and it will wait, 
 Ready for us to fill it, soon or late. 
 No star is ever lost we once have seen ; 
 We always may be what we miglit have been." 
 
 Not only is that true, but we may be now, 
 in the present, that which we aspire to be, not- 
 withstanding the interruptions and the daily 
 demands. These are not obstacles nor hin- 
 drances, but sources of strength ; or, rather, 
 they become sources of strength when trans- 
 formed by love and faith. Met with distrust 
 and disturbance they bar the path ; met with 
 sunny faith they make themselves into step- 
 ping-stones. Why, it is the initial business of 
 life to be happy. One should go about treading 
 on air, and sip nectar and ambrosia. It is a 
 
The Vision and the Splendor. 33 
 
 beautiful thing to live. Life is a fine art ; it 
 is the supreme consummation of all the arts, 
 the final finish and flower. Acliievements are 
 not the result only, nor even chiefly, of con- 
 scious labor ; they spring triumphant from the 
 power of thought brought to bear upon the 
 elements out of w^hich success springs. We all 
 remember the legend of Friar Jerome and tlie 
 Beautiful Book, how, when the monk left his 
 work on the richly illuminated missal to an- 
 swer the call of human needs, he found, on 
 his return, that an angel had stood at his 
 desk and wrouf^ht at the task all the time he 
 had been absent. 
 
 The legend is typical of life. The painter 
 leaves his canvas or his clay, or the poet leaves 
 his poem, to fulfil claims that press upon 
 him from humanity ; and lo ! the angel pre- 
 sence is there, and in some way we cannot ex- 
 plain the miracle is wrought. But it can only 
 be wrought for those who keep their atmos- 
 piiere magnetic with love and faith, for this is 
 the only atmosphere into which spiritual force 
 can enter and assert its power. Even the work 
 
34 The World Beautiful. 
 
 of Christ himself was subject to conditions. 
 "And he did not many mighty works there 
 because of their unbelief," we read. " Because 
 of their unbelief ,' — therein lies the signifi- 
 cance. Even Jesus could not work in an at- 
 mospliere rendered negative by want of faith. 
 Spiritual power, like electricity, must work 
 througli the conditions that conduct it. 
 
 Happiness and success are the normal con- 
 dition of life, just as health is the normal, 
 and disease and illness the abnormal condition. 
 This happiness, like the kingdom of heaven of 
 which it is the reflection, is within, not without. 
 It is a spiritual state, but it works outward, 
 and asserts its own conditions. If the vitality 
 of the Christ could but How into our efforts, 
 our friendships, our aspirations, what a lifting 
 up to a higher plane there would be! How 
 imperfect and struggling aim would leap into 
 glorious achievement ! How our halting and 
 fragmentary friendships woidd glow with di- 
 vine significance, and deepen into infinite ten- 
 derness ! The entire scenery of life would be 
 transformed. Gloom would give place to 
 gladness, depression to exaltation, inertia to 
 energy, halting eftbrt to complete fulfilment. 
 
The Vision and the Splendor. 35 
 
 Humanity is already on the very threshold 
 of its higher development. We stand on the 
 brink of such untold joys and deeper satis- 
 factions that there is no room for repining or 
 regret. IMental and psychic power is begin- 
 ning to assert its potent sway. We are to live 
 in enthusiasm and exaltation. In this new 
 state we shall realize the transformation ef- 
 fected by this liberation of energy. If one 
 pausing on a walk of twenty miles to care for 
 or help a wayfarer, were, because of this de- 
 lay, to be taken on board a lightning-express 
 train and rushed swiftly on in a few minutes 
 to his destination, he would not have cause to 
 complain that he lost time by helping his 
 brother, or that he failed of the achievement 
 of his own work. The analogy holds true in 
 all the complicated duties and demands of 
 life. Do not fear to leave the Vision and the 
 splendor. It will wait; it will shine again 
 brighter than before. 
 
 *' Do thy duty ; that is best : 
 Leave unto thy God the rest." 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 No soul can ever truly see 
 
 Another's highest, noblest part 
 Save through the sweet philosophy 
 
 And lovmg wisdom of the heart. 
 
 I see the feet that fain would climb ; 
 
 You, but the steps that turn astray. 
 I see the soul, unharmed, sublime ; 
 
 YoU; but the garment and the clay. 
 
 Phcebe Gary. 
 
THE ENLARGE.MENT OF RELATIONS. 
 
 HE enlargement of social relations 
 depends far less on opportunity 
 than on sympathy. It depends 
 to a very slight degree on travel, 
 
 on sight-seeing, on the number of people, 
 even, that one meets ; but very largely on the 
 power of coming into real relations with some 
 of that number. Responsiveness, sympathy, 
 receptivity, — these are the doors through 
 which life enters to us and through which we 
 go forth into life. On this power depend the 
 conditions of success ; and on it also depends 
 conduct, which Matthew Arnold rightly de- 
 signates three-fourths of life. The enlarge- 
 ment of all that rang^e of feelinoj and thouoht 
 which we call life does not lie in its external 
 scenery. It is not, necessarily, the larger life 
 to have a more imposing house, or finer ap- 
 parel, or more dainty and luxurious surround- 
 
40 The World Beautiful. 
 
 ings than our neiglibor. These are accidental 
 things that may, or may not, accompany it. 
 They are no inherent factors of the perfection 
 or the completeness of life. Enlargement is 
 something more intimate, more permanent in 
 its nature, more entirely dependent upon those 
 qualities that make personality. In fact, if 
 one comes to scrutinize it closely, the enlarge- 
 ment of life is gained by living so in harmony 
 with the divine will — so at one with it — 
 that one is receptive and responsive to every 
 sweet inlluence. When the wandering wind 
 finds out an ^Eolian harp, it becomes musical ; 
 but 
 
 '' Hornpipe and hurdy-gurdy both are dull 
 Unto the most musicianly of winds." 
 
 Now this state of harmony with the divine 
 forces is not one of mere negation. It is not 
 one of mere passivity. It is the very highest 
 positive state. It is simply magnetic with 
 vitality. It is the ideal condition of life, and 
 therefore tlic condition of supreme success. 
 It is tiie condition of recognition and of 
 vision. 
 
The Enlargement of Relations. 41 
 
 It is easy enough, however, for any of us to 
 philosophize on what we should be ; to dis- 
 cern the better conditions. The test is to 
 realize them. And this is as practical a work 
 as any labor of the hand. The initial step to 
 be taken in any enterprise or endeavor is first 
 to realize in one's self harmonious and recep- 
 tive conditions. 
 
 Xow the jars and discords come mostly 
 from without ; the harmony and sweetness 
 nmst first be found within. If one is con- 
 scious of a fretful and discordant state, let him 
 seek entire solitude, if only for a moment. 
 Then call up the spiritual forces. Take a 
 strong stand in the affirmative. " I and my 
 Father are one." That is not merely a phrase 
 of rhetoric or an assertion that Jesus alone 
 could make. We may all make it. '' I and 
 my Father are one." He is the vine ; we the 
 branches. Demand to be taken into the true 
 life, into one's own life. Do not merely de- 
 sire to be at peace with all, to love all, but 
 affirm that you are so. The love of God 
 and all his creatures will set toward you till 
 
42 The World Beautiful. 
 
 you are upborne on the current of divine 
 magnetism. 
 
 " His strength was as the strength of ten 
 Because his heart was pure," 
 
 writes the poet of Sir Galahad. Therein lies 
 the true philosophy. The latter line explains 
 ivhij he had the tenfold strength. AH life 
 is truly such only as it exists in harmony with 
 its environment. AYe are now entering into 
 tlie spiritual age, — a fact that is just as true 
 statistically as was that of the stone age or of 
 the iron a2fe. We have lived throuQ:h the aixes 
 where the physical and then the intellectual 
 powers were those most in harmony with the 
 environment of the time. Now the environ- 
 ment is spiritual, and the spiritual faculties 
 must be those developed. It is the age of 
 supcrnaturalism, one may say, if we may so 
 call that law just higher than the ordinary 
 and familiar one, and quite as natural on its 
 own plane. The supernatural, after all, is 
 merely tliat the higher has taken the place of 
 tlie lower. Emerson said, fifty years ago : 
 
The Enlargement of Relations, 43 
 
 " Our painful labors are unnecessary ; there is 
 a better way." Now we are coming into the 
 actual knowledge of that better way. The 
 soul that can hold itself in direct and respon- 
 sive relation to the Infinite Love will com- 
 mand undreamed of potency. It will at once 
 enter on the true enlargement of life. 
 
 No other possession of life holds such pre- 
 ponderating value as one's friends. All beside 
 these are a part of the scenery of the external 
 and temporal world ; but friendships are of 
 the eternal and the divine. It is these that 
 give value and zest to life; that furnish it 
 with interest, with charm, and with happi- 
 ness. To be rich in friends is to be poor in 
 nothing. It is to possess that infinite reser- 
 voir of what may be, for want of a better 
 term, denominated capital in life, in that it 
 predetermines success in whatever line of 
 achievement one may clioose to work. A 
 range of warm and strong friendsliips creates 
 the magnetic atmosphere that vitalizes every 
 element within its influence, so that it is not 
 that social enjoyments and companionships are 
 
U The World Beautiful 
 
 in any sense interruptions to specific work, 
 however important, but that tliej yield in- 
 stead the very elements out of which it is 
 best created. The genuine friendships of life 
 are largely discovered, not acquired. We find 
 them rather than make them. They are pre- 
 destined relationships and are recognized in- 
 tuitively. 
 
 " ^Ye meet — at least those who are true to 
 their instincts meet — a succession of persons 
 through our lives, all of whom have some pe- 
 culiar errand to us," writes Margaret Fuller. 
 " There is an outer circle whose existence we 
 perceive, but with whom we stand in no real 
 relation. They tell us the news, they act on ua 
 in the olfices of society, they show us kimluess 
 and aversion ; but their iutluence does not 
 penetrate ; we are nothing to them, nor they 
 to us, except as a part of the world's furniture. 
 
 *' Another circle within tliis are dear and 
 near to us. We know them and of what kind 
 they are. They are not to us mere facts, but 
 intelligible thoughts of the divine mind. We 
 like to see how they are unfolded ; we like to 
 meet them, and part with them ; we like their 
 action upon us, and the pause that succeeds and 
 
The Enlargement of Relations, 45 
 
 enables us to appreciate its quality. Often we 
 leave them ou our path and return no more, but 
 we bear them in our memory, tales which have 
 been told, and whose meaning has been felt. 
 
 ''But yet a nearer group there are, beings 
 born under the same star, and bound with us in 
 a common destiny. They are not mere acquain- 
 tances, mere friends, but when we meet are 
 sharers of our very existence. There is no 
 separation ; the same thought is given at the 
 same moment to both ; indeed, it is born of the 
 meeting, and would not otherwise have been 
 called into existence at all. These not only 
 know themselves more, but are more for hav- 
 ing met, and regions of their being, which 
 would else have lain sealed in cold obstruction, 
 burst into leaf and bloom and song. 
 
 *' The times of these meetings are fated," she 
 goes on to say, " nor will either one be able 
 ever to meet any other person in the same 
 way." 
 
 It is one of the paths to success and happi- 
 ness in life, or rather it is success and hap- 
 piness in itself, to be swiftly responsive to 
 impressions of this character, to recognize the 
 angel when he draws near. Dickens touched 
 
46 The World Beautiful 
 
 the deeper truth in this relation when he 
 wrote that the people who have to do with 
 us, and we with them, are drawing near ; that 
 our paths, from whatever distant quarters of 
 the globe they start, are converging ; and that 
 what is set for them to do for us and for U3 
 to do for them, ivill all he done. 
 
 The fatalism of friendship might well be 
 a subject for extended consideration. It is 
 fate, — it is predestination, or it is nothing. 
 
 The friendships that are best worth having 
 are those that come unsought. Suddenly we 
 recognize the shining beauty before us, and 
 life is invested with a divine radiance. The 
 talent for making friends, or for discovering 
 them, is a specific and distinctive one, and is 
 perhaps the result of a combination of happy 
 qualities ; yet in any perfect friendship there 
 is always the sense of the unexpected, the 
 miraculous. 
 
 Nor sconr tlio soas nor sift manliind 
 A poot or a friond to find. 
 Behold, lie watches at the door I 
 Behold, his sluulow on the Hoor I 
 
Friends Discovered, not Made. 47 
 
 Friends Fi'ieiids ill any true and abiding 
 discovered, sense, therefore, are in the nature of 
 not ma e ^ discovery; but when discovered, 
 it is because of a predestined spiritual relation 
 that compels recognition and which transcends 
 and dominates all temporary and external con- 
 ditions or circumstances. Friendship of this 
 order is as eternal as the spirit itself. It is a 
 part of spiritual identity and simply cannot be 
 destroyed. As things go with human beings 
 in a finite world, it may be subjected to much 
 jar and fret, and be thereby deprived of much 
 of its inherent joy and exhilaration and the 
 luxury of that sympathetic comprehension 
 which, in its ideal state, would be perfect ; 
 but still it can endure this and not be de- 
 stroyed because there is that in its nature 
 w^hich is of the divine order and therefore 
 indestructible. Of course, this is that rarest 
 order of friendship which comes not only not 
 more than once in a lifetime, but perhaps not 
 more than once among a hundred, or even a 
 thousand lives. It is one of the heavenly 
 mysteries, and cannot be accounted for by 
 
48 The World Beautiful, 
 
 any earthly formula. It is, too, a relation 
 for which the world has neither sympathy nor 
 comprehension. '' Oh, you idealize so-and- 
 so," says society ; " you see what is not there. 
 You set up a chimerical creation of mere 
 fancy, and fall down and worship it." 
 
 To listen to this is to turn away from the 
 heavenly vision ; to be deaf to the voices which 
 the multitude cannot hear and which call to 
 you alone. To idealize is not to follow a delu- 
 sion, to mistake clay for alabaster, but it is to see 
 more clearly, to discern that finer significance 
 that he who runs may not read. It is only 
 the exceptional nature that can be what the 
 world calls idealized which is simply recogni- 
 tion for what is actually there, and not in the 
 least a process of investing it with qualities 
 it does not possess. It is the inner vision 
 that sees " the beauties hid from common 
 si^rht." 
 
 Any friendship that is worth the name is 
 not in the least a matter of reason or choice, 
 but rather of magnetism and temperament. 
 It can bear almost everything of friction, jar, 
 
Friends Discovered, not Made. 49 
 
 annoyance, or pain, — not, surely, without 
 losing much of its divineness and sweetest 
 joy, yet still it can bear them, — and still 
 spring up again with renewed vitality. And 
 as it is a wholly spiritual relation, it may not 
 only spring up with renewed vitality from ex- 
 periences that would simply exterminate and 
 annihilate any lesser bond, but in the region 
 where it lives — the miracle region of life — 
 the renewal may be absolute regeneration as 
 well, and transmute it into an infinitely higher 
 condition, — purified, redeemed, from the ele- 
 ments that so nearly wrought its wreck and 
 destruction. It may undergo a kind of resur- 
 rection hour, in w^hich all baser elements are 
 eliminated from the crucible in which it has 
 been tried ; sown in weakness, it may be 
 raised in power. This experience, while ex- 
 ceptional, is possible, and depends upon the 
 magnanimity and the generosity of the one 
 who, of either, has the most to forgive, and 
 the way in which the forgiveness is offered. 
 A certain mingling of dignity and delicacy, 
 with yet a liberal allowance of generosity and 
 
 4 
 
50 The World Beautiful 
 
 faith in a better future, go a great way in this 
 regeneration of personal relations. One who 
 receives this feels the responsibility upon him 
 of proving not again unworthy this noblest of 
 aid ; and so the very springs of endeavor and 
 aspiration are renewed, and there rises before 
 Iiis vision a new heaven and a new earth. 
 
 People talk lightly and carelessly of friend- 
 sliip when they do not know the meaning 
 of the term ; when tliey are not, themselves, 
 the stuff of which friends are made ; when 
 they know less of the truth and trust and ten- 
 derness that the name implies than i\i. Flam- 
 marion believes that he knows of the emotions 
 of the inhabitants of Mars. To exchange 
 cards or calls or dinner invitations ; to be 
 members of the same club or the same 
 cimrch ; to hold views in common as to 
 ^Yagner operas and the drama as it is in Ib- 
 sen, — is no more friendship than it is politics 
 or theology ; although these relations, and 
 others even more superficial, masquerade un- 
 der its name. In its true sense friendship is 
 a relation that defies analysis, tlefies cxplana- 
 
Friends Discovered, not Made. 51 
 
 tion, and defies all the known laws of the 
 chart of polite society, because it is grounded 
 in something far deeper and more abiding. 
 It is, when found, something to be held sa- 
 credly as the inestimable treasure of life, as 
 its profoundest and most potent source of in- 
 spiration. It is something in which to be- 
 lieve as one believes in God. '' The soul's 
 emphasis is always right." Its insight is un- 
 erring, and its vision swift to discern that 
 which is spiritual reality. 
 
 There are plenty of people fitted out with 
 a good relay of substantial qualities and pleas- 
 ing attributes, who are admirably calculated to 
 fill the place of the extensive outer court of 
 agreeable acquaintances. But that life alone 
 is rich which holds one perfect friendship, in 
 which mutual sympathy is mutual clairvoy- 
 ance as well ; in wliich sacrifice on either side 
 would be luxury and not trial ; in which the 
 bo'nd is indestructible because it is that of the 
 spirit, and therefore divine and eternal. 
 
 It is quite useless ^^ to strike leagues of 
 friendship with cheap people where no friend- 
 
62 77^6 World Beautiful. 
 
 ship can be." People, like pictures, should 
 have the advantage of a good light and of 
 fair and true perspective. This is only simple 
 justice. Many persons are like the pictures 
 whose color is put on in the decomposition du 
 ton, — the method that blends only at a cer- 
 tain focal distance. Seen too near, the can- 
 vas is all one blot and blur of shapeless smears 
 of paint, witliout meaning or values ; but go 
 to the true focal distance, and, behold, the 
 purple smear becomes a mountain range ; the 
 shapeless patches of blue or gray or rose be- 
 come a sky and clouds ; the red and green 
 spots show as scarlet flowers in the grass, 
 and the entire landscape is palpitating with 
 light and throbbing with life. It is lumi- 
 nous and beautiful ; the artist has fairly 
 painted ligiit as well as color. Bat all 
 this is only to be felt and seen at the true 
 focal distance. Another school of painting 
 permits the closest scrutiny, but at a dis- 
 tance you miss the wondcM-ful atmospheric 
 effects and the light and life of the impres- 
 sionist. 
 
Friends Discovered, not Made. 53 
 
 There are people who correspond to each, 
 — those who suffer by being seen too near, 
 and those who may be seen to advantage in 
 small details, but whose character or achieve- 
 ments when viewed in perspective are not 
 impressive. Each must be given the advan- 
 tage of the true light and the true focal dis- 
 tance. 
 
 Again, friendship, like love, must be largely 
 taken "for better, for worse." It is idle to 
 " throw over " a friend who in many ways 
 gives you pleasant and agreeable companion- 
 ship, because, indeed, you discover faults not 
 at first perceived. If one waits to find per- 
 fection in his friend, he will probably wait 
 long and live and die unfriended at last. The 
 fine art of living, indeed, is to draw from each 
 person his best. Friendship is in itself as fine 
 an art as is music or painting or sculpture. 
 Let the artist approach the keyboard, and 
 what melodies does he evolve ? Let the un- 
 trained and the ungifted come, and we have 
 discords. The skilled fingers of the sculptor 
 touch the clay into beauty of form and charm 
 
54 The World Beaut'ifnl 
 
 of suggestion ; the painter, the poet, brings 
 color and vision and power ; but the one not 
 endowed with the artist's genius produces dis- 
 cords, daubs, or meaningless rliynic. So with 
 life. The individual gifted with tact, faitli, 
 sweetness, and charm creates the very quali- 
 ties in which he believes and which he him- 
 self possesses. He " gets on " with people 
 harmoniously. It is the exquisite result of 
 higli qualities. 
 
 Per contra, to be swift to discern the faults 
 or follies of others does not argue the pos- 
 session of superiority. It takes far less in-^ 
 sight to discover defects than it does to 
 discern noble and lovely qualities. " It re- 
 quires a god to recognize a god." Noble 
 people recognize each other intuitively. Of 
 course there are persons witli whom no friend- 
 ship can be, — people who are cheap, petty, self- 
 ish, and self-seeking. One should not " strike 
 leagues of friendship " with these, for with 
 them no friendship can be. 
 
 Nothing is more fatal to friendly relations 
 tlian comi)laints and reproaches and demands 
 
Friends Discovered, not Made, 55 
 
 for explanations. People must be judged iu 
 the wholeness of their conduct. A thousand 
 subtle influences, unexpected and unforeseen 
 events, have their action and reaction on life. 
 A thousand things occur that can neither be 
 analyzed nor defined. i\Iany a temporary 
 alienation is effectively overcome by silence. 
 Reproaches, questionings, but widen the gulf 
 Leaving it alone, taking up other interests 
 and ideas, bridges it over. Then, too, if peo- 
 ple would truly meet, it must be in an at- 
 mosphere above the merely personal and local 
 and visible. By different and very diverse 
 paths they may gain the same spiritual plane ; 
 and when there, meeting is inevitable. In 
 fact, there is tliis element of inevitableness in 
 all friendship worthy the name. It is not so 
 much an achievement or an agreement as it 
 is a predestined relation. Its strongest bond 
 is charm. " ]\Ien talk of morals," says Emer- 
 son, " but it is manners tliat associate us." 
 More deeply still, it is tastes that associate us. 
 An expression that jars on one's sense of taste 
 will undo in an instant all the influence or 
 
56 The World Beaut if id. 
 
 impression made by sterling virtues through 
 a term of jears. A defect in knowledge, 
 even in morals, can be condoned, but not 
 defective perception. For its roots lie deep 
 in temperament, in tlie lack of all that cul- 
 ture which is the result of a thousand subtle 
 influences. 
 
 The lack of fine perception that results 
 in want of consideration for others, in for- 
 getful ness and carelessness in little things ; 
 that imposes upon the time, strength, or re- 
 sources of other people, is a defect more inim- 
 ical to friendship than is many a graver fault 
 in morals. It implies lack of good breeding, 
 lack of refinement, lack of a thousand essen- 
 tials of daily intercourse. 
 
 Cheapness of nature can be redeemed only 
 from one source, — that of the invisible power 
 on tlie divine side of life. By seeking this in 
 silence and concentration for a little time each 
 day, all refinement and loveliness and charm 
 can be achieved. It is the magic of life. 
 
A Psychological Problem, 
 
 A Psycho- Liking and not liking people is 
 logical a condition whose causes refuse to 
 be analyzed. It is a result that is, 
 seemingly, independent of the usual processes, 
 and like the fragrance of the rose is to be per- 
 ceived and enjoyed, but not reduced to exact 
 analysis. You do not like people because 
 they are, specifically, rich or poor, great or 
 obscure, brilliant or dull, learned or ignorant, 
 but for some reason that goes deeper than 
 each or all of these. Nor, indeed, do 30U 
 always, nor by any means, care most for the 
 people who are kindest to you, and least for 
 those who are less thoughtful. For liking, 
 regard, friendship, — whatever form or de- 
 gree the feeling may assume, is independent 
 of gratitude. It is very possible to feel a 
 deep sense of obligation, a very strong and 
 sincere gratitude, quite independent of and 
 apart from a strong personal liking. 
 
 There are persons — we all know them — 
 who do us good and not evil in all visible and 
 ostensible ways ; who are always agreeable so 
 far as outward manner and words go, and to 
 
58 The World Beautiful 
 
 whom we arc and sliould be grateful ; yet 
 wliom we hold in a curiously instinctive dis- 
 trust. It is a distrust, or even a dislike, that 
 we will not confess to ourselves ; that we do 
 not, as a matter of conscience or intelligence, 
 admit that we feel, but all the same it is 
 there, and neither reason nor philosophy can 
 wholly eradicate it. 
 
 Perhaps tlie real quality for which we 
 most deeply care in people is responsive- 
 ness, and this is an affair of temperament. It 
 is also a matter of mutual relation. A may 
 be responsive to B, while he is not in the 
 least so to C, and wliile B and C are by no 
 means responsive to each other. It seems to 
 be a spiritual relation, predetermined and 
 foreordained, and quite beyond the influence 
 or the compulsion of mortal existence. It is 
 or it is not, and, apparently, you have your- 
 self nothing to do with the matter one way 
 or the other. 
 
 Of course there is plenty of getting on in 
 the social world tliat has no possible relation 
 to the inner springs of feeling. Social con- 
 
A Psychological Problem. 59 
 
 tact is for the most part superficial, and gov- 
 erned b}' laws of ceremonial etiquette. Only 
 the barbarian is rude to persons he does not 
 like. A high degree of civilization, while it 
 is not, necessarily, synonymous with Christian 
 feeling, simulates its code. Courtesy is not 
 Christianity, but is its imitation. While the 
 latter enjoins that one love his neighbor as 
 himself, the former enjoins only that one shall 
 appear to love his neighbor as himself Nor 
 is courtesy to be despised, even if it exist only 
 as veneer. True courtesy implies a great 
 many very real virtues of self-restraint, gentle 
 consideration, and patience, even if it does 
 not imply love. And that is the quality be- 
 yond our power to compel. We are under 
 obligation to give entire courtesy always to 
 our neighbor, but to give him love is beyond 
 any power unless it gives itself. We do not 
 * love people because they are good to us, or 
 because they give us things or do us favors, or 
 because they are beautiful or rich or famous 
 or learned, — because they possess this, that, or 
 the other, — but because — we cannot tell why 
 
60 The World Beautifal 
 
 " Thought is deeper than all speech; 
 Feeling deeper than all thought." 
 
 And it is feeling that governs the genuine 
 liking, — the eternal, predetermined, foreor- 
 dained friendship. 
 
 You may realize that in conversation you 
 find the chief entertaimnent and the highest 
 social enjoyment; and still there is So-and-so, 
 whom you never remember hearing say any- 
 thing out of the ordinary line, yet whose pres- 
 ence is perpetual joy. He may remark that 
 it rained yesterday and that the sun sliines 
 to-day, and yet the commonplaceness enter- 
 tains you more than would the brilliant con- 
 versational pyrotechnics of another. In foct, 
 you care nothing for what he says, — it is 
 what he is. If he said nothing, he would 
 enchant the hours for you all the same. So 
 that, although conversation is to you the 
 greatest of joys, it is not, evidently, the su- 
 preme attraction in this rare relation of deep 
 and genuine liking. 
 
 Nor does presence and familiarity dull its 
 glamour, nor absence and time efface the spell. 
 
A Psychological Problem. 61 
 
 It is the rapture of life that is new every 
 morning and fresh every evening. It is that 
 glory of light that never was on sea or land. 
 It is the ecstasy of recognition, and is due 
 wholly and solely to intuitive insight. 
 
 Psychical science has quite conclusively es- 
 tablislied the truth of our complex personality, 
 and it designates one of these selves as the 
 higher self. This higher self is to our appar- 
 ent self, as daily manifested on its lower 
 plane of life, as is the ideal to the actual. In 
 plant growth every leaf and bud is seen to 
 have an ideal towards which it tends. In 
 humanity each individual has this ideal self, 
 even though sometimes so overlaid and over- 
 fjhadowed with the material and the un- 
 {vorthy, with the transient and the trivial, as 
 to fail of beino: discernible. What does 
 Browning say in " A Toccato of Galuppi " ? 
 
 *' The soul, surely, is immortal — icliere a soul can he 
 discerned." 
 
 It is not invariably the case that a soul can 
 be discerned. 
 
62 The ^yo^ld Beautiful. 
 
 This point aside, however, it is more than a 
 question if this swift recognition, tliis intuitive, 
 rapturous liking tliat we all instantly feel for 
 some people, and that no aggregation of good 
 qualities will yet inspire us with for others, 
 — it is more than a question if this is not the 
 intuitive recognition of the higher self of the 
 individual. What you love in your friend is 
 not himself, as ordinarily seen or estimated, 
 but his higher self, that few see, or that you 
 alone discern. It is to his higher self that 
 you are responsive, and it is that which in 
 some mysterious manner is responsive to you. 
 What he is to tlie world, or the v/orld to him, 
 you do not care. It is what he is to you that 
 is of importance. 
 
 It is possible, nay, it is easy, to feel very 
 kindly toward one who>c presence in the 
 sense of companionslnp is distasteful and 
 hard to endure. It is not specifically 
 because he is rich or poor, or great or 
 unknown, good or bad, fashionable or un- 
 fashionable, learned or simple. For the fact 
 of liking transcends all these things, and 
 
A Psychological Problem, 63 
 
 defies exact analysis. Dr. Fell's theory is 
 what we all come back to at last. You may 
 love a person out of that higlier state of being 
 we call the Christian life ; but you can only 
 like him from reasons of temperamental adap- 
 tability. The friend one likes and cares for 
 in the sense of companionship, who can never 
 come too often nor stay too long, with wliom 
 presence is always a joy and solitude a sym- 
 pathy, — such friends as these are ours purely 
 by right of temperamental accord. One's 
 friendships in the sense of one's personal en- 
 joyments are matters of sympathy, of tastes, of 
 nmtual experiences, of culture, of habits, and 
 general scope of life, — a whole world, indeed, 
 into which only the initiate can enter, and 
 whose atmosphere can neitlicr be translated 
 nor communicated to those who are not in it 
 and of it. They belong to tlie sphere of life 
 which is found and not made. " That man 
 is my friend v/hom I encounter on the line of 
 my own march," says Emerson ; " to whom I 
 do not decline and who does not decline to 
 me, but, native of the same atmosphere, holds 
 always the same place." 
 
64 The World Beaut'ifal 
 
 The Supreme After all, say what we will, 
 uxTiry ^j^^ ^^g supreme luxury of life 
 
 Life. 
 
 is sympathetic compaiuoiiship. 
 Friendship is a comprehensive term, and to a 
 considerable degree comprises those relations 
 of friendly feeling which are given, which 
 should be given, freely and widely, but 
 which do not, necessarily, involve the element 
 of companionship. One may give all good 
 feeling and good wishes, and be quite willing 
 to give occasional time to the individual 
 whom, after all, for his own pleasure alone, 
 purely as a personal matter, he would never 
 long to see. Because it is only companion- 
 ship that can be absolutely desired and longed 
 for, and those who give it in any measure are 
 comparatively few, and those who give it in 
 perfect measure still more rare. 
 
 In this the vital quality is perfect mutual 
 understanding. It is tlie quality the Italians 
 exquisitely express as that of being simpatica. 
 It cannot be defined nor acquired, because 
 it is a temperamental relation. It is or it 
 
The Supreme Luxury of Life. 65 
 
 is not, and its origin is prior to all our 
 questioning. 
 
 Among its attributes are similarity of ex- 
 periences. To care for the same authors or 
 the same plays or the same range of human 
 interests does not necessarily create sympa- 
 thetic companionship, though it is safe to say 
 it never exists without this. And still in no 
 dead level of accord is it found. The like- 
 ness of differences is more attractive than the 
 likeness of similarities. 
 
 But there is a conversational freemasonry 
 that exists in a kind of foreordained way, 
 and which people do not make, but simply 
 discover. To like or dislike Wagner's music, 
 Signora Duse's acting, Pierre Loti's romance, 
 Gladstone's statesmanship, Mr. Henley's poe- 
 try, the Dutch Sensitivists, the French Sym- 
 bolists, — to espouse one side or the other of 
 the vexed questions of the day, is not so much 
 the point as it is to flash back opinion and 
 repartee and comment on these existing phases 
 of art and criticism. The world would be far 
 duller than it is if there were not some one 
 
 5 
 
GG The World Beautiful 
 
 Kq retort, when you assert so-and-so of French 
 Impressionism, '* Ah, but don't you know that 
 Monet himself thinks " this or that ? or who 
 revises your wavering recollection of ^Marten 
 JNIaarten's latest poem, or sets your denuncia- 
 tions or ecstasies to a new key, by the flash 
 of wit or raillery or knowledge. All this 
 makes the freemasonry of that atmosphere we 
 name culture, and which is an unconscious 
 result, and not at all a matter of ethics or de- 
 termination. It is this play and freedom and 
 brightness and spontaneousness that make the 
 true social equality. For social equality is 
 never determined, in its finest and most endur- 
 ing sense, by rank, or wcaltli, or even knowl- 
 edge, but by culture. In this exquisite sym- 
 patliy of companionship lies the true luxury 
 of life. 
 
 And the social luxury becomes the spiritual 
 necessity. To receive happiness and to give 
 it are equal in the just measure for measure. 
 To one who is, for instance, in the role of host 
 there can be no more bitter rebuke than to 
 have any guest or even chance caller go out 
 
The Supreme Luxury of Life. 67 
 
 from tlie portals with the feeling that he is 
 sorry that he came, — that he is depressed 
 rather than uplifted, saddened rather than 
 gladdened, and in the mood of discord rather 
 than that of harmony. For all personal as- 
 sociation, whether permanent or transient, 
 whether prearranged or a matter of acciden- 
 tal contact, should leave behind it a lingering 
 charm, as of something sweet and gracious, — 
 a deeper sense of the possible exaltations and 
 loveliness of life. When any meeting does 
 not do this, some one is to blame. One or 
 both is not giving of his best, and not to do 
 this is a wrong to society in general. N"o one 
 is livinoj arisfht unless he so lives that who- 
 ever meets him goes away more confident and 
 joyous for the contact. Faith in all ultimate 
 good should be so vital that it can communi- 
 cate itself, as with a vibratory impulse, to 
 others. There should be such gladness and 
 joy in life that all may partake of it. " There 
 are some men and women in whose company 
 WG are always at our best," says Dr. Drum- 
 moud. '^ While with them we cannot think 
 
68 The World Beautiful 
 
 mean thoughts, or speak ungenerous words. 
 Their mere presence is elevation, purification, 
 sanctity. All the best stops in our nature are 
 drawn out by their intercourse, and we find 
 music in our souls that was never there 
 before." 
 
 Now, it is not only a possible ideal in life 
 to conceive of evolving harmonies of spirit in 
 this way ; it is the absolute Christian duty of 
 every thouglitful man or woman. It is a 
 simple obligation laid on every one, — 
 
 " To make the world within his reach, 
 Somewhat the better for his being, 
 And gladder for his human speech." 
 
 To attain this art of living is to attain hap- 
 piness. It is only a matter of spiritual seren- 
 ity and exaltation. Be glad in the Lord ; that 
 is, so find your environment in aspiration and 
 generous out-giving that you may live and 
 breathe and have your being in this magnetic 
 atmosphere of sweetness and joy. Experience 
 it and radiate it. 
 
 There is no mental attitude more disastrous 
 
The Supreme Luxury of Life. 69 
 
 to personal achievement, personal happiness, 
 and personal usefulness to others than that 
 of despondency. *' I will expect nothing/' — 
 of that nothing comes ; it is spiritual suicide 
 and intellectual negation. " I will expect 
 everything : I will believe and be glad in the 
 untold richness of life," — of that comes every- 
 thing. Faith creates the conditions in which 
 the noble purpose may take root and grow ; 
 but we utterly neutralize all our own poten- 
 tialities by doubt and despondency. 
 
 It is a law of science that sound cannot 
 travel through a vacuum, — the sound waves 
 require the atmospheric conditions for their 
 vibration; and this may serve as an analogy 
 that through the spiritual vacuum made by 
 unfaith no divine aid can pass. 
 
 It is love that is life, — so much love, so 
 much vitality. It is measure for measure. 
 The only life that is found is the life that is 
 lost. If one would be happy, let him forget 
 himself and go about making some one else 
 happy. 
 
 " Is not the life more than meat ? " 
 
70 The World Beautiful 
 
 The life is so infinitely above being made 
 or marred by material things that one almost 
 marvels at the esteem, the actual reverence, 
 indeed, in which mere things are held. 
 " ThiDgs are in the saddle, 
 And ride mankind," 
 
 lamented Emerson. But one may refuse to 
 be ridden by things, he may refuse material 
 limitations and denials ; he may assert his 
 integral power of spiritual potency. So en- 
 tirely is the giving way to despondency a 
 species of spiritual suicide that one should 
 regard the tendency in himself as one of act- 
 ual and positive wrong. There is a sensitive- 
 ness that is very nearly akin to selfisliness. 
 It is the self-centred, the self-contemplating 
 quality, not infrequently met in refined na- 
 tures, but one that is still incompatible with 
 the best quality of life. Personal happiness 
 comes, not by seeking it specifically, but by 
 seeking that nobler quality of living that pro- 
 duces it as a result. 
 
 Let one lay hold on life, — the life of the 
 spirit. Let him rejoice in the Lord. The 
 
The Supreme Luxury of Life. 71 
 
 term is not a mere rhetorical figure ; it is lit- 
 eral and true. The Lord is the giver of life ; 
 in his presence are joy and exaltation. The 
 life of materiality is friction and discord and 
 depression. The life of the spirit is joy and 
 peace and exaltation, — the charmed life. 
 And the test is " not religiousness, but Love," 
 the life of love. The test is to diffuse around 
 one joy and gladness and uplift of spirit, — to 
 evolve the nobler harmonies of life. 
 
OUR SOCIAL SALVATION. 
 
 We are not strong by our power to penetrate, but 
 by our relatedness. The world is enlarged for us, not 
 by new objects, but by finding more affinities and po- 
 tencies in those we have. ... It is not talent, but 
 sensibility which is best : talent confines, but the cen- 
 tral life puts us in relation to all. . . . Feel yourself, 
 and be not daunted by things. — Emerson. 
 
EXCLUSIVEXESS AND INCLUSIYE- 
 
 NESS. . 
 
 ]T is frequently remarked that a cer- 
 tain individual is "very exclusive; " 
 or that certain society, supposed to 
 comprehend within itself many dc 
 sirable qualities, is " a very exclusive society." 
 The expression is invariably held to be of the 
 most complimentary nature imaginable, and 
 the grande dame who could achieve the repu- 
 tation of being the most exclusive of her time 
 was the grandest dame of all ! 
 
 Still more remarkable was a local article on 
 Old Trinity, New York, in the columns of 
 the " New York Herald," in which the writer 
 evidently intended to express himself in the 
 most complimentary terms regarding this 
 church, and he therefore described it as " the 
 most wealthy and exclusive church in New 
 York." 
 
76 The World Beautiful 
 
 But why ^' exclusive *' ? the average reader 
 would inquire. Is the ministry of the gospel 
 to be judged by a curious social standard that 
 holds up ^tTclusiveness rather than 2/2clusive- 
 ness as a cardinal virtue? And whom does 
 it exclude ? Is it the poor only wlio are ex- 
 cluded, because it is, as its chronicler de- 
 scribes, a " wealthy " church ? Or is it the 
 absolutely sinful and immoral who are ex- 
 cluded from the teaching of Him who declares 
 that He came to save sinners? Or is it the 
 ill-clad or the ill-bred, or the people who, 
 though sufficiently wtII- to-do, and well-clad 
 and well-bred, are still not " in society " ? It 
 would be interesting to learn just wdiat people 
 or class of people are excluded by an "ex- 
 clusive " church. 
 
 The attribute of exclusfveness has for a 
 long time masqueraded under the highest and 
 choicest pretensions. Is it not time to prick 
 the bubble of a most absurd fallacy, — of one 
 utterly out of keeping with the spirit of the 
 age, one at variance with every Christian 
 grace and every better impulse of gentle 
 
Excliisiveness and Indusiteness, 77 
 
 breeding, and show it for what it is, — as a 
 term denoting defective social sympathy, lim- 
 ited intellect, absurd pretension, and colossal 
 conceit. 
 
 To be exclusive is to exclude. Now, the 
 note of the day, in all its higher and nobler 
 trend of thought, is to include, to share, to 
 communicate. 
 
 When will arise the grande dame of society 
 sufficiently secure in her grandeur to assume 
 the i?iclusive rather than the ea:?clusive posi- 
 tion, — one whose social aspirations will take 
 the form of outgoing generous sympathies and 
 liberal recognition and sunny stimulus, — one 
 of whom her admirers will say, as the highest 
 praise they can bestow, that she ''is one of 
 the most mclusive women of society " ? 
 
 The truth is that any one can be ^a^clusive. 
 It requires, to be sure, a petty brain, and a 
 cold and narrow heart, and a lack of sympa- 
 thy and imagination, and a very distorted and 
 exaggerated opinion of one's self; still, all 
 these qualities can be cultivated, if this is 
 the true social ideal to be held before human- 
 
78 'The World Beautiful 
 
 ity, and their successful cultivation by all the 
 communicants of a ^' wealthy and exclusive 
 church " would doubtless enable the church 
 itself to become most highly and rigidly ex- 
 clusive. The only question is, Is this the 
 true ideal ? 
 
 Emerson has remarked that " exclusiveness 
 excludes itself" xVll that we keep out, we 
 go without. If we admit no one, we deprive 
 ourselves of every one. If we admit a few, 
 in order that we may lay that flattering unc- 
 tion of exclusiveness to our souls, we ex- 
 clude the many. Cui bono ? Or on the plane 
 of the intellectual rather than the pluto- 
 cratic aristocracy, is there do pleasure in the 
 society of people who have not written a 
 book ? It takes, or rather it should take, — it 
 is not safe to assert that it invariably does, — 
 some good degree of knowledge to write ; 
 but there is much to be said for that portion 
 of the community who know enough not to 
 write a book. On the whole, literature does 
 not comprehend within itself all the intellect 
 of the world nor all the intellectual activity. 
 
Exchisiveness and Inclusiveness. 79 
 
 There is a great universal love which the 
 world only dimly comprehends. There is a 
 transcendent greatness of life into which every 
 soul may and should enter. There is the 
 joy of possessing, and the infinitely greater 
 joy of sharing all spiritual possessions. If 
 you have greater knowledge, better manners, 
 finer culture, do not exclude those who 
 have less, but include and share, and thus 
 find in it its divinest sweetness. Exclusive- 
 ness is the attribute of the barbarian, the sav,- 
 age, or the defective person. Why should it 
 be affected by those whose greatest glory 
 should lie in the inclusiveness of all human 
 aid and human affections ! 
 
 And all absolute judgment of people is er- 
 roneous, because character is an ever-living and 
 ever-growing force. The man who was un- 
 worthy five years ago may be most worthy 
 to-day, and he may have been enabled to attain 
 a state of worthiness by means of one who did 
 not pose as an exclusive, but wliose noble 
 convictions and generous ardor led him "to 
 condense and crystallize into the uses of daily 
 life the teachings of Christ." 
 
80 The World Beautiful. 
 
 Is it not true that it is not exclusiveness 
 wliich is great, but rather the power to so 
 touch and inspire the best qualities of others, 
 to develop and quicken these, that they 
 shall grow worthy of i^clusiveness ? Even to 
 be common is less vulgar than to be snobbish ; 
 to be capable of appreciation and reverence 
 is higher than to be only capable of severe 
 criticism ; to give always of one's best, — these 
 are the qualities that most unvaryingly char- 
 acterize the spirits finely touched but to fine 
 issues. 
 
 All the same it is true that while errors, 
 faults, even crimes, may be forgiven and con- 
 doned, a defect in taste cannot be. This 
 may seem on the surface a flippant and su- 
 perficial thing to say, and something to be 
 tolerated only as a paradox, — a sentiment, in- 
 deed, that, looked at seriously and rationally, 
 has not sufficient consistency for cohesion ; 
 but a deeper consideration will reveal its 
 eternal truth. 
 
 A fault of taste, either in language or man- 
 ner, is rooted in personality. It is the ex- 
 
Exclusiveness and Inclusiveness, 81 
 
 tcriial manifestation of an internal defect. It 
 reaches back into heredity, environment, in- 
 dividuality. It is not the result of an impulse f 
 of the moment, of a flash of temper, or some I 
 erratic and temporary emotion ; it is simply a 
 tiling that reveals the grain of life, its very 
 quality. 
 
 There is something in being too fine for the 
 world's coarser uses, too fastidious for asso- 
 ciations that jar on the more delicate and 
 exacting sense of the external fitness of 
 tilings. Such a temperament should have its 
 due respect, and perhaps may well be allowed 
 to see its visions and to dream its dreams. To 
 attain its own individual possibilities it abso- 
 lutely requires a certain amount of guarding 
 and shielding from ruder forces, and it is use- 
 less to call on it for the heroic, for that is not 
 in its metier. 
 
 But while such a nature should have its due 
 respect, it is not entitled to an undue portion. 
 Its defects are not to be mistaken for some 
 finer and more or less incomprehensible kind of 
 virtues. To be unable to bear any degree of 
 
82 The World Beautiful. 
 
 - ■ ■ — — ■ ■— 11^ 
 
 average contact with the world is not, neces- 
 sarily, to be altogether superior to the world. 
 It depends. It is a great misfortune to any 
 one to conceive and cherish the idea that he 
 is not as other men are ; that he is of finer 
 clay and of a superior order of nature, and 
 requires certain special dispensations of life 
 and a particular ordering of events in relation 
 to himself to enable him to endure this mortal 
 pilgrimage at all. It is a misfortune, first, 
 because it is difficult to persuade a sufficient 
 number of persons of this conviction to insure 
 the desired comfort of his life : and, secondly, 
 because, if a large proportion, or even all 
 with whom he comes in contact were so per- 
 suaded, it would so isolate him in an atmos- 
 phere of selfishness that his better nature 
 w^ould be absolutely stifled and dwarfed, and 
 in time killed, — if that immortal part of us 
 which is our better nature can die. There 
 is not, however, nmch danger that a very 
 alarming proportion of humanity will unite in 
 this view of the being who feels himself alien 
 to them ; and such a belief on his own part. 
 
Exclusiveness and Inchmveness. 83 
 
 unsupported by others, produces a scarcely 
 veiled antagonism which sets one ajar with 
 life. It hinders his best development, and is 
 a serious barrier to his usefulness. There is a 
 sense in which fastidiousness and selfishness 
 are almost synonymous. 
 
 This question, indeed, involves a problem 
 which is of a very practical nature. The so- 
 cial life of the day — using the term " soci- 
 ety " in its large and general sense — is 
 tending more and more to organization. 
 There is no idea, no theory held that does 
 not immediately become the nucleus of some 
 club or society. Those who support the idea 
 or the cause naturally gravitate to it, and the 
 hourly proverb about the strange companions 
 that poverty makes applies as well to the 
 singularly incompatible personal associations 
 often enforced by means of A's and B's devo- 
 tion to the same idea. 
 
 Now it is very possible to have a true en- 
 thusiasm for ameliorating the condition of the 
 Jews in Russia, or exterminating the saloon 
 from the face of the earth, or giving lovely 
 
84 The World Beautiful 
 
 woman the ballot, or to place the railroads of 
 the nation under government control without 
 being precisely able to love your neighbor as 
 yourself, — or, at least, to love all your neigh- 
 bors as yourself, — simply because they, too, 
 have sympathetic fervors towards the Russian 
 Jews, and hold convictions regarding the duty 
 of the government. 
 
 In the clubs formed purely on the intellect- 
 ual or literary basis, there is a strong pre- 
 sumption of sympathy in the beginning. 
 People who unite in liking Dante must have 
 a good deal in common witli each other. 
 Those who are drawn together by a common 
 desire to pursue literary culture in this form 
 are those that have mutual tastes and appre- 
 ciations to a great degree. 
 
 Not necessarily is this true of the workers 
 for some* great reform. Emerson and Mrs. 
 Childs have told us of the ludicrous incongru- 
 ity of the antislavery workers, whose ranks 
 included Garrison and Phillips on the one 
 hand, and the most extraordinary specimens 
 of humanity on the other hand. What then ? 
 
Exclusiveness and Inclusiveness, 85 
 
 Does the refined and courtly and polished 
 Phillips withdraw from a cause he holds sa- 
 cred because he is partly supported in the 
 company of boors? Assuredly not. 
 
 For while there is much to be said, and 
 due recognition to be given, to the refinement 
 that is too fine for crude and common contact, 
 there is more to be said for that refinement 
 which is so fine that it can go among the 
 coarsest, which is so perfected that it can 
 endure and withstand and indeed be imper- 
 vious to any rudeness or crudeness ; a refine- 
 ment that is not a merely decorative attribute 
 of character, but that can go into the coarse 
 and common life and inspire it with a sugges- 
 tion of something better, — that can spiritual- 
 ize all with which it comes in contact. 
 
 Fastidiousness, that left alone degenerates 
 into selfishness and aloofness, is, when in- 
 spired by the enthusiasm for humanity, re- 
 deemed to the refinement that lifts up others 
 to its own high level. 
 
 Surely it is better to go into the highway 
 and the byway, and love men, and serve them, 
 
86 The World Beautiful 
 
 and contribute an endeavor, be it much or 
 little, to make tlie world a better place than 
 it is to wrap ourselves in the mantle of a 
 fondly fancied superiority, and reject all con- 
 tact with the great and the common daily 
 currents of life. 
 
 Through There is a profound truth at the 
 Scorning i^^tt^j^^ ^f ^i^^^ Browning's asser- 
 
 NotMng. 
 
 tion that — 
 
 *' Poets become such 
 Through scorniug nothing." 
 
 There is no quality which is more corrosive 
 to all true life or endeavor than that of con- 
 tempt. Nor does it spring from any supe- 
 riority of character or gifts, however fondly 
 one who manifests it may lay that flattering 
 unction to his soul. Contempt is not tlie 
 product of spiritual aftluencc, but of spirit- 
 ual poverty. It is the great nature, not the 
 narrow one, that is keenest in discernment 
 and that is most swift to recognize all that is 
 fine or noble in any effort. There is no criti- 
 
Through Scorning Nothing. 87 
 
 cisrn so severe, so carping, as that of the per- 
 son who could least accomplish the work he 
 views with such disdain. So true is this that 
 absolute denunciation is almost invariably the 
 product of absolute ignorance. 
 
 There is a phrase much in use in the world 
 of letters, that of creative criticism. It is a 
 branch of literary art second only to that of 
 poetry ; and when a literary review or art 
 criticism is written by a master in this phase 
 of expression, the reader gains not only a clear 
 and discriminative idea of the work discussed, 
 but also much collateral knowledge of a posi- 
 tive kind. The merely negative writing that 
 points out errors or failures is of little value in 
 comparison with the positive kind that, while 
 revealing these, also discloses the accompany- 
 ing excellences, and the means and measures 
 of a true success. 
 
 The analogy holds true in life. The critic 
 of character who can only point out weak- 
 ness and mistaken endeavor is, at most, of a 
 negative value in progress. If to the keen 
 vision for defects he adds contempt for the 
 
88 The World Beautiful 
 
 defects he discovers, his criticism on life has 
 the effect to paralyze human endeavor. It 
 requires some ability to see reasons for doubt ; 
 but it always requires more ability, and that 
 of a higher order, to see reasons for belief. 
 
 It is an important factor in social harmony 
 to learn to accept people for what they are, 
 rather than to find fault because they are not 
 something else. You may be, at times, bored 
 by the too ardent devotion and profuse de- 
 monstrations of a rcGfard which clothes itself 
 in all variety of material forms, and showers 
 upon you an accumulating avalanche of vis- 
 ible remembrances. You grow tired of too 
 great subjectivity, and long for the plane of 
 the rational and the impersonal. And still 
 the emotional warmth of friendship is not so 
 common that one can afford to banish it or 
 altogetlicr ignore its claims. The ideal friend, 
 who blends the wide outlook on life and ac- 
 tivity in its larger and more permanent inter- 
 est with the liigher possibilities of personal 
 thought and tenderness, is too rare to serve 
 as a prototype. One extreme is found in one 
 
TJirough Scorning Nothing, 89 
 
 person and the other in some one else, and 
 rarely are they united in the same nature. But 
 there is wisdom in accepting people as we do 
 pictures, and placing them in the right light. 
 
 There are few characters or few pursuits 
 that will excite the contempt of one who 
 views them seriously, and sees them in their 
 larger relation to life as a whole. Character 
 is not a fixed and definite creation, — that is, 
 at any time ever made, — but it is always 
 making. It is continually in evolution. 
 There are usually latent possibilities to be 
 considered. There is always the possible 
 inflorescence. 
 
 The mental attitude of contempt towards 
 any phase of human activity not only re- 
 presses or even paralyzes the energy of its 
 object, but it is almost equally fatal, too, to 
 one who habitually cultivates this state of 
 reflection. It is only abounding love and 
 trust and faith that produce abounding en- 
 ergy. To him who believes in nothing, noth- 
 ing can exist. It is the exhaustion of the 
 spiritual atmosphere. 
 
90 The World Beautiful 
 
 « « « ¥ ^ 
 
 The Woman The woman of the world and 
 of the \\^Q worldly woman wear their rue 
 ^^ with a difference. Between them 
 there is a great gulf fixed, — a gulf that sepa- 
 rates worldly knowledge from worldly ambition. 
 Worldly knowledge is desirable ; worldly am- 
 bition is despicable. The one may be, and 
 should be, noble ; the other could, by no trick 
 of transformation, be other than ignoble. 
 Worldly knowledge is safety. A life without 
 it is left largely adrift to the chance forces 
 of destiny. 
 
 *' They shall safely steer who see." 
 
 And sight is always better than blindness. 
 Ignorance and innocence are not altogether 
 synonymous. The innocence of knowledge 
 
 is hififher. 
 
 ''Blind endeavor is not wise ; 
 Wisdom enters through the eyes, 
 And the seer is the knower, — 
 Is the doer and the sower." 
 
 By the truer interpretation a woman of 
 the world is not a worldly woman at all. It 
 
The Woman of the World. 91 
 
 requires far higher qualities than the selfish- 
 ness and materialism that make the worldly 
 woman, to make one whose breadth of view, 
 liberal sympatliies, mental poise, and felici- 
 tous judgment fit her to be a woman of the 
 world. It is she who is the leader in all good 
 works. It is she who perceives needs and 
 comprehends the relative importance of events. 
 Her horizon is wide, her insight swift as 
 light and as unerring, and her sentiment never 
 degenerates into mere sentimentality. She is 
 a woman who can think as well as feel, and 
 who lives in the clear upper air of intellec- 
 tual greatness. A knowledge of the funda- 
 mental forces of life, of its finer possibilities 
 and larger worth, saves her from the emo- 
 tional plane of fanaticism. She acts from 
 reason and intelligence, and has sufficient 
 experience or intuition — the one apt to be 
 true as the other — to realize that the good 
 of others is, for the most part, to be achieved 
 incidentally rather than by any direct and spe- 
 cific effort. The individual who sets out with 
 a conscious purpose to do good, rather than 
 
92 The World Becmtifid. 
 
 fulfil his initial duty to he good, is apt to de- 
 generate into a prig and a bore. It is much 
 the wiser course to strengthen and build up 
 the good than it is to denounce the evil. To 
 help people to help themselves, rather than 
 increase their dependence by emotional re- 
 grets, is far the more effective. 
 
 The worldly woman has no permanent 
 place in social life ; she is kaleidoscopic 
 and unstable. Self-interest is a poor anchor ; 
 but it is all the one she has, and a corre- 
 sponding insecurity of character is the result. 
 One only lives worthily by living for some- 
 thing higher than immediate personal con- 
 cerns. Tlie mere worldly ambition, even 
 when realized, is a kind of Dead Sea fruit, 
 that turns to ashes at the touch. 
 
 But a knowledge of the world is essential 
 to a wise use and direction of life. It is this 
 which gives vision ; and by vision one looks 
 forward and attracts new and potent forces 
 of growth. Thought is the one potent force. 
 The woman of the world, with wide knowl- 
 edge and fine culture, recognizes this spiritual 
 
The Potency of Charm, 93 
 
 law, while the worldly woman knows only 
 the present hour, and has no vision of the 
 larger destinies. 
 
 ***** 
 
 Tiie The quality of charm is the most 
 
 ° ^^^^ potent of any characteristic of hu- 
 of Charm. ^ . "^ 
 
 manity and the least definable. It 
 is that which is most swiftly perceived and 
 most impossible to describe. It is neither the 
 direct result of learning or goodness or accom- 
 plishments, nor any specific gift or grace, and 
 still it includes the essential element in all 
 these. There are persons who may possess 
 every cardinal virtue, so far as known, but 
 whose lack of the one quality of charm renders 
 all else without value to one susceptible to 
 this finer art. Charm is temperamental. It 
 is born, and not made. It is a gift, not an 
 acquirement, and is developed by fine influ- 
 ences in early life. Associations in the im- 
 pressionable period of childhood and early 
 youth leave their ineffaceable stamp. In so 
 far as the individual possesses the ideal and 
 
94 The World Beautiful. 
 
 the artistic temperament, the poetic and im- 
 aginative as distinguished from that which 
 is merely aesthetic and clever, so far he pos- 
 sesses this magic gift of charm. The prac- 
 tical and executive type of people may be, and 
 often are, entitled to respect, consideration, — 
 what one will; but they are fatally lacking 
 in the element that transcends all virtues or 
 acquirements in its magic potency. The great 
 defect in the education of the day is a pre- 
 dominant tendency to the utilitarian basis : as 
 if doing were, in some mysterious way, higher 
 tlian being. Nothing is more remote from 
 the truth. A little margin for- the stillness 
 and leisure of growth — the time to think — 
 is the only corrective for the rush and stress 
 of practical life. The life of a certain type of 
 individuals — wlio subsist on public meetings, 
 committee consultations, cast-iron and well- 
 regulated work in the charities, and strongly 
 defined theories of education — is the life of 
 penal servitude. There is no room left in it 
 for the grace and poetry and exaltation of 
 living. Specific public duties have their 
 
The Potency of Charm. 95 
 
 place ; but it is, after all, in the private life of 
 the day, in the more personal influences and 
 immediate relations, that the chief concern 
 lies. To idealize this daily life and to make it 
 worth idealizing is the secret of that myste- 
 rious attraction called charm. What is meant 
 by culture, says Mr. Mai lock, is seen in one 
 " on whom none of the finer flavors of life are 
 lost; who can appreciate, sympathize with, crit- 
 icise all the scenes, situations, sayings, or ac- 
 tions around him, — a sad or happy love affair, 
 a charm of manner and conversation, a beau- 
 tiful sunset, or a social absurdity. ... I don't 
 call a woman cultivated who bothers me at 
 dinner first with discussing this book and 
 then that, — whose one perpetual question 
 is, ^ Have you read So-and-so ? ' But I call 
 a woman cultivated who responds, and who 
 knows what I mean, as we pass naturally 
 from subject to subject ; who by a flash or a 
 softness in her eyes, by a slight gesture of the 
 hand, by a sigh, by a flush in the cheek, 
 makes me feel as I talk of some lovely scene 
 that she too could love it, — as I speak of love 
 
96 The World Beautiful 
 
 or sorrow, makes me feel that she herself has 
 known them ; as I speak of ambition, or en- 
 nui, or hope, or remorse, or loss of character, 
 that all these are not mere names to her, but 
 things. The aim of culture is to make the 
 soul a musical instrument which maj yield 
 music either to itself or to others, at any im- 
 pulse from without ; and the more elaborate 
 the culture, the richer and more composite the 
 music. . . . The aim of culture is to make us 
 better company as men and women of tlie 
 world. ... A woman may have had all kinds 
 of experience, — society, sorrow, love, travel, 
 remorse, distraction, — and yet she may not 
 be cultivated. She may never have recog- 
 nized what her life has been. To turn this 
 raw material into culture, we must come to 
 art, to poetry. Poetry is the developing solu- 
 tion of life. It is that magic mirror in wliich 
 we see our life surrounded with issues view- 
 less to the common eye. The smell of au- 
 tumn woods, the color of dying fern, may turn 
 by a subtle transubstantiation into pleasures 
 and forces fcliat will never come again, — a 
 
Fine Souls and Fine Society. 97 
 
 red sunset and a windy seashore into a last 
 farewell, and the regret of a lifetime. . . . 
 This is using poetry in its widest sense, as 
 inclusive of all imaginative literature and 
 other art as well." It is in just this sense of 
 responsiveness that the gift of charm lies. It 
 is mental and spiritual vitality. The individ- 
 ual with this magic of charm will kindle and 
 stimulate all around, and inspire new and 
 finer realizations of ideal life, w^hile it can no 
 more be defined than can the scent or the 
 color of the rose^ or the exhilaration of Octo- 
 ber sunshine. 
 
 " I hold it of little matter 
 Whether your jewel be of pure water, 
 A rose diamond or a white, 
 But whether it dazzle me with light. 
 
 Whether you charm me. 
 Bid my bread feed, aud my fire warm me." 
 
 ¥^ 7^ ¥^ ^ ^ 
 
 Fine Souls Emerson's assertion that " it is 
 
 and Fine i\^q f^y^Q souls who serve us, and 
 
 °"" ^' not what is called fine society," is 
 
 a refreshing assurance to fall back upon ; for 
 
 7 
 
98 The ^Yorld Beautiful 
 
 when life degenerates into an idolatry of the 
 senses, a worship of material good, and is con- 
 trolled only by the sovereignty of selfishness, 
 its divine aim is irrevocably lost miless some 
 achievement in the line of duty or sacrifice 
 shall restore it to the sphere of high thouglit. 
 Mr. Mallock once wittily remarked that it 
 used to be considered an attribute of the low- 
 est savages not to believe in a God ; but it 
 would apparently soon be considered an attri- 
 bute of savasre life to believe in one. This ob- 
 servation was made several years ago ; but its 
 latest application seems to be not only inclu- 
 sive of the religious, but also of the moral atti- 
 tude in contemporary life, in which belief, faith, 
 conviction, are rigidly ruled out, and external 
 pleasure is the aim pursued. There is a curi- 
 ous anomaly presented in the fact that in that 
 portion of the community which arrogates to 
 itself the term " society," the attitude toward 
 life in its aims and aspects is as material, as 
 crude, as ignoble as could be found among 
 the poor and the ignorant class. We see a 
 certain portion of the comnmnity whom vast 
 
Fine Souls and Fine Society. 99 
 
 wealth has emancipated from necessities of 
 toil ; who hold the two greatest factors of in- 
 dividual development and rational progress, — 
 leisure and freedom. All opportunities for the 
 noblest culture, the most extended and refined 
 achievements, are open to them. Society it- 
 self, in the highest sense, is a fine art, and re- 
 quires leisure and freedom to develop its best 
 possibilities. Yet, as a matter of statistical 
 data, we discover that fine society does not 
 make fine souls, — that the great and enduring 
 achievements always have been in the past, 
 and continue to be in the present, made by 
 people who are working under conditions of 
 limitation and pressure, who have to use 
 much of their force in overcoming the diffi- 
 culties before they can reach the work itself; 
 while those persons who have nothing to do 
 but conquer on the spiritual side of life turn 
 from it to enofaore in the trivial and the mate- 
 rial. It is little wonder that pessimism is the 
 logical outcome of a life given over to mere 
 personal pleasure and spectacular amusement. 
 The spirit that says, ^' Let us eat, drink, and 
 
100 The World Beautiful 
 
 be merry, for to-morrow we die," is not the 
 spirit that is laying hold on any of the things 
 that make life worth the living. Where life 
 represents nothing but the worship of the body, 
 — that it shall be well cared for, well clad, 
 and constantly amused, — it is little wonder 
 that there can be no convictions of innnortal- 
 ity, or perhaps hardly the wish for it. The 
 first cause of all discontent, all weariness, all 
 jealousy, bitterness, and vanity of life is mate- 
 rialism. It is the corrosive element that rusts 
 away all the pure gold of energy and of 
 aspiration. 
 
 '' jMan is not changed," says ^lazzini, " by 
 whitewashing or gilding his habitation ; a peo- 
 ple cannot be regenerated by teaching them 
 the worship of enjoyment ; they cannot be 
 taught a spirit of sacrifice by speaking to them 
 of material rewards. It is the soul which 
 creates to itself a body, the idea which makes 
 for itself a habitation, ... by devoting him- 
 self and purifying himself by good works and 
 holy sorrow. It must not be said to him, 
 Enjoy, — life is the right to happiness; but 
 
Fine Souls and'Fiiie S'oMetk/': ;\|iO\ 
 
 rather, Work, — life is a duty; do good, loith- 
 out thinking of the consequences to yourself 
 He must not be taught, To each according to 
 his passions ; but rather, To each according 
 to his lover 
 
 When, out of the life of scenic beauty and 
 spectacular amusement, its votaries come to 
 say : " Pleasure is all there is of life ; no one 
 ever does anything for any motive save that 
 of vanity and greed ; authors write only for 
 vanity or for money ; Johns Hopkins en- 
 dows a university simply for the selfish pur- 
 pose of perpetuating his name ; the belle 
 who spends hundreds of dollars on one gown 
 probably does more good than the philanthro- 
 pist who makes higher education possible for 
 a larger number ; no life has any significance, 
 and to believe that one has a message to give, 
 a work to do, a responsibility to meet, is in- 
 sufferable arrogance ; ministers are as selfish 
 for greed and gain as other men ; the churches 
 are nothing but women's club-houses ; wealth 
 is the only rank, and though, if a person has 
 it not, he may sometimes be received by soci- 
 
10'^ The World Beautiful 
 
 ety, he never can be in society," — when such 
 a creed as this is formulated and expressed in 
 tlie literal words given here, as the typical views 
 of the individual speaking and of the leisure 
 class represented, what can be thought of the 
 course which thus eliminates all moral prin- 
 ciple, and takes from life all value of signifi- 
 cance ? Is this the outcome of great fortunes, 
 — to produce this ignominious attitude, this 
 base and common greed for enjoyment? 
 How is this point of view any higher than 
 the crude materialism of the ignorant, the 
 low, and the untrained ? Is this the attitude 
 out of which will come artistic, literary, sci- 
 entific, or philosophical achievement ? The 
 question answ^ers itself. Aspiration, to say 
 nothing of inspiration, is stifled in such an 
 atmosphere. Neither learning nor genius can 
 arise from it. 
 
 That it is the fine souls wdio serve us, and 
 not what is called fine society, is not only emi- 
 nently true, but a truth very much to the 
 point in a practical w\iy, in these days when 
 wealth arrogates to itself the exclusive basis 
 
Fine Souls and Fine Society. 103 
 
 of social life, and believes that they wIjo can 
 build palaces become thereby princes by some 
 occult process of transubstantiation. Yet is 
 there nothing more vulgar than the faith that 
 the parvenu becomes a prince by virtue of 
 gilded setting. The true aristocracy of Amer- 
 ica lies still in genius, intellect, and culture, 
 whatever may be the claim in the life of rep- 
 resentation. To allege that this or that 
 magnate sprang from humble origin is the 
 province of sham and sui^erficiality, and has 
 no part in a true aristocracy. It is the direc- 
 tion in which one's life is moving, the range 
 of affinities that he attracts, the quality of his 
 nature by which the true test of aristoc- 
 racy falls, and not in the least whether he 
 was born in this condition or that. To be ' 
 born with refined tastes and moral instincts is '\ 
 to be well born, whether it be in the limited 
 outward circumstances that have largely cliar- 
 acterized the greatest and noblest in Amer- 
 ican life, or in the purple and fine linen of i 
 latter-day luxury. As a matter of record 
 in America, nearly all permanent greatness has 
 
104 The World Beautiful 
 
 originated in comparatively limited circum- 
 stances, — to wit, Emerson, whose early life 
 w\is one of even actual privation; Lowell, 
 wliose father had the modest comfort of a 
 hard-w^orking and self-denying minister in 
 early days ; Edward Everett Hale, who told 
 us in the "Forum" that he grew up in the 
 days "when an American gentleman might 
 have to put his hand to anything, and there 
 was no service to which he could not give dig- 
 nity, and none to which he should not give 
 himself if there were need." Examples need 
 not be multiplied, but they will readily recur 
 to one, — from Abraham Lincoln reading by 
 pine knots, to Howells reading Longfellow's 
 poems while the old mill wheezed away. 
 
 Fine society is not made. It is not to be 
 bought with a price. It must grow. It is 
 the result of evolution. "Xoble aims and 
 sincere devotion to them, the highest devel- 
 opment of mind and heart, the fine aroma of 
 cultivation wliich springs from the intimacy 
 with all that human genius has achieved in 
 every kind, simplicity and integrity, a soul 
 
Fine Souls and Fine Society » 105 
 
 whose sweetness overflows in the manner and 
 makes the voice winning and the movement 
 graceful, — here is the recipe for fine society ; 
 and although much of this is impossible — 
 as, for instance, high and various cultivation 
 ■ — without wealth, yet wealth of itself cannot 
 supply the lowest element. The wealth of a 
 foolish man is a pedestal, which, the more he 
 accumulates, elevates him higher, and reveals 
 his deformity to a broader circle. These most 
 obvious facts are rarely remembered. Gilded 
 vulgarity believes itself to be gold." 
 
 When it arrogates to itself the exclusive 
 claim to gold, it is time its pretensions were 
 stripped away, and its barrenness revealed. 
 The only fine society — that which is com- 
 posed of fine souls — is exclusive, but not in a 
 vulgar way. All that does not belong to it 
 drops away by a spiritual law. All that does 
 belong to it comes by spiritual gravitation. 
 Fine society is the graceful, genial, sympa- 
 thetic intercourse of fine souls. It is a festi- 
 val over which the gods themselves preside. 
 It is not spectacular. It is not to be manu- 
 
106 The World Beaut if uL 
 
 factured out of a sudden rise in stocks. It 
 does not depend on the market. The noble 
 words of Julia Ward Howe hold the final 
 truth that crowns this train of speculation : 
 
 " To me the worship of wealth means, in 
 tlie present," says Mrs. Howe, " the crown- 
 ing of low merit with undeserved honor, the 
 setting of successful villany above unsuccess- 
 ful virtue. It means absolute neglect and 
 isolation for the few who follow a high heart's 
 love through want and pain, through evil and 
 good report. It means the bringing of all hu- 
 man resources, material and intellectual, to 
 one dead level of brilliant exhibition, a second 
 ' Field of the Cloth of Gold,' to show that the 
 barbaric love of splendor still lives in man, with 
 the thirst for blood and other quasi animal 
 passions. It means in the future some such 
 sad downfall as Spain had when the gold and 
 silver of America had gorged her soldiers and 
 nobles ; something like what France experi- 
 enced after Louis XIV. and XV. I am no 
 prophet, and least of all a prophet of evil ; 
 but where, oh, where, shall we find the anti- 
 
Fine Souls and Fine Society. 10/ 
 
 dote to this metallic poison ? Perhaps in the 
 homoeopathic principle of cure. When the 
 money miracle shall be complete, when the 
 gold i\lidas shall have turned everything to 
 gold, then the human heart will cry for flesh 
 and blood, for brain and muscles. Then 
 shall manhood be at a premium, and money 
 at a discount." The final word on society 
 considered as a fine art, considered nobly and 
 with full recognition of its high purpose, must 
 always be this word of America's most rep- 
 resentative woman, — Julia Ward Howe. 
 
LOTUS-EATING. 
 
 I walked on, musing with myself 
 On life and art, and whether, after all, 
 A larger metaphysics might not help 
 Our physics, — a completer poetry 
 Adjust our daily life and vulgar wants 
 More fully than the special outside plans 
 Preferred by modern thinkers, as they thought 
 The bread of man indeed made all his life. 
 
 Auroj'a Leigh, 
 
VICE AND ADVICE. 
 
 !OME wit says that the worst vice in 
 the world is advice ; and it may be 
 added, with equal truth, that no 
 one is so unwise as he who gives advice, 
 — save the one who takes it. Of course 
 both these assertions are a little extreme, and 
 should be taken with more than the tradi- 
 tional grain of salt. There is such a thing as 
 a very fine and true appreciation of that kind 
 of wisdom which may be imparted by counsel, 
 and of the value of that influence which makes 
 itself felt through sympathetic companionship. 
 Still, in a general sense, the formal asking for 
 and receiving advice is something worse than 
 worthless, inciting unfounded ideas of capa- 
 bility for counsel on the part of one who, in 
 a misguided moment, shall give it, and ener- 
 vating and unnerving the one who receives 
 and appropriates it. 
 
112 The World Beautiful 
 
 Doubtless the clergy, of all classes of men, 
 suffer most from this burden flung upon them 
 by the ignorant and the thoughtless. The 
 very nature of their calling attracts it, and 
 makes it difficult, indeed, to evade the claims 
 which yet they cannot meet, and which they 
 should never be asked to meet. There is 
 something that touches the fancy, if not the 
 conscience, in the picture not infrequently 
 held up of the clergyman who is not only the 
 preacher, but the minister as well ; who shares 
 all his people's private joys and griefs, and is 
 their guide and counsellor, et ccetera. It is a 
 picture that the sentimental novelists are fond 
 of depicting, and it is not without its hu- 
 man charm and something of its divine sig- 
 nificance. The value of personal influence, 
 through sympatlietic personal intercourse, can 
 never by any possibility be over-rated. It 
 was what Jesus gave to His disciples, and as 
 far as possible to the populace ; and His ex- 
 ample remains for all ages the ideal one. 
 
 Still, even ideals themselves are somewhat 
 relative to time and circumstances. The good 
 
Vice and Advice, 113 
 
 priest, who shares the simple joys and sorrows 
 of the peasantry, and whose relation is more 
 that of the father to his family than of the cler- 
 gyman to his parish, undoubtedly meets a real 
 need of the primitive and simple life to which 
 he ministers. As that life advances in intelli- 
 gence, it gains in individual self-reliance. It 
 gains the power of decision, the ability to 
 make its own choice and selection. The 
 higher service of the priest is then to educate 
 the conscience, to stimulate and refine the 
 moral sense, and to make his teachings tend 
 to the one supreme result, — the culture of 
 spirituality. When the life of the spirit is 
 once grasped by the intelligence and entered 
 upon by the response of the soul to the 
 Divine Spirit, then is the individual started 
 on that upward way where he perceives, with 
 constantly increasing clearness, the relation of 
 his soul to the Divine, — where he can seek 
 the leading and recognize the guidance. 
 
 There are not wanting, however, in every 
 city, in every parish, the type of people who 
 desire to " pour out their soul/' as they will 
 
114 The World Beaut if al 
 
 express it, to something or somebody, and 
 their minister is the natural victim of this 
 yearning. However useless and even harm- 
 ful he may know this to be, it is difficult to 
 refuse, by virtue of his holy office. And there 
 is always the possibility of there being one 
 real need amid all the tide of mere emotional 
 and sentimental outpouring, and he would 
 rather give unnecessary effi)rts to a thousand 
 tlian deprive one of essential aid. 
 
 Still, it is a man's duty to himself — and 
 not less that of the clergyman than other men 
 — not to be submerged in a tide of helpless 
 appeals from people who would do far better 
 to help themselves. As Sir Hugo said to 
 Daniel Deronda : '' Be courteous, be obliging, 
 but don't give yourself over to be melted 
 down for the benefit of the tallow trade." A 
 parish should realize how the power of their 
 minister to break for them the true bread of 
 life, to communicate to them the spiritual 
 energy which is the motor, so to speak, by 
 which each may successfully conduct life for 
 himself — they should realize, how his power 
 
Vice and Advice. 115 
 
 to give them this all-essential aid depends on 
 a certain freedom and detachment from mate- 
 rial details. It is his office to give them the 
 principles of navigating the sea of life ; but it 
 is not his office to hold the rudder and steer 
 each man's ship for him. That one must do 
 for himself. 
 
 The faculty of self-reliance is one that 
 should be considered in educational culture. 
 To rely on one's self is not, necessarily, to be 
 conceited or audacious. It may consist with 
 a very adequate appreciation of the greater 
 wisdom of other people, but also with a deli- 
 cate reverence for that greater wisdom, — with 
 that reverence which would forbid intrusion 
 or insistence. On general principles, those 
 persons who desire to have their lives moulded 
 and their souls fed, and to be propelled gen- 
 erally by somebody else, had much better 
 learn that invaluable lesson of the culture of 
 self-reliance. Each must live his life for him- 
 self ; he must realize that that life lies between 
 his own soul and God. Seek wisdom, seek 
 understanding ; but seek it at the Infinite 
 
116 The World Beautiful 
 
 Source. " Trust thyself," well said Eniersou. 
 " Every heart vibrates to that irou string." 
 
 ***** 
 
 One's There is perhaps no trait in hu- 
 
 ^^ man nature that is more under the 
 
 Way. 
 
 ban of a general and by no means 
 concealed aversion than that which is vaguely 
 designated as the liking to have one's own 
 way. It is held up to protest, to scorn, to 
 denunciation. Yet after all what is better ? 
 Another person's way ? But to pursue that 
 successfully requires all the personal inclina- 
 tion of angle, the thousand subtle determining 
 causes that go with it, and which no individ- 
 ual can ever transfer to another. Yet the 
 strong bent to one's own devices and plans is 
 not unlikely to keep one in a state of semi- 
 martyrdom for the first twenty-five years of 
 life. This instinct in a chikl is called obsti- 
 nacy, and is usually rebuked and repressed by 
 parents and teachers. In early youth family 
 and friends look on it with distrust, if not 
 with positive disapproval, and it is only after 
 
One's Own Waij. 117 
 
 one has at last succeeded in asserting his in- 
 dividuality and holding his own, that this dis- 
 trust or disapproval becomes mitigated. 
 
 All this attitude operates as a check and 
 hindrance to entering: on one's true life. If 
 gained at last, it is gained in spite of remon- 
 strance and impediments, rather than entered 
 into gradually, naturally, and joyfully, as into 
 the promised land. 
 
 It may safely be asserted that no one vrho 
 depends on another to mark out his path for 
 him can ever make much imj^ression upon life. 
 " A poor thing, but mine own," said Touch- 
 stone, and so saying defined the secret of 
 power. One's own way may be in the ab- 
 stract a poor thing, but being one's own, its 
 chances of success are far above those that 
 attend a better way, not one's own. 
 
 In fact, the magic of success is to believe 
 this. The people who ask for counsel and 
 advice, and get it, — and what is more, fol- 
 low it, — precipitate themselves into a chaotic 
 wilderness, " w^here nothing is but what is 
 not." The man who asks what you think 
 
118 The World Beautiful 
 
 he can do, cannot, it is probable, do any- 
 tiiing. If he has not the polarity of know- 
 ing his own way, and having a way of his 
 own to know, he is driftinor too aimlessly to 
 arrive at any specific destination. With no 
 trnst in himself he cannot inspire trust in 
 others. 
 
 The new education is everywhere recogniz- 
 ing tlie importance of the education of the 
 will, and to lead the will to express itself in 
 outward habits and customs. This is a re- 
 turn to the principles of Aristotle, whose sys- 
 tem of ethics furnishes permanent illumina- 
 tion which has never been surpassed by any 
 thinker. " We acquire the virtues," he said, 
 " by doing the acts. We become builders by 
 building, and so by doing riglit acts we be- 
 come righteous." Which, after all, is but 
 another way of saying that '^ He that docth 
 the will shall know of the doctrine." 
 
 There is a delicate point between the apoth- 
 eosis of the will, the positivcness and the con- 
 fidence that marks out one's own way and 
 follows it, and that over-confidence in one's 
 
Ones Oton Woy. 119 
 
 ^ ■ " -■' ■■ ' ■ ■ ■ — • — ~* — — — 
 
 own powers which leads to the undue exag- 
 ageration of egoism ; and egoism and conceit 
 are largely due to the lack of any standard 
 of measurement. To " know the best that 
 has been thought and said in the world," 
 which is the knowledge held by Mattliew 
 Arnold as desirable, is to know how far 
 short of what is really great and permanent 
 in thought, action, or literature, one's ow^n 
 achievements are apt to be. Devotion to 
 one's own way only becomes heroic when 
 some object higher than ministering to per- 
 sonal gain, or greed, or vanity, is the object 
 pursued. It is not unmixed selfishness or 
 coarse egoism of flaunting boastfulness that 
 may be rightly considered in carving out 
 one's own way. These are of the lower 
 plane to whicli it may degenerate, and are 
 its abuses rather than its uses. It is only 
 when conserved to ends noble in them- 
 selves, when it is informed not only by in- 
 tellectual purpose but by moral energy, that it 
 becomes worthy to create and control a happy 
 future. 
 
120 The World Beautiful 
 
 *' The suii set, but not his hope ; 
 Stars rose, — his faith was earlier up ; 
 
 His action won such reverence sweet 
 As hid all measure of the feat." 
 
 All lives that are in the best sense worth 
 the living are so by virtue of being true to 
 their own polarity. There is undoubtedly a 
 certain line of life, a certain definite, however 
 dimly defined, path predestined for each, and 
 tiiat achievement which we are accustomed to 
 call success is simply the result of the vision 
 tliat sees, and the energy that follows this 
 hidden but divine leadinir. 
 
 Writing It is the temperament which is 
 
 m ympa- ^yj}|jjjor to take risks that is the 
 thetic Ink. ° 
 
 temperament of success, and that 
 
 reads the messages written in sympathetic 
 ink. Its success may not, invariably, be the 
 success of personal gain, or of personal grati- 
 fication ; it may even come in the guise of 
 sacrifice and of spending and being spent for 
 others, — but all the same it is the tempera- 
 
Writing in Sympathetic Ink. 121 
 
 ment of accomplishment and achievement, one 
 that is a potent factor in the progress of the 
 world. It is only the idealists who take risks, 
 and it is they who contribute that which is 
 most of value to the world. But between 
 the idealist, in the true sense, and the mere 
 aesthetic sentimentalist, there is a great gulf 
 fixed. The idealist is imaginative, hopeful, 
 and abounding with life and eneigy. He sees 
 visions, and he dreams dreams, and he lives 
 in a world of hopeful, happy forces that con- 
 tinually radiate new energy, — that generate 
 it, indeed, and that form the living coal on the 
 altar. The mere aesthetic tastes are not to be 
 mistaken for the strong out-going and out- 
 giving forces of the idealist. A good propor- 
 tion of what is mistakenly called art is only 
 the aesthetic. The taste for color, decoration, 
 for pictures and poetry of a grade that appeals 
 only to taste and fancy but have no message 
 of spiritual life to convey, — these are by no 
 means attributes of the artistic, but rather of 
 the aesthetic nature. The one is on the spirit- 
 ual plane ; the other on the sensuous. The 
 
122 The World Beautiful. 
 
 one is the appreciator or the creator of all no- 
 ble forms of art ; the other is at home among 
 the gingor-jar style of decorative effect. 
 
 If one would accomplish anything in tlie 
 world worth doing, he must have sufficient 
 confidence in himself to take risks, to set out 
 on journeys of wiiich he cannot see the end 
 or know by what means he shall be guided ; 
 in other words, he must be capable of belief, 
 of trust in the invisible. A strong purpose 
 creates its own means of accomplishment. " If 
 a god wishes to ride," says Emerson, " every 
 chip and stone will bud and shoot out winged 
 feet for it to ride." 
 
 Undoubtedly, above the material laws which 
 we have investigated and in some degree for- 
 mulated, there is a higher set of laws whose 
 workings are as harmonious and as method- 
 ical, and which may be set in operation by 
 compliance with their conditions. It is un- 
 questionably these laws that are invoked by 
 prayer. Being spiritual potencies, they are 
 moved by spiritual agencies ; and this may 
 be true without any conflict with scientific 
 
Writing in Sympathetic Ink. 123 
 
 theories or rationalistic truth whose operations 
 are restricted to the physical plane. 
 
 It is on this higher plane, and under the 
 spiritual laws that govern it, that the idealist 
 ' — who is constantly ready to take risks in 
 order to inaugurate or to advance his projects 
 — dwells. He is intuitively conscious even 
 if he has never formulated it of having to do 
 with powers that on a lower jjlane of life are 
 unknown ; he is conscious of a support of 
 which the world knows not. 
 
 All great inventors and great discoverers 
 have been men of this type. They have been 
 great idealists, as truly as have been the great 
 poets and painters. They have all been irre- 
 sistibly borne onward by faith in the things 
 that could not be seen, 
 
 " For me, I have no choice : 
 I might turn back to other destinies, 
 For one sincere key opes all Fortune's doors." 
 
 Always to the idealist is it true that 
 
 " One day with life and heart 
 Is more than time enough to find a world." 
 
124 The World Beautiful 
 
 Always he feels the courage of his convic- 
 tions in that 
 
 " Success in thyself which is best of all." 
 
 He who is conscious of alliance with these 
 higher forces cannot know despondency or de- 
 feat. He sets out on the work whose pur- 
 pose thrills and inspires. He has no idea of 
 the details by which it is to be accomplished. 
 He sees it as in vision, as a whole. If he 
 were to await accurate and precise informa- 
 tion as to the methods by which each detail 
 could be wrought, he would never take the 
 initial step. But he is sufficiently at one with 
 these higher potentialities to know that in 
 some way his purpose will be supported, his 
 steps guided, his efforts prospered to fulfil- 
 ment. Michael Angelo somewhere writes : — 
 
 " Meanwhile, the Cardinal Ipolito, in whom 
 all my best hopes were placed, being dead, I 
 began to understand that the promises of this 
 world are, for the most part, vain phantoms ; 
 and that to confide in one's self, and become 
 something of worth and value, is the best and 
 Bafest course." 
 
Success as a Fine Art, 125 
 
 At all events, it is they who do confide in 
 themselves who are apt to become something 
 of worth and contribute forces of value. They 
 set their courses by the stars, and do not w^ait 
 for a rushlight for every individual step of the 
 
 way. 
 
 '^ What fairer seal 
 Shall I require to my autheutic mission 
 Thau this fierce energy, — this instinct striving, 
 Because its nature is to strive ? " 
 
 To believe and go forward is the key to suc- 
 cess and to happiness. Doubt and distrust 
 are the negative and corrosive forces. The 
 enthusiasm for a high purpose calls into being 
 the agencies by means of which it may be 
 accomplislied. Great powers attend on great 
 thoughts ; and, above all and beyond all, 
 among the creative forces, is the power of a 
 
 great faith. 
 
 ^ ^ ^ ji^ ^ 
 
 Success '' What boots it, — what the soldier's 
 as a mail, 
 
 ±me Art. Unless he conquer and prevail?'' 
 
 Success in life is too largely and far too 
 generally considered in the nature of special 
 
126 The World Beautiful. 
 
 gifts or of exceptional good foi'tune, of some 
 unusual provision or combination in some way, 
 rather tlian as the simple duty and the obliga- 
 tion of all intelligent and aspiring people ; that 
 is to say, it should be held as the normal, and 
 not the abnormal, condition. The defective 
 classes in intellect or in morals are the only 
 ones who do not rise to the level of being 
 regarded under this obligation. The idiot, 
 the lunatic, and the totally vicious arc the 
 special and exceptional in the great rank and 
 file of humanity ; and it is they alone who 
 should not be held by public sentiment as 
 under the law of success. 
 
 For even the chronic invalid may make such 
 a success of character — the only permanent 
 form that it takes — as to be a blessing, a 
 benediction, and an inspiration to all who 
 come near. Physical deficiencies or afflictions 
 of any kind do not put one outside this law, 
 because success is mental and moral and spirit- 
 ual, — a result of fine qualities of mind and 
 heart, of energy and of striving, — and is 
 therefore not in bonds to physical or material 
 
Success as a Fine Art. 127 
 
 causes. Success, then, is simply a duty. It is 
 the obligation of the many, and not the luxury 
 of the few. 
 
 *' One thing is forever good, — 
 That one thing is success." 
 
 To achieve success is not merely the gratifi- 
 cation of a personal ambition, not merely a 
 selfish endeavor ; it is a moral duty, and a 
 very high responsibility. It is a personal obli- 
 gation. Success is good. The traditional talk 
 about failures being often better than success ; 
 the traditional feeling that the successful man 
 or woman is, by that very achievement, more 
 or less isolated from the average toiling, bur- 
 dened masses of mankind ; that, though suc- 
 cess may imply a certain ability and keenness, 
 its very realization is through some lack of 
 consideration, some defect of sympathy, some 
 self-centred power, that pushes on, regardless 
 of those through whose ranks it makes its 
 way, — this conception of success is very far 
 removed from the truth. To reo:ard success 
 as more or less synonymous with selfishness. 
 
128 The World Beautiful 
 
 is to degrade it from anything like its real 
 significance. 
 
 No one has success until he has the abound- 
 ing life. This is made up of the many-fold 
 activity of energy, enthusiasm, and gladness. 
 It is to spring to meet the day with a thrill at 
 being alive. It is to go forth to meet the 
 morning in an ecstasy of joy. It is to realize 
 the oneness of humanity in true spiritual sym- 
 pathy. It is, indeed, that which one is ; not 
 that which he does or which he has. And so 
 all our usual conceptions of success fall infi- 
 nitely short of the genuine thing. It is not 
 necessarily success to be rich, or famous, or 
 even popular, in the general acceptation of 
 that term. These attributes and accidental 
 things may or may not accompany success ; 
 but their presence does not make it, their 
 absence does not take it away. 
 
 It is as amazing as it is sad, that we go 
 about so largely burdening ourselves with 
 strivings that are of no consequence, and miss 
 the gladness and cxiiilaration of living. Xo 
 life is successful until it is radiant. The King 
 
Success as a Fine Art 129 
 
 of Glory is always ready to come in. Why do 
 we bar the way ? We cannot all live in pala- 
 ces ; but we can all live in the Kingdom of 
 Heaven, and the material luxuries of the 
 one pale before the glow and thrill and exal- 
 tation of the other. " The contribution of 
 Christianity to the joy of living, perhaps 
 even more to the joy of thinking, is im- 
 speakable," says Dr. Drummond. " The joy- 
 ful life is the life of the larger mission, the 
 disinterested life, the life of the overflow from 
 self, the more abundant life which comes from 
 following Christ. ... If Christianity can do 
 anything, it can take away the earth. By the 
 wider extension of horizon which it gives, by 
 the new standard of values, by the mere set- 
 ting of life's small pomps and interests in the 
 light of the Eternal, it dissipates the world 
 with a breath. All that tends to abolish 
 worldliness tends to abolish unrest." 
 
 The one great truth to which we all need to 
 come is, that a successful life lies not in doing 
 this, or going there, or possessing something 
 else : it lies in the quality of the daily life. It 
 
130 The World Beautiful 
 
 is just as surely success to be just and cour- 
 teous to servants or companions or the cliance 
 comer, as it is to make a noted speech before 
 an audience, or write a book, or make a mil- 
 lion dollars. It is achievement on the spirit- 
 ual side of things ; it is the extension of our 
 life here into the spiritual world, that is, alone, 
 of value. This extension is achieved, this 
 growth toward higher things is attained, by 
 our habitual attitude of mind. It develops by 
 truth and love and goodness ; it is stunted by 
 every envious thought, every unjust or unkind 
 act. Tlie theatre of our actions may be public 
 and prominent, or private and obscure. Our 
 conduct may be read of men, or it may hardly 
 be known beyond the most limited circle. 
 AVhat then ? Does not one require moral 
 healtli, spiritual loveliness for himself, as he 
 docs his pliysical healtli, and not merely for 
 display ? One would prefer to be well rather 
 than ill, if he were alone on a desert island. 
 Why not, as well, prefer to be spiritually 
 abounding, whether the world recognize it or 
 not? 
 
Success as a Fine Art. 131 
 
 " For to be carnally minded is death ; and 
 to be spiritually minded is life and peace." 
 Here we touch the profoundest truth of life. 
 All the jar, the unrest, the friction, the un- 
 happiness of life are inseparably related to 
 the material plane. " To be carnally minded 
 is death." But leave this ; live the "life more 
 abundant ; " rise above selfishness and envy ; 
 rejoice in your neighbor's success, be glad in 
 his gladness; love what is lovely, whether 
 your own or another's : in short, be " spirit- 
 ually minded," and at once there is "life and 
 peace," at once there is success in its pro- 
 foundest significance. 
 
 It is so possible to cultivate easy, cordial, 
 friendly relations of reciprocal good-will to all 
 whom one may meet. It is so possible to be 
 glad in the gladness of other people ; and, too, 
 it is possible so to extend one's own life into 
 higher regions that his happiness shall not 
 be altogether dependent upon other people. 
 He may come to realize the deep truth in 
 the lines, — 
 
132 The World Beautiful, 
 
 ** Seek not the spirit, if it hold 
 Inexorable to thy zeal ; 
 Trembler, do not whiue or chide, — 
 Art thou not also real ? " 
 
 ^Yhen one can gain this basis of actual 
 reality in his life ; when he can realize that 
 first of all and above all are his relations to 
 the unseen, his anchorage as a spirit to a 
 spiritual world, developing his faculties as 
 best he may, — then is he prepared to be the 
 truer and warmer and more steadfast friend, 
 while yet less dependent on friendship than 
 before. 
 
 The only success worth the name is the 
 achievement of this high spirituality. With 
 it, the beggar would be rich ; without it, the 
 king would be poor. This is '' the thing for- 
 ever good," — the thing that may truly be 
 called success. 
 
 There are few writers in any 
 A Common 
 
 Experience, l^^'gc city who do not receive more 
 or less (and usually more) notes 
 running somewhat after this fashion : — 
 
A Common Experience, 133 
 
 "... Pardon this intrusion; . . . but be- 
 lieving that you are a friend to all novices in 
 literature, we venture to ask if a young lady 
 who is desirous of entering into active literary 
 (journalistic) work could be offered a word of 
 advice ? She has decided ability and plenty of 
 determination. Some two years ago you printed 
 one of her poems, and personally commended 
 other productions. ..." 
 
 There is a somewhat general impulse on the 
 part of those receiving such letters either to 
 ignore them altogether, or to offer strongly 
 negative advice regarding the stranger's de- 
 sire to enter into the competition of what is 
 rather nebulously termed overcrowded work. 
 '^ If you have a place to stay in, stay in it," 
 growls the cynic. " There are more workers 
 than there is work, more aspirants for places 
 than there are places to fill." All of which is 
 not without truth; but is there not a still 
 deeper truth ? 
 
 The presumption of experience is always 
 against the probabilities of success to the new 
 and untrained workers. But experience, 
 
134 The World Beautiful 
 
 tliough not without its claim to respect, has 
 yet far less title to be considered than has 
 faith. Experience is of the world, and faith 
 is of the spirit. A young man or a young 
 woman may go, unaided and unfriended, to 
 a large city, — may go with nothing and to 
 nothing, — and yet build up a beautiful and 
 successful life. It depends. The light of the 
 public square alone can test the statue. 
 
 So far as literary work goes, the term is very 
 elastic, and is almost stretched to embrace 
 everything in these days, from literature proper 
 — from literature as produced by an Emerson, 
 Hawthorne, Tennyson, Whipple, or Lowell — 
 to tlic inanities of a fashion reporter. The 
 requirements of that rather distinctive branch 
 of work, literary journalism (using the term 
 in its ideal significance), are far greater than 
 those for the spasmodic production of special 
 newspaper or magazine articles of the average 
 quality. The literary journalist must, per- 
 force, take all knowledge for his province, to a 
 very large degree. His ideal work implies be- 
 hind it the endeavor to realize in it certain 
 
A Common Experience, 135 
 
 ideals of life. There is a very definite stand- 
 ard to be maintained ; and no great or uplift- 
 ing writing comes out of narrow and trivial 
 life. The degree of achievement in literary 
 journalism will be determined more by the 
 individuality of the journalist than by any ex- 
 ternal scenery of his life. Tlie spirit fashions 
 its own world, regardless of visible correspond- 
 ence between its inner visions of beauty and 
 its actual limitations of environment. 
 
 While, however, the inexperienced aspirant 
 may wish to enter into what her adviser calls 
 '^ active literary work," the presumption is that 
 she has not the culture nor the original power 
 to do anything of the sort. But if she has a 
 temperamental tendency toward letters, and 
 the gift or the grace that overflows in verse, 
 — even though it be very far from poetry, — 
 there is every reason to believe she has the 
 capacity for being trained into some useful 
 work in journalism. It is true that the daily 
 press does not want her verse ; it can always 
 select the best in the world, — while its origi- 
 nal contributions in rhyme are, at best, doubt* 
 
136 ' The World Beautiful. 
 
 fill ; but the glow and vivacity that ripples 
 itself away in rhyme is a very good ingredient 
 for reportorial work. It argues the tempera- 
 ment that possesses brightness, ardor, and sym- 
 pathy. And the personal qualities that endear 
 a young woman to her friends at home, and 
 incline them to write of her and to try to se- 
 cure for her a hearing in a distant city, are the 
 qualities not less indispensable in a newspaper 
 office, if she came to the city ; for nowhere is 
 there a greater demand for sweetness of spirit, 
 for refinement, courtesy, and sympathetic com- 
 prehension. Harmony is an important — one 
 almost says the important — factor in the con- 
 duct of journalism. Added to these qualities 
 the young aspirant must bring to her work 
 plenty of willingness, of energy, and reliability. 
 She nmst learn to be in her place when her 
 place needs her ; and to that all other matters 
 of life must be held subordinate. Engaged to 
 do a certain work, it is her first duty always 
 to do that work to the very best of her ability 
 — not, perhaps, her only duty, but always her 
 first one. 
 
A Common Experience, 137 
 
 Fitness for work inevitably creates its own 
 theatre of action. Opportunities correspond 
 with almost mathematical accuracy, to the 
 ability to use them. 
 
 If the aspirant for city journalism is pre- 
 pared to enter on a branch of service that is 
 very probably within her possibilities and 
 give to it her best effort and her faithful devo- 
 tion, trusting to growth and fitness for subse- 
 quent promotion, there is no reason why she 
 should not make her trial of the chances, 
 though a hundred have tried and failed. 
 Their failure creates no precedent for her, 
 because places are never found, but made. 
 Ninety-nine may fail to make a place, and the 
 one hundredth succeed. There is true wisdom 
 in the lines from Tlieocritus : — 
 
 *' A shipwrecked sailor, buried on this coast, 
 Bids you set sail ; 
 Full many a gallant ship, when we were lost, 
 Weathered the gale." 
 
 Never need one be disheartened or dis- 
 couraged by other people's failures. They 
 have no power to aftect his own. 
 
138 The World Beautiful 
 
 The woman who desires to write is, indeed, 
 an ever-present problem, not only to the lite- 
 rary profession, but largely to society as well. 
 Her chosen victims, whom she selects as pre- 
 destined to serve as amateur audiences, repre- 
 sent both the literary worker and tlie general 
 reader ; and her inquiries as to ways and 
 means are addressed to each faction with 
 equal impartiality. 
 
 Now, there is nothing to be said against 
 the aspiration to engage in literary work. If 
 tlic attractions do not invariably point to the 
 destinies, there is always more or less of a 
 probability that way. And while the aspirant 
 will be told dismal and depressing talcs of an 
 overcrowded market, and while these tales 
 arc true, they really amount to very little. 
 The tools are to one who can handle them. 
 Let the right person come, and he passes 
 through the ranks and h.as his own right of 
 way. London was overflowing with literary 
 workers ; but Kudyard Kipling came, and edi- 
 tors and publishers entreated him to invade 
 their columns. The person who has something 
 
A Common Experience. 139 
 
 to say will always find a hearing. It does not 
 make the slightest difFercnco if a thousand 
 persons before him have failed. He is not 
 governed by their conditions, because all the 
 conditions and circumstances that attend any 
 one are individual. Each person is the mag- 
 netic centre of the elements he alone attracts, 
 and these unite in the combinations that form 
 his conditions and atmosphere. Because one's 
 predecessors have succeeded or failed, is not 
 the slightest argument in favor or against a 
 man's own success or failure. A thousand 
 may fall at his right hand, and ten thousand 
 at his left, and the pestilence not come nigh 
 him. All depends. 
 
 So to the girl or the woman who wants to 
 write there is but one thing to be said, — 
 write. But realize that this work is purely 
 and wholly a matter of individual fitness. All 
 the cards and compliments of society, or the 
 lack of them, will never make or unmake the 
 writer. It is worse than useless to ask 
 friend, acquaintance, or stranger if you may 
 read to them your story, essay, or poem. 
 
140 The World Beaidifal 
 
 Their liking or not liking it is no test, and it 
 is merely a waste of time on both sides. Try 
 the test of the liglit of the public square, — 
 that is, the editorial test. Make the publish- 
 ing-house, the magazine, the newspaper your 
 bar of judgment. It is the only possible cri- 
 terion. The less you talk about your inten- 
 tions and aspirations the better. Put all that 
 surplus energy into your work. Study the 
 range and tone of the periodicals you propose 
 to work into, and send the thing that is not 
 utterly incongruous with the periodical to 
 which it is addressed. 
 
 The literary market may be crowded, but it 
 is all the time being enlarged. There is, at 
 all events, always abundance of room for the 
 writer who has something to say that is worth 
 hearing. AVhether an aspirant is that person 
 or not, the market test alone will decide. 
 The praise and compliments of friends are 
 very easy to get, but they are not worth one 
 straw in the way of actual weight with the 
 editorial mind. 
 
 To determine to accomplish a certain thing 
 
A Common Experience, 141 
 
 is to have it half done at ouce. Energy is 
 creative. Believe, and go forward. 
 
 Of course there are times and seasons when 
 a group of friends, or two en tete-a-tete^ can 
 talk over the conditions of literary supply and 
 demand with stimulating effect ; but these 
 seasons arise spontaneously, and are idle if 
 prepared for beforehand. 
 
 It may seem uncharitable to say that there 
 is absolutely no purpose served in helping the 
 person who cannot, for the most part, help 
 himself; yet it is true. It is like trying to 
 " keep up the sun at nights in heaven," or to 
 induce water to run up hill. Unless the in- 
 dividual has that nameless gift in himself 
 which magnetizes conditions, no power on 
 earth can create these conditions for him. 
 The amateur lecturer bores society to a fatal 
 degree by insisting that her friends shall create 
 a social and purely artificial market for her 
 tickets. It may be done once, but unless she 
 has the interest and the power to attract the 
 general public of its own will, the artificial 
 success can never be repeated. The effort 
 is absolutely useless. 
 
142 The World Beautiful 
 
 Let one give the aid lie can, by all means, 
 when the word, the act, or the money will 
 serve as a bridge thrown over a chasm which 
 otherwise would check an onward progress ; 
 but when the object of solicitude has in him- 
 self no original impetus, then do all the aids 
 in the world become utterly useless. 
 
 One who desires to do a given work should 
 first study intelligently the spiritual laws that 
 govern it as surely as the law of gravita- 
 tion controls all efforts on the material plane. 
 The more one comprehends these spiritual 
 laws, the more entirely can he control the con- 
 ditions of his life. The higher always dom- 
 inates the lower. One who comes into an 
 intelligent recognition of spiritual laws need 
 not bo submerged by calamity, or left to the 
 blind fiite of circumstance. He can arise in 
 his own spiritual integrity ar.d say : '^ I have 
 such-and-such a purpose in life. I will work 
 it out to certain ends. I will control the 
 currents, and not be controlled by them." 
 
 The degree to which this assertion may be 
 carried out would amaze those who never 
 verified its truth by their own experience. 
 
THAT WHICH IS TO COME. 
 
 We see but half the causes of our deeds 
 Seeking them wholly iu the outer life, 
 And heedless of the encircling spirit world, 
 Which, though unseen, is felt, and sows in us 
 All germs of pure and world-wide purposes. 
 
 Lowell. 
 
INTIMATIONS AND PROMPTINGS. 
 
 But whoso answers not God's earliest call 
 
 Forfeits or dulls that faculty supreme 
 
 Of lying open to his genius, 
 
 "Which makes the wise heart certain of its ends. 
 
 Lowell. 
 
 HERE is no question but that every 
 one receives in a greater or less 
 degree intimations and promptings 
 which come from some source higher than 
 his own consciousness. There is as little 
 question that both his happiness and his suc- 
 cess are to be measured by his recognition 
 of the Vision, his obedience to the Voice. 
 Not only that, but he is responsible, too, for 
 the degree in which he receives the higher 
 intimations. These grow numerous or fade 
 away altogether, according to the quality of 
 life. It may be held so pure, so receptive to 
 all high influences, so noble in its aspiration, 
 as to furnish the right conditions for these 
 finer promptings ; or it may so degenerate 
 
 10 
 
146 The World Beautiful 
 
 into the material, the selfish, the self-centred 
 as to become deaf and blind and unresponsive 
 to them. To gain a trifle — merely a transient 
 trifle at that — many often sacrifice the one ir- 
 resistible and all-conquering force, spirit power. 
 Balzac emphasizes this truth wlien he says, 
 in " Seraphita " : — 
 
 " Do for God what you do for 3'our ambi- 
 tious projects, what you do in consecrating 
 yourself to Art, what you have done when you 
 loved a human creature, or sought some secret 
 of human science. Is not God the whole of 
 science, the all of love, the source of poetrj^ ? 
 Surely, His riches are worthy of being coveted ! 
 His treasure is inexhaustible, His power infi- 
 nite. His love immutable. His science sure and 
 darkened by no mystery. Be anxious for noth- 
 ing. He will give you all. Yes, in His heart 
 are treasures with which the petty joys you love 
 on earth are not to be compared. What I tell 
 you is true ; you shall possess His power ; you 
 may use it as you would use the gifts of love. 
 Alas ! men doubt; they lack faith and will and 
 persistence. . . . One thought borne inward, 
 one prayer uplifted, one echo of the Word 
 within us, and our souls are forever changed. 
 . . . The soul is ceaselessly joyful. . . . The 
 
Intimations and Promptings. 147 
 
 final life, the fruition of all other lives to which 
 the powers of the soul have tended, and whose 
 merits open the Sacred Portals to perfected 
 man, is the life of Prayer ? Who can make 
 you comprehend the grandeur, the might, the 
 majesty of Prayer? There are privileged be- 
 ings. Prophets, Seers, Messengers, and Mar- 
 tyrs, all those who suffer for the AYord and who 
 proclaim it ; such souls spring at a bound across 
 the human sphere, and rise at once to Prayer. 
 So, too, with those whose souls received the fire 
 of faith. Be one of those. God welcomes 
 boldness. Know this, the torrent of your will 
 is so all-powerful that a single- emission of it, 
 made with force, can obtain all ; a single cry, 
 uttered under the pressure of faith, suffices. Be 
 one of such beings, full of force, of will, of 
 love ! Be conquerors on the earth ! . . . Thus 
 the separation takes place between matter, 
 which has so long wrapped its darkness round 
 you, and spirit, which was in you from the 
 beginning. 
 
 " Then you will no longer feel convictions, 
 they will have changed to certainties. The 
 Poet utters, the Thinker meditates, the Right- 
 eous acts ; but he who stands upon the borders 
 of the Divine World prays, and his prayer is 
 word, thought, action in one ! . . . The uni- 
 
148 The World Beautiful 
 
 verse belongs to him who wills, who knows, 
 who prays ; but he must will, he must know, he 
 uust pray, — in a word, he must possess force, 
 wisdom, faith." 
 
 To recognize the Vision, listen to the Voice, 
 to be open perpetually to the divine prompt- 
 ings, is to come to that spiritual plane on 
 which thought and action are one ; where 
 achievement lifts itself outside visible causes 
 or forms. Prayer is simply the union of the 
 human Spirit with the Divine. It compre- 
 hends within itself all potency. ^' When you 
 possess the faculty of praying without weari- 
 ness, with love, with force, with certainty, 
 with intelligence, your spiritualized nature will 
 presently be invested with power. The quick- 
 ness of spirit becomes yours." 
 
 There is sometliing wrong when life be- 
 comes a drudgery or a weariness. It is like 
 making a journey over the continent on foot, 
 instead of taking a lightning-express train. 
 
 It is possible to rise to the region of crea- 
 tive power where thouglit is the force tliat 
 produces swift results. Force, will, and love 
 
Through Struggle to Achievement. 149 
 
 are the conquerors. "The universe belongs 
 to him who wills, who knows, who prays." 
 
 Success in life is simply coming in touch 
 with these spiritual forces. It is the truth 
 implied in the words of Jesus when He said : 
 " Seek ye first the Kingdom of Heaven, and 
 all these things shall be added unto you.'* 
 Seek first the kingdom of heaven, — the realm 
 of spirit force ; then all other things follow. 
 The kingdom of heaven is ^^joy and peace 
 and love in the Holy Ghost." Life, then, to 
 be successful, to be lived in this kingdom of 
 heaven, should be joyful, loving, and beauti- 
 ful in its serene peace. 
 
 And he who flagg'd not in the earthly strife, 
 From strengtii to strength advancing, — only he, 
 His soul well-knit, and all his battles won, 
 Mounts, and that hardly, to eternal life. 
 
 Matthew Arnold. 
 
 Through In the life of every one who has 
 
 rugg.e ^.gr,]}y tried to make his life some- 
 Achievemant. 
 
 thing finer and nobler and more 
 
 impressive in its influence than a mere exist- 
 
150 The World Beautiful, 
 
 ence could be, there come retrogressions, 
 backward eddies in the tide, unforeseen obsta- 
 cles and hindrances. What then ? Shall he 
 give up the struggle and relax into common- 
 place activities ? " There is no sorrow I have 
 thought more about than this," wrote George 
 Eliot : " that one who aspires to live a higher 
 life than the common should fall from that 
 serene height into the soul-wasting struggle 
 with worldly annoyances." Nor is there any 
 sorrow or loss or pain of life equal to such 
 an experience. To deny it would be false ; to 
 ignore it would be foolish. It is an experi- 
 ence which may come to any one, which does 
 come to many of us ; and it is not blindness 
 to it that will aid but rather the clearer sight 
 to recognize the experience at its true value, — 
 to hold the serenity of spirit that will not be 
 unduly terrified and exaggerate the evil, and 
 also the seriousness of contemplation that will 
 not flippantly pass it by. 
 
 The mysterious principle of vicarious atone- 
 ment has prevailed in the universe, and re- 
 vealed itself, in some form, through every age 
 
Through Struggle to Achievement. 151 
 
 and in every national and individual Iiistoiy. 
 The Christ on Calvary is but the supreniest, 
 divinest form that the truth has taken. 
 The Roman lei]fend that tells how Curtius 
 leaped into the dark gulf which closed over 
 him, is but another attestation of the way this 
 universal truth has taken root in every litera- 
 ture and every land. No work — not even the 
 individual work of one's own life — is ever 
 assured until sacrifice, in some form or other, 
 is made. ^' That which thou sowest is not 
 quickened except it die." It is the power to 
 recognize this relation of temporal defeat to 
 eternal success which is the all-determining 
 factor, — the power to see, not the mere paltry 
 annoyances of the moment, but the vision 
 shining fiiir beyond, and to endure, as seeing 
 Him who is invisible. 
 
 To recognize loss, or pain, or annoyance, 
 not flippantly nor with undue dread, is to 
 assume the conquerinoj attitude. No one 
 is defeated until he gives up. The point 
 is, then, not to give up. Life is, after all, 
 a supernatural affair, an affair of super- 
 
152 The World Beautiful 
 
 naturalism ; and it is the iuvisible powers 
 which are its stay, its guide, and its inspira- 
 tion. We live and move and have our being 
 on the divine side of things. We only live, 
 in any true sense, as we arc filled with the 
 heavenly magnetism. '' Thou hast made 
 known to me the ways of life ; thou shalt 
 make me full of joy, with thy countenance," 
 says the disciple. Here is the true gospel to 
 live by. There are '' ways of life ; " and 
 through toil and trial they shall be reached. 
 The one is eternal ; the other temporal. It is 
 unwise to lay too much stress on the infelici- 
 ties of the moment. Exaltation alone is real ; 
 depression is unreal. The obstacle is not in- 
 tended to stop the progress but to stinmlate 
 new energies. 
 
 For one mounts to eternal life now, — 
 not in some vague to-morrow, but to-day. 
 Eternal life is a condition, not a period. Live 
 in immortal energies, in noble purpose, in true 
 lift of soul, and one lives at once and here the 
 immortal life. His soul has already put on 
 immortality. 
 
Through Struggle to Achievement 153 
 
 There is, too, a charm of going out into the 
 unknown which has seldom been sufficiently 
 appreciated by those to w^hom changes in 
 affairs come by ways outside their own choice, 
 or from causes with whose origin they are not 
 familiar. The ordinary feeling is of shrinking 
 from the new ; of dreading to go from the 
 known into the unknown ; of leaving with 
 reluctance the old familiar ways for the new 
 and untried. This implies a want of adjust- 
 ment to the divine harmony, and not only 
 ignorance, but unbelief in the laws of the 
 universe. 
 
 As we all realize, mere existence is not life. 
 Not existence, but experience, constitutes liv- 
 ing; and experience is gained largely by a 
 continual succession of new environments. 
 With the immaterial as with the material, 
 the law holds good that two bodies cannot 
 occupy the same space at the same time. One 
 experience crowds out another, save that the 
 best of each is, in its essence, assimilated into 
 life and becomes a part of one's character. 
 Now, there is such a thing as spiritual as well 
 
154 The World Beautiful 
 
 as material enterprise. On the visible and 
 material side of life, those who have conquered 
 have always been they who have gone out and 
 on into tiie unknown. The hero is he who 
 takes risks ; although the converse is not, of 
 course, true, — that he who takes risks its inva- 
 riably a hero. But no man conquers who is 
 afraid to venture outside his own garden plot. 
 No one conquers spiritually who is not willing 
 to accept risks, — to go out into the untried 
 and unknown immaterial realm. New expe- 
 riences are the very material from which it 
 draws its life and weaves its fabric. They are 
 something to be largely welcomed and em- 
 braced. They are possessions ; they arc sj)irit- 
 ual capital. Change is apt to be development. 
 Under new skies new voices call to one, — 
 new inspirations are in the very air. 
 
 It is commonly said that no one can escape 
 his fate. But fate is — unpenetratcd causes ; 
 and cause and effect are as indissolubly linked 
 together as night and day, or as the succession 
 of the seasons. T!ie law of cause and effect 
 can no more be escaped or annulled than can 
 
Through Struggle to Achievement. 155 
 
 the law of gravitation. One who, from cre- 
 ating the cause, sets in motion the current of 
 activities that produce the effect, must accept 
 that effect. As the Theosophist would saj, it 
 is a part of his karma. But causes wear them- 
 selves out, and their effects then cease. If 
 one does not like his life in its present aspect, 
 he can change it for the future by changiiig 
 the sources from wliich the present flows and 
 is shaped and colored. Every individual is 
 simply the result, the exact sum and amount, 
 of the causes he has, by his own series of 
 choices, set in motion. But surely no life is 
 ever so perfect in all its fulfilments or ap- 
 pointments, that there are not possibilities 
 or preferences for something different. If a 
 change may be worse, it may also be better ; 
 and whether better or worse depends, after 
 all, wholly on ourselves. It is the mental atti- 
 tude that stamps circumstances, and not cir- 
 cumstances that stamp the mental attitude. 
 
 Outward life is the reflex of inward states. 
 It is the expression which the spirit makes of 
 itself The mind stamps its impress upon the 
 material surroundings. 
 
156 The World Beautiful 
 
 Goethe has said that the highest state is a 
 "tranquillity of soul, in which a man loves 
 what he commands himself to do." There is 
 more in this than meets the eye. To love 
 what one commands himself to do is to endo^v 
 the action with that vitality and magnetism 
 which creates success. To command one's 
 self to do it without loving it, is to perform 
 merely a mechanical action which generates 
 no power to perpetuate its influence. Let 
 no one fail to realize the infinite potency that 
 lies in devotion to the work which he has 
 commanded himself to do. Love that into 
 which one goes forward. Endow it with life ; 
 generate for it the magnetic atmosphere of 
 liope and belief and conviction. One's per- 
 sonal power carried into a new environment 
 shall produce external circumstances as beau- 
 tiful as is the power he brings to bear on 
 them. It depends wholly on himself. If one 
 is afraid of new conditions, — if he dread the 
 untried, — it is really the fear of himself. But 
 if he be strong in integrity of purpose, in 
 singleness of aim, in that larger love and in 
 
Through Struggle to Achievement, 157 
 
 the sweetness of spirit which is serenity and 
 peace, he need feel no terror in going out into 
 the unknown. The cloud by day becomes a 
 pillar of fire by night The need of the morn- 
 ing is met by the heavenly manna. Nor need 
 the manna be stored and hoarded : it is offered 
 anew each day. One need only trust. The 
 force in to-day will rival and re-create the 
 beautiful yesterday. If the angels go out, the 
 archangels may come in ; and whether they do 
 depends wholly on one's self. That power is 
 '^ to him who power exerts " is as certain and 
 unvarying a truth as any law of mathematics. 
 The power that is within rushes to meet one 
 from without. All that is one's own, — that 
 is to say, all that one has conquered of the 
 invisible potencies by means of his own spirit- 
 ual energy, — all that power is his. No exter- 
 nal change can deprive him of it. Nothing 
 can lessen its force to create his outward life. 
 The external circumstances, the surroundings 
 amid which he shall dwell, the friends that 
 shall bring untold sv/eetness and grace into 
 his life, — all these are predetermined by his 
 
158 The World Beautiful. 
 
 own mental state as certainly as the stone falls 
 to the earth by the law of gravitation. We 
 always come to our own, and enter in and 
 possess the land. 
 
 Trial and perplexity teach one the wiser 
 meanings of life, and the way to speed their 
 departure is to grasp the meaning as quickly 
 as possible. Then, with this, let one demand 
 from the higher powers the aid to overcome 
 the plane of trial, and to rise to that where all 
 work is done with exliilaration, and it will be 
 given in even greater measure than he could 
 ask. 
 
 It is these matters that are now those of 
 chief concern to the public in general. It is a 
 very striking fact that, of all the long series of 
 congresses held in Chicago in connection with 
 the World's Exposition, none began to attract 
 such crowds and throngs as those which dis- 
 cussed religion and the higher life. The 
 psychical, tlie theosophical, and the great Par- 
 liament of Religions — a sublime assembly — 
 were those to which the people pressed and 
 thronged, in a degree tenfold greater than to 
 
A Question of the Day. 159 
 
 those devoted to science or economics. For 
 the whole world is feeling the electric thrill of 
 a new life. Our Sinai is before us, and we 
 realize that we must climb it and hold con- 
 verse with the divine. A wave of new invigo- 
 ration is sweeping over the entire world. The 
 gospel of hope, of faith, is bearing men to a 
 wingdd vantage-ground. 
 
 To keep one's foot firmly set in the way 
 that leads upward, however dark and thorny 
 it may be at the moment, is to conquer. All 
 trial is, in its very nature, temporal ; all joy 
 is, in its nature, eternal. Legions of angelic 
 powers wait upon the soul, and guide it to the 
 Mount of Vision. 
 
 ***** 
 , ^ There is no question but that the 
 
 A Question 
 
 of the Day. '\tmosphere in whicli we live is 
 
 magnetic, or, at least, capable of 
 
 being made so, — of being so charged with 
 
 spiritual magnetism that all outward events 
 
 are not only modified, but are even deter- 
 
160 The World Beautiful 
 
 mined bj this all-pervading force. Is it in 
 Festus that we find the lines, — 
 
 " There are points from which we may command our 
 life, 
 When the soul sweeps the future like a glass ; 
 And coming things, full-freighted with our fate, 
 Jut out on the dark offing of the mind " ? 
 
 And it is more than a question if every 
 morning is not such a point in life. 
 
 '' Every day is a fresh beginning ; 
 Every morn is the world made new." 
 
 Each day we stand on the threshold of a 
 new lifetime. We may say that the conse- 
 quences of one day, of one year, of one decade, 
 reach over into another ; that they overlap each 
 other ; that we are always, as the Theoso- 
 phists would phrase it, under the influence of 
 a past karma. But consequences wear out ; 
 new karma, new conditions, replace the old ; 
 and then, over all and above all, there is the 
 absolute and unchaiiGfins: and eternal truth of 
 the forgiveness of the Divine Love. Up to this 
 point theosophical speculation, as well as the 
 so-called liberal " thought," is full of vitality 
 
A Question of the Day, 161 
 
 and clearness. It is helpfully explanatory of 
 the phenomena of life, of its various states 
 and planes. But rationalism does not satisfy, 
 as an end. It is all very well as a means, and 
 so far as it goes ; but it does not go very far. 
 We come face to face with the crisis hour 
 when we demand that the miracle shall be 
 wrought; that all past sins and transgres- 
 sions, errors and weaknesses and failures, shall 
 be absolutely blotted out, that Ave may take 
 strength and courage to begin again. It is 
 here that we come to the infinite comfort, 
 the infinite restoration of the assurance, that 
 " so far as the east is from the west, so far hath 
 He removed our transgressions from us," — 
 not only forgiven, but removed them. They 
 lie no more in our way, — obstacles and 
 stumbling-blocks. There is a new way and 
 a new life. We have only to arise and walk 
 in it. 
 
 And walk in it with fiiith, with happiness, 
 with spiritual serenity ; with that exhilaration 
 of delight which can only come by throwing 
 off every weight, every clog, and feeling sure 
 
162 The World Beautiful. 
 
 of the new heaven and the new earth that 
 another day has brought. 
 
 The glory of the morning is far more than a 
 mere phrase. There lies around it something 
 of the " trailing clouds of glory," in which, 
 the poet tells us, we came *' from God, who is 
 our home." Tlie day lies before us like an 
 unwritten tablet, to be inscribed as we will ; 
 like a fresh canvas on which we shall paint 
 with colors all our own ; or like the mass of 
 clay out of which we shall ourselves shape the 
 statue that waits in it all unformed. 
 
 And how can it be done ? By the heavenly 
 magnetism, the spiritual energy which may be 
 generated, liberated, as tlie chemist would 
 say ; by putting one's self in harmony with 
 the Divine Spirit ; by coming into that attitude 
 of receptivity to the Infinite Love and Infinite 
 Strength which renews and transforms life. 
 *' In the morning will I direct my prayer unto 
 Thee, and will look up. And let all them that 
 put their trust in Thee rejoice ; they shall be 
 ever giving Thee thanks because Thou defend- 
 est them : they that love Thy Name shall be 
 
A Question of the Day. 163 
 
 joyful in Thee." " Thou wilt show me the 
 path of life ; in Thy presence is the fulness of 
 joy, and at Thy right hand there is pleasure 
 forevermore." 
 
 " Commit thy way unto the Lord, and put 
 thy trust in Him, and He shall bring it to 
 pass." Who can remember these words with- 
 out realizing their infinite depth of signifi- 
 cance ? We have only to accept the simple, 
 literal meaning, and absolutely trust in it. 
 "Create in me a new heart;" "Renew my 
 spirit," — these phrases are not mere rhetoric, 
 not merely vague words to be read in a Sun- 
 day service at church ; but they are the most 
 practical of truths applied to daily living. 
 " Ask and ye shall receive," said Jesus. Wliat 
 can be more simple ? 
 
 However full days or weeks or years have 
 been of annoyance, unrest, trouble, even sin^ 
 the miracle may be wrought in any life on any 
 morning, by which all the unrest, the trial, the 
 sorrow shall be lifted, the burden removed, 
 and the soul caught up to ineffable joy and 
 life and light. One has but to give himself 
 
164 The World Beautiful, 
 
 absolutely to the communion of the spirit, — 
 to place himself in receptivity to the currents 
 of spiritual energy and heavenly magnetism. 
 He can will that into the untried day before 
 him shall come only wisdom and beauty and 
 peace and sweetness and love, and the 
 miracle — if it be one — shall be wrought. 
 Undreamed of charm shall wait upon the 
 hours. The friend, unexpected yet always 
 longed for, shall appear. The event so de- 
 sired, yet hardly anticipated, shall come to 
 pass. Work, in all its lines of accomplish- 
 ment, shall take on new achievements. The 
 hour shall be regal in splendor of vision and 
 imagery, and there shall be literally a new 
 heaven and a new earth. 
 
 Thoughts not only " let us into realities," 
 but they are realities. They are the only 
 realities, — the only forces that create perma- 
 nent results. The new and higher life on 
 which all humanity is entering will, undoubt- 
 edly, reduce to the exactness of a science the 
 potential spiritual development that shall pro- 
 duce at will this magnetic atmosphere, in 
 
The Laiv of Overcoming, 165 
 
 which the desire or the thought shall be 
 vitalized into the deed. 
 
 Simply to come to this, to bring our 
 thought " in unison with God's great thought," 
 and we create the conditions wherein '* what- 
 soe'er is willed is done." \ye may, before 
 leaving our own room in the morning, abso- 
 lutely create the conditions of the day, control 
 and shape its events, select its actors, and 
 stamp the entire drama with this magnetic 
 spiritual vitality. 
 
 ***** 
 
 The Law There is, perhaps, no one term 
 
 Over- ^yi^Qgg significance is less truly un- 
 coming. 
 
 derstood than that of overconnng. 
 
 When Jesus said : " In the world ye shall have 
 tribulation ; but be of good cheer : I have over- 
 come the world," there was something meant 
 quite different from its commonly received 
 interpretation. Many persons have trans- 
 lated it to imply that in this world — this 
 present life — tribulation is the appointed lot 
 of man ; but that death will end this, and by 
 
166 The World Beautiful, 
 
 that event we " overcome the world," — that 
 is, euter into joy and peace as inevitable condi- 
 tions of the life beyond. But is there not un- 
 doubtedly a far deeper and nobler meaning 
 than this ? The " world " does not refer 
 merely to life on this planet, — the threescore 
 years and ten allotted to man in this present 
 state of existence, — but rather it has refer- 
 ence to a condition. By " the world " is 
 meant all that materiality which must be 
 overcome before one can enter into that state 
 of mind which is the kingdom of heaven, and 
 w^hich may be the condition of life here just 
 as surely as hereafter. Tlie initial duty, the 
 highest privilege, of life is to overcome the 
 world at once. After that all else is easy. 
 But is it easy to achieve this overcoming? 
 That is the question. 
 
 Still, there are one or two primary truths 
 that every one accepts, and on whose basis we 
 can all meet. These form a favorable point 
 of departure. One, for instance, is the famil- 
 iar truth that the life of the spirit is that 
 which is immortal, and which, because it is 
 
The Law of Overcoming. 167 
 
 permanent, while physical vitality is tempo- 
 rary, is the lire to be considered. We accept 
 fully the truth that all the possessions of this 
 world can serve us, at the utmost, but a com- 
 paratively brief time ; and yet we object vig- 
 orously to their loss or their curtailment, 
 and talk about a man's being "ruined," be- 
 cause, indeed, he has lost his worldly goods ! 
 In short, we say we believe — in fact, we 
 really do believe — one thing, and yet we 
 act every day of our lives as if we believ^ed 
 something else. We assert that we have here 
 no continuing city ; that vast possessions are 
 not of themselves necessarily of significance ; 
 but if a man must forsake a luxurious house 
 on a stately and beautiful avenue, and remove 
 his household gods to a plain home on an un- 
 fashionable street, he views the change to be 
 one of signal misfortune, and regards himself 
 as an unhappy victim of malevolent fate. 
 Now, is it not possible so to overcome the 
 world that we can hold the integrity of life 
 above the incidental and accidental changes 
 of material things ? For, while submerged 
 
168 The World Beautiful. 
 
 in these material tilings, which is being '•^ in 
 the world," we shall assuredly have tribula- 
 tion. Tribulation is inherent in the very 
 nature of material things. We overcome it 
 only as we rise to the spiritual plane. " Be 
 of good cheer/' said Jesus : " I have over- 
 come the world." Where He has gone we 
 may follow. If He overcame the world, so 
 may we. It is not easy ; it is possible. 
 
 Not being easy to achieve, it is, when once 
 attained, a condition so easy that it preserves 
 itself and progresses by its own momentum. 
 One who is succeeding in living to any per- 
 ceptible degree the spiritual life rather than 
 the material, realizes for himself the profound 
 truth in the assertion of the Christ, that His 
 yoke is easy and His burden is light. There 
 is in it the peace which indeed passeth all 
 understanding, and the joy that the world can 
 neither give nor take away. The man of in- 
 telligence and culture may measure this truth 
 by recognizing how much greater is his enjoy- 
 ment than that of the ignorant and the crude. 
 Whatever his fortunes or misfortunes, if he 
 
The Laio of Overcoming, 169 
 
 has a love of literature, of art, of nature, he 
 has resources of happiness that nothing can 
 remove. He can bear hardships of any kind 
 far better than the man who has none of 
 these inner resources on which to draw. 
 Now, if mental culture imparts such greater 
 permanence of happiness, by how much more 
 does that still higher culture that tends to 
 spirituality of life ? AVith this the poor man is 
 rich and the rich man can never become poor. 
 Having overcome the world, the world can- 
 not enojulf or overcome him. 
 
 A mere vague and nebulous rhetorical rhap- 
 sody over " rising to a higher plane " is not 
 worth the paper on which it is written. The 
 readers of the " World Beautiful " would be 
 only wise to turn from any such outpouring as 
 that, if it held no related significance to daily 
 life. But as the life of culture is higher than 
 that of crude ignorance, so is the life of spir- 
 ituality higlier than that merely of intellectual 
 culture. The spiritualization of tliought can 
 be acliieved and held to form an atmosphere 
 in which the individual may live continually. 
 
170 Tlie World Beautiful. 
 
 It is gained by the perfect acceptance as well 
 as the clear realization that to hold the integ- 
 rity of the spirit is the one essential thing of 
 this mortal life. Precisely how this spirit, 
 whose temple is the bodily form, is to be 
 housed and clothed and fed is a subordinate 
 question. The real consideration is how shall 
 it grow in sympathy and tenderness and 
 consideration for others; how shall it feed it- 
 self on great thoughts and noble aims ; how 
 shall it be swift to recognize and avail itself 
 of those opportunities of usefulness which are 
 its best channels for growth ; how shall it 
 hold its clear, direct, and intimate relation 
 with the Div^ine? 
 
 The submission of man's nothing — perfect to God's 
 
 all-complete, 
 As by each new obeisance in spirit I climb to His 
 
 feet. 
 
 The answer is in serene and cheerful obedi- 
 ence and in all-believing and all-confident 
 love. Believe and love, — all the duties of 
 the world and all the privileges of heaven are 
 condensed in those three words. Believe and 
 
Li Newness of Life. 171 
 
 love. Not only trust, but know, believe. 
 Hold fast to the conviction that the forces of 
 life are divine. Come into harmony with 
 them, and thus live above the plane on which 
 discord is possible, thus overcome the world. 
 
 '' With those elect, 
 Who seein not to compete or strive. 
 But with the foremost still arrive, 
 
 Prevailing still : 
 Spirits with whom the stars connive 
 To work their will," 
 
 William Watson. 
 
 In New- There are few phrases that bear 
 
 ^^^3 within them more inherent buoy- 
 I^ife- 1,1. 
 
 ancy and exhilaration than that, 
 
 "to rise in newness of life." It is a thought 
 to live by. It comes to one in the morning 
 on first waking, and instantly he is conscious 
 of a new tide of exhilaration. It is like a 
 ladder on which his spirit climbs and all 
 beautiful things seem possible. There is in- 
 finite significance in the injunction of Saint 
 Paul to be not conformed to this world, but 
 
172 The World Beautiful 
 
 transformed by the renewing of spirit ; and 
 again, when he asserts that to be carnally 
 minded is death, but to be spiritually minded 
 is life and peace, the thought is the most prac- 
 tical and simple. Because we live by our con- 
 victions and our enthusiasms, our visions and 
 our ideals. Those are the properties, so to 
 speak, of that spiritual world which the spirit 
 inhabits, even though it is held to earth by 
 dwelling in its physical body. That which 
 we habitually see, as in vision ; those condi- 
 tions in which we picture ourselves in half- 
 unconscious imaginings, are those which shall 
 be realized in outward i\\ct. And so, when 
 on the clear mirror surface of a perfectly un- 
 tried day we see ourselves rising in newness 
 of life, transformed by the renewing of spirit, 
 we grasp thus the key to achievement and 
 happiness and blessedness. 
 
 The initial point is to bring the mind into 
 an attitude of love. Hatred, discord of any 
 kind, forms an impassable barrier between the 
 spirit and the joy and exaltation of the spirit- 
 ual atmosphere. Hatred is Hades ; and for 
 
In Newness of Life. 173 
 
 one to keep that attitude is to sliut himself in 
 prison, and exile himself wholly from all tliat 
 is life. Hatred is mental paralysis, and it 
 forms one of those circles of hell that Dante 
 saw. Love, on the contrary, is magnetic. It 
 offers the open vision. It is not only recep- 
 tive, but it attracts all germs of noble ac- 
 tion and of fortunate combinations. It is 
 not passive, but active ; not negative, but 
 positive. 
 
 Every morning one holds in his own hands 
 this marvellous power to rise in newness of 
 life and to shape conditions. The law by 
 which this may be done is as definite and as 
 inevitable as is the law of gravitation. It is 
 now time for the Newton of the spiritual 
 world to arise and announce these principles 
 by which the soul may formulate its con- 
 ditions. All the trouble, the defeat, the dis- 
 aster, the gloom, and the conflict of the world 
 is simply due to the fact that man has never 
 asserted his birthright. He is not only " the 
 heir of all the ages," but he is the heir to all 
 spiritual treasure and power. Yet, instead of 
 
174 The World Beautiful 
 
 looking to heaven, he looks down to earth ; 
 instead of asserting his power to create con- 
 ditions, he allows himself to be entangled with 
 material conditions, chaotic and meaningless, 
 and involved in trouble, disaster, and defeat. 
 It is as if one should sit down in the midst of 
 skeins of silk, and allow the filaments to over- 
 flow in knots and tangles all around him, and 
 then direct his time and energies to the minute 
 untying of knots, instead of arising and shak- 
 ing them all off at one movement. " All 
 power is given to INIe in heaven and earth," 
 said Jesus. And He promises that the very 
 works He has done man shall do also, " and 
 greater works than these." Are we to take 
 these assurances as a mere dead letter, — treat 
 them as rhetorical figures, rather tlian read in 
 them the living truth ? Why, tliese assur- 
 ances not only offer a privilege, — they confer 
 on man a responsibility. It is his business to 
 arise and assert his spiritual birthright, — to 
 insist on his own power over conditions. All 
 fulfilment of duty lies in this. 
 
 The condition of this assertive success is 
 
In Newness of Life. 175 
 
 love. This is the quality wliich produces that 
 magnetic atmosphere in which creative exer- 
 cise is possible. In this atmosphere alone 
 shall he rise to newness of life. 
 
 It is my most earnest purpose to convince 
 the reader of the literal truth, the absolute 
 practicality, of these assertions. As a bit 
 of decorative verbal embroidery, they would 
 not be worth the paper on which they are 
 written ; but as the most important truth in 
 the life of this century, — an age in which 
 man is beginning to realize the powers that 
 have largely lain dormant in the soul, — to 
 that truth the most earnest consideration may 
 be urged. Psychic power has been mistakenly 
 regarded as being, at best, for purposes of 
 mere phenomena and wonder-working. This 
 is the least of its significance. Its true place 
 is as the practical working force of daily life. 
 No one has any moral right to live in a hap- 
 hazard way, at the mere mercy of circum- 
 stances. It is as wild as it w^ould be for a 
 rational being to put out to sea in a row-boat. 
 It is a part of the accomplishment of true 
 
176 The World Beautiful 
 
 acliievenient to give a margin of time out of 
 every twenty-four hours to the clear shaping 
 — the psychic stamping, so to speak — of the 
 day. The hours lie before one like plastic 
 clay, ready to take the design of his spiritual 
 impress. 
 
 We live in a world where visible and tan- 
 gible things exist, to which, on the immaterial 
 side, tliere are spiritual correspondences. One 
 of these things is money. The higher order of 
 people are apt to say there are better things 
 tlian money ; tliat there is the w^ealth of aspi- 
 ration, of noble purpose, of generous and 
 liberal sympathies, of good health and right 
 feeling. And this is deeply true ; and if one 
 w^ere to choose from financial riches on the 
 one side, and spiritual riches on the other, he 
 who would choose the former rather than the 
 latter would be a madman rather than a 
 rational human being. x\ll the same, how- 
 ever, there is no truth in a sort of vague, 
 traditional feeling that material poverty is 
 necessarily synonymous with spiritual wealth, 
 or that material wealth is synonymous w^ith 
 
In Neiviiess of Life. 177 
 
 spiritual poverty. Tliat this not unfrequently 
 is true does not in the least argue that it is 
 necessarily so, or that it is an ideal state of 
 affairs. Still, when wealth is gained by a man 
 giving himself over, body and soul, to material 
 accumulation ; when it is gained by grinding 
 down the wages of employes, by the oppression 
 and selfishness of all competitive industry, 
 why, then, to amass financial wealth is at the 
 fearful price of spiritual development. 
 
 The new trend of advanced spiritual thought, 
 which proclaims that poverty is a disease, has 
 right premises. " For the earth is full of the 
 riches of the Lord." " And the Father know- 
 eth what things ye have need of before ye ask 
 Him." "And whatsoever ye ask, believing, 
 ye shall receive." We need merely to believe 
 really what we say we believe. We read and 
 repeat all these passages as meaningless forms ; 
 but they are vivid and vital and magnetic with 
 the most infinite significance. That marvel- 
 lous current of progress which runs through 
 everything in time, and which we call the 
 divine will, would work its undreamed-of 
 
 12 
 
178 The ^Yorld Beaidifiil 
 
 potency in each individual life if the individual 
 could bring himself into a condition whereby 
 he might receive. 
 
 Now, it will be readily seen that all the 
 immaterial world is absolutely dependent on 
 conditions. Human love or friendship cannot 
 give its gifts where they are unwelcome or 
 unheeded. Your friend may long to pour out 
 to you the treasures of his love, his care, his 
 tenderness, his service ; but unless you re- 
 spond to them, he cannot give them. A gift 
 presupposes two persons always, — not only 
 one to give, but one, also, to receive. 
 
 In the same way, to receive aid from the 
 spiritual side of life, where all infinite treasure 
 and potency exist, one must achieve the right 
 conditions. These are more common than is 
 altogether realized; but they exist, as yet, 
 only in isolated instances, in fragments of ex- 
 perience, and are related as either something 
 of very curious coincidence or else of divine 
 aid, and he who has experienced it, or he who 
 narrates it, hardly knows which name to apply. 
 History is full of these instances as occurring 
 
In Newness of Life. 179 
 
 in the lives of notable people in sudden and 
 unforeseen emergencies. And there are, per- 
 haps, few persons who have not experienced 
 something of the kind in their own lives. One 
 was told me recently by an artist in Boston. 
 This young lady passed last summer on the 
 North Shore. At one time she was very much 
 in need of some money, and she could not see 
 any way in which she could, on the visible 
 and material side of life, expect it. But she 
 was not dismayed. "My help cometh from 
 the Lord, who made heaven and earth," she 
 repeated to herself, half unconsciously, as she 
 walked one beautiful morning on the beach. 
 As Omar Khayyam puts it, she '^ sent her soul 
 into the invisible." She needed the money; 
 it was right she should have it ; and she be- 
 lieved that out of the unspeakable fulness of 
 infinite riches it would be, in some way, given 
 to her. And it was. Three checks from 
 three friends came to her at once ; yet not to 
 one of these had she made the slightest appeal, 
 or even reference to her need of the moment. 
 Was this mere coincidence ? I, for one, do 
 
180 The World Beautiful 
 
 not believe that it was. I believe the lady 
 touched the key that thus responded ; and I 
 believe that there is, riglit here, a law, as yet 
 undiscovered and unformulated, but as defi- 
 nite and inevitable as that which holds the 
 stars in their courses. And, beyond this, I 
 believe more, — that humanity is now on the 
 verge of the discovery and the development of 
 this law. I could fill pages with these frag- 
 mentary instances, personally related to me by 
 those who have experienced them ; and biog- 
 raphy is also full of them, — and he who runs 
 may read. It is just as much the part of 
 common sense, of social economics, to en- 
 deavor now to formulate this law, and adjust 
 life to it, as it is to conduct all our opera- 
 tions in harmony with the law of gravitation. 
 It is the same part of mental sanity. The 
 time has come for people to live as those 
 
 " Spirits with whom the stars connive 
 To work their will." 
 
 ]\Ian, made in the image of the divine, 
 shares to some possible degree the creative 
 power, — the power to shape conditions, to 
 
In Netvness of Life. 181 
 
 control circumstances, to range himself with 
 the creative forces. It is ignoble to sit down 
 and repine, or even to endure passively limi- 
 tations which energy and faith would easily 
 surmount. 
 
 Humanity needs to draw on its resources 
 of Christian faith. They have been stored up 
 in accumulating quantity for eighteen hundred 
 years ; but religion is not a decorative attribute 
 to be contemplated at stated periods, but is, in- 
 stead, the motor of life. Religion is not merely 
 theology, any more than courtesy and civility 
 are love. Theology presents the intellectual 
 theories and principles of religion, as love pre- 
 sents those principles of civility and courtesy 
 which result in the harmony of agreeable liv- 
 ing. Ecclesiasticism has done a certain w^ork 
 in formulating^ reliG:ious tendencies. Prescribed 
 forms and appointed hours are undoubted aids 
 to devotion ; but when the heart lifts itself 
 up to the Lord by an irresistible impulse, for- 
 mal restraints fall off of their own dead weight. 
 Certainly, the Christianity which does not 
 manifest itself in consideration, courtesy, and 
 generosity, is not worth the name; but be- 
 
182 The World Beautiful. 
 
 yond these is more, — the iiifiiiite potency of 
 faith. Nor is faith an abstract quality. It is 
 as positive a force as is steam or electricity. 
 It is infinite and resistless in its action. 
 As the spiritual motor, it is as much more 
 potent than any material motor, as spirit is 
 more potent than matter. There is no desti- 
 tution, no poverty in the universe. " The 
 earth mfull of the riches of the Lord." These 
 riches are held in solution, as it were, in the 
 spiritual atmosphere, and they can be crystal- 
 lized and precipitated by complying with the 
 conditions of the spiritual law by means of 
 which their distribution is governed. Every 
 genuine demand on this has the same direct 
 force that a message sent by telegraph might 
 have on the ordinary plane of life. There 
 need be no more hesitancy in accepting this 
 assertion than tliere need be in accepting 
 the truth of the law of gravitation. Psychic 
 power is the true creative power, and the one 
 that humanity is now to learn how to use in- 
 telligently ; as, within the past half-centurv, it 
 has learned to use the lightning intelligently. 
 
In Newness of Life. 183 
 
 In that marvellous occult book, " The Per- 
 fect Way," its author, Dr. Anna Kingsford, 
 says : — 
 
 " The enemy of spiritual vision is always ma- 
 terialism. It is, therefore, by the demateriali- 
 zation of himself that man obtains the seeing 
 eye and hearing ear in respect of divine things. 
 Dematerialization consists not in the separation 
 of the soul from the body, but in the purifica- 
 tion of both soul and body from engrossment 
 by the things of sense. It is but another ex- 
 ample of the doctrine of correspondence." 
 
 Man is, primarily, a divine being, and only 
 secondarily a human being. It is the spiritual 
 world, and among spiritual forces, in which 
 he should dwell. 
 
 What would be thought of an accomplished 
 woman, with exquisite tastes and extended 
 culture, who, instead of dwelling: with hisfh 
 thoughts, and living in her drawing-room, 
 her library, her music-room, — instead of oc- 
 cupying her time with friends and literature 
 and art, — should instead choose to spend 
 it in the basement of her house, cook- 
 
184 The World Beautiful 
 
 ing, launclrying, scrubbing, and all the while 
 fretful and complaining and distressed and 
 depressed because of her hard and gloomy 
 life? 
 
 The comparison applies to all humanity. 
 Let one live not in the basement, but in the 
 upper stories. Let him assert his own power 
 and tastes, and his inalienable birthright to be 
 A partaker in the divine inheritance. Let him 
 arise in newness of life. 
 
 If he will learn the law of psychic force, he 
 need not longer " compete or strive." 
 
 He will learn how, with the foremost, to 
 arrive at the desired achievement. He will 
 acquire the art of allowing the past, with 
 whatever errors, sins, faults, follies, or igno- 
 rances entangled, to slip out of sight, and he 
 will turn his face to tlie future. He will 
 look toward the morning. Every day he will 
 arise in newness of life, and enter more nearly 
 into tliat magnetic atmosphere where all 
 achievement is easy, because accomplished 
 through the creative powers ; where all hap- 
 piness and exaltation of life shall lie, and 
 
The Heavenly Vision. 185 
 
 where the days will thrill and pulsate with 
 joy, as if lived in an Enchanted Land. 
 
 * 
 
 " I was not disobedient unto the Heavenly Vision." 
 
 The There are few words that so 
 
 Heavenly thrill one with a sense of new and 
 Vision, diviner possibilities, that are so 
 deeply freighted with the positiveness of the 
 higher life, as these. They comprehend all 
 the greatness which results from the entire 
 spiritualization of thought, all tliat glow and 
 gladness in noble endeavor and successful 
 achievement which comes because one has not 
 been disobedient unto the Heavenly Vision. 
 So far as this obedience is regarded in the light 
 of limitation, of sacrifice, of exaction, of resign- 
 ing a very certain and positive and tangible 
 satisfaction for a vague and intangible and in- 
 explicable thing, for one having no significance 
 save to the mystic or to the cloistered monk, — 
 so far from that, this obedience is the very 
 reverse. It is the positive and not the negative 
 
186 The World Beautiful 
 
 good ; it is walking in illumination rather 
 than stumbling in darkness ; it is holding 
 the clew to the labyrinth instead of groping 
 through it blindly ; it is movement with, rather 
 than against, the force of spiritual gravitation ; 
 it is like rowing with the tide, cutting the wood 
 with the grain ; it is indeed to have found the 
 secret of success. It is to gain the vantage- 
 ground whereunto all things shall be added. 
 
 There is no possibility of doubting that 
 humanity is on the threshold of a life so much 
 higher and more potent than the present that 
 to enter on its realization will make a new 
 heaven and a new earth. The change will be 
 as great as that from the grub to the butterfly. 
 Humanity will find its wings. INIental and 
 psychic power will assert their sway. The 
 entire scenery of life will be transformed. 
 Unsuspected stores of energy will be libe- 
 rated. ]\Iankind will live in exaltation and 
 enthusiasm. There will be abounding life, 
 not plodding existence. Life will then be 
 what Emerson says it should always be, — 
 an ecstasy. The psychic transformation that 
 
The Heavenly Vision. 187 
 
 is drawing near will give far more wonderful 
 results than any of the splendid conquests 
 of science in the past. 
 
 The moment we come into the realm of 
 spirit all things are possible. What on the 
 natural plane would seem miracle becomes as 
 simple as the most every-day occurrence. It 
 seems not impossible that the earth may be 
 the theatre of a new life, — of newness of life 
 on a plane heretofore undescried, and which, 
 if conceived of at all, has been believed could 
 only wait tlie experiences of the soul after the 
 change called death. But let humanity once 
 come into the actual realization that the human 
 race is a race of spirits, — of spirits dwelling 
 in temporary physical bodies ; that those bodies 
 are the instrument through which the spirit 
 comes in contact with material life and gains 
 its earthly experience, but that the body need 
 not limit the power of spirit, but be used for 
 spiritual power to work through, — and life is 
 altered at once. This is the transformation of 
 energy that is drawing near. 
 
 The unhappiness of life is limited to the 
 
188 The World Beautiful 
 
 material and tlie temporal ; its happiness lies 
 in the spiritual and the permanent. Ones 
 birthright is happiness. It is as freely offered 
 as the sunshine and the air. It is a spiritual 
 state, and not conditioned by material limits. 
 Not only is it every man's privilege to be 
 happy ; it is his duty, his manifest obliga- 
 tion. Happiness is the condition of his higher 
 achievements and his higher usefulness. It is 
 tlie exliilaration of the highest energy, and 
 lends wings. 
 
 The problem of fate and free-will is one 
 that has tortured many a life as its curious 
 and contradictory phases are studied. No 
 one can observe tlioughtfully the pl.enomena 
 of living ; can note how, like a prearranged 
 plan, little details and events fit into each 
 other as if all were parts of one great whole, 
 without recognizing a unity which we call ftite. 
 Hawthorne has said : " Our individual fate 
 exists in the limestone of time. AVe fancy 
 that we carve it out, but its ultimate shape 
 is prior to all our efforts." Certainly, the days 
 and their train of events seem to us oftcncr 
 
The Heavenly Vision. 189 
 
 found than made. We close our eyes at night 
 with as little idea of what may come into the 
 next day, even, of our own lives, as into that of 
 our neighbor's. What, indeed, may not lie in 
 wait for us? Fortune or ill fortune, death 
 or illness, or a sudden surprise of joy. Vfe 
 are as utterly powerless to predict our own im- 
 mediate future as that of the veriest strano-er. 
 Even more; we are hardly less powerless to 
 predict our own acts, our own states pf mind 
 that may be induced by action and reaction 
 of currents of activity still undiscerned. We 
 go on to meet these unknown days freighted 
 with the incalculable, like ships sailing over 
 an unknown ocean, perhaps to encounter ice- 
 bergs or tempests, perhaps to sail stately and 
 serene throuo-h summer seas under a summer 
 sky. 
 
 *' It may be that the gulfs will wash us down ; 
 It may be we shall reach the Happy Isles." 
 
 But as the mariner has his compass and the 
 pole star, as the Israelites had the pillar of fire 
 by night and the cloud by day, so to each is 
 revealed the Heavenly Vision, — the special 
 
190 The World Beaiitifid, 
 
 guidance and illumination for his own pathway. 
 When the impatient word is repressed, and 
 one strives for patience and serenity and 
 love ; when the uncharitable word is unsaid, 
 the suspicion checked, and a finer — and 
 almost invariably truer, because finer — con- 
 fidence given in its place ; when the aid it 
 comes in our way to give is gladly done 
 because it seemed a special and individual 
 appeal, — is it not then that we are obedient 
 to the Heavenly Vision? 
 
 " Whatsoever thing thou doost 
 To the least of mine and lowest, 
 That thou doest unto Me." 
 
 The Heavenly Vision shines upon us in our 
 ideals. There are persons who say they must 
 live the worldly life, — the life of getting and 
 greed and gain, because, indeed, they have 
 not wealth, because they must *^get a liv- 
 ing," and they seem to believe that " a living " 
 is something achieved only out of a scramble 
 of competition and selfishness. In getting 
 this living, they omit to live, — a matter that 
 the unprejudiced mind might fancy of equal 
 
The Heavenly Vision. 191 
 
 importance. But even this "living," whose 
 getting appears to absorb so much ill-directed 
 energy, is infinitely better acliieved on the 
 higher plane of unselfishness and of love. 
 The effort to protect our neighbor in his 
 rights and privileges best insures our own. 
 The joy w^e feel in his gladness brightens 
 our own life. The rejoicing in his prosperity 
 is the most inevitable passport to our own, for 
 all humanity is so closely interwoven and in- 
 terlinked. To take no thought for the mor- 
 row, for the morrow shall take thought for the 
 things of itself, is simply to keep in the right 
 current of noble activities, to follow the Heav- 
 enly Vision. Thus there need be no anxiety. 
 Life becomes harmony and peace. It unfolds 
 by a law of spiritual evolution. 
 
 We are just as much in the presence of the 
 Lord here to-day, this hour, as we shall ever 
 be, except that as one grows more spiritual 
 and less material, as his perceptions are opened 
 to spiritual things and his temperament be- 
 comes more responsive to spiritual influences, 
 he is, of course, more in the presence of the 
 
192 The World Beautiful 
 
 Lord than when he was steeped and stifled in 
 the material life. The man wlio can see pos- 
 sesses the sunshine more than tlie man who 
 cannot see, although the sunshine is the same 
 all the time. We are spirits now, or we are 
 nothing. We are dwelling in the body as an 
 instrument through which the spirit must 
 work in order to work in a physical world. 
 We are spirits, but spirits embodied. Does 
 not this realization invest this part of our life 
 with a new dignity, as well as a new responsi- 
 bility ? This world, so far as it is anything, is 
 a spiritual world now, though in a cruder and 
 lower state of development than that which 
 the spirit enters after leaving the body. But 
 the forces that govern it are of spirit; for 
 there is no force but spirit. The life of vege- 
 tation is but the dawning of spiritual life. It 
 is all under the great law of evolution. 
 
 To live truly and see clearly in this world of 
 spiritual forces that we are in ; to discern our 
 appointed way and hearken to the angelic 
 guidance that attends each and all of us ; to 
 discover and to follow the polarity of our owa 
 
The Heavenly Vision. 
 
 nature, and thus realize our own ideal, is to 
 make life a success. This only is success. All 
 else, without this realization, is failure. It is 
 failure to suppose that happiness is conditioned 
 by possessions or by surroundings. It is fail- 
 ure to take it for granted that happiness is not 
 intended for this life but is to be the miracle 
 of some other in some vague and unknown 
 future. It is a mistake to be anxious and 
 worried over a future, because, indeed, though 
 we are fortunate to-day or this year, we may 
 not be in ten years from this time. The same 
 Power that upholds us to-day will uphold us 
 any number of years from to-day, if we keep 
 in touch with spiritual forces. The power is 
 in ourselves, the impediment is in ourselves ; 
 and instead of an exclusive struggle to lay up 
 money to provide for a far-away future, should 
 be the effort to come into possession of the finer 
 forces ; to enter into the familiar knowledsfe of 
 the apportionment and the use of our spiritual 
 powers, whose use opens to us the infinite 
 w^orld ; to live in touch with all this divine 
 life that, once gained, offers to us that which 
 
 13 
 
194 The World Beautiful. 
 
 eye hath not seen nor mind conceived, — the 
 infinite wonder and beauty of spirituality. 
 Only as life is held receptive to these divine 
 influences does it become great, and worthy to 
 receive the leading of the Heavenly Vision 1 
 
 THE END. 
 
Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publications. 
 THIRD EDITION. 
 
 jfrom Bteamlanb Sent^ 
 
 A Volume of Poems* By Lilian Whitingf, author of 
 ''The World Beautiful/^ Cover desigfn by Louise 
 Graves* J6mo« Cloth* Price, $1*25* 
 
 Many of Miss Whiting's verses are permeated with the longing, the loneliness 
 and the wonder of one who looks with chastened heart and seeking eyes after those 
 of her beloved who have passed into the world invisible; but her tears alwa}'s form 
 prisms for the rainbow of hope, and in her saddest songs there are notes of faith and 
 healing. — L. A. C. 
 
 This verse gives the keynote of the stanzas throughout the volume. They are 
 replete with poetic feeling and tender sentiment, musical in diction, and chaste in 
 expression. If the feeling comes over us as we read them that they are little more 
 than echoes of grander work, we must admit that they are very sweet echoes, and quite 
 well worth listening to. — hiter-Ocean. 
 
 The verses have a warmth of feeling in their direct appeal to emotional sympathy 
 that is sure to find a responsive chord in the hearts of all those readers who value 
 poetry, not for its technical perfection, but for the manner in which it voices the joys 
 and sorrows of everyday life and those aspirations which, at favored moments, tend 
 toward the higher ideals of personal conduct. It is rare, indeed, that one comes upon 
 a volume wherein the finer feminine qualities are so artlessly made evident. It has 
 the personal note, and that note is always fine and true. — The Beacon. 
 
 A dainty little volume of dainty little poems is "From Dreamland Sent," by 
 Lilian Whiting, and worthy the pen of the author of" The World Beautiful." Those 
 who have read her other books and writines will know what to expect in this volume 
 of poems. They are mostly poems of the heart, of love, of sympathy, and affection. 
 Lilian Whiting is by nature a poet, whether she writes in prose or verse, and her 
 verses are flowing and melodious. Repeated expressions of praise are not needed. — 
 Boston Sunday Times. 
 
 While none of them can be classed among really great poems, yet there is a 
 sweetness and a charm abnut many of tJiem that will linger in the memory like strains 
 of music. They look on the bright side of life, and are full of hope and faith and 
 courage. — The A dvance. 
 
 Miss Lilian Whiting's poems are notable for the beautiful thoughts which they 
 embody, for the exquisite taste with which these thoughts are treated, and for the 
 sweet expressiveness of the words in which they are dressed. Her verse is like a bit 
 of sunlit landscape on a May morning; it carries one's mind away from stress and 
 turmoil and asserts a suggestion of peace and rest, — not that peace which comes in 
 the evening of life, as the result of work well done, but that peace which stands 
 unperturbed in the midst of struggle, the operation of a quiet mind fixed on permanent 
 things. — Boston Herald. 
 
 In this litde book Lilian Whiting has offered to the world about seventy bits of 
 verse, graceful, tender, and true, appealing to what is best in the human heart. — 
 Independent. 
 
 These beautiful brief poems, inscribed to Kate Field, all have a meaning and a 
 purpose ; they are artistic in form and finish, full of genuine inspiration. — Wovian's 
 Journal. 
 
 Mailed^ postpaid., on receipt of the price, by the piiblisJters, 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston. 
 
Messrs. Robe?'ts^ Brothers Publications, 
 EIGHTH THOUSAND. 
 
 THE WORLD BEAUTIFUL 
 
 (SECOND SERIES). 
 
 By LILIAN WHITING, 
 
 Author of " The World Beautiful ^^ and '■'•From Dreamland Sent.'"' 
 J6mo. Cloth. Price, $1.00. White and Gold, $1.25. 
 
 Rarely does a book appear more rich in tliought, suggestive, help- 
 ful, practical, unique, and forcible in its lessons for daily life. — J . IV. 
 Cliadwick. 
 
 "Kind words and pure thoughts" is the text from which Lilian 
 Whiting delivers some of the best lay sermons ever composed. The 
 thousands of readers who were helped and uplifted in moral tone by 
 The World Beautiful, first series, will be glad of this second in- 
 stalment of essays that are more than essays; which combine a high 
 level of literary achievement with a consecration of purpose and a hap- 
 piness of style, method, and illustration rarely surpassed. To the 
 weary, be it in well doing or in evil doing, this little volume will come 
 like a reviving draught, instilling courage, inspiration, strength. — Coti- 
 cord Monitor. 
 
 The book constitutes a noble appeal for higher and more conse- 
 crated living. — Boston Advertiser. 
 
 The second series of essays by Lilian Whiting, collected under the 
 title of The World Beautiful, admirably sustains the fine intellectual 
 quality and the ideal of spiritual aspiration which found such graceful 
 expression in a former volume from the same hand. Miss Whiting in 
 this later series dwells at length on the higher possibilities of friendship, 
 and in connection with this theme discusses the determination of social 
 conditions, the art of conversation, the charm of atmosphere, the force of 
 love as a redemptive agency, the virtues of self-control and pleasant 
 speech, and the supreme necessity of an elevated outlook, in adjusting the 
 mind to the experiences of external life. In a concluding chapter the 
 author touches upon the potentialities of the unseen world, and sets forth 
 with contagious earnestness the doctrine that "immortality is a species of 
 conquest in spiritual domain." If, in the course of this discussion. Miss 
 Whiting draws freely upon the occult and the mystic, it must be confessed 
 that she makes effective use of them in the way of pertinent illustration. 
 — Deacon. 
 
 Sold by all Booksellers. Mailed, postpaid^ by Publishers, 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston. 
 
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