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^ L. C. PAGE & COMPANY
New England Building, Boston, Mass. yA
%])t iHafeing of^
^er0onalit5
By
Bliss Carman
AutAor of " Pi^es of Pan;' « Sappho,'' «« The
Kinship of Nature," " The Friendship of
Art;' '' The Poetry of Life," etc.
L. C. PAGE esf COMPANY
BOSTON , f\ _ MCMVIII
Copyright, igo6, igoy
By The Ess Ess Publishing Company
(incorporated)
Copyright, igo6, jgoy
By Gustav Stickley
Copyright, igoy
By The Butterick Publishing Co., Ltd.
Copyright, igo8
By L. C. Page & Company
(incorporated)
All rights reserved
First impression, March, 1908
Second Impression, November, 1908
COLONIAL PRESS
EUctrotyfed afid Printed by C If. Stmotuis &* Co.
B^stfin, U.S. A.
Cfje iHeasure of Jftan
He who espouses perfection
Must follow the threefold plan
Of soul and mind and body^
To compass the stature of man.
For deep in the primal substance
With power and purpose and poise^
An order under the chaos^
A music beneath the noise^ —
The urge of a secret patience
Throbbed into rhythm and form^
Till instinct attained to vision
And the sentient clay grew warm.
For sense was a smouldering fire^
And spirit a breath of air
Blowing out of the darkness^
Fostering reason^ s flare.
By loving^ learnings and doings
Being must pass and climb
To goodness^ to truth^ to beauty^
Through energy^ space ^ and time ;
175605
Eftt Mtu^nvt of JWan
Out of the infinite essence^
For the eternal employ^
Fashioning^ freeing^ and kindling
Symmetry^ wisdom^ and joy.
Wherefore the triune dominion^ —
Religion^ science^ and art^ —
We may not disrupt nor divide^
Setting its kingdoms aparty
But ever with glowing ardour
After the ancient plan^
Build the lore and the rapture
Into the life of man.
VI
^tdatt
ffuERE was never a time, perhaps, bigger
with s^i*i*Hal promise than the present, nor
more strenuously eager to liberate the human
spirit for its next step forward in the arduous
and inspiring journey toward perfection and
happiness. The cause enlists the best work
of the best workers against just such odds as
have always confronted radical effort, but
with less stubborn resistance than in duller
daysj
Among the active forces of advance are the
thought and work of Mary Perry King, my
coworker in this study of The Making of
Personality. Her formulation of an art of
normalizing personal expression is original
and scientific, and of proven educational
vii
value. From her luminous talks on the sub-
jects of these essays, and on the humanities
in general, has been taken the substance of
this book and of others that have appeared
within the last decade. Refusing joint sig-
nature on the title-page, Mrs. King's pref-
erence restricts my expression of obligation
to a most inadequate prefatory acknowledg-
ment. I welcome even this tardy and too
limited opportunity for signifying my appre-
ciation of her happy genius and my indebted-
ness for her wise and generous cooperation.
The first chapter indicates, as clearly as I
can make it, the scope and purpose of the vol-
ume and its underlying ideal of education and
personal culture. While the book does not
attempt to make any systematic presentation
of a philosophy (a task to which I am un-
equal), it will be found to indicate every-
where a triune ideal of normal well-being
and happiness, and to be based upon a definite
conception of symmetrical life and growth, —
a conception which attributes to aspiration,
viii
effort, and education equal and coherent val-
ues.
The paths of mental and spiritual training
are well marked, and physical education itself
is growing rapidly in popularity and effi-
ciency, but the work of relating the three in
any coordinate personal culture has as yet
hardly been recognized as a desirability.
Such work at its best cannot be merely a pro-
fession, it is essentially a most subtle and com-
prehensive art, — the art of appreciating, in-
terpreting, and educating personality.
This triunistic or unitrinian philosophy, as
I find myself calling it to avoid a confusing
use of the word trinitarian, lends itself most
simply and practically as a standard of dis-
crimination and a guide in self-culture.
B. C.
Boston, February^ igo8.
IX
Contents
V9
FAGB
I.
The Meaning of Personality . , , i
II.
The Underglow .
• 43
III.
The Lucky Pilot
, 58
IV.
The Winged Victory .
• 73
V.
The Silver String .
. 104
VI.
Rhythms of Grace
127
VII.
Beauty of the Foot
156
VIII.
The Art of Walking .
185
IX.
Dancing as a Fine Art .
204
X.
The Music of Life
221
XI.
The Sorcery of the Hand
250
XII.
The Leaven of Art
257
XIII.
Designer and Builder .
278
XIV.
The Might of Manners .
289
XV.
The Use of Out-of-Doors
310
XVI.
The Dominion of Joy . ,
324
XVII.
SCVIII.
The Growers
An Old-Fashioned Essence
342
353
XIX.
Genius and the Artist .
37^
iWafetng of ©ersonalitij
%fft iWeaning of personality
/There is still nothing more interesting^
than perso naJit vA Selves are all that finally
count. ^To discerning modern eyes all of life
is a mere setting for the infinitely intense and
enthralling drama of personalities. We slave
and endure and dare and give ourselves to the
engrossing demands of business and affairs,
deluding ourselves for the hour with the no-
tion that mere activity ensures success, and
that deliberate achievement, if only it be
strenuous enough, will bring happiness. But
in moments of calm sanity we perceive our
I
8CJ)e JHaftino of ^ttuonaUts
d
folly, and know full well that personality and
^not performance is the great thing./
Current thought attests this. Popular as-
piration passionately affirms it. Whatever
any one's philosophy of living may be,
whether transcendental or materialistic, the
first and chief concern in its pursuance is how
to make the most of it in making the most
Vand best of oneself, f^ All our social disquiet,
our constant turmoil in political and indus-
trial life, means only an attempt to give
larger freedom' and greater scope for the per-
fection of human personality. We would
give it room to grow, opportunity to thrive,
the chance to realize its ideal§/) Under the
stress of a divine evolutionary impulse, we
wish to disentangle personality from the
crushing monotony of mere circumstantial
mechanical existence. Man is not willing to
remain an automaton, but must somehow
achieve and vindicate an individual selfhood.
We feel sure that it is to this end that we were
created^ and to this end surely all progress
STfie iWeaning of ^tvnonuUts
is seen to be tending. ,The seed of the gods,
sown in the dust of the ground, exerts its in-
finitesimal but mighty force to break from its
enveloping darkness and put forth at last the
perfect long-awaited flower of mankincl^
y^g N ot only is this the urge underlying ourj
instinctive, tentative, and often irrational ef- 1
forts for the reform and betterment of insti- 1
tutions, but underlying the demand for better!
individual education among thinking and/
cultivated people as well, (pur modern plays
and novels all centre about the values of
personality, the influence of personality, the
freedom of personality, the development, tri-
umph, or defeat, of personality. When be-
fore our own day were such cold psycholog-
ical problems as Ibsen's offered and accepted
as entertainment? Even such expositions as
Marie Bashkirtseflf's and Mary MacLane's
are accepted as frank statements of truth,
" human documents " that may help to gain
freedom for other personalities.
Of old, men were more engulfed in nature,
3
more deeply embedded in subconsciousness
and dreams, more completely under the dom-
ination of superstitions, fears, and marvels,
and felt themselves more helplessly in the
hands of an inscrutable destiny which they
could neither conquer nor placate. The
mere fact of general existence was a lifelong
and perplexing wonder. There was neither
time nor light for the recognition and realiza-
tion of self. Then, too, there were more ex-
ternal dangers, wars, famines, pestilences,
which made men cling together, repressing
individualky.J With greater peace and as-
/surance of subsistence, tr-ibiii Ues and obliga-
tions were loosened, and the individual awoke
and put forth hungry self-conscious claims
for growth. It was not enough to be a frac-
tion, one must be an integer. And to-day that
thought, that aim, is the one supreme motive
force underlying our civilization, — the
emancipation and cultivation of personal-
ity.
\ln personal culture, that great task which
4
confronts us all, and to which many of us
apply ourselves with so much impetuous fer-
vour and persistence, there is one supreme
truth to be constantly remembered, the three-
fold nature of personality, and consequently
its threefold perfectability in the different
but inseparable realms of spirit, mind, and
bod;^
In cultivating personality, it is impossible^
to disregard the person. For the person of \
every man and woman is not merely the shell |
aftd^-tertefw^^t wherein the spirit dwells, but/
the very substance and fibre of personality/
[Walt Whitman said of his book, '' Who
touches this, touches a man." As truly we
may say of any human body, '' Who touches
this, touches a soul." When my friend lays
his hand upon my shoulder, it is my very
most intimate self that must respond, not
merely this flesh and blood whose form and
features are recognizable in my name^ Thj
culture of personality, thefel^ux, is a vei
complex and subtle process. It is not accoi
5
.plished by the acquiring of knowledge and
I the adoption of morality alone, but by every
moment's life of the body, — every deed,
every word, every gesture, — by the delib-
erate training of exercise and regimen, by the
long course of habitual occupation, and by
\ every brief act of each i«:eyocaWe instant.
^We not only transform our outward bodily
persons by what we are, making them simu-
lacra of our inmost selves, but in sober truth
our most essential selves are in their turn re-
flexly transformed by the reacting influence
of our physical habits and doings. If a
crabbed and malign soul makes its inevitable
appearance in the face, just so truly does the
habitual cultivation of a gracious and con-
siderate demeanour tend inevitably to erad-
icate those unhappy conditions of spirit. To
forget this power of the body upon the mind
and spirit, is to leave one-half of the re-
sources of education untried and miss half of
the opportunity of this too brief life. A
cheap and shallow religious optimism may
6
©tie J«ean(nB of ^tvuonmt^
bemuse itself with idle ecstasies, but it has yet
to demonstrate its ability to support life with-
out food and impart perennial vigour to the
mind. Dreams and aspirations are the nat-
ural output of the human soul, but nutrition
and hygiene are its proper and inevitable
sources of vitality. Only by the careful use
of these modest means, and not otherwise, can
we detach ourselves from our mother ground
and go about our rational activities in this
perplexing world.
The long playing of a role like Hamlet, if
it be well enacted, works so insidiously upon
the spirit of the actor as to become a formid-
able danger. No conscientious actor could
repeat the performance of such a role as Dr.
Jekyl and Mr. Hyde through an extended
run, without incurring grave responsibilities
to himself; while the portrayal of the charac-
teristic habits of Rosalind, on the other hand,
acts as an irresistible nervous tonic; so in-
eradicably is the spirit joined to the kindly
clay in which it was begotten. So, too, the
7
persistent punchings and pommellings of
some forms of exercise strengthen not only
the habits of physical violence, but deeper
lying habits of aggression and pugnacity as
well. And it is clearly recognized that these
manly arts must require and inculcate a code
of manly honour and fair play, in order to
maintain our respect. When they fail to do
this, they become brutal and brutalizing at
once, and lose favour even with the most un-
cultivated of their devotees. The pugilist's
necessary self-control extends to the soul be-
hind the fist, and habitual grace of conduct
appreciably forestalls and discourages gross
desires. The enforced gymnastic of some
gracious expression, if imposed on naughty
children, is a more fruitful corrective than
most forms of punishment. If gymnastics in
good motion were given to criminals, it
would prove more reformative than most
moral suasion, for it would be more deep and
instinctive; it would be as if we should pro-
vide them with the mechanism of escape from
8
JEiie MtunitiQ of ^tv^onnlits
the evil aptitudes in which they are impris-
oned.
Both fundamentally and throughout in-*
finite intricacies of subdivis ions, th e m33Sg^^^^^
of personality has im threefild requirement
and procedure^ aftdniiijivtft .ii&pf^nd mi dirfiniir^
training in morality, intelligence, and phy-
sique, /a realization of this triune composi-
tion of our being and its consequent threefold
need of nurture and symmetrical grov^th, is
the most auspicious beginning of culture. It
weeds out all false pride in partial excellence
and special accomplishment; it does away
with mistaken prejudices as to overdevelop-
ment and underdevelopment in any direction
at the cost of general symmetry; and substi-
tutes a standard of normal growth with equi-
librium of powers, for one of excessive andL
exceptional cultivation and specialization
When once accepted as a criterion of per-
sonal culture, it affords the most helpful basis
for self-examination, and for the selection of
whatever kind of reinforcement one may
9
sri^e M^^itiQ of ^tvuonaUts
most need at any given moment; it indicates
the most serviceable adjustment of conditions,
and the most valuable utilization of circum-
stances. It is a magic formula w^hich turns
everything into grist for the mills of life, is
.a remedy for hardship and a cure for de-
spair.
Inasmuch as wt must both get and give our
mpressions of personality through its phys-
cal expressionSj-dftd a€Uhis fact is very gen-
erally underestimated! it may not be amiss to
emphasize it. The physical side of person-
ality offers a medium of transmission for rea-
on and impulse,* a«d at the sanfie- ttf«^ i& the
only soil and substance through which the
spiritual and intellectual live and are rein-
f0^ced^ This surely seems sufficient reason
for making an appropriate and adequate
physical education one of the bases for the
culture of personality^ — a--^.c«kttfe \vfeich
may be begun in childhood -lo»g before self-
consciousness dawfts^-^r-eonscTcnce. makes- it-
self known.
lO
The making of personality begins with/
learning to breathe and move.
*' How Nature first made throb
Her atoms in the void,"
iwe do not know, nor how the reasoning soul
takes on the restlessness of matter. These are
among the mysteries, but we know very well
that even before birth the human personality
begins to be moulded by parental will; and
thgj} in childhood th^ iofm^^nci fraturgti, nnd
habits of motion, are modified and moulded
as the mind and emotional nature assert them-
selves in the plastic little bodies. Then, of
course, is the time to safeguard and foster
natural apd right methods of breathing and
motion. Unfortunately we have small habit
of doing mat, and modern life imposes wrong
and unnatural habits on the child almost im-
perceptibly^^ a«4-<iftys of labour under ^mfa-
vourable conditions and at highly specialized
industries come to further arrest and distort
the growth of the young and impressionable
II
physique. All the main activities of modern
life, most of its industries and nearly all busi-
ness and professional vocations, are carried
on under conditions so far removed from the
primitive circumstances of natural living,
that it is hardly an exaggeration to question
whether one person in a hundred breathes
and moves well. So that it is not at all pre-
posterous, as it might sound at first, to say that
we need to be taught these rudiments of ani-
mal existenceJ The increasing attention we
&re giving to physical culture and voice train-
ing, far from being superfluous, are of the
profoundest good, and must in time come to
form part of all elementary education as a
matter of course.
/Tn this, as in other fields of criticism, it is
only the most perfect and beautiful standards
that we ought to have always in mind. How-
ever strong and healthy we may be, there are
still more noble unfulfilled ambitions for the
physical perfection of human beauty and be-
ing than have ever yet been realized. It can-
12
Kfft J«eanfn0 of ^tvuonuUts
not be enough that we should have a goodly
number of beautiful faces among our women
and strong bodies among our men, it must
become our national pride to people the land
with a more perfect race than the world has
yet seen. Of what use otherwise are our
boasted growth and civilization? After all,
wealth is made for man, not man for wealth.
And we are undone surely, if our great ad-
vantages and wonderful achievements cannot
be assimilated, and do not tend to make us
generally and individually more healthy,
more sane, more happy. One may be an un-
compromising admirer of the age and yet
perceive heights of perfection before it still
unattained. Shall we allow it to be truly said
that another nation is more unselfishly de-
voted to truth and science than we, or any
other people more careful of justice than our-
selves, or that we can be surpassed in our in-
stinct for beauty and art? Men and women
who are alive to-day in this still New World
of unexampled opportunity and resource, can
13
8Cf|e M^Uina of Jl^tvuonulits
scarcely content themselves with any less am-
bitious task than the accomplishment of unri-
valled perfection in each and all of these
three directions. To do that, there can only
be one method employed, — the blending and
harmonizing of these three aims into an ideal
standard of symmetrical human develop-
ment.
That a people like the ancient Greeks
should have been at the same time devoted to
the fine arts and enamoured of physical
beauty, was but natural. The possession of
taste, the spiritual quality of appreciation
which made them so finely discriminating in
matters of art and literature, made them also
sensitive and fastidious in the matter of hu-
man beauty. Their eager and plastic intelli-
gence, and their devotion to all sensible love-
liness, were manifest in their nobility of per-
son, and made them give their attention most
assiduously to the culture of the body. The
Japanese in our own day are a marked in-
stance of the same tendency, — a people in
14
whom the most highly developed art instinct
exists side by side with the utmost attention
to physical training and development. The
two traits are but different manifestations of
one quality, — a passion for perfection in all
the forms and colours which nature may as-
sume or art create.
Among Latin peoples there is a like feeling
for art and sensitiveness to the alluring influ-
ence of beauty, which often seem almost
wholly lacking in our more practical and
stolid race. Perhaps it is only dormant,
buried under the crushing pall of mediaeval
religionism laid upon it by our excellent but
misguided ancestors, or submerged beneath
the insufferable weight of business and indus-
trial servitude which we have evolved for
ourselves. Alert intelligence, prompt and
capable executive qualities, inventiveness,
courage, industry, ambition, honesty in deal-
ing, good nature in conduct, these are all
traits that make for a cleaner, more whole-
some life; but without equivalent discrimi-
iS
nating taste, — a regard for what may be be-
coming, pleasing, and beautiful, as well as
effective, — their command of happiness is
most insecure, and all our strenuous endeav-
ours must lead but to doubtful ends and dis-
appointing achievements.
Our architecture, our homes, our dress, our
furniture, our household effects, as well as
our books, our music, our drama, our statues,
and our paintings, — all these necessary and
pleasant things with which we surround our-
selves must be not only abundant but beauti-
ful in order to serve all our requirements of
them. If they surround us in lavish profu-
sion, but without taste, they are but barbarous
treasures, exerting a debasing rather than a
civilizing influence over us. Everywhere we
are beginning to feel this more and more gen-
erally, and to discredit the cheap and ugly
products of machine labour, and to perceive
that art is an inherent quality in all industry
which is honest.
Along with this growing appreciation of
i6
w
Efft Jtttanfnfl of J^etsoiTiiltts
art, this sensitiveness to beauty in all our sur-
roundings, must come an ever growing care
for our physical perfection. As we become
more and more critical of what is ugly in
things about us, we shall be more easily of-
fended by any blemish of personal appear-
ance, any defect in bodily vigour, any inade-
quacy or awkwardness or insincerity in per-
sonal expression. It will not seem sufficient
to us that a man should be possessed of inflex-
ible integrity and nobility of spirit; we shall
demand that his nobility and integrity per- '\
meate his entire being, and that he bear him- ^ j
self accordingly and present a noble seeming
to the eyes of the world. Moral perfection
will not seem enough, while physical perfec-
tion is lacking. We shall not then ask every
man merely to be a reputable citizen, we
shall expect him to be an admirable and cred-
itable example of physical manhood as well.
Love of beauty has been held in disrepute
as a pagan ideal of life with which the less
we had to do the better. But as we reach a
17
srtie JWaifeinfl of J^rtsonalitff
juster appreciation of our human needs, it
takes its place as one of the three requisite
factors of human character, along with the
love of truth and the love of goodness. And
it does not seem that any well-chosen care
we can bestow on physical education can be
unimportant or undignified, or that any ele-
ment of culture is more needful than the per-
fecting of our bodily powers and the main-
taining of them in all their normal fitness and
growing vigour.
** Let us not always say,
* Spite of this flesh to-day
I strove, made head, gained ground upon the whole ! *
As the bird wings and sings.
Let us cry, * All good things
Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh
helps soul!'"
/Physical culture does not emphasize phys-
/ical consciousness. On the contrary it mini-
mizes it. Just as being well dressed prevents
one from being conspicuous, so being well
[trained and in good condition physically
\gives one immunity from inordinate, intem-
i8
perate, ill-regulated habits, and brings us to
a normal happy state of unselfconscious free-
dom.
While general lack of taste in the art of
living is only too prevalent, and prevents us
from being sensitive enough to our physical
defects^ the overstrained and artificial condi-
tions of modern life tend to aggravate those
defects and to make it imperative that we
should carefully reinforce and regulate our
physical knowledge and procedure, correct-
ing faults and supplying ourselves with legit-
imate standards of human excellence. Such
growth of ideals and of excellence can only
be achieved by education and training. And
in the domain of physical culture as in any
other, education must begin with the rudi- I
ments. The first rudiment of-— b^^uly is '
health, one of the first rudiments of grace is *.
a good walk, the first rudiment of a pleasant i
speaking voice is the ability to breathe freely, j
It always seems a little absurd to us grown |
people at first that we should need to learn ;
X9 '
how to walk, or to breathe, or to speak. We
protest that these are matters of instinct, that
we can do everything of the kind much better
if we are allowed to do it naturally, and that
if we were to permit ourselves to be instructed
we should become affected and artificial.
This might be true if we were animals living
a free and primitive life, or if we were ideal
humans living a correspondingly free and de-
veloped life, but we are not. The condi-
tions under which man attained his bodily
form and vigour and habits of motion have
been dangerously modified by civilization,
and many of the demands which modern life
lays upon us tend directly to diminish our
physical perfection and efficiency, rather than
to foster and help them. There is danger
that we may lose the natural habits of free,
spontaneously graceful human motion, be-
cause of the lessening need and opportunity
for bodily exertion in many occupations, and
the demand for cramping and harmful excess
of highly specialized exertion in others.
20
As human society is constituted to-day,
many of our most coveted occupations call
for no physical exertion whatever. The more
diligently we prosecute our nervous and se-
dentary callings, the less physically fit do we
become. While our primitive brother could
not devote himself to the simple business of
his life without growing thereby in bodily
health and vigour, we men and women unfor-
tunately cannot devote ourselves to the affairs
of modern life without depleting whatever
store of energy and health we may possess.
As long as we can sit upon a chair, like
Browning's Grammarian, " dead from the
waist down," we can still, after an accepted
fashion at least, follow our chosen pursuits.
We are under no such direct and imperative
incentive to keep ourselves strong, as they of
earlier simpler times encountered.
Many occupations, moreover, which do
call for active bodily exertion are so special-
ized as to cramp and distort and diminish
physical development rather than to help it.
21
2CJie M^fiitia of j^ersonalUff
So that there is almost always and everywhere
a tendency towards general inefficiency and
physical perversion, as the natural man comes
under the more or less artificial conditions of
contemporary life, whether of luxury or la-
bour, — conditions no less exacting and in
many ways much less wholesome than of old.
jNeither the office, the factory, the school-
room, the shop, nor the drawing-room, is
capable of producing an admirable type of
physical manhood, or supplying those activ-
ities which call forth fine bodily powers and
develop them to the point of adequate per-
fection.
It is not to be wondered at that our motion
should be in danger of losing its primal
strength and grace, and that so many of us
grow awkward and constrained. Such bad
habits become confirmed and transmitted,
and we hardly even inherit symmetrical and
unhampered physiques or natural motion.
Unfortunate mannerisms of carriage and ges-
ture and voice are often our heritage, even if
22
we acquire no new defects for ourselves. It
may have been natural for an Indian or a
South Sea Islander to walk well, with no
more training than his unvitiated instinct sup-
plied; he would have had a free, unperverted
body at his command; and then his walk and
motion would have been his natural express-
ive meeting of a requirement. It does not
by any means follow that the city-born man
will have the same instinctive faculty. He
may never have to run a step nor take a deep
breath in his life, nor ever have felt any in-
centive to realize his best personal prefer-
ence through bodily exertion. The need of
a capable sound physique is not borne in upon
him every hour, as it was upon men long ago
when all life went on out-of-doors. The pos-
session of grace and strength may seem
mildly pleasant and valuable, but it can hardly
appear to him an instant matter of life or
death. He is not hourly pressed upon by cir-
cumstances that call for all his best bodily
efforts, and so constantly develop his forces
23
and faculties, his deftness, skill, strength, and
promptness of action.
Animals in their wild state are strong and
graceful of necessity, since they must move
with the utmost economy of motion or be
eliminated for their blundering. Their ex-
istence as individuals depends upon their per-
fecting to the utmost what is normal in their
kind. To be awkward is to stand in jeopardy
of the very life. To be wasteful of strength,
to be inadequate in motion, are sins in the
natural world that are visited with the dire
punishments of hunger and death. There
there is no respect for average excellence, no
indulgence of any fashionable weakness or
perversion of primal powers.
The primitive man was necessarily and nat-
urally graceful for similar reasons. His free,
wild life in the open compelled him to be
constantly at his best. He could not shirk,
nor be indifferent, nor allow himself to get
out of training with impunity. The world
about him was a huge and hostile environ-
24
ment, which yielded him a living indeed, but
which compelled him to be always up to the
standard of normal manhood, and visited any
deflection with a ruthless punishment. His
life depended upon his dexterity, precision,
and fleetness of foot, on eye and wind and
agility. His physique was beautiful because
it was fit; and it was kept fit and normal by
continual exercise in the most rigorous school
of necessity, — a school which compelled ex-
peditious, effective, and unwasteful perfec-
tion of activity, and commensurate develop-
ment.
With moderns the case is very different.
The struggle for life is as keen as ever, but
its base has been shifted. It is less a case of
the survival of the strongest than of the
shrewdest. The likeliest to maintain himself
among his competing fellows has come to be,
not the man of greatest muscle, but the man
of keenest calculation. Modern life has be-
come a battle of Machiavellian wit, rather
than of human strength. We have not al-
25
tered the law of evolution, but we have al-
tered its conditions and deflected its course.
Popular selection, instead of producing
strong, graceful and delightful persons, pro-
duces exceptional, overmentalized and often
malign ones. That is the unwholesome ten-
dency of the modern business world, against
which we have to guard. It is a tendency
that so exaggerates the mental faculties, that
they need more than ever before the backing
of strong uncompromising moral qualities,
and the reinforcement of vigorous physique,
if we are to profit by the value of our ad-
vancement or realize the happiness to which
we aspire. The universal and instinctive en-
joyment of outdoor life and exercise is proof
of the validity of any claim for wholesome
living, and for such education as shall help
us to get the utmost physical good, in health
and pleasure, out of our possibilities and lim-
itations.
r Since we no longer live under the rigorous
/ necessities which produced and determined
26
©tie J«ean(nfl of ^tvnonmts
our physical powers, in the course of human
evolution, it is not to be expected that those \
powers can be retained unimpaired without ■
wise and deliberate fostering. Our physical
development needs our most intelligent care
and determined cultivation. In return it can-
not but repay our painstaking with added
health and sanity and happiness. We must
remember, however, that the mere supplying
of haphazard exercise, no matter how ample
and stimulating, is not alone enough to pro-
duce the best results in physical development.
It goes without saying that our customary?
responsibilities allow little time out of each
day for physical recreation pure and simple;
yet even the busiest life offers more possibili-
ties of that sort than is realized, and would
gain rather than lose by the utilization of
every such opportunity. Then, too, there are
best ways of doing all the enforced work one
has to do, — best ways of sitting and standing
and breathing and moving, so as to get a min-
imum of detriment and a maximum of bene-
27
2rt)r ifttaftCna of ^tvnon^Uts
fit from our lab^ourj even though it be drudg-
ery. No labour, however menial, but can be
made to yield its quota to our physical well-
being, if performed with intelligence and
spirit. Drudgery is in the drudge, not in the
task.
This is the chief use of physical education,
as of all other, to fit us for the perform-
ance of necessary work, — no mere training
that is made up of incoherent and unrelatable
gymnastic diversions, or athletic excesses, but
a veritable and beneficent education, as sci-
entific as engineering, as ethical as religion,
and as artistic as the best sculpture.
Such an ideal physical training would not,
of course, correct all the ills under which we
live, but it would certainly go far to help us.
Social ideals have to be modified, social insti-
tutions reformed, continually, so that life may
be kept balanced and sane, — so that the indi-
vidual may have something like a fair chance
for free development of all the human facul-
ties of body, heart, and brain. Our own age
28
JCtie Mtnnins of ^tvnonnUtp
is as much in need of this healthy growth as
any other. But quite apart from these con-
siderations of social readjustment, the fact is
to be noted that modern life, with its distorted
demands, its crazy haste, and its foolish ab-
sorption in affairs, is directly responsible for
any physical deterioration, and that we can
only maintain our normal physical standard
of excellence and efficiency by deliberate and
adequate care.
Exercise is only the outward modifying cTr^
cumstance which moulds our physical powers,
and must be accurately adjusted to the laws
of remedy and growth, in order to yield the
best results. It has the inward, living, con-
trolling force of personality to reckon with.
Unless we recognize this truth and proceed
upon it, all our systems of physical education
must remain futile, — as they so largely are.
Man's body is the product of evolution, in-
deed, but that evolution includes also the
growth of his spirit and intelligence, which
find their only manifestation through his
29 I
physical being. Free life in the open may
give us opportunity for good motion and fine
carriage, but even under the most favourable
conditions habitually fine carriage and good
motion can only spring from nobility of char-
acter. Dignity, grace, dexterity are physical
traits, if you will, but they are incompatible
with an unintelligent and depraved nature.
We have therefore to take into consideration
the essential threefold unity of personality in
any attempt at education, — the indivisible
relation between body-building and charac-
ter-building.T We have to make sure that we
are well supplied with dignified and gracious
ideals that shall induce and stimulate worthy
growth of character, while inspiring and
establishing fine habits of plastic motion for
its spontaneous expression.
The cultivation of beautiful motion is an
avenue to the attainment of great personal
lQY£l+ne§s, and-i& available to all. For grace,
that is to say good motion, is one of the most
alive and potent sorts of beauty, exercising a
30
JCtie Jtteaninfl of ^tvnonmts
subtle but incalculable influence; and while
perfection af form and feature is largely be-
yond our own control, the charm-of pleasing
motion, with the improvement in look and
bearing which it gives, is almost immediately
attainable, and is instantly impressive. We
are accustomed to think of a fine carriage as
a becoming accomplishment or a fortunate
accident; we seldom account it a result of ..
character, — an inevitable expression of indi-V-^
vidual personality. It does not usually occur
to us to interpret what it means, and what
tj-afts it indicates. Yet, consciously or uncon-
sciously, it always conveys an impression; and
voluntarily or involuntarily, it always betrays
character. Aad, if we wish to cultivate or
enhance physical personal beauty, we must
inculcate this truth of the close relationship
between the physical being and the inward
character, and the influence of the one on the z'^')
other. Beauty is the expression of noble in-
telligence.'' 'Personal charm and grace are the
manifestation of fundamental values inherent
31
SCfje JWaftinfl of J&tv^onulits
in the individual. It is impossible to culti-
vate personal beauty and physical perfection
in ourselves and in the race, without first hav-
ing ideals of perfection of spirit and under-
standing. The aid of goodness and truth must
always be enlisted to accord with our aims
for the achievement and maintenance of
beauty, whether in life or art, or personal
culture. To build a structure, we must first
have a design. Our outward self is built and
rebuilt, moment by moment, by our inward
self, and is the true expression of our thoughts
and emotions; just as the beautiful outward
world of nature is created, moment by mo-
ment, and is the true expression of a benefi-
cent purposeful energy.
'he human body in every tissue and move-
ment is but the living simulacrum of the
mind and soul that pervade it. It can never
be given a fair and lovely seeming, — dignity
and charm and grace, — by any attempt to
affect these attributes, since they are spiritual
attributes as well as physical, — manifesta-
32
tions of kindly sincerity, not of selfish artifice.
Any body need only be made a plastic and
obedient vehicle or medium, faithfully re-
vealing fine spirit and intelligence, in order
to realize the utmost physical beauty of
which that person is capable, and to gratify
the most aesthetic demand.
All motion, whether self-conscious or not,
has meaning; and one's bearing — the pres-
ence with which one fronts the world — is
an irrefutable revelation of oneself. Per-
sonal beauty and graceful motion, a charm-
ing manner and a musical voice, are valuable
powers that may be cultivated and attained
in some degree by all, just as health and vig-
our may be. But they cannot be acquired as
mere elegant accomplishments, the affected
externals of a fashionable education, to be
learned by precept or imitation. So consid-
ered, they become nothing more than a trans-
parent veneer over ignorant vulgarity, a
sham polish that very badly imitates good
breeding. Real gracefulness of bearing,
33
charm of manner and speech, are truly the
" outward and visible signs of an inward and
spiritual grace." ^^Tiey give eloquent utter-
ance to significant personality. Being subject
to definite natural laws of expression, not to
be learned by rote nor taught by rule,rth^y
must be developed as normal means of ex-
pression, if they are to be acquired at their
best; and they must only be exercised as nat-
ural avenues of sincere expression if they are
to be retained in their legitimate normal
freshness. When so acquired and so used,
they can never be artificial nor fictitious nor
insincere; they are then what they were
made to be by nature, spontaneous character-
istic traits of the individual^^^lending him
identification, distinction, and magnetism.
To cultivate fundamental means of expres-
sion is merely to take care of certain faculties
and powers already in our possession, and for
which we are responsible. This should con-
stitute a most vital and practical part of any
liberal education, since education surely can
34
have no other aim than this, — to liberate the
mind and spirit, to set them free, to put them
in possession of their lawful dominions, to
help them realize and utilize themselves, to
increase still more their growing powers for
beneficent influence, so that human person-
ality may reach its happiest normal devel-
opment. Culture of the body, like culture of
the mind, must be a real education of the in-
dividual, not the mere acquisition of tricks,
if it is to hold its rightful place in educational
and general esteem and fulfil the largest
measure of its usefulness.
It is the quality of exercise, rather than its
quantity, that needs consideration. The at-
tention we give it is perhaps already sufficient
in amount; it is requisite that we should see
that it is adequate in value also, and that it
is rightly related to other branches of per-
sonal culture, if it is to be accredited with its
legitimate place and importance in any
scheme of human improvement.
Voice and motion are primarily faculties
35
JSCiie i«aft(n0 of JJrtsonaUts
of expression, and can best be cultivated only
as such. The laws which govern their use
are the laws which govern all art. In the
person of the actor they must be brought to
perfection and held in readiness to be utilized
in his art of characterization. He exempli-
fies the possibility of making any discrimina-
tion between the art of expression and the
individual use of our faculties of speech and
motion. He reminds us that, while few of
us are actors portraying the moods and pas-
sions of imaginary characters by deliberate
imitation, we are all of us every instant con-
sciously or unconsciously betraying emotions
of our own. And the means at our command
are precisely the same as his in kind, though
in a much less perfect state of development
and control. The master of his indubitable
art, he makes use of no other media of expres-
sion than we. But with his intelligent com-
mand of his art he is able to express exactly
what he means to express, while we on the
other hand, through lack of such control,
36
through defective education and bad habits
of imitation, express much that we would not
express, and fail to express much that we
think and feel and long to be accredited with.
The truth is, no man can speak or move with-
out definitely expressing something; which
makes it obviously desirable that expression
be educated and devoted to the highest hu-
man service.
So inexorable are the laws of expression
under which we live and move and have our
being, that the tortuous soul can never quite
hide any duplicity from the keen observer,
nor true nobility be mistaken for pinchbeck.
Training in the fundamental principles of
expression — the acquiring of good habits of
speech and motion, which are two most pri-
mary factors in expression — is therefore not
only a requisite part of all thorough education
of personality, but a constant aid in the dif-
ficult matter of maintaining a worthy con-
duct of life. It tends to make us directly
masters of ourselves; it gives us insight into
37
/"
the thoughts and feelings of others; it vents
the springs of generous freedom in ourselves;
its principles are built into the foundation of
all culture, life, and art.
These are very definite reasons for main-
taining that wisely adapted physical educa-
tion is as much needed for the personality of
the artist, the scholar, and the man in the
street, as for the athlete. It should be clear
enough that no great achievement in art, in
science, or in religion, no surpassing stroke
of genius, nor any masterly human dealing,
can be expected of a puny or perverted peo-
ple. That in itself is enough justification for
scrupulous care and culture of the body. But
it is impossible to teach good motion and pure
\ musical tone-production, without thereby
evoking and encouraging the growth of fine
spirit and clear thinking. Tone and motion
can only be pleasing and beautiful when they
have sincerity of impulse behind them and
through them, and are executed with freedom
and skill. It follows inevitably that to instil
38
and disseminate habits of graceful movement
and pleasing speech is to develop through
well-chosen exercise such basic qualities as
sincerity, dignity, and kindliness in the indi-
vidual, and honesty, beneficence, and effi-
ciency in the community. The raw, crude,
vulgar manners of so many young people,
even in grades of society where better things
might be expected, are oftentimes attributa-
ble quite as much to ill-regulated habits of
using the voice and the body, as to any inten-
tional discourtesy. And these blemishes van- ^ J
ish as if by magic under adequate physical
education, — a wise and practically selected
cultivation of motion and speech. An awk-
ward and slovenly gait, a boorish and un-
lovely bearing, a strident and repellent voice,
forbidding as they are to those who encounter
them, may be far more harmful in their reflex
influence upon the nerves and temperaments
of their unfortunate possessors.
Such considerations as these more than jus-
tify a plea for the spread of the best physical
39
2rt)e i«aft(nfl of jpersonalfts
education, training that is not only good for
muscles and amusement, but that betters all
our effectiveness and satisfaction in life. The
evolution of such a standard of education
would create a necessity for teachers of such
surpassing wisdom and patient skill as are
almost nowhere to be found, and would re-
quire in those who professed it not only a
broad fund of psychological and scientific
knowledge, but a distinct genius for the art
of their calling, — an art far greater and
more consciously creative than it has hereto-
fore been considered.
To such a philosophy of education it can-
not seem enough that physical training should
be conducted as a separate and optional
branch of work, and be relegated to occa-
sional supervision of overspecialized teach-
ers, who, however proficient they may be in
gymnastics, are seldom inspired by the broad-
est culture. All teachers, of whatever subject,
should comprehend the principles of such a
symmetrical educational ideal, and should be
40
versed in all of its rudiments at least, so that
they may have a wise care of the general well-
being of their pupils at all times. It should
be considered quite as much the teacher's
province to encourage habits of good motion
and fine voice as to inculcate orderly beha-
viour and clean morals. We should fare
badly if our only training in ethics were
derived from a half-hour's lesson on a Sunday
afternoon; just as inadequate for the needs
of the growing body must be a half-hour of
calisthenics once or twice a week.
It must always be recognized that teaching
is^ne_of__the_greatest arts, as well as one of
the noblest professions. It may be claimed
that the task of the ideal artist is to make
something out of nothing, to disseminate
ideals by giving them reality, to increase the
sum of happiness in the world, to uphold
lofty standards of conduct, to make the god-
like powers of goodness and reason prevail
against the Titanic forces of ill; but it is
hardly appreciated that the task of the ideal
41
teacher is equally creative and far-reaching.
He deals with a spiritual art, moulding plas-
tic personalities to human perfection by his
skill, his patience, his insight and his genius.
Such incomparable service demands the nvDst
comprehensive culture and devotion, and is
entitled to the highest honours in the gift of
mankind to bestow. Such a teacher is a co-
worker in the field with Christ and Buddha
and all the supremely unselfish souls who
have devoted their lives to the development
and betterment of the life of our kind. Not
until we recognize and encourage this essen-
tial status of teachers, can we expect them to
fulfil these ideals, or hope that schooling shall
yield the best possible fruits of ideal educa-
tion.
42
(Bt, Clje "gJ'alue of f nstinct
The value of instinct is its incorruptible
honesty. Reason may err and palter and vary
and be deceived or overborne ; sentiment may
grow false and stale; both may be deluded
by the shows of circumstance, the force of
tradition, the dictates of authority, the voice
of calumny, or the mere inertia of habit. But
instinct is swerved by none of these things.
It was the master of our destinies long ago,
when we were first emerging from chaos and
oblivion, before reason was achieved or sen-
timent begotten, playing the part of divinity
in our strong, restless, obedient, unconscious
43
2rt|e iWaftinfl of jptrsonalitff
bodies, while as yet error of judgment and
sadness of heart were scarcely beginning to
be.
In the earlier world instinct taught us to
forage for our food, to engender and rear our
offspring, to preserve the precious gift of life,
to avoid danger, to seek joy, and to conquer
fear. Since then, in the long course of evo-
lution, as we have come to call the story of
man, the teaching of instinct has been over-
laid with a mass of other information, — all
the knowledge which awakening mind has
discovered, all the lore which the growing
emotions have accumulated. Instinct itself
has been abandoned, insulted, almost forgot-
ten, and its invaluable guidance set aside.
Life has been made so safe, so much a matter
of routine and comfort and custom, that our
realization of the need of the services of in-
stinct from moment to moment in daily life
has fallen into abeyance. We no longer rely
upon its fresh and prompt decisions, but refer
all perplexities to the slow adjudication of
44
reason or the uncertain arbitration of the
heart.
True, it seems to be the destined aim of
sentient life to evolve and perfect these two
gifts, the power to think truly and the power
to feel deeply; but that is by no means a rea-
son for discountenancing their primitive part-
ner and invaluable helpmate, a keen and
active instinct. A little consideration of the
subject will show that such a loss must prove
fatal not only to the outward physical life of
the human being, but to the inward person-
ality itself. In '^ The Life of Reason," that
book full of wise things, Mr. George Santa-
yana says, in dealing with '^ Reason in Relig-
ion," " It is no accident for the soul to be
embodied; her very essence is to express and
bring to fruition the body's functions and re-
sources. Its instincts make her ideals and its
relations her world." And again in the vol-
ume on " Reason in Common Sense," " The
soul adopts the body's aims; from the body
45
>
and from its instincts she draws a first hint
of the right means to the accepted purposes.'*
M. Maeterlinck, with his incomparable in-
sight in such matters, has given a description
of instinct in his essay on '^ The Psychology
of Accident," which leaves little more to be
said upon the subject, save to reinforce the
profound lesson which his penetrating de-
scription suggests. He portrays instinct as a
humble, tireless drudge, lodged in our mortal
tenement, to tend and care for all its more
menial necessities, unrecognized for the most
part, yet ever ready to spring to our assistance
whenever any need arises, rushing instantly
to the aid of its slower superior, reason, in
moments of peril, and retiring again unrec-
ognized and unencouraged to the obscure
corners of its dwelling. In his own words,
*' The danger once past, reason, stupefied,
gasping for breath, unbelieving, a little dis-
concerted, turns its head and takes a last look
at the improbable. Then it resumes the lead,
as of right, while the good savage that no one
46
dreams of thanking, returns in silence to its
cave."
We have all passed through that experience
of being rescued by our faithful savage, and
feel how true this description is, — with what
terror we grasp that modest and surest aid,
and how nonchalantly we turn from it the
moment our panic has subsided. For the cul-
tivator of personality, bent on achieving the
most normal self-development, the point is
that we pay far too small heed to our savage,
and for the most part treat it with culpable
and costly neglect and contempt; when in
truth it is quite as important to our human
happiness as proud reason, which flatters itself
it has accomplished such wonders, or fastidi-
ous moral spirit, which has had unnumbered
temples, churches, shrines, altars, basilicas,
cathedrals, mosques, minsters and abbeys built
for its indulgence and gratification.
These pampered and sniffy aristocrats are
apt to regard their unassuming ally as much
too vulgar and anarchistic to be associated
47
E^t Jttaftinfl of Jletfiionalftff
with upon equal terms, and would gladly for-
get him and his affairs if they could. He
must shift for himself, for all they care, and
satisfy his own wants and requirements as best
he can without any intentional aid from them.
This is the prime and monumental fault of
civilization, the flaw which all our philoso-
phy of education so far has failed to correct,
and which it is our most important business
to amend. We have somehow allowed this
coolness between savage and angel to grow
unchecked, to the great detriment of our
human nature. Let us be well assured that
we shall in no instance be able to regain or
maintain anything like normal perfection un-
til this breach is bridged, and instinct and
reason are brought again into fullest legiti-
mate accord. So only can we avert chaotic
and otherwise incomprehensible sadness, de-
terioration, and defeat from the triumvirate
of personality, so omnipotent when at peace
with itself, so vulnerable when distraught by
inharmony and misgovernment.
48
Instinct, like any other faculty, may be edu-
cated and kept growing and strong by exer-
cise and good care, or may be allowed to be-
come inept and useless. Do we give instinct
decent care from day to day? Do we not
rather follow the modern fashion of discoun-
tenancing, repressing, and insulting it, like an
unwelcome and unappreciated child? Ac-
cording to popular supposition, instinct is an
endowment, something like one of the senses,
which we each possess in a definite and un-
alterable degree. But that notion is wrong.
Instinct is not like the hearing or the eyesight,
of certain more or less fixed utility in each
person. It is more like the mind itself, capa-
ble of great development under careful cul-
ture or of great deterioration under neglect.
By most people instinct is classed with the
least spiritual of the senses, among the least
noble of the faculties of man, a part of that
animal heritage which a false theology has
taught us to be ashamed of, but which indeed
we must foster and train with every respectful
49
><
care, as an ever essential help in human
growth.
Instinct is the wisdom of the senses, and the
censor of all our wisdom. All the experience
of sensation, with its subtle modifications by
thought and feeling, through countless gen-
erations of life, has gone to the making of that
wisdom, and been absorbed by the species in
its store of animal consciousness and the
equipment of that fundamental and indis-
pensable faculty which we call instinct. ^ And
all of our higher, later, or more rational
knowledge, including our thoughts, aspira-
tions, dreams and conclusions, are almost val-
ueless until they have been weighed and ap-
proved by instinct. ' Reason alone, splendid
and daring as it is, is far too erratic, youthful,
vain, and visionary to be entrusted with the
entire control of our human destiny; it must
for safety pay respectful heed to the more
deeply sympathetic judgments of instinct.
Instinct cannot become educated unless it is
allowed to bear some part in the problems of
50
living. It is a valuable third judge with rea^
son and intuition, and together, not sepa-
rately, they direct the affairs of the body, the
affairs of the mind, the affairs of the soul, and
adjudicate the ultimate welfare of personal-
ity. If instinct were thwarted and repressed,
and allowed to operate in the sphere of the
senses alone, it could not help being stultified
and dulled. It is only by being given free
scope in the widest range that it can be kept
happy, keen, growing, and competent. When
instinct is given this fair opportunity, it will
be found to develop and serve as wonderfully
and widely as either of its fellow faculties of
spirit and mind, and to yield its needed quota
to the sum of personal happiness and worth.
Instinct must help to govern not only our
food and clothing, but our friendships, our
antipathies, our vocations, our recreations, »•
our labour, and our love. Few of us know it
sufficiently even in its most primal and essen- /^
tial realms.- We are so accustomed to eat and
dress by rule and custom that we often forget
i>,
to consult instinct in the matter, greatly to our
disadvantage. How often we eat, not because
we are hungry, but because it is meal-time!
And how often we eat whatever is most con-
venient or customary, without consulting our
instinctive appetite at all, even when choice
is possible and an abundance is at our com-
mand. Eating and drinking should never be
matters of mere routine or heedless habit, but
always of normal sensibility. A certain reg-
ularity is not to be despised, but inert habit
should never be permitted to override the
alert and vital instinct, though habit also has
its lawful and beneficial uses. And in the
matter of the appetites, (it is the instinct for
ultimate well-being and satisfaction that is to
be consulted; not the momentary proclivity
of taste and inclination. Only a few articles
of food are universally wholesome and nutri-
tious. Each individuality has its own idio-
syncrasies of diet; shell-fish are poison to one,
strawberries to another, honey to a third, and
so on. These are matters for each one's in-
52
stinct to learn and heed, as a most elementary
lesson in common sense. But a trained and
respected instinct will go much further, and
will safely guide one's preference at any time
for the nurture and protection of the phy-
sique, so as to keep it always wholesome and
fit.
Instinct, too, might help beneficially to reg-
ulate our housing and clothing more than it
is allowed to do. We are inclined to wear
our clothes according to seasonal traditions
and fashions, rather than according to the feel
of the weather and our own condition and
comfort. A little heed given to our natural
monitor would often save us from distressful
cold, dangerous overheating, and poisonous
asphyxiation; for it will unerringly warn, if
only we are accustomed to recognize its sig-
nals, the moment we step into the street or
crowded car, or lie down to sleep, whether
or not we are sufficiently or excessively pro-
tected. '\^^
Quite as legitimately also is instinct entitled W''
53
to its voice in deciding our choice of acquaint-
ances and friends. An instant aversion, an
unreasoning but definite antipathy to this per-
son or that, is not as foolish as chaotic charity
and commercial common sense would lead us
to believe. And we often overpersuade our-
selves, against the subtle intimations of in-
stinctive preference, to enter into relation-
ships that turn out disastrously for all con-
cerned, and to attempt friendships that never
could be worth while, when, if we had ac-
cepted the warning of our genius, we might
have avoided much wasteful experiment and
dismay. Every personality has its natural
antagonisms; it could not otherwise have any
individual inclination, insistence, or influ-
ence; and it is a waste of power to incur un-
necessary contact with these antagonisms. It
is the business of instinct to avoid such waste
and whatever is inimical to well-being, in the
realm of association as in other spheres, — to
help us to recognize and select those person-
alities best suited to stimulate our happy
54
growth and enjoy in their turn whatever hu-
man helpfulness we may possess. It is only
on such foundations of honest comprehension,
sympathy, and gladdening utility that noble
and lasting friendship can be maintained.
So, too, in our work and recreations. This
or that play may be very excellent and enjoy-
able for many persons, and yet not suited to
your needs nor mine at the moment. Ibsen,
for example, though an admirable dramatist,
a keen and beneficent analyst of the ills of the
age, may very possibly for you be unpleas-
antly superfluous; you may already have on
your hands, to say nothing of your heart and
head, more grievous problems than you can
relish; then instinct most wisely bids you
away from the theatre where his studies are
being presented. Be not deluded by any false
sense of intellectual or fashionable obligation
into watching his horrors. On the other hand
if he gives you what you need, — some help
to realize facts, some hint to think of things
about you, — obey the impulse that bids you
55
Y
seek his presentation of human drama, though
you have to stand through whole perform-
ances. This same obiter dictum is true of
reading. Let us read nothing that we instinc-
tively dislike; it can do no more good than
food for which we have a natural distaste.
There is better reading wherever honest taste
leads; and as we gain therefrom we soon
come to discard the worthless readily enough.
Instinct would make us lords of ourselves,
instead of dupes of charlatans and slaves of
fashion. The reliance upon instinct relieves
one of self-consciousness, because one waits to
know its dictates, instead of wondering and
worrying. It thus makes for repose and se-
renity, and liberates us from fussiness, incer-
titude, and trepidation. To be ashamed of
one's instinct is like being ashamed of one's
nationality; it may be desirable or undesir-
able, but to be ashamed of it is least desirable
of all. Instinct is a most democratic faculty,
endowing us with a sort of universal language
or free-masonry intelligible to people of
56
every race and condition. At the same time
it lends distinction and charm to any person-
ality. Habitual response to instinctive im-
pulse gives an air of high-bred courage to
conduct by taking av^ay the appearance of
hesitancy and calculation. When reason is
endorsed by comfortable assurance of instinct,
there is a resulting gladness that no fantasies
of unsubstantiated reason can hope to attain.
It is instinct that pronounces indisputable
judgment on the value of erudite opinion and
the worth of varied experience. ^>
57
(!^r, Cije (§uitiance of il^eason
We may exclaim with the sturdy English
poet, if we will,
*' I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul,"
and still find our craft in troublous places and
sorry plight, if we persist in considering cap-
taincy all sufficient for smooth sailing. The
captain, while he is in responsible command
of his ship, is not the only person of impor-
tance in its service. In clear sailing on a deep-
sea course he may wield undisputed sway; in
dangerous channels and among unfamiliar
58
soundings he must pass his command to a
pilot. It is the business of that functionary to
be better acquainted with the perils and intri-
cacies of his locality than the high-sea cap-
tain need be, and to keep the craft from dis-
aster, not from lack of seamanship but from
lack of knowledge.
The simile may be applied to human be-
ings. The primacy of the spirit is incontesta-
ble, but the necessity for reason is incontesta-
ble also. Not only must every personality be
captained by its soul, it must also be piloted
by its own intelligence. Whatever course the
untutored will may wish to venture upon
needs to be examined, adjudged and steered
by the understanding. Reason deals with our
affairs in a strictly practical fashion. It ruth-
lessly revises our dreamful purposes and
ideals, with regard to their possibility or prac-
ticability of accomplishment in this very real
world. Our captain soul would have us sail
on and on into some beautiful and alluring
glory, where all seems fair and innocent, when
59
2Ci)e iWaftinfl of ^ttnonnlii^
perhaps wiser reason must come to the rescue
and warn us of some sunken reef directly in
our path.
The soul is guileless and unsuspecting, and
seems to be native to a land that knows no
sorrow nor disappointment, no accident nor
evil, and to be experienced only in an eternity
of truth and beauty and goodness. Left to its
own devices, it would soon and often come
to disaster on the shores of this world's life.
It needs the more canny reason to come con-
stantly to its aid in all issues of its daily course.
In a state of ideality, we may imagine that
the soul might require neither chart nor pilot,
but could sail on its glorious w^ay unthreat-
ened by obstructing facts. When it came to
take upon itself mundane existence, however,
it needed some defence against the world's
fatalities, and so reason evolved to be its guide
and friend.
The spirit of man with all its soaring and
radiance is unsophisticated, unadapted to its
earthly environment, and through the best ef-
60
fort of a long lifetime only begins to learn
the lesson of wise procedure among its daily
concerns. With this difficult task to accom-
plish, we can ill afford to overlook or slight
any possible means of advantage, and yet we
recklessly ignore and defy reason's splendid
help, and allow it to deteriorate day by day.
It has been said that if all the world could
stop simultaneously for five minutes and rea-
sonably consider the real values of life, it
would thereupon be immediately and wholly
converted to good. Human welfare is less in
need of new facts than of renewed habit and
growth of power in utilizing rationally and
fully those already at our command. The
wisdom of the cheerful woodsman who knows
little beyond the facts and uses of his habitat
is of greater human value than the encyclo-
pedic and chaotic information of the world-
wanderer, who with all his smattering cannot
make life seem worth while an)rwhere. The
manipulation of knowledge and of spirit
proves their worth, not the mere possession of
6i
them. And reason is our supreme manipu-
lator. Plans approved by reason are the only
ones worthy all the skill that execution and
devotion can acquire.
When effort is thus put forth under the
careful guidance of reason, there is no such
thing as its coming to nought, even though
the reason be faulty and the art faltering.
The very rightness of the process accomplishes
something, if only in strengthening the habit
of trying in the best way. How much tardy,
painstaking and misguided diligence, how
much befogged aspiration and benighted dis-
content, may be avoided by simply using our
pilot honestly and opportunely. The sad fal-
lacy that reason is incompatible with inspira-
tion, detrimental to genius, and antagonistic
to art, has led us far astray in our search for
happiness and beauty, and has grievously re-
tarded human growth and gladness.
As the time for a pilot's service is at the
beginning and the close of a voyage, so the
most serviceable time for reason's help is at
62
the beginning and the end of an undertaking.
When we have once fully embarked upon a
venture, it is mere childishness to cry for help,
to wish we had taken thought sooner, or to
hesitate in indecision. Main considerations
must be weighed before setting sail; and the
sum of wisdom may be profitably reckoned
afterward; but while we are in the midst of
endeavour there is little time for successful
calculation.
<^appiness is never the result of mere well-
meaning. The best intention can achieve no
satisfaction for itself, save through the aid of
intelligence and skill. \ Our utmost longing
for felicity will prove for ever futile, unless
we can supplement it with some command of
circumstance, some power to control condi-
tions and to fashion procedure to our will;
and this we can never do without promptitude
and clarity of understanding and judgment. ^
Pure volition is incapable of achievement, a
feckless entity without mind or force, if such
a thing be conceivable.
63
Ciie JHaitefng of J^etsonalftff
To the sincere and eager student bent upon
finding a genuine solution of the difRcult
problem of self-culture or the making of per-
sonality, it must surely appear that no over-
specialized development can make for perfec-
tion, but that we must foster our triune indi-
viduality with impartial care. Under our
present educational ideals there is little dan-
ger of mentality being neglected. In fact our
system concerns itself almost wholly with
training the mind; and with that aim in itself
one can find no fault. It would be wrong to
say that any intelligence can be overcultivated,
or that there can be any danger of being over-
educated. There is very great danger, how-
ever, — indeed there is every evidence, — that
culture and personality may be overmental-
ized. Many a person has been given exercise
of the mind out of all proportion to that be-
stowed either upon the physique or the spirit,
to the sorry undoing of the personality as a
living whole. Of higher education in its best
and symmetrical sense no one can have too
64
much ; but of mere book knowledge and men-
tal training, which is almost all that our edu-
cational system offers, one may easily have a
disproportionate amount. The highly edu-
cated person, in our usual understanding of
the term, is proverbially inept and inefficient,
less well fitted for the task of securing and
disseminating a creditable degree of happi-
ness in life than many an illiterate but better
balanced man or woman. The developing of
any one of the three phases of human nature,
at the expense of the others, must inevitably
lead to such undesirable result; and while
our present standards of education may make
scholars, they will never make the happiest
possible human beings. To that end, educa-
tion must include a commensurate recognition
and culture of physical and spiritual values,
in the assurance that the mind itself cannot
reach even its own finest growth, unless fur-
thered in its progress by a refreshing spirit
and an invigorating body.
Inasmuch as the chief concern of life seemsil
65
^
2rt)t JHaftfnfl of Jpetsonalftff
to be the evolving and training of personali-
ties, it would seem sensible to make our mental
training such as will readily and efficiently
serve all requirements that body, mind, or
spirit may make upon it.^ to bring our intel-
ectual culture to bear upon the hourly prob-
lems of living and the securing of happiness;
to pursue our cherished schemes with success-
ful intelligence; in shortj^^o make reason
oTnrrrorTfs utmost aid not only in the sphere
of thought but in all the affairs of daily health
d gladness.
The setting aside of intellectual life as a
mere refuge from the difficulties of practical
well-being and well-doing, the withdrawing
ourselves into the enchanted kingdoms of pure
science, and the turning of our responsibilities
away from all the hard problems which beset
every hour, is only a begging of the question
of wisdom. The life of a scholarly recluse,
absorbed in his own intellectual preferences,
may be excused with specious arguments, but
it may also be criticized as a shirking of the
66
main issues of individual conduct, of evading
the difficulties in the way of securing some
form of that healthy, helpful, and joyous life
which constitutes the first dignity of man.
Whatever gratification it may bring to the
scholar himself, it offers no solution of the
universal difficulty of best living. The book-
worm is as helpless as the monk, when it comes
to offering any effective aid to confused hu-
manity in its task of finding out how to make
success and happiness out of the materials at
hand. Moreover, neither of them reaches his
own best possible development through that
method of self-absorbed devotion to a single
phase of existence. The scholar in his knowl-
edge and the hermit in his sanctity are as far
from the ideal of normal manhood as the man
of many millions under his burden, of stocks
and bonds. /Tearnijig aad- s^n-€*ity ^j^of vast
value, but m^^-Atc of immediate concern to
y^«-^3S^ifee only in so far as rf^ey can be made
to illumine and better iw^mSb life.as-w^ ha^i^
to live tt'to-dapaFHi--h.ec6r* What the soul and
67
I mind might accomplish under other condi-
tions cannot profitably concera Wat all, but
what they can do to help us m any present
^lace and hour is vital. Their only compre-
hensible value and obligation is to enrich and
advance the interests of normal personality in
its arduous progress toward perfection.
For every one, then, the question is not,
How much can I know, but How can I make
such intelligence as I have help life to the
utmost. Perhaps in nothing is defection at
this point more general and more astonishing
than in the all-desirable art of keeping well.
What can be more important than to know
how to care for one's health and safeguard it
against impairment? And yet how many of
us have any adequate understanding of the
matter, any habit of using such hygienic
knowledge as we may possess, or even any con-
viction that the matter comes within the range
of our responsible control? We are accus-
tomed to squander health without heed, and
without even an effort to realize how little
68
rational care it would take to preserve our
energy from undue depletion and disease.
When sickness overtakes us we rush to a physi-
cian, and when the emergency is past we blun-
der on as before, without a moment's rational
thought given to prevent a recurrence of the
disaster.
In these days sickness is a disgrace. But
we are so fond of considering it a visitation
of the will of God, emotionalizing over its
woes, and indulging in an irrational religious
sentimentalism concerning them, that we can
hardly bring our common sense, actual knowl-
edge, and reasonable skill to bear upon the
question. Doctors are not wholly to blame if
they devote more time to palliating ailments
than to maintaining health. Most patients
'^ enjoy poor health," prefer pity to fair play,
and demand to be helped by some remedy they
do not understand rather than by any rational
prevention. If serious people actually realize
what detrimental clothing does to human wel-
fare, how can they ever condone it? If they
69
once fully comprehended the benefits of a
rational attention to diet, to dress, to ventila-
tion, to exercise, to normal walking, talking,
and breathing, to tonic bathing and to sleep,
what would become of sickness and prema-
ture death?
The gain to be derived from including the
guidance of reason in spiritual matters fills
the churches of those teachers and preachers
who are liberal enough to try the experiment.
Many a sound moral lesson would be received
gladly were it reinforced with appreciable
reason rather than with appeals to discredited
dogmas and an impossible faith in unrealities.
The world is no longer to be ruled by fanat-
icism and superstition at the expense of its
growing intelligence. And this does not mean
that religion is to be belittled nor done away;
it rather means that it is to be honoured the
more, — its uses made more and more sane
and beautiful in conformity with the growth
of standards of goodness in the world.
We are accustomed to mistake love for a
70
wholly supernatural or subnatural matter, and
to yield to it as to an emissary from Divinity,
beyond the province of rational guidance or
control. And yet from the multitudinous mis-
takes that are made in love's name, it would
seem that in no other realm of life is the wise
piloting of reason more necessary. The tragic
plight of this spiritual domain may perhaps
be due far less to any flaw in the quality of
modern feeling or any shortage of means for
its perfection, than to the wilful exclusion of
reason from all of its procedure. Those who
set out on voyages of loving companionship,
perhaps the most difficult of all adventurings,
should hardly expect propitious sailing with-
out chart or pilot.
In care of our pilot reason we may embark
safely not only for ultimate worthy achieve-
ment, but immediately upon orderly tides of
thought, where, as in the realm of music,
beauty and joy are unconstrained, — the most
easily attainable region where perfect happi-
ness is to be found. But our greatest triumphs
71
in the art of living will come from following
the lead of our best rationality in cheerful and
painstaking contest against the forces of ad-
versity, desolation, and despair, and in ma-
king upon earth a home for the unextravagant
ideal.
72
(Bx, Cfje l^oWx of l^oist
CC " The human body is adapted to the ex-
pression of conscious will, and this is free-
dom. The perfect subordination of the body-
to the will is gracefulness. It is this which
constitutes the beauty of classic art: to have
every muscle under perfect obedience to the
will — • unconscious obedience — so that the
slightest inclination or desire of the soul, if
made an act of the will, finds expression in
the body." »
Dr. T. W. Harris, in his orderly and lu-
minous work on Psychologic Foundations
of Education, uses these suggestive words in
73
discussing the harmonious beauty of the art
of sculpture as perfected by the Greeks.
They might well serve as a compendium of
philosophy for students of expression, body
training, and general development, so con-
cisely and clearly do they embody the essen-
tial truth underlying all art. And he adds
this memorable sentence, which ought to be-
come a watchword with all teachers of phys-
ical education, and indeed with all teachers
in all branches of education who are worthy
of their great profession: ''The soul is at
ease in the body only when it is using it as a
means of expression or action.^'
There we have in plain terms the secret
not only of the principles of art in general
and of the art of physical self-expression in
particular, but the secret of their relation to
intellectual and spiritual education as well.
There surely can be no true culture that
leaves the soul ill at ease. It is not enough
to train the understanding and fill the mind
with stores of knowledge. Both mind and
74
2Cf)e WLitiQtXf Tittovs
spirit must be given free and adequate exer-
cise of their natural functions, and opportu-
nity for worthy expression and reinforcement
of their powers. Thus only can the inner life
with its lawful desire for activity be allowed
proper and beneficial scope and range, —
thus only can the soul be made at ease in the
body. This must become the purpose of all
culture, and it cannot be accomplished by
mental or moral training alone.
The body which the soul inhabits is more
than a mere tenement, it is an essential prop-
erty of the soul, the exponent and purveyor
of the mind, the outer aspect of personality,
the art medium for the manifestation of spirit
and intelligence; and it requires just as care-
ful consideration, just as wise education, and
just as high perfection of technique as its as-
sociate powers of thought and feeling. To
educate the human being, — to give it the
confidence, the delight, the satisfaction, the
power and repose and legitimate perfection
which the best culture can bring, — care
75
must be taken to place at the disposal of
every lovely spirit and brilliant mind a
worthy, sensitive, and capable body, and to
provide each individual, so far as possible,
with its own appropriate physical means of
activity and enjoyment.
In a symmetrical cultivation of all our
powers, in a balanced exercise of all our fac-
ulties, the volatile treasure of personal happi-
ness is most likely to be found. If we indulge
a thirst for knowledge irrespective of all
other considerations, — at the expense of
health, kindliness, and comel^iness, — we are
doomed to find our acquisition of learn-
ing an unwieldy and disappointing encum-
brance. Such unmodulated knowledge can
never become wisdom, but must remain mere
information, bookish pedantry^, or mechan-
ical cleverness. All such lore can avail as
little as untrained thews and endurance avail
a dunce. We can never be personally well
equipped with only one-third or two-thirds
of developed being, but must compass the
76
Zftt WLlnatXi Tutors
ideal of a triune balance and symmetry of
excellence, as the only adequate measure of
perfection for every individual who is men-
tally, emotionally, and physically endowed.
It is good to be athletic; it is good to be
scholarly; it is good to be honourable, pa-
tient, loving, and helpful. It is not best to
be an ignorant athlete; it is not best to be a
dyspeptic bookworm; it is not even best to be
an unhuman fanatic. Unillumined brutality,
selfish insatiable curiosity and vanity of
mind, and intolerant righteousness, are all
equally unlovely. It is obviously best to be
a man, with the strength and understanding
and honour of a man.
Ethical culture, mental culture, physical
culture, each is excellent and all are neces-
sary, but no one of them will suffice, indeed
no two of them can satisfy without the third.
Only in harmonious and well-balanced co-
operation can they further that highest per-
sonal development, that supreme reach of
ideals and growth, which may be the aim of
77
any one of them. All three are of equal dig-
nity, importance, and delight, and no one of
them can attain its best efficiency without the
aid of the others to inspire and guide and
reinforce it. More than that, their spheres,
which seem so different, are really not dis-
tinct nor separable, and each must continu-
ally either cripple or complement the others.
The soul, the centre and source of volition,
with its perceptions and aspirations, ever
leading in the progress to perfection, needs to
be closely seconded by intelligent guidance
and carried to the fullest achievement by ade-
quate skilful execution. We need never
imagine that spiritual attainments can be suc-
cessfully forced at the expense of the guides
and servants of the spirit, the intellectual and
physical powers. We must care before we
can know, and we must know before we can
do; nor may we even be content with caring
and with knowledge, until we add to them
well-skilled effort toward the realization of
our ideals. In no other way can we develop
78
and appreciate and enjoy the power of per-
sonal poise.
The practical advantage of poise and its
chiefest sanction is the opportunity it affords
for spiritual precedence, for proving the pri-
macy of the will and the fortunate prefer-
ences of the soul. It makes a vantage from
which the best may be attempted, a starting-
point from which the avenues to the fairest
good are seen to radiate, a condition from
which life may spring normally to its finest
stature. Poise endows us with power to stop
and consider, to use our intelligence and judg-
ment, and so improve through every contin-
gency. Habitual poise is the essential pre-
requisite of freedom for happy endeavour
and satisfactory growth.
A conception of the value of personal poise
as the worthiest ideal of education was em-
phasized by Cecil Rhodes in founding his
Oxford scholarships. It has been instinc-
tively felt by students themselves as a legit-
imate need of aspiring human nature, but it
79
2rt)e iWiaitefns of J^etsonalitff
has not yet had such general authoritative
recognition as it deserves. Rhodes helped to
give it practical currency and prestige. In
effect his great gift is a criticism of our in-
complete system, and points the direction in
which mediaeval standards of culture are to
be enlarged. It calls for men in whom schol-
arship is to be supplemented by correspond-
ing physical and spiritual excellence. It de-
mands poise of character rather than excess
of learning. It is a strong, successful man's
endorsement of the ideal of personal poise.
If personal poise — the symmetrical devel-
oping and perfecting of all our capacities in
the building of character — could be made a
widely accepted ideal of culture, it would do
more than any specific social revolution to
ensure greater happiness for all mortals.
Is not such a valuation of poise really the
underlying principle we try to reach in all
attempts to simplify living? Is not the satis-
faction we feel in any such simplification
really a satisfaction at finding ourselves re-
80
8Cf)e Wiinatrf Tittovs
stored to a normal poise? Are not our lives
apt to be unsatisfying because they are partial
and ill balanced, excessive in some directions
and falling short in others? The simple life
cannot be a worthy ideal if it is to mean a
meagre and insufficient life, but only if it is
to mean an undistorted and well-balanced
one. Perfect poise seems simple, because it
is so unperplexing and wholly satisfying. To
simplify living is only advantageous and ben-
eficial in so far as it permits a richer and freer
and more complete enjoyment of the few
pursuits which are vital and worth while.
Our average life, particularly our average
city life, is apt to be overwrought and ill-
regulated, as we all know. To return to sim-
pler conditions would not be to impoverish
human experience, but to enrich it; we should
gain in health, in merriment, in leisure, in
wisdom and length of days; we should lose
only our anxieties, our ailments, our ill-tem-
pers, and our debts. There can hardly be
room for choice. But such a return, let us
8i
stir JHaftinfl of ^tvnonmts
remember, can only be successful if it is car-
ried out in conformity with the ideal of per-
sonal poise, and with the threefold needs of
personal life constantly in mind. A life
somewhat nearer to the earth than we live
now could hardly fail to be more vigorous,
more delightful, more normal. Instead of
sensational criminality, frenzied ambition,
and fashionable artificiality, we should be
able to acquire something of sincerity, come-
liness, and kindly joy.
Slowly but certainly the truth of this ideal
is coming to be recognized. The need for
such a standard is felt in innumerable ways,
though as yet we may not definitely discern
its import. The restless spirit of the patient
world, always seeking the best, has been
driven from one extreme point of view to an-
other in the long course of history, confused
by the clamour of the senses, the cry of the
soul, and the insatiable curiosity of the im-
perious mind. Must we not believe that it is
in some fortunate hour to find the ideal which
82
©tie Wiinatti Tittovs
shall make possible the harmonizing of its
seemingly divergent aims and expedients?
What if the ideal of symmetrical develop-
ment and normal personal poise should prove
just the saving principle it seeks?
As poise serves as a happy criterion of ex-
cellence of personality, and a most advan-
tageous standard of culture, so in physical
training, physical poise provides us with the
only adequate standard of physical beauty
and efficiency. Such an ideal implies the
equal development and control of every por-
tion of the body, the culture and maintenance
of its every perfection, and the habitual use
of all its powers in harmonious accordance
with the most effective and economic laws of
motion and growth. To be able to attain
such poise, the body must be made strong
and free, must be fostered in a symmetrical
growth, and above all must be considered as
the inseparable manifestation of the inform-
ing mind and the indwelling spirit. More-
over physical poise can only be attained
83
8Ciie Jtlamno of J^ersonalitff
through the ideal of personal poise. The
first physical need of the natural man is for
exercise, but for us moderns there is one thing
even more needed than exercise, and that is
bodily emancipation. It is evident that the
body must have freedom to stretch and read-
just itself in every direction before it can
poise itself normally and adapt its poise to
any and all conditions.
We speak of the mechanism of the human
body, with its many joints and levers, its com-
pensations and balances, and its complicated
movements, but we must beware of consider-
ing it too exclusively as a machine. It is so
far more subtle, significant, and adaptable
than any mere mechanical contrivance, so sen-
sitive, so variable, and so intelligent. There
is infinite ingenuity in these human mechan-
isms, but there are preference and sensibility
and responsibility as well, all within an al-
most incredible frailty allied with amazing
strength. Our bodies have many of the char-
acteristics of a machine, but they have also
84
2Cfie WiinatXi Tittoxs
many of the traits of a self-active intelligence,
and must be treated accordingly.
The admirable structure of the animal
skeleton serves, indeed, to lend rigidity to the
body, but it also serves for points of attach-
ment of elastic muscles whose express pur-
pose is to modify that rigidity, just as our
senses modulate our thought. The muscular
system, under the guidance of instinct, seeks
to secure the safety of the individual by not
opposing the manifold casualties of existence
with an unyielding solidity, and by interpo-
sing an ever-ready flexibility that lessens shock
and avoids breakage, enabling us to pass tol-
erably well through a world of insensate op-
position, of stress and resistance and friction.
Power to spring from the ground and
alight again without fracturing ourselves is
a privilege we share with our four-footed
brothers of the field. In jumping they do not
light on rigid heels with straightly stiffened
legs, like a table dropped from a window.
A fox goes over a wall as lightly as a drift
85
of snow, and even an elephant, for all his
huge bulk, seems to move as softly as a mould
of jelly. Though few of us can be as grace-
ful as foxes, we may all avoid cruel shocks
by alighting on the muscular balls of the feet
with spread toes and flexed knees. The im-
petus of the body may thus be stopped grad-
ually, considerately, without violence, almost
without impact, by the intervention of mus-
cular alertness, strength, and elasticity, under
voluntary adequate control. All poise and
every movement of our bodies should have
something of the pliancy and ease of the great
cats, those paragons of grace with their soft,
undulating strength, their powerful quies-
cence, and noiseless activity.
It almost goes without saying that in order
to move well, one must first breathe well, sit
well, stand well. To stand well, there are
two things chiefly necessary, first, that the
chest should be carried well up and forward,
and second that the weight should balance
pliantly over the balls of the feet and spread
86
2Cf)e WHnattf Ttctots
toes, — a spirited, intelligent, adaptable body
on an adequate base of support.
The question of good breathing is so
closely related to proper carriage that the
two can scarcely be considered separately.
It is hardly possible to breathe well while sit-
ting or standing or lying improperly, and it
is not practicable habitually to stand prop-
erly without breathing well. Good breath-
ing, like fine carriage, requires that the chest
should be habitually upheld and automatic-
ally carried by the well-developed chest mus-
cles as high as is comfortable, that the great
life-giving lungs may have room for their
utmost utility. And this condition must be
maintained whether one is sitting, standing,
walking, running, dancing, talking, reading,
or working, in fact through every hour of
life. Particular care must be taken not to
thrust up the chest by overinhaling, nor by
holding the breath, nor by raising the shoul-
ders, nor by making the rib muscles tense,
nor yet by an undue bending backward of
87
the spinal column at the small of the back.
The fonvard carriage and uplift of the chest
must be secured by exercising the pull and
hold of the muscles of the chest and back of
the neck, the stretch of the rib muscles, and
by swaying the whole body forward from
foot to crown, with a very slight mobile for-
ward bend at the hips. And even these direc-
tions must be taken with discretion. The
backbone is not a ramrod; and the fashion
of pulling the hips back and pushing the
chest forward with perfectly rigid spine, as
if the body were only jointed at the waist, is
as unlovely as any other abnormal posture.
The human body is not a flail, with only one
joint in the middle. At its best it is as flexible
as a whip.
" Light and lithe as a willow wand.
She danced, and the monarch held her hand,**
embodies the ideal of graceful poise; and to
attain it, gymnastics for poise must be taught
and practised until the muscles grow so fitted
88
2Ci|e WLitiQt'a Ttctotff
and used to their task that good carriage be-
comes an unconscious habit.
Other requirements of good breathing need
not be detailed here, further than to say that
the throat and entire trunk should be kept
wholly unrestricted and mobile, ready for
automatic or well-controlled service. The
whole body from nose to lower abdomen is
needed to command the best breathing, and
must be given strong free play at all points
in order to be fully serviceable. This point
is so important that one of the first and last
words of physical culture to-day must be,
Breathe well. This accompanies the other
two injunctions, Poise well, and Move worth-
iiy-
Poise should never be mistaken as synon-
ymous with pose or immobility. It is simply
balance, the most advantageous natural ad-
justment, to be infinitely modified and util-
ized whether we are in motion or at rest. It
is the normal state of all being. For con-
venience we may distinguish three different
2rtie M^IHtta of petf^onatlitfi
kinds of poise: static poise, as in a tripod;
dynamic poise, as in the position of the Fly-
ing Mercury or a runner at the start; and
kinetic poise, as of a bird in the air. The
difference between them is, of course, only a
question of adaptation, — transitional and
not fundamental; and it will be seen that
one melts into the other insensibly at need.
But the discrimination helps us to realize that
under no condition is perfect physical poise
unavailable nor unimportant, nor to be dis-
regarded without serious disadvantage.
That there is only one way to stand is of
course not true. Poise must suit its condi-
tions. The identical poise that befits a piano-
mover will not serve the dancer. The golfer
and the Japanese wrestler must stand differ-
ently. For all that, there is a normal poise
for the standing human figure, which gives
the maximum stability, combined with a
maximum latitude for swaying without loss
of balance, and from which transitions may
most easily be made to meet whatever de-
90
©tie WLinatTi T(ctotff
mands may arise. This one way of standing
is generally more economically serviceable
than others and therefore more beautiful;
while there are many ways which are awk-
ward and injurious and essentially unlovely.
Good poise is a matter of utilizing the most
serviceable base of support without sacrific-
ing supple ease and readiness for action.
The best alert standing position is the one
which affords the body the surest and easiest
support, and at the same time the greatest
freedom and facility for prompt effective
movement in any direction. The position
which oftenest and best serves this double
purpose is one in which the weight is upheld
and forecarried over the ball of one foot,
while the other foot is dropped a little back,
resting lightly to help balance and ready to
swing forward at need, the knees being
slightly flexed and never thrown flatly back.
The heel of the forward foot carries almost
none of the weight, merely touching the
ground to help the balance. The heel of the
91
idle foot is clear of the ground altogether.
The balls of the feet are not much more than
the length of a foot apart. The weight may
be swayed occasionally from the ball of one
advanced foot to the ball of the other, ad-
vanced in turn, or for rest or greater static
strength it may be held equally between the
balls of the two feet, in which case far greater
solidity of poise is secured. This is the basis
of physical poise in which the maximum sup-
ple stability consistent with general alertness
is attained. This ^' normal poise " will be
found most economic and untiresome, giving
amplest latitude for the body to sway with-
out toppling, and at the same time permitting
it to get into motion easily and without agi-
tation. Since it is so serviceable an adjust-
ment, it is as a natural consequence a graceful
one.
A distinctive requisite of good living poise
is that the weight of the body should be car-
ried lightly, with elation, with spirit, with
elasticity. Our legs, in readiness for action,
92
are not stilts nor posts made to shore us up
above the earth. They are obedient flexible
springs, powerfully hinged at hip and knee
and (with the most powerful spring of all)
at the ankle. This special mechanism, par-
ticularly the great contractile spring in the
calf of the leg, which plies the ankle hinge,
is intended to cushion the impacts of the body
and let it ride springily and comfortably
hither and thither. To get this advantage
from it, we must use the mechanism properly,
bringing our muscles into play and keeping
them voluntarily under control, in sitting
and standing as well as in walking. When-
ever the body is upright, its muscles must be
on active duty, supporting or moving it.
Muscles need not be tense in order to be in
control, but they must be alive and ready for
service. They must keep the body balanced
and prepared for motion. In standing, this
can only be done when control of the weight
is shared by the muscles of the foot as well
as by those of the leg and trunk. When the
93
weight is thrust down through the rigid bones
of the leg upon the heel, in a lazy attempt
to shirk muscular exertion, there can be no
suppleness of poise, no softness of tread, no
elegance of carriage, no ease nor magnetism
of motion.
It is true that many persons have not
strength enough in the foot and ankle to stand
and walk normally without undue fatigue;
but this weakness is itself the result of long
habits of imperfect carriage and inferior mo-
tion. Inefficiency is the inevitable result of
misuse or disuse. If we were taught cor-
rectly in childhood, if we never used artificial
heels, but gave our ankles and toes the train-
ing of natural free exercise, and transmitted
the results to our children, we should soon
all have the strength of leg and foot that we
were designed to have. We should all enjoy
a distinct gain in general vigour, and a cov-
eted access of usefulness and beauty.
In contrast with beautiful normal poise of
the human figure, many bad poses are preva-
94
lent, in which the body is not in poise at all.
Modern sculpture as well as the modern
drawing-room is full of them. Particularly
unfortunate is the posture, very common in
society, on the stage, in dancing, and even
in plastic art, wherein the weight is rested
entirely on the heel or flat of one foot, with
the supporting knee sprung back and the idle
leg thrust forward. The body is almost in
unstable equilibrium. A touch would tip it
backward. At the same time it is quite un-
prepared for action. Before locomotion can
take place in any direction, the protruded leg
must be drawn in, stable equilibrium re-
established, and muscular control regained.
It is not only a most uneconomic position,
but an unattractive and ill-meaning one as
well.
Man is neither quadrupedal nor winged;
he is aspiring though not wholly detachable
from the good solid ground. He is buoyed
and swayed by emotions impalpable as the
wind, and yet he is inescapably related to the
95
sure foundations of material needs. He
stands on the earth, this figure of glowing
clay, inspired with the uplifting breath of
the infinite. At his best he is well poised
between two realms. We feel this harmony
of adjustment in every gracious and worthy
presence wherein the perfection of poise is
achieved. It is one of the supreme triumphs
of art. Only think how gloriously the
Winged Victory takes the eye! How easily
she is victorious! Her splendid breast is up-
borne by lofty inspiration which carries her
forward with fluttering robes, light-footed,
unwavering, rejoicing almost with the free-
dom of the winged creatures of the air, an
incomparable apparition of triumphant glad-
ness. Of all the shapes of clay fashioned by
man, her poise is the noblest and most inspir-
ing. She lifts our drooping spirits to new
endeavour, to larger hope, to heights of in-
credible daring. And the Flying Mercury,
how good is his potent poise! The magic of
those winged sandals touches the spirit of
96
^fit WLimtn TittOVS
every beholder, and we are carried away like
children under the spell of the fabulous old
legend of the messenger god, master of speed,
conqueror of space and time, the prototype
of modern ambition. As the divinity who
presided over commerce, too, he would have
an especial interest for our day; but while we
emulate his swiftness and shrewdness, perhaps
only too well, let us remember his delicacy
of bearing and his exquisite poise, as he hangs
with balanced feet light as a swallow on a
slant of wind.
In daily life, too, how good it is to see fine
poise, and alas, how rare! How it catches
every eye in the street, in the drawing-room,
upon the stage! It is the basis of fine per-
sonal influence, the foundation of enduring
beauty, the centre from which powerful im-
pressiveness must radiate. A large part of
that strange personal potency which we call
magnetism is the direct and inevitable result
of fine poise, — the victory of the " happy
chest."
97
While personal magnetism is primarily a
spiritual power and has its source in the soul,
it yet must find its avenues of expression
through the body. And it is the breast that
is peculiarly the abode of the spirit. It is in
the upper part of the body, between the dia-
phragm and the head, that the two great
ceaseless life-sustaining functions are carried
on, — the come and go of the vital breath,
and the frail but enduring rhythm of the
heart. It is in the breast that the evidences
of emotion and passion are first made mani-
fest, — in the quickened heart-beat and per-
turbed breathing, — whether we be moved
by love or sudden indignation, by terror or
remorse.
This region of the breast with its acces-
sories, the arms, in distinction from the head,
which is the seat of the brain and mind, and
in distinction from the lower body where the
animal operations of nutrition, reproduction,
and locomotion are carried on, is eminently
98
the emotional realm, and was called by Del-
sarte, " The zone of honour."
'^ A man of heart," we say, meaning one of
generous and kindly spirit. The breast is
almost a synonym for the dwelling-place of
love and hate, of hope and fear and courage.
It is on our mother's breast that we first learn
tenderness and the welling power of the feel-
ings. It is to our breast that we gather all
that is most cherished in life. It is to the
breast of our benignant mother earth, as we
call her, that we ourselves are gathered at
last. Hand may touch hand in acknowledg-
ing acquaintanceship; the arm may circle the
shoulder in friendship; but in deepest love
the breast receives the cherished head of the
beloved.
It is this fact, — that the breast is the centre
of our spiritual and expressive nature, — that
makes good carriage of the chest so impress-
ive and so important. Though you meet me
eye to eye, and offer me specious conversa-
9g
tion, — promises or threats, — if your chest is
sunken, I feel there is a lack of heart in your
assurances. But if your chest is bravely fore-
carried and upborne, I can have no doubt of
the conviction and determination and well-
intentioned sincerity behind it. If a nurse
enters a sick-room, walking on her heels, with
head and abdomen protruded, while her chest
is a mere hollow between her shoulders, who
can imagine that she could ever inspire the
least hope or cheer in any patient? I have
seen a very capable actress, in the role of
Melisande, attempt to enlist the interest of
her audience in the spiritual plight of that
character, and fail utterly to win sympathy,
simply because she never once lifted her chest
through the whole performance. For the
sunken chest means more than physical weak-
ness; it means moral dejection, discourage-
ment, cowardice, and defeat, as the lifted
chest means not only strength, but elation,
courage, confidence, kindliness, and hope.
The sunken chest, w^hich is the indication
lOO
©tie ZiZSingetr Tictotff
of the dispirited weakling, may evoke pity;
it can hardly elicit interest or sympathy. We
sympathize willingly and readily with the
noble in misfortune, but for the ignoble there
must always be a reserve in our commisera-
tion. Whoever would not appear ignoble
and risk actually becoming so, must ever pre-
sent a brave, happy breast to the world.
Since we are spiritual beings, it is respectful
and generous that we should meet spirit to
spirit, that we should show our best selves to
one another.
If I meet a stranger, I am glad to have
him approach me with so gracious and dig-
nified a bearing that I must instinctively rise
to receive him. If he struts toward me
throwing forward his stomach and feet first,
I am naturally not attracted to him. I wish
to meet the man, not his legs and digestion;
nor should I be more pleasantly prepossessed
if he came toward me with the shiftless walk
and protruded head of the absorbed and over-
mentalized person. In either case I perceive
lOI
2rj|e i^alteino of jpersonalft^
he is more concerned with himself than with
others, and is not happily infused with the
great universal breath of the spirit, which is
common to all men, and which alone vitalizes
every interest and sustains and ennobles life.
The importance of a good carriage, there-
fore, is not only a matter of health and econ-
omy and grace in motion; it is quite as much
a matter of personal influence and obligation.
A well-poised body, while expressing a well-
poised character, reacts in turn on that char-
acter to help and enrich the whole personal-
ity. To bear oneself with grace and kindly
dignity is to foster and breed graciousness
and self-respect, as well as to disseminate
them.
" The soul is at ease in the body only when
it is using it as a means of expression or ac-
tion." So when art would embody in beauty
the idea of triumph without weariness, of
glad elation untouched by envious defeat, of
high intelligence overcoming the barbarous
and base, — when it would add to the fairest
102
2ri|e Wiinatra Tfctots
human loveliness some hint of superhuman
power and dominion over a region more vast
than earth, — it created the Victory of the
Wings, to be a lasting signal before our won-
dering eyes, and an incentive to that dignity
of bearing which we behold only in the rarest
personalities.
103
5ri)e Sillier Siting
0x, ^erjsDnal '^ibxmt^
It is evident that in the making of person-
ality the acquirement of poise is not enough.
The advice of the Latin poet, that we should
preserve an equal mind in the midst of dif-
ficulties, is excellent; but equanimity, even
an ideal equilibrium of all our powers, is
hardly a sufficient goal for human endeavour.
We are not aspirants of a passive and crystal-
line perfection, but must find our satisfactions
in activity, in achievement, in human inter-
course and relationships. We take more
pleasure in modifying life, in mingling with
the tumultuous business of the world, in leav-
104
ing some traces of our impress upon the
events of the great human drama, than in any
isolation of self, however learned or holy.
The most blameless character must be doing,
if it would be glad. This is one of the un-
questionable laws.
To be poised is not to be immobile always,
for there is poise of motion as well as of rest.
For a mortal to cease from growth, from ac-
tion, from exertion, is to cease from enjoy-
ment and to begin to decline and perish.
Poise is only the springboard of performance,
the pou sto of the Greek mathematician, from
which we may move the world. It is a pre-
requisite of personal happiness and power,
the very acme of education, and yet not a suf-
ficient end in itself, — a most desirable con-
dition of being, but by no means the ultimate
concern of creation. The supreme artistry
of the cosmos in which we share, calls for
initiative and toil as well as for the duty of
self-perfection and repose. We may well di-
rect all the efforts for culture to the attain-
105
ment of poise, but the object of culture after
all is only preparatory, — to put our energies
in the happiest condition for accomplishing
ideal ambitions and practical purposes in the
world. To be well poised is indeed a first
necessity, but to rest content with poise is to
be already touched with death.
The personality without poise is baffled,
chaotic, blundering, and unhappy in its own
bewildered inefficiency, no matter how furi-
ously it may strive. But the personality in
which poise has been secured is already on
the threshold of felicity, and may pass at one
step into the region of happy experience.
Whatever mischance may come to it, what-
ever natural sorrow may visit it with grief,
no irrevocable disaster can befall such a one.
Yet with all the universe in flux, man cannot
stand still; and the individual being must
maintain its poise from moment to moment,
from deed to deed, balancing and rebalan-
cing for self-preservation amidst the oppos-
ing tides of force.
io6
JTi&e Sdbet Sttfnfl
But every personality is itself endowed
with force, with power, with preference and
intelligence. It cannot endure to be merely
passive, but must energize in order to be
happy. As poise is a normal state of being,
of the personality, and a natural ideal for it,
no less so is achievement. Achievement at
touch of need springs from poise as inevitably
as circling ripples spring from the placid
surface when a pebble is cast into a still pool.
Sometimes a single little seed of suggestion
dropped into the brooding mind is enough to
start a lifelong train of consequent activities.
If the personality be unpoised and ruffled,
then the circles of widening influence are
confused and broken and dissipated.
It is no vague figure of poetic fancy to
speak of personal rhythm, or to say that every
personality, like every violin, is possessed of
a marked vibratory character peculiar to it-
self, which is indeed the index of its excel-
lence, the measure of its power, and the
means of carrying its communications across
107 .
the gulfs of space. Just as violins differ in
make and timbre, personalities differ in poise
and vibrancy. Timbre is the peculiar qual-
ity revealed in execution, unique in every in-
stance. Personal vibrancy is the peculiar
inseparable quality of the individual, w^hich
reveals itself not only in characteristic mo-
tion and speech, but also in that mysterious
form which almost defies analysis, and yet
accomplishes with infinite subtlety the ex-
pressive and impressive purposes of the per-
sonality as effectively as the most unmistaka-
ble gesture or tone. If the wonderful timbre
of an old Cremona cannot be duplicated nor
explained, how can we hope to define this
essential vibrancy inherent in the personali-
ties of men? The one depends, we say, upon
the fibre of the wood, its cunning form and
age; the other lurks in the recesses of being,
modified plainly by build, temperament, and
mentality, by inheritance and experience;
and both possess awesome powers beneficent
or malign. But does that dispel the marvel
io8
of their presence or make clear the secret of
their lure?
There is no manifestation of life that is not
vibrant. Even the inorganic world vibrates
through all its substance, the unseen particle
and the unseen planet responding alike to the
throb of cosmic vibration, pulsating in the
crucible under the stir of chemic change or
pendulous in space under the sway of gravi-
tation. The great active primal forces of the
universe, heat, light and electricity, are, so
far as physicists can tell, all modes of motion
or vibrancy, and are convertible because they
are fundamentally the sam.e. They differ
only in the time or force or shape of their
vibration, and any one of them may be
changed iato any other as easily as we glide
from one tune to the next in the realm of
music.
We who are the complex products of this
natural world must be compounded only of
the materials and forces found within it.
The vibrancy of light enables us to see, the
109
2riir JWaftfno of petfiionalftff
vibrancy of sound enables us to hear; out
taste, our smell, our touch, are only faculties
for recording vibrations in the universe
around us. The most primordial functions
of the living organism, breathing and circula-
tion of the blood, are rhythmical. Even our
hunger and thirst are timed to a slow peri-
odicity, and swing from lulled inactive ease
to restless demand with a certain regularity.
At times the flood of waking energy sweeps
through us like a compelling tide, and after
its due period of joyous accomplishment ebbs
away again, leaving us to fatigue, languor,
and sleep. The rhythm of the breath and the
beating of the pulse are only the more obvi-
ous and gross forms of personal vibration, but
they parallel another and more impalpable
sort of vibration which exists not only in the
person but in the personality. This latter sort
of vibrancy, a personal vibration which is
characteristic of the individual, is indeed
largely dependent upon physical peculiari-
ties, and is modified by them; its origin, its
no
intensity, its quality, are always partly phys-
ical; yet it is equally a psychic power and a
revelation of the inward personality. It is
not possessed equally by all people, nor do
those who are endowed with it possess it
equally at all times. In many it is so slight
as to seem to be almost wholly wanting, so
that we declare at once, they have no mag-
netism. In others it is so strong and forceful
that the very air seems charged with their
presence, and we are aware of an almost pal-
pable influence radiating from them wher-
ever they may be. It is as variable as mood,
and differs in different men and women as
much as temper or disposition.
Vibrancy is never wholly lacking in the
human being, in some degree or other, but it
is often so faint and vague as to be almost
indistinguishable and inoperative. Sickness
impairs it, confusion and doubtfulness of
mind render it ineffectual, and a wilful des-
pondency may destroy it at its source. At its
best, however, it is a great power; and like
III
any other supreme characteristic of human
clay may be cultivated with intelligent care
or ignored and thwarted and ruthlessly des-
troyed. It behooves those who have it abun-
dantly to guard it scrupulously as one of the
most precious of gifts and to use it wisely for
beneficent ends; while those who have it only
to a small degree could hardly do better than
attempt to increase it by educating so potent
an ability.
To call it personal magnetism does not ex-
plain this subtle power at all, nor elucidate its
obscure character, but it proves how familiar
we are with it in every-day life. Its actual
existence is very real and pervasive, only we
need to give it rational recognition and treat-
ment, as something quite as worthy of respect
and culture as any of the more salient traits
of personality. It is more powerful than
beauty, more effective than intelligence."^
Serving each human being, like a prompt
and eager messenger, just as electricity serves
us in a mechanical way, it aids inestimably
112
2Ct|e Sdbet Sttinfl
in all the strenuous forceful dealings of men
and all the glad or grievous concerns of
women, — that dramatic interplay of charac-
ter which goes to make up the sum of human
happiness or woe. Obscure and little re-
garded, often inert or degraded, but never
wholly dead, it resides at the very core of in-
dividuality, like the hidden force which
marks the identity of the atom and appears
to be almost synonymous with life itself.
To thrill with rapture or quiver with grief
is no mere metaphor; the whole person re-
sponds like a vibrant cord to the touch of
experience; and spirit and sense are inex-
tricably bound together, while life lasts, in
one sentient organism through which its own
thoughts, emotions, and sensations surge and
throb, and to which its created fellows call
and are apprehended in answering rhythms.
And yet personal vibrancy or personal mag-
netism, in the sense in which we are using
the term, is not to be considered as a species
of hypnotism, since hypnotism is an abnormal
113
phenomenon produced under extreme condi-
tions, whereas personal magnetism is wholly
normal, healthy, and a quality of every-day
intercourse.
It may be that hypnotism is an exaggerated
effect of personal vibrancy deliberately em-
phasized and enforced; but the manifesta-
tion which we are here calling vibrancy or
magnetism, and which plays so important
though inconspicuous a part in every mortal
career, is by no means so extravagant or ex-
ceptional a thing. It proceeds to no such
extraordinary lengths as mesmerism, and yet
its ends are similar, for its function in human
economy is the serviceable communication of
personal influence. Its invisible but cogent
dictates carry inducement or authority w^her-
ever they go, eliciting some response wher-
ever they pass, either of acquiescence or dis-
sent. One can seldom remain wholly indif-
ferent to its sway when once it is recognized,
but must yield it some kind of acknowledg-
ment, whether in compliance or aversion.
114
2Ci)t SiHiet String
Personal vibrancy is the automatic carrying
power of the individual will; it sounds the
personal note of the individual, and like the
tones of sound must mingle in harmony or
discord with every vibration it meets.
In all the commonplace occurrences of
every-day affairs, as in the crucial hours of
life, personal magnetism is operative and pow-
erful, — wherever two men meet in the street,
wherever business is transacted or speech ex-
changed, wherever eyebeams meet and looks
of understanding pass, wherever a gesture is
recognized or an inflexion observed, in liking,
in antipathy, and even in indifference. It
is the power of the orator, the sorcery of the
lover, the secret of the leader of forlorn
hopes, the resource of the anxious hostess, the
help of the physician, the reliance of the ad-
vocate, and the preacher's most telling ap-
peal. Personal vibrancy fires assemblies with
enthusiasm and touches mobs with the mad-
ness of fury or panic fear. Wherever a mor-
tal soul perceive its fellow, the transmitting
115
E'^t JWafefufl of J^nfiionaUt»
power of personality is felt and exerted as a
vibrant vital force.
In the early days of mesmerism, the exist-
ence of a certain mysterious magnetic fluid
was postulated to account for the transmission
of an apparently inexplicable personal influ-
ence. That theory of course has long since
been abandoned. But in thinking of vi-
brancy as a personal quality, we need con-
ceive of it in no such material or mysterious
fashion. Only in its physical manifestation
does personal vibration become something
measurable to the senses. But there, indeed,
whether we call it personal magnetism or ani-
mal sympathy, it reveals itself in no dubious
guise, with no uncertain power, as a deter-
miner of choice, an indissuadable advocate
of preference, in comradeship, in friendship
and in love. To such lowly but honourable
origin in the great kinship of nature may our
mental and spiritual affinities in part be
traced. Responding with a glad elation to
an accent of sympathy, a glance of compre-
ii6
hension, a touch of kindred vibrancy, and
ignoring quite as arbitrarily other stimuli
which might seem to sober judgment no less
compelling and delightful, the sensitive mor-
tal takes his way through the confusion of
life, choosing his associates, his companions,
his bosom-friends, at the bidding of an in-
stinct seemingly no more rational than vagu-
est whim. " Yet choice is not whimsical. We
may trust the predilections of instinct and in-
tuition if only they be kept fine and unde-
based. We may make sure that a true and
kindly relation is attainable first or last in the
rarer spheres of spirit and intelligence be-
tween any two beings whose senses have first
felt a glad response in the recognition of sym-
pathetic vibration, — that silver string which
binds together the hearts and heads and hands
of friends and lovers. Woven of tactile sense,
of iridescent light, of rhythmic sound, this
fine thread on which the living beads of per-
sonality are strung is a strand of that mighty
cord which holds the glowing stars to their
117
2rfie i!«aftfnfl of ^tvnonnlits
centres as they circle through their purple
rounds.
Personal vibrancy implies and requires
tension. And vibrant tension implies chiefly
three things, power, sensibility and freedom
of vibration, — the power which resides in
energy and strength, the sensibility or deli-
cacy which comes of experience, and the free-
dom which is only born of courage.
Being inseparable from the physical as it
is, personal magnetism must find its chief
means of growth and recuperation and re-
enforcement in a salutary bodily culture and
code. Unless the physique be sound, efficient,
and in its best condition, personal vibrancy
must be impaired. The singing wire from
which glad music is to issue must be taut, or
it will not vibrate at all, and to hold it taut
the attachments at either end must be strong
and fixed. There can be no harmony, there
cannot even be a responsive sound from a
slackened string. To keep the cord of per-
sonal relation tuneful, therefore, its points of
ii8
2CJ|t SHijet Sttfnfl
fixture must be firm. To look for adequate
responsiveness and potent magnetism from a
weak or sickly body is like expecting reso-
nance from punk, or resilience from a broken
spring. That magic power, so subtle yet so
inescapable, which is felt to surround every
forceful personality and lay a spell on all
who come within its range, can only have its
origin in the happy spontaneity of a poised
and wholesome body. Vigour is a prime
requisite of personal vibrancy.
It is good to feel that we are maintaining
our vigour not merely for itself alone, — not
only for the sensuous satisfaction of perfect
health, great as that benefit is. There is a
further satisfaction in maintaining physical
energy at its finest perfection, when we have
consciously in mind its ever present value in
strengthening mental vigour and spiritual
force, — • in enhancing personality and per-
sonal relations, — when we recall that health
is not only the basis of endurance but of influ-
ence and success. To consider physical vig-
119
our in this light adds a noble and fascinating
interest to life, and stimulates the wisest care
of our animal selves, the magical bodies
which we too often misuse and degrade, and
which a false and iniquitous asceticism has
even led men to despise.
To keep the bodily instrument in healthy-
tone and capably vibrant, we must keep it
supplied first of all with food and air and
freedom. These are the great basic necessi-
ties of life, from which intelligence and joy
and power are to be made. The engine must
be kept going at its best, no matter what un-
happiness or misfortune may threaten. A
plentiful supply of the best food we can ob-
tain, and an abundant supply of pure cold
air, these are the requisites never to be omit-
ted. An unstinted use of cold water and
quiet sleep materially help us all to make the
most of our opportunity for success and glad-
ness. As much time as possible in the great
fresh out-of-doors, where our natures are at
home, is medicine for many ills and brings
1 20
unguessed reinforcements of vitality to the
thwarted spirit. Perplexities will often van-
ish like a pallid sickness in open sunshine.
And, be it soberly said, tired nerves may be
wonderfully refreshed by resting or sleeping
on the naked ground, where all their jangling
rhythms may be reattuned and their discord-
ant pain absorbed by the great unseen mag-
netic currents of the earth. Our strength is
sapped, the very sources of our vitality are
cut off by floors and pavements, just as we can
be insulated from electricity by a rubber shoe.
We grow artificial and distraught in exile
from our native resting-place. Something
of the strong, instinctive, and normal life of
the creatures of the field is needed in the
finest civilization, — their natural honesty,
their unperverted instinct, their lawful per-
sistence and unembarrassed repose. We may
well retain, too, all that we can of the animal
habit of orderly motion, — that unconscious
adherence to a natural individual rhythm in
all movements which the wild things always
121
exhibit and which no domestication can spoil.
To this end the cultivation of normal motion
is important, the most rhythmical exercise is
best. And for this reason all exercise is bene-
ficial only when it is adapted to the personal
rhythm, as well as to the other physical and
personal needs of the individual.
Though personal magnetism is thus pal-
pably physical in its basis, none the less is it
appreciably spiritual and rational in its com-
position and function, helping our personali-
ties to find their proper scope and wield their
proper influence in life. While its power is
rooted in strength and health, these alone are
far from sufficient to secure and perfect it.
For no matter what amount of mere animal
strength a man may possess, if he have not
discriminating sensibility and courageous
freedom as well, his personal value will be
only rudimentary. Indeed if the equation of
his personal make-up is lacking in any one of
these necessary factors, the efficiency of his
personal power cannot but be impaired. A
122
personality, like a violin string, must have
free play for its vibrations and accuracy of
attunement along with its strength and tenac-
ity; otherwise it can give forth only a crip-
pled result. The freedom of spirit we need
for the maintenance of a finely strung per-
sonal vibrancy is a matter of daring, of hav-
ing the courage not only of our convictions
but of our instincts and aspirations, of being
undeterred by the puny fear of consequences
or by the blind old tyranny of tradition. It
is not enough to do our own thinking; we
must do our own feeling and acting also.
That factor in personal magnetism which
we may call sensibility, delicacy, or intelli-
gence of appreciation, controls the most ex-
quisite quality of social intercourse and hu-
man sympathy, and gives personality the
power of quick perception^ comprehension
and judgment. It saves personal force from
wasting itself on futile ends and in ill-advised
endeavour. However freely and resonantly
a string may vibrate, it will not enhance any
123
harmony unless it be struck in time and tune.
To be off the key is as fatal in personal rela-
tions as in music. Much that is vigorous and
daring in personality is undone for want of
delicacy, discrimination, understanding. It
is the finest ingredient of personal being, this
delicate and subtle wisdom; and while, like
other endowments, it may be a gift at birth,
it is also product of culture and experience.
Children having plenty of physical health
and often a splendid spiritual freedom, can-
not have the commensurate sensitiveness of in-
sight which experience gives. Their merci-
less cruelty, their thoughtlessness, their lack
of understanding are the result of ignorance
and inexperience.
But the artist in life, who has kept his body
with all its forces unperverted, who has held
his courage high through all vicissitudes of
experience, will also have attained a vibrant
sympathy with suffering and sorrow and the
desolation of defeat. For the capable worker,
lighted by imagination, experience develops
124
a liberal sympathy^ a tolerant and kindly
judgment, and a most sensitive understanding
of the lights and shades of life. Time, that
adds value to the violin, may also be made
to bring skill to the fingers of the player.
Else were we for ever at fault, and experience
might leave us where it found us.
As a practical summary it may be said that
personal magnetism may best be fostered and
retained by utilizing the natural laws of per-
sonal rhythm, instinctive preference, and true
adaptation; by never doing anything awk-
wardly nor in disordered haste; by never
violating a legitimate normal prompting or
intuitive choice, merely because of the infat-
uation of fashion or the intimidation of cus-
tom; by never acting without kind consid-
eration and liberal reason. So may our vi-
brancy become a legitimate power for better-
ment as well as a personal attainment and sajt-
isfaction.
Those who vibrate strongly, freely, and
considerately, — who avoid alike the errors
125
of weakness and of violence, of wilfulness
and of timidity, of credulity and of intoler-
ance, — ^ and hold the fleeting gift of life in
a capable balance of powers, are the masters
of destiny and the benefactors of their fel-
lows. They learn from practice that the test
of success for any personality is that it shall
yield the delectable harmony of this triple
chord, sounding the notes of primordial en-
ergy, humane sympathy, and ideal wisdom.
Experience teaches them that personal vi-
brancy is the silver string of life upon which
the fairy music of happiness is made.
126
In walking or running or dancing, the
human body is seen at its best. Its static
beauty of form then takes on another loveli-
ness, — the charm of motion, the bewitching
rhythms of grace. If we are captivated by
its ravishing lines and tints in repose, we are
more deeply enslaved when those lines and
hues begin to move and melt through yield-
ing curves from poise to poise. We then per-
ceive the purport and power, the adaptabil-
ity, ease and success, of its wonderful mechan-
ism. If we were in love with the promise of
its beauty, we are (though we may not know
it) more completely in love with its perfec-
tion of graceful and facile achievement.
127
More than that, there is a sorcery in timed
and modulated motion, which is inherent in
all rhythms, and which lures us to respond,
as surely as the charmer's pipe beguiles the
serpent from his coils. The cultivation of
grace is too fine to be achieved through arti-
fice or affectation, and yet it may be acquired
by lawful means; and while it is not so much
coveted as beauty is, because it is less realized,
it is no less potent and delightful, and is more
readily attainable. A properly comprehen-
sive physical education will develop grace as
certainly as vigour and strength. Indeed,
grace must be the ultimate test of all culture
of the body.
With all our attention to outdoor sports,
our college athletics, our innumerable schools
of physical training, we cannot be said to be
indifferent to bodily well-being, and another
word on the subject may even seem superflu-
ous. It is not the quantity of physical train-
ing, however, which is open to criticism, so
much as its quality. While the amount of
128
3Ri&J>tiimj5 of <Krate
care we bestow on the culture of the body may
be thought sufficient, — in our colleges, at
least, — it is certainly for the most part lack-
ing in the wisest guiding educational princi-
ples, and is very rarely made to yield the best
general results. The prime mistake seems to
be that all except the greatest educators have
overlooked the possibility of the higher edu-
cation of motion. They have devoted them-
selves exclusively to developing muscular and
special strength, but that is very far from
being enough. Strength, without the habit
of using it with the utmost economy and ap-
propriateness, is only of limited advantage.
It is true that sports and athletics do culti-
vate motion, and in the long run do give their
kinds of dexterity and skill and physical effi-
ciency. Our great natural bodily proficiency
has been achieved through long ages of trial
and practice in work and play, and the elim-
ination of the inefficient. But it is not true
that mere exercise in itself necessarily affords
the most valuable education in motion or in-
129
2Cf)e JHafttnfl of ^tvuonulits
duces the best motional habits. The processes
of natural selection are effective but ruthless,
and attain their purpose with entire disregard
for the individual. The blind cosmic forces
which play through us produce perfection of
the species in their own good time only by
sacrificing with supreme unconcern myriads
of the weak, mistaken, and ineffectual.
It is the object of education to better this
clumsy process, to discriminate among natural
tendencies, to guide and assist evolution, to
modify and adapt it to the crying need of each
particular being. One might quite as well
expect to become a good reader merely by
persistently reading aloud without instruc-
tion or criticism, as to hope to acquire good
habits of motion by unaided practice alone.
We forget that bad habits of motion, bad
habits of walking or standing, may most eas-
ily be acquired in childhood, and may
be unconsciously and tenaciously retained
through any amount of exercise, unless they
are recognized by a competent instructor and
130
carefully eliminated, just as bad habits of
speech — unpleasant tones and inefficient
breathing — may be contracted in childhood
and retained through life, unless duly cor-
rected. Unguided exercise does not neces-
sarily eradicate faults in the individual, but
the faults merely tend to vitiate the exercise.
The exercise of any faculty is of little educa-
tional value, unless it is wisely directed with
definite educational purpose.
The average parent sees no necessity for
giving his child any real physical education.
'^ Because," he says, " the boy is not very
strong. I think it better to give him plenty
of outdoor life. Let him take his exercise as
Nature intended." This sounds very well,
but the difficulty is that Nature, while she is
always trying to produce normal types, sets
very little store by any separate life. A boy
may have inherited a poor physique from his
father and execrable habits of motion from
his mother. To turn him loose to exercise by
himself is to allow all his bad habits to be-
131
2rt|e M^'fiitta of ^tvHonmts
come confirmed, and his maldevelopment to
be established. Nature would let him exer-
cise himself to death. His weak inefficient
body needs constant wise guidance and help;
without these, he might almost as well and
sometimes much better not exercise at all. A
playground without a physical director is just
about as useful as a schoolroom without a
teacher. A child can exercise his mind with-
out help, and does so every minute he is
awake, but that does not mean that he can
give himself a proper intellectual education.
No more can he learn good motion, physical
deftness and aptitude, merely by exercising
his muscles in haphazard exertion.
The 5^outh at college is not much better off.
He rows or runs or plays ball or uses the
gymnasium without any idea beyond excel-
ling in his favourite sport, outstripping his
fellows in speed, or overmatching them in
strength. He knows no other measure of
physical excellence, — no standard of beauty
or symmetry of development. His only in-
132
centive is the natural but pernicious sense of
rivalry; and this leads him to specialize in
directions where he is already most proficient, i^
and to neglect his development in other di-
rections where he needs it most. He thus •
exaggerates his peculiarities of build and mo-
tion, instead of correcting and supplementing
them, and thus retards his own harmonious
physical education. All good teachers, of
course, deplore this tendency and strive to
correct it; but since physical training is not
compulsory in our educational system, their
advice is seldom followed, the student prefer-
ring to follow his own mistaken will. The
man must beat his rivals, the college must
beat its sister colleges, at any cost. So that
college athletics, which might have so great
an influence for nobility and beauty in form-
ing American manhood, are actually always
too near exhibitionary gladiatorial profes-
sionalism, and tend to vulgarize and brutalize
their students.
Another danger to be avoided in physical
^33
education is an excess of simultaneous class-
work. The good to be obtained from it, of
course, is that it trains the pupil in habits of
prompt cooperation, and gives him a sense
of responsibility and of his relative impor-
tance as a unit in an organized society. It
teaches him to sink his identity in the general
identity of the class. And it is just here that
the danger of class work lies; for in teaching
the pupil to keep time with others and move
in unison with others, it tends to force him
out of his natural rhythm and characteristic
motion. Class drill may produce very pretty
results for purposes of exhibition, it may save
space and time in teaching; but at the same
time it may do violence to the individual in-
stinct and mechanism of every member of the
class. Appropriate enough in military coun-
tries like Germany, where discipline and the
state are counted all-important, it is not at
all appropriate in America, where the indi-
vidual is valued above the system, where we
are more concerned in making men than in
134
making machines, and where we esteem effi-
cient spontaneity and originality more than
stolidity and obedience.
Perhaps the most flagrant example of the
evil of class drill is to be found in an extraor-
dinary performance in which ten or a dozen
men stand in a file between two poles which
they grasp in their hands. Then the arms
are moved up and down, in and out, in vari-
ous ways, just as they might be in many fig-
ures of ordinary calisthenic drill. Here the
performance is purely an exhibitionary feat,
and is worse than valueless educationally.
There is no possibility of any one of the per-
formers keeping his own rhythm and quality
of motion. He submits himself to an avera-
ging machine, which cannot but impair his
motional habits and trammel his spontaneous
vitality. He might go through the same
movements by himself with nothing but bene-
ficial results; but when he follows them in
this inflexible unison, he can receive nothing
but injury. This is an instance of the truth
135
that exercise may be injurious not only when
it is excessive, but when it is foolish, ill-reg-
ulated, and not adapted to individual good.
It is of the greatest importance, therefore,
that all pupils should be carefully educated
individually before being allowed to do si-
multaneous work. Their peculiar traits of
rhythm and the manner of their motion have
to be considered, and their peculiar faults
corrected, before they can afiford to exercise
. in unison with others. It is no more possible
' to give an individual proper physical train-
ing through class work alone than it is to give
him proper vocal training by the same means.
When sufficient individual motion training
has once been gained, it penetrates and modi-
fies and perfects all of our exercise and makes
all well-ordered activity beneficial. What-
ever sport we take up becomes more than
doubly helpful and delightful. The differ-
ence between a game of tennis played by a
young man whose motion is bad, — restricted,
136
disorderly and ineffectual, — and one played
by a player whose motion is free and graceful
and adequate, is immense, — the difference
in enjoyment as well as in results and appear-
ance. There is no need for any new form
of exercise; we only need to apply better
motion to the numberless forms already exist-
ing.
But how, it may be asked, are we to secure
the exercise best suited to each individual?
Chiefly in two ways: by selecting exercise to
serve the physical needs and defects of the
student, so that it becomes a source of reme-
dial development as well as a means of
health; and by adapting that exercise to the
student's own peculiar rhythm, either to cor-
rect or to emphasize it so that it becomes a
naturally educative process, refreshing the
personality, as well as the physicality. The
first precaution is practised generally enough,
but the second is not even recognized as a
necessity; and yet the one is as needful as
137
2ri|c i&^itins of i^rtsonalttff
the other if physical education is to result
in the production of individual happiness,
power, and beauty.
If physical training is to have any really
educative value, if it is to be an integral part
of a humane culture, it cannot rest satisfied
with developing strength, endurance, and
skill, delightful and goodly as these qualities
are; it must be civilizing in its tendency, and
help to eliminate violent impulses, minimi-
zing and obliterating all that is savage and
ferocious in our animal nature, and retaining
and developing all that is wholesome and
needful. It must, in other words, cooperate
with mental and moral training in the per-
fecting of the human being, in imposing
guidance, restraint, and fineness upon prim-
itive impulse, in securing the freedom of
spirit and the supremacy of reason. It must
not hinder human evolution by keeping alive
the more ruthless and blind animal propen-
sities, it must rather aid human progress by
educating instincts and directing them toward
138
i^tjfftJjmfii of ©tare
noble intelligent issues; it must help us to
maintain strength, resourcefulness and cour-
age, and to discard brutality, cruelty, and
vindictiveness.
There is not the least doubt that physical
education can render great help in doing this.
In bodily training, as in all other realms of
life, it is practice that forms habit, and habit
that forms character. The calling of the fire-
man or the coast-guard must educe and stim-
ulate the humaner instincts, sympathy, gen-
erosity, kindliness, unselfishness, tenderness;
while it also requires no less courage and en-
durance than the brutalizing art of war. As
a vocation thus exerts so potent an influence
in the formation of character, even so must
bodily training exert a definite modifying
guidance. Inborn pugnacity tends to make
a man a fighter, and quite as surely does prac-
tice in boxing develop pugnacity.
Civilization does not consist of architecture
and wealth, but of spirituality, temper, and at-
titude of mind. Nevertheless we are civilized
139
Ci^r i«aft(nfl of jpetsonallts
by circumstances, by the tasks which society
imposes upon us, quite as much as by our own
direct aspirations. We modify our actions
at the bidding of impulse and intention; and
our gestures, voices, and habits of motion are
faithfully indicative of the personality be-
neath; and no less certainly is our personal-
ity modified and moulded in turn by the re-
flex influence of its own acts and expressions,
whether spontaneous or imitative. Imitation
is one of Nature's rudimentary means of
growth; but it needs superlative standards,
and even then it cannot advantageously sup-
plant individual effort. To make any act or
gesture or mode of speech or motion habitual
through deliberate repetition is to stimulate
in the personality the appropriate moral qual-
ity or emotion of which such act or gesture
is the expression. The student of acting can-
not practise the expressions of anger, despair,
revenge, or love, without exciting those pas-
sions in his own heart. So inseparably allied
140
are spirit and sense, — so interdependent are
their aims, their interests, and their spheres.
In order that exercise may be most helpful
and ensure the best results, it must be of a
kind which can become instinctive and auto-
matic. Otherwise it may necessitate a too
constant strain on the attention and fail to
produce that economy of motion which we
recognize as grace, and which is always pres-
ent when energy is allowed to play freely
through its physical embodiment. Men and
women are only ungraceful through some
hindrance offered to this free play of energy,
whether it be a physical impediment, a bad
habit of motional procedure, the restraint of
self-consciousness, or only the constrictions of
modern dress.
An animal may be ungraceful in our eyes,
but it is rarely awkward or inept in its move-
ments. Many of them seem to us monstrous
and ungainly, but of such species we must
remember that their world is so different
141
from ours, their requirements so alien, that
our standards of grace and theirs can hardly
be the same. Judged by the inflexible de-
mands of its life and its surroundings, the mo-
tion of any perfectly normal creature will be
found to show the highest economy of effort.
And this among mortals is the criterion of
grace. Animal motion is good through being
instinctive and free, and our own motion can
only become graceful when those qualities
are ensured for it.
The body is constantly tending to adopt
habits either good or bad in its motional life
and to make them automatic; it knows and
profits by the secret of routine; and by pref-
erence it will adopt good habits rather than
bad, — a saving rather than a wasteful ex-
penditure of energy. We can have no natural
preference for bad habits of motion, no real
zest or enthusiasm in awkward actions, since
these can never become deeply instinctive nor
expressive, but must always be distasteful to
our normal animal consciousness and our best
142
taste. We must use our bodies as they prefer
to be used, just as a good rider must make
allowances for the preference of his horse,
and ride him as he wishes to be ridden.
The best exercises, therefore, are those )
which permit freest play to normal motion,
freest expression to the physical character of
the individual. And since the body cannot
repeat with pleasure any motion which is un-
suited to its own rhythmic preferences, but
does repeat gladly any motion whose rhythm
and form are adapted to its peculiarities, it
follows that the most congenial exercises are
those whose rhythms may be varied and
adapted to meet individual need.
For this reason the use of Indian clubs is
one of the most beneficial and delightful
gymnastics. They give the body something
to do beyond the mere stretch of muscles ob-
tained in calisthenic exercise without appara-
tus. They lure us to exertion, like riding or
swimming, without calling for a constant
effort of volition. At the same time they
143
\
demand the least possible strain or attach-
ment with a mechanical world. They have,
the guise of a work, and yet they leave the
body almost absolutely free in its motion.
They afford it an opportunity for rhythmic
action, and yet leave perfect liberty to mod-
ify that rhythm at will. They are thus truly
educational, inculcating the science of motion
and developing the art of motion at the same
time. Their persistent rhythms tend to do
away with faulty idiosyncrasies of motion,
and to replace a disorderly, spasmodic, cum-
bersome, violent, or ineffectual habit of phys-
ical action by one that is well-ordered, reg-
ular, exact and capable. The practice of In-
dian clubs introduces us to a world of rap-
turous harmonies, where energy can find a
pure enjoyment neither servile nor lawless.
Indeed, by making us accustomed to a freer
and at the same time a more regulated mo-
tion, they give us a hint of the great truth that
lawlessness is a hindrance and not a help to
liberty. Their gentle discipline rescues us
144
from any possible disorderliness of motion,
and impresses us with the order and sym-
metry of freedom. They approach more
nearly the free art of dancing than other
forms of exercise, and share its power of hyp-
notizing the mind, fascinating the attention,
and so allowing the dormant animal con-
sciousness to emerge and grow. They teach
the muscles to think for themselves and to act
independently. They encourage good mo-
tion, and by making it automatic, tend to
make it instinctive for future use. Further
than that, the natural freedom which they
offer the body infects the spirit with gladness.
Their rhythms, like the rhythms of the dance,
awaken in the personality latent primordial
joy by making activity expressive, and restore
the soul to full possession and control of the
body, so that it can find there again its lawful
satisfactions, its sufficient avenues of expres-
sion, its mobile salutary means of achieve-
ment, its virile sustenance, its orderly reen-
forcement, its happy existence.
145
The most graceful form of Indian club is
of the long-handled English pattern, nine-
teen inches in length, made of soft wood hol-
lowed for the sake of lightness, and weighing
not more than eight or ten ounces. This pat-
tern of club will be found to give far more
satisfactory results than the old-fashioned
heavy type, which weighed two or three
pounds at least. The heavy club compelled
great exertion through certain parts of the
swing, thus retarding the motion at points,
while it hurried the motion at other points of
the swing by the inertia of its weight. The
lighter club, which is also better balanced,
allows a more even and regular use of the
muscles, a smoother and more graceful mo-
tion, with an equal distribution of energy
throughout the whole circle of the swing. It
permits much wrist and finger work quite im-
possible with the heavier club; and this pos-
sibility of extending exercise to the very ends
of the fingers is important in the development
of a full unconscious rhythm in personal mo-
146
tion. As a consequence of this better rhythm
and more uniform exertion, the physical de-
velopment produced by the lighter club is far
more beautiful than that produced by the
heavier instrument. The one gives a well-
rounded muscularity, at no point overexer-
cised, and at no point neglected, while the
other developed the exaggerated biceps and
lumpy muscles of the circus gymnast of our
boyhood.
In swinging clubs, the body must of course
be held in proper poise with the weight on
the balls of the feet and the chest held up as
in elation. Every movement must originate
in the breast and be transmitted not only to
the tips of the fingers but as far as the eyes
and tips of the toes; so that the whole phy-
sique may participate in the rhythmic exhil-
aration, and while the body may not actually
rise from the ground at each swing, it may^ at
least seem to be quickened by vibration and
elasticity in its kinetic poise. To this end the
body must never be tense, for in certain uses
147
of the clubs, as in the pendular swing, the arm
learns to be as passive as a swinging rope, all
the impulse being given by the chest and
shoulder. In many movements the fingers,
too, are as lax as may be, and retain their hold
with the least possible attachment, so that the
exercise may more nearly approach an abso-
lutely " free gymnastic," — that is, a gym-
nastic of the body without apparatus. This
delicacy of poise and hold breeds grace of
motion, without at all diminishing the devel-
opment of strength. It adds skill and ecstasy
to crude power.
That Indian clubs may afford one of the
most normalizing of exercises is unquestion-
able. But it must be remembered that their
normalizing value, their power to render per-
sonal motion more graceful and proficient,
and personality thereby more effectual, de-
pends almost altogether on the way in which
they are used. They may be used to increase
muscular strength and manipulatory skill,
and still fail to have any direct effect in nor-
148
3Ktlffti)ins of ©tare
malizing personal habits of motion. In order
that their best effects may be realized, — in
order that they may make personal motion
permanently better, and personality itself
more sane and normal, — they must be prac-
tised with an intelligent understanding of
their advantages, a feeling for their rhythmic
possibilities, which is the chief benefit they
secure. Unless clubs are swung with as much
happy zest and abandonment and apprecia-
tion of their graceful harmonies as one would
bring to the fine art of dancing, their utmost
benefit will be lost. Without realizing this,
we might practise them all our days and de-
rive but little improvement in grace or bear-
ing. But to feel the enchantment of their
rhythms, the sorcery of their complex har-
monious movements, as they wheel through
space in their silent arabesques; to follow
and obey their delicate law and yet modify
their evolutions at pleasure; to produce new
and almost infinite varieties of flying curves
out of their few elementary figures, is to ex-
149
STijr J«aft(u0 of J^etsonalftj?
perience the veritable artistic rapture, and be
carried out of oneself into the region of true
creation where magic happens and beauty is
born.
Such exercise teaches the body the funda-
mental laws of motion, the simple and pri-
mary rules of grace, and leads it by a wise
education through subtle intricacies to a
happy participation in the order and freedom
of life. Club-swinging ought to form a part
of all elementary education, since it induces
a normal development, advantageous in itself
and serviceable in any commonest kind of
labour; while out of its physical harmonies
the finest personality may spring. The edu-
cation it provides, so basic and so requisite,
tending to refine our physical nature, as
music and mathematics do the mind, would
help to make every workman an artist and
every artist a master in his craft. Not only
in an ideal republic, but in this practical
world, the hod-carrier and the poet may bene-
150
iSiftstf^mu of ©rate
fit alike by training in a field of motion where
the rhythms of grace are supreme.
A second form of exercise, which may well
supplement the use of Indian clubs, is pro-
vided by the medicine-ball. Here the ele-
ment of art is lessened, since the movements
are less conventional, and the rhythms less
pronounced; but there is a compensation for
this loss in the added element of sport which
is introduced through companionship in prac-
tice, and by the increased capacity for the
direct development of strength. The Indian
clubs serve to invigorate and refresh the
whole being, in the same way that a few min-
utes of good breathing will do. The med-<
icine-ball does more than this; in offering
scope for greater muscular effort, it makes an
excellent step from the training in pure mo-
tion of the Indian clubs to the applied exer-
tions of heavy gymnastics, athletics or actual
labour. It brings all the muscles into play
equally and well, demanding variety of poise,
and cultivating the beginning of judgment,
151
2Ci)t JHaltefng of Jletsonalltff
promptness, responsiveness, and skill. Like
any other form of exercise, it should of course
be practised with a constant heed to the qual-
ity of its motions, the grace and orderliness of
efifort, as inculcated by the Indian clubs.
Every catch and throw should embody a con-
sciousness of rhythm and a pleasure in eco-
nomic and thorough motion that would lend
satisfaction and gladness to activity.
These forms of exercise, if rightly pursued,
will go far toward making good motion in-
stinctive and habitual, so that all tasks may be
undertaken and executed with an intelligent
and automatic economy of force. If it be
only scrubbing a floor or washing a window,
the work will be the better done for any pre-
vious training in orderly, regulated motion.
To cultivate bodily perfection for no end but
the perfection itself would be a vain and fool-
ish pursuit. Unless our sports, our athletics,
our whole physical education, are to have
some application to real life, and serve to
make it easier and happier, they must be sadly
152
futile. But to be able to carry into daily la-
bour and activity an actual pleasure in every
motion, to feel a glad satisfaction in the exert-
ing of physical energy, is substantial gain.
Even the most uncongenial labour then loses
half its drudgery, and may be turned, for all
its disagreeableness, into positive and appre-
ciable benefit.
Not only does the habit of good motion, or
grace, give us greater ease and efficiency for
work; it helps us to extract a measure of
needful recuperative exercise from all ab-
sorbing daily tasks. The business man who
has no time for other exercise than the walk
of perhaps a couple of miles to and from his
office may make that help to keep him in
health, if he has learned to walk and breathe
well. Even sitting at a desk all day may be
made less exhausting and distressing if the
worker shall have learned to hold his or her
body well and to be careful to secure an abun-
dance of fresh air all the time, and to breathe
it properly. There is as much need for right
153
carriage in silting as in standing; and if the
body is kept under control through all the
waking hours, — poised, alert, and vibrant,
without overtension and with adequate breath-
ing, — the quietest occupation may be made
to furnish enough good exercise to preserve
some measure of happy health. Nor will any
toil, short of the impossible, seem too great,
or leave the well-ordered being exhausted
without recompense and chance of recupera-
tion. Real joy in action is a magic lightener
of Titanic and distasteful tasks.
The housewife or shop-girl who has to be
on her feet all day does not suffer so much
from the excessive hours of work as from a
lack of such physical training as would give
her free animal intelligence in the use of her
body. Every hour, hampered by artificial
hindrances, is a drag and brings only weari-
ness and discouragement, because every move-
ment is wasteful and disorganizing, making
gladness and economic efficiency of labour
impossible. Just as it is not work but worry
154
that wears out the mind and depresses the
spirit, so it is not work but ineptitude that
wears out the body and fatigues the willing
heart.
Grace is not merely an adornment of life,
but, like beauty, it is an inherent requisite,
indicating perfection of motion, as beauty in-
dicates perfection of form. Both are neces-
sities of personality and revelations of power,
not to be affected nor compelled, but to be
cultivated lawfully and revered as puissant
oracles of the divine.
155
JSeautg of tt}t iFoot
" Great toe, little toe, three toes between.
All in a pointed shoe —
Ne'er was so tiny a fo' castle seen.
Nor so little room for the crew."
So might an observer of the average
pointed-toed shoes exclaim.
It is strange that beautiful feet are almost
nowhere to be seen nowadays except among
babies, Orientals and savages. That wonder-
ful human member, so strong, so patient, so
sensitive, so marvellously built and mathe-
matically contrived with its arches and levers,
so cunningly adapted to its ceaseless employ-
ment, has undeservedly become a thing of
shame to be covered and hidden from sight.
156
m^uts of tfie iFoot
Yet what poetry and romance reside in the
normal naked foot! The hand itself is not
more beautiful nor more significant; though
we sing the praises of the one, while the other
we must never mention. Consider the service
of the foot, bearing us hither and thither over
the face of the lovely earth, up hill and down
valley, by road and tangled meadow, through
the open world, beneath the open sky, to many
destinations, on errands of kindness or pleas-
ure through all the bright business of life.
Consider how life itself has risen, like an
emanation from the fertile ground — first
through trees and plants and particoloured
flowers, which truly share the breath of ex-
istence, yet must for ever remain patiently in
one spot; next in the creeping and crawling
forms w^hich move ceaselessly over the green
surface of the earth with such infinite slow-
ness; and then finally in the creatures which
run and walk as they will, almost as inde-
pendent as the wandering clouds. They be-
long to the race w^hich has detached itself
157
from the mighty parent, to wander between
heaven and earth, abiding where it will, free
with that power of moving on nimble feet, —
a power, when you think of it, scarcely less
extraordinary than that of certain flies to skate
on the smooth surface of the stream. Think
of the silent pad of the great cats as they move
to the hunt, hardly turning a stone or snap-
ping a twig. Think of the sure hoof of the
mountain climbers, passing from ledge to
ledge at dizzy altitudes in intrepid security,
or of the cunning and exquisitely sensitive
hoof of the deer, adapting itself to every step
at such swift pace; feet for all surfaces, all
countries, all necessities of weight and speed.
Think of all these animal myriads as they
come and go upon their business in the wild
places of the world, and how their feet must
always mark the measure of their strength.
The only greater wanderer and journeyer
is man himself, the incorrigible nomad. Un-
der tents or in palaces his abiding is hardly
158
ntunts of tJie iFoot
more stable than life itself, as it fleets from
instant to instant. He goes forth in the morn-
ing of time in bands, in hordes, in armies,
hunting, conquering, settling; through dust,
through snow, through swamp or forest; by
trail and ford and red highway; and always
his tireless feet must bear him forward to his
goal. The anabasis of the Ten Thousand;
the wandering of the Israelites in the wilder-
ness; Napoleon's retreat from Moscow; Sher-
man's march to the sea; all the countless ex-
peditions of armed men forgotten long ago;
all the daring adventures of hunters, lovers,
explorers, seekers for gold, or mere restless
waifs driven by their own fatuous whim;
forced marches by night; leisurely rovings by
day; — how all these wayfarings testify to the
courageous, patient feet which went upon
them, returning in triumph or coming back
no more!
You think fondly of the beloved hands that
served and tended and solaced you; think
159
also of the willing feet that have done your
pleasure, — run your errands, companioned
you on many a delightful walk, and come to
meet you on how many a glad return! How
cherishable are the feet of the beloved, with
all their rose-leaf delicacy of texture, their
network of sensibility as responsive as the
palm of the hand or even the life-breathing
lips! In the beautiful deft sandalled feet of
dancing-girls what enchantment lurks, what
a sense of power to go and come at the sweet
will of the spirit! They may gleam and tan-
talize and allure and madden the infatuated
beholder; yet in truth they are all the while
expressive of capacities for patient docility
and the sublime helpfulness of women. Over
unnumbered leagues of travel in all times,
under all weathers, through trackless jungles
with death lurking in the shadows; across
pathless wastes of snow with death stalking
naked as the wind; through all lands and sea-
sons and circumstances, the untiring, indom-
itable feet of man have gone, carrying him
i6o
Utants of tiie iFoot
to the door of his desire. Think of all this,
and then declare whether the human foot is
not worthy of honour.
When we think of the foot as strong and
capable and performing all its tasks so thor-
oughly and well, we instinctively think of it
as beautiful. The idea of beauty is funda-
mentally an appreciation of absolute fitness.
Those things come to seem beautiful to us
which are exquisitely efficient, — which dis-
charge their functions with fascinating expe-
dition and economy. So that the moment we
reflect on the wonderful adaptability and ef-
fective power of the human foot, our latent
admiration is aroused at once^ our esthetic
enthusiasm is satisfied. Our popular notion
of a pretty foot, on the other hand, does not
call up a picture of the naked foot at all. It
means something quite different, — simply a
conventionalized form, a pretty shoe, a neatly
made article of fine kid and soft patent
leather, having a certain prettiness of its own
in line and texture, but having little relation
i6i
to the human foot either in shape or in serv-
iceability. The modern shoe with its pointed
toe and high heel may be interesting as a bric-
a-brac, as all human fashions are interesting,
however extreme or bizarre; but its compara-
tive uselessness, its lack of anything like per-
fect fitness to meet the demands which will
be put upon it, make it essentially an inartis-
tic invention. As long as it remains so arti-
ficial in shape and so ill adapted to its re-
quirements, it can never be a really beautiful
foot-covering. It is little less than an instru-
ment of torture, and we wince at realizing it.
Strange that we should condemn the foot-
binding of the Chinese as cruelty, and will-
ingly undergo discomforts almost as excruci-
ating, and quite as illogical and disastrous, at
the mere caprice of custom!
Without freedom of action there can be
no beauty in these supple shapes of clay into
which the breath of life has been blown. The
average well-bred woman dare not show a
bare foot, so cruelly is it blemished and mis-
162
Ht^nts of ti^e iFoot
shapen by her ridiculous shoe. The story is
told of a beautiful woman on the American
stage, that she lost a suitor because he once
chanced to see her uncovered foot. The
man's sense of beauty was revolted at the sight
of a foot, which should naturally have been
beautiful, deformed and disfigured by per-
verted and perverting shoes. The flaccid
throat, the small, incompetent waist, the hob-
bling walk and the crippled feet of fashion
would be disgusting if they were not so piti-
able and so usual.
Whenever the foot is liberated from its
fashionable bondage, it returns to the glad
service for which it is formed; and all its
added freedom and exercise bring back its lost
suppleness, strength and grace. It grows sen-
sitive and mobile and adequately serviceable
again, and so again become interesting and
beautiful with the beauty of life. A withered
member, be it hand or foot, cannot be made
lovely by being encased in expensive trap-
pings.
163
2ri|r JHalKing of Jjrrfijonalitff
What is the naked human foot really like?
In general outline, the natural foot is three-
sided. It approximately fills a triangle whose
sides are formed by the inside straight line
of the foot from toe to heel, the outside
straight line of the foot and a straight line
across the toes. The two long sides of the
triangle meet in an apex behind the heel.
The point of the foot is the heel, not the toes.
In the naked foot of a young child, still un-
deformed by shoes, in the feet of all good
statues and paintings, and in the feet of all
peoples who go barefoot, this shape appears.
It is the normal form of the human foot, de-
veloped by natural use, and giving adequate
stability to the body; and only as our feet
conform to this typical three-cornered shape
can they make any just claim to beauty. Any
divergence from this free-spreading, wide-
toed form means inadequacy and weakness,
and therefore unloveliness.
Among the barefooted people of the West
Indies and the Orient, you may see the human
164
Utauts of tfie iFoot
foot in its primitive strength and undistorted
beauty. If you watch a young Negress going
by with her burden on her head, the free
stride of her naked feet, her soft step, her
elastic, undulant body, you will have a new
idea of physical loveliness. You may note
how the foot spreads and springs with every
step, bearing her forward in exquisite poise,
with a grace and nobility of carriage quite im-
possible to our women of modish gowns and
shoes. She moves with the ease and latent
power of some wild creature; and watching
her, you grow aware how much charm lies in
beauty of motion, in the mobility and action
as well as in the statuesque perfection of the
human body. I have to confess that my sense
of what is beautiful and attractive in physical
perfection has found more delight in the un-
fettered swinging motion and free step of
many a dark-skinned portress through the
white streets of Nassau than it finds in the
average " at home," where women mince
helplessly and artificially across a room, or
165
wobble unstably from chair to chair. In the
one case I see the alluring beauty of unspoiled
nature, stirring me to enthusiasm without
shame. In the other I see the shameful and
revolting perversion which foolish fashion
has imposed upon women of my own race.
I look upon the foot-bound Chinese woman
with pity, but without contempt. The custom
she obeys is a curious relic of tyranny survi-
ving from a darker age of the world; and the
very antiquity and helplessness of her enthral-
ment lend pathos to her sorry plight. But I
cannot look at the silly shoe and ugly walk
of the average American woman without a
flush of indignation, that a people which
prides itself on its intelligence should will-
ingly tolerate such crippled and ungraceful
usage.
There is more in this matter of graceful
motion than appears at first sight. Women
wear their absurd shoes, no doubt, to make
their feet look smaller, more dapper and, as
they suppose, more attractive; and we all
i66
ntunts of tfie iFoot
tolerate the custom. But we all overlook, I
am sure, a very important factor in charm;
we forget the fascinating sorcery which re-
sides in graceful motion. Physical charm
does not consist in perfection of colouring and
form alone, but in perfection of motion as
well. The gracious and irresistible allure-
ment which a lovely woman exercises over the
hearts of any company springs quite as much
from her graceful mobility and nobleness of
bearing as from any loveliness of face or fig-
ure. Personal magnetism, that strange unac-
countable influence which plays upon us so
potently, yet ever eludes definition, is largely
a matter of freedom of poise and harmony
of movement — normal poise of the body,
whether at rest or moving with all the won-
derful flexions and tensions of which it is
capable. An elusive, irresistible power, an
air almost superhuman, seems to surround
that person whose walk and bearing approach
our instinctive standards of human motion at
its best. So eagerly do we long for beauty,
167
for loveliness and power and ease and grace,
so intuitively do we recognize them, that
there is no saying what influence such deli-
cacy of poise and refinement of motion may
not wield. The woman who moves well may
have the world at her feet; while her rival,
of more beautiful lineaments but with an
awkward carriage and ungainly motion, may
retain her flawlessness, picturesque but unad-
mired. There is more power in the tone of
the voice than in the meaning of the word
it utters. There is more force in a gesture the
hand makes than in the mould of the hand
itself.
Now the basis of good carriage and good
motion, or the basis of personal magnetism,
is of course a strong, flexible, intelligent body
at the command of a worthy personality.
And the prime support or base of such a body
must be a pair of strong, flexible, intelligent
feet. Any foot w^hich has strength, flexibility
and muscular intelligence may not be the most
beautiful foot in the world, but having these
i68
iSeatutff of tftt iFoot
qualities which go to make grace and effi-
ciency, it will surely be more beautiful than
one of more perfect mould in which those
requisites are wanting. Beauty, it cannot be
said too often, does not mean shape alone;
it implies charm of effectiveness and adapta-
bility as well. The idea of beauty includes
the idea of perfect fitness, perfect economy of
effort, perfect fulfilment of a function, per-
fect attainment of an end or purpose, always
with the least waste of energy. No foot —
indeed, no part of the body — can be beauti-
ful which is not capable of serving its natural
purposes gracefully; and no member can
gracefully serve its natural purposes or fulfil
its proper office to the body unless it is free.
The hand or foot — or the whole body, for
that matter — cannot be kept beautiful by dis-
use. It was designed for use, for motion, not
for immobility. It attained its present normal
beauty, its present formation, through con-
stant service and motion; and only by being
used freely and lovingly can its beauty be
169
preserved and perfected. Beauty is a result
of continual gracefulness, an evidence of good
habits of motion. And good motion, beauti-
ful, strong, economical, intelligent, can spring
only from a gracious spirit finding freedom
of expression through an obedient, mobile
body. Freedom, therefore, freedom for every
part and member of the body, is a prime
requisite of beauty.
If we would have beautiful feet, we must
take off our restricting, debilitating shoes. If
we would have beautiful bodies, we must
abandon our corsets and high collars, for be-
fore we can have beauty, we must have grace;
before we can have grace, we must have com-
plete freedom of motion. We must do away
with all restrictions of foot and waist and
throat before the natural symmetry of the body
can be regained or preserved with all its de-
lightful harmonies. We must learn to admire
the body with all its natural spontaneous
power and pliability, its capacity for action,
its instinctive unhampered ease. We must
170
JSeautff of tfft iFoot
learn to despise the pititful restrictions which
we have allowed fashion to put upon us. We
must permit ourselves, with no loss of spiri-
tuality, to love physical beauty as the Greeks
loved it, as artists and poets have always loved
it, and to take a sane delight in the normal
health and vigour and loveliness of the body.
That delight, in turn, will enhance and nour-
ish our spirituality; and he who takes care
to have a clean, active, wholesome physique
will be likely to have a clean, active, whole-
some mind and soul as well. Our delight in
physical beauty is a fine bloom of the spirit,
just as physical beauty itself — loveliness of
form and colour — is the fine bloom of bodily
health. And beauty of form, let us remem-
ber, can no more subsist without freedom of
air and exercise than beauty of colour can;
they both result from perfect health, and are
marks of a fine normal exuberance of being.
Hardly any decree of emancipation is more
needed to-day than one for the liberating of
the foot. We have dangerously enslaved our-
171
selves with uncomfortable footgear, and until
we discard its perverting shackles, we can
never fully realize our inheritance of joyous-
ness in possession of the earth. We must be
able to stand firmly but unrigidly, as the trees
stand in the wind, nobly upheld, yet sensibly
swayed by the least motion of our surround-
ing atmosphere, the least breath of inspira-
tion, the least impulse of emotion. We must
be able to move without thought or hin-
drance, as the animals move, as primitive man
could move. We must be content with noth-
ing less than a perfect foot, such as the an-
tique statues have to show, such as belongs to
Eastern dancing-girls and the unshod dwell-
ers in tropic lands. How incongruous Cleo-
patra, or Ruth, or Helen of Troy, or the
Queen of Sheba, would appear in modern
shoes! And, more than that, their beauty
would be actually impaired. All the mar-
vellous grace, the simple strength, the fasci-
nation or the dignity which they must have
possessed, would be dissipated as they tried
172
litants of tJie iFoot
to move about in our uncomfortable modern
dress. The glamour in which they hold our
imagination even now would be lost. And it
would be lost through bad motion, just as the
fascination that an eagle's flight may exercise
over us by its power and beauty would be lost
if he should be suddenly crippled in a wing
and come limping to earth. The spell of
beautiful motion would be broken. He
would seem no longer a wonderful creation,
but merely a maimed and fluttering thing in
the clutch of a sorry accident. We ourselves
are in much the same case, when we maim
at any point our natural freedom of body, our
capacity for fine and beautiful activity.
Our gain from a physical emancipation,
such as the loosening of our dress would se-
cure, would be beyond belief; for we should
gain not only in physical comfort, but in utter
relief of spirit also; we should be able to
inhale long drafts of happiness with every
breath, taste the satisfaction of being normal,
and feel the simple self-respect which comes
173
JSTijr Jilattfno of prti^onalits
from living without affectation and in accord
with the deep laws of our nature. It is not
possible to be as serene and light-hearted, as
the good God intended, while our bodies are
fretted by ill-adapted clothing. No woman,
I am sure, can be quite happy in the array
which she is required to don for the social
routine. To possess her soul with anything
like equanimity, she must retire to dressing-
gown and slippers, and if she be a bond-slave
to fashion, she will suffer from nothing more
completely than from her shoes.
The ideal shoe is a barefoot shoe, following
the model of the naked foot, and disregard-
ing entirely the wholly artificial models of
fashionable wear. It will be made to fit the
foot and to interpose the very least resistance
to all the duties which the foot has to per-
form. It will be dedicated to service, not to
affectation; and in that way it will attain a
real artistic beauty such as can never invest
the ludicrous patterns of footwear prescribed
by unnatural fashion. It will meet the need
174
ntunts of tt|t iFoot
of the foot for protection and warmth, and
yet allow as much ventilation as possible.
Since it must adapt itself to work, it will have
the utmost flexibility consistent with strength.
It will differ from the ordinary shoe chiefly
in three particulars: it will be heelless, it
will be broad in the toe, and it will be low-
cut.
If we take it for granted, as we surely may,
that our walk becomes more graceful and easy
and effectual the more nearly barefoot we can
go, it follows that the ideal shoe will have the
most pliable sole consistent with the protection
required, and of an even thickness through-
out. This matter of flexibility of the sole is
of prime importance in securing and main-
taining a good walk and carriage. Even the
slight thickening of the sole to form " spring
heels " interferes with good motion and
should be avoided. The Indian moccasin is
an ideal foot-covering in this respect; for
although it is too soft and light to protect a
sensitive foot against damp or rough travel,
175
jri^e jnadteing of prtsonalfts
it allows perfectly free play to that pliant roll
of the foot always necessary to good walking.
The entirely heelless shoe not only gives free-
dom of motion; it also compels the muscles
of the toes and leg to keep the weight of the
body poised over the balls of the feet, — the
safest and sightliest balance either in walking
or standing. It is a fundamental help to good
motion and general poise, and it forces the
finest development of leg muscles and en-
hances healthful activity, which the average
conventional shoe makes almost impracti-
cable.
With a disuse of heels must come a broad-
ening of the toe of the shoe, for the following
reason: When high heels are worn, all flexi-
bility in the use of the foot is lost. Instead
of being a pliant springy support, as it is nat-
urally, the foot in its artificial covering be-
comes practically a single stump; and the
most beautiful woman loses caste the moment
she begins to walk, pegging along as if she
were wooden from the knees down. As soon
176
IStunts of tije iFoot
as heels are discarded, however, we must take
care to return to a normal walk; and a nor-
mal walk implies an increased use of the toes
and the balls of the feet and a consequent
strengthening of all the fore part of the foot,
with a spreading and utilizing of the toes.
So that a pointed-toe shoe, which may be
bearable so long as the foot is used only as
one might use a wooden foot well-jointed at
the ankle, becomes intolerable as soon as we
attempt to carry ourselves gracefully, bring-
ing the balls of the feet and toes into proper
use.
In addition to being without heels and giv-
ing complete freedom to the toes and balls
of the feet, the ideal barefoot shoe will be
low-cut. High laced or button shoes are
worn for two reasons, both of which are erro-
neous. It is supposed that they give support
to weak ankles and warmth to cold feet. As
a matter of fact, they only aggravate those
discomforts. They make the foot colder by
weakening the surface reaction and interfer-
177
srtje JWafeCitfl of Jlrrsonalits
ing with the circulation, and they make the
ankle weaker by hindering its exercise. Mus-
cles are strengthened by use, not by support
and disuse. The growing custom of keeping
children in " spring-heel " shoes is excellent,
so far as it goes; but they should always be
low shoes with broad toes, and are better with
no heels at all. It is the constricting repres-
sion of high, tightly buttoned shoes that gives
to so many children and young girls wooden
ankles, calfless shanks, and a flat-footed walk,
where we might rightfully expect shapeliness,
elasticity and grace. Sandals, of course, are
excellent for the perfect ventilation and free-
dom they allow, though they may not always
afford sufficient protection.
The normal muscular use of the feet in
proper shoes will prevent " flat-foot." That
painful malady, contrary to popular super-
stition, is invited rather than prevented by
high heels and steel supports. The artificial
prop and brace accustom the foot to depend
upon their aid, and so gradually to lose rather
178
ISeauts of tfje iFoot
than gain strength; they really only aggra^
vate the trouble and one who resorts to their
help is sure to go from bad to worse. The
wonderful arch of the foot breaks down
through being misused, not through being
overused. To bind it and support it only
interferes with its natural muscular play; so
that it becomes weakened and atrophied
through disuse, as any member would under
similar conditions. Whereas if it be prop-
erly used in an unrestricting shoe, all neces-
sary exercise will strengthen it.
To change from high heels and arch-sup-
porting shoes to free shoes, without transfer-
ring the poise of the body from the heels and
arch and stiffened knees to the balls of the
feet and toes and deftly flexed knees, is to pre-
cipitate '' flat-foot " almost inevitably. And
here lies the cause of discomfort and disaster
arising from an unguarded change to gym-
nasium shoes, ballet shoes, tennis shoes, and
heelless slippers or house shoes. Such change
must be made with careful readjustment of
179
SEJje Jttafeing of J^ersonalits
one's habits of motion in standing and walk-
ing, and even then is not unlikely to be at-
tended with discomfort at first, as different
and comparatively unused sets of muscles are
brought into play. Of course, after damage
has been done, the case is complicated, and
the sufferer may need a surgeon's care.
The whole question of the beauty of the
foot and the best use of the best shoes is insep-
arably bound up with the question of good
walking and good carriage of the body, and
consequently also with questions of health, of
efficiency, of happiness for ourselves and use-
fulness to the world. It involves, too, the con-
sideration of the subtle reflex influence of
motion on the spirit and temper, on the tem-
perament and mental attitude of the indi-
vidual. A perfect foot is the beginning of
beauty, as a fine cast of the head is its crown-
ing attribute. Neither the vestal virgins nor
the nautch-girls could ever have uplifted the
spirit or charmed the senses, if their feet had
been hampered and inadequate. Goddesses
i8o
m^nts of tiie iFoot
would lose their majesty and angels their per-
fection, if anything should mar the beauty of
their feet.
The tender curve and sensitive mobility of
the sole of a beautiful foot is one of nature's
subtlest beauties. A strong, soft, flexible
rolling tread on the balls of the feet, letting
them spread and contract freely with each
step, keeping the heels almost wholly off the
ground, and never allowing the weight of the
body to fall back on the heels and spinal col-
umn, is the natural process for developing
fine, straight feet, a genuine instep and calf
of the leg, a neat ankle, and curves of power
and spirit not only through the foot but
throughout the whole body. This was the
breeding that made shapely feet and legs to
match the loveliest bodies of bygone times
and gave us our traditions of the well-bred
foot. A spontaneous, easy elegance in the
carriage of the head depends upon elegance
in the development and use of the feet. The
absence of many wrinkles, the unanxious ease
i8i
of the whole body, our perfection of physical
and personal development, our utmost useful-
ness and health, our entire symmetry and
poise and vigour, depend largely upon our
development and use of our feet. Nothing
can exist or happen anywhere throughout the
length and breadth of the body that is not in-
fluenced by the condition and use of the foot.
The relation of the nervous system to the foot
is often sorely realized. Few people have
escaped experiencing the overwhelming de-
moralization, mental and spiritual as well as
physical, that results from a hurting foot.
Speaking of Japanese workmen, Lafcadio
Hearn says, ^' Nature has given him perfect
feet that can spring him over fifty miles a
day without pain; a stomach whose chemistry
can extract ample nourishment from food on
which no European could live; and a con-
stitution that scorns heat, cold, and damp
alike, because still unimpaired by unhealthy
clothing, by superfluous comforts, by the
habit of seeking warmth from grates and
182
mauts of ttie iFoot
stoves, and by the habit of wearing leather
shoes.
" It seems to me that the character of our
footgear signifies more than is commonly sup-
posed. The footgear represents in itself a
check upon individual freedom. It signifies
this even in costliness; but in form it signifies
infinitely more. It has distorted the Western
foot out of the original shape, and rendered
it incapable of the work for which it was
evolved. The physical results are not limited
to the foot. Whatever acts as a check, di-
rectly or indirectly, upon the organs of loco-
motion must extend its effects to the whole
physical constitution. Does the evil stop even
there? Perhaps we submit to conventions the
most absurd of any existing in any civiliza-
tion because we have too long submitted to
the tyranny of shoemakers. There may be
defects in our politics, in our social ethics, in
our religious system, more or less related to
the habit of wearing leather shoes. Submis-
sion to the cramping of the body must cer-
183
tainly aid in developing submission to the
cramping of the mind."
After experimenting with footwear for
many years, experience leaves one eager to
impart this grain of knowledge, — that no
material comfort can equal the luxury of a
well-fitting, broad-toed, flexible, heelless shoe.
Of course, the secret is that a good barefoot
shoe enables us to walk naturally and to find
in simple natural exercises not only health,
but sanity and happiness as well. If I were
a fairy and asked to bestow one gift on the
man and woman of the twentieth century, I
would give them each a pair of model shoes.
184
TJKJfK
ffilje art of Walking
The delightful art of walking, the happy
vagabondage which Stevenson and Whitman
praised so well, the most innocent of pastimes,
the simplest of exercises, is in danger of fall-
ing into disuse in our multiplicity of modern
sports. Tennis, golf, bicycling, riding, yacht-
ing, motoring, all call us in their different
ways in the pursuit of diversion or health,
until the love of the open foot-road is become
almost old-fashioned. Yet there they lie, all
the highways and paths and trails running
out from before our very feet to overlace the
earth, to carry us whither we will, with all
their old allurement of the golden age of gip-
sydom before steam carriages were invented
i8S
2CJie JHaftfnfl of Ji^tvuon^lxts
or electricity discovered. The art of walking
may be temporarily outrivalled, but it cannot
be lightly neglected, and the wise will always
hold it in high esteem, — so primary a benefit
is it, and so essential to all womanly elegance
and manly dignity.
An idea that shall help us to walk well
is to think of the walk as a moderated run
rather than to think of the run as a modifica-
tion of the walk. Fancy the Flying Mercury
changing feet, and you have an ideal run.
Fancy that run slackened in speed, and you
have a godlike walk.
The run is, of course, the natural human
gait whenever speed is required; and as the
rate of speed is lowered, it passes by a gradual
transition into the normal walk. The run is
our legitimate highest form of locomotion,
developed under the keen stress of the exi-
gencies of life; and as such it represents our
utmost efficiency of motion, and exhibits the
most graceful economy of strength in action.
As we watch it in children and in the games
i86
2CJ|t art of WiuWina
of our athletic youth, the run lends a touch
of glamour and additional charm to the
beauty of the figure, altogether lacking in our
starched and restricted demeanour; it carries
us back to the days of freedom and sincerity.
Our almost complete disuse of the run in civi-
lization was inevitable, but none the less has
surely been detrimental to the quality of our
motion in general and to our walk in partic-
ular. As the ease and security of life in-
creased, we became a race of walkers; and
now as the means of transit are multiplied,
we walk less and less. As a consequence of
this decreased necessity for muscular effort,
we have lost much of the spring and endur-
ance which belong to us by natural right.
There is the greater need, therefore, that such
walking as we do should be done thoroughly
well, since grace and beauty are only the fine
flowers of motion and strength.
The mechanics of walking, like the science
underlying any art, may not be as interesting
as the art itself; yet it is none the less neces-
187
sary, if we would practise the art correctly.
The first requisite of good walking is a good
poise. If the body is well poised at each point
of its motion, the motion itself must be good.
The process of walking, w^hich has been de-
scribed as a series of falls, is, to be somewhat
more accurate, a series of falls and recover-
ies, so insensibly merged that there is no say-
ing where the fall ends and the recovery be-
gins. In walking we are in a continuous
state of changing equilibrium. We pass
gradually from one position to another, yet
should never be out of poise. We are play-
ing with gravity. The instant we lose poise
our step becomes a stumble, and we ourselves
the sport of gravity, no longer its self-con-
trolled masters. A good walker spins the
earth deftly beneath his feet, as an acrobat
in a circus spins a barrel or a painted ball.
This simile suggests something of the light-
ness and ecstasy to be acquired in walking,
and gives us an imaginary guide for our mo-
tion so far as the feet are concerned. For
1 88
^ftt art of WLuimna
our other requisite of good walking, a proper
carriage of the chest, a suggestion may be
gained by balancing a stout pole about eight
or ten feet long vertically from the chest. Of
course an imaginary pole will do quite as well
as a real one, if not better, for it will not in-
terfere at all with the carriage of the head.
Between these two attempts — the endeavour
to keep the chest well lifted and carried for-
ward, and the endeavour to keep the earth
as far below us as possible — lies the achieve-
ment of good walking. Between these tw^o
diverse extremes we shall master that ease and
strength of action which is so fascinating in
all good motion, and attain a natural dignity
of mien which no affectation can bestow.
Instruction in the exact technique of walk-
ing might be epitomized as follows: — From
a normal standing position, with the greater
part of the weight on one foot (the left, for
example), slightly in advance of the right,
lift the body gently on the balls of the feet
and let it sway forward. As it sways out of
189
2Cfie JHaftltifl of ^tvnonulits
balance, the right leg will instinctively come
forward to save it from falling. If this right
leg be allowed to swing freely of its own
weight, like a rope, sagging at the knee and
slack at the ankle, and if at the same time the
body be lifted high on the ball of the left foot,
the right foot (the trailing end of the rope)
will clear the ground as it swings past the
left; and the first part of the foot to touch the
ground in this first step will be, not the heel
of the foot, but the ball, — the tip of the rope.
The moment the ball of the right foot touches
the ground, it resists, and receiving the weight
of the body gently, with softly flexed knee,
lowers it until the heel also touches the
ground lightly, and the first step has been
taken.
Meanwhile the forward impetus of the
body has not been retarded, and the left leg
is now swinging forward in its turn. The left
foot must have room to swing clear of the
ground; and, to meet that necessity, the body,
which has just been lowered by the strong
190
muscles of the right leg and foot, must imme-
diately be lifted again by those same muscles.
The left leg swings to the front; the chang-
ing weight is again caught and lowered on the
left foot; the second step has been taken, and
the walk is under way.
If this rough analysis seems to overempha-
size one or two crucial points in the walk,
such as a greater use of the ankle joint and
of the powerful lifting muscles of the calf
of the leg and ball of the foot than we are
accustomed to, it should be said that it is
hardly possible to lay too much stress on the
importance of these essentials. It is just in
them that we generally fall short. To walk
well, — indeed, to move well at all, — we
need not only strength but strength well or-
dered; and nowhere is our locomotion so
faulty and inefficient as in our use of the leg,
the ankle and the foot.
Analysis makes clear the important part
played by the strong, sensitive, flexible ball
of the foot and toes, which spread and almost
191
8Ctie JHaftfnfl of J^ersonalitff
grasp the earth as they exercise their exqui-
site control of balance and support, — a power
which can never be exercised at all in narrow
shoes. It also ensures the straight tread of
the Indian; since, when the foot is swung for-
ward freely and loosely in the direction in
which we are going, it falls naturally parallel
to our line of progress. The turned-out toe
is insisted upon by dancing masters rightly
enough, in consideration of an audience in
front, to whom profile contours are more
pleasing than straight lines, and because in
dancing the body is constantly moving from
side to side, and the leading foot should point
in the direction in which the motion is to take
place. The old military standing position,
^' heels together and toes out," which threw
the weight upon the heels, was long permitted
by instructors in gymnastics in class drill, for
the purpose of facilitating diversity of exer-
cise. In the normal walk, however, wherein
we wish to go straight ahead, the turning out
of the toes is an anomaly and should never be
192
of
y
srtie art of WLalUina
taught. It ought to be clearly understood
and carefully borne in mind that the standing
position of the dancing-school is to be used
only when specifically required, and that
when it becomes habitual it leads to bad gen-
eral poise, an awkward walk, and injurious
physical results. That a wrong method of
standing should be inculcated in schools of
physical culture, simply' to facilitate certain
drill exercises, is unwarrantable, inasmuch as
the establishing of good habits of general mo-
tion is more important than the artificial in-
tricacies of any diverting or exhibitionary
drill. If a drill necessitates bad poise at any
time, then it is a bad drill and should be
abandoned.
It will be noticed, also, that our descrip-
tion of ideal walking does not fit the require-
ments of the heel-and-toe walk as practised
by athletes. That particular gait is an arti-
ficial one, and has been adopted for a specific
reason. The natural walk, as has been said,
is only a modified run, and lapses into the
193
run so gradually that the exact point of dif-
ference is not easily perceptible. The patent
difference between a walk and a run is this,
of course, that in the walk both feet are never
oE the ground at the same time. In order to
render this difference perfectly plain and un-
questionable in contests, athletes have re-
quired the heel-and-toe step, wherein the heel
strikes the ground first. With this gait it is
almost impossible to get sufficient spring to
lift both feet from the ground at the same
time, and so the possibility of the walker
breaking into a run is almost nil. The tax
on him, however, is something terrific. He
hunches along, thumping on his heels, and
almost dislocating his entire anatomy at every
step. The racking strain to the whole system
from such an abnormal locomotion is an in-
tolerable violence to nature. Nature fitted us
to run when we are in a hurry; and to push
the slower gait quite beyond the limits of its
intended use is to sin against the laws of na-
ture and common sense. Like any other vio-
194
ffiDe art of Wi^lUina
lence, it can only be injurious and wasteful of
energy; and being so harmful, it cannot but
be ungraceful. Nothing is more ungainly
and less pleasant to watch than a heel-and-toe
contest. Yet this discordant method of walk-
ing, only less furious in speed, is the one we
use every day, almost without exception. It
is a slovenly habit, only too readily acquired
through muscular inefficiency, disordering
footgear, or heedless imitation or laziness.
Our fashions prescribe one ridiculous man-
ner of walking and then another year after
year, but almost no one thinks it worth while
to learn to walk normally. There can be no
uniform fashion of good walking. The nor-
mal walk is not a matter of caprice, but of
art; it lends itself to the infinite varieties of
character, and becomes in each instance ex-
pressive of the individual; so that we recog-
nize and even interpret a man by his gait as
easily as by his voice. Both are unmistakably
characteristic of him and could belong to no
one else. A friend is known by his step be-
195
fore he crosses the threshold. Words may be
marshalled and pressed into the service of
falsehood, and may deceive the unwary; but
our tones and motions are more instinctive,
less deliberate, and will betray us in spite of
ourselves to any keen observer. No two
voices are alike, nor any two walks, but every
one in his own person — in bearing, demean-
our, speech, gesture and motion — is the man-
ifestation of a distinct personality and cannot
be identical with another. To try to assume^
therefore, any capricious mode of speech or
any affected fashion of walking is fruitless;
it is easier to change the part which destiny
has set us to play than to conceal the individ-
ual characteristics she has given us to play
with.
On the stage, along Fifth Avenue, in our
drawing-rooms, at our summer resorts, what
innumerable examples of ugly walking and
ungainly carriage one sees! Women who
flop, and wiggle, and hump, and mince, and
lope, and stride, and hardly ever one who
196
8CJ|e art of WLalUina
walks like an immortal human being! One
sees well-bred girls stumping along a country
road in thick-soled men's shoes, affecting a
so-called manly stride, because they fancy it
seems athletic, and because it is considered
" smart " to be mannish. Even so, they are
far from manliness; they imitate the gross,
uncultivated motion which bespeaks a low
type of physicality characteristic of the pugi-
list and the roustabout; and of course they
only succeed in looking ridiculous. Though
they may be pretty girls, their affectation of
a manner and motion not native in them —
not characteristic and unconscious and ex-
pressive of themselves — makes them ludi-
crous. It is not necessary to be a man in order
to be strong and healthy; and it is impossible
to be graceful and affected at the same time.
In justice, it ought to be added that many
men make the same mistake of affecting a
walk that does not belong to them. It is, per-
haps, one of the lesser follies of an imitative
youth, when we long to play a part in the
197
2ribe iWafeinfl of ^ersonalitj?
world, and must ape this or that ideal of our
busy imagination. But, as Browning says, —
** Best be yourself, imperial, plain and true.'*
And no walk can be normal or beautiful
which does not belong distinctively to its user,
which is not just as inseparably his own or her
own as the expression of the eyes. The in-
finite and distinguishing varieties of walk de-
pend on the infinitely varied proportions of
length of limb and strength of muscle and
quality of energy in different persons.
Many a capable actor fails of his efiPect by
not knowing the inalienable meaning of mo-
tion and the significance of a walk. Wishing
to impress us with a sense of dignity, he often
comes strutting and stamping on high heels,
quite forgetting that true dignity is easy, re-
poseful, assured, and elastic, not assertive nor
unyielding; and that the jarring thump of
his heel-hitting tread is enough to shatter any
possible illusion of majesty or elegance. Real
majesty of bearing is not to be assumed easily.
198
sri^e art of S2la^litefn0
It appears only as the cloak and habit of true
majesty of character, — • thorough worth and
nobility of heart.
A distinguished American critic, who wit-
nessed the coronation ceremony at Westmin-
ster, has declared that Queen Alexandra in
that assemblage of younger and more daz-
zling beauties, held an unquestionable su-
premacy of royal elegance and grandeur by
her every movement of unassuming, unaf-
fected dignity. It was said of Adelaide Neil-
son that to see her walk was like listening to
exquisite music, so well rhythmed and elo-
quent was her motion. Madame Duse's great-
est preeminence as an artist is her genius of
mobility, her wonderful capacity for expres-
sion through motion and pose. Majestic mo-
tion was never more wonderfully exemplified
than in Salvini's walk in the character of
Othello. Though he played the part in bare
feet, his tread was impressive with a dignity
that no high-heeled boot would permit. It
was simply an untrammelled expression or
199
8ri)e JHaftfnfl of J^ersonalitff
revelation of the dignity of character of
which the man himself was capable; and
that capacity, that quality of innate dignity,
required only natural transmission, transla-
tion from feeling into motion, to give it as-
tounding power. The great actor must be
equally a master of good motion and of
speech, since motion is quite as important a
medium of expression as voice.
To ensure good normal walking the free-
dom of the foot is the first essential, but no
less essential is the freedom of the entire
body; for walking brings every muscle into
play, and the whole torso and head have to
be controlled and mobilized every moment
through the strong muscles of the neck and
trunk. This needs freedom of the waist and
throat, as well as of the foot and ankle; and
when we realize the values of breathing and
the increased use of the lungs and diaphragm
necessitated by walking, the need for this free-
dom becomes imperative. The spread of cul-
tivated taste in matters of art has shown us
J!Ciie art of 23Zllalltein0
how unbeautiful the deformed waist and
pointed foot really are, in themselves and in
their efifects upon poise and personal expres-
sion, — how pitiably deficient compared with
the superb strength of the Winged Victory
or the ideal sufficiency of the Venus of Melos.
How magnificent the Victory is in her loose-
girdled bearing, seeming almost to tread on
air, — the very embodiment of the soul of
walking arrested for an age-long instant in
mid-glory!
How shall we regain such power and per-
fection of grace and beauty? How attain
that fine-poised loveliness of body which the
old Greeks left recorded for us in their
sculpture as standard of physical excellence?
Surely not by the use of corsets and cosmetics,
but perhaps by cultivating as they did all the
bodily faculties in a life including free mus-
cular activity and physical art. The Greeks
were the finest exponents of physical culture,
because they saw its fundamental relation to
total culture, and held it in the honour which
20 1
2C|)e MuUina of ^tvuonalits
is its due. They respected physical beauty
just as instinctively as all natural men and
women respect it. They had not been inocu-
lated with that false and shameful asceticism
which sprang up in the Dark Ages and cast
its blight over the sacred natural joy of life.
They knew well the inherent dependence of
beauty of form upon loveliness of spirit, and
cultivated each with assiduous care. Their
love of beauty was only another phase of their
eager and undarkened love of truth. Their
devotion to athletics sprang consistently from
their feeling for art, and their eminence in
art in turn was fostered and enriched by that
very untrammelled devotion.
It will be so in our own case. We shall
grow gradually nearer perfection of physical
strength and beauty, as we live more and more
nearly in accordance with our best instincts,
putting away shams, discarding prejudices,
and throwing off the tyranny of whatever im-
positions are too rigid and hampering for fine
personal development. No small part of this
202
JTtie art of 2imalft(nfl
just, profitable and very becoming liberation
of the spirit, this delightful enhancement of
personality, will come to us through securing
the utmost perfection and service of the sim-
ple and practicable art of good walking.
203
When David danced before the Lord he
was making use of one of the most primitive
methods for giving vent to the joyous energy
that was in him. That natural expression of
vigorous gladness was so common that it
could not but find a place in all early cere-
monials and religious rites. When Salome
danced before Herod at his birthday feast,
her triumph was tribute to the facile power
of her art.
Though we have abandoned the use of
dancing in our sober, more intellectual relig-
ion, the tendency to express heights of feeling
in rhythmic motion shows itself in almost any
perfervid religious revival among simple and
204
Bantina as a Jftm art
unrestrained people. And a resort to patting
and drums, to kneeling and bowing and sing-
ing as a means of freeing the spirit and an
elevation toward holiness, is by no means ex-
tinct. We still make use of rhythm for the
inducement of mood, though we fail to give
it scientific recognition or to regulate it as a
legitimate aid.
That an art so potent and subtle as dancing
should often have been turned to ill account
was to have been expected, yet that was hardly
a sufficient reason for condemning it without
reserve and banishing it to the limbo of the
forbidden. So strong and delicate an instru-
ment for influencing personality and arousing
emotion ought rather to be treated with tena-
cious respect and made the object of a wise
and fostering care. We do not ban electricity
because it is dangerous, nor shun the service
of fire because it is terrible and destructive
when unmastered. So with the arts; those
great and primordial manifestations of psy-
chic energy are to be guarded, indeed, with
205
every wise precaution, but they are none the
less to be used most gratefully for forwarding
and facilitating the purposes of human life
in its struggle toward happiness and wisdom.
Like the elements of outward nature, they are
the Titanic ministers of man, rendering in-
calculable aid when properly employed, and
equally incalculable harm when left to op-
erate in a wayward and unregulated manner.
To make them outcasts from our world of
activity is mere childish petulance; to the
mature and sane mind they must always seem
worthy not only of use but of study and hon-
our. While ever alive to their baleful possi-
bilities, we should still rejoice without stint
in the exercise of their legitimate powers, and
cherish them with loving reverence. To do
this is only to make the most of our native
endowments, — the resources of the great un-
known universe of being from which we are
sprung. To neglect it is surely to be foolish
and cowardly and inept in dealing with the
vital forces of creation which have been given
206
into our hands. The artist in life need feel
no panic in the presence of the gods; for
though it becomes him to go modestly and
without presumption, he is after all in the
house of his kindred, and while the lords of
being have little liking for undue assurance,
they have less for cringing timidity.
The reinstating of dancing in its rightful
place among the liberal and humanizing arts
is greatly to be desired, and any tendency in
that direction is most welcome. The prac-
tice of the art as developed in the modern bal-
let is admirable so far as it goes; its semi-pop-
ularity proves how universal and ineradicable
our love of expressive motion is, how eagerly
we respond to its appeal, and how gladly we
encourage it to beautiful achievement, even
when it dwindles to bleak artificiality and
conventionalization. But the modern ballet
is only a stiffened relic of the art of dancing
compared to what may be accomplished in
reviving it as a popular amusement and re-
storing it to its lawful position of honour and
207
enthusiastic pride in people's hearts as one
of their loveliest and most salutary pleas-
ures.
Motion as an art includes the walk, but it
only reaches its highest achievement in dan-
cing. Walking is primarily a utilitarian pro-
cedure, with other aims and purposes beside
personal expression; its expressive intent is
secondary. Dancing, on the contrary, is
quite superfluous from the utilitarian point of
view; it has no practical service in view; its
sole purpose is the expression of feeling. In
the first instance, it is the mere physical in-
stinctive manifestation of pleasure, a mute
but unmistakable indication of the gladness
of life. Later, it becomes more complex, co-
herent, articulate and intelligible; it serves
not only as a vent for an impulsive ebullition
of animal spirits, but as an avenue for the
definite expression of varied emotions, — it
serves as a means to convey their infection and
fascination to others; and it takes its appro-
priate place among the fine arts as one of the
208
most charming and winsome dialects in the
language of ecstasy.
The artistic dancer uses bodily motion as a
poet uses words, as a musician uses tones, as a
painter uses colours, — as an appeal not so
much to our reason as to our sense and spirit,
— as a means of enlivening and gladdening
our nature, making us more sensitive to
beauty, more spontaneous in glad emotion,
more sane and balanced in general well-be-
ing. This service of harmonizing us with
ourselves, freeing us from irritation and fa-
tigue and discordant vexation, is what art
always does for us, and what dancing does
most wholesomely when properly cultivated.
As it shares with the other arts the right to be
called liberal and fine, it deserves an equally
important place in our education, our social
life, our serious regard.
That dancing is the legitimate sister of
Music and Poetry is indisputable. Her birth-
right is not less authentic than theirs, nor her
origin less divine, while the realm of her in-
209
heritance lies more within the enjoyment of
aU. If not the wisest of the immortal nine,
she is the gayest, most human, debonair, and
alluring. To the sorceries of her rhythmic
motion, to the silent but inescapable witch-
eries of her melting curves, to the languid or
impassioned glamour that she weaves, every
son of man is responsive. She alone shares
with her twin-born Music the power to
charm the wildest heart, and foster even in
the rudest mind some elements of civility.
Poetry may enlarge our horizon, making us
serene and wise; architecture may remind us
of the spacious nobility and order of the uni-
verse; painting and sculpture may help us
to a more vivid delight in the colour and
form and loveliness of the world; and acting
may stir our sympathy with its mimic follies
and woes; but dancing is preeminently the
preceptress of unmitigated joy. She is the
epitome of happy moments, embodying the
innocent abandon of our unrestrained rap-
ture. The hours sacred to her are those
2IO
which are free from care. It is to her that we
instinctively turn when the soul leaps for
gladness. It is she who teaches us that perfect
fusion of sense and spirit, without which no
art is possible and no life is fortunate. She
personifies that creative rapture which was in
the beginning, when the morning stars sang
together and all the sons of God shouted for
joy-
Terpsichore is not only the Muse of dan-
cing, but the goddess of all motion. She pre-
sides over dancing mote and whirling leaf, as
well as over the jig and the minuet. The
wheeling hawk hanging on balanced wings
above some dark ravine, the fleet innumerable
droves of the sea that glimmer and dart
through their dusky silent firmament, the
clever tumblers in the circus, the happy chil-
dren in the street keeping time to the hurdy-
gurdy, the flying thistle seed, the drifting
snow, the sand that travels in the tide, and the
recurring planets in their vast career, — all
are biddable devotees of her cult, paying
211
2CJie iUa^ftiufl of petfiianaltts
obedience to her mighty law, whose first ob-
ligation is poise, whose final realization is
freedom. For poise is ever the first step
toward perfection, as significant beauty is the
last. To follow her commandments, keeping
proper time, proper force and form, in every
motion we create, is to bring ourselves, body
and spirit and understanding, hourly into
happier accord with the orderly rhythms of
infinitude. By so doing we lose timidity and
strangeness and distrust of ourselves; we
learn number, proportion, accuracy, skill;
and we become assured, gracious, composed
and glad. For art not only holds the keys
to the realm of beauty, but to the realms of
knowledge and benevolence as well. This
is the truth which every artist divines, and
which all must one day come to perceive.
We have lost much of our respect for the
pure fine art of dancing, because we have al-
lowed It to become debased and corrupted.
When the Puritan put the blight of his anath-
ema upon it, he worked an almost irrevocable
212
injury. That was one of the enormities with
which his soured righteousness afflicted the
earth, one of the ill effects of his narrow big-
otry which we are left to undo. Dancing
might be put out of countenance for a time,
but no fanaticism could irrevocably over-
throw a genuine deep and beneficent human
activity. For dancing is more than a custom;
it is not confined to any race or civilization;
it is native to man; it answers a primary need
in his being, — an ineradicable necessity for
self-expression; and like all the arts it has
an unquestionable, almost mysterious, power
to influence his life. It must, therefore, take
its lawful position again and be honoured as
it was in other times, when it had its due place
in sacred ceremonial as well as in daily life.
Not that we need revive the dance as a relig-
ious rite, but we must recognize, just as the
ancients did, just as the savages still do, the
religious element inherent in motion, and its
great power in the spiritual realm. Having,
as it surely has, so potential an influence for
213
Eftt JHalteino of Petf^onalitfi
good or ill, surely we are bound to cultivate,
liberate, refine and ennoble it, in order that
we may generally practise it, and may be cul-
tivated, liberated, refined and ennobled by it
in turn. The wise and loving practice of an
art is the making of the artist.
As dancing comes to be revived among us,
restored to its lawful standing, it must resume
its place in our regard as one of the most de-
lightful of pastimes and beneficial of recrea-
tions. It is peculiarly fitted to become a dis-
tinctive national amusement with Americans;
its grace and spirit and gaiety should supply
a most becoming exercise for our buoyant and
volatile exuberance. We might have dancing
clubs, just as we now have tennis clubs. It
might become as great a distinction to excel
as a dancer as it is now to excel in golf or
baseball.
Dancing as an exercise is more desirable
than most sports, for the simple reason that
it is an art as well as an exercise, and the prac-
tice of it cannot but be more helpful and sat-
214
lamina as u Jfint art
isfying than the pursuit of sports which are
more wholly physical in their requirements.
Most of our sports and playgrounds demand
accuracy, skill, bodily vigour, and even such
temperamental characteristics as patience and
good nature; they cannot, however, afiford an
outlet and avenue of expression for the higher
personality, nor a means for its cultivation,
such as the arts always supply. Athletics
generally leave one side of our nature, the
spiritual or emotional side, entirely unexer-
cised. That is why our young college giants
are often so persistently mere huge and grace-
less barbarians. They have given themselves
with commendable diligence to the cultivation
of thews and brawn, daring and endurance,
and after all they are only fit for the arena;
they have none of that grace and nobility of
person which were so prized by the Greeks,
— none of that imposing beauty which mo-
tion, when infused with the aspirations of the
spirit, can do so much to develop, and which
uninspired motion can so easily destroy.
2IS
It seems a pity that so beautiful an art, so
delightful an amusement, should be relegated
to formal dress occasions and not enjoyed
much more frequently on the spur of any
happy moment. A moderate amount of good
dancing would be enough to keep women in
health, to say nothing of its value for mental
stimulation and balance. And there can be
no more ideal and practically salutary exer-
cise and recreation for children and adults
than barefoot dancing, practised in unre-
stricting cleanly clothing, and with only the
simplest sandal protection for the otherwise
bare feet, — a pastime in which no pointed
shoe, no hampering garment, increases the
difficulty of delightful achievement, nor de-
tracts from its benefit. Such dancing gives
bodily and emotional freedom and nervous
relief as well as stimulus to expression within
the limits of orderly beauty; it helps to legit-
imate and happy expenditure of restless ac-
tivity; it leads to lines of pleasurable benefit
energies which might otherwise be either un-
216
^untina as a iFtne art
reasonably repressed or vented in uncouth
violence and discordant noise.
We are all of us very much in the same
boat, and often are not much wiser than chil-
dren, nor much more capable of helping our-
selves. We think the heavens are unkind, the
tangle of life impossible, and ourselves in
some dire extremity of woe or complication,
when in reality all we need is a touch of in-
spiring, harmonizing, and genuinely recuper-
ative exercise. The elation to be gained from
freeing our manacled bodies and refreshing
them with some beautiful and happy motion
is almost unbelievable.
A few years ago in New York a number of
women gave a Greek dance as a studio
performance for the entertainment of their
friends. In the freedom of the classical cos-
tume, the sandalled foot and loosely robed
figure, they found unexpected opportunity for
natural and expressive motion. Their under-
taking became a delight they had never
dreamed of, revealing to them the ecstasy of
217
free and spontaneous mobility which belongs
to all natural things, and which man alone
has seen fit to deform and cripple and de-
fraud. Their pleasure was something more
than the simple physical exhilaration of exer-
cise; they were touched with the divine fire
of inspiration, the primal creative impulse
which all artists know. This was their mem-
orable return for a few hours given to the
glad art of dancing.
More recently Miss Duncan and Miss St.
Denis have demonstrated the imperishable
interest we all must have in dancing as a fine
art. Their practical success in barefoot dan-
cing should be a substantial encouragement
to the culture and pursuit of the art for its
own valuable sake. Their performances were
open to criticism naturally, but the spirit of
their undertaking cannot be too much praised.
Miss St. Denis has still a good deal to learn
about the meanings of motions and the ma-
king of magic, but it must be remembered in
her favour that there is almost no one from
218
TBuntlns ^^ ^ iFtne art
whom she could learn these secrets. Her
dancing lacks sorcery and charm as yet, power
to fascinate as well as to astonish ; she has the
cleverness which arouses interest and makes
one admire, but not the touch of rapture
which would carry one away, as all competent
art should. She has, in other words, an ex-
cellent technique, a plastic mobility, but no
passion and no adequate mastery of the ex-
pressional values of various motions. So that
while her dancing may dazzle by its bril-
liance, it cannot enthrall. Nevertheless her
intelligent and unaided endeavour in an al-
most deserted field of art was most admirable
and worthy of all its success.
For several years Wellesley College has
been giving a pictorial dance at each Com-
mencement. In these interpretive dances,
which are held out-of-doors in the beautiful
grounds of the college, the parts are all taken
by the students; and, while not a recognized
part of the academic procedure, it might well
become as settled a custom as the yearly Se-
219
nior Dramatics among the students of Smith.
Such extra-academic performances, which af-
ford means of actual training in the arts, are
likely to be of far more value to the student
than a great deal of her theoretic knowledge
acquired in '' Arts Courses," which are not
courses in art at all.
Dancing in its finest development, with all
its scope, bewitchment, power, and satisfac-
tions, has nearly become one of the lost arts;
but instances of a reviving interest in it here
and there point to a hopeful future when one
of the most lovely of the arts shall come to its
own again, bringing back solace and gaiety
and innocent ardour to an overmentalized
world.
220
X
©It JWueit of fife
A BRILLIANT woman once said to me, '' Life
without abandon, to me is a dance without
music." And I knew instantly what she
meant, with that delight one always feels in
the perception of a fresh statement of truth.
It was a poet's phrase, and as all good poe-
try will, it illumined the mind at once with a
radiant conviction, and left itself in the mem-
ory as a perpetual word of wisdom. Every
day everywhere I am constantly having it
borne in upon me how true the saying is; and
as I hear of incidents in the lives of my
friends, or of their friends, and as I watch the
expression of men and women going by me
in the street or gathered in public places,
321
zrije iWaftlng of J^etsonalftff
light-hearted with elation or depressed with
complaining, I find myself repeating, not
without something of the resigned detachment
of the philosopher, '' Life without abandon
is a dance without music."
But what do we mean by abandon? I mean
a free and unrestrained yielding of oneself,
at any given moment, to the best promptings
of the instinct, the reason, and the spirit, —
a happy and ready accepting of the best dic-
tates of conscience, the delicate monitions of
kindliness and taste. We commonly speak of
an abandoned person, in the evil sense of the
word, as one wholly given over to the control
of the baser passions, — one in whom the
malign forces which dwell in humanity have
gained another of their sorry victories. And
just as such a one goes down-hill with ever-
increasing speed, unchecked by fear or hesi-
tation or scruple, so one who consciously
yields with a happy abandon to the beneficent
and goodly powers at work in human per-
222
SEfie JHusic of Hift
sonalities may mount to heights of developed
manhood or womanhood by a sheer momen-
tum of reasonable joy. It is not the part of
abandon to falter or shuffle or count the cost,
nor to be laggard in well-doing nor lukewarm
in appreciation. To be potent in abandon and
to cultivate it is to be instant in action, gen-
erous in deed, confident of resource, and pos-
sessed by an invincible faith in the ultimate
triumph of all that is just, beautiful, and
kindly in life.
One who lives with abandon lives with no-
bility, sincerity, and freedom. The deep
wells of life are Licxliaustible, and those who
draw from their sweet waters most lavishly
are most sure of being sustained and re-
freshed. It is only the timorous and mean
and calculating who ever imagine those
magic springs can run dry, or fancy there are
narrow limits to human possibilities. When
the dandelions fail to reappear with the
spring-time, when the fogs cease to blow over
223
the face of the sea, the sources of mortal
knowledge and aspiration may also cease and
fail, but not till then.
It is so easy to distinguish where music has
gone out of a life, and where it still lingers
with its enrapturing possession of the person-
ality! Here go by, the dejected mien, the
dispirited walk, the drooping shoulders and
slovenly gait, the eyes bent upon the ground,
the head bowed in hopelessness; these are
they who for one cause or another have lost
the first fine abandon which is the natural
heritage of every mortal born into a beautiful
world; they have ceased to make magic
music in their personalities; and while they
still go through the motions of living, they
are scarcely more than automata moving to a
joyless mechanical rhythm, creatures of rou-
tine, puppets dancing without a tune. Pity
them, for they are the unfortunates of the
great army of triumphant humanity, — not
only the deserters and stragglers from the
ranks, but the weak, the ignorant, the ill-ad-
224
Ef^t mnuit of affe
vised, the wayward, who have somehow
strayed beyond the sound of the fifes and
drums and go plodding on out of step and
forlorn, perhaps wilfully searching for free-
dom, perhaps only vainly looking for rest,
and never guessing that all their wayfaring
must be bound in misery unless they can re-
cover the strain of that high inspiriting music
they have lost, and which somewhere far in
the van is still calling them to enthusiastic
allegiance, still marking an irresistible beat
for their steps to follow.
If there are many in whom the music of
life is hushed or jangled, there are more in
whom it is resonant and alluring still. For
among the multitude of the silenced tuneless
personalities, pace for pace with the discord-
ant and disheartened, moves the splendid
company of confident men and spirited
women, those who walk with springing step
and uplifted chest, with dancing eyes and
traces of rapture in their bearing. They may
not always be radiant with rejoicing, they
225
may even be sorely touched by natural sor-
row, but in any case they carry themselves
w^ith a freedom and intensity, with an alert-
ness and vibrancy, that bespeak the undefeated
soul and the mind still free from the blight
of dissonance and disillusion. One sees at a
glance that they have not surrendered to mis-
fortune, nor been tainted by any inward cor-
ruption of fear or despair or ruthless cruelty.
If black pessimism has ever whispered in
their ears, it has not been able to mark them
for its own. For them the bands are still
playing enlivening airs, as the human pag-
eant files along in its tatterdemalion cele-
bration of living. Whether they be going
afoot or on horseback, in velvet or in rags,
seems to matter but lightly to them. The one
great fact is that they are filled with the music
of life. Never having allowed themselves to
become unstrung, their resonant personalities
are still played upon in the rapturous har-
monies of beneficent, joyous being.
Music of life is everywhere, and those who
226
Zf^t JWufiiic of affe
have apprehended its presence in themselves
and in others are in possession of an inval-
uable knowledge. It must always seem to
them of the first importance to maintain their
power of abandon, of rapture, of resonance,
at all hazards, let their actual fortune be what
it may. They will make any sacrifice, forego
any material advantage, disrupt any bondage,
to save their natural responsiveness, — their
zest, their vibrancy, their faculty of individ-
ually reechoing to the concord of existence.
To be out of tune with themselves and inca-
pable of sharing in the mighty music of hu-
man life, whether that music be glad or sad,
sorry or triumphant, must appear to them as
the greatest of human misfortunes, for they
will truly apprehend such injury and deteri-
oration as a fatal beginning of death.
Abandon in life — vivacity, animation, ar-
dour — is like music in that it gives and de-
mands enlarged scope and freedom for action,
and introduces us into an ideal world, where
the will may find free play without harm,
227
where '' nothing beautiful is extravagant,
nothing delightful unworthy." Those who
walk the world in a cloak of unsurrendered
rapture, however worn and threadbare their
actual garments may be, are in possession of
ampler opportunities and enjoy purer and
more generous rewards than any unfair ex-
travagance can command. They always have
hope and faith and charity, because by some
means they always keep attuned to unpolluted
life, to nature, to the world, to society, to truth
and beauty, and never permit themselves to be
severed from the great choral unison of fel-
low beings, nor cease from bearing part in the
divine vibrancy of living. They may have
griefs in plenty and adversities without end,
but they will not live in tuneless despair, they
will not become passive automata ruled by
rote. Dance they must, and they refuse to
dance without music.
This metaphor of the musicalness of life is
applicable to many things. The music of
wealth is the freedom it gives us, the power
228
Ciie iWttfiifc of aife
of realizing our generous impulses immedi-
ately and without hindrance, as in an ideal
world. The music of night is its space and
mystery and the liberation it offers the spirit
from the unimaginative limitations of the
day. They miss its music who do not yield
to that fascination of vast majestic leisure and
solemnity, as those miss the music of wealth
who carry on their affairs, on whatever scale,
in a spirit of penurious fretful timidity, with-
out ever hearing the melody of spontaneous
generosity and the greater harmony which
would arise from making the utmost use of
their resources, whatever they may be. The
music of a great festival like Christmas is the
spirit of renewed joy and kindliness which
it celebrates. We miss that music altogether
if we allow ourselves to make a burden of
the day through petty selfishness or pride or
greed, if we are unwilling to take pains for
the enjoyment of others, if we let ourselves
grow disgusted from a few hours' shopping,
if we fear to give the little that we can afford
229
joyously, or if we demand material excesses.
Great and worthy music is not produced
without care and thought, nor sustained with-
out efifort.
The music of life is written in the key of
the ideal, in the time of the possible, and with
the cadences of personality. To be without
ideals is to be incapable of appreciating or
reproducing this magic music. Its very
source is ideality, its whole aim is to make
use of the encouragement we derive from
imaginary perfection, and to bring happiness
actually to pass. Its rhythm, therefore, must
not be impossible of performance; for ideals
which are incapable of any practical realiza-
tion are hardly ideals properly, but only fan-
cies and phantasmagoria of the fertile mind.
Moreover, it is only when the music of life
shows a personal cadence, only when it is
modified by this or that personality, that it
has individual interest and significance. Per-
sonal cadence is what transforms the music
of life into popular (or unpopular) melody.
230
©fje mnnit of Hift
Abandon in life finds its most opportune
and appropriate field in the middle realm
of the spirit, midway between high-pitched
thought and low-tensioned physicality. True,
it has its affinities, its roots and blossoms, in
both these regions; it could not be born with-
out taking thought of some object for an ar-
dour and enthusiasm to attach to, and it could
not be maintained without some pleasurable
realization; but its service belongs chiefly
to the emotional world. As the human voice
shows its rarest beauty in the middle register,
so the music we make of our lives shows its
loveliest qualities when it is modulated to the
compass and solace of the soul, between the
extremes of attenuated thought and crude
sensation. It can afford to make sparing use
both of the deepest bass notes of the senses and
the keen, thin treble of mentality. In the
generous middle octaves where the chords of
the heart are strung, it finds its most congenial
and potential sphere, and while daring to
sound all notes throughout the range of be-
231
ing, uses most successfully and frequently
those that are most sympathetic to human
weal and woe.
This does not mean, however, that any mel-
ody can ever be made in the music of life
without the command of the whole gamut.
The low strong notes, when needed, are in-
dispensable to give force and body; the fine
high notes to give clarity, definition and
finesse. It is hardly possible to feel the aban-
don of life without giving it some expression
in voice or gesture, in speech or conduct, and
without being influenced by it in imagination
and thought It is vital to the very essence
of abandon that it should be shared by the
whole personality without restriction. A
strange sort of abandon that would be which
stopped short with the impulse and never
found vent in actual expression, nor ever had
any effect on our ideas! Persons may accen-
tuate one tone or another in human relation-
ships, they may chiefly exchange thought or
oflfer sympathy, but not magnetically or mu-
©tie JWufiifc of aife
sically until the whole personality is harmoni-
ously represented in the intercourse. You
may form an acquaintanceship in a distant
place by correspondence, but there can be no
true fellowship or friendship until you meet
eye to eye and hand to hand. The primitive
wholesome instinct of the senses must be sat-
isfied, as well as the more tenuous require-
ments of spirit and intelligence, for in its
sphere and at its best it is quite as fastidious
and trustworthy as they.
Thus it is that men drink together to bind
a bargain, or shake hands upon a transaction.
The discussion of the subject and the final
agreement to which it leads are mere proc-
esses of understanding, where personal bias
need play no part. But after the terms have
been settled, and if the men feel a liking for
each other, they instinctively turn to some
natural physical expression of their unanim-
ity and good fellowship; there is a relaxa-
tion of insistence; the senses begin to beg for
their part in the compact; then the glasses
233
2rj|e JHatftin0 of l&tvnonulits
are filled and, " Here's luck to the venture!"
They find gladness in that abandon and be-
come participants in the music to which the
world goes round. Or the music may only
find vent in the altered tones of the voice.
After hours spent in strenuous discussion,
where brows are knit in close attention, where
tones are high-pitched and looks intent, when
a settlement is reached the tenseness of atmos-
phere is relieved at once; voices, looks, man-
ners change and become free, glad, spontane-
ous and attuned.
So, too, in affairs of the heart, as our grand-
sires called them, there is no assurance of a
happy concord short of the ultimate test; and
many a marriage has proved a pitiable dis-
aster because the consenting mind and spirit
led the senses blindfold into a relation from
which they revolted without compromise.
There is no foretelling the preference of in-
stinct, and in these sacred matters, to do vio-
lence to instinct because of any supposed ob-
ligation to duty or advantage or self-interest
234
a^fie mnnit of 2L(fe
is an abhorrent wrong punishable by death,
— sometimes death of the body, sometimes
death of the soul. How often, too, — perhaps
how much more often — the opposite calam-
ity occurs, when the too eager and willing
senses find themselves responding to a seem-
ingly kindred individual, only to discover
when too late that there could be no harmony
of feeling or understanding. Nature has ar-
ranged that the body shall know its own kith^
and kin, as the mind and soul know theirs,
with an instinct that is imperious and une-
quivocating. It is this possibility of diver-
gence between sense and spirit that works
such havoc in our destinies, unless we learn
at least to try to introduce some rational uni-
son among our correlated but only half recon-
ciled powers through their appropriate and
symmetrical education.
'' But after all," you will ask, " are not folk
born with their characters and temperaments
already formed? Can one change personal-
ity? Can those who are naturally morose
235
ever become cheerful, or the sullen become
sunny of temper? "
It is taking a great deal for granted, per-
haps, to say that these seeming miracles can
be wrought. And yet what else is education,
but a process of forming character and
moulding personality? If education did
nothing but inform the mind it would be
but a doubtful good. The chief function of
life, perhaps, is to change and modulate per-
sonality, — to evoke its beneficent qualities
and restrain its dangerous deflections, to cul-
tivate it, to complete it, to perfect it in poten-
tiality and poise. To doubt the teachableness
of the soul is to be guilty of the ultimate skep-
ticism. You or I may be stolid and inflexible,
tenacious of our own wills, refusing to learn
wisdom of experience or to grow in grace as
we grow in years, but the spirit of man is not
so intractable. Our stolidity may be a matter
of fear or small vanity or dulness of mind.
But the spirit of humanity is, in the long ac-
count, glad, gracious, malleable, fearless, and
236
Ef^t iWtt6(c of 2i(fe
eager. It unfolds itself to seek new knowl-
edge, as the leaves unfold themselves upon the
hills to take the winds of spring.
Would you be counted among the music-
makers of life, among the company of the
joyous and triumphant whom all their fellows
welcome and no destiny can defeat? I know
only one way of attaining to that happy state
of being, if we have it not, — the way in
which everything is accomplished, — and
that is by deliberate endeavour. It requires
most careful procedure throughout the three
distinct though inseparable registers of living.
As the first requisite to tunefulness in a mu-
sical instrument is resonance, so the first re-
quisite to tunefulness in a personality is re-
sponsiveness of character. There is needed
the ready and open spirit, willing and eager
to respond in harmony when played upon by
life, by beauty, by companionship, — glad to
reply with alert appreciation to every kindly
advance, every beneficent influence. We con-
tribute to the music of life or not, as we will.
237
It is first of all a matter of volition and spiri-
tuality. The soulless being could make no
human music.
After the voluntary desire comes the need
of mental attunement, and in this we gain
help by keeping ourselves surrounded by the
masters. The culture of books and art famil-
iarizes us with the best music of life that has
been made throughout the centuries. Wher-
ever there is a fine picture or building or
statue to be seen, or any beautiful product of
craftsman's skill, there is a trace of its crea-
tor's personality, — a record of the music he
could make out of life. The ^neid is not
only the story of the founding of Rome, it is
the musical score of Virgil's noble personal-
ity, left for our happiness and encouragement,
to tell us how serene a strain, how glad and
prosperous a harmony, that exquisite mortal
was capable of, and how well he could accord
with his own world and time. So, too, of
any sincere work of art, — Paradise Lost,
the Sistine Madonna, The Ring and the
238
Srtie Jttttsfc of ISLitt
Book, the famous Ninth Symphony, Whis-
tler's portrait of his mother, the Winged
Victory, the Taj Mahal, — the many thou-
sand vestiges of itself that the joyous creative
impulse has left upon the earth. These are
so many rhapsodies of significant and delight-
ful melodies struck by original composers
from the mighty medium of existence, and
bequeathed to their fellows as possessions of
incalculable value for ever. Their worth
cannot be measured, for their influence is un-
told, and to nothing can we give many hours
more profitably than to their study and enjoy-
ment. Yet must our enjoyment and our study
be without envy or servility, for each one of
us may be, indeed must be, a creator in some
sort. A delightful garden, a lovely home, a
well-served meal, or an arrangement of fresh
flowers in a stone jug, may be our contribu-
tion to the loveliness and happiness of the
world, and serve as our message of joyance
to those around us.
Much has been written of bedside books
239
srtie JWafting of ^tvnonalits
for the late hours of candle-light, — books of
solace and peace suitable to induce rest and
invite sleep to uneasy brains. But there
should be morning books on the same shelves,
volumes of inspiration and tonic cheer for
our waking hours, when the spirit is unstrung
and the mind unattuned. A brave, coura-
geous thought or a happy inspired fancy when
we first open our eyes, strikes a fine key-note
for the soul to vibrate to, and helps us to set
out upon the old road again to a quickstep.
Can one read an essay of Emerson's or a lyric
of Wordsworth's without hearing the fifes
and flutes begin to sound, or turn a page of
Marcus Aurelius without thrilling as to a
bugle-call? And will not a passage from
Isaiah or The Leaves of Grass lift up one's
head like a roll of drums? Surely a day
begun on such a note must come to a more
tranquil, happy, brave and successful conclu-
sion than one begun in a haphazard or dis-
cordant strain. While without this assistance
we might take up the work of the day in a
240
mt mnnit ot Hift
dumb silence or sadly out of tune, by the po-
tent aid of such suggestive themes we should
be enabled to go gladly about our affairs,
making a music of contentment within our-
selves, vibrant, hopeful, and possessed.
There is a third requisite, however, to be
secured, before any harmonious rhythmic
music can issue from these wondrous person-
alities of ours, and that is perfection of phy-
sique. We cannot all have equally beautiful
bodies, but we can all make the utmost of
those we have, and by right care and culture
make them sufficiently wholesome, plastic,
and expressive to serve our needs. Without
such care and training, we shall have only a
marred and uncomely instrument at our com-
mand for the spirit to play upon. The soul
may be never so eager and responsive, the
mind never so receptive and cultivated, they
must still be foiled in the making of the best
music, any vibrant personal melody, if the
body is ill or weak or hampered by restraint,
or restricted by habit. All our exuberance
241
and wisdom must be given a free and normal
physicality through which to express them-
selves before their expression can become ade-
quate, effective, and vibrant, — before the
personality of which they form the inward
part can create its own motif in life. Their
generous, impulsive abandon, their spontane-
ous gladness or sorrow, their impassioned ec-
stasy or doubt, will be stifled and mutilated if
forced to find their only vent through an ill-
conditioned, insensitive or immobile body.
Not even a god could play upon a checked
and broken reed.
All these things are within the reach of
every man and woman to accomplish in some
measure. Any one surely can cultivate a
cheerful responsiveness of spirit. Any one
can own at least one wise book. Any one can
command enough exercise and fresh air and
cold water to ensure bodily health and come-
liness. And yet out of such few and simple
elements as these may the immortal music of
life be evolved, — a little happiness of heart,
242
sri^e Jttttsk of a(fe
a little understanding, and a modicum of care
of these sensitive instruments on which we are
to play.
When some measure of this reconciliatioi
has taken place in any personality, how capa-
ble of delightful melody it becomes, — how
responsive to an innocent and happy abandon!
Then, indeed, is the fine music of life made
possible. Then, indeed, may that thrice for-
tunate individual give thanks to the gods, for
the music-makers in life are superior to cir-
cumstance. Possessed of so lovable a talent,
so indestructible an asset, they are everywhere
welcome for a charm that is never outworn.
Whether they be wise or foolish, calamity
cannot embitter them, nor age render them
unlovely. Having once become thus attun-
able, life plays upon them with all its infi-
nitely variable phases, only to produce new
measures of the infinite harmony. And
through their power of music-making, their
capacity of transmuting every experience into
some intelligible theme, either of gladness or
243
2Ctie Jttal^fng of ^tvuonalits
sorrow, they escape the monotony, the tedious
insignificance of those who are discordant or
mute. A nature in which such an adjustment
has taken place may become as tuneful as an
old violin ; it mellows with years ; so that to
the end of life its ever-enriching tempera-
mental tone gives forth, to wise and gentle
evocation, strains of rarest music.
When two such personalities meet and find
themselves in harmony in all the realms of
being, — unanimous, congenial, and at one in
the delicate register of sense, — so that their
individual melodies may blend and mingle
with perfect freedom and without disparity
or discordance, the greater eternal music of
life begins to be heard in all its purity and be-
witchment. There can then be no jarring nor
disunion in those two fortunate ones, no fatal
blighting conflict between spirit and sense in
either life, to tear it asunder as so many lives
are torn, — no stirring of the blood while the
heart is cold, no leaping of the emotional soul
while the pulses still sleep, and neither infat-
244
sri^e Mnuit of atft
uation nor rapture without the glad, appre-
ciative assent of the vigilant yet amenable
mind. If love is the only source of abandon,
the primal note in every melodious person-
ality, it is also surely abundant sanction and
sufficient fulfilment of the soul's greatest
rhapsodies.
It is easy to recall in human history mem-
orable names of characters who were verily
permeated with the music of life. That, as
a modern instance, was Stevenson's rare dis-
tinction. There was the frailest of mortals,
in no way exceptionally favoured by worldly
circumstance, an invalid all his days, yet abso-
lutely refusing to live without abandon. In
spite of sickness or hard fortune, he would not
dance without a tune, and made music every
hour he was alive. There are myriads like
him unknown to fame, cheery, brave, diligent
souls, who will not succumb to dreariness,
weariness, skepticism, nor despair. It may
only be your Chinese laundryman, the porter
who makes up your berth, the boy who runs
245
your elevator, or the first cabby you pick up
at the curb, who has the magic gift of tuneful
joyousness that, unreasonable as it may seem,
will nevertheless make him a more desirable
acquaintance for the hour than lugubrious
brokers or unctuous divines. And consider,
in comparison (if report be true, poor gentle-
man!), such an inharmonious character as
Carlyle's. It is a pity that so sturdy a soul
should become a byword for crabbed unhap-
piness, but he comes to mind as an example
of the type which is never happy, never makes
music in life. His physical frailties were too
great for him to overcome. A constant strife
between body and soul, fretted by dyspepsia
and railing against fate, make sad personal
discord. He was among those who, for all
their strength, have a mighty handicap to con-
tend against in their own lack of harmony.
The world is full of them, jangling, dissonant
beings, corroded by peevish discouragement,
incapable of evolving any concord in them-
selves and unable to produce any resonant joy-
246
©tie Jtluf^ic of mu
ousness to sweeten their noise or gladden their
silence or in any way heighten the pleasure of
their fellows. For them no task is easy, no
matter how great their genius. Though they
were emperors or prelates, they would still
be merely slaves and drudges of the world,
full of dissonance and resentment, feeling the
very gift of existence to be a bane.
Abandon means fervour, ecstasy, enchant-
ment of the mind, fascination of the will,
enravishment of the senses, vital generosity,
recklessness of spirit, the fearlessness of intel-
ligence. It constitutes the good measure of
life needed for great growth that is the main-
spring of progress, in science, in religion, and
in art. Without some overabundance of im-
pulsive ardour we should only stand still,
having barely enough energy to carry us
through from day to day, from birth to death.
And yet the quality of abandon I am thinking
of is not an attribute only of youth or of an
excess of physical vigour. You may see many
old persons who continually make music in
247
8Cfie JWafefng of ^tvuonnlits
their beings as they sit by the fire all day long
with their reading or their dreams. It is not
that they have never known sorrow ; they may
have borne many grievous burdens; but the
central spirit within them has never been in-
fected with the sullen discontent which makes
happiness for ever impossible. Whatever
evil destiny may have befallen them they have
confronted with fortitude, never acknowledg-
ing the supremacy of hatred or harm, temper-
ing instead of mutilating the fibre of their
being, and so remaining always resonant with
goodness and gaiety and a courage of endur-
ance that no frailty can destroy. They have
never ceased, and need never cease from the
ever welcome music-making of life, though
many of their younger neighbours, perhaps
more fortunate than they, with far less cause
for the lassitude of despondency, may be cod-
dling their moping souls in unbeautiful taci-
turnity.
Possibly these unfortunates never felt what
abandon means, nor ever heard the entrancing
248
STJit JHui^ft Of Hife
music of life calling to them throughout the
world. But as I see such folk living in deso-
late loneliness, dwelling, as it were, in the
silent halls of gloomy exclusion, unlovely and
unloving, harbouring to the last their grudge
against the world, and as I contrast their de-
feat with the happy triumph of those sunny
dispositions who never refrain from sweet-
voiced fervency of enthusiasm even in age, I
shake my head, repeating to myself, " Life
without abandon is a dance without music."
249
It is written in the Book of St. Kavin,
^' The eye for science, the mouth for relig-
ion, and the hand for art."
As the eye is the index of perception, and
the mouth the symbol of desire, so the hand
is typical of developed power and reveals the
skill and efficiency of the personality. As the
eye serves intelligence in the cause of truth,
and the mouth serves the soul in the cause of
goodness, so the hand serves in the making of
beauty. With the eye we observe and reflect.
With the mouth we shape our innermost
yearning, our aspirations, thanksgivings,
dreams, exultations, hopes, and despairs.
With the hand we mould the plastic world
250
cue Sottetff of tiie l^antr
to our will, to give form and permanence to
our ideals.
In no other way is the supremacy of man
so clearly shown as in the possession of hands.
Arts, cities, empires, civilizations are the
work of his hands. With his naked hands he
has remade the world. By the skill of his
hands he holds dominion over the sea, and
makes a garden of the desert. The round
earth is covered with traces of his handiwork,
and history is nothing but a record of his
craftsmanship. Man has grown in justice
and understanding, but in nothing is he
greater than in the embodying of his love and
his thought, — in the fair and meaningful
things he has fashioned to please his imagi-
nation and satisfy his longing.
Mammoth ships plying through the sea
under the stars, titanic engines racing east
and west with their freighted trains, magic
wonders of electric machinery in a hundred
forms, thousands of implements for innumer-
able purposes, all seeming so vast and omnip-
251
otent, and all controlled by the same dimin-
utive, significant hand that contrived them
w^ith such painstaking ingenuity and fondness.
Watch a great steam dredge at work, or a
great steam derrick lifting girder or monolith
into place, with a precision that almost seems
rational and a strength that is like a cosmic
force, and then suddenly realize that it is con-
trolled by a hand of frail flesh and bone held
intelligently on the gear.
To the student of personality the hand is
one of the most interesting and distinctive fea-
tures. One can scarcely call it anything else,
so sensitive is it in its response to emotion, so
expressive and tvpical o^ character. Not only
does it betray its calling and occupation, it
also bears unmistakably the impress of the
personality behind it. Like the face, it is only
a plastic mask through which the individual-
ity speaks and is recognized. Whether or not
there is justification for the more elaborate
and exact pretensions of chiromancy, it offers
252
artie Sorcevff of ttie ?^anlr
sufficiently rich field of study in the general
unmistakable characteristics of the hand.
The hand may be a great beauty of per-
sonal expression or a great blemish. It need
not have ideal shapeliness, size, colour, nor
texture, in order to be lovely, and it may be
most unpleasing in character and expression,
while in size, colour, texture, and shape it is
almost faultless. Many a statically flawless
hand, like many a perfectly formed face, is
beautiful only until it begins to speak, when
its charm vanishes in incongruity and our dis-
appointment makes it seem unlovely or even
repellent. Awkward and inappropriate mo-
tion and gestures unerringly reveal unlovely
causes, — a fact that should be reckoned with
in education.
Pleasing hands can be made or marred at
will. No other feature, except the mouth, is
so controllable, so amenable to development
and to education in expression, so sensitive to
the formative influences of habit. Our eyes
253
change but little and with difficulty, under
the slow process of a humanizing education,
and we have almost the same eyes in maturity
that we had in youth, but we begin to make
our mouth and hands from our earliest years.
So accurate a record of personal habits, pre-
dilections, and propensities is the hand, that
to perfect the expression of any given hand
would be to materially modify the education
of the individual. The hand is most readily
educated, if not to perfection, at least to cor-
rection of its worst habits. And well-edu-
cated hands have ease and dignity and interest
which give them a distinction beyond mere
beauty. However small or large a hand is,
it need never be embarrassed, if its faults have
been corrected by good training.
A supremely competent, adequate, clever
hand is a rare distinction. The hand of the
sculptor, the surgeon, the violinist, how elo-
quently each speaks of its noble artistry. And
the hand of the actor may be half his fortune.
Not long ago I witnessed an amateur per-
254
formance of " The Heir-at-Law," in which
Dr. Pangloss was played admirably by a man
who had the most astonishingly expressive
and well-educated hands I have ever seen on
the stage. He was a teacher of reading by
profession, and in this role showed admirable
talent as an actor. In his hands it amounted
to genius, so convincing were they, so grace-
ful, so ready and inevitable in their gestures.
On the other hand, there are persons into
whose presence one cannot come without be-
ing at once unpleasantly aware of their hands,
which seem aggressive and malign in some
abnormal way, and infect one with an instinc-
tive apprehension.
The aristocracy of the hand is not a mat-
ter of whiteness and inutility, but of adequacy
and finesse. The competent hand of a black-
smith or a carpenter, if it is strong and cun-
ning in its craft, is more goodly to see than
the pale ineffectual hand of idleness and va-
pidity. The self-conscious curlings and atti-
tudinizings of anxious underbred hands are
255
2Cf)r M^'^ina of ^tvuonulits
no help toward elegance. The Chinese, who
as a people have beautiful hands, and set par-
ticular store by the significance of hands, con-
sider white hands generally inelegant and
inefficient, and indicative of crude, immature
racial development. The smooth and shapely
Chinese hand is as carnal, capable, and unim-
passioned as the race itself; while the thin,
nervous, knobby little hands of the Japanese
are characteristic of a people overtrained in
unselfish serviceability.
There is love in the voice, there is under-
standing in the eye, but in the hand there is
a touch of that happy primordial sympathy
out of which human relationships are made.
The hand has not only refashioned the world
into a place more habitable and fair, but daily
it does the bidding of kindliness to make life
itself more glad and easy. It cares for its
children and its helpless, it cherishes those
it loves, it offers welcome to the stranger, and
in the eternal struggle for liberation it turns
back oppression, injustice, and defeat.
256
xm
S'ije ^taUn of ^rt
We talk so much about art nowadays that
the average man in an average mood is apt
to be betrayed into some disgust with the
topic. '^ In the name of common sense, what
is all this pother about? Our grandparents
didn't talk about art, and they got along very
well. Isn't there a lot of feeble cant regard-
ing the whole subject? Shouldn't we be just
as well off if no one ever heard of art, but
went about the wholesome tasks of every day
in the good old cheerful, thoughtless fashion,
without any doubts or discussions of the mat-
ter? "
Unfortunately we cannot do that if we
would. We are born into a time of unrest
257
and agitation, when all matters are under
trial to be sifted for their worth. We must
be skeptics and experimenters without stabil-
ity of creed or certainty of procedure in the
process of learning. The complexity of life
has begotten a perplexity of thought, and the
older ways of another century are no longer
feasible. However weary we may grow of
argument and analysis, of canvassing new
projects in religion, in sociology, in education,
in science, in philosophy, or in art, the burden
of quest is upon us. Without recreancy to an
inherited trust, we cannot abandon the search
for truth. What the nineteenth century be-
gan in its splendid w^ork in science, we must
push to symmetrical proportions in religion
and art, that is to say in sentiment and in life,
as well as we can.
Art is a great pleasure. It may have what-
ever other obligations you will; it may be
asked to edify and instruct and ennoble, to
espouse great causes, to decorate proud and
barbarous civilizations, to express premoni-
8rj|e Heatjen of itrt
tions of the divine, or to serve the humblest
craftsman in his need; but still its first con-
cern will always be to render satisfaction
to inarticulate but imperious cravings for
beauty. The longing for aesthetic fitness and
the enjoyment of it are instincts as deep and
primitive as hunger itself, and they have been
no less real in their effect upon life. To se-
cure for them their due satisfaction is not only
a legitimate aim, but one of the most delight-
ful activities to which we can turn our eager
energy. One who is a lover of art in any form
is a devotee of a pure and ancient cult, which
superstition and bigotry and the pedantic
wrangling of the schools have not been able
to annihilate. He is partaker in an imme-
morial universal religion, whose doctrines are
renewed by every breath of the sweet wind
of heaven, whose traditions are drawn from
the twelve corners of the world, and whose
invisible altars are fed by the fires of an inex-
tinguishable ardour.
Ah, no, we are wrong, to grow impatient
259
over continued discussion of so great a theme!
There are sober considerations in the subject
which must appeal to every sane being, and
which lead to the belief that a just under-
standing of all that art implies would do more
than any one thing to increase the happiness
of men. Not a knowledge of the fine arts
merely, but the knowledge and practice of art
in every province of daily living; not only a
cultivation of one or more of the arts, whether
fine or industrial, but the habitual use of art
in affairs everywhere at all hours. A rational
art of life is the consummate flowering of
human endeavour. To cultivate it may well
be our persistent care, since it will make, to
any personality, so rich and incomparable a
return.
An art of living, however, is as it were a
generalization of art, and calls into execution,
through conduct, those qualities of mind and
temper and equipment which every good ar-
tist must possess. A supreme artist is an artist
not alone in his painting or his music, but in
260
srjje aeatien of art
his every act and undertaking. He will have
learned from the pursuit of his chosen calling
such a love of perfection, such a sense of or-
der, such an appreciation of aptness and pro-
portion, that he will make all of his life as
harmonious and lovely as his work. Some
persons, indeed, have this passion for perfec-
tion in the conduct of daily life, this genius
for the art of living, so fully developed that
they are not impelled to find a vent for their
creative talents in the pursuit of any one of
the specific arts. But whether one be an artist
in conduct or in clay, the characteristics re-
quired and fostered, and the principles ma-
terialized by artistry, are much the same. It
is a matter of devotion to spirit and outlook,
to inspiration and aspiration. The real artist
delights in perfect execution and finds happy
satisfaction in adjusting means to ends, in
finding adequate expression through any me-
dium, and is never satisfied with anything ill
done. " Only the best is good enough," must
be his uncompromising motto.
261
Do you think it would be an exaggeration
to say that most of the faults of modern civili-
zation spring from a lack of artistic appreci-
ation? Why this endless strife between those
who have and those who have not? Why,
but for the fact that we all make mistakes
about happiness, supposing that it must de-
pend upon possessions, whereas it rests much
more upon individual ability to discriminate
wisely and to live selectively? Our incorri-
gible mania for wealth comes from this mis-
apprehension. The most inveterate and typ-
ical money-getter is notoriously a man of few
resources within himself and of little essential
culture. Why shouldn't he chase his golden
prize? He knows nothing better to do with
his time, no other way to seek necessary pleas-
ure of living. Poor fellow, he is often enough
desperately in need of a little real happiness,
of some touch of real gladness which he can-
not buy. He is often enough as simple and
kindly as he is capable, and his chief error is
one of ignorance. Having the crude idea,
262
2Cfie Heatien of art
common to uncultivated minds, that in order
to enjoy life one only need own the earth and
have all its pleasures at command, he does
not find out until too late that to own is not
inevitably to command. He has not discov-
ered that enjoyment does not depend wholly
upon good fortune, but is equally a matter of
temperament and character. He does not
know what the artist in life could tell him^
that happiness, while it is naturally evoked
by pleasure, is essentially the product of per-
sonality, and results only from a fortunate
adjustment between the soul and its surround-
ings.
This being so, it is the part of simple wis-
dom to care for that adjustment. Such a task
is eminently a matter requiring the most com-
prehensive and subtle art; and when once this
possibility is realized, it will no longer seem
sensible to give wastefully of one's days, one's
health and honesty and humanity, to the ac-
cumulation of possessions. It will come to
the mind like a breath of inspiration, that
263
every moment of activity, every hour of efifort,
may be caused to yield an adequate gladness
without anxiety, and that conduct from day
to day may be made a fine art which shall
dignify and ennoble life under whatever cir-
cumstances. The inward triumph of the
spirit, its native delight in all simple unex-
travagant beauty, will then begin to make it-
self felt, — the elation of the artist, an uplift-
ing of the heart in joyousness such as Words-
worth meant, when he wrote in his poem
about the daffodils, —
** For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood.
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills.
And dances with the daffodils."
There would come to any one who honestly
tried to master the haphazard trend of events
by confronting them with a rational skill, the
same satisfaction which an artist must experi-
ence in seeing his work grow from chaos to
264
8ri|t aeaUen of Slrt
ordered and meaningful loveliness beneath
his hand. And conversely there would come
to him who diligently cultivated an apprecia-
tion of the fine arts an informing sense of pur-
pose and proportion, and a love of perfection,
which could not but make themselves felt in
every undertaking of that sentient personal-
ity.
This is no more than the object at which
all culture aims, — the imparting to person-
ality of a power to deal with life on fair
terms. To be wholly without culture is to be
wholly at the mercy of circumstances, incapa-
ble of securing happiness by any wise means,
incapable even of making a creditable liveli-
hood. For culture must be considered a wide
term, applicable to our most elementary ca-
pacities as to our most refined. To be culti-
vated is, not to possess extraordinary learning,
but to possess a personality adequately
equipped to appreciate and meet the demands
of life successfully, — not only with the prim-
itive success which means a comfortable or
265
luxurious living, but with the higher suc-
cess which implies a sanity and joyousness of
life.
Through symmetrical culture we attain
the point of view of the happiest and wisest
ones of the earth, wherever they have left
record of their gladness or wisdom. Through
a cultivated acquaintance with art in all its
works of beauty we come to be infused with
the enthusiasm, the insight, the sincerity, the
glad and prospering spirit of the masters
great and goodly, who saw what was best in
life and had the incomparable gift of making
that boon apparent to others. So the beauti-
ful products o*f art, pictures, statues, operas,
dramas, poems, churches and houses, old rugs
and furniture, silverware, jewels, carvings,
tapestries, costume, when they are eminently
excellent, become so many foci for the spread
of that happy state of being which the orig-
inal artists experienced in creating them. All
who encourage and educate themselves to be-
come appreciators of such things, to know
266
?rj|e aeaben of Mvt
their value and feel their influence, undergo
a change and refinement of character which
a crude manner of living, however strenuous
or extravagant, can never exert. They are
able to add to the physical and fundamental
power, with which primitive life endows us,
the loftier and subtler attributes of a culture
both intellectual and moral which it is the
chief aim of any civilization to bestow. In
so doing they become initiates, or at least nov-
ices, in the joyous cult of creative art; they
come to understand the satisfaction which
artists take in perfection, and to attempt the
development of it through daily affairs.
Specialized artists are not as a class the
happiest of mortals. But that is because they
fail to relate their ideals naturally to life,
rather than because they are vowed to the
exacting standards of perfection. Unhappi-
ness comes upon them, as it would upon any
one else, in consequence of folly and indiffer-
ence and wilfulness and mistake; and their
devotion to art^ which is often held to be the
267
2rfir iWaftfitfl of J^rrsonaUts
cause of their misfortunes, is in reality the
only mitigating factor in their lives. When
an artist makes a ruin of his career, it is not
art that is to blame, but his own bungling
irrationality. It would be truer to say that
he missed happiness, because his art was too
partial and wayward and short-sighted.
Great artistry, such indeed as does not often
make itself manifest, if it should take posses-
sion of a man, would not dissipate itself in
unreasonable creations of empty and fantastic
beauty, but would permeate the man's whole
nature, touching his mind as well as his spirit
and his senses, and making him sane and
happy as well as inspired.
We need not look on the artistic tempera-
ment, therefore, with Philistine supercilious-
ness. For in itself it is a wholly excellent
quality, needing only to be balanced by some
sober traits of common sense of which the
practical man claims the monopoly. Prac-
tical common sense avoids many disasters and
insures useful creature comforts. By itself,
268
8Ciie aeatitn of ^tt
however, unmixed with warmer and more
spirited characteristics, it may be a very bleak
and joyless equipment. It needs, for its per-
fecting, the complementary strength of ar-
dour, the touch of fearless elation, unspoiled
faith, and imagination, a sensitiveness to
beauty and an aspiring loving-kindness, that
are perennial. To be effective for happiness,
common sense must be winged with a touch
of artistry. When once this truth is realized
it will never be undervalued nor discarded.
The leaven of art in life glorifies human
effort and achievement by infusing beauty
through every undertaking, by instilling can-
dour in the mind, and by filling the heart with
a gladness that could not have been foretold.
Art is a paper lantern, perishable but indis-
pensable, whose flame is goodness, whose light
is truth, whose sides are patterned with shapes
of beauty, and whose office is to illumine and
make festal for us the rough and devious road
to perfection. Without art we must remain
sombre and dispirited wanderers, distracted
269
amid the mazes of a meaningless and hostile
world. With it we may do much to unravel
a significance from the dark oracles of fate,
and render existence not only bearable but
biddable, glad, and fair. Art in its widest
sense covers all provinces of life, and with
religion and science forms a sort of philo-
sophic trinity representing all that man may
do or feel or know. But just as many men's
emotions and thoughts never rise to the level
of religion and science, so most men's acts and
work rarely rise to the level of art. In
achievement art gives the final hint of magic
which differentiates a man from a machine,
— that evidence of variable human mind
which no automaton can ever reproduce.
The glory of art is only that it makes earth
more habitable and humanity more divine.
The business of art is to afford joyance.
When it fails of this, it is bankrupt altogether,
being unable to meet its legitimate obliga-
tions. Since few can live as joyously as they
would, what a shame it is that great gifts of
270
STfje Hea^ben of art
expression should ever be wasted on heinous
and joyless subjects! Think of the hideous
and revolting plays with which an impover-
ished dramatic art overloads our stage in an
attempt to stimulate sensation, regardless of
beauty, regardless of the whole truth, and
more than all regardless of that inward core
of human love which is only goodness under
another name! Good art is not an expensive
thing, weighed in the scales of the counting-
house. Yet it is priceless in that it cannot be
bought with any amount of money alone.
There must always some love go with its
price. And while it becomes one of the chief
requisites of a happy life to surround our-
selves with art, that does not mean that we
must have costly trappings and outfit and ex-
pensive homes. A modest apartment on
which thought and care and taste have been
lavished with loving generosity may be a
beautiful home where one is thankful to be
made welcome; while across the Park some
monstrous pile of stone may lift itself against
271
the sky, a monument of pathetic ambition, a
warehouse full of costly and unlovely mer-
chandise, an offence to taste and an affront to
moderation.
Good taste is no respecter of prices; it
knows values, appreciates worth, and reveres
beauty wherever it finds it. Nor does it ever
grudge to pay the utmost cost for beauty in
patience, toil, painstaking, and devotion. It
will gladly lavish a whole day in rearrang-
ing a room, matching a colour scheme, or
finding an inevitable cadence. He is but a
slovenly artist in letters who will not wait a
week for the irresistible word, if need be,
though knowing all the while that genius
would have found it on the instant. Taste,
which plays our good angel in matters of
beauty, is as scrupulous as conscience, as un-
erring as reason, and guides our senses in the
disputable ways between the unlovely and the
desirable, just as those sensitive, incorrupti-
ble monitors of the soul and mind guide us
in the regions of conduct and of thought.
272
It is no sign of good taste, however, to pur-
sue some petty art to the exclusion of all other
obligations, but indicates the old false notion
that art is something elegant and genteel con-
ferring a superiority on those who follow it.
Whereas the truth is we should all be artists,
artists in our own life and artists in our own
work, however inconspicuous that work may
be. An artist is any one who glorifies his
occupation. It is no evidence of artistic apti-
tude to spend days and years in playing the
ineffectual amateur, while all personal af-
fairs are allowed to run as they will; it is
rather an indication of a self-indulgent, ir-
rational nature. An instinct for the art of
living is greater than an overemphasized
single talent or personal preference, and its
obligations are more primary, more impor-
tant, and more closely bound up with the
problem of happiness. Creative art can have
no character nor value nor beauty, if the life
that nourishes it has not first its due order and
significance and seemliness. The tent must
273
2ri^e M^^itiS of ^tvnon^lits
be pitched and the fire lighted before we can
expect the goddess. To muddle or neglect
the first duties of life is fundamentally and
to the highest degree inartistic, since it throws
us back into a chaos from which neither
beauty nor joyance can spring, and where the
creative impulse, however genuine, must
eventually perish of morbid sickness.
Literary and artistic folk are almost pro-
verbial for carelessness in dress and demean-
our and the small amenities of life, and often
think it a mark of distinction to be so. Mag-
nifying their own art, often with a praise-
worthy singleness of devotion, they forget that
the art of life is a larger matter, including
their own particular craft, imposing its limits
and reservations, as it bestows its facilities and
advantages, on all alike. Painters often dress
unnecessarily unbecomingly, though their
taste is fully trained to befitting appropriate-
ness in colour and costume in any key of cost
or requirement. Poets and writers, whose
chief concern is wisdom, are often among
274
2Ci)t Htni^tn of ^xt
the most unwise of men in the conduct of their
own lives. While women, who one would
suppose might always be credited with per-
sonal nicety and loveliness, often seem to
fancy that absorption in music or letters or
painting gives them the liberty to be disor-
derly, distrait, untidy, and irresponsible.
It is such false procedure and thoughtless
reasoning that bring art and ideals into dis-
repute, and cause havoc in the lives of so
many artists. A sober realization of the ne-
cessity and desirableness of an art of individ-
ual living would make such mistaken over-
emphasis impossible. The great thing is to
keep one's mettle from becoming distem-
pered, and this is not to be done by evading
and ignoring the requirements and desirabil-
ities of actual life, but by meeting and master-
ing them. To overindulge an artistic bent to
the limit of its capacity is to induce a self-
dissatisfaction, a mordant fretfulness of spirit,
and ultimate disappointment; while the mod-
ifying and regulating of special capability,
275
through the successful handling of practical
concerns, affords a training which is most
likely to insure a masterly success in the
chosen art.
Art as a revivifying element in life plays a
part similar to nature's in her tonic recreative
influence. We must dwell in the sun and
open air, within sound of the trees and be-
neath the touch of the sweet wind and the
rain, shunning too much of the sedentary, de-
teriorating life of houses, if we would grow
sound and glad and sane. Just as truly we
must not be wholly given over to out-of-doors,
nor be satisfied with maintaining a primitive
animal wholesomeness. Life for the modern
is not so simple as that. There are inerad-
icable hungers of the mind to be satisfied, pas-
sionate desires of the soul for legitimate grati-
fication in creative art, unconquerable and
goodly aesthetic impulses which must not be
defrauded of their development. Let us have
an ample life in the open, to keep us sane and
strong and sweet; but life in art also, to keep
276
srije aeaben of att
us interested, growing, civilized, and humane.
Only under influences tending to cultivate
symmetrically the body and the intelligence
can the spirit be most bravely fostered and
happiness most surely emerge.
277
^m^mt aittr Jiuiftret
It is easy to be an impractical dreamer.
There have been seers and prophets in all ages,
but there have also been ineffectual vision-
aries who wasted their lives in idle speculation
and moody discontent, lost among the clouds.
It is easy, too, to be absorbed wholly in prac-
tical affairs and put dreams aside altogether,
as many men do from sheer faintness of heart
at the prospect of unremitting toil which ex-
istence demands. But it is not easy to be both
inspired and practical at the same time, for
that implies a nice balance of appreciation
under the supervision of an unbiassed judg-
ment.
It is easy to build castles in the air; one
278
may spend whole days in that seductive occu-
pation; and it is almost equally easy to lay
one brick upon another without giving
thought to anything except the mortar be-
tween them. But he is master of his world
who can both plan and achieve, who keeps his
plans within the bounds of the achievable, and
brings his achievements up to the require-
ments of his plans. His castles, though pro-
jected in Spain, he sees reproduced, perhaps
after long years and perdurable patience,
from the solid ground before his eyes.
In '' The Last Ride Together " you may
read:
** What hand and brain went even paired ?
What heart alike conceived and dared ?
What act proved all its thought had been ? "
And it is true and natural that some must be
preeminently designers, and others preemi-
nently builders; yet each must gain a modi-
cum of the capacity of the other, for the best
efficiency and cooperation, and for rendering
the best service to the world. We must spe-
279
STije J«afefnfl of ^tvuonulits
cialize, indeed, for the finest productivity in
the liberal arts and industries. But it is not
good for a man to specialize so closely and
excessively as to lose his breadth of under-
standing and sympathy, and impair the nor-
mal completeness of his own nature and de-
velopment. For after all, the arts exist for
man, and not man for the arts. And the full-
est and finest art of all, the art of life, de-
mands that w^henever our pursuits begin to
w^ork more harm than benefit, we should
change or amend them.
When it comes to the consideration of
standards of personal culture and precepts of
conduct, the sanest criterion must be to keep
our ideals and actions in close accord. Ideals
are good, but they are not all equally good,
and those are best for our life here and now
which can be realized in some degree by pos-
sible effort. It is a dangerous habit to in-
dulge in dreams which can never be accom-
plished — as if a mariner on the Atlantic
should occupy his time in plotting courses
280
among the South Sea Islands. There can
never be any radical divergence between the
different elements of a man's nature and life
v^ithout injury therefrom. To lead one life
in dream and another in reality is a fatal du-
plicity, innocent though it seem.
It is in youth that we are most subject to
the seductions of vague, magnificent and elu-
sive ideals. We are easily carried away by
the splendour of looming possibilities, sus-
tained by enormous ambitions, and impatient
of the plodding prosaic measures of our sires.
We scoff lightly at their methods of prudence
and hold practicality generally in imperious
contempt. Life is all poetry to our inexperi-
ence, and we are very willing to take its intox-
ication of beauty, without asking for its fun-
damental structure of reasonableness and ex-
cellence. Whatever is humdrum or rational
seems to partake too much of the earth for
our fastidious fancy. We chafe at caution,
demur at the authority of tradition, and are
281
eager to disrupt the world in the confident
belief that we could
" Remold it nearer to the heart's desire."
As we mature, however, we learn a juster
estimate of things; we perceive that, however
faulty this world may be, it is the one we have,
and it is folly not to make the best of it. To
that end we come to value ideals in propor-
tion to their applicability to life. We see that
they are of little use unless they can be made
practical aids to daily life, and we begin to
select from our vasty dreams those which can
be translated into action or art. We learn
that the soul must condescend to live, and that
its daily task is the merging of the ideal in the
actual, and the gradual transforming of the
actual into the ideal. Dreamful youth grows
aware that this is the sanction of life; lays
aside its noble scorn of the practical; submits
itself to the stern inevitable law of rational-
ity; and pours its energies, not into the pur-
suit of vain and futile imaginings, but into the
282
accomplishment of possible and immediate
betterment. As Thoreau remarked, youth
gets together the materials for a bridge to the
moon, and maturity uses them to build a
wood-shed.
In thus resigning our too exclusive occupa-
tion with dreams we are not recreant to any
lofty obligation; we are, in fact, progressing
upon the pathway of perfection. We are
merely discriminating among our ideals, dis-
carding the less useful, in order that the more
valuable may be cultivated and realized.
The garden of our being needs careful weed-
ing and thinning out and keeping in order,
just as a flower bed does. If the story of the
cosmos shows any intelligible significance or
trend or purpose, it is surely this — a constant
embodying of thoughts in actions, a constant
attempt to crown longing with fulfilment, a
continuous and unflagging effort to bring
about the realization of ideals. This is the
one strand of revelation which runs through
all history of nature and man, and we are only
283
2CJ)e M^UitiQ of ^tvuonnlitp
in close relationship with universal tenden-
cies when we are engaged in some such em-
ployment — in putting our convictions into
practice, in making our dreams come true.
Whatever there is of beauty in the world
must have been imagined before it was
wrought; whatever there is of truth must
have been postulated before it was verified;
whatever there is of good must have been de-
sired before it was brought about. And what-
ever there is to be of these things in the future
for the benefit of men can only come to pass
in the same way, by being imagined first and
then made actual.
" All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good, shall exist.
Not its semblance, but itself,"
says Browning; and we are not properly men
nor women until we give ourselves without
reserve to the furthering of that great cosmic
scheme, adding our energies to the energy of
the universe, in helping beauty to be born,
and knowledge to appear, and the longing
284
spirit to find happiness and satisfaction in
creative activity and growth.
Nature herself produces phenomena with
a seemingly wasteful prodigality, but we have
hardly her time or resource at our command,
and so we must economize our endeavours
and not spend too many hours in weaving pat-
terns of ineffectual dream. Many a man
misses success only by a hair's-breadth, so lit-
tle it takes to deflect destiny and turn good
fortune into defeat. He may be full of kind-
liness and unselfish ambitions and splendid
imaginings, and yet never have realized the
futility of a life given over to contemplation
devoid of deeds. He spends hours in musing
upon schemes of happiness and perfection,
only to feel the profound dissatisfaction
which must come with a surfeit of inaction.
He grows more and more timid and distrust-
ful of his powers, the more he abstains from
energizing. He gives his will no exercise,
and falls daily into a state of feverish hesita-
tion or supine despondency. He deludes him-
285
STfje JHaftinfl of ^tv^onuUts
self with childish dreams of unaccomplish-
able greatness, while all about him lie actual
benefits and possibilities only waiting to be
utilized. He misses the substance of life in
reaching for the shadow, and passes joyless
years simply because he does not know where
joy resides. The materials from which hap-
piness can be built are ready to his hand, only
needing an intelligent will to put them in
place; but he is too absorbed in contemplat-
ing the plan of his impalpable architecture
to pay heed to the realities of construction.
So his whole life crumbles in failure for want
of industry and a sense of values and propor-
tion.
The fate of the man without ideals, on the
other hand, is hardly more to be envied. He
is so engrossed in the execution of business or
afifairs that he takes no time to look upon his
work, to question whether it is good or not,
he brings to it no spring of delight and but
a petty ambition ; he has no thought beyond
the gain of the moment; he Is too dull to see
286
that his work can be anything more than mere
drudgery, or that he himself is not the mere
sport of cruel fate. Without a glint of the
divine dream of perfection, he can hardly be
entrusted to execute the commonest task as it
should be executed, while for large enter-
prises he is sadly unfitted. But I must think
that such men are not as common as we might
suppose, and that there are really few who
are not illumined at times by fitful gleams of
inspiration.
There are many, however, belonging to a
third class, who have both industry and imag-
ination, a genius for practical activity as well'
as for ideals. And it will sometimes happen
that these characters, aware of two diverse
trends of nature in themselves, may attempt
to dissever these two tendencies, and to lead
two lives, one of every-day prosaic affairs,
and one of lawless fancy, expecting the unreal
splendours of the one to compensate them for
the actual difficulties, disorder, and discour-
agement of the other. It is a similarly pa-
287
thetic fallacy that leads us to imagine a
heaven where the ordinary activities of the
world do not obtain, where all our human
powers are to be in some mysterious way laid
aside without detracting from our capacity
for enjoyment, where we are to dwell in a
state of passive beatitude, yet without any op-
portunity to employ those energies and capac-
ities whose exercise forms our only happiness
in this world.
The hopeless incongruity of this idea does
not strike us, nor does it often occur to us to
emparadise the present, as a certain good, and
let the future take care of itself. Yet the
purest satisfaction to be found in life lies in
bringing our best dreams to pass, — in giving
useful form and timely existence to what we
have imagined of good and fair. This is the
service of the true idealist, the heroic dreamer,
the man worthy to dwell in a world of rich
possibilities, in fellowship with the indom-
itable designers-and-builders of the immemo-
rial past and the future that is to be.
288
tEijt Mi0 of MannttB
That " Manners make the man " is a say-
ing with truth deeper than mere common-
place observation in its sound philosophy.
Neither Chesterfield himself, that paragon of
deportment, nor the incomparable Barney
McGee, in his
" Chesterfield's way with a touch of the Bowery,'*
can be imagined without the potent manners
that were natural and characteristic and
memorable in them. For good manners can-
not be donned nor laid aside like a coat.
Whether ceremonious or simple, they are the
expressive and appropriate garment and pro-
tection of personality; and it is one of the
289
^i)t J«afefn0 of J?ttfiionalU»
tests for them at their best that they are ha-
bitual and can never be misjudged as being
assumed or affected. The least touch of affec-
tation or insincerity is fatal to their value.
To have bad manners or '' no manners " is to
announce oneself a boor; but to use false
manners is to betray sad ineptitude.
When manners are real and actually reveal
the inner personality, how^ mighty they are!
So potent are they, indeed, that wg are often
carried away by them, and our judgment is
dazzled by our enthusiasm, in response to the
sv^ay they exercise over the senses of common
humanity. The might of manners is as great
as the majesty of mind or the supremacy of
soul.
There is no denying the palpable pleasure
of excellent manners, their ease, their advan-
tage, their charm and grace and economy, and
the distinction they confer upon the plainest
dealing. But a headlong and headstrong age,
devoted to achievement for mere achieve-
ment's sake, is apt to consider them superflu-
290
ous after all — a mark of lightness and arti-
ficiality, if not of effeminacy. Our ingrown
virtues are prone to arrogance and an over-
weening self-reliance, and are too ready to
discount the veritable though subtle power
which manners possess. Truculent merit, as-
sured of its own unassailable honesty, and re-
enforced perhaps by an abundance of physical
vigour, scorns to employ any suavity of de-
meanour, any graciousness or tact in present-
ing itself, for fear of seeming to concede an
atom of its own angular integrity.
The mistake is not an uncommon nor an
incomprehensible one, but it is a grave error
none the less. For manners are not an arti-
fice, but an art of true behaviour, inherent in
all procedure, and as clearly related to fine
feeling and wise purpose as speech is related
to thought. They form the very embodiment
of personality when it seeks for social expres-
sion, and are every whit as essential as good
intention or intelligence. Manners are to
ethics what the shell is to the sea-urchin, not
291
merely a domicile to be changed at will, but
a structural part of the very being, — an out-
ward formation at once protecting and identi-
fying the individual within. They interpret
our meaning and transmit our emotions even
more truly than words, thus making possible
for the spiritual prisoner in the flesh a life
of interesting and pleasurable relationships.
No one is insignificant who has distinguished
manners. And no one need be misunderstood
who will make his own manners expressive
of his meanings.
Manners, if we will cultivate them as they
deserve, give us the means of escaping from
the doom of miserable loneliness, unintelli-
gence and brutality which would otherwise
be ours, and which is the fate of all repressed
and thwarted beings. They are sanctioned
not only by a code of courtesy and considera-
tion for others, but even more by the authentic
joyous freedom which they offer ourselves.
The master of good manners is everywhere
welcome for his service. Awkward situations
292
©tie MiSftt of JWanntrs
vanish at his approach, embarrassments are
removed, and the air is cleared as if by elec-
tric magic. Such an influential force is in
itself no small asset in any personal account.
Far deeper, however, than this obvious social
power, and much more permanently valuable,
is the serene poise and inward balance of
spirit, the glad sense of capability and satis-
faction, which must always accompany the
possession of good manners and their scrupu-
lous practice.
In the last analysis, to live without manners
would be as detrimental to the soul as it
would be to the body to live without exercise.
They form a legitimate medium for the activ-
ity of our spiritual selves, just as necessary and
just as adequate as the world of work and play
is for the activity of our physical powers.
And while manners without an intelligent
morale are indeed but a lantern without a
candle, the noblest morality without compe-
tent manners to convey its beneficent purpose
can be but an ineffectual light.
293
Sije iHaftiufl of J^ersonalitj?
There are many who live like dark lan-
terns all their lives, bearing about with them
a store of illuminating knowledge which they
never show. They are often of excellent abil-
ity and irreproachable habits, but without
elasticity, generosity, vivacity, or any accus-
tomed power of self-expression. They may
be philosophers, scientists, farmers, or of any
trade or occupation. It is not a question of
calling, but of culture and character. Born
perhaps with a naturally shrinking or sullen
disposition, that unfortunate tendency has
never been corrected in them by an adequate
cultivation of pliancy, courtesy, and ease.
For lack of that liberalizing freedom which
manners bestow, they are never at home in
their environment, but are either self-con-
sciously excited or morose, without ever
knowing where the cause of much of their
unhappiness lies. Careers are often marred
and stunted for want of a sufficient and cov-
eted means of expression for admirable pow-
ers. Disappointed people, not realizing what
294
this lack is, are filled with wonder as they see
themselves gradually outstripped by their in-
feriors, persons of less force, less intelligence
and less aspiration, but expressing better what
they are and what they want.
Even more to be regretted is the case of
those who deliberately despise manners and al-
together discount their value, who find them-
selves well placed in the world, with well-
mannered people all about them, and yet from
a mere exaggeration of the ego, or from a lack
of comprehension of life, or from an inborn
defect of taste and the delicacy of the artist,
insist that rough-and-ready is always well
enough, and honesty of purpose need take no
account of the prejudices and sensibilities
through which it has to take its way. Many
a man has wrecked a brilliant career and nul-
lified all his own great efforts solely by disre-
gard of good manners. What to do to ensure
success he knew very well ; why to do it he
also knew; but that how it was to be accom-
plished was of equal consequence he did not
295
8r]^e JHa^ftfng of JJetrsonalftg
know at all. Yet they symbolize a trinity of
conduct, these three small words, and indicate
a science, a religion, and an art of life, no one
of which is greater or less than the other.
What are good manners? How are they
to be enlisted, and what is the secret of com-
manding so enviable a possession? To be
without them is to be unequipped in any com-
pany and to act as a discordant and disquiet-
ing, if not an actually disrupting, element.
To have them in perfection is to possess the
faculty of putting oneself in harmonious rela-
tion to all persons and circumstances, and of
abandoning oneself to the spontaneous re-
quirement of any occasion. Not to be anxious
for oneself and so become self-conscious, re-
strained and embarrassed, nor to be violent
or effusive and so embarrassing to others, but
to yield to time and place and situation what-
ever they may demand in order to make the
occasion happy and free; in some such mood
as that lie the sources of good manners, of
296
t!tfft Jll(gi|t of M^nntvn
courteous bearing, and the effective presenta-
tion of personality.
How then, you ask, can the day be carried
by one whose preference and best judgment
are pitted against the judgment and prefer-
ence of ten others, each as much entitled to
consideration as oneself? Not by bullying
and self-insistence, for that would only whet
their opposition. Not by palpable truckling
and insincere concessions, for these would
only win contempt. Better, by an even regard
for the point at issue and a well-mannered
devotion to impersonal right.
Those remarkable women who make them-
selves memorable in the minds of their con-
temporaries and in history by their social
power, who hold their salons, charm their
guests, delight and sway their friends with
such incomparable skill, never accomplish
it, you may be sure, by worrying about them-
selves. One drop of self-consciousness would
annul their magic. Such leaders must yield
297
with a happy abandon to the spirit of every
occasion, shaping and controlling it with as
subtle a mastery and as essential a genius as
any other artist bestows upon his creations.
How great and unsuspected are many of the
difficulties they must meet and surmount, yet
how charming and apparently easy are the
triumphs they secure!
It is not for them to sit by and criticize in
passive enjoyment. They have no time to
worry whether or no their own toilette is un-
rivalled, nor to sulk if the soup is not hot
enough, nor to flurry over details. The spirit
of the hour must engross all their attention
and effort from instant to instant. All petty
mishaps must be settled before or after the
occasion. While the function is in progress
it demands all the mettle of the successful
hostess to keep the atmosphere alive and the
interest free. A canoeman in a rapid has no
time to worry about the colour of his hunting-
shirt, nor to fret because the tobacco was left
at the last camping-place; his wits are busy
298
8rj)e JHfflijt of JWannets
enough avoiding the dangers that are strewn
thick about him; hidden ledges, jagged rocks,
sweeping undercurrents, and climbing waves
absorb all his attention and prove or disprove
his skill.
To forget oneself in the larger interest of
the event, to be capable of sincere and serv-
iceable abandonment to the exigency of the
moment, this is the secret of good manners.
In heroic cases how impressive it is! What
a large part of the power of all great men
have been their manners! The traditions of
Alexander, Hannibal, Napoleon, Pericles,
Dante — of most of the worthies of old or
later time — teem with instances of the com-
pelling potency of apt and unequivocal man-
ner. Such men had the art of doing things,
as well as the inclination and foresight. They
knew the importance of method, and never
dreamed of depending on force or intelli-
gence alone. Good manners are infectious
and help our dearest wishes and ideals to
spread and germinate in hosts of other per-
299
sonalities unconsciously in a primitive way,
unattainable by any mere argument however
unanswerable or any compulsion however
overwhelming. Our logic may be flawless,
our will indomitable, even events themselves
all in our favour, and still success in any en-
deavour will be most difficult if we have not
the saving grace of a competent manner to
supplement our purposes and execute our
cherished plans.
There is no faculty more indispensable to
success in the intricate diplomacy of life than
the power of fine abandon. It helps us to
yield to the inevitable without a grouch. If
we miss our train, let us amuse ourselves by
watching the crowd until the next one leaves.
When fate blocks the highroad it is idle to
sit down peevishly in the dust; better take to
a circuitous footpath at once and enjoy the
flowers we would otherwise have missed.
The abandon which underlies good man-
ners is more than mere self-effacement, for it
requires a positive appreciation of the deci-
300
sive claim of the moment and an unreluctant
giving of one's best self to that inexorable
demand. It implies a capacity not only for
unselfishly yielding petty individual prefer-
ence, but for generally and unfeignedly ap-
preciating and furthering a common cause,
and is an ennobling trait never to be found
in mean or calculating characters. The talent
for behaviour varies in races as in individuals,
and lends to those who possess it an irresist-
ibly endearing charm. It is a source, rather
than a product, of civilization, emancipating
the heart and liberalizing the mind.
Some of the most prominent nations seem
to be conspicuously deficient in the distinc-
tion of good manners, while others far more
primitive appear to have them in an eminent
degree. One cannot help thinking of the
Latin peoples, with their inherent grace of
doing, as conspicuously proficient in this re-
gard, in comparison with nations of other
stocks, less volatile and less alert. The man-
ners of Old Spain are proverbial, and many
301
^ftt iHlamng of J^etsonalfts
a traveller has felt in modern Italy or France
a charm of gracious manners that compen-
sated for many inconveniences.
An aptitude for good manners may appear
as unmistakably among the illiterate as among
the most cultivated. The Negro, for exam-
ple, has an almost incomparable genius for
manners. The interest which the men and
women of that race take in ceremonious cour-
tesy, in kindly expression, in the small amen-
ities that make up, after all, so much of pleas-
urable life, in social behaviour and personal
diplomacy, is a most marked and lovable
trait. To '' forget your manners " is with
them a serious imputation, and we may profit-
ably emulate their gay and spontaneous ease,
their dramatic sincerity and politic grace.
Have we not all known coloured people
whose manners put our own to shame? As
a child, I myself had a Negro nurse in the
North, a tall young woman, an aristocrat of
her race, whose careful speech and courtly
manner I remember most vividly, though I
302
sriie illf0i)t of JHannets
fear I have often fallen short of the example
she constantly set her young charge in the use
of unfailing politeness and scrupulous Eng-
lish.
In a different way, of a different sort, how
excellent are the Indian's manners at his best!
The majestic dignity of many an old chief
could only be matched in the House of Lords,
so surely do brave blood and breeding tell.
Your self-made man is seldom finished to the
extent of manners. As compared with the
finest product of the Old World or the New,
he is like a statue of Rodin's, so different from
the classic — very potential, very significant,
very striking, if you will, but not fully
emerged from crude formlessness. The la-
tent power is all there, — the thought and
originality, — but they have not been brought
to perfection. They await their release in
delectable manners, in finished form which is
the ultimate achievement of art.
Good manners are not necessarily formal
nor conventional nor correct. They may
303
often make themselves felt even through the
difficult media of awkwardness and bad
grammar. They have a syntax of their own,
whose principles are apprehended by the
heart and transcend the inflexible usage of
the academy. For them there is no such thing
as tyranny of custom. At the right moment,
with force of human sincerity, they may
change the rules of etiquette, they may over-
rule the decisions of punctilio with a look, and
alter the devices of convention with a word.
Under the exigency of loving exuberance they
may cast cramping dogmas of behaviour to
the winds and disclose a new revised rubric
of conduct. Good manners can never fear
innovations, for their very existence and all
their right procedure are based upon the finest
intuition of the moment. They are fresh
and refreshing as the loveliest morning, and
original as the personality they clothe. The
best manners, however, maintain distinction
and originality through gracious recognition
304
of accepted codes and graceful adaptation to
them.
Good manners are a revelation of good
feelings; and to have good feelings and a
desire to make them known is to possess the
first elements of good manners. Actually to
attain them, two things more are needed, — a
knowledge of usages and an adequate and
adaptive expressional skill. That is to say,
in order to be well mannered one must have
three requisites, — the humane prompting,
the understanding, and the art. When these
become habitual and instinctive they result in
manners that are well bred as well as good.
The command of expression, which must
supplement the generous wish before one can
acquire the perfection of elegant manners, is
something that people are wont to think of
slightingly as an artificial and superfluous ac-
complishment. As a matter of fact, excel-
lence of expression is no less valuable than
excellence of thought or intention. It mat-
305
ters little how kindly disposed you may be
in your heart toward me, if you make me feel
uncomfortable by your brusquerie or boor-
ishness. Expression is quite as necessary,
quite as incumbent a responsibility, and quite
as deserving of respect and cultivation, as the
inward prompting of kindliness itself. The
best manners require not only a kindly spirit
and intelligence but also a plastic and intel-
ligent body for their manifestation. And that
is not to be had at its best without care, edu-
cation and training.
To move and speak with all the convincing
beauty of motion and purity of tone that the
best manners imply requires superior culture
of body and voice. There may be a natural
aptitude for these qualities in fortunate in-
stances, but there must always be advantage
from education as well. Rules of deportment
have their uses, but they can no more produce
good manners than an excellent recipe can
produce a good pudding. Material and ma-
nipulation are indispensable. The physical
306
training which facilitates good manners also
evolves the spirit of good nature which must
underlie them. This is the real reason of the
importance of a code of conduct and a scru-
pulous insistence upon the keeping of that
code. The best impulses which arise in hu-
man instinct are thereby steadied and made
habitual, effective, and dominant.
Instances of the power of manners both
grotesque and beautiful appear about us every
day. A young and popular American actress,
cultivated and well born, was recently enter-
tained by her friends at a small dinner in one
of our best restaurants. She arrived amid a
flurry of smiling welcomes, and found a huge
bundle of American Beauty roses upon her
table. Heaven knows what sentiment of ap-
preciation she sought to convey to her hosts
by the act, but she laid the flowers in her chair
and sat upon them throughout the evening.
A few months ago New York entertained
a Japanese dignitary with much civic hospi-
tality, and among other notable places in the
307
^ftt JHafefnfl of Jlrrfiionalfts
metropolis took him to see Grant's tomb on
Riverside Drive. Instead of turning away
when his visit to the resting-place of the illus-
trious dead was over^ he kept his face toward
the monument, walking backward down the
steps and well past the immediate vicinity,
as a mark of respect to a great man and to
a nation's pride in his memory! To our more
abrupt and hurried way of thinking there
may seem to be a touch of the fantastic in such
an elaborate ceremonialism, but on deeper
consideration how fearlessly natural and spon-
taneous we feel that tribute of reverence to
have been! To be rude or inexpressive where
some instinctive manifestation of gentle cour-
tesy were more natural as well as more be-
coming is to stifle the springs of human cour-
age and beneficence at their inmost source.
That a generous and general practice of
good manners stimulates and disseminates fine
aspiration, nobility of character, and grace of
living, is beyond question; and until appre-
ciation of that truth becomes more wide-
308
spread among individuals and nations, not all
the sterling qualities of heart and brain can
avert the consequences of rudeness, nor justify
arrogant infatuation with a mannerless age. ■
2>09
XV
Uu of ©ut-of-Boot0
That we should need to recall the use of
out-of-doors is of itself a criticism of our con-
temporary mode of life and a confession of
our indoor dangers. So habited have we be-
come to living under roofs and behind glass,
that living out-of-doors is strange and un-
usual. We turn to it only occasionally and
then as to a novelty, as if we were about to
make a journey into a foreign country. The
wholesome sting of a sharp autumn morning
strikes fear into our flinching bones, and we
huddle and dodge from cover to cover, as if
the open heaven were our enemy. At the
310
first drop of temperature from torrid summer
heat, we rush for overcoats and clamber into
closed cars, in very fright at the freshening
of God's breath upon us.
The old Germanic superstition as to the
poison of the night dissipates but slowly. You
may still find many persons who will not sleep
with their windows open for fear of the
" night air," nor within reach of moonlight
for fear of lunacy. In the West Indies the
Negroes shut themselves up to sleep in their
cabins, with every door and window closely
battened down to keep out the evil spirits,
despite the beauty and warmth of the tropic
night. The luminous wheeling stars and the
great shield of the moon cannot tempt them
to leave so much as a chink uncovered. It is
piteous to have such unwholesome fears. Our
good friends, the skeptical doctors, are teach-
ing us better, with their fresh-air treatment
of pneumonia, tuberculosis, and kindred
scourges.
Do not let us be afraid of out-of-doors!
311
sri^e Jtlal^fng of petri^onalits
After all, there is our freest safety. We were
born and nurtured in the open for aeons before
cities were thought of or suburbs invented.
We had ridge-poles, it is true, and hearth-
stones, tepees, and wigwams and igloos, but
we had no sewer gas nor soft coal smoke nor
dinning noise of streets. Our life was derived
from a nature whose sunlight and oxygen are
unlimited, where pure water is abundant, and
where food, if scarce, is at least not adulter-
ated. We have harnessed the earth and mod-
ified her powers for our own uses, making it
possible for a thousand men to live where
formerly hardly a hundred could survive, but
we have not been altogether wise with our
cleverness; and in the flush of triumphant
civilization we are in danger of forgetting
some of the old essential benefits of humanity.
Air and sunlight and water in abundant
purity are built into the tissue of these bodies
of ours by the secret chemistry of nature, and
there can never be any manufacturing a sat-
isfactory existence without a plentiful supply
312
2rtit Urn of ®ut=of=:3l9oots
of them. Nothing takes their place and we
only cheat ourselves if we think to do without
them. We may put up with factory-made
commodities and all the impositions of com-
merce, if we will, but there is no substitute
for open air. It is not only a choice between
outdoors and indoors, it is a choice between
out-of-doors and death.
It is more a matter of self-preservation than
of anything else. In the universe of animal
existence to which we belong, the great nat-
ural elements and laws are inescapable. It
is not strange, since we are sprung from the
operation of these laws and forces and ele-
ments, that we must inevitably lose through
any divorcing or alienating of ourselves from
their beneficent powers. We are not wholly
animal, it is true, but we are fundamentally
so; and our spiritual strain which we so cher-
ish and seek to cultivate can never be made
to grow away from its physical base and
source. Surely it is short-sighted to wantonly
weaken and destroy that strain through which
3-^3
our being is materialized and kept growing.
There can be no saving the soul alive, either
for men or nations, if the body be allowed to
sicken in ignorance or neglect. And yet how
people cling to the fallacy that growth of the
spirit and the mind may be induced without
regard to the health and normal wealth of the
body, through which they move and learn and
have their being. As well believe that roses
will grow without roots, as that human happi-
ness and know^ledge can ever reach their de-
sired perfection in a puny race or in an inade-
quate physique.
To breathe deeply, to sleep soundly, to walk
well, to be unflurried and undespairing, to
take from the bounty of the earth only so
much as will serve just needs, — these are
some of the things we learn at nature's knee
and forget in our greed.
One need not be a detractor of our own
time to praise justly the more primitive life
of the open. Life in ages gone was more
perilous than it is to-day. In those small
314
JJTtie Wiut of ®ttt=of=:®ootfii
classic and mediaeval cities^ whose names are
surrounded with such picturesque glamour,
life was doubtless more unwholesome than in
our own Babylons. In our sanitation, our phi-
lanthropy, and our multifold conveniences,
we have outstripped them beyond measure;
and yet there remain the elemental needs to
be remembered and respected. Our social
customs, habits, usages, our personal require-
ments and fashions of living, all change with
the centuries; our ideals, thoughts, senti-
ments, ambitions have changed many times
with changing civilizations; but the great
primordial human hungers and wants are no
other to-day than they were in Eden. And it
is really in unconscious obedience to those
deeper necessities that we rebel against many
of the demands which civilization imposes
upon us, and turn to nature for relief from
the petty exactions and disordering complex-
ities of life with which we have become en-
cumbered.
" Going back to nature," does not mean
315
ari^e JHaWnfl of IHvuonalits
going back to savagery nor to barbarism nor
to any pestilential past; it only means open-
ing the doors and windows, and stepping out
to reclaim each his share of the riches of
earth's sufficiency, the leisure and sunlight
and gladness which have been from the begin-
ning only waiting to be utilized and enjoyed.
♦ We go back to nature every time w^e take a
deep breath and stop worrying, every time we
allow instinct to save us from some foolish
indiscretion of greed or heedlessness or bad
habit. A tiled bath-room is not essentially a
menace to health; neither is a roll-top desk,
nor a convenient electric light, nor any one
of the hundred luxuries we have become hab-
ited to. As the good emperor might have
remarked, " Even in a modern hotel life may
be lived well." All of our triumphs of me-
chanical genius are so many means of living
the more easily, if only we make use of them
appreciatively, instead of being mastered and
undone by them. When a luxury becomes a
burden it ceases to be a luxury. That would
316
seem to be a very simple piece of logic, yet
it is not always easy to follow, and we are apt
to cling to our supposed luxuries long after
they have grown to be nuisances. It is chiefly
a matter of selection, adaptation, and elimina-
tion, of taking what is good and discarding
what is harmful in the great flood of com-
modities which civilization brings to our serv-
ice.
The benefit of out-of-doors is not that it
takes us away from civilization, but that it
restores us to ourselves. Its profound essen-
tial satisfactions build themselves into the
character and become part of the personal-
ity. All that suits out-of-doors is so elemental
and normal that living within its mighty
influence must gladden and normalize and
deepen our natural selves, renewing our
worth in temper, in health, and in sanity.
Houses were made for shelter, not for con-
finement; for freedom, not restraint; they
were intended to enlarge our sphere of activ-
ities, not to diminish them. They were to
317
provide us a protection against the elements,
so that busy, happy life could go on unhin-
dered by extremes of climate. After food,
shelter is the first requisite, — the first trace
of himself which man imposes upon the nat-
ural world, and the most primitive and last-
ing evidence of the handiwork which grows
into all the arts of all the centuries. Houses
foster the family and facilitate progress if we
do not abuse their protection. We have with-
drawn into their still and comfortable re-
cesses, slept in their warm chambers, toasted
ourselves over their easy fires, read by their
unflickering lights, and eaten from their over-
bountiful boards so long, that we are grown
pale, timid, peevish, and thankless withal.
We have kept ourselves away from the
wind and the sun and the lashing rain, from
the feel of the earth under foot and the sense
of the leaves and stars overhead, until we no
longer know the keen and simple joys of being
alive. We have set up barriers against the
inclemency of nature, and cowered before her
318
severe austerity, until now we have forgot-
ten how indispensable is all her kindly nur-
ture, how tonic her rugged ways, how full
of solace her assuaging calm.
Houses were only made to live in when it
is too cold or too hot or too wet to live out-of-
doors. At any other time out-of-doors is best.
Out-of-doors is the only place where a man
can breathe and sleep and eat to perfection,
keeping the blood red in the cheek; and those
are the three prime factors in the life of hu-
mans, the three first great rhythms of our be-
ing. It is almost impossible to get enough
fresh pure air inside of four walls, and it is
not possible at all to keep the wholesome flush
of health in rooms unvisited by daily sun and
breeze.
To sleep out-of-doors for a month is better
than a pampered trip to Europe. In this cli-
mate one must have a roof, of course; but
any piazza that is open to three-quarters of
the heavens will serve as a bedroom ; and the
gain in happiness is unbelievable. With an
3^9
abundant supply of good air sleep soon grows
normal, deep, untroubled and refreshing, so
that we open our eyes upon the world as
gladly as a hunter or any pagan shepherd in
the morning of the w^orld. Too often we
grow anxious and flustered and harried with
distractions; the goblin of worry becomes an
inseparable companion indoors; and we
groan in spirit that the universe is all awry;
when in truth half a dozen deep breaths of
clean air lend a different complexion to life.
Our anxieties are nearly all artificial, and are
bred indoors, under the stifling oppression of
walls and roofs, to the maddening clangour
of pavements, and a day in the open will often
dispel them like a bad dream.
We are crowded and hustled and irritated
to the point of physical desperation. In our
thoroughfares and marts, our tenements and
tiny apartments, our shops and street cars, we
revert pretty closely to the jostling of the
original herd and pack. Is it any wonder that
we should throw back to a primitive ruthless-
320
SCJje JKse of 0uUoumoovu
ness in the stress and haste of competition?
Can you ask for manners in the midst of a
scrimmage, or look for moral steadiness in a
nervous wreck? With more air and sun and
ground, we find fewer instances of immoral-
ity and despair. For a return to nature is a
return to good nature.
True, we cannot at once incontinently leave
our tasks and wander at will out into the
green world whenever the wind sets from a
pleasant quarter; but for all that, there are
many steps that we may take toward reestab-
lishing our divine heritage and rightful por-
tion in the delectable commonwealth of out-
of-doors. And the best use we can make of it
will surely consist in wholesome normalizing
exercise, — not necessarily in living out-of-
doors more than we do at present, but in
living there more wholesomely and naturally.
A drive through the park, to take the least
promising example, may be made a means of
recuperation and health, or it may be almost
worthless. To sit well in the carriage, breath-
321
ing freely and deeply, is one thing; to sink
among the cushions, hardly breathing at all,
is quite another. Many a woman takes her
afternoon drive with almost no benefit at all,
— except to the horses. Just so one may walk
or ride or play tennis with such unfortunate
habits of motion as to gain little good from
the exertion; while a better trained physique,
with less expenditure of time and energy,
would easily obtain more beneficial results.
Out-of-doors is the birthright of every man
and woman alive. The roads are free, if the
land is not yet; there is plenty of life in the
open air to be had for the taking; and with
a little thought we may all increase our share
in that inheritance of uncounted benefit. No
land has a finer out-of-doors than this. Win-
ter or summer, there is hardly a corner of it
that will not afiford you tolerant and kindly
treatment, and reward your confidence a
thousand fold. The seaboard, the mountains,
the great plains, the farmland valleys, the
noble rivers, the forests, the deserts — they
322
srtie Wlut of ©ttt=of=3ioorfii
are all good to live in. Where we have not
polluted and profaned them, they retain the
purity and majesty of clean creation; and
they are ever waiting to reinforce us with
their nobility and strength, to soothe our fret-
ted nerves, to console us with their leisurely
endurance, to inspire us again with something
of the natural dignity we have lost. They
will discount our clever practices and shifty
ways, but they will teach us instead methods
of thought and conduct, a poise of character,
better befitting our preeminence as human
beings. When we breathe and move freely
once more, we shall begin to realize our pos-
sibilities of greater happiness.
3^3
^\)t dominion of 3oij
It does not need a philosopher to note how
volatile happiness is, how variable and seem-
ingly beyond control. Its sources are hidden
among the springs of life; its volume and
current, because they are so largely unmate-
rial and essential, appear uncertain; and like
those rivers w^hich lose themselves in the des-
ert, its radiant stream is often dissipated in
arid distractions and confusing cares. Pure
as a mountain brook in its origin, it too often
frets itself away in tortuous channels, mud-
died by passions, perverted by mistakes, or
contaminated by resentment and regret.
Happiness is an essence w^hich is so readily
extracted from life at times that one might
324
®i^e Bomfnfon of 31 os
suppose its formula easy to discover. But it
is not so. Being secretes happiness out of ex-
perience as the bees secrete honey from the
flowers of the meadows; not promiscuously,
of course, nor indiscriminately, and always
with consummate ease. The process of its
distillation, like the production of honey, is
veritable magic, and belongs among the nat-
ural mysteries.
We know in truth very little of the making
of this divine extract; for the most part we
are willing to take it without question and
spend it without care; and we are almost
equally ignorant of any rules for its preserva-
tion, though it escapes more quickly than any
other aroma. It may appear in response to
the wizardries of beauty, the summons of
truth, or the impetuous demands of desire;
and seemingly without rhyme or reason it
may depart as quickly and inevitably as it
came, leaving only the vaguest recognition of
the conditions that invite it. Certain general
laws which govern happiness are plain
325
enough for all to understand, and philoso-
phers have essayed to formulate its compo-
nents and stimuli; but how are we to com-
mand it with any surety, or guard against its
dissipation?
With such knowledge we should be lords of
as much of the empire of destiny as any sane
man need wish. This is that secret which no
oracle ever could declare, that enigma which
no sage could ever solve, the one problem
which absorbs the emperor and the hod-car-
rier, the philanthropist and the vagrant, the
duchess and the drab, — every living figure
in the whole tatterdemalion pageant of hu-
manity, — with equal persistence and almost
equal disappointment. You may write me
learned treatises and expound pedantic mo-
ralities on the nature and sources of happi-
ness, but what I want is a plain answer to a
plain question. How can I be happy at will?
If I commit murder or theft or any crime
against my fellow mortal, it is easy to foresee
that I shall be unhappy; for other beings are
326
©tir Bomfnfon of 3Jo»
only extensions of myself, part of the same
spirit, parcel of the same stuff, and I know
instinctively that any violence against them is
an outrage against the laws of my own being
and an offence to my own spirit. You need
not explain to me that nothing but unhappi-
ness can spring from evil doing. I know that
very well already. For I know better than
any one can tell me that the evil deed is born
in blackness of heart, and that happiness only
visits a soul innocent of malice. Again, if I
violate my instincts, I know I shall be un-
happy, — if I eat or drink inordinately, if I
am unreasonable and wayward and lawless in
my habits, and fail to give rational care to my
physical well-being. As a child I learned
that I must not put my hand in the fire; as
a man I am learning that I must not harm
any one else ; and the first law does not seem
any more arbitrary to me than the second.
They both seem natural and inevitable and
I begin to perceive that we cannot be happy
in transgression.
327
Not to transgress, however, is hardly
enough to ensure happiness. The laws of in-
hibition are not guide posts on the road to
the land of heart's desire, but only danger
signals; they point nowhere, they are only
warnings against disaster, and while they may
save the wayfarer from destruction, they ad-
vance him little on the highway of perfection.
You may abstain from every indiscretion, vio-
late no rule of health, and still be an ineffec-
tual stay-at-home. You may keep every one
of the shalt-not commandments, and remain
a gloomy prig for all that.
In the garden of the heart innocence and
abstinence are hardly the finest flowers of con-
duct; they are but cleanly soil from which
such flowers may be induced to spring. The
virtue of a man is the strength of his essen-
tial spirit, not his mere harmlessness or pas-
sivity. Just as the only test for the virtue of
salt is its savour, so the only test for the vir-
tue of the heart is its joy. There is no happi-
ness for us humans save in the normal exer-
328
sri^e dominion of 3Joff
cise of our senses, our intelligence, our emo-
tions. If we claim that privilege for all men,
we shall have an ample serviceable creed
enough, and if we attempt to secure it, we
shall have a happy enough task.
The direct pursuit of pleasure, or to de-
mand happiness, may indeed be futile; but
the instinctive pursuit of our activities is not
futile, unless it be ill-advised; and from such
pursuit, when it is wisely ordered, some es-
sence of happiness is inevitably derived.
Happiness comes to us not as a reward of
merit, but as a proof of worth. It is not a
recompense for abnegation, but a natural sat-
isfaction in normal life, an incalculable result
of real deserving. It is not to be found in
violation of fundamental laws, for the simple
reason that those laws, so far from being arbi-
trary restrictions imposed upon the human
spirit, are merely the inherent laws of its own
development and growth.
The Dominion of Joy is divided into three
provinces or states — the state of mind, or the
329
8rtie iWal^fng of ^tvnonulits
Province of Truth, the state of spirit, or the
Province of Goodness, and the state of body,
or the Province of Beauty. Like any worldly
realm, its boundaries are invisible and its in-
terrelations various. There is no saying
where the province of sense ends and the
province of mind begins, nor where either of
them joins the province of soul. These de-
marcations exist in theory only, on the map
of the imagination. As a matter of fact, you
may pass from one to the other and never
know it, just as you may cross the line from
New York into Connecticut without perceiv-
ing any difference. While each phase of be-
ing may have its own peculiar traits and beau-
ties and resources, with its own necessary laws
and customs, industries and appurtenances,
they are all equally under an interactive gov-
ernment throughout — the great triune code
of manners, morals and meditations.
The Dominion of Joy is as wide as the uni-
verse in which we dwell. Wherever the foot
may tread and the soul subsist, there its be-
330
srtie dominion of 3Jos
neficent power may extend. Its terminus is
no nearer than the outmost star that glimmers
within the sweep of vision. A flower by the
wayside, a moonrise over the roofs of the city,
a quiet sunset among the purple hills, the sud-
den flash of a passing glance in the street, the
scent of some remembered perfume, a breath
of spring wind stirring the blind at an open
window, the blessing of a beggar, the sight
of a masterpiece in a museum, news of an old
friend, a strain of music, the skill of an acro-
bat, or a seasonable word — any one of these
ordinary occurrences, if we be capable of ap-
preciating it, may transport us instantly to
the borders of this dominion, invest us with
a cloak of happiness, and disclose to us a mo-
mentary glimpse of immortality.
The Dominion of Joy is neither a despot-
ism nor a democracy, yet it is wider than any
commonalty and finer than any aristocracy.
It confers upon its citizens the freedom of the
world, and gives them a distinction of bear-
ing, an air of radiance, a compelling power,
331
2CJie MuUlns of ^tvuonulits
such as no other aristocracy can bestow.
There may be degrees in its social order, but
the poorest of those who live within its rule
is a more charming figure than joyless em-
peror or sombre king.
Yet the great ones of the earth may be
greatest in its peerage, too; for as the blame-
less Roman said, '^ Even in a palace life may
be lived well." Joydom is not founded on the
fanaticism of scullions, nor on the haughty
ruthlessness of the strong, but on the basis of
every man's normality. It has no peculiar
costume, no compulsory language, no racial
features, no traits of character by which its
inhabitants may be told. Its only signs are
the laughing lip, the kindling eye, the kindly
hand, and the foot that is light upon the pave-
ment.
Inhabitants of the Dominion of Joy belong
to a primitive tribe whose type is universal.
They may vary in stature and in colour, in
contour and in motion, in gesture, voice and
habit; they may be black or red or yellow or
332
SCfie mominlon of 3Jo»
white, Hindu, Malay, Celt, Slav or Negro;
but under these trivial marks of latitude they
are all of one breed, betrayed by the eager
step and the radiant glance. Though speech
may be a babel of many languages, there is
no mistaking the elemental meaning of the
tone of happiness, the inflexion which signi-
fies content. Before mind had anything to say
to mind or any words to say it in, heart had
its confidences with its fellow heart in soft
caress and crooning love-note. And to-day,
so lasting are these traditions of joy, that pro-
testation and eloquence are superfluous be-
tween friends, and vain between those who
have become estranged.
Beauty is the common tongue in the Do-
minion of Joy, — beauty with its elements of
truth and its finish of graciousness, — and
speech in that language has an instant pass-
port to the hearts of men. No expression of
beauty can fail of appreciation; no matter
what its dialect may be, its welcome is secure.
Its place prepared, its worth established.
333
Eftt JHafting of l^tvnonnUts
Moreover, those who give their days and
nights to the study and practice of beauty, to
the creation of loveliness in any form, are
thereby naturalized in the Dominion of Joy
and take on unconsciously the guise of its
gladsomeness. Those who cause beauty to
gladden in the world are rewarded by the
afterglow of happiness in themselves, so near
is dust to dream, so truly are human achieve-
ments a part of the divine.
There are many roads that lead to the Do-
minion of Joy through its different provinces,
some of them broad and sumptuous, others
inconspicuous and half hidden from view,
some thronged day long with travellers, oth-
ers unfrequented save by an occasional way-
farer. But those who are really wise confine
themselves to no single province of the great
realm, for they know there is an unwritten law
of the Dominion to the effect that no one shall
be allowed to thrive exclusively in any one
of its precincts, but all who grow within its
borders must share in all its influences and
334
JCl^e dominion of 3Joff
have some knowledge of all its resources.
Sensualists have tried to preempt the delight-
ful Province of Beauty; pedants have at-
tempted to monopolize the Province of
Truth; and bigots have endeavoured to usurp
the Province of Goodness; but all have found
their purposes equally vain. For it matters
not by what road one may first approach the
Dominion of Joy, once within its borders,
one must learn allegiance to its federal pow-
ers, and not merely to its partial interests.
The clamour of the imagination and the
senses for pleasure, the call of the mind for
satisfaction in reason, and the cry of the spirit
for loving-kindness, often seem to imply a
distraction in our nature. In reality these are
not diverse demands, nor contradictory, but
essentially identical, variously conveying the
single wish of the personality for happiness.
And never by degrading any one of them, nor
by debauching any one, can anything more
than a damaged and perishable happiness be
obtained or preserved. For happiness, that
33S
Stie il«aite{n0 of ^tvnonnllts
simple test of successful effort, is abiding only
where it is harmonious and where it may
freely range through all the regions of being.
It cannot be obtained from any pursuit of
the intellectual life, however single-minded
and diligent, if that pursuit is carried on at
the expense of health and generosity. No
following of the so-called holy life can secure
happiness if the body be marred and broken
with wilful tyrannies and degradation, and
the mind insulted and restrained from its law-
ful reasonableness and natural convictions.
Much less can the nimble senses cling to hap-
piness for more than a moment at a time, re-
gardless of our respect for truth and our love
of impersonal goodness. Happiness is at
home only where soul and mind help flesh,
and flesh helps them.
It is not easy to retain the franchise of this
Dominion of Joy, though no mortal is by
birth ineligible for that fine privilege. Some
indeed are born to it by good fortune of in-
heritance; and even they may lose it by per-
33^
JTi^e Homfnfon of 3os
versity or neglect. But those who do not con-
form so easily to its radiant governance, its
serene and fostering atmosphere, may never-
theless prolong their sojourn there, if they
will take some precautions, and be at some
pains to achieve so delectable and so noble a
triumph.
Happiness, let us admit, is not a relative
thing, as pleasure is, but a positive condition
of the spirit regardless of surroundings, a
fundamental state of being in which normal
personality finds the justification and value of
life. A man may be happy in the face of
death, and wretched amid luxury. Frail
women have gone to the scaffold for a be-
loved cause with a smile upon their lips, and
sturdy men have dragged out wretched years
in palatial discontent. You may environ a
man with all the comfort that pampered fancy
can imagine, and still fail to ensure to him
a moment's unmitigated joy. You may toss
him upon a desert or transport him to Siberia
with equal impunity, without destroying his
337
happy poise of being, if he happens to be one
of the fortunate children of the kingdom of
joy-
Pleasure depends upon material things,
upon circumstances and events, and may be
had in some measure even by the desolate, the
selfish, the evil-minded. It is often a pallia-
tion of unhappiness, often a distraction of the
desperate, but it can never be a substitute for
veritable happiness of soul and essential peace
of mind. Joy cannot visit the malicious, the
selfish, the cowardly, the sullen, nor the dis-
pirited, though two mortals talking together
through the grating of a prison door may
know the purest happiness. It only needs that
their minds and spirits should be free and
capable of being happy together; then con-
ditions need not matter too much, nor count
for a hopeless weight in the balance. Being
that is not capable of happiness under all cir-
cumstances, cannot be sure of it under any
circumstances.
Since earthly joy is coterminous with life,
33^
8Ciie Bontfnfon of 3ios
and life is in the moment and the hour, the
protection of happiness needs to be a daily
consideration. To create some little bit of
beauty every day, even if it is no more than
rearranging the flowers in a jar or making a
habitation more bright and clean; to serve
goodness every day by even the smallest act
of courtesy and kindness; and every day to
learn some fresh fragment of pure truth —
these are lines of the necessary procedure for
those who seek naturalization and growth in
the Dominion of Joy.
To enhance the loveliness of the world of
form and colour as it lies about us, to widen
the world of our knowledge and gain some
helpfulness of wisdom and understanding,
and above all to gladden and enlarge the
world of sympathy and love where tender
hearts have their tenure and questing spirits
find their encouragement to hope: here is a
threefold hourly task for the strongest of
souls, yet not beyond the compass of the frail-
est of mortals, and here is a magic talisman,
339
with which the pilgrim artist or apprentice
upon the highways or the byways of perfec-
tion need never go far astray.
But, O mortal, whenever it comes to you
to dwell in that enchanted country, have a
care, I beg of you, to cherish your good for-
tune with incorruptible devotion. For if once
you lose that mystic franchise, that impalpa-
ble prerogative of joy, that warrant and pre-
scription of glory, you will not find it easy to
be regained. Do no violence to your sense of
beauty, lest you imperil it; profess no belief
which you do not really hold; cling to no
creed which does outrage to your reason; nor
in any way ofifend against sincerity, lest you
imperil it; and above all stifle no welling
love within your own heart, nor dismay the
priceless love of another, lest you imperil joy
beyond repair. Such misdealing makes wan-
derers and outcasts, self-exiled for ever from
felicity, to range through a world to them for
ever commonized and degraded, where there
340
!!Ci|r Bominfon of 3op
is neither glamour nor elation nor courage
nor hope.
The death of happiness in life is for every
personality the insidious but fatal beginning
of annihilation, the seed of infection and de-
cay to which immortality must succumb. Joy
must be for ever a part of the ideal, of which
Mr. Santayana speaks so nobly, " He who
lives in the ideal and leaves it expressed in
society, or in art, enjoys a double immortality.
The eternal has absorbed him while he lived,
and when he is dead, his influence brings
others to the same absorption, making them
through that ideal identity with the best in
him, reincarnations and perennial seats of all
in him which he could rationally hope to res-
cue from destruction." And it behoves all
those who would perpetuate the sacred fire
of life, to nurture through all hazards its
glowing core of happiness.
341
We have had The Seekers, The Spenders,
The Spoilers, The Sowers, treated of and ex-
plained in fiction, but as yet, so far as I know,
no one has written of The Growers.
The subject is a suggestive one. Even the
title gives a fillip to thought. The growers
are all those fortunate ones who, whether con-
sciously so or not, have kept themselves truly
and persistently in harmony with great na-
ture. They have carefully cherished the mys-
terious seed of aspiration, which is the secret
of growth, neither allowing it to atrophy un-
sown by hoarding it away in the dark closet
of discouragement, nor impoverishing it
through spendthrift dissipation. Normal
342
growers are not priggish nor niggardly,
neither are they ignobly wasteful of what is
more precious than gold. They are endowed
with the instinct, the impulse, the curiosity
which only constant development and a meas-
ure of lawful freedom can satisfy, and which
must die if continually thwarted or repressed.
The growers are all those natural children
of the earth, whether simple or complex, who
have cultivated the most fundamental princi-
ples of responsible living, a capacity for im-
provement and a hunger for perfection. And
it is this trait of rational painstaking that
lends the most sterling distinction to person-
ality and differentiates leaders from follow-
ers, helpfulness from dependence, and the in-
dividual from the mass.
For growers there can be neither stagna-
tion nor decay. They are like thrifty trees in
the forest, deep rooted in the common soil of
life from which they spring, deriving nour-
ishment from the good ground of sympathy,
stimulation and refreshment from the free
343
winds of aspiration, producing perennially
the flower and fruitage of gladness and well-
being proper to their kind and enriching the
earth. They are the normal ones, at once the
exemplars of all that is best in their species,
and the perpetuators of all that is most val-
uable. Between the growers of the human
and the forest world, however, there is this
distinction, that while the monarchs of the
woods grow only to the limit of their prime,
the spiritual and mental growth of mortals
may be unarrested throughout a lifetime.
That is the glory of our human heritage, and
the encouragement to our faith in our ow^n
venturesome essay. The power of growth is
our talisman against dismay, wherewith to
confront old age with interest, circumstance
with equanimity, and the unknown without
fear. And perhaps it may be impossible to
bring to the extreme bound of our lifetime
any more warrantable satisfaction than to
have been a grower all one's days.
The growers are like the trees in that they
344
make use of such means as they have to fur-
ther their life. A tree may sprout in ground
far from congenial to it, and among condi-
tions that are often largely disadvantageous.
Still it neither sulks nor despairs. It proceeds
to grow with as much determination as if it
were in the most favourable environment.
True, its difficult position or inappropriate
soil may hamper or mar its growth, so that it
will never reach the fine perfection which
belongs to its type, but it will grow never-
theless. It does the best it can with its life,
taking advantage of every possible opportu-
nity, and making the most of whatever air and
light and soil it can reach.
Just so with human growers. They use
their wits to cultivate their aspirations and
powers. They employ to the utmost such
powers as they have, and fret themselves not
at all over faculties or talents or opportuni-
ties that are not theirs. They are too busy
benefiting by what is, to speculate idly on
what might be, or to repine wastefully for
345
SCJie JWaftfnfl of Jlrtfiionalitff
what is not. Aspiration is the seed of growth,
but it must be farmed carefully like any other
crop. It is not enough to have lofty ambi-
tions and ideals, if we do nothing about them.
They must be put in practice or they will not
contribute to growth. It is in making our
ideals actual that we attain success in life, and
experience growth of personality. Many a
well-endowed mortal has failed for lack of
effort, while less fortunate ones have reached
splendid heights of achievement and growth
by dint of cultivating the modicum of powers
that belonged to them. Making use of the
advantages at hand, to the very utmost in
every moment and place, is the secret of the
seemingly magic process of success.
Thus the growers live in conformity with
the universal trend of life, having a working
faith that its mighty laws are friendly and
benign. They overcome obstacles not by an-
tagonism but by utilization. Having done
their utmost to harmonize their living with
immutable laws, they feel secure in the benefi-
346
cence of life, and have no fear of destiny.
Here is ground for a contentment quite unlike
the dulness of stagnation ; a basis of buoyant
well-being, and a perennial interest in all that
influences development. Growers can never
be hesitating, fretful, distracted, nor unlovely
for long, since some new truth, some un-
looked-for beauty, some fresh spring of emo-
tion, is sure to touch their interest, refresh
their sympathy, reinspire their enthusiasm,
and requicken their whole being to gladder
activity once more. To their ears it must al-
ways sound like sober philosophy to say,
"The world is so full of a number of things,
I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings,"
since hardly anything can exist or happen
that is not capable of being transmuted into
food for growth in their wise conduct of life.
There are many different ways of growth,
spiritual, mental, material, — all beneficent,
all leading to ultimate perfection when
rightly followed, and all necessary for a sym-
347
2rtie iWatftinfl of ^tvnon^Utp
metrical development. We all admit that it
is hardly enough, in the history of any indi-
vidual, that there should be a progress in ma-
terial affairs alone. One may steadily im-
prove one's worldly condition through life,
and remain personally but little bettered at
the close. The advancement in circumstances
must be accompanied, pace for pace, by an
advance in intelligence and feeling. Every
day '' to earn a little and to spend a little less,"
as Stevenson says, is good, proverbial philos-
ophy, and if it be parallelled in matters of the
mind and heart, becomes an invaluable word
of wisdom. To grow a little more reasonable
and a little more kindly day by day is an es-
sential part of the truest prosperity.
The material value of this salutary thrift
goes without saying, and one need only recall
the riches of character in one's most stimula-
ting friends, to be convinced of its equal de-
sirability in the less tangible realm of per-
sonal culture and influence.
To our complex human nature symmetrical
348
growth seems the fittest ideal, — a balanced
development that prevents the limitations of
distortion and the friction of discord, and se-
cures the freedom of poise. The lack of an
ideal of symmetrical culture is to blame for
such imperfect maturity as we find for exam-
ple in persons who exhibit an overinsistent
instinct for self-preservation, protecting and
furthering their own animal indulgence, re-
gardless of cost to others; in those who are
so greedy of mind that they neglect the care
of practical things; and in those again who
are overdeveloped emotionally through un-
controlled avidity of sentiment and feeling.
The best growers are those rare and fortu-
nate mortals who have divined the incom-
parable value of a symmetrical culture, and
take constant care to utilize the avenues of
growth in each of these three directions with
equal solicitude. They know, or at least they
instinctively feel, that any stultification in the
development of one part of that composite
miracle called personality means an inevita-
349
JTJje JHafefng of ^ttnonnlits
ble injury to the other two, and that none must
be preferred or forced singly at the cost of the
others, but that they can only be brought
nearer to the measure of perfection by being
helped and freed and cultivated harmoni-
ously. This is the law of perfect growth.
Growers are the only people for whom we
need feel no anxiety. If they are our friends,
no matter for how long they may drop out
of sight, it is certain that at our next meeting
we shall not find them deteriorated nor
worsted by life, w^hatever adversities or sor-
rows they may have had to face. For all for-
tune, both ill and good, is converted into
means of growth by some secret chemistry of
the soul, known (if not actually understood)
by all personalities that are intelligently alive.
However often they may change their address
or their philosophy, they can never be worse
off. They move their belongings from place
to place, only to better their estate; they trans-
fer their convictions and enthusiasms " from
350
©tie eftotoerfii
creed to larger creed " only to widen their
outlook and refresh their faith.
Again, growers are the only people who
need never be afraid, — neither of misfor-
tune, sorrow, defeat, unkindness, nor the
shadow of death; for deterioration is the only
veritable evil that can befall a personality.
There is neither injury nor fault that cannot
be outgrown. But when we cease to grow,
it is a calamity indeed, and just cause for hu-
man dread. Fear and despair and anger and
ignorance and worry and meanness are fatal,
because they arrest growth, arrest spiritual
and mental activity, even arrest digestion, and
so are inimical to life and happiness. Any
one of them may be truly called a partial
death, since it causes a dissolution of some
glad and natural emotion, beclouding the
mind and involving the vital processes in
temporary disaster. When the mind is un-
hinged by terror, or the heart is frozen by
grief, the body can neither eat nor sleep, and
351
our whole being is torn from its proper en-
vironment of rational and kindly sensibility,
beginning at once to wither and die like a
wounded sapling or a broken flower.
And who so well as the growers can afford
to drift? They need have no fear of being
carried out of their course, for they are in the
main current of life, and not in an eddy or by-
water. Whither the mighty river of existence
may be carrying them, perhaps they never
inquire. They only know that they are being
borne onward by its titanic sweep, in some
glad, free, lawful way that makes for ever-
widening horizons of happiness.
352
an
®Iir-;ffa0]^toneir ^^untt
The modest and most essential virtues of
the soul are like those old-fashioned flowers
we used to love in dim half-forgotten sum-
mers of the past. They sweeten the character
that fosters them, and under the magic process
of life yield extracts more potent than the
subtlest perfumes.
Can there be any one who does not remem-
ber the pitchers and bowls full of pansies and
stocks and mignonette, of roses and poppies
and nasturtiums, of heliotrope and sweet peas
and lilies-of-thc-valley, in odorous darkened
rooms of some old country house far away
353
from the noise of town, among the elms and
the hay-fields and the silver rivers.
In early morning the windows, which had
stood open all night to blessed cool of trees
and stars and shrubbery and drenching dew,
would be closed by some gentle hand, and the
green shutters drawn against the mounting
glare of day, to retain in hall and parlour and
dining-room something of the peace and re-
freshment of the hours of sleep, — in the
lovely twilight of these most human sanctu-
aries, — while the blazing midday of North-
ern summer bathed all the garden world in
pure unmitigated golden heat. The only
sound to break that almost solemn quiet was
the chatter of purple martins in their dimin-
utive houses above the lawn, or the sharp thin
note of the yellow warbler, as hot and intense
as the breath of noon itself, or perhaps the
sudden dry clacking of a locust driving his
fairy mowing machine under the spacious
blue.
Indoors, in that grateful stillness, beads of
354
icy water gathered on the brown stone jug on
the sideboard, and the scent and colour of
homelike companionable blossoms filled the
dwelling with friendliness and charm. They
were so still, so delicate, so fresh, so vivid,
so eloquent of loving and sedulous care! As
their fragrance gave a last touch of grace to
the gleaming mahogany and silver of those
hushed colonial rooms, the remembrance of
them must perpetually haunt the chambers
of the mind.
Of all the personal qualities which fragrant
virtues go to distil, the most complex, while
seemingly the simplest and surely the most
irresistible, is the old-fashioned essence we
call loveliness.
This fine quality, so easy to recognize yet
so difficult to define, does not at once betray
to the casual sense its component principles,
and we are at a loss to realize exactly whereof
it is made. Only after living and learning
does the realization come to us that loveliness
is distilled from a blending of kindliness, sin-
355
SCfie ittaftfnfl of J^etsonalits
cerity, and comeliness, — or as a poet might
say, from the lilac of love, the iris of truth,
and the carnation of beauty.
The lilac may well stand for the emblem
of kindliness. It comes so inspiringly with
the opening of the year, when all the forces
of the ground are awakening from their cold
lethargy, and the beneficent earth is renewing
her elemental life. In that time of universal
joyance and exuberant hope, the lilac puts
forth her generous beauty to the world, ma-
king a paradise of many a dooryard in the
spring. In our Northern spring-time many
loved flowers come early to the woods and
garden beds, proclaiming with their bright-
ness that the season of birds and leaves is here
once more; and yet for all the encouragement
of these welcome vanguards, there remains a
chill in the air, a reluctance in the earth, a
flinching in our skins, and a hesitation in our
hearts. But when the blessed lilac blooms
under the window, we are assured that the
joy of summer is really at our doors, windows
356
are thrown open, and a warm gladness takes
possession of indoors and out. The lilac, like
all true kindliness, is so abundant yet so unos-
tentatious, so sweet yet so subtle, so common
yet so fine, so exquisite and so hardy! It
grows without coddling in the humblest spot,
lavishing all its wonderful delicacies of scent
and colour, all its rich luxuriance of foliage,
to glorify the poorest environment; and yet
quite as becomingly will it deck the costliest
table or the prettiest head with a touch of
something untellably rare and precious. The
children may gather it in armfuls without
stint, while the wisest can never outlive the
gladdening magic of its kindly charm.
To the artist, the lover of orderly revela-
tions of truth in shapes of beauty, the iris has
always been dear for its stately blending of
symmetry and grace. It lends itself more
serviceably than any other flower to the exi-
gencies of decoration and design. Its tripli-
cate petals, symbolic of the threefold nature
of all perfection and the regularity of law
357
2rtje i^alKing of ^tvuonmtsi
which must underlie all freedom, have been
reproduced in myriad modifications through
many centuries of art. As the trefoil, it has
served to symbolize the trinitarian faith in
countless reproductions of ecclesiastical ar-
chitecture and ornament. As the fleur-de-lis,
it is invested with memorable associations of
historic glory. Through immemorial leg-
endry its triune flower appears as the mys-
tical symbol of sex, full of occult significance
and implications of joyous life. As the com-
mon blue flag, it decorates our wilding mead-
ows with a shred of heavenly azure cast down
upon the young and springing world of green,
beguiling imagination on many a summer
morning with a strange spell, — as of a supra-
mundane loveliness, — which always attaches
to blue flowers. It is the joy of the designer,
giving itself so pleasingly to interpretation
of his fertile fancy, and adding its eloquent
symbolism to myriad devices in wood, in
leather, in pigments, in precious metals and
plastic clay. Like a good model, it is not only
358
an mXf^ffuu'^ionttf lEnntntt
a convenience, but an incitement and an aid
to invention, adaptable yet original and sug-
gestive, definite and calculable yet full of
flowing grace. There must be in all triune
forms, whether in nature or in art, a profound
and subtle satisfaction to the mind, since no
other form — neither duplicate, fivefold, nor
multifold — so suggests the triplicate sym-
metrical structure of all supreme beauty.
The pure colour and delicate fragrance of
the iris, with its simple yet luxuriant sym-
metry, conspire to make it a fitting symbol of
sincerity and truth.
To distinguish between the comely and the
beautiful requires some nicety in the usage of
words, though any of us will feel sure of
knowing the difference, so long as we are not
asked for definitions. And while we readily
accede the supremacy to beauty, it is still true
that a comeliness that is sincere and kind may
transcend many unsound beauties. Comeli-
ness, to be exact, differs from beauty and
grace, combining something of each of those
359
attributes, and adding and emphasizing cer-
tain distinctions and qualifications of its own,
— serviceability, fitness, becomingness, fresh-
ness, and above all a scrupulous wholesome-
ness and freedom from taint.
As a type of pure comeliness, w^hat flower
surpasses the carnation? To the rose no doubt
must be accorded her unquestioned preemi-
nence of beauty. Her name has been imme-
morially a synonym for all that is most desira-
ble and ravishing to human sense. She is the
undisputed empress of the flowery world,
magnificent and unrivalled. But next to her
consider the carnation's claim to popular sov-
ereignty. Consider their masses of opulent
bloom, their long delicate bluish leaves and
stems, their stimulating cleanly perfume, their
variegated colour as they nod in homely clus-
ters in their well tilled beds, or sway with
cheery sufficiency from the simplest vase, and
declare whether any of their sisters are more
comely than they, or can better satisfy that
craving for sensuous refreshment which the
360
loveliness of flowers has helped to engender
in us, and must for ever help to slake.
Loveliness is not perfection. It requires
only human possibilities, — kindliness of
heart, frankness of disposition, fitness of per-
son. It is warm, impulsive, quite fallible,
often sad, but never unkind. It does not even
affect omniscience, content if it can but secure
an acceptable sincerity and fair dealing in
the conduct of life. It does not pine for flaw-
lessness, if it can but have faithfulness, pains-
taking, good cheer, and growth toward a
noble dream.
As old-fashioned flowers are simpler and
commoner than many overfostered favourites
of the hour, and yet never lose their perennial
essence of loveliness, but rather become en-
riched and endeared as associations and mem-
ories gather about them, so these old-fashioned
qualities of kindliness, sincerity, and comeli-
ness, which go to make up personal loveliness,
are not really superseded by any amount of
" temperament," " esprit," " style," or what-
361
ever characteristic may be in current vogue
in the jargon of the hour. The quality of be-
ing " chic," for instance, does not include all
that comeliness implies; a friend may be
'' sympatico " (that admirable and delightful
trait!) and yet not have all the tonic charm
comprehended in kindliness; and no charac-
teristic of the mind can ever take the place of
human sincerity. The newer modes, whether
in flowers or graces, cannot supplant the old
essentials. Fashions change, but the things
that fashion life are unchanging.
One is often surprised at finding beauty
where there is neither soul nor intelligence
at all commensurate with the physical seem-
ing, and in such instances one instinctively
hesitates to use the adjective " lovely," as sy-
nonymous with " beautiful." For loveliness,
as we habitually think of it, contains other
attributes besides physical ones, being made
up of a modicum of beauty, actuated by a
generous heart and inspired by an incorrupt-
362
an ®lJr=:iFafiiJ|fonelr lEnnmtt
ible loyalty. This subtle composite charm
does not necessarily affect us in the same way
that surpassing beauty does, suddenly over-
coming us by its sheer supremacy and often
leaving our riper judgment bewildered and
void. Loveliness pleases and satisfies without
reservation or reaction. While it is within
the power of beauty to astonish the senses,
only loveliness can delight the soul and con-
tent the mind as well as charm the eye.
To the lover of beauty in old days Aphro-
dite was immortal and divine, and remnants
of her liberal cult may still lurk in our pagan
blood, haunting the imagination at times with
an alluring spell. The immemorial rites of
that worship are not to be revived. Our skep-
tic days call for a more rational religion.
Meanwhile we credulous and practical mod-
erns, still not altogether unmindful of endur-
ing loveliness, might recall the three immor-
tal Graces, offer them sane devotion under
their names of Comeliness, Sincerity, and
363
Kindliness, and enroll ourselves in the order
of the carnation, the cult of the iris, the fel-
lowship of the lilac.
What mainly distinguishes these essential
ingredients of loveliness is that they are all
attainable practical virtues, rather than ab-
stractions, — human rather than divine attri-
butes. Kindliness is practical love, sincerity
and comeliness are the every-day forms of the
truth and beauty which we think of as eternal.
And loveliness itself is a most human essence,
rather than an angelic one. We endow celes-
tial beings in fancy with shining, preeminent,
and supreme perfections, but reserve the liv-
able properties of this-world loveliness for
the children of mortals.
Gentle, warm and generous natures lay a
sorcery upon us with a look or a tone, or trans-
port us by a hand-touch beyond the confines
of sorrow and dismay, while far more per-
fectly beautiful but less loving and under-
standing beings leave us indifferent and un-
moved. Time as it passes betrays the loveless
3^4
spirit and the unlighted mind by unmistak-
able signs; the eyes grow hard, the mouth
unsmiling or mean, the brow sullen or super-
cilious, and the general mien becomes furtive,
dejected, or querulous. But the kindly spirits
who put love and care into the daily practice
of life, increase in loveliness as the years go
by, and age only lends them a more indubita-
ble and magic comeliness. Their beauty is
not the mere insensate mask of appearance,
whose flawless hues must pale, its texture
change, its lines droop, beginning to wilt even
in the moment of maturity, like a soulless
flower; it is the subtle and registering simu-
lacrum of the ever-growing intelligence and
spirit, whose loving thoughts and feelings it
reveals from moment to moment in valuable
and memorable expressions of loveliness.
The plainest features grow more comely with
years, through habits of loveliness, — by be-
ing made continually the instruments of sin-
cere and kindly lives.
Of all the qualities that can enlist our en-
365
thusiasm for a personality, sincerity is surely
the noblest and most rare. It is only through
sincerity that mortals can attain anything like
a permanent tenure of happiness, and come
to breathe that paradisal air in which fearless
intelligences dwell. Sincerity is to conduct
what truth is to science, what unselfishness is
to religion, what devotion is to art, the core
upon whose soundness all other worth de-
pends. As a single error may invalidate a
whole fabric of reasoning, so a drop of insin-
cerity may vitiate all the effect of an attract-
ive character, nullifying beauty, weakening
love, and involving the personality and all its
relationships in disaster. It is sincerity that
supplies the preservative ingredient in love-
liness, that keeps it stable and sweet under all
conditions and for any length of time, keeping
its goodness from the insidious inroads of sad-
ness, and its beauty from the deterioration of
futility and disappointment.
That comeliness should be so potent a part
of loveliness is natural enough, since it is the
366
ain ®lir=iFafi5i|fone5 Essence
senses after all that supply the nourishment
of our dreams and suggest the trend of our
ideals. It is useless to delude ourselves with
the belief that the spiritual life needs nothing
more than virtue for its sustenance, and may
be lived in a state of fatuous beatitude quite
removed from actualities. Such a dreary and
fantastic conception of existence could only
have been devised by the dark rabid theology
of the middle ages, that midnight of man's
reason. Strange as it seems, there are still
here and there fanatical minds which can de-
cry the excellence of beauty, keeping alive the
mistaken old cant which declares it to be an
evil and a snare. This is no more than an
ascetic and fanatical pose, without any real
ground of conviction; for we must all enjoy
the aesthetic stimulus of beauty and feel the
religion of its innocent good, unless we are
perverted or mad.
But the instinct of humanity is never to be
defrauded for long. The sternest Puritan
must have felt in his heart that his hatred of
367
2rj|e JHamufi of ^ttnonnUts
beauty was traitorous to honest goodness and
at enmity with benign truth. Is not the deep
unhappiness in the lives of bigots a proof of
the unnatural and monstrous falseness of their
doctrines? We need to be constantly trained
and exhorted to an honest and generous mo-
rality, but comeliness is an unquestionable
good which we must instinctively approve
and admire. No healthy intelligence can be-
lieve that disregard of physical welfare can
be other than injurious and crippling to men-
tal and spiritual growth. Our intuitive ad-
miration of the beautiful is too deep and pri-
mordial to be other than wholesome and legit-
imate, and productive of salutary results.
And we must make ourselves happy by free-
ing our minds from the unfortunate notion
that somehow personality is to be miracu-
lously endowed with angelic perfections,
through vigorously neglecting to cultivate the
perfections that are possible to it here and
now, — by getting rid of the delusion that
our instincts are evil and our senses corrupt,
368
and that the aspirations and purposes of the
soul and mind can be best served by meagre,
inadequate bodies.
The practical cultivation of gladdening
and helpful loveliness needs no extraordinary
wealth, no exceptional opportunities, no fa-
voured habitat or environment, no peculiar
advantage of air or season. In any garden
of the spirit its growth may spring and flour-
ish with modest rapture and invincible pow-
ers. Comeliness glorifies a cotton gown as
enchantingly as it does a Paris ^' creation."
One may wear clothes worth a ransom, and
still be unlovely, even uncomely, — dowdy,
mean, undesirable, and ashamed. It costs
very little money but considerable nicety to
be comely, — to be clean, cared for, and in
keeping with just requirement. To be sin-
cere and kindly is equally inexpensive mone-
tarily, and more costly in unselfish effort and
wisdom, yet not unattainable for the least of
us even in a confusing and distracting world.
And always before us within constant touch
369
8Ct)^ IWafein© of ^tv^onulxts
of enjoyment is that enheartening and suffi-
cient reward for all efforts in self-culture, —
a sense of our own small share of unequivocal
though unobtrusive success and contentment;
always about us, the loveliness of life, its
blossoms flowering in choicest and humblest
places, fragrant and perfect, and distilling for
our rapture the potent essence whose perva-
sive magic makes Eden everywhere.
370
©enius anir tiie Artist
No more misleading definition was ever
formulated than the familiar one which de-
clares genius to be an infinite capacity for
taking pains. That is the one thing that ge-
nius is not. A capacity for taking pains may
be a characteristic of every conscientious
worker, but is in no way an essential distinct-
ive trait of genius.
The very essence of genius is its spontaneity,
its inspiration, its power of instant and inex-
plicable coordination and achievement. Its
processes are incomprehensible even to itself.
It cannot take pains, for it is an immediate
force like gravity, and works without effort
or consciousness of exertion. It is indeed an
371
infinite capacity, but it can only have been
confused with patient painstaking because in
the eternal course of creation infinite patience
and infinite desire must be supposed to be
parts of infinite wisdom. Among men genius
is more often spasmodic, uncertain, fluctua-
ting as the tide and erratic as the wind, sus-
ceptible to stimulus and amenable to sugges-
tion and education, but intolerant of routine,
impatient of restraint, and accommodating it-
self with difficulty to the stereotyped require-
ments of conventional toil in a workaday
world.
The woes of genius are proverbial. And
the many annoyances, misfortunes, and dis-
tresses which usually beset its most marked
possessors are charged unreasoningly to the
inherent character of genius itself. But this
is surely an error. It is not the unfortunate
man's genius that involves him in unhappi-
ness, but his lack of a rationally ordered and
well balancing education adapted to his ex-
ceptional needs. Far from being the cause
372
<!!;niiiif$ attn tf^t Artist
of his undoing, his genius is often the only
source of satisfaction and happiness he has;
and its exercise and influence afford him the
only refuge possible to his otherwise chaotic
and ill-regulated life.
The dictates of genius are never unsound.
Its tremendous urge is a veritable breath of
the life-spirit, infinitely wise, benign, and
powerful, making only for good, for beauty,
for enlightenment in the life of the individual
and in the life of the race. It can only seem
chaotic or malign when perverted by faulty
art, when thwarted in exercising itself, when
stultified and harried by unfortunate environ-
ment or inharmonious training. Genius often
seems mad only because its possessor is inade-
quately educated for handling his treasure, in-
capable of arranging any modus vivendi be-
tween himself and the world. Small wonder
that the bungler of such a blessing should be
distracted and distraught by such failure.
The precious gift of genius is not so infre-
quent as is said. Not all genius is in the realm
373
of fine art or in public or famous or conspic-
uous activities. It may show itself in the sim-
plest service of humanity, and all genius is
richly valuable and exquisitely pleasing. The
genius of motherliness, that soothes and sus-
tains the whole weary world! The genius of
merrymaking that suns out the dark places
whenever it comes near! The genius of un-
selfishness that gilds the dullest efifort! The
genius of making happiness out of the unlike-
liest odds and ends saved from the wreckage
of our disappointments! The genius of inge-
nuity, — how well balanced it must be, how
modestly it works its miracles! The many-
sided genius of home-making and child-rear-
ing! The sturdy genius of dependability!
Unacclaimed, unappreciated, unappraised,
but never wholly unrequited, these bits of
life-spirit work against unreasoning obstruc-
tion and confusion to save the world! Who
has not some genius, and what might it not
grow to, if it were happily educated! How
374
better can one serve the world than through
the happy bent of one's genius?
Genius is the spontaneous coordination, of
inspiration, aspiration, and execution, and re-
quires for its perfect development the finest, tX
most harmonious culture of the spirit, the in-
telligence, and the senses. Why not, there-
fore, so educate every one in the art of living .
as to establish avenues through which genius
could free itself and develop to the incalcu-
lable good of the world? Genius must be
educated and supplied with adequate comple-
mentary capacities in order that it may be
saved from torture and frustration; and the
artist, that is to say, every one of us, should
be so educated that genius may emerge and
find an unobstructed vent for its purpose and
dream.
THE END.
^
375
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