P < ^ . : ..-?. , PRIVATE LIBRARY | JAMES H. BURKE. Mr. James S. Porter 2cw Q //?/ JOHN H. VINCENT, D. D. f LL. D. A LIBRARY OF GUIDING THOUGHTS -BY- Leading Thinkers of To-Day, INTRODUCTION BY JOHN H. VINCENT, D.D., LL.D. ILLUSTRATED. DETROIT, MICH.: F. B. DICKERSON COMPANY, PUBLISHERS. COPYRIGHTED 1888, BY \ B. DICKERSON. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PUBLISHER'S PREFACE. Books are educators, and their aim should be to answer and encourage those earnest aspirations for improved conditions, higher culture and a better environment, felt by every intelli- gent person. As we are endowed with a sense and a love of physical beauty, so also have we an ideal of moral, intellectual and social beauty. Man seeks a triple perfection: first, intellectual, which no creature below Jiim aspires to or is capable of ; second, a moral, or divine perfection, consisting of those things where- unto we tend by spiritual means, but which, here, we can not attain; lastly, a social perfection, consisting of the elements which are essential to the existence of society, and embracing also, in its higher department, all those graces which render human intercourse beautiful, and satisfy those finer instincts which God has implanted in the breasts of all superior beings. Physical and intellectual training are necessary adjuncts to the moral and social training of every individual who would .attain the highest culture in these directions. That structure IV PUBLISHER'S PREFACE. endures longest the foundation of which is most securely laid. As no work of the architect will withstand the beating rays of the summer sun or the blasts of winter without a firm basis, so it may be said of man, that he cannot hope to main- tain a position, impregnable to all assaults of public criticism, without morality and intellectuality as a foundation upon which to build his social structure. A higher and nobler aim must be his, also, than that of social position alone; and it is the object of the present work, first, to show the reader the many and varied influences that will assist him in developing a physical and intellectual temple; second, to lay down those social and moral laws that will enable him suitably to deco- rate it. It is believed that the work is wholly original and unique, that nothing approaching it, either in form or scope, was ever before attempted. In preparing it, the publishers have, at great expense of time, patience and money, called to their aid those men and women who, by reason of their intellectual training and high positions, seemed best fitted to lead an upward tendency in the moral, physical, intellectual and social training of the people. We trust we have succeeded in pro- viding for the public a work that needs no apology for its appearance; but one that will be a welcome visitor to every home where worthy books are to be found. F. B. D. CONTENTS. INTRODUCTION, .... . . By J. H. VINCENT, D. D., LL. D. INTELLECTUAL CULTURE, ...... By RIGHT REV. SAMUEL FALLOWS, D. D., LL. D., Chicago, 111. PHYSICAL CULTURE, ... . By PROF. E. B. WARMAN, Boston, Mass. EVILS OF MENTAL DISSIPATION, By A. S. ANDREWS, A. M., D. D., President of the Southern University, Greensboro, Ala. 30 4 1 58 FOES OF SOCIETY, . . , . . By REV. RANSOM DUNN, D.D., President of Hillsdale College, Mich. ASSOCIATIONS OF YOUNG MEN AND YOUNG WOMEN, 68 By B. F. AUSTIN, A. M., B. D., President of Alma College, St. Thomas, Ont. BOOKS AND ASSOCIATES, . . . . . .88 By REV. GEO. W. WILLIARD, D. D., President of Heidelberg Col- lege, Tiffin, Ohio. vi CONTENTS. ADVANTAGES OF EARLY TRAINING; THE INFLUENCES AND INSPIRATIONS OF THE HOME LIFE, . . 99 By JOHN H. YOUNG, A. M., Author of "Our Deportment." A PLEA FOR THE HIGHER EDUCATION OF MOTHERS, 106 By F. S. BURTON, B. S. LL. B., Detroit, Mich. THE LIBRARY IN THE HOME; OR, How TO SELECT AND USE BOOKS, . . . . . .112 By CHAS. N. SIMS, D. D., Chancellor of the University of Syracuse, N. Y. CHARACTER BUILDING; MENTAL AND MORAL, . 123 By WM. A. OBENCHAIN, President of Ogden College, Bowling Green, Ky. Music IN THE HOME, . . . . . -133 By REV. L. R. FISKE, D. D., LL. D., President of Albion College, Mich. CULTIVATE A DESIRE TO PLEASE, . 138 By MARY ASHLEY TOWNSEND, New Orleans, La. How TO MAKE FRIENDS AND How TO KEEP THEM, 153 By MRS. M. L. RAYNE, Author of "Against Fate," " What Can A Woman Do?" etc. THE INFLUENCES OF NATURE, . . . 159 By REV. SYLVESTER F. SCOVEL, President Wooster University of Ohio. MANNERS CONSISTENT WITH RELIGION, . . 175 By W. G. ELIOT, D. D., President of Washington University, St, Louis, Mo. REGARD FOR PUBLIC OPINION, . . . .191 By J. D. MOFFAT, D. D., President of Washington and Jefferson College, Washington, Pa. HOME ATTRACTIONS AND AMUSEMENTS, . . 206 By REV. JAS. H. POTTS, D. D., Editor "Christian Advocate." CONTENTS. vii THE VALUE OF THE CULTIVATION OF THE ENNOB- LING INFLUENCE OF SELF-RESPECT, . . 226 By A. R. TAYLOR, M.A., President of Kansas State Normal School. PRACTICAL LIFE, . . . . . . . 234 By G. DE LAZARRE, Ph., D. LL. D. TO-DAY AND FIFTY YEARS AGO, . . . 252 By MRS. HENRY WARD BEECHER, Brooklyn, N. Y. THE COMMERCIAL VALUE OF GOOD BREEDING, . 259 By REV. CHARLES O. REILLY, D. D., Treasurer of the Irish National League, Detroit, Mich. SOCIAL CULTURE, 271 By ALICE E. IVES, Author of "Social Mirror," etc. THE SABBATH DAY AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE, . . 283 By REV. W. C. WOOD, A. M., Boston, Mass. PRACTICAL EDUCATION OF OUR DAUGHTERS, . 321 By MRS. KATE BREARLEY FORD, Detroit, Mich. THE INFLUENCE OF CLIMATE AND OF COUNTRY, , 348 By THOS. HILL, D. D., LL. D., Portland, Me., Ex-President Har- vard University. THE UNIVERSAL CONFLICT; A NEW VIEW OF PHYSI- CAL, INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL DEVELOPMENT, 374 By C. E. SARGENT, A. M., Utica, N. Y., Author of "Our Homes." INDIVIDUALITY IN WOMAN, . 440 By Miss FRANCES E. WILLARD, Evanston, 111., President W. C. T. U. THE EDUCATION OF BRAIN AND MUSCLE, . . 450 By THOMAS LAWRENCE, D. D., President Biddle University Char- lotte, N. C. How TO GOVERN OUR THOUGHTS, . . . 463 By GEO. B. STEVENS, Ph. D., D. D., New Haven, Conn., Prof, of Sacred Literature, Yale University. vin CONTENTS. OUR COUNTRY'S NOBLEMEN, . . . . 483 By S. H. PEABODY, Ph. D., LL. D., President University of Illinois, THE SUN'S INFLUENCES, ..... 507 By O. N. STODDARD, LL. D., Prof, of Sciences, Wooster University, Ohio. HISTORY AND HISTORICAL STUDY; THE LESSONS OF THE PAST FORETELLING THE EVENTS OF THE FUTURE, . . 533 By JOHN CLARK RIDPATH, LL. D., the Historian, Greencastle, Ind. GEOLOGY AND THE BIBLE; THE TESTIMONY OF THE ROCKS REGARDING THE TRUTH OF REVELATIONS, 579 By ALEXANDER WINCHELL, LL. D., Prof. Geology, etc., University of Michigan. BUSINESS INTEGRITY CONSISTENT WITH BUSINESS SUCCESS, . . . . . ." . .617 By GEN. B. F. COWEN, Ex-Adjutant General of Ohio and Assistant Secretary of the Interior. I How TO IMPROVE THE POWER OF THINKING, . 636 By B. F. HAYES, D. D., of Bates College, Lewiston, Me. YOU AND I; OUR RELATION TO EACH OTHER, TO THE WORLD AND TO OUR MAKER. BY J. H, VINCENT, D. >., L.L. D. INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. LL great social, scientific, political and religious movements in this world have their center in the individual man. The multitude is necessary to the carrying out of progressive and radical ideas; but it is only as the individual receives, and in his own life embodies such ideas that they become effective. The man is the unit of society, and must therefore hold the thought and possess the character which the true reformer would develop in society at large. " The great hope of society is individual character." The person must be in himself what he would exhibit and pro- duce in his varied relations. A good father must first of all be a good man. And true statesmanship is impossible with- out true manhood. Character is everything. There are two important elements in a perfect character: the recognition of individuality, and the conviction of inter- dependence. Man must love himself, respect himself, and build himself up ; but he must, at the same time, love, respect and build up his fellow-man. All true and powerful person- alities possess these characteristics. And whatever tends to 10 SIGNAL LIGHTS. the education of man in self-respect, personal independence,, and a true respect and love for his neighbor is worthy of our thought and support. The present volume contains many thoughts from leading thinkers, touching personal character and the relations of man to his neighbor. These thoughts are SIGNAL LIGHTS to arrest the attention and minister to the upbuilding of society. At the request of the publishers I take the liberty of intro- ducing the admirable series of papers which have been pre- pared for this volume by a brief and practical dissertation on individuality and inter-dependence, and I am permitted by them to select as my text the suggestive title: "You and I." You are you, and not I, while I am I and not you. So it was in the beginning, so it is now, and so shall it ever be. Individuality and identity are two unchangeable laws of our being. In the very outset of a human life these characteristics are stamped upon the living entity, the living unity, the living personality. Circumstances and educational agencies may modify him, but after all he is what he is. He may be warped, worn, worm-eaten, widened, cut down, painted, polished, you may do a score of things with him, but he is all the while himself and not some other self. So you are you and not I, and I am I and not you. Oak is oak and not pine. It was oak when as an acorn it softened under the pressure of soil and sun and moisture. It was oak when it was a tender sapling, bending to the breath of the wind, the touch of a pass- ing traveller, or the tread of a resting bird. It was oak in the full-grown tree; oak when it fell under the axman's stroke; oak when the sharp teeth of the gang-saw tore through it ; oak in the raft that floated to market ; oak in the shop, and still is it oak as it stands a costly and polished piece of furniture in the splendid hall- way of the palace. And when, five hundred years from now., it is cast, a ruin, into a corner of an attic a. YOU AND I. H thousand miles away, it will still be what it was at first, oak, and nothing else. You and I are subject to the same immutable law which holds all over the world and through the ages. The individ- ual is, under all conditions and transformations, identical. The babe that clung to the mother's breast is the same person through the entire sweep of life ; the same as a boy in play ; the same as a man in business ; the same as a veteran lingering on the shore of time. And he will always be the same, and not another. Ten thousand cycles hence you will still be you, and I shall still be I, and you and I will remain forever you and I. You and I, the same in the identity of individuality, may both, by culture, become in most respects different from what we could have been under evil influence or subjected to -neg- lect. You may be you true or you false, trustworthy or untrustworthy, strong or weak, lofty or degraded, pure or foul, a success or a failure. Personal identity, a blessing and glory to the good, becomes a curse to the bad. It is the chain that binds together cause and effect, sin and punishment, opportunity and destiny. It is the cable that carries memo- ries and tendencies through the wide sweep of existence from youth to age, from time to eternity. There is something both beautiful and alarming, inspiring and terrible, in this continu- ity of personality under the rein of justice and righteousness through all stages of being. He who feels it can never be wholly frivolous. To him, " Life is real, life is earnest." You and I are responsible and immortal beings. You are you in the body, and you are you out of the body, and your principal existence will be spent out of the body, at least out of the kind of body you now inhabit. The body is not necessary to your identity. Science tells us that our bodies frequently change as to the material of which they are composed. Identity of atomic constituents or of atomic com- 12 SIGNAL LIGHTS. binations or proportions is not necessary to identity of essen- tial personality. You are you when you weigh ten pounds, one hundred pouncjs, or three hundred pounds, and whatever the body of the future life may be, the identity of its occupant will not be affected by the form, color, density, attenuation, weight, or parts of the members of the new body. You will be you, and I shall be I, on aerial flight among the starry spaces, or rejoicing in the light and peace and fellowship of the city of our God. This changed existence as to its outward form and condi- tions, although so protracted, and this present connection with the physical body, although relatively so short, but a mo- ment as compared to centuries, do not justify us in neglect- ing or despising the body we now have. The other body may be more glorious in its material and make-up, more pleasant to live in, more readily responsible to the needs of the spirit that is to inhabit it, more free from conditions which make pain possible, more swift of motion, altogether more desir- able, but while you and I occupy bodies of flesh and blood we must care for them and honor them. When we travel for ten days over the sea, we do not undervalue the ship we sail on, nor do we like to feel that the Captain and his crew are neglecting any part of it. We want care taken of hulk and engines, ropes and rudder, as well as masts and compass. Of course we do not expect to live in this ship after we reach the other side, but we know that we shall be better off on the other side if we have good accommodations, good ventilation, wholesome food, no excessive solicitude, and no unnecessary delay on the voyage. You and I must take care of our bodies for the sake of our souls. Good people in sound bodies are worth more for work and companionship than good people in diseased bodies. They are less morbid, more reasonable, more cheerful, more active, more useful. The pulpit ought to YOU AND I, 13 A preach more about the sanctification of the body, about tem- perance in food and drink, good sleep at the right hours and in the right rooms, about exercise, ventilation, diet, digestion, work and recreation. Children should be taught to take care of their bodies while they are young, and to deny or subdue the flesh. Such things should be talked more about in con- ventions, taught more in schools, practiced more in the famil^. It should not be an uncommon thing to meet men a hundred years of age. You and I are in danger of dying too young, because we do not know how to handle the body in which we now live. You and I are separate existences, each having his own interests, destiny and delights. I cannot always like what you like, nor can you always approve what I prefer. One man's meat is another man's poison. One man attracts me. The same man repels you. Sometimes people on the whole take to some people and to the same pursuits. The points of diver- gence are few and slight. What one praises the other praises. They agree in commendation and condemnation. Many troubles of social life arise from divergencies above described. We need to know and heed the law of independence and of toleration. Let every man have his own chosen way so long as his way does not hamper or hinder you. My old Quaker schoolmaster, in a little country school- house, announced on the opening of school his one only law. He expatiated upon its excellence before he proclaimed : " You and I are here in this school-room for the season, and we need only one rule. Let us keep this and we shall have a peaceful time. If I keep it, I shall be able to teach better; if you keep it, you will be able to study better. It is a rule that will pre- vent quarrels on the play-ground, promote genuine friendship, increase self-respect, and add to mutual esteem. It is a good rule for the homes we live in. Its observance would help 14 SIGNAL LIGHTS. parents to govern, servants to please, children to obey. It would quel! hard feelings and prevent hard words. It would make rulers just, ministers useful, the nation strong, and the church successful." After a still more protracted and elabor- ate glorification of his " rule," the old Quaker of the drab garb and plain speech said: " Now the rule which I commend is simply this: MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS." The profound silence was followed by a pleasant titter. The boys and girls seemed to approve the "rule," and we certainly did have a delightful winter with the wise and kind-hearted old Jesse Broomall, in our sand-hill school-house. You and I must learn to respect each others' opinions and tastes. You may go your way, and I mine. You must not try to meddle with me, nor I with you. In this way we shall bring variety into unity, which is always better than monotony and uniformity. You and I, although independent, are inter-dependent. We are two and yet we are one. Each is to mind his own busi- ness, but neither can wholly mind his own business without giving some attention to the business of the other. " It is not good for man to be alone." Absolute unity with the thought of complete separateness is simply impossible. The human being is, at birth, of all animals the most dependent, and this dependence continues. The cord severed at his birth is never wholly severed. Invisible it may be, but by it he is held to mother, to father, to brother and sisters, to playmates and friends, to wife and children until the day that he is drawn from earthly to heavenly companionship. This inter-depend- ence gives new and important significance to human life. If each man lived for himself, life would be a very simple pro- cess. He could have for himself all that he could lay hands on. Silent and self -centered, he could feed himself, build him- self up, live in himself and for himself, to the day of the end. As nature is, this self-life would, of course, involve bitter fight YOU AND I. 15 with mighty forces. Beasts of prey would meet him, and birds of the air snatch away something he sought. His life would be a conflict with gravitation and tempest, with moth and malaria, with blight and death. Some things which in combination with other men of like aim and power he might easily win, he must in his solitude abandon as unattainable. The best part of his being must be left undeveloped. He must live a recluse, and lie unburied when death at once sub- dued him. You and I must live together, in the same community, possibly in the same street, the same church, and what if it be in the same house ! We must live together. It is an inexor- able law of nature, which is the immutable and eternal law of God. From it there is no escape. Old men accept it; wise men approve it ; good men enjoy it. Thus are homes created ; thus villages, towns, cities and states grow up. Now, people who live together may live in solitude, each may live for him- self. Personal interests may collide. Sullen silence may take the place of conversation. A man may eat at the same table with you, and be plotting for his own interest against you. For he who lives for himself is sure to work against the man O who stands in his way. The aim of the other makes no differ- ence to him, whether it be innocent and just or not. He is bent on his own ends. If you are in his way, he will drive his car over you. If you oppose him, he will soon dispose of you, and he is not particular as to the time or the way or the pro- cess involved in the transaction. His line will run across your property. If the law enters, he will resort to bribery or fraud or violence. His contract will give him an advantage through some technicality, and against all fairness he will exact the last pound of flesh. And thus, in endless ways, the selfish man will live for himself in society, using the law and the power and other advantages which social organizations secure, 16 SIGNAL LIGHTS. - not to build up and help society, but to build up and help him- self. If he be a monarch, he will oppress the weak; if a mil- lionaire, he will grind the poor. He lives alone as nearly as he can in a world full of people. " Self " is written on his door-posts, frescoed on his walls, graven on his harness. Self, self, self. He " minds his own business." He pleases himself. He looks out for number one. He is not his brother's keeper. With him it is all " I," and " my," and " mine." You are a cipher, and he cares for you only when he can put you, the cipher, on the right-hand of the unit, " I," and thus you make him count ten times more than he could alone. Then, indeed, that colossal " I " cares for you. You and I must recognize this fact, the inter-dependence under the laws of God which control it, that we may repress selfishness and foster love; that we may mind that part of our own business which has fixed proper relations to each other; that we may limit, too, our personal ambition by the well-being of our fellow men, and scorn to accept personal advantage at the expense of the comfort, security and happi- ness of our neighbors. You and I must learn the rule and possess the spirit of the good Samaritan. We must commit and remember the sec- ond law of the commandment " Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." We must become like the good, unselfish one, who delighted to do the will of God, who pleased not himself, but went about doing good, and who gave his life for the sal- vation of the world. If you and I could enter into his life; if we could look on humanity as he did; and, according to our ability, do for humanity what he did, we should find the high- est joy of living; and if society generally followed his exam- ple, we should soon hear an end of all strikes and strifes, and the coming of a brighter day for our race. YOU AND I. 17 You and I must live for each other. We must talk and act and vote in mutual and not in selfish interest. If one is rich and one is poor, we must vote for those ends that are best for both rich and poor. We must be fair towards each other as members of the same government; must not be bound by party, but by principle; must take measures that are for the good of the whole nation and in harmony with the laws of God; must stand by men who are true and courageous and just. What a nation we might have if we were all, as citizens, loyal to God and to humanity ! Well, this is what you and I are to aim at. You and I, as neighbors, must carry out the doctrine embod- ied in the " Golden Rule; " we must not quarrel over bound- ary lines, meddlesome pugs, invading chickens, unreasoning children. We must not carry talk from one house to another, nor allow other people to do it in our hearing. We must not listen, and then we shall not hear. People, as a rule, do not talk much to the deaf and dumb. As neighbors, we should be mutual helps, yet you and I will not borrow when we can pos- sibly help it. People who borrow little, count it a luxury to lend, and much borrowing would soon spoil the pleasure. We may not talk against each other, never. Not even by the slight casting of the eye, the lifting of the brow, or the shrug of the shoulders. Good will may be marred and confidence broken by a look, and even a child will interpret it. It will be well, therefore, to love and be patient. And where love is put to the test, to be long-suffering, gentle, and forgiving to the last. Blessed is the neighborhood where neighbors are neighborly ! You and I must remember that the first, last, best, strongest place m this world is the home. It is the true center of the state, the community, the church and the school. Good homes make good neighbors, good citizens, good scholars, good 18 SIGNAL LIGHTS. saints. You and I should carry to it the law of " minding our own business " in the ordering of our households. We should train ourselves that we may train our children. The best governor is he who is self-governed. A man who cannot rule his own spirit cannot rule his own children. We must keep calm hearts, unruffled brows, subdued voices, and well- chosen words. Then we can expect silence and serenity in our children when these are required of them. And we can the more easily endure and the more effectually correct, impa- tience and irritability and bad temper in them. What father and mother cannot themselves do, they cannot with grace or consistency insist that their children should do. You and I must make home a pleasant place. It may not be large and elegant, but it may be beautiful and attractive. Pictures and flowers, fresh air, good books, bright smiles, cheerful songs, sweet tones, true prayer, loving ministries, all these cost little, but are counted of inestimable value. They make homes that make men and women, and they create memories that remain forever. Especially must we keep an altar of religion in our homes. Fires of family worship should burn there every day. The word of God should every day be opened. We should be familiar with the precious promises of scripture, the sweetest hymns of the church, and the lives of the noble and devout saints of the ages. You and I, therefore, have wide and responsible relations. May we so live that, dying, we may live forever. And may we walk the streets of the New Jerusalem, through the Grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. / REV. SAMUEL FALLOWS, D. D., LL. D. INTELLECTUAL CULTURE. BY RT. REV. SAMUEL FALLO WS t D. Z>., L L. D. HERE is no subject, perhaps, more trite than that of education. It has always been the topic of common-place utterance for more than a thousand years. Libraries have been crowded with .volumes written upon it. But although com- mon-place as sunlight or air, it is yet fresh as the morning and virginal as the human soul. Old as the first man, it is as new " as the last born infant, whose wail, falling on the mother's ear, implores her tender care and train- ing." The ablest minds of every nation have thoughtfully pondered the great theme. The Egyptian priest bent his con- templation to it while " instructing the children of the favored caste, or inscribing the mystic lore of his nation on the column and obelisk for an eternal remembrance." The Grecian scholar meditated upon it while leading out the minds of eager, enthusiastic disciples, beneath the olive grove of the academy, " Plato's retirement where the attic bird Trilled her thick warbled notes the summer long." 19 20 SIGNAL LIGHTS. The Roman rhetorician reflected upon it, teaching in the schools the precepts of his art, and with them the knowledge of his times. It filled the thoughts of the monk of the middle ages, as he trained his choir, or illuminated his missals. It was preached by the clergy of the modern world, after the darkness resting upon portions of those mediaeval times had passed away. It is, to-day, the inspiration of the largest and most influential gatherings of cultivated men and women to be found upon the continent. I am restricted by my subject to intellectual education. Distinguished writers for this timely book have elsewhere treated upon the various phases of moral and religious culture. In reality, however, there can be no fundamental separation between these different divisions of education. There can be no act of the intellect without emotion. Feeling is the natural and reliable prompter of the will, an affection or emotion being always the necessary preliminary to volition. Hence the parent, or teacher standing in the parent's place, must be a moral as well as an intellectual instructor. Even in the schools, where religious teaching may be excluded, the purest intellectual subjects can and ought to be taught in a moral or religious spirit. Men who are entitled to an attentive hearing have given us their views on this great subject of education. Locke says: " I think I may say that of all the men we meet with, nine parts out of ten are what they are, good or evil, useful or not, by their education." The estimate of this renowned philoso- pher is doubtless correct. The poet Pope, in his well known and often quoted couplet, states substantially the same truth: "'Tis education forms the common mind; Just as the twig is bent, the tree 's inclined." Lord Bacon also agrees with it when he says: "Custom is INTELLECTUAL CULTURE. 21 most perfect when it beginneth in young years; this we call education, which is, in effect, but an early custom." When we ask, "What constitutes a right education?" we find an answer in the language of Milton : " I call that a com- plete education which fits a man to perform justly, skillfully and magnanimously all the offices, both private and public, of peace and war." In a comprehensive and admirable manner, Herbert Spencer meets the question. " The education required for the people is that which will give them the full command of every faculty, both of mind and body; which will call into play their powers of observation and reflection; which will make thinking and reasonable beings of the mere creatures of impulse, prejudice and passion; that which, in a moral sense, will give them objects of pursuit and habits of conduct favorable to their own happiness and to that of the community of which they form a part." And along with this succinct summing up of the subject, may be put the statement of John Stuart Mill: "The very cornerr stone of education must be the recognition of the principle that the object is to call forth the greatest quantity of intellectual power, and to inspire the intensest love of the truth." To whom shall the great work of education be first entrusted? Most evidently to woman. The early part of a child's life, for ' shaping and guiding, is given to her. It is the mother on whom the precious responsibility is laid. If she, for any reason, is unable to fulfil her duty, then to some other woman is the important charge to be intrusted. As the earliest im- pressions are the most lasting, the first years of a child's life are those in which the character is largely formed. The home education precedes the education of the school, and the education of the world with its innumerable teachers and lessons. Mothers are the natural, heaven-ordained, primary teachers of the race. The new education, based so completely 22 SIGNAL LIGHTS. on the nature of the child and its requirements for develop- ment, makes its earnest appeal to them to seek the knowledge of the means and methods by which, with the divinely im- planted instinct of love in their hearts, they may worthily guide their children's feet into wisdom's paths. Pestalozzi, one of the most honored pioneers of reform in education, was the first in history to call distinctively upon mothers to help intelligently and systematically in the work of childhood instruction. He said : " I will make education the basis of the common moral character of the people, and will put the education of the people in the hands of the mothers." And so he gave the world the book for mothers, or "How Gertrude Teaches Her Children" a work full of practical helpfulness and rich suggestiveness. Froebel followed him, and with profound philosophical insight taught that children, in their education, must pass through the same stages of development, on a small scale, that have marked the develop- ment of the human race. They must pass from the concrete to the abstract. Their powers must be unfolded according to law. The process must be a gradual and methodical one. Through sensation, perception, observation, attention, expres- sion and reflection, they must reach the maturity of their being. The -perceptive faculties are the first in the order of nature and of time to be exercised. The child coming into this world begins its life with the display of this power of sensation. In a short period it perceives and discriminates and distin- guishes the objects about it. We do not realize how early a child first receives impres- sions from the persons, circumstances and things surrounding him. He does not come into the world, as some philosophers have held, with a mind like a blank sheet of white paper, on which we may write whatever we choose, but with a mind written all over with secret characters, which need the contact INTELLECTUAL CULTURE. 23 and influences of the outer world, like invisible writing held before the flame, to make what is written start into legibility and significance. The figure of the invisible writing brought out by means of fire, is not entirely correct, for what has been written upon the mind by the creator, in the form of powers, faculties, susceptibilities, nascent ideas, and the like, are greatly modified or shaped or determined by the outward educational or drawing out process. If it is asserted that there is nothing in the intellect which was not first in the senses, it is equally true that there can be nothing in the senses which was not first in the intellect. The paradox may be explained, in part, by saying that through the gateway of the senses must enter in the impressions and influences which are to furnish knowledge for the mind, but it is the mind itself which causes the gates to stand ajar, or throws them wide open for such impressions to enter in. It is the mind that works up the impressions into knowledge. The mind of the child, as I have said, begins unconsciously to act from the very moment of birth. Imme- diately, the environment with which it is encompassed exerts an influence upon it. The first grasp of the child is probably the earliest sign of awakening intelligence. By the time it is a year old, it has come into possession of important knowledge. It has already learned something of shape, size, material, form and color. The work of education, then, must begin at the beginning. The stretching out of the hand for objects, is the child's in- stinctive expression of its needs to learn something, first of all, of space and distance. What can be more foolish than to keep objects out of the reach of the child, when these are the very things needed to give it the primal impressions it must receive. Sensation has begun its work, and through it the child's perceptions must be trained and increased. 24 SIGNAL LIGHTS. The mother must now begin the teacher's vocation. Let objects of different material be grasped by the infantile fingers, also objects of the same material, of different sizes and forms. Even at this early stage, let the blocks of different geometrical forms come within the reach of the little grasping hands. Let the soft woolen balls of bright red and yellow and blue, the three primary colors, come within the reach both of the eye and the hand. The power of observation, upon which perception depends, is thus being trained. The world will gradually and continually unfold to this observing faculty. Ke who has not been trained to use it, will go through life scarcely seeing any- thing about him. He who has been taught to keep his eyes open, to retain a lawful, vigilant curiosity, will find new facts and truths meeting him at every step he takes. New knowledge will be perpetually coming to him, and new pleasures will ever multiply upon him. The world of nature is the great store- house from which the objects are to be taken to meet the child's observation and to gratify its curiosity. The explana- tion of the different geometrical forms must be given when the child is able to understand them. The names of the primary colors must be taught him. The different combinations of color growing out of these three primary colors must be made known to him. His own hands must be taught to make the com- binations. From his blocks, which contain the primary geometrical figures, he must be taught how to produce all their varied forms, and be shown that, on these few fundamental figures, the whole universe is built up. Instead of bringing the child a multitude of toys which only confuse its ideas and produce thus early the feeling of satiety, a few carefully selected ones should be purchased, from which clear, distinct impressions of beauty or utility can be gained by him. INTELLECTUAL CULTURE. 25 The mother should early begin to form a cabinet of pebbles, stones and minerals, no matter how common they may be. How eagerly does the child stop to pick up these common stones in the street, and how often is it thoughtlessly checked in so doing! How many scoldings have been given it for soil- ing its hands and clothes in its exercise of this foundation . faculty of observation! Let the mother, instead of checking it, take the child's treasures home, sort them out, put them in the cabinet and teach the little one their names and the part the substances of which they are the representatives play in the welfare of mankind. Mr. Josiah Holbrook, that prince of teachers, was accustomed to go into the schools under his care, having picked up a plant or a weed or a stone by the wayside, and make it one of the most charming, instructive and stimulating of subjects to the scholars. Thus he would take a little piece of granite, and by a few simple but skillfully-put questions, would create an earnest desire in his young audience to be permitted to look more closely at the object. He would then hand it to them and have it passed from one to another. With eager, childish delight this would be done. "Now," he would say, "I will spell granite, g-r-a-n-i-t-e. Is that correct?" "Yes," would be the reply in chorus. " But, then," he would continue, " that is not the true way to spell it." A look of astonishment would be on the faces of his juvenile auditors. " No, the true way to spell it, is mica, quartz and feldspar '." And then he would show them how there were three substances in the one little frag- ment. Such a lesson was never forgotten. Every child became, at once, an explorer in the realms of nature for himself. The child should be taught the names of flowers and plants, and be led to see that even the commonest weeds are con- structed upon a plan of exquisite beauty. The study of geography can be begun by a knowledge of the small portion 26 SIGNAL LIGHTS. of the earth's surface comprised in the garden, or even in the contracted city yard. The points of the compass, the idea of boundaries, and of the different productions of the various countries of the globe, can soon be mastered. The rudiments of geology, chemistry, botany, natural phil- osophy, mechanics, astronomy, and kindred studies, can be taught through a lump of coal, a grain of salt, a few flowers, the sparkling dew-drop, the sunbeam, the peal of thunder, the lightning's flash, the shifting clouds, the starry heavens. Be- fore the child has reached seven years, and before it has learned to read (and I would not have the average child learn its letters before six years of age), it can be furnished, without any straining of its powers, by a process of mental absorption almost as natural as the act of breathing, with the knowledge that many an adult, making considerable pretensions to an education, acquired by the old system of learning words in- stead of things, would be proud to possess. The accuracy of observation depends upon attention, hence the child must be trained to take particular notice of the object coming before it. Attention is the key which unlocks all the gates of knowledge and secures an entrance into every realm of fact and truth. It must be secured without any forced or unnatural mental tension. The mind must not be allowed to grow weary in contemplating any given thing, but what it sees it must see closely and accurately. As the mind develops, the attention will become prompt, earnest, close and continuous. The power of expression follows that of perception. In our views of education, we have too often limited the mean- ing of expression to the use of language alone, while it should include everything by which the mind can give utterance to the knowledge it possesses, or is striving to acquire. Hence, as in kindergarten instruction, the hands should be employed INTELLECTUAL CULTURE. 27 in every conceivable way, as in planting, weaving, moulding clay, drawing, and the like. Language, of course, is the chief means of expression, and thus of communication. It should be taught, not at the first, by compelling the child to learn the rules of grammar and composition, but in such a way that the rules will be readily seen to grow out of what has been first expressed by the child. All the rules in the world committed to memory will not make a child a good speller, or reader, or speaker. He must be taught at home, first of all, to speak distinctly and grammatically. I do not think it necessary, to accomplish this, that the nonsensical but delightful baby talk should not be indulged in, during the period of babyhood. I once knew a father, who was also a teacher, who laid clown the rule that there should be no baby talk to his children. At a very early age, they were the most painful pinks of propriety I ever wish to see. The loving hearts of a wise father and mother will not be deprived of talking to the little one in a way that would not be appropri- ate before a National Teacher's Convention or a Sorosis Club. But when the child can begin to frame sentences, it must be taught to articulate clearly and distinctly, pronounce accu- rately, and to use the right pronouns, cases, moods and tenses. The home, I repeat, is the place where this all important edu- cation must begin. I heard once, in my college days, a very eloquent speaker on a popular subject, but very ungrammatical withal, who, ob- serving the smile on the faces of the students at some viola- tion of the laws of grammar, suddenly stopped, and said r " Young gentlemen, I see you are smiling at the grammatical blunders I am making. I will now make a challenge to you all. I will undertake to compete with any one of you in repeating every rule of Lindley Murray's grammar. Will you accept it ? " There was no answer. He then continued^ 28 SIGNAL LIGHTS. " I know every rule in that grammar by heart, but I was never taught at home to speak correctly. I have never had the advantage of school instruction, and hence did not correct my errors in youth; and now, although I know all about the grammar theoretically, I am breaking its rules in practice continually. Learn to use your grammar, my young friends, while you are young, in the proper way, and when you grow to be as old as I am, you will not misuse it as I now do.'* The foundations of correct emphasis, modulation, inflection, purity of tone, must all be laid in earliest youth. The mother ought to be the first, wise master-builder. While the faculties of perception and expression have been in training, the reflective powers have been gradually develop- ing. Memory has been retaining in its grasp the elements of knowledge, which are, at once, the rudiments of intellectual life, the springs of mental action, and the material of thought. " It is the chain which links the past to the present, and retains every acquisition as a foothold for the next step forward in the processes of reason and the investigation of truth." It is memory which largely constitutes man a reflective, being, prompting to thought, inviting to meditation, cherishing con- templation, and thus leading to that earnest consideration on which reason depends. It must be judicionsly cultivated and developed. In the impressible mind must be stored gems of thought and wisdom. Choice quotations in prose and poetry, especially the latter, should early be learned by heart, and thus a correct taste be formed. The actual study of objects, facts and relations, instead of the mere records of knowledge^ must be cultivated, that there may be a living, intelligent memory, and not a verbal and mechanical one. In the study of arithmetic, principles, and not, so much, rules, should be committed to memory, although when the principles are comprehended, the memorizing of rules is important and INTELLECTUAL CULTURE. 2U valuable. History should be taught and held in the memory, not as a bare record of detached facts, names, or dates of single important events, or striking incidents. There should be in the mind the names and the deeds of the prominent actors in the different ages of the world's history and about them the other historic personages and events should gather. History ought to be thus taught more as biography, having the personal charm that centres in and proceeds from the hero of a story or romance. Here, again, the mother can be of signal service in the edu- cation of her child. She should gather in a scrap book the portraits of illustrious men, as authors, statesmen, warriors, musicians, artists, and the like. Arranging them in the sequence or contemporaneousness of their existence upon the earth, she can teach from them, by anecdote and incident, in a captivating manner, the rudiments of this noble and liberalizing study. Along with the development of the memory, the imaginative and reasoning faculties are being unfolded and disciplined. The school takes up and continues the work of education, until the child, emerging from youth into manhood, is ready for the practical duties of an honorable life. PHYSICAL CULTURE. BY PROF. E. B. WARM AN. " Holier than any temple of wood or stone, consecrated for divine right, and moral purposes, is the human body." HYSICAL, health and strength are so neces- sary to happiness and success in life that it is not surprising to find that the subject of phys- ical development has engaged the attention of many writers, and of many of our institutions of learning; yet the practical benefit to the general public, from all that has been written on the sub- ject, seems to be inconsiderable. This must be the result of one of two causes: either the various modes of exercise have not been placed before the public in .such a way as to make them practical, or such modes as have been given have only been adopted to be abused, and have only served to increase the prejudice of the public against manly sports. There is not an art, science or religion that cannot be abused, and shall we, then, condemn them all? Shall we not, rather, seek to discover the truth in each of 30 PROF. E. B. WARMAN. PHYSICAL CULTURE. 31 them, and thus be enabled to pursue that course which will lead us to a high, noble, grand manhood and womanhood? The primary object of physical training is health and phys- sical development; the secondary object is to attain to an easy and graceful carriage of the body. No person, weak in body and feeble in health, can appear to advantage on the rostrum, in public places, or in. the social circle. While phys- ical development should be sought as a means of health, which is the most important object, it is also a duty we owe to our homes, our friends and society that we shall cultivate those faculties which sweeten the disposition and render us most agreeable to those around us. It is seldom we see a weak, dyspeptic person with an ami- able or enviable disposition, while it is rarely that we see one of a strong physical frame whose presence and disposition are not the delight of his home. When we consider how many homes are made happier, and how many faces are made brighter through the study and practice of physical training, should we not consider this one of the leading branches of an early education ? A uniform, development is necessary one part of the body should not be developed at the expense of another. No teacher should lay claim to proficiency, and no book to completeness, that disregard this theory. We find, even among trained gymnasts, a great deal of abnormal devel- opment. Did you ever ask a man to show you his muscle? If you did, what muscle? You did not specify any particular muscle, yet you asked him in the singular, indicating thereby that he had but one. In answer to the question, nine times out of ten, he will pull up his sleeve and show you his biceps. Is that the criterion of strength ? No, not even for the arm for all purposes. It is often the criterion of weakness else- where, especially if over-developed. It is a test of strength in pulling or lifting, but such a development will not materially 32 SIGNAL LIGHTS. aid one in striking a powerful blow, for the development of the triceps the one under the biceps, which is used in striking or pushing may have been neglected. To satisfy yourself concerning the development of these muscles, push against some solid substance with your right arm, the palm of the hand resting against the object; then feel the upper portion of your arm, .back and front, with your left hand, and you will readily perceive that the fore part of the upper arm biceps shows no special development, while the back part triceps is quite solid. Reverse the exercise by pulling some heavy object toward you, or raising a heavy weight from the floor, by bending your arm at the elbow, and by feeling with your left hand, you will at once find that the muscles in the fore part of the upper arm immediately rise and fill out, while the back part the triceps becomes nearly level. We state this merely to show the tendency to irregular development. As well might a parent educate and develop the taste for music in a daughter, without giving her those other accomplishments which are necessary to her success in the world. We can imagine to .what an extent the life of a perfect musician would be a failure, who had no other knowl- edge, no other accomplishments. Yet, as well might we develop one of the mental faculties as one of the physical. An expert musician should possess other accomplishments. An expert rower should be an expert boxer, and thus equalize the development and consequent strength of his arm. What ! is boxing manly? Yes, when a man boxes. Anything that a man does is manly; anything that a 'woman does is womanly, Next to God himself, there is nothing grander than a manly man and womanly woman. There are many who regard boxing as brutal; it is when you make it so. So is rifle practice; so is sabre exercise; so is anything that is abused. Because you are handy with the gloves, there is no more PHYSICAL CULTURE. gg danger of your entering the prize-ring or developing a disposi- tion to pommel everybody, than being an expert with the rifle or saber will develop a disposition in you to go around and shoot or slice up your neighbors. There is an old and fam- iliar quotation which says, " It is glorious to possess a giant's strength, but cowardly to use it as a giant." Let the poor, hollow-chested, ill-tempered, dyspeptic grumbler against manly sports come out of his little den, doff his coat and vest, drink freely of the pure air which the Almighty has so plentifully provided, and then let him throw the ball, or use the dumb- bells, or tug at the oar, and he will go back to that self-same den and acknowledge to the world through the silent but powerful influence of his pen that he was wrong in attacking the thing itself, when his blow should have been levelled at its misapplication or abuse. We exclaim with Dr. Foss, " Let these things be done with the distinct recognition that we have a manly nature, and with such a manly measure as to do no harm to what is best and noblest in this loftier realm." We have spoken of health of body and carriage of the body as distinct aims of physical training; but we must not stop there, for it is threefold in its mission; it will give to us what the old Latin poet prayed for, a sound mind in a sound body. Many of the colleges of our country are supplied with gymna- siums which often prove a detriment rather than an advantage, from the fact that so many of them have no competent in- structors and the pupil is allowed to choose his own exercise, and he is very apt to practice those exercises which to him are the most pleasurable, and consequently he will either overdo in the first few weeks and then cease altogether, or will exercise only spasmodically, either of which is hurtful. Possibly, he may continue to exercise daily, but will only take such exercise as is to him most amusing, thereby developing one set of muscles at the expense of the others. 34 SIGNAL LIGHTS. All these things need proper care to produce beneficial results; they should be regular, but never violent. Physical exercise in order to be strengthening need not necessarily be fatiguing or exhausting; such exercise is, on the contrary, debilitating. We would prescribe a course of exercise in our schools and colleges that would be as obligatory as any part of the regular curriculum. The teacher should be genius enough to make his pupils enthusiastic, so that exercise might cease to be looked upon as an obligation, but considered a pleasure. Neither would we excuse the ladies from these exercises. The demands of the physical nature are in every way equal to the demands of the mental; if too much attention is given to the physical development and the mental is neglected, the brain will become correspondingly weak in its functions. The same rule applies to the undue exercise of the mental faculties at the expense of the physical; it draws the much needed blood of the body to supply the brain. Brain work is much more exhausting than hand work. Dr. Hall says: "The farmer can work from morning till night, from one week's end to another, and thrive on it, while the brain worker can not profitably labor more than six hours out of the twenty-four." The most voluminous and literary men of all times did not spend to exceed four or five hours per day at their desks, having found this the limit of their endurance and pleasurable labor. The body also needs the utmost care as it is the sacred temple for the in- dwelling of the soul. Do our young men and young ladies so regard it when they are getting an education? An educa- tion of what? Simply of the mind, while the body is neglected, and this process goes on till it has sapped the very life from the foundation of the mind. How many weak, debilitated, half-alive men and women are knocking at the doors of our halls of learning asking admittance ; it would be just as reason- PHYSICAL CULTURE. 35 able to adorn a tumble-clown shanty with a mansard roof, as a physical wreck with an accomplished education. Stand before an institution of learning and watch the young men as they march from the building and pass down the street, and you will find them with heads that seem running away with their bodies, not because the heads are so large but because the bodies are so small. Some wit has said that if you want a fair representative of the average student who neglects phys- ical exercise, just put a large, round doughnut upon a hair-pin. Alternate mental effort with some pleasant physical pastime. There is no one in any occupation who can not find an oppor- tunity sometime between the hours of rising and retiring for at least a few moments exercise. When the brain is over- tasked, do something to draw the blood to other portions of the body ; there is nothing gained by too steady mental appli- cation. If the mind feels the need of rest, nature demands it, and unless one yields to the demand he will only lose time in trying to collect and concentrate his thoughts. A change in the line of thought is also essential, for endless monotony will wear away the fibres of the brain. The human body is like an engine; it will stand a good deal of wear and tear with little attention, but with proper care these bodies of ours may be so strengthened and our minds so disciplined that we may live the time allotted to man " three score years and ten, and if by reason of strength, they may be four score, etc.," thereby admitting that they may be four score, if by reason of strength. Such we believe to be the purpose of the All-wise concerning every healthful child. How important then that parents and teachers see to the proper physical training of the children, that they may all reach that good old age. Volumes have been written on early moral and social training of the children; the mother will go out of her way to avoid any disagreeable sight that may injuriously affect the morals and manners of 36 SIGNAL her child, but how many mothers are there who have ever thought or taken into consideration the physical training of their little ones. How much more susceptible to moral and mental culture is a strong, healthy child than a weak, sickly one. Many of the pupils of the writer will recall what he has so often said to them concerning his belief as to his own future, i. ., that he fully expects to live to be one hundred years old, and he does not intend to be in any one's way either. Such is his earnest belief. For if " by reason of strength " it may be four score years, then by reason of more strength and proper care it may be five score. What we sow we shall reap. Is there no need of being sick ? No. Not for a healthy child ; he should pass through youth and manhood and old age and not know an ache or pain, unless it be the result of some accident, and when he does go to the beautiful beyond, the house in which he has lived so long simply crumbles to the dust, having served its purpose, and the spirit takes its flight. Is the writer never sick? He has been, but it was when he violated some law of nature. Every ache or pain he has ever had has been traceable to some carelessness on his part; but his physician is diet and exercise. But some may consider the question, asking if we do not think sickness is providential? No, a thousand times, no. We have no doubt that it greatly displeases the Almighty when He beholds the weakness and folly of His children. He may suffer it, but we most emphat- ically say we do not believe He wills it. Were it so, it would be a rebellion against Him to take medicine for restoration, and every physician would be an enemy to His divine will. Horace Mann, in his address as president of Antioch College in 1853, said: "I hold it to be morally impossible for God to have created, in the beginning, such men and women as we find the human race in their physical condition now to be." Examine the book of Genesis, which contains the earliest PHYSICAL CULTURE. 37 annals of human history. With child-like simplicity this book describes the infancy of mankind; unlike modern history, it details the minutest circumstances of the social and religious life; indeed, it is rather a series of biographies than history. The false delicacy of .modern times did not forbid the mention of whatever was done or suffered, and yet over all that expanse of time, more than a third part of the duration of the human race, not a single instance is recorded of a child born blind or deaf or dumb or idiotic or mal-formed in any way; during the whole period not a single case of natural death in infancy or childhood or early manhood or even in middle manhood is to be found. Not one man or woman died of dis- ease. The simple record is "and he died; " or u and he died in a good old age and full of years ; " or " he was old and full of days." No epidemic or even endemic diseases prevailed, showing that they died the natural death of healthy men and not the unnatural death of distempered ones. Through all this time excepting the single case of Jacob in his old age and then only a day or two before his death it does not appear that any man was ill or that any old lady, or young lady, ever fainted. Bodily pain from disease is nowhere men- tioned. No cholera infantum, scarlet fever or small-pox; no, not even tooth-ache. So extraordinary a thing was it for a son to die before his father that an instance of it is deemed worthy of special notice, and this first case of the reversal of nature's law was two thousand years after the creation of Adam. See how this reversal of nature's law, for us, has become the law; for how rare is it now for all the children of the family to survive the parents. Rachel died at the birth of Benjamin, but this the only case of puerperal death that hap- pened in the first 2,400 years of sacred history, and even this happened during the fatigues of a patriarchal journey when passengers were not wafted along in the salons of a railroad 38 SIGNAL LIGHl^S. car or steamboat. Had Adam, think you, tuberculous lungs? Was Eve flat chested, or did she cultivate the serpentine line of grace in a curved spine? Did Nimrod get up in the morn- ing with a furred tongue, or was he tormented with dyspep- sia? Had Esau the gout or hepatitis"?* Imagine how the tough old patriarchs would have looked if asked to sub- scribe for a lying-in hospital or an asylum for lunatics or an eye or, ear infirmary or a school for deaf mutes. W|,jat would their eagle vision and swift-footedness have said to the project of a blind asylum or an orthopedic establishment? Did they surfer any of these revenges of nature against a false civiliza- tion? No; man came from the hand of God so perfect in his bodily organs, so defiant of cold and heat, of drought and humidity, so surcharged with vital force, that it took 2,400- years of the abominations of appetite and ignorance, it took successive ages of outrages, excess and debauchery, to drain off his electric energies and make him even susceptible of dis- ease. And then it took ages more to breed all these vital dis- tempers which now nestle like vermin in every fiber of our bodies. During all this time, however, the fatal causes were at work which wore away and finally exhausted the glorious and abounding vigor of the pristine race. So numerous have diseases now become that if we were to write down their names in the smallest legible hand on the smallest bits of paper, there would not be room enough on the human body to place the labels. Let us start, as it were, in a new life, with a determination to fight these maladies that have settled upon us. Let us build up our lost health in every way that our reason may dictate; let us have, at all times, a plentiful supply of fresh air, even in the coldest weather. A person may live for days without food ; but deprive him of air, even for a few moments^ and you deprive him of life itself. Breathe deeply; very few PHYSICAL CULTURE. 39 people do this as much as they should. As to general rules for dieting, clothing and bathing, all persons are more or less sufficiently informed; and there can be no rules laid down to meet individual cases. As to rules and instructions on physical training, we have not space to give them here, but little manuals can be purchased at any book store. Each one should be his own physician; read, observe, think, and then act. As for beauty, what is it? Has physical exercise any- thing to do with it? In fact, there are no pretty men, though the term is often misapplied. Pretty applies -to something on which we may feast the eyes. There are beautiful and hand- some men and women, but the character is one of the constit- uents. What is called a pretty man is nothing more than a suit of clothes, the latest fashion, passing down the street without anything in it. No man or woman may be termed really beautiful before the age of forty or forty-five years; there are few really handsome men and women. Young womanhood is beautiful in the soft, dreamy day-dawn of lov- liness, but she never reaches real beauty till womanhood has developed her body, mind and soul with touches of thought, feeling, love, care and grand resolves. The youth, just fledged as a professional man, must wait years until the lines of expe- rience, close thought, professional conflicts, business excitement, hopes blasted and hopes realized, have chiselled a few lines upon his face and brought the brilliancy of sobriety to his eye, then, if pure, he is beautiful. Let us strive, then, for bodily and mental development; let us develop the physical side by side with the mental, but never let one oppose the other. In this way each may be made consistent with the other, thereby producing our threefold aim, health of the body, health of the mind, and a graceful carriage of the body. These three, when attained, will give us symmetrical development. We boast of freedom in this great land of ours, but we are all slaves; 40 SIGNAL LIGHTS. slaves to some pernicious, soul-destroying habit. Let us free ourselves from everything that impedes our progress towards our high ideal manhood or womanhood, of form and health, and have for our motto, hopefulness, helpfulness, healthfulness and happiness. A. S. ANDREWS, A. M., D. D. THE EVILS OF MENTAL DISSIPATION. BY A. S. ANDREWS, A. M., D D. I N D is the great element in man, the intellectual lord of the temporary earthly temple. For its protection, nourishment and safety, the house of clay was con- structed; and providential repairs and occasional renovations are graciously continued for " three score and ten years," that the exalted spiritual occupant may re- main in health, and finally attain to maturity. The relative excellency grade of the mind may be inferred from the elegance and finish of its fleshy tenement. This wonderfully articulated and flexible casement, through the brain and nervous system, nourishes every faculty of the mind, until its earthly development and work are finished. For years, mental growth consists mainly in an increasing acquaintance with material things. The nervous system, rooted in the brain and spinal marrow, furnishes a 41 42 SIGNAL LIGHTS. double highway over which intercommunication and com- merce are constantly carried on between the mind and the outer world. Trains of reflection are coming and going each moment, and the storehouse of memory is filling up with the richest materials that the realm of matter affords: Through abstraction, comparison, judgment, understanding and reason, these materials are analyzed, classified, assorted and put away for future use. This well arranged and hoarded information becomes, in due time, the basis of fresh intellectual activity; and new conclusions are reached. The process is repeated upon a constantly increasing scale until the whole kingdom of physics is reached, studied and apprehended. Literature, science, art and philosophy spring into being. Discovery, progress and greatness ensue, and man becomes the master of all terrestrial things. He regains his lordship over the earth and its inferior inhabitants, and he calls into use all the con- tents of land and sea. Spring and summer, seed-time and harvest, day and night and heat and cold, are his agents, and minister to his wants. His life becomes elegant, new attrac- tions and fresh ornaments and graces are added to his person, his speech, his home, his furniture, his food, and his pleasures. Even before this stage of advancement has been reached, the mind takes cognizance of itself, and discovers in its own exis- tence a new world, teeming with objects of the deepest and most exalted interest. To name these, new words are needed, and old ones are employed in a higher sense. To enter and explore this spirit-land, and to clothe the objects encountered in suitable linguistic drapery, furnish fresh mental employment of an exalted and ennobling character. Nowhere else in this life does such a field open. It is an intellectual domain, whose territory is wide and whose resources are well-nigh infinite. It abounds in whole continents of intellectual being, THE EVILS OF MENTAL DISSIPATION. 43 whose forests, springs, rivers, bays and oceans of thought are rare and rich beyond all finite computation. Here '' Everlasting spring abides, And never withering flowers." From dewy youth to green old agej new scenes and fresh beauties present themselves daily. It is a radiant, sunny land, where elect spirits walk and commune, explore and discover,, arrange and classify their mental treasures. These immortal spirits, in their white robes, have an elysinm, whose beauty, variety, brilliancy and happiness are surpassed only by the owners of that glorious inheritance which the infinite and munificent " Father of the spirits of all flesh " is constructing- for his earthly children. In this high state of mental develop- ment and Christian civilization, men not only confer with each other in literature, art, learning and faith, but they rise from the contemplation of creation and providence to the apprehension of God, bare their heads in his presence, and fall down in awe and loyalty at his feet ! They are made in His image, see His. wisdom, feel His power, and taste His goodness ! Thus gifted, and with such possibilities within his reach, what a wonderful being is man ! With the crown of intellectuality grac- ing his brow, and the likeness of God spreading through his heart, who can set bounds to his growth and power in this life, or who can measure his moral worth, or fully estimate his glory and felicity in that which is to come? Such a being was created for the presence of God and the society of angels. Would it not be a melancholy sight to behold an intellectual orb of such magnitude and brightness wavering and flickering in its orbit? Yet, how often is this depressing spectacle wit- nessed in our daily experience. A gentleman once put into the hands of a silversmith an elegant watch, which ran irregularly. It was a perfect piece of work- 44 SIGNAL LIGHTS. manship. It was taken to pieces, examined and put together, again and again; no defect was discovered, and yet the irregularity continued. At last it occurred to the expe- rienced watchmaker that possibly the balance wheel might be influenced by a magnet, which retarded or quickened its movement, and in this way produced the irregular- ity. A needle was applied to it, and his suspicion was found to be true. The steel works in the other parts of the watch affected its motions. With a new balance-wheel, the watch was a perfect time-piece. The human mind, despite its finished workmanship, rich materials and nice adjustment of all the parts to each other, often moves irregularly. And in nearly all cases, the presence of some magnet may be suspected. Natural bias, a perverted taste, an intellectual habit, or wrong education, may have located, near the balance- wheel of that mental being, some magnetic influence that dis- turbs its activities and makes its motions irregular and eccen- tric. When this has been done, the poise and stability of intellectual life have been disturbed, and mental dissipation begins. If regular habits of mind are interrupted, and disorder and confusion are permitted, no one can predict, with certainty, the mischief that may ensue. The mind itself is injured. The Creator has bestowed intellectual gifts upon man in an undeveloped state. No one comes into being like the fabled Minerva, from the brain of Jupiter, in full maturity. Here, as in religious life, we have " first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear." The development of the mind is slow, and never is great in the absence of labor. Ordinarily, mental growth and strength are in proportion to the labor performed. The petted child, that lives for years in its nurse's arms, remains helpless, while that one which is seemingly neglected, learns to walk, and at an early age becomes inde- pendent and self-reliant. The blacksmith's arm and the THE EVILS OF MENTAL DISSIPATION. 45 ditcher's back grow strong from vigorous exercise. The pilot sharpens his vision, and the musician improves his touch by constant practice. The same is true intellectually. The untried mind is weak, and never becomes athletic without exercise. If these statements are true, the human mind can never become strong without vigorous, regular and manly em- ployment. The dainty, tidy little intellect that never touches anything rough or heavy, is not remarkable for strength or boldness. Like the bright-winged insect that spends the few hours of its existence in the green meadows and gardens of spring, and tastes the honeyed juices in each clear flower cup, so the habitual reader of sonnets, fictions and pastoral poetry, is an intellectual moth, whose wings pos- sess no strength, and whose feet never touched the branches of forest trees or mountain summits. The great ox, that plows his master's field and draws his rich harvests to the world's markets, is made strong by the hardships and drudgeries of his life. If men would shun the foibles, weaknesses and mis- eries of multitudes of those whom they see and whose condi- tion they deplore; if they would become wise, find truth, hoard up knowledge, and grow great in all the attributes of exalted manhood, they must grapple with difficulties, vanquish foes, and plant their feet in triumph upon the highest moun- tains of faith and successful investigation. When, in his reading and studies, man has " sown beside all waters," and " intermeddled with all wisdom," he is rich in experience, wise in counsel, self-reliant in action, lofty in purpose and fearless in execution. A man of this mould is never poor and never without resources. He has food to eat that the world knows not of. He has light in his dwelling and hope in his heart. If the people of his age flatter and smile upon him, he appreciates their kindness 46 SIGXAL LIGHTS. and knows how to turn it to the best account. But if they neglect and frown upon him, he can withdraw from society, live within himself, commune in books and liter- ature, art and science, with the great master spirits of the past and present, and, through faith in Jehovah, as revealed in nature and revelation, " he can soar to heaven and talk with God!" A man of this grade is never lonely, and need never be depressed. His horizon is broad, his vision bright, his experience deep and his happiness profound. Such a creature is worthy of the God who made him, and, like his Infinite Father, he is, to some extent at least, " the same, yesterday, to-day and forever." The shallow, fitful, dissipated mind is incomparably inferior to this. Its vision is short, sympathies narrow, resources few and capabilities small. In the great trials of life, when discipline, endurance and courage are indis- pensible, what can the dissipated mind do? It is wholly dependent ! It has refused to encounter difficulties and master enemies. Labor has been irksome, regular employment shunned, and the mind in its conscious weakness has become irresolute and timid. And now, toward the end of life, when cares and trials come and the strength and courage which well developed manhood and brain power secure are needed, the dissipated mind is helpless and hopeless! Such minds have a pitiable experience, and their poverty and littleness are absolutely hideous. In all the walks of life, there are multitudes of such minds. Men and women who have allowed the era of mental discipline and culture to pass unimproved, who have for years been drones in every intellectual hive, now, when their lives are hard and their stores scanty, curse their fate, envy the intellectual competency of the learned and great, and murmur against the allotments of providence. In these things they are wrong. Their weakness, ignorance THE EVILS OF MENTAL DISSIPA TION. 47 and mental destitution are the natural results of their own folly. They have never been systematic workers, have had no self- control, and the powers of their minds, like undrilled and undisciplined soldiers, are useless and helpless! The steam has not been compressed into the intellectual cylinder, and, con- sequently, it has no power. It is not denied that they have had their periods of activity, and that at times they have worked. But their labors have been fitful, irregular and eccentric. Their energies have been divided and scattered, and the results of their studies and readings are comparatively worth- less. Their minds may have been bright, and the mental rays may have been abundant and luminous, but they have been scattered, and their focal power has never been felt at a single burning point. This is one of the causes, aye, one of the greatest causes, of intellectual blight and personal disaster. Mental Dissipation is Hurtful to Society. The effects of mere manual labor are small. Mind is the prolific source of wealth, ease, convenience and comfort. The activities of this divine principle within us mark the distance between savage and civilized life. Before the proper development of mind in any country, the bare necessities of existence, and these only, can be possessed by those who have no culture, no science and no art. In this state of society, existence is cramped and stinted. Food and raiment are meagre, and men and especially women are menials. The drudgeries and hardships of life bear heavily upon them. Their mode of being is little above the condition of the beasts that perish. They are of the earth, and seldom lift their eyes and hearts up toward Him in whom they live, move, and have their being. But when mind is realized, esteemed, and fully utilized, the era of growth and progress begins. The hidden stores of nature are uncovered, and their contents drawn out 48 SIGNAL LIGHTS. and brought into use. The principles and facts utilized in mechanics are discovered. Manufactories spring into being. The raw materials collected from the fields, forests and mines are transformed into articles of usefulness. Taste is developed. The fine arts spread a charm, an elegance, over all that we possess, and man becomes a more refined, a more accomplished being. The great a -priori principles, that run through and bind together the phenomena and facts that enter into sys- tems of science and philosophy, are perceived, and men see the order of creation, trace the links in the chain of cause and effect, and feel the motion of the great wheels of infinite providence. In the light of reason, conscience opens its eyes. The wide distinctions between truth and error, right and wrong, heaven and hell, are perceived, and men and women possess a nobility, grace, dignity, moral worth and greatness that ally them to God and angels! But the steps by which these heights' of physical, mental and moral being are reached can be climbed only by him who walks steadily, calmly and regularly onward and upward. No fitful, irregular motion will succeed Earnest, faithful, persistent, exhaustive labor is indispensable, and, without it, the great realms of matter and mind can never be explored, thrown open and brought into the service of the human race. If these things are true, and society is dependent upon regular, athletic, mental employment for all its resources and powers, can any thing be more destructive to the interests, successes and hopes of humanity than mental dissipation? The primary meaning of the word shows its deadly influence. It comes from " dis, apart, and supo, to throw." Dissipation scatters and wastes, pulls down and destroys. With this fearful conception of the word in the mind, we have only to look around to perceive the wholesale mischief that is carried on almost everywhere. Of the thousands who come into being in all civilized climes THE EVILS OF MEXTAL DISSIPATION. 49 and countries, how few have any real mental life? Of the vast hordes that come upon the stage of action, not one in ten, not one in twenty, regularly reads and thinks! More may pretend to do so, but where are the fruits of their mental being? " They have names to live while they are dead." There is no system, nor order, nor aim in their reading and thinking. The light, passionate fictions of the age, with their licentious and weird stories, may occupy the time, chain the attention, and inflame the natures of our sons and daughters; but they contain no accurate information, interpose no checks to vice and folly, and create no great training of thought and sentiment. On the contrary, their tendency is to evil. They distend and poison the intellectual stomach. They hang up in the halls of memory unnatural life pictures, which haunt the imagination and corrupt the heart. It is impossible to estimate the waste of time, the decay of the intellectual powers and the blight of the moral nature produced by such mental habits. They spread and grow like the breath of a great pes- tilence, in proportion to the countless victims upon whom they feed, until whole countries and generations are cursed and blasted by their influence. They lay their wilting power upon manhood and womanhood, and spread the shadows of death over many a blighted home and ruined family! The sensational newspapers and the police gazettes, that stream from the teeming presses of the age, exert a no less per- nicious and deadly power. In too many instances, for the sake of gain, the owners of these execrable sheets cater to a per- nicious public appetite, and feed to surfeiting the debauched intellectual and moral natures of a dissolute but growing multi- tude of voracious readers! Who can adequately estimate the great harvest of corruption and crime, sin and death that must ultimately grow and be reaped from seed sown by the venal presses of this country? Nor are the extravagant and bitter 50 SIGNAL LIGHTS. partizan periodicals of the time free from censure at this point. Large numbers of these appear to have adopted as their motto, " The end justifies the means," and they assail their adversaries and defend their friends by any instrumental- ities that truth or falsehood, fact or fable, may supply. When we remember that the masses of the people read little outside of the classes of books and periodicals just named, do we wonder that the number of disciplined minds is so small, and the number of those who do not study or think is so large? When the tendencies to disorder and abasement are so numerous, can any be surprised at the enormous outlays of money and men that are necessary for the quiet, peace, and protection of society? And yet, outlaws increase, crimes multiply, officers of state are busy, the courts of justice find constant employment, and work-houses, jails and penitentiaries are crowded! Thousands, aye, millions, who could, and should be constant workers and producers in the busy social and political hives of the country, are worse than drones. They are destructives whose power goes crashing through all the interests of humanity! Who, that ponders these facts as he ought, can fail to feel and deplore the evils that spring from mental dissipation? Its breath is pestilent, and its touch is death ! History Bears Testimony to the Truthfulness of What has Been Said. The great epochs in nearly all countries have been preceded by men of earnest and continued mental work. An instance of this kind occurred during the reign of Queen Elizabeth of England. From the age of Alfred the Great, there had been men of mind in the kingdom. Geoffrey Chaucer was a great man, and he did much for his native land, and especially in the formation of the English language. But, notwithstanding the advancements made in literature and art, THE EVILS OF MENTAL DISSIPATION. 51 no great galaxy of stars appeared in the scientific heavens of Great Britain. Sonnets, pastoral poetry and fiction had engaged the attention of the people who could read. All intellectual labor was of a light and joyous character. The people lived in their eyes and ears and in the gratification of their appetites. They were fond of passion and display, jousts and tournaments, feasts and masquerades, music and shows. But before the death of Henry VIII culture began to grow. It continued, and in the reign of Elizabeth, the ancient classics were studied, the sciences began to receive the attention which their importance deserved, education took a much wider range, and men learned to study and to think for themselves. Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Francis Bacon and others, became great in thought and culture, and the intellectual labors of these men and their learned and laborious contemporaries, produced a new era in English mind and in English manhood. The momentum which these master spirits gave to growth, great- ness and power, has never been lost. To this day, they live in the literature, science, philosophy and religion of the British empire. Their example and influence have lifted their coun- trymen upon an elevated plane that has never before been reached by a whole nation of people. The greatness of Eng- land to-day and her power at home and abroad, on land and sea, are the direct results of the thousands in her wide domin- ions who, day and night, bend under their intellectual burdens. In their hoarded wisdom, scientific skill, personal energy and united strength, they are in the van of the vast army of intel- lectual and Christian workers in the civilized world. Prussia, under the reign of the Emperor William, guided by the astute and far-seeing Bismarck, exemplifies the same truth. Her exalted and splendid position among the great powers of Europe is the result of the Herculean mental energy and enterprise that have distinguished the Germans for more 52 SIGNAL LIGHTS. than half a century. The plodding, toiling, persistent German mind is now beginning to eat the rich, ripe fruits of its long, earnest and indefatigable labors ! And does not our own history shed a clear, strong light upon this subject? Little more than a century ago, a few scattered colonists, representing the best blood, brain and heart of the gifted, freedom-loving masses of the old world, came to this country. They occupied a small number of settlements on the borders of the newly dis- covered continent. They were in the midst of thousands of savage red men, who regarded them as enemies and depreda- tors, and who planned and plotted for their destruction. These colonists were destitute of all the comforts and elegancies of life, and could secure only the bare necessaries of existence in the sweat of their faces. But, despite all the difficulties and dangers that confronted them, they have cleared, peopled, and now hold in a high state of physical, mental and moral culture, the finest continent upon which the sun shines ! And they have built here, in their free, united and prosperous government, the finest temple of personal and public freedom ever erected upon the face of earth ! This glorious country, with its vast domain, teeming resources and fifty millions of people, is the magnifi- cenj result of a hundred years of intellectual toil. The failures of many ancient and modern states and king- doms add emphasis to what has just been said. When the citi. zens of a country are ignorant, they become an easy prey to am. bitious and selfish rulers. In such a country, a single great man can fasten chains of despotism upon the necks of undeveloped thousands. He can build up a princely family, establish a throne, and lead great armies into the territories of neighbor- ing states. To the uninitiated, such a government may seem to be strong and the sovereign or magistrate may apparently be firmly established in his chair of state; but, if the great THE EVILS OF MENTAL DISSIPATION. 53 ruler dies, how- often does his kingdom perish with him. There is a want of great men in the land, who can take the place of the fallen leader, and complete the work already begun. This is one reason, and the chief one, that caused the fickleness and instability of ancient governments. The Cen- tral and South American states have been of this character. The people have been ignorant, have not had mental discipline and training, their intellectual forces have been wasted, dis- sipated and lost, and there is nothing stable or strong. Like the colors of a chameleon, or shifting scenes in the kaleidoscope, such governments come and go. And the miseries, poverty and discouragement of the people must necessarily be great. Accumulation, growth, power and greatness are impossible! There is nothing permanent, and nothing safe! And no man can tell "what a day may bring forth." Industry and energy often lose their rewards. There are no restraints to vice, idle- ness and dissipation, and no incentives to enterprise and virtue. The gloom of midnight rests upon such a country, and the paralysis of death falls upon its inhabitants. It may be proper here to suggest some remedies for the evils of mental dissipation. These are, to begin with, a 'well organized and regulated system of hygiene. The laws of health have much to do with mental training and develop- ment. A sound, healthy body is a noble boon. The in- spired teacher makes Christ congratulate Himself, as the divine Son is enveloped in pure flesh and blood. Looking up to the Father, in grateful recognition of the gift, He says, " A body hast thou prepared me!" This body, created pure, fitted Him for His mission in this world, and without it He could never have put the holy and spiritual truth of the divine kingdom into the minds, hearts and lives of men. Neither can men develop, do their work, and pass hopefully and joyously out of life without a body. Infants and invalids may fall 54 SIGNAL LIGHTS. asleep sweetly and quietly in the arms of infinite compassion, but great and well poised mental life is generally encased in a healthy body. There are exceptions to the rule, but still it exists, and its reality is conceded. The mind operates in this life through physical organs, and its vigor and power must, to some extent, depend upon their strength. And, if this be true, too much attention can hardly be given to the laws of health and physicial training. Multi- tudes of men and women are wrecked intellectually for want of these. In their absence, a weak, sickly state of body ensues, mental application can not be endured, idle, restless and inat- tentive habits are engendered, and the powers of the mind can not be unfolded, concentrated and made strong. Some of the brightest minds in the world have been lost to themselves, and lost to society in this manner. If we would stop this con- stant drain upon our mental resources, stimulate intellectual growth and enterprise, and raise up a generation of men and women who can master difficulties, discover the occult prin- ciples of social, civil and religious truth, we must inculcate and practice a wise and rigid system of hygiene. A thorough and well digested course of instruction should be inaugurated in our public schools. There is a tendency to light, partial and rapid education in this age. Our sons and daughters are eager to become men and women. They are impatient of restraint and control. Life is bright and gay to them, seems too short for the acquisition of all that they wish to possess and enjoy, and, consequently, they are unwilling to spare the time necessary for culture and prepara- tion. They must hasten to the goal of their activites and joys. They bear constantly against the reins of parental authority and scholastic discipline, and indulgent fathers and mothers yield. Adroit and selfish teachers, perceiving the tendencies of the age, adjust their courses of study to the popular taste- THE EVILS OF MENTAL DISSIPATION, 55 Either long lessons, wearisome to the student and improperly prepared, are hurriedly passed over, or a short, easy curric- ulum is established, cheap teachers are employed, the young of both sexes enter our colleges, and graduate at a stage of advancement that hardly fits them for the high school. Such a course is ruinous, and fails to prepare the young for the stern realities and responsible duties of life. These half educated and undisciplined -parvenus enter society to become the devotees of fashion and folly, the dupes and gulls of ingenious and unprincipled men and women, who wish to use them for the accomplishment of their own selfish, heartless and infamous ends ! Every friend of humanity pities from his heart the inexperienced thousands of both sexes who pour out of the finishing schools of this country to flutter and flash like the gay and thoughtless butterfly through the bright flower-beds of youthful pleasure and fashionable dissipation, and then to endure the bitter disappointments and cruel hard- ships which spring from wasted youthful opportunities, and ultimately to die in neglect and want, with the fires of remorse burning in their hearts! Education should be thorough; the rudiments should be com- pletely mastered; the linguistic and scientific schools should be strong; our own rich mother tongue should hold a command- ing place in the course of studies; able masters possessing the accomplishments and manhood which we covet for our chil- dren, should fill the seats of learning, and the practical utility of all that is taught should be emphasized and pressed upon the attention of the young. When all of this is done, and faithfully done, the tendencies to mental dissipation will be immeasurably diminished. And all this should be done, or our children should be left to the discipline and culture which labor, attention to business, and the earnest, necessary and pressing enterprises of life secure. It is better, a thousand 56 * SIGNAL LIGHTS. times, to leave a child to these, than to smatter him through the short course in many of the shallow and superficial schools of this age. Moral principle and the restraints and stimulants of reli- gious truth are friendly to mental discipline. Whatever may be the opinions of men in reference to the Christian religion, it must be conceded that, when honestly embraced and conscientiously practiced, it calms, sobers, restrains and elevates human nature. It unites, with the religion of nature, in throwing open to man's gaze all the stores that a benignant providence has filled for the use and enjoyment of his earthly creatures, while, at the same time, it tells us how and when they may be legitimately used. But, while it freely encour- ages all innocent and pure pleasures, it puts the divine inter- dict upon all that is irregular, eccentric and wrong. This system, that claims to be from God, proposes to regulate and control our whole lives, and to hold us, in the indulgence of our appetites, passions, tastes, and predilections, within the bounds of temperance, prudence and propriety. And it en- forces obedience to its mandates with the awful penalties of life and death to both body and soul! No thoughtful mind can fail to perceive that such a religion must, and will, be favorable to the highest species of mental discipline. Under its benign influence, the powers of appetite are diminished, reason and conscience become the regnant elements in human life, virtue and purity are quickened, and the poise, greatness, and splendor of manhood, are augmented and beautified. If these be facts, who can fail to see that the cultivation and practice of the Christian religion should be esteemed and encouraged by all who wish to diminish the tendencies to mental dissipation, and who would promote the health, ac- tivity, regularity and power of the human mind! They who THE EVILS OF MENTAL DISSIPATION. 57 would take the Bible from the school-room, exclude Christian masters from professorships and presidential chairs in our institutions of learning, and would, if they could, divorce Christianity from culture, are not the friends of mental growth and intellectual superiority. He who, animated by the spirit of the late Stephen Girard, would stand, armed with authority, at the doors of the colleges and universities of this country, and prevent the ingress of the principles and ministers of religious truth, is, either wittingly or unwittingly, the enemy to true culture, to high mental discipline, and to the purity and elevation of character that ennobles and dignifies human nature. If we would make the wisest and best possible use of the rich stores of material, intellectual and moral good, which God, in His goodness, has given us; if we would properly employ the abundant materials furnished to our hands by the intellectual and spiritual generations of workers that have preceded us; and if we would finish the great temple of Christian civilization upon the foundation which they have laid, we must avail ourselves of the restraints and fears, the hopes and incentives of the Christian religion. This will help to awake the human mind to all its possibilities for this life, and for that which is to come. .XL . 4j + THE FOES OF SOCIETY. BY REV. RANSOM DUNN, D.D. BSOLUTE simplicity, if not incon- ceivable, is indefinable. Definition implies plurality. No idea, thing or being is known by itself, but al- ways in relation to something else. We must believe in simple ideas and single objects; but in rerlity every individual is a part of a g?neval whole. This is em- phatically true of man. No mat- ter how complete and perfect may be the individual, he is never complete in himself, but is always a part of society. The real functions of man, his true life and dignity are real- ized only in society. This society may be primitive and simple, domestic and social, organic and civil; but it must exist. The duties, advantages and dangers of society are therefore subjects of the highest importance. The accidental aggregation of individuals in simple society or the voluntary organizations for profit or pleasure may be of vast consequence to those associated; but man's- 58 REV. RANSOM DUNN, D. D. THE FOES OF SOCIETY. 5<> development, character and destiny depend upon the natural relation in family and state. All combinations of matter and mind exhibit antagon- isms, and much of the beauty and utility of the universe depends upon these antagonistic forces. Society must neces- sarily include some such forces ; but a single glance at the his- tory and condition of the world reveals something more and worse than simple antagonism. Personal crimes, social dis- orders and national wars reveal the fact that some terrible forces have been at war with society and in conflict with its principles and interests. These foes have not been weak and incidental, but fierce, perpetual and bloody. The most tender ties have been severed, honor and happiness disregarded, and the most sacred obligations and institutions violated. Empires have been scattered, nations ruined, and civilization itself saved from death only by marching out from falling kingdoms to newer fields. The fragments of these social and civil ruins, stained with blood, are scattered all over the field of history. No form of government nor type of civilization has escaped the foes of society, which have fought with equal vengeance against the family, the republic and the throne. First. Individualism necessarily antagonizes society. Each individual has wants and desires to be satisfied only by the same blessings desired by others; and, if the competition and antagonism could only be well balanced, each braced by resistance and stimulated by contact, public utility would be enjoyed. But each member of society possesses some quali- ties, forces and capabilities, the uses of which belong to others. Every man is thus in part owned by others and, although his right to himself is supreme over what is exclusively his own, yet the assistance due to* others by reciprocity or benevo- lence, is as really a debt to society as though written in the most formal bond. Just how much belongs exclusively to the 60 SIGNAL LIGHTS. individual and how much to society is not easily determined. Despotism claims entire possession, denying all personal claims. Monarchy claims supreme, if not divine rights, holding per- sonal rights subject to the king or queen, who speaks of sub- jects and soldiers as, " my subjects and servants." Republi- canism claims a portion of every man's energies and influence and admits every man's personal rights and claims upon soci- ety. Individualism claims, in theory or practice, entire per- sonal possession and the right to ignore society in life and labor. Hermits and ascetics thus fight society by robbing the world of services due and retiring as far as possible within the limits of exclusive individuality. In a sense no less offensive, those who in labor and trade endeavor to secure wealth and comforts for personal satis- faction and use, regardless of others' claims, are foes to society ; not only withholding what belongs to society of their own being and possessions, but taking what actually belongs to the public. Whenever the support due to the family is withheld or hoarded, or the tax due to government retained, society suffers from foes who are not honorable nor honest. This class of foes did not die with ancient empires, nor fear to cross the Atlantic, nor perish in the American civil wars. Consistency is not a necessary qualification for society's foes. In all ages, not excepting the nineteenth century, some have denied the rights of society entirely, claiming complete and supreme individual rights in all things and associating together simply for their maintenance. The communistic distribution of property proposed, the socialistic idea of force by society in meeting the demands of individuals, and the nihilistic, chaotic state fought for, are all but the wild forces of extreme individ- ualism. None of these schemes could be realized without destroying society, upon which the civilization and existence of the race depends. THE FOES OF SOCIETY. 61 Second. Monarchism, or the love of power, presents a still more formidable array of the enemies of society. Some- times the war-club of the savage reveals and stimulates this murderous love, and the necklace of scalps tells the bloody story of wrong and suffering. Sometimes, in milder form, individual intrigue and persevering assumption give destruc- tive power. Sometimes, and often, the power of influence and financial dominion are sought and secured by the power of money. Indeed, it is hard to see why money is sought with such eagerness and sacrifice excepting for animal gratification, or better standing in society ; and what does that better stand- ing mean but a position, exciting the fear and respect of others, and an increase of influence or power over the feelings, business or pursuits of other members of society. Most of the " love of money," especially in America, is for the power it gives over business and trade, and position in society, or for civil or military office. This destructive warfare upon society is developed in all kinds of public and private robbery and in inflictions of poverty and wretchedness upon society. But this destructive foe is seen in his most frightful work in per- sonal and incorporated monopolies. Capital and capitalists are necessary in the great improvements and progress of civiliza- tion, and corporations are indispensable; but when these might}- forces are used for the oppression of labor or the unnecessary increase of the prices of life's comforts, they become the engines of torture, foes to humanity. And these foes are all the worse and more dangerous, because of the dif- ficulty in distinguishing them, and of devising means or laws for their suppression. Producers and consumers have, com- paratively, very little money, but most of the wealth of the world is to be seen somewhere between the hand of the pro- ducer and the mouth of the consumer. In some cases the love and exercise of power against the best interests of society 62 SIGNAL LIGHTS. are developed in hereditary and family aristocracy. The power of assumption is wonderful, and, when kept up for suc- cessive generations, it is not strange that caste distinctions, jealousies and oppressions afflict society, and when civil gov- ernments recognize and support such assumptions, the evil is greatly increased to the injury of all parties. Even the aris- tocracy of learning, when confined to a few favored ones and given civil or military authority, may, with the superior skill and knowledge of scholarship, become an enemy to society. Religious aristocracy has sometimes been employed as an engine of power against the people and society at large. There are false, as well as true religions, selfish as well as benevolent organizations. Pure religion is the friend of society and of progress, and even false religions stand out in history so identified with the best developments of civilization and society, as to justify the belief that the exercise of man's religious nature in some form, is indispensable to human progress. There are religious systems, orders and organi- zations which are oppressive and injurious, and especially is this true respecting ecclesiastical centralization and monopoly. Indeed it is probable that not a single case in the world's his- tory can be found where a single religious organization existed any great length of time without competition, which did not become corrupt and oppressive. Universal ecclesiastical unity in America would undoubtedly, with present moral and relig- ious attainments, repeat the history of the Dark Ages, with a vengeance. But the civil and military foes of society stand out the most distinct in the field of history, with the spirit of monarchical tyranny, and the instruments of death and despotism. Poli- tical partisans, struggling for power which would be oppres- sive if unopposed ; civil officers usurping unjust prerogatives; ignorant and selfish legislators; bribed judges and ambitious THE FOES OF SOCIETY. 63 administrators, kindle passions and fires which result in the slaughter of the battlefield. It may be true that the moral and civil atmosphere is sometimes cleared by these terrible convulsions ; and yet, better methods ought to be adopted, and society saved from the torture of the world's great curse. The love of power, which is the spirit of monarchism, seems to be universal and omnipresent, disturbing the peace of the most sacred relations, defeating the wisest counsels of states- manship and always participating in the death of nations. Third. Animalism furnishes foes no less numerous and formidable. Society is constituted of mental beings, not ani- mals. But men have animal as well as human nature, bodies as well as minds, instincts as well as reason. If controlled by reason and conscience, these instincts become fibres of attach- ment and sources of social and civil strength; but their limits are not determined by fixed physical laws, and unless re- strained by judgment and conscience, their constant demand and continuous gratification will prove the most subtle and destructive foes ever broughf against human society. Unlaw- ful gratification of appetite destroyed the peace of Eden and poisoned the currents of human life. Not only were fear, wretchedness and death thus introduced into the first family, but into every family upon the earth. Passion and appetite simply demand gratification and freedom from exertion. Indolence is the sure result of sensualism; but the utility and success of society depend upon activity. Nothing can be more directly opposed to the best interest of society than the lethargy produced by excessive gratification of animal nature. As animal nature is thus developed, intellect and intelligence are diminished and the conscience and social feelings stupefied. Literary institutions and enterprises will be neglected, and culture, at first confined to esthetics and fiction, will decay. 64 SIGNAL LIGHTS. and general weakness ensue. Without labor, in ease and luxury, energy and enterprise, courage and constitution diminish and general debility prepares society for prostration and death. The coolness of family love, the weakness of social virtue, the low estimate of public conscience and honor, the weak- ness of moral convictions and true patriotism, are the sure signs of national death. There are crimes against individuals, which, although great, are not murder, and there are terrible foes of society which still leave life in civilization and nations; but luxury and lust sap the foundations of society, destroy the vitality of nations and complete the work of destruction. Nations do not die from external conflict and pressure, but from internal weakness superinduced by their luxurious and deteriorating modes of life. If to indolence, debilitating amusements and common luxuries, powerful stimulants are added, decay and death are sure. So Egypt, intoxicated with the luxurious habits and pleasures of Assyria and Phoenicia, decayed. The remnants of her civilization were too much for Greece, which in self-gratification lost her strength and grandeur, leaving her history and literature her dead empire and dead language to other nations. Rome, prospering for a while, with literary, artistic and financial wealth, borrowed or stolen from the Grecian isles, dies at last by the imbecilit}^ superinduced by her passions and pride. Her physical and moral strength and courage were wasted before the Northmen struck the fatal blow which scattered the grandest empire the world had ever seen. So it has been with all the nations and all the types of civilization in their conditions of life and pro- gress. They have been weakened, petrified or destroyed in proportion to the influence of sensualism. Nations may waste their wealth in useless expenditures, or mangle each other on battle-fields, yet survive, and even grow ; but when they yield THE FOES OF SOCIETY. 65 to animalism, they drink the poison of death and commit national suicide. If, with the luxuries and stimulants of antiquity, nations were so completely subdued and ruined, what must be expected from the foes of the present day, which pour the burning lava of alcohol through all the land? Never before have the means of inebriation been so abundant and so easily obtained, and never before have these stimulants been so pois- onous and destructive. The wealth and wages of the people of America, which furnish larger means and opportunity for intoxication, render foes from this source more terrible and dangerous to society than ever before threatened the vital- ity of civilization. Just so sure as the laws of nature continue, the continuance and liberty of this class of foes will seal the doom of American society. More family blood, tears and anguish arise from this source than all others. No blighting curse of earth has done so much to ruin family happiness and hopes, or severed so many ties of friendship and society. No other evil has wasted and consumed so much prosperity and life, destroyed so many minds and bodies, produced so much crime and misery, debilitated so many officers and citizens, as intemperance. The tide of civilization must sub- side or the waves of intoxication be stayed. This is an irrepressible conflict which cannot be postponed or evaded. The foe is in the field with millions of money and hundreds of thousands of servile followers. It is life or death for the nation for civilization and for millions of families and individuals embraced in the relations of society. Fourth. Philosophical Enemies. The growth and pro- gress of society must depend largely upon its ideals. If these are not above the human, then the development must be limited by the best which are accepted. The denial of a perfect 66 SIGNAL LIGHTS. Supreme Being must be a hindrance to personal and social advancement. Society is based upon social conceptions and feelings, and, if these are limited to human associations, social nature must be limited in practical exercise and experience as well as in ideals. But a small portion of human life can be spent in actual converse with society. Most of our time and thought is devoted to those who are absent, and these associa- tions should be in advance of actual experience. As a child should be associated with those higher and better than his equals, so man needs to cultivate his social nature with a being higher than himself. In all cases of affection, there is a neces- sary tendency to deny all imperfections of the loved ones and to make out, as far as possible, a perfect object of love. This demand for a perfect object of affection is 'inherent in the human mind, showing that mind was made for something higher than itself and that without such an object of love, like the bird with its broken wing, the man, and thus society, must sink instead of rising. In all society there must be mutual dependence and feelings of obligation and a grateful recognition of favors. Gratitude therefore becomes a necessary condition of society, life and happiness. Gratitude always contemplates personal favors, and grati- tude to things is impossible. And yet, ninety-nine hundredths of all our comforts come from some source above and indepen- dent of man, and any theory which ignores a Supreme Bene- factor destroys all possibility of gratitude indispensable to true society. The denial of a divine supreme Deity, or the denial of a divine personality outside of matter, or such denial of evidence as leaves the mind professedly without belief in divine personal perfections, must be opposed to- the best interests and life of society. Atheism, as positive, pantheistic or agnostic, THE FOES OF SOCIETY. 67 robs society of its models of character and of the best associa- tions of thought and feeling, renders gratitude impossible in many cases, and is a foe to society in the fundamental elements of its life. As a chain cannot be sustained by its own links without some ground of dependence outside itself, no more can obligation have a firm basis and standard without relations above equals, and supreme. Without a God there can be no standard of morality nor moral foundation for society. The denial of a God is virtually the denial of spirit, distinct from matter. But society is itself spiritual and to ignore or deny such existence is to deny society itself. So also is society necessarily constituted with reference to a future. And that tendency of mind and life of hope is to such an extent vital to all true society that the denial in any form of the existence and eternity of God or of man's immortality is to strike at the very heart of society and oppose its very life. Such then are the enemies with which society has to con- tend. All the battle-fields of nations and conflicts of civiliza- tion, all the struggles for family and social life and happiness have been conflicts with individualism, Monarchism, Animal- ism and Atheism. And when individual claims shall be held subject to society rights, power be exercised in benevolence, animal appetites and passions be subjected to reason and conscience, and all subjected to the Supreme Ruler, then will be realized the completeness of personal life, the perfection of society and the fullness of hope. THE ASSOCIATIONS OF YOUNG MEN AND YOUNG WOMEN. RY B. F. AUSTIN, M. A., B. D. WISH to address a few words of friendly counsel to the young men and wo- men who may read this book, concerning their mutual associa- tions, the influence given and received therein, and the methods by which such influence may be increased and extended to mutual advantage. I shall assume, in this discussion, that such companionship of young men and women is eminently fitting and proper in itself, that it was evi- dently designed by divine providence, and that, though attended with some temptation and dangers, it subserves grand purposes, and is fraught with blessings to the race. Here and there in society may still be found a home where such associations are looked upon as an evil, to be restrained or prohibited, and occasionally, too, a church where separate seats are still provided for men and women. But, generally speaking, it is assumed that it is natural, expedient and right 63 F. AUSTIN, A. M., B. D. ASSOCIATIONS OF YOUNG MEN AND YOUNG WOMEN. QQ that young men and women should enjoy each other's com- pany, and that each sex is much better for the society of the other. From the ages of fifteen to twenty-five a 1 ! young men and young women, unless defective in body, brain or heart, experience a social craving, which the members of their own families can not satisfy. Then they turn longingly towards society. As the warm breath of spring kisses the sleeping flowers, and calls dead nature into new life, so this period of youth awakens the social nature, and makes its graces bud and blossom in the human heart. It may be seriously questioned if this great fact of human nature has yet been sufficiently taken into account by parents, educators, ministers and social reformers, in arranging the home, school, church and social life of the young. Those having charge of the youth are under very serious obligations to see that alongside the devel- opment of the physical, intellectual and moral natures of those committed to their care, there shall be a corresponding devel- opment of the social nature, that no undue restraint be placed upon it, and that young people shall have the very best pos- sible opportunities for forming that thorough acquaintance with each other upon which the choice of a life time may safely be made a choice that blesses or blasts the entire life. Both sexes supply needed elements to social life, and, hence, each is incomplete without the other. Every young man is insensibly refined and elevated by the society of a lady; and she, in turn, is strengthened and inspired by the companionship of a gentleman. I will also assume that the }'oung friends for whom I specially write are really anxious for self-improvement, and possess some laudable ambition to gain and exert beneficent influence in society, for, without this, I am fully persuaded that all the counsel I can give you will prove useless. Pos- sessing this ambition,- you will very likely suggest for our dis- 70 SIGNAL LIGHTS. cussion a few practical questions such as these: Under what circumstances should young men and young women enjoy each other's society? How may such association be made in the highest degree beneficial? With regard to the places and times at which young people may properly associate, it will not be difficult for any young man or woman of good judgment to decide. All who are under age will, of course, pay strict obedience to the rightful authority of parents and teachers, and even those no longer minors will hear and heed with deep respect the counsels of such loving friends. The choice of company is another mat- ter in which it is much wiser and safer to trust the judgment of those of riper years, than to rely upon our own. There are to-day so many proper places of association for young men and young women that it is much easier to point out where they should not than where they should meet. It may be laid down as a maxim for young people that all places that furnish in themselves, or their surroundings, temptations to- waste of time or money, and all amusements that suggest improper thoughts to the mind, or necessitate or even permit liberties that would not be considered proper and in good taste in a well-conducted home, are to be carefully avoided. In the same index -prohibitorum, we would place all associa- tions or amusements that tend to lessen respect for Christianity and the sacred obligations of religion, or to render the simple duties of every-day life dull and irksome. " By their fruits ye shall know them." Every young person, possessing true self-respect, and desiring to rise into the highest excellence and power for good, will shun, as dangerous and deadly, all amusements that break down the wall of modest reserve which God has erected between the sexes. Rest assured, young friends, that company in which there is little of this " modest reserve " is at least unprofitable company. Chester- ASSOCIATIONS OF YOUNG MEN AND YOUNG WOMEN. 7^ field very truthfully says: "You little know what you have done when you have first broken the bounds of modesty: you have set open the door of your fancy to the devil." For these reasons, we consider those places which necessitate a freedom of intercourse that very easily degenerates into license and a " free and easy " style of conduct, which sanction and even require many bodily attitudes, movements and postures that could not be practiced in the home circle with self- respect, by no means conducive to modesty.% The social gathering in home or church, the concert, the lecture and all entertainments that cultivate the intellectual, social or moral nature, 'are, of course, very proper places of association for young men and women. No more sacred or delightful spot can be found on earth for the formation of acquaintance, the growth and ripening of friendship, and the exercise of all helpful and beneficent influences than the home circle. Few obligations upon parents are more binding or important than that of providing pleasant and profitable com- panionship for their sons and daughters. Most young people have some laudable ambition to possess and exert an influence over their associates, and are wont to'ask themselves the question: What must I do to obtain and exert this magic power? A very grave and almost fatal mistake is made just here, however, by the mass of young people, and by far too many who assume to instruct them in manners and general conduct. I allude to the popular fallacy underlying the question, what must I do? the fallacy of supposing that any course of conduct or demeanor is sufficient to secure the highest influence and social power. There is, perhaps, no more common or disastrous delusion than the supposition that real influence may be acquired by a code of rules alone, that social power may be obtained by a certain style of dress, mode of speech, or manner of acting. The highest, mightiest and most 72 SIGNAL LIGHTS. permanent influence is not obtained by such artifice. The young man or young woman who desires to make the most of life, and for this purpose turns the chief thought upon man- ners, dress and conduct, makes a fearful mistake. Back of the question, what shall I do? lies the infinitely more import- ant question, what must I be? Under conduct lies character. Back of the stream of beneficent influence, whose fertilizing waters you would pour upon society, must be the hidden foun- tain of character. Do not misunderstand me. Conduct is very important, but character, out of which this conduct springs, much more important. In place, therefore, of burden- ing you with a multitude of rules and directions for your behavior, I prefer to turn your thoughts, first to the formation of noble character, afterward offering a few simple directions having particular reference to your conduct toward each other. Let me first arouse, if possible, the intensest desire of your nature for real personal excellence. Had I a voice with which I could address the millions of young men and women of to-day, I would cry out to all of them, awake ! And the first great essential for a successful debut and an influential career in society is that you be thoroughly awake. I would have you then wake up to these all-important facts: The supreme value of exalted and ennobled character, as the one great pos- session in life. The power of personal influence springing out of such character. The possibilities in the way of improve- ment before each of you. The responsibilities inseparable from power and privilege. Three-fourths of the young men and women of to-day are asleep, so far as the knowledge of these great facts is con- cerned. Many are lying in graves of selfishness and sin dead, while living and need to be called forth, as was Lazarus, by the voice of the living Christ to the knowledge of life's glorious possibilities and tremendous responsibilities. Power ASSOCIATIONS OF YOUNG MEN AND YOUNG WOMEN. 73 and success are won by those alone whose mental and moral powers have become aroused for life's struggle. " Genius is only the power of lighting one's own fire." Happy are the young men and young women, fortunate enough to wake up before they are thirty years of age. Any book, lecture, sermon or companionship is to be reckoned a choice gift from heaven if it have the power of rousing thee from slumber, and inspiring thee to duty. Character, the sum of all one's qualities of body, mind and heart, is the all-important object to set before us, whether we aim at personal happiness, or power among our fellow men. It is the fountain-head of life, purifying which, we may make the streams both pure and sweet. But the reverse process can not be accomplished, for, no matter how we may straighten the streams, or purify their waters, or even adorn their banks with flowers, we can never thus affect the fountain. No wiser words were ever penned, even as a guide to refined manners and social influence as well as to religious character, than the inspired precept : " Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life." Nature, as well as revelation, teaches the superlative value of high intelligence and moral character. In fact, the one object for which nature exists, is the growth of character. Revelation has for its single object the exaltation of human character. Go out, young friends, and look upon the earth and man, a pilgrim upon it for a brief day. Is not character the only thing he can acquire between the cradle and the grave, which he can carry with him into the future? What else, then, can a man really. call his own? See how all nature points out character as the supreme object it has in view. The vegetable kingdom feeds the animal, and dies; the animal world serves man's physical nature, and passes away; man's physical nature acts as a dwelling-house for the soul, and perishes; the soul lives on forever, but its destiny depends on its character. This char- 74 SIGNAL LIGHTS. acter is, therefore, the one uniform object God has in view in nature, providence and grace the one great preparation man needs for the society of this world as well as the next. This it is that gives weight, value and power to human conduct. It is not so much to the words we utter, or the manner of utter- ance, not to the deeds performed, or the mode in which they are done, that we are to look for power and influence among men. It is the mind that lies back of the words, the will and spirit that permeate the deeds, that give to them their dyna- mic influence among men. The world is ruled to-day by the might of mind, as it was in former days by the might of arms. The educated mind and the cultured heart and will are the dominant factors in society at present. Just as the mightiest planets rule in heaven, drawing the weaker ones out of their projected orbits, so the strongest characters of earth control the weakest. Remember, therefore, young friends, that yon enter society to rule, or to be ruled. Without a character that inspires respect, and imparts something of its own energy to your words and deeds, all your advantages of birth or station, all your acquirements of knowledge and skill, all your graces of person or address, are comparatively powerless. Awake to the power of that personal influence you have, or may possess. This will spring out of your character and be, like it, strong or -weak, and its moral quality good or bad, as you are. If you are pure in thought and affection, your whole life will partake of this heart purity, and the influence you exert will be as gracious and grateful to humanity as is the brook to the trees and plants that line its banks. If, on the contrary, the mind and heart be impure, no amount of atten- tion to the conduct will make your influence wholesome. If the powers of thought and expression be developed, and the mind stored with knowledge, your influence must make itself felt in the world of mind: no artifice of the tailor or dress- ASSOCIATIONS OF YOUNG ME. V AX D YOUNG WOMEN. 75 maker, no instruction of the dancing-master, not even the choicest wisdom of the writers upon etiquette, will ever endow an ignoramus with influence. There are two kinds of influ- ence the voluntary, and the involuntary. The first is occasional, often weak and futile, while the second is silent, perpetual and often mighty for good or ill. It belongs as naturally and necessarily to character .as gravitation does to matter. It is an invisible tie, binding together human minds and hearts so that no man can either rise or fall alone. No one lives, or can live, to himself. This involuntary influence is as unceasing as the sunshine, or the action of gravitation, or the rolling river. It is a continuous stream of living energy, that flows out from every life upon the lives of others. This is the one momentous fact in connection ivith our social rela- tions. It is never lost never exhausted though its course cannot always be traced. Longfellow describes it as an arrow one shoots into the sky, the fall of which is unperceived, and the whereabouts unknown for many years, till, in an unex- pected hour, it is found buried in the heart of a mighty oak. It is ever increasing. Now the little rill on the mountain <_? brow now a noisy rivulet singing among the gorges now a swollen brook in the valley and then a broad and mighty river hastening to the ocean. It is eternal in its duration. It is irremediable, irrevocable. We can imagine the bird just loosed from the cage and spreading its wings in the sun- shine of heaven, called back by a magic word, or the ball that leaps from the cannon's throat recalled by a word of com- mand, sooner than the effect of a word spoken or a deed done. This influence, that goes out from the centre of your being- into society, will be like the odor that exhales from flowers, or the malaria that rises from stagnant marsh or pool. From your inner life, the still, small voice will speak more musically, more eloquently, more effectually than any words your lips 76 SIGNAL LIGHTS. can utter. Let this voice, I pray you, be an echo of the divine Teacher's, calling men to higher, nobler life, rather than a siren voice luring to the rocks of ruin. Awake to the glorious possibilities of self-improvement before you! This age inherits all the stores of wealth, knowledge, power, goodness and privilege belonging to the past, and has, in addition, ten thousand blessings and oppor- tunities peculiarly its own. With knowledge accessible on every hand, society extending; its hands in kindly greeting, with the clear light of revelation on thy pathway, and a divine call to labor ringing in thy ears, surely thou art less than true man, thou art less than true woman, if thy soul does not exult at the prospect, and thy whole being leap for the race of life! The physical powers may be developed to an extent quite incredible. The mind and moral nature are opened to the infinite, and destined to the eternal. There are no bars the soul may not leap, no mountains it may not scale in its career of progress. And, with this progress in knowledge and virtue, may come increased power over your associates in life. The streamlet of your personal influence to-day may, to-morrow, become the mighty river bearing its thousand barges to the sea. Surely the young men and women who are indifferent to these possibilities are asleep, they are like dumb driven cattle. Awake to life's great responsibilities, and in youth make Duty your guiding star. Remember that as influence is inseparable from thy being, so responsibility is inseparable from influence. You need the sense of duty, both as a chart to guide you and as a ballast to steady you in life's voyage. Without this, every wind of temptation will toss your vessel toward the breakers. "Is life worth living? " is the question of the hour with men who have no faith in God, no sense of duty and no hope of reward. Duty faithfully done, and this ASSOCIATIONS OF YOUNG MEN AND YOUNG WOAIEN. 77 alone, will give dignity, value, enjoyment and reward to life. If, therefore, you desire to gain the respect of your com- panions, to win the attention and the hearts of your fellow men, to lead and control society, rather than be led and con- trolled, first turn the deepest energies of your soul upon the cultivation of noble character. Seek Knowledge and Develop the Poivers of the Mind, Ninety-nine out of every hundred men and women are without excuse if they remain uneducated to-day. With books em- bodying the wisdom of the ages, and costing but a trifle, with newspapers in every home, conveying full information on all current topics, with available lecture courses and night- schools, the young man or young woman who remains unintel- ligent in this blaze of light, deserves to be ignored by society. What a disgrace it is to many young people that they are unable to converse intelligently and profitably upon any sub- ject really worthy of consideration! Listen to them for hours and you hear only the gossip of society, some silly personalities, or " that abominable tittle-tattle " only this, and nothing more. .From them you hear not a statement that displays reason and reflection, nor a thought or sentiment that can ele- vate and refine. It is, of course, utterly in vain to reprove such persons, or to teach them how to converse, since intelli- gent speech can only be expected from intelligent people. All the " Rules for Conversation " ever printed will not essentially change the matter or the manner of their conversation. Such persons can no more utter thoughtful and noble sentiments than they can speak Hebrew. Out of the abundance or emptiness of the heart the mouth speaketh either wisdom or foolishness. Have a Commanding Pur-pose in Life. No one can ever acquire much power over his fellow men who has not, sweep- 78 SIGNAL LIGHTS. ing through his life, the current of some great purpose. The idler, the pleasure seeker, the mere butterflies of fashion can never command the respect, or even the admiration of their fellowmen. A great purpose will concentrate your energies and bring them to bear with power upon society. It was this, in connection with high moral principal, that lifted the lives of Paul, Luther and Wesley, and in our own age, Livingstone, Gordon and Taylor into such commanding prominence and power in the world. Cultivate then a " generous purpose for a noble end." Thousands around you are mere driftwood on the surface of society. They float as the current of pleasure directs, with no sails spread to catch heaven's favoring breeze, no rudder, no chart, no port in view! Their lives have none of that momentum that comes from an overmastering purpose, working itself out in a life of intense activity. Remember that driftwood is only an impediment: it is the tug, with its mighty machinery and steam power, that compels the long line of barges to follow it. A great purpose will always pro- duce a laborious life. Idleness, unless enforced by sickness or old age, is dishonorable, and an idle life can never become influential. Seek by Divine Grace the Cultivation of the Moral Nature, the Development in Tour Character of the Divine Graces, Faith, Hope and Charity. The corner-stone of character, the great essential of every life, the one source of the highest, purest and most potent influence one human being can exert upon another, is piety. This alone inspires the noblest culture, imparts the highest purposes, and gives to the life its greatest eloquence and most persuasive power. A terrible mistake those young people make, a mistake fatal to their best interests here and hereafter, who imagine that the possession of piety, and the faithful discharge of the duties of a Christian life, are ASSOCIATIONS OF YOUNG MEN AND YOUNG WOMEN. 79 out of harmony with social enjoyment and the exercise of social influence. " Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace." Religion gives the richest enjoyment to the mind, the most lasting peace to the heart, and the mightiest influence in the life. Having considered the importance of character, and some of the lines along which you ought specially to seek its devel- opment, let me now direct your attention more specifically to your conduct toward each other. Form the Habit of Expressing Tour Thoughts with Ease, Elegance, Purity and Poiver, both in Composition and Com- pany. The most important thing is to have thoughts worth expressing, and next in importance is the ability to express them in a pleasing and effective manner. The young man or young woman who is content with mere facts, and does not seek to know their causes, who does not form a habit of reflec- tion and investigation, will have few thoughts worth uttering in public. Thought rules the world, yet even the best thoughts are shorn of their natural power and glory if dressed in ungrammatical language, or uttered in bad style. A knowledge of the principal rules of grammar is very necessary, but a careful reading, and re-reading of the best authors, and much association with good conversationalists, are even more essential. Some people, who are quite ignorant of the rules of grammar, speak very correctly; and some who know them well, violate them with shocking impunity. Many, who know a good deal well worth expressing in company, are very poor conversationalists, because of lack of training and practice, or because of mental dyspepsia their knowledge lying unused in the mind, like so much useless lumber, a rude and undi- gested mass. Such persons need to form habits of orderly thought and concise expression, and, for this purpose, should 80 SIGNAL LIGHTS. make a practice of arranging and writing their thoughts until facility be acquired. Be assured, young friends, if you would have influence in society, this fine art of speech must be acquired. Without this, even with wealth, beauty and grace of manner on your side, you will find yourself distanced in the race by others having fewer a-dvantages, who have acquired the ability to express their thoughts with precision, force and elegance. How often do we find society at the feet of some gifted talker who, it may be, has no other social distinction. . In aspiring to eloquence in conversation, the following brief directions may be of use: Avoid curiosity respecting other people, which is usually a mark of poor breeding. Do not listen, if you can help it> to any family affairs, or to any account of the mistakes and follies of other people. Encour- age no gossips with a hearing. Never repeat what was not intended for repetition, or what would do harm if repeated. Avoid egotism in your conversation, making as few references to yourself as possible. Your wealth, exploits and position in society should seldom, if ever, be alluded to by yourself. The same rule should be observed with regard to your peculiar views upon religion, politics and public questions likely to produce strife. Avoid argument, which is seldom beneficial, and often provokes resentment. Remember that all your con- duct in society, and particularly your conversation, should be based upon the Golden Rule. Cultivate the kindliest feelings toward all. Be charitable in your judgment, and avoid cen- suring others, especially the absent. Form the valuable habit of thinking kindly of others, and kind speech will follow kind thought. Never willingly injure the feelings of another. If you have wit, use it to please, but not to lacerate. The best wit shines, but does not cut. " It may be doubted," says a celebrated writer, " if any person, famous for satirical retorts, can be at heart either a true gentleman, or a true lady." ASSOCIATIONS OF YOUNG MEN AND YOUNG WOMEN. SI Above all things, avoid falling into the dreadful habit of carp- ing, criticizing and fault-finding. Practice constant civility in speech toward all with whom you come in contact. Nothing is more charming in the conduct of young people than this genuine civility, when shown toward parents and teachers; and it has equal charm and grace, when shown toward dependents. Aim constantly at correct and elegant language, make an intimate acquaintance and hold frequent intercourse with the English grammar, and dictionary. Notice carefully every mistake made by others, not to criticise, but that you may avoid the same. Resolve that you will never use an incorrect or inelegant expression. Preserve an elevated tone of conver- sation. I do not mean, of course, by this a stiff and stilted style of speech upon topics beyond your comprehension, but simply that the subject should never be trivial or nonsensical, and that the language should never descend to slang or vul- garity. Listen attentively and patiently to others, not seeking to monopolize the conversation. " The best talkers are the best listeners." Patience is the first of all the social virtues, and silence and attention her most useful handmaids. Defer- ence to the rights, opinions and even prejudices of others, adds beauty to the conduct. Young ladies should remember that they have a special mission in the cultivation and use of fine conversational powers. Yours it is to be agreeable to all, to relieve the embarrassment of the timid, to call out, by the magnetism of your presence and powers of speech, the talent of the company, and to become the inspiration of your social circle. The groups of genius that appear here and there in history have almost invariably been formed around women of cultured conversation. The intellect of Greece once knelt at the feet of the beautiful and talented Aspasia, and in the French salons of the last century, women were acknowledged as queens in conversation. Even the wit and polish of Lord 6 82 SIGNAL LIGHTS. Chesterfield was derived, as he tells us, from assiduously cul- tivating the society of ladies. So, in every age where the interchange of ideas in speech has risen into the dignity of a fine art, it has been largely so by woman's inspiration and talent. Cultivate the Graces of Character Modesty, Humility. Sympathy. Nothing can atone for a lack of modesty in woman / and it is no less graceful and beautiful in the character of man. " Humility, that low, sweet root, From which all heavenly virtues shoot," is compatible with the greatest strength of character, and imparts to it increased influence, by rendering it attractive in the eyes of others. Yet, of all the graces of character the one most essential for the exercise of influence is sympathy. Well does Sir Walter Scott write: " It is the secret sympathy, The silver link, the silken tie, Which heart to heart, and mind to mind, In body and in soul can bind/' Sympathy is that disposition which prompts us to rejoice with those that rejoice, and weep with those that weep. By it we bear, in part, the burden of others, sharing their suffer- ings, difficulties and discouragements. "We often do more good," says Canon Farrar, " by our sympathy than by our labors, and render the world a more lasting service, by absence of jealousy and by recognition of merit in others, than we could ever render by the straining efforts of personal ambi- tion." This touch of nature that "makes the whole world kin," is the channel through which the mightiest influence flows into other hearts and lives. Cultivate it, then, by daily ASSOCIATIONS OF YOUNG MEN AND YOUNG WOMEN. 83 taking interest in others, and living, in part at least, for your companions. Preserve Intact that Wall of Modest Reserve Nature has set up Bet-ween the Sexes. Ever} 7 young woman, if true to herself and her own best interests, will permit no liberties, either of language or of conduct, on the part of young gentle- men. The young woman who imagines that by submitting to such indignities she is simply making herself agreeable, and thus increasing her influence, makes a serious and sad mistake. No young man can truly respect a young woman with whom he can indulge in liberties of speech or demeanor. The young woman who has not the self-respect to rebuke such a liberty is just as lacking in sense as self-respect. Cultivate Moral Courage to Rebuke Wrong-doing, even in your Friends, and Exert your Influence to Correct their Faults, or, if need be, Reform their Character. What a grand field of usefulness and of reward is opened to young women in their associations with young men. Instead of yield- ing quiet assent to the expensive, hurtful and foolish habits of their friends, and thus encouraging wrong, they might, by the exercise of moral courage and a little genuine self-respect, induce reform. If the young woman of culture and social influence were once thoroughly enlisted in social reform, tobacco, wine and gam- bling would soon become unpopular, and the world would gain immeasurably thereby. Shame on the young woman who in her soul hates the smell of the dirty weed, and yet out of cowardice declares she is not disturbed in the least by tobacco smoke that she likes the smell of a cigar! Shame on the young woman who, knowing the dangerous and deadly results of strong drink, will, either from custom or from fear of offending some one, lend the sanction of her presence or example to wine ! The young woman of society to-day whose 84 SIGNAL LIGHTS. voice and example are not thrown upon the side of temper- ance is sadly lacking in either head or heart. Be not deceived, young lady, indifference on this question, with the facts of the world's sufferings before you, is not merely weakness it is wickedness! How many thousands of women, now wedded to drunkards, gamblers, or libertines, might at one time by the loving word of entreaty, or the eloquence of example, have rescued a soul from death, and in saving another, have saved themselves! After all that woman has suffered on account of strong drink, there is positively no excuse for the woman who countenances the social drinking customs of to-day. What shall we say of the young woman who sanctions them by either wine-bibbing herself, or putting the social glass to the lips of others? This is the one unpardonable sin of social life to-day, and tens of thousands of women have committed it, and now find no place for repentance, though they seek it carefully with tears! Pay Careful Attention to Dress, Manners and Appear- ance. Character is, of course, the great essential ; yet appearance and manners have very great effect in increasing or decreasing its power. Character is the jewel; these the casket in which it often lies hidden. The world does not always recognize the jewel, and a part of mankind are foolish enough to think more of the casket than of what it contains. The wearing of neat' and becoming dress is a duty you owe to society, for we have no right to needlessly offend the taste of our friends. All striking effects and defects should be avoided. There is a loud style of talking and laughing that is exceedingly offensive to all persons of refinement, and there is a loud style of dressing that is equally distasteful. Bright colors and striking effects are aimed at by the savages of the plain, and by the ill-bred of civilized life. Aim at that style ASSOCIATIONS OF YOUNG MEN AND YOUNG WOMEN. 85 of dress which is best suited to yourself, in which you can feel and act most naturally, and which will least attract the attention or remark of others. Remember that neatness, cleanliness and appropriateness are always in fashion. No matter how excellent your character, your influence in society will be greatly lessened by slovenly dress or boorish appear- ance or manner. Unclean hands, soiled clothing, unkempt locks, or an ill-fitting garment will mar the effect of the best speech, or the sweetest song. Although all good manners are based upon the commandment, " Thou shall love thy neighbor as thyself," yet it is very important that young people should learn and practice the forms in which this love for one's neighbor expresses itself in refined society. Pleasing address opens the way to human hearts, and thus aids the outflow of influence from character. Chesterfield must have had a very high estimate of its value, for he declared "A young man might better return a dropped fan genteely, than give ten thousand pounds awkwardly." The charming manners of the Duke of Marlborough often changed an enemy into a friend, and it is said that it was pleasanter to be refused a favor by him than to receive one from others. Cultivate, then, diligently this " finest of the fine arts." Cultivate Candor and Sincerity in Speech, and Natural- ness in Conduct. When young ladies and young gentlemen meet in the home, let there be none of that stiffness and form- ality and acting of a part, which are so often found in society. Why should there be so much dissembling of real sentiment? so much pretended admiration for what is not admired? so much assumption in manner, voice and face of what is not experienced in the heart ? I would have young people always maintain that "modest reserve" of which I have spoken; yet surely this is entirely compatible with the utmost geniality and 86 SIGNAL LIGHTS. c naturalness of conduct. These social deceptions, practiced upon each other by young men and young women, by mask- ing of their real sentiments, and assuming an unnatural expres- sion of countenance, tone of voice, mode of speech and conduct, are responsible for very serious results to themselves. Aside from the injury inflicted upon their moral nature by this volun- tary deception, it is an undoubted fact, that many young people associate for a long time without ever becoming truly acquainted, and many, who imagine themselves sufficiently acquainted to choose each other as life companions, become acquainted with each other's real character only after marriage. Let there be, I pray you, an honest expression of your own views and opinions of your own. Candor and sincerity are two of the great charms of childhood, and are equally charm- ing in young men and women, though more rarely exhibited. What could be more pleasing than to hear from the pouting lips of a child, the confession, "I do not like you one bit?" And what is more refreshing, in this age of sham and pretence, than an honest expression of opinion and an independent course of conduct by young people, when in direct opposition to public opinion and custom. Aim to Inspire Tour Associates -with Love of the True, the Beautiful and the Good, and to Interest and Enlist them in Christian Work. Woman's grand mission is to inspire, encourage and help man in the upward path of duty, self- sacrifice and benevolence. Every young woman ought to recognize this as her special mission, and to seek to make her character, her example and her conversation a mighty inspir- ation to noble living. The surest and most effective method of interesting your companions in any good work, is to become intensely interested in it yourself. Zeal is infectious, and its glow pervades, unconsciously, every act of life. In the social ASSOCIATIONS OF YOUNG MEN AND YOUNG WOMEN. 87 circle, of which she is the centre, the young woman wields a power greater than that of all the rest of society combined. Your language, sentiment and example must here be all-potent for good or ill. Be assured, if your influence, efforts and example, under divine blessing, will not correct the faults, reform the character and ennoble the life of a young man admitted to your society and friendship, no other power under heaven can do it. You hold your own and another's destiny largely in your keeping. BOOKS AND ASSOCIATES. BY GEO. W. WILLIARD, D. D. ili HERE is no period of time of which it could be more truthfully said that " of making books there is no end," than of the present. The country is literally flooded with books upon almost every imaginable topic books, good, bad and indifferent so as to suit and in many cases pander to the tastes of the people. And yet, great as this enterprise is, it is perhaps not more so than in other departments of life, show- ing the wonderful energy and activity of the age in which we live. There is, also, as any one must see, an unusual amount of intelligence, and a thirst for knowledge. Men run to and fro after knowledge, and are eager for what is new and old so that as soon any book is brought before the public, at all adapted to the times, there are thousands to purchase and read it, thus making a great demand for books. So great, 88 REV. G. W. WIJ.LARD, D. D. BOOKS AND ASSOCIA TES. 89 indeed, is the thirst for knowledge, that no individual or family ought to be without books. They have become an indispens- able article in every well regulated family, where the means are at hand to purchase them; parents should regard it as much their duty to provide for the intellectual culture of their children, as they do to feed and clothe them; it is as great a wrong to impoverish the mind as it is to stint or dwarf the body. How many books ought to constitute the family library no one can tell, as this will depend largely on the size of the family, the desire there is for reading, and the means at hand for their purchase. This much, however, may be said, that no family ought to be without some books of a devotional, historical, biographical, social, literary and scientific character, aside from the journals of the day, so that intelligence may be as widely diffused as the air we breathe. Better, far better, do without the luxuries of life, better exercise rigid self-denial in regard to many things deemed necessary, than have no books. No one who has not had access to a well selected family library can tell the advantage and benefit it is to the children growing up to manhood or womanhood, and how it tends to add to the pleasures and endearments of home. Many a young man might, and in all probability would have been saved from the shame and degradation of a mis-spent life had he found at home the entertainment and pleasure he sought on the streets and in the company of wicked associates. Imagine for a moment the condition in which we would be had we no books. What an intellectual death there would be; a famine worse than that which affected Egypt and Ireland, when they had no bread! Had our fathers written and handed down to us no books, what would be known of the past, the growth and dispersion of the race, the rise and tall of empires, the establishment of different religions, the cus- 90 SIGNAL LIGHTS. toms, manners, habits and intellectual achievements of nations? The past would be to us mostly a blank, as there is little reli- ance to be put in traditions when they have passed through the coloring of a century or two. Had no books come down to us through the ages that, are past, it is not at all probable that we would have made the progress in the arts and sciences we have, or that we would enjoy the refining, elevating and Christianizing influence of this nineteenth century. The books stored away in our libraries, many of which are soiled and torn from the use or abuse made of them, and perhaps read but little, being superseded by others of a more recent date, are still valuable to us, for reference, if for nothing else, con- taining, as they do, the views, researches and general intelli- gence of the age in which they were written. No one of the present day, if he should undertake to write a general history of the world, as Sir Walter Raleigh did, could do so with any exactness, if he did not have before him the histories of the different nations written and handed down by those who pre- ceded him. What would we know of the discoveries of the past, when and by whom made, had they not been carefully recorded and transmitted to us? No one could write an intel- ligent and exhaustive treatise on art, science, religion, or any of the general topics of the day, if he were to ignore or disre- gard the researches of the past. It would be worse than folly for any one to attempt a lecture on philosophy, if he had never read Plato, Aristotle, Bacon, Descartes, Kant or Reed; or to give a treatise on any particular science if he had not made himself acquainted with the writings of those who preceded him; or to instruct us in the deep and difficult problems of theology, if he knew nothing of the history of Christian doc- trine, and had never read anything on the subject. No age or individual can be severed from the past. The world rolls on like a mighty stream in the even tenor of its way, gather* BOOKS AND ASSOC1A TES. 91 ing tributaries from every age and nation, so that the farther it goes, the greater and more numerous are the blessings which it has to dispense, reminding us of the rich legacy we have in the books that have come down to us, containing the researches and investigations of the masters of thought in the past, many of whom have been raised up, as it would seem, by Providence to do the work they did. The world would be stripped of much of its wealth, if it were, by some misfor- tune, to lose the writings of Athanasius, Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton, not to say anything of the long array of names that come crowding in upon us as we write or read. Let us then be thankful for the precious inheritance we have in the books that have come down to us through the ages, containing richer treasures than all the mines of gold that have been discovered. But books have many uses beside linking us to the past and laying its treasures at our feet. To speak of all these in an article of a few pages is impossible. All we can hope to do is merely to throw out, here and there, a few hints which may suggest such thoughts as will lead to a more thorough investi- gation of the subject. The mind is naturally inquisitive, and is ever in search of something new and better. We can no more repress or chain its activities than we can arrest the motion of the wind. Men will think and reflect. Even children give signs of great inquisitiveness in the many ques- tions they ask, which would often puzzle the greatest philoso- phers to answer. Books subserve a good purpose in that they foster and direct the natural thirst for knowledge which is common to man, and urge him on to pursue it in its diversified forms. Any book, worth reading, will, if attentively perused, quicken the latent powers of the mind, broaden its views, and may put it on the way to high intellectuality and eminence. It is 92 SIGNAL LIGHTS. remarkable how a little incident, occurring in youth, or read from a book, may change the current of a life, and lead to the most wonderful results. The reading of Robinson Crusoe is said to have filled many a boy's head with ideas so new and strange, that he had no rest until he had given himself up to the life of a sailor. If the history of men's lives were all writ- ten, it would doubtless appear that many of those whose names are inscribed high on the scroll of fame were influenced to take the course they did by a book which they had read in early life. Especially has this result been produced by the many excellent biographies of the good men who have left their impress on the world, verifying what has been so beauti- fully and truthfully said by the poet: " Lives of great men all remind uk, We can make our lives sublime, And departing, leave behind us Footprints on the sands of time ; Footprints, that perhaps another, Sailing o'er life's solemn main, A forlorn and shipwrecked brother, Seeing, shall take heart again. " Books are also of great use in that they furnish the nourish- ment necessary to the growth and expansion of the mind, which, although spiritual in its nature, can no more live and gain strength without its proper support than the body can grow and develop its various members independently of whole- some and nutritive food. As the body becomes diseased and effeminate when left to surfer hunger, so the mind and heart fail to perform their proper work when their cravings are not satisfied. What bread is to the physical constitution, books are to the soul ; from this we may learn the great wrong prac- ticed upon the young and rising generation when no proper provision is made for their intellectual improvement. Parents BOOKS AND ASSOCIATES. 93 greatly err in this repect when they provide for their children, in great abundance, the food and clothing necessary for their bodily growth and comfort, while they make little or no pro- vision for their education, and not unfrequently speak of it as though it were of little advantage, if not in some instances a wrong. One can hardly have patience with these false notions in this enlightened age. And yet there is great reason to be hopeful when we think of the progress that has been made within the last century, and the increased facilities that are brought within the reach of all, the poor as well as the rich, for obtaining a liberal education and having such a supply of books, at a moderate expense, as will satisfy their intellectual thirst. It is certainly gratifying to those interested in the progress of society and the elevation of the race, to look out upon the world and see the laudable efforts put forth to make provisions for the culture and education of the mind in the schools and colleges of the day, and in the books written upon almost every imaginable subject in a style so simple and glowing as to interest the dullest intellect. Such, indeed, are the pro- visions in this respect that they are hardly less abundant than those which are made for the support and maintenance of the body, making it as inexcusable for any one to impoverish the mind when the means are at hand for its healthful culture and education, as it would be to allow the body to suffer for the want of food, when it is within the reach of all. Books are written and published to be read and studied, and not as mere ornaments for the parlor table, or book case. Some persons seem to have as great a mania for books, as others have for pictures and flowers, and purchase every book that is thrown upon the market, without any regard to its character, and in this way accumulate large libraries, which are of no practical benefit to them. Any book worth pur- 94 SIGNAL LIGHTS. chasing, and a place in the library, ought to be read and studied, otherwise it will be of no profit, and its purchase must be regarded an unwise expenditure of money. Without attempting to lay down any positive rule in the purchase of books, it may be said, in general, that no book that does not afford food for the mind, that does not strengthen its powers, that adds nothing to our store of knowledge, that is not suggestive of useful thoughts and reflections, that does not incite to a higher and better life, that is not elevating or refining, is not worth reading. Life is too short, its oppor- tunities and privileges too important, its work too great and pressing, and eternity too near, to waste our time in reading books that yield no profit, especially when others may be had at no greater expense, the perusal of which will always be refreshing and beneficial. It may be added that there is one book, and one only, that ought above all others to find a place in every library, and be read by all, the young and the old, the rich and the poor, the learned and the unlearned a book hoary with age and yet always new and fresh a book wonderful in its contents and purpose which, while no one can fully comprehend it, may yet be believed by all a book of the purest morality and richest comfort a book maligned and spoken against by infidels and men of reprobate minds, yet loved and read with increasing interest a book that has a balm for every sorrow, a cordial for all our fears, and a cure for all the pains, aches and ills of life a book that reveals God in all the perfection of his nature as the only proper object of worship and devotion a book that tells so sweetly the story of Jesus and his love, that no one can read it, if he will but enter into the spirit of it, with- out being moved by the constraining love of Christ to give himself up to a Christian life. This book, if I need name it, BOOKS AND ASSOCIATES. 95 is the Bible, the book of books, God's own book, of which it may be truthfully said: " Bright as a lamp its doctrines shine, To guide our souls to heaven." But good as books are, and many as are the purposes which they serve, they are not all we need. Our nature has many sides and is wonderfully complex, so that books alone can not meet its diversified wants. Constituted as we are, we need human associates as well as books, persons with whom we can converse, and to whom we can unbosom our joys and sorrows, our hopes and fears, who, having the same tastes and being of the same turn of mind as ourselves, can enter into our feelings, and so help us in our life's work. No one, when true to himself, can cut himself off from the society and inter- course of the world, and live the life of a hermit, or ascetic. To do so would be to practice a wrong upon himself and repress some of the noblest instincts and aspirations of his nature. Hence Shakespeare, who is said to have sounded the depths of our nature and to have analyzed its secret work- ings as few can do, has said : " This above all. To thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man." No man is entirely without associates; for even the most hateful misanthropes, the most censorious critics, who are all the while denouncing the follies and vices of the age, and the most rigid reformers, have their companions who are of like views and feelings, and they would be miserable if they had none to sympathize with them. The men who come nearest to being hermits by living secluded and alone, are usually cold, heartless, censorious and ill-natured, and have, as they give, little sympathy; they are to be pitied in their solitude 96 SIGNAL LIGHTS. and desolation. It may, therefore, be laid down as a rule, that all those who desire to live noble, useful lives, and accom- plish the true end of their being, have their associates, with whom they often take counsel, and in whose society they delight. With associates, as with books, no rules can be laid down as to how many it is safe to have and how much time should be spent in their company, as this will depend on circum- stances of which each one must judge for himself. Yet it is easy to see how those of a cheerful and social turn of mind may readily transcend the bounds of propriety, and spend more time in the company of associates than is generally con- sidered profitable. This much, however, may be said with safety, that whenever our associates become so numerous as to encroach upon the necessary work and business of life, and the society of comrades so fascinating and entangling as to lead to the perpetration of deeds which our better judgment condemns, it is time to draw back and assert our manhood and independence. But good and necessary as it is to have associates among our equals, we should never forget that there is one 'whose society and fellowship we should seek above all others, the one in whom we live and move and have our being, and from whom we receive every good and perfect gift, our Maker, Preserver, Benefactor and Redeemer, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and through him our Father. To walk with him as we pass along through life, to have a little talk with Jesus amid the hurry and business of the day, and have the comforting fellowship of the Holy Spirit, is a boon and safeguard of greater value than all the favor and friendship of the world. Having said this much concerning books and associates, this article would be incomplete were no mention made of the BOOKS AND ASSOCIATES, 97 care and precaution necessary in their selection, for, judge as charitably as we may, there is no disguising the fact that the moral effect of many books and associates is pernicious. And how can it be otherwise so long as the country is flooded with the light, trashy, vulgar literature that is thrown upon the market, and disseminated through the land at a nominal price, and read by the masses ! Many innocent and unsus- pecting youths reading these obscene books in which vice, a monster of frightful mien when seen in its native ugliness, is so gilded, and associated with what is alluring and attractive, are enticed thereby and led from one act of sin to another, until they are lost to all shame, and even glory in their degrada- tion. A man might as well eat unwholesome and poisonous food, and expect the bod) 7 to remain healthy and strong, as to feed the mind or heart with obscene literature, and expect it to retain its native vigor and purity. And yet how sad to say that, with all the warnings that are given, and the fearful wrecks that lie strewn all along the path of dissipation, obscene books and bad associates are not feared and shunned as they should be. But how, it may be asked, are we to counteract the evils resulting from bad books and bad associates? Both have their charms and are palatable to the corrupt heart, which rolls sin of every form under the tongue as a sweet morsel. Some there are, who, seeing the increasing tide of wickedness and the little support that is often given to law and order by those in authority, despair of any great reformation, not to speak of the entire suppression of the evil. And yet, if we have faith in God and the regenerating influence of His grace, we have every reason to believe that He will, in His own time and way, bring this and every other evil to an end, and fill the world with righteousness and peace. We may not live to see and rejoice in this blessed state of things, as it may, 98 SIGNAL LIGHTS. for aught we know, be long in coming. Yet we can labor according to our ability to bring it about. God, as we know, works through human agencies, and has been pleased to make us co-workers with' Him in accomplishing His plans, and He will not, by a mere exercise of his power, eradicate any evil from the world. This is the work of His church and people, so that there is a fearful responsibility resting upon us in refer- ence to the suppression of evil in its varied forms, and the sooner we are made to realize it the better. There is reason to hope for a better state of things in the near future in view of what has been and is being done for the suppression of evil. Never before in the history of the church have good men been so earnest and so ready to work for the speedy establishment of God's kingdom in the world. The choirch is arming herself for the conflict. Look where we may, we see great victories won and advances made in the overthrow of the kingdom of Satan. Many of the out- posts of the enemy have been taken, Christians of all denomi- nations are combining their forces, and evince a boldness and determination to maintain the right, as never before. The signs of the times are hopeful and seem to indicate that the Lord is preparing the way for the universal spread of His kingdom. May the day be speedily ushered in. JOHN H. YOUNG, A. M. ADVANTAGES OF EARLY TRAINING; THE INFLUENCES AND INSPIRATIONS OF THE HOME LIFE. BY JOHN H. YOUNG, A. M. HILDHOOD shows the man," says Milton, " as morning shows the day." Is it not, therefore, of vital importance that childhood should be surrounded with everything that can assist in elevating, purifying, strengthening, everything that will cherish good impulses and overcome inclina- tions to evil, everything that is true and honest, simple and generous in our nature? It is in childhood that the temper can be curbed and disciplined, and the wayward will brought into subjection. It is in childhood that the intellect, like virgin soil, lies open to the reception of golden seed; it is in childhood that impressions are received that communi- cate their coloring to later life. It is in childhood that the " natural instinct " is most plastic and can be moulded after the highest model. The early influences of home are never forgotten. The earliest lessons learned are best remembered. 99 100 SIGNAL LIGHTS. What a youth will become, what position he will secure in society, or in a profession or business, when he has reached manhood, may often be inferred from his home, and home influences and surroundings. We never see a great and good man without feeling sure that the home atmosphere he breathed in his youthful years was pure and healthy. Child- hood is both receptive and imitative; it absorbs all that is poured into it. The most potent influence which humanity acknowledges, is that of woman; the most potent influence in childhood is the mother's. We are, to a very great extent, what our mothers make us. The lessons learned from their loving lips are the lessons which abide with us to the grave ; the prayers said at our mother's knee will linger in our memories when life's winter blasts shall have chilled our decaying frames, and he sunset is reddening toward the night. Well might George Herbert say, " One good mother is worth a hundred school- masters." Great Men's Mothers. We can not have a St. Augustine without a Monica. Washington, Lincoln, Bishop Simpson, Garfield, Lee, how much did they not owe to the early training of their mothers ? In each case the maternal impres- sion was strongly apparent. The fruit grew out of seed sown by the mother's hand. John Randolph, the great statesman, writing to a friend in his old age, says: " I should have been an atheist if ^ it had not been for one recollection, and that was the time when my departed mother used to take my little hand in hers and cause me, on my knees, to say, ' Our Father who art in heaven.' " Lord Langdale, in his consciousness of his mother's early teaching, exclaimed: "Were the whole world put in one scale, and my mother in the other, the world would kick the beam." ADVANTAGES OF EARLY TRAINING, 101 Early Associations. The youth's aspirations, though largely controlled by home influences, will also be not a little swayed by the influence of companionship. Show us the man's friends and you show us the man himself. In the song of the Persian poet, Sadi, the poet asks a clod of clay how it has come to smell so fragrant. " The sweetness is not in my- self," says the clay, "but I have been lying in contact with the rose." Those higher qualities, to which our character may need a building up, we must obtain by cultivating worthy friends of lofty and noble character, and cherishing the highest aspirations. It is in this way that we shall be fitted to form a loftier ideal of life. The friends of Robert E. Lee were accustomed to say of him that no one could come in contact with his noble mind and heart without being in some manner ennobled, and lifted up into a higher region of aims and objects. Friends. " If thou wouldst get a good friend for thy children," says an old writer, "prove him first, and be not hasty to credit him, for some are friends for their own occasion, and will not abide in the day of trouble. A faithful friend is a strong defense, and he that hath found such a one hath found a treasure; a faithful friend is the medicine of life." These precautions are worthy of being remembered, for our choice of a career in life, and our successful pursuit of it, will depend, in a greater degree than we imagine, on the impulses we receive from our friends, an impulse sufficiently powerful at times to counteract the wise lessons and sacred examples of the home. If we choose worthy friends, our lives will be worthy ; or, as George Herbert says, " Keep good company, and you will be of the number." Herbert's mother wrote similar words of wisdom : " As our bodies take in nourish- ment suitable to the meat on which we feed, so do our souls 102 SIGNAL LIGHTS. as insensibly take in virtue or vice by the example or conver- sation of good or bad companions." The inspiration of example is felt by all generous natures, and one of the greatest services rendered to humanity by our poets, artists, patriots and heroes, is the suggestions they give, by their lives, of all that is best and loftiest to young minds. The example of a good and great man is like a light-house: it not only warns, but directs; not only indicates the point of danger, but guides safely into port. No sermon can be so eloquent as a noble and heroic life; for it teaches us how poor and common-place would be our own lives, if never elevated by worthy deeds, and never illuminated by generous thoughts. Nothing that is good or bad is without its influence. Of deeds or words whatever is good or whatever is bad produces corresponding influences. They are like seed sown in fertile soil, the thistle chokes the clover, and the soil is* worse than barren. Whether good or bad they are contagious and wide- spreading. They make others good or bad, and these, others ; as a stone, thrown into a pond, makes circles that make wider ones, till the last reaches the shore, so the electric spark of character shoots all along the chain, from link to link. The causes which operate upon us in determining our aims in life are many; sometimes it is an accident which touches the hidden spring and throws wide the gate through which the adventurer passes into the land of fortune; a sudden impulse may evoke the " natural instinct " and set the feet in the path they are best adapted to pursue. Hall, the arctic explorer, was inspired by the perusal of the narratives of earlier explorers. But most of us can not wait for such inspi- ration, nor do we need to. Our vocations in life are humbler and less exciting. It is well if our calling be honest, and in that calling we do our best ; if it be adapted to the measure of ADVANTAGES OF EARLY TRAINING. 103 our powers, and not in opposition to our natural bias, we shall have no occasion to repine. Whatever be the aim in life, let it be honest in itself, and honestly pursued. The Path of Life. It is not difficult to discover the "path of life " which can be followed with the greatest success. The '- natural instinct " reveals itself in many ways, and the taste of the boy foreshadows the occupation of the man. If the youth display a predilection or love for any particular calling, that feeling, if the occupation be honorable, should be fostered and encouraged by the parents. Ferguson's clock, carved out of wood and supplied with the rudest machinery; the boy Davy's laboratory in the garret ; Faraday's tiny electric machine, made with a common bottle ; Chantrey's carved image of his school- master's head; Watt's experiments with steam, with his mother's old iron tea-kettle, all were indications, clear and strong, of the future man. Not only was the natural bias to persevere present, but also the talent and will. What might have been the career, had the early training not been in sym- pathy with the " natural instinct," may never be known, but the wise parent, in each instance, began early to encourage the honorable calling which was destined to be that of the man. A man's career in life is more frequently fixed by the mother's influence and early training than by the father's, and it is to be observed that the < mother generally shows a much more subtle sympathy with the "natural instinct " of her children, more correctly estimates their capabilities and more fully understands their tastes than the father. It is the mother who heals all the little wounds and heart-aches, and hears the little tales they have to tell; to her they go with their sorrows, and are listened to with all the tender sympathy of woman's nature. It is the mother who is always ready for a frolic with the little ones as they are dis- 104 SIGNAL LIGHTS. robed at eventide, who trots them on her foot and sings the * ' O lullaby that shall put them to bed happy. It is she whose rule of love sends each child to its nightly repose with a smile on its lips as it utters its sweet "Now I lay me down to sleep. 1 ' It is due to her gentle treatment that they are more tract- able and useful in the morning, that they will have happier memories of their childhood when they have flown from the home nest and gone out into the unsympathizing world. Is it strange, then, that we enshrine in our hearts as a household saint the mother who gave us the good-night kiss, with smiles and benedictions every night of our early lives ? It was to the fostering care and wise guidance of his mother that Sheffer, the German artist, owed the develop- ment of his intellect. When he was pursuing his studies at Paris she wrote him: "Work diligently; above all, be modest, humble and courteous, and when you find your- self excelling others, then compare what you have done with nature itself, or with the ideal of your own mind, and you will be secured by the contrast, which will be apparent, against the effect of pride and presumption." Lord Lytton ascribed his literary success to the early impulse given to his talent by the cultivated taste of his accomplished mother. From his mother the poet Burns derived much of his fervor of imagination. Henry Clay, the brilliant wit and successful statesman, inherited his intellectual qualities from his mother. James A. Garfield was largely indebted to the energy and vigor of his mother; he also owed not a little to the early example of industry of his father. The Vanderbilts, the Adamses, the Camerons, the Randolphs, are all indications of the inheritance of ADVANTAGES OF EARLY TRAINING. 105 ability and character from the father's side; but as the mother is nearer to the child than the father, as her love is deeper and more unselfish, so is her influence greater and more enduring. A PLEA FOR THE HIGHER EDUCATION OF MOTHERS. BY F. S. BURTON, B. S., LL. B. IJODERN civilization plumes itself upon its supposed advance over all other civilizations in the depth and extent of its culture; but it is not impossible that it overrates itself. This is emphatically the age of the practical. The end of all education, it teaches, is to assist in " making a living " for the learner. The intellect must be trained to work directly for the sustentation of the body. The test of a course or curriculum of study usually is this : Will it aid one who pursues and completes it in his struggle for bread and butter ; or, if more ambitious, in accumulating wealth ? Hence, this is the age of industrial schools, and business colleges, of classes in cookery, and schools of journalism, all of which institutions are well; but most of which fail because they are founded on a mistaken idea of the end to be attained, and are 106 F. S. BURTON, B. S., LL. B. A PLEA FOR THE HIGHER EDUCATION OF MOTHERS. 107 hence inadequate to accomplish even the partial results their founders have in view at their inception. For those whose parents are the possessors of wealth, as the tendency runs, thorough intellectual culture, or even the semi-culture afforded by these industrial schools, or the better class thereof, is regarded as less necessary (in fact, quite un- necessary, perhaps, were it not esteemed almost as difficult a problem to keep inherited wealth as to accumulate property in the first instance), and accomplishment takes the place of education, polish is sought rather than culture. The daughters of the wealthier classes, particularly, do not appear to require the fortification against want which, in this narrow interpretation of the age, education should give. Their " expectations " from parental estates, or promising alliances, appear to remove them far beyond any necessity of taking upon themselves these plebeian cares. I speak now of classes, not of those glorious exceptions (for such there are) to the sordid rule. And with the sons of the rich, why should deep culture be an object of anxiety when a certain business shrewdness or sharpness of intellect only is the end aimed at. How narrow, how trivial, how poor, how pitiful this view of life is, a single moment's thought should be sufficient to show the intelligent and candid person. If human existence has a meaning, if life is aught but a transitory vapor, if creation itself is not a poor farce too sad with disappointed hopes, stifled aspirations, eternally baffled upward-strugglings, and tears and groans of its noblest creatures to excite one wretched smile then, to constitute the true education, some- thing more is needed than merely the strengthening or supplying of those powers which will enable the learner to grasp and hold a little more or less of the dross of the earth men call wealth. If there be worth in moral character, if the human soul be a sacred thing, if there be a life beyond this life, if there be a 108 SIGNAL LIGHTS. heaven and a God, and a relationship existing which in any way gives mortal beings an interest in things high and holy, then the nineteenth-century idea of education, in its narrower interpretation, is founded on the saddest of mistakes ! It is an outgrowth of the notion that the principal, if not the sole object, of culture is to win wealth, fame, distinction, and, so far as it relates to women, it is coupled with another notion somewhat older perhaps .{and one which this age appears more willing to abandon), but equally erroneous, and as sad- dening in its effects, viz: that the married woman has little or no real existence separate and apart from that of her husband, and, as a matter of course, shares in the glory of his achieve- ments. This it is which has made it seem unimportant to the world whether her mental powers were disciplined or other- wise; and hence has it been that, with woman in particular, accomplishment has taken the place of deep culture, the ornamental has been aimed at rather than the useful in education. Every earnest lover of his kind must deplore this tendency of the age, which, it would be unfair to deny, it has inherited from former ages. Not necessary that the minds of the mothers of the human race be cultivated! Whose, then? Why the lines: "The hand that rocks the cradle Is the hand that moves the world!" in a pleasant, simple statement convey a weighty truth. But a weightier lies behind: The fate through the eternal years of progress of every human being, more than upon any other merely human circumstance, depends upon what lessons have been taught him at his mother's knee, what influences have been breathed into his soul by the being who bore, who first loved, and who nurtured him during his earliest and most susceptible years! A PLEA FOR THE HIGHER EDUCATION OF MOTHERS. Think of this, mothers, as you gaze into the sweet angel- faces of the helpless darlings lying in your arms, and tremble at your responsibility, while you pray for grace and strength to enable you to perform aright your mission with the heaven- sent little stranger. I repeat, if there were no such thing as futurity, no such possibility as a posterity to suffer for our sins of commission, or omission, no hope of a future upward progress, or danger of deeper degradation for the race, no possibility of human achievement higher than that of accumulating sordid riches for purposes merely temporary and at best so poor, my posi- tion would lose much of its significance, and I had remained silent. It is, at length, an acknowledged fact of physiology, that the child of an intelligent and refined woman will frequently inherit its mother's intelligence and refinement, notwithstand- ing the coarseness, even vulgarity, of its father; and one acute observer and able writer has declared that most men of tran- scendent abilities nearly resemble their maternal parent in their mental and spiritual constitutions. On the other hand, the sons and daughters of a coarse, uncultured mother are almost certain to exhibit corresponding intellectual traits, even when descended from cultivated and refined people by the father. Hence it is almost axiomatic that woman, in relation to the weal or woe of posterity, through her peculiar functions as mother and nurse, exercises tenfold the power that is exercised by man; and according as she employs that power beneficently or otherwise, is she a good angel, smiling down upon all succeeding ages, or a malignant spirit, the curse of whose existence will be felt to the remotest generation. 110 SIGNAL LIGHTS. "A pebble in the streamlet scant Hath turned the course of many a river; A dew-drop on the tender plant Hath warped the giant oak forever! " 111 the light of these truths, how important must it appear that the course of mental and spiritual training marked out for woman should be carefully framed with wise reference to the development of every noble faculty of her mind and heart, of every power of the sweet mother-soul, until that crowning earthly glory, perfect womanhood, stands confessed ! Motherhood, properly understood and appreciated, is a great privilege; but the condition which accompanies this privilege, as it does every other we receive in this earthly existence, is its exercise under a responsibility correspondingly great. It appears unnecessary to adduce further matter to enforce the chief doctrine sought to be taught in this brief (and hence somewhat incomplete and inadequate) article, viz: the neces- sity of a higher and a deeper education for mothers ; but we desire to point a moral in a matter intimately connected with and a natural outgrowth of this, and then we close. The matter referred to is the early training of children. The first principle, then, being that sought to be established above, viz: Mothers should be properly educated, mentally and spiritually. The second should be: So far as practicable, they should (and will) themselves care for and conduct the early educa- tion of their offspring. Third, in choosing nurses and governesses when, as in many cases, the assistance of these is necessary, all the vigilance and care of the educated mother's mind should be exercised that A PLEA FOR THE HIGHER EDUCATION OF MOTHERS. \\\ +. a mete companion and trainer of the susceptible infant be found. "Just as the twig is bent the tree is inclined," is only another manner of stating an important truth enforced in a former quotation. THE LIBRARY IN THE HOME; OR, HOW TO SELECT AND USE BOOKS. CHARLES N. SIMS, D. D. HERE are two rooms in the house devoted to guests the parlor and the library. The former is located, built and furnished for the entertainment of our visiting friends. Happy are they who are permitted to receive here many true friends and congenial acquaintances. Most of the days our parlors are silent and empty. Social position, leisure and proximity determine largely who enter them, and many whose presence we would greatly enjoy can never come. Into the library we welcome the world's best thinkers and singers and teachers. From near and far they gather. Out of every country, and from every age they come. The young and the old; the weaver of fancies, the gleaner of facts, the builder of philosophies; the historian and poet; the statesman and the traveler; the man of science and the teacher of religion. Out of classic lands, from the bustle and hurry of commercial cities, from brilliant courts and lowly hermitages, they assemble to grace and bless our homes. And each 112 CHAS. N. SIMS, D. D., LL. D. THE LIBRARY IN THE HOME. noble spirit brings its best gift to enrich the host who enter- tains it. These guests of the library have left their bodies behind them, and are here only by a spiritual, intellectual, immortal presence. In each book on our shelves is some soul's best thought, some life's best fruitage. In single expressions are sometimes garnered months of labor. In single statements, truths only found after years of search and investigation. You may be sure that whatever was best of the writer, is here, winnowed, and refined, and polished. Milton thus speaks: "Books are not absolutely dead things, but do con- tain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul whose progeny they are: nay, they do preserve, as in a vial, the purest efficacy and extraction of that intellect that bred them. A good book is the precious life blood of a master spirit embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life. When a man writes to the world, he summons up all his reason and deliberation to assist him. He searches, medi- tates, is industrious, and likely consults and confers with his judicious friends." Collyer says: "Books are a guide in youth and an entertainment for age. They support us under solitude and keep us from becoming a burden to ourselves. They compose our cares and our passions, and lay our dis- appointments . asleep When we are weary of the living, we repair to the dead who have nothing of peevishness, pride or design in their conversation." And these books represent the guests of the library. We may assemble. here as many as we please of the world's worthies. They are quiet, inoffensive and considerate friends. Indeed, they become our most obedient servants. They speak or are silent according to our wishes. They permit us to choose the topics of conversation, and then give us their best thoughts and the results of their most laborious researches. SIGNAL LIGHTS. Think of the celebrities you may invite and gather here. Macaulay and Froude, Prescott and Bancroft, Motley and Hallam, with their stories of former times and peoples ; Shake- speare and Milton, Pope and Dryden, Moore and Byron, Wordsworth and Cowper, Browning and Hood, Longfellow and Tennyson, will pour forth melody in many keys and measures, and will always respond to your call in whatever strain you choose. If your humor is for curious stories, Scott and Cowper, Dickens and Thackeray, Reade and Hawthorne, will feast your spirit with the rarest fancies, and enrich your imagination with the most wonderful pictures. And with changing moods, Irving will charm you with his sketches and stories, or Carlyle and Emerson challenge your closest thought. There is no topic or question, no mood or fancy, no field of investigation, where some guest of the library will not lead and instruct you. Into this rare company we invite whom we please, and then converse with whom we will. Surely the library is a wonderful room, and its- proper management a matter of great moment. Many things determine its charac- ter and contents our tastes, the money at our disposal, our previous education, our leisure time, and the age and disposi- tions of the persons who are to use it. One must choose his books as he does his friends, because he is in sympathy with them, their subjects, and the methods of their treatment. It is as easy to quarrel with books as with living people, and as easy to find in them loving companionship and genuine friends. A library can not be made to order all at once, no matter how much money we can afford to spend upon it. It must grow and take shape with the experience of its owner. One must become acquainted with books as with persons. A col- lection of strange volumes is as unsocial as a crowd of people whom we have never before met. Some suggestions for creating a library may not be out of THE LIBRARY IN THE HOME. 115 place here. The beginning should always be the Bible, a dic- tionary and an encyclopaedia. These place at our command the most important of all truths, information upon the multi- tude of subjects that in various ways are brought to our atten- tion, with a key to the meaning of all the words of our mother tongue. Next comes an authoritative statement of the Chris- es tian doctrines we profess to believe, and a clear and standard defense of them. Then the history of our own people and country, affording that knowledge which is the foundation of patriotism, and indispensable to the duties of citizenship. Add to these a good newspaper giving current events, and a good magazine containing the current thought of the times, and you have the framework of a library. The family of limited means, if it can afford these and nothing more, has information enough at hand to make its members well-informed citizens in any community. When we have knowledge of God, religion, our country, the great events of the world's history, and its current deeds and thoughts, we are certainly far from being ignorant. Having these as essentials, personal tastes may be consulted and gratified in the enlargement of the library. Illustrated books are to be preferred where illustration is practicable. Good pictures are rapid and accurate teachers. Architecture, dress, natural history, natural scenery, historic events, specta- cular occasions, social conditions, and a thousand things beside, may be written in pictures, and be read with equal ease and comprehension in all languages and by all classes of people, young and old, learned and ignorant. It is also a pleasant kind of reading, with which the dullest mind may be inter- ested and instructed. The well illustrated book is twice written once in the text, and again in its pictures, and often the pleasant contemplation of the latter leads to the careful 116 SIGNAL LIGHTS. study of the former. Furthermore, many things may be told by the illustration for which the types can find no expression. Story books, whether adapted to childhood or riper years, if well chosen, are always pleasant and valuable additions to the library, often possessing a greater value than most people imagine. Burns was awakened and inspired for his wonderful songs and poems by the stories of an aged " granny " who knew all the tales of mystery and witchcraft of the whole j j country. Walter Scott's literary career had its direction determined by reading Percy's Reliques of Ancient Poetry. A well told tale is life in the concrete, yet lifted above the accidents which so often interrupt the moral tenor of events, and disappoint honest and deserving effort; it shows what should be the results of a given course of life, and what is the natural outworking of given motives and passions. Robinson Crusoe^ the tales of Hans Andersen, and similar books, will make the library a joy to childhood. The old, half fairy story of Undine will do any one good. Nor are works of romance to be wholly excluded. The writings of few novelists, indeed, deserve a place in any library, and by far the larger part of all that have been written are not only useless, but positively and seriously pernicious. But there are honorable and valu- able exceptions. The semi-historical romances of Walter Scott, the Indian tales of Fenimore Cooper, the fascinating character stories of Dickens, the dainty and unique fancies of Hawthorne, are always healthful and profitable when properly read. This class of reading is, however, only the seasoning of literature, and must never be taken for its more substantial repast. Such works of fiction divert and refresh the mind, stimulate the fancy, enlarge the sympathies, and improve the taste. The works of the great poets should be found in all libraries where means can be afforded to purchase them. Some people, THE LIBRAR Y IN THE HOME 117 who think themselves practical, regard poetry as a sort of unsubstantial literature, which recites no history and records no facts. It appears to them only a high form of amusement, lying quite outside the common utilities of life. There could scarcely be a geater mistake than this. The world's highest wisdom, its profoundest truths, its best philosophy, its purest conceptions of God and goodness, appear in poetic literature. When St. Paul preached to the Greek philosophers on Mars Hill, he quoted from their own poets while he argued for one God and the spirituality of His worship. From Shakespeare's plays might be gathered an encyclopaedia of the struggles, hopes, fears, and movements of human nature in all its posi- tions, and under all conceivable influences. But Shakespeare cannot be enjoyed until we have learned to read him by the expenditure of much time and study. Other poetry, though far inferior in power, will be much more generally read and enjoyed. The grand old English poets are, I fear, too much overlooked and neglected; but Wordsworth and Cowper, Scott and Moore, Burns and Keats are always good and profitable when we take time to read them. Our nineteenth century has mven us many of the best and noblest poets the world has known men and women whose lives have been true to the great sentiments they have embalmed in verse. Where was ever a gentler or loftier soul than Elizabeth Barrett Browning? Her protests against slavery, her Cry of the Children, her patriotic songs for Italy are but her own deep feelings formulated in verse. Gentle, suffering, sympathetic Tom Hood, whose quaint utterances lie close along both sides the line which divides laughter and tears, is always a blessing whether he leads us to The Haunted House, the Bridge of Sighs, or the home of the Kilmanseggs. We have many American poets worthy of places in every 118 SIGNAL LIGHTS. American home. Bryant interpreting Nature in her loftiest thoughts and feelings; Longfellow speaking for the holiest affections; Whittier sounding the bugle charge against every wrong, or waking the memory of happy olden days with their attendant, familiar faces; Holmes bubbling over with humor and laughter; Willis painting pictures that are alive and speak to us. All these and many more become our best friends and teachers let us give them a place in the library if we can. The modern historian will well repay us for the space we accord him in our library and the expense of bringing him there. The art of writing history seems really never to have been discovered before the present century. The stately array of dignitaries, the transactions of courts and parliaments, the march of armies and the shock of battles, the recital of con- quests and changes of dynasties once made the web and woof of what was called history. The people, with their pleasures or sufferings, seemed altogether too insignificant to be accorded a place in the record. But this conception of history no longer prevails. The successful historian of the present writes the story of the people, and these pompous persons and events are only mentioned as they stand related to the multitudes of obscure and unnamed citizens. Macaulay, Froude, Motley, Prescott, Greene and Justin McCarthy give to their histories the action, passion and thrilling interest of romance. They tell of the rise of opinions, customs, and amusements, of guilds, trades, and industries, of the changes in dress, furni- ture, repasts and entertainments ; they describe inventions and the useful arts; they mark the ferment of the people, the popular discord, clamor and enthusiasm out of which reforms and revolutions grow, delineating all so vividly and truth- fully that the past lives again in our presence, and we become the cotemporaries of all generations, and the eye-witnesses of THE LIBRARY IN THE HOME. all important events. A few good histories bring all the world, with living reality, under your roof. I do not care to speak of biographies. But few have ever been written with enough knowledge of the whole life and fidelity to exact truth to give us any reliable and adequate idea of the person of whom they pretend to tell us. Usually, only so much of the personality is described as the world saw. The best letters are printed, the most heroic deeds described, and what is weak, unamiable or blameworthy is left untold. A picture of the subject is painted without the shadows, and it lies so flat on the canvas that no one mistakes it for a gen- uine likeness. In the broad field of essays, science, philosophy and other forms of miscellaneous literature, the individual tastes and preferences must be left to follow their own inclinations. After all, the enlarged library grows often like the one who builds it, and fits him like a suit of clothes made to order. How shall a stranger who has not taken his measure presume to cut his garments? Wherever the expense can be afforded, a microscope of good working power should be provided. The best and ful- lest book next to the Bible, within our reach, is the great volume God has written and which we have named Nature. Its pages lie open before us continually. Grasses, leaves, flowers, insects, seeds, crystals ten thousand beautiful won- ders all invite our observation, and are ready to fill us with delight. The microscope will show them to us when we can see them in no other way. If a few simple pieces of physical apparatus be added, a horse-shoe magnet, a cheap electrical machine, a prism, and such other things as reveal the secrets of the material world, we shall have in the library enough to make it the most instructive and attractive of places. Let me call attention now to the manner of using the 120 SIGNAL LIGHTS. library, which is quite as important a matter as the nature of its contents. Too often it is only an orderly room, with the books and papers all in their places behind glass doors care- fully locked, and the key mislaid. Such a library is like an Egyptian tomb, with its mummies standing in silent rows around its silent walls. A drearier place would be hard to find. Only a little better than this, is the library into which we enter, when a passing fancy leads us there, to take up a book by chance and glance at it, till another fancy takes us somewhere else. Our reading must not be left to whimsical impulse, and the half-mechanical glancing over pages, while the vagrant mind is playing hide-and-seek with floating day-dreams. Some regular time, more or less faithfully observed, should be found each day for earnest, careful reading. It will be often interrupted, but if persistently adhered to, daily duties will come to understand and respect the requirement, and will adjust themselves so as not often to disturb it. All clamorous calls and duties soon fall into order and time for systematic people. If the spirit within is orderly, all things about us will come to obey its regulations. With this custom steadily maintained, any one may become well and widely informed. Without it, no one can possibly do so. It is quite as necessary that the character of our reading should be determined by an intelligent purpose, as that the hours given to it should be regular and constant. He who follows inclination merely will develop the taste unduly in one direction, to the total neglect of other needs of the mind. How easy it is to become a confirmed novel reader, and to lose all relish for more nourishing literature; to read the magazines and daily papers, and scarce ever complete a bound volume; to so fix the habit of reading short articles as to be strangers to all that have attained considerable length. The TffE LIBRAR Y IN THE HOME. 121 choice, variety and succession of reading should be the result of thought and plan. What is begun should be completed, and what is selected should be in view of adequate and per- manent intellectual results. Concentration of attention and thought is indispensable to profitable reading. The habit of perusing books with half attention is easily formed, but is only eradicated with great difficulty. While the printed page is before us, and our eyes are passing along the lines, too often the mind is occupied with indistinct visions of other and disconnected things, a procession of memories, plans, hopes and fancies, is passing through it, preventing a clear and permanent impression of what is read. Little improvement and much evil are the result. Time is wasted and mental indolence indulged under the pretence of doing something. We have no clear view of the opinions, no exact memory of the facts given in the book we think we have read. Pouring water into a sieve, is a fair illustration of what we have done by pouring truths and argu- ments into our inattentive and unretentive minds. We may thus become omnivorous readers, and yet make no progress in the accumulation of knowledge. Wherever this evil habit is formed, it should be corrected at any inconvenience it may cost. If we cannot, on pausing, recall distinctly what we have just read, we should immediately re-read it with greater attention. On laying down a book a little time should be given for a mental review, and we should thus assure ourselves that we know what we have been over. In this way we may acquire an accuracy of information which will be of the great- est value to us. The increase of our knowledge does not depend so greatly on how much, as how carefully, we have read. The mental faculties should always be critically alert while reading. An active memory and fixed attention may impress what the author says, but if critical judgment has not been 122 SIGNAL LIGHTS. exercised, if we have simply received with unquestioning absorption, we have not yet learned the art of profitable read- ing. There is great wisdom in the old proverb, " Beware of the man of one book," for while " one book " does not contain all knowledge, if it be thoroughly studied, its statements examined and criticized, and the thoughts it suggests followed by independent thinking, it will yield more profit than twenty books of equal value, read in a casual and careless manner. Whatever is worth perusal at all, is worth the honest and patient labor necessary to its clear understanding. The possible value of a well selected, well used library, even if it be small, is only appreciated by a few people. Let its first books be standard, and contain the fundamentals of gen- eral knowledge. As it grows beyond this, let it minister to refined taste, elevated thought, valuable information, and a chastened imagination. Then let it be properly used. Enter it as if coming into the presence of the wisest and best men of all ages, in the moments of their supreme greatness and thoughtfulness. Let the family often spend evenings together here. Let some one read aloud and the others listen, criticise and discuss what is brought before them. In this way the whole world and all the ages may be brought together into quiet, unpretentious homes, and the library be the centre of happiness, wisdom and refinement. ^yyi/ ', WILLIAM A. OBENCHAIN, A. M. CHARACTER BUILDING; MENTAL AND MORAL. BY WM. A. OBENCHAIN. " The great hope of society is individual character." Channing. HE world acknowledges two lords: character and genius, or, to give the word a broader meaning, character and intellect. Character may be and should be a common possession; genius is occasional and rare. Character must be acquired; genius is innate. Character is a plain, everyday fact; genius a mystery, like the wind, whose sound we hear, but can not tell whence- it cometh, and whither it goeth. Character is the founda- tion of the social structure ; genius is non-essential and dependent. To obscure character, when its excellencies are pointed out, we give a tardy and discriminating admi- ration; genuis we worship. Splendidly self-assertive, it tri- umphs over our ignorance, stupidity and base envy, and compels our homage. The development of character is too seldom insisted upon; the development of intellect is made the end of existence. Never was life so full of opportunities for self-culture as it is to-day. Such a thing as undeveloped talent cannot be in this age when science, art and literature, in myriad forms,. 123 SIGNAL LIGHTS. are sounding a reveille to every dormant faculty of the soul. Yet it has remained for this busy and cultured generation to ask the question, "Is life worth living?" and to answer it with a scornful negative. Weariness of soul, weariness of flesh, suicide, madness, these are too often the bitter endings of lives that apparently were rilled with all good. Life is not the glorious thing it should be. There is disappointment where there should be content; failure instead of success; anxiety instead of peace ; despair instead of faith. Why is it ? Alas ! we have forgotten, if indeed we ever knew, that the divine secret of peace is in being, not in doing \ The parable of the talents is the scriptural lesson most heeded by this rest- less age, while the command " Be ye perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect " is set aside as impracticable. I have gathered here a few thoughts from the wisdom of the ages. I have looked into my own life and into the lives or others, and I declare to you, speaking with no human authority, that perfection of character is the true end of life, and the only attainment that can satisfy the soul. Some one has remarked, that we are not able to say what a thing is so forcibly as by saying what it is not. So, in defining the word character, I say first of all that character is not nature; and a confusion of the two terms will lead to mis- chievous error. Thus, " Character," says Voltaire, " is what nature has engraven in, us; can we then efface it ?" " Should anyone tell you that a mountain had changed its place, you are at liberty to doubt it," says Mahomet; "but if anyone tells you that a man has changed his character, do not believe it." These expressions indicate the most dangerous form of that Eastern fatalism which, in a drapery of theological phrase, is a cherished part of many religious creeds, and, in the shape of ready aphorism, is found on the lips of every nation. CHARACTER BUILDING. 125 " Che sara sara" (Whatever will be, will be), is the Italian version. " What fates impose, that men must needs abide, 1 * says Shakespeare. " What must be, shall be," says Seneca. And Marcus Antoninus declares with all the lofty calm of a philosopher: "Whatever may happen to thee, it was prepared for thee from all eternity; and the implication of causes was from eternity spinning the thread of thy being and of that which is incident to it." I know not how others may be affected by such utterances, but to me they are like chains hung about my very soul. It is not my purpose to enter into a discussion of predestina- tion or of free-will. I can not measure exactly the extent to which hereditary influences determine a person's character, nor the scope of that " divinity that shapes our ends." I have only a few earnest words, to counteract, if possible, the para- lyzing effect of such devil's maxims as I have quoted above. It is of small consequence that a man believes in fatalism in material matters, but in the moral world and in the manage- ment of his own nature it is essential that he realize his power and freedom. "A strict belief in fate is the worst of slavery." "All things are in fate, yet all things are not decreed by fate." One's nature is indeed inborn. By the operations of heredi- ty, or fate, if you like, the infant just breathing its first breath or uttering its first cry, has a certain nature; but what its character is to be depends upon a thousand things parental training, finite circumstances, and, above all, its own will. For character is the product which man's infinite will, gov- erned by some circumstances, and triumphing over others, evolves from his crude nature. Fate gives him a nature, but free-will creates his character, and a will that labors coward perfection can not but be both free and infinite, since it is 126 SIGNAL LIGHTS. one with God's will. What wonderful changes might be wrought in the moral and social world, if parents, teachers, and all other guides of youth would daily set before young minds the omnipotence of a right will ! It is a gospel of per- fect and delightful freedom, and a never-failing inspiration. " In the moral world there is nothing impossible," writes Von Humboldt, " if we can bring a thorough will to it. Man can do everything with himself, but he must not attempt to do too much with others." " When I was a child," said a gentleman not long since, " a phrenologist examined my head, and, among other things, told me that I was inclined to be careless and disorderly in small matters, such as the locking of doors, the putting of things into their proper places, and so on; also, that I was deficient in memory. His words made a deep impression on me, and I began at once to correct these faults. I even pun- ished myself for breaches of order or lapses of memory, and by such careful self-training I have changed my very nature" Mark these words. The will working on one's nature evolves character, and in the evolution the nature itself is changed. Each man, therefore, bears in himself the means of redemption from his own evil nature, and can " work out his own salvation," not " with fear and trembling," but gladly and fearlessly, knowing that it is God that worketh in him, " both to will and to do of his own good pleasure." If, then, a . " perfectly educated will " has such absolute power over man's inner life, how far can the same will govern his outer life? Or, to put the question in another form, how far can a man of character control circumstances? That " man is the creature of circumstance " is a main article in the world's indolent, self-indulgent creed; and we must allow that this is a sort of half-truth which is harder to confute than a whole falsehood. There are indeed rare crises CHARACTER BUILDING. 127 in every man's life, when circumstances rear an insuperable barrier to present success. Still, it remains true, that " he who is firm in will moulds the world to himself," and what seems to us disastrous failure is really a step toward success. The fable of Antaeus receiving new strength every time he touched the earth is a type of character struggling with cir- cumstances. To make adverse circumstances an excuse for failure is to proclaim one's own weakness. It was Emerson who lamented that his son would miss the discipline of pov- erty that had been his in early life. We are men and women, not mollusks. We need no shel- tered cove, with soft-lapping tides to bring our nourishment to us, but a stormy ocean, battling with whose waves and tem- pests we may strengthen the sinews of mind and soul. Blessed is he who sees in every difficulty, not an obstacle placed in his way by a frowning fate, but a stepping-stone on which he may vanquish sloth, and rise to higher things. Do you desire perfection of character and success in life? Then fling aside all enervating beliefs in the immutability of nature and the inexorableness of circumstance, and give the Godhead in you a chance to assert itself. Napoleon believed in a star that ruled his destinies. What was it but "the star of the unconquered will?" No planet that ever beamed can influence your destiny. " Man is his own star." There is no decree of God that you shall be or shall not be a power in this world. " By our own spirits are we deified." Instead of a cold, passionless deity watching unmoved the actions he has decreed from all eternity, we have in the heavens a Father who looks with intensest interest on his struggling children, helping them by all benign influ- ences, yearning for their final triumph, and rejoicing in that growing perfection of character which is the outcome of every real victory. 128 SIGNAL LIGHTS. If character does not seem to you the most desirable of all possessions, consider that without it the most brilliant intel- lectual gifts are of small avail. The soul of the Scotch poet was a winged creature that might have dwelt among the stars; yet he died, slain by the poison of his own vices, and with the glorious promise of his genius unfulfilled. Chatterton was a genius, yet a few fragments of verse and a literary imposture are all that remain of " The marvellous boy, The sleepless soul that perished in his pride." Say, rather, " perished in his weakness," unable to withstand a little poverty, a little delay of the good fortune that came, too late. And Byron and Poe their works, however brilliant, are but glimmerings of the glory that might have been, had they been strong in character as in intellect. Precious as are the works of genius, we could better spare a thousand matchless poems than the humble labors of one woman like Dora Patti- son. Take from the world all that character has wrought, and what would be left but dust and ashes? It is possible to conceive of a world without genius, a world whose only songs were those of birds and happy chil- dren; whose only poems were the lovely lives of its men and women; whose only eloquence flowed in the familiar talk of every day life; whose dramas were enacted on street and at fireside by human beings who walked reverently as in the sight of " God and good angels." Such a world would be not far from heaven; but a world without character, though every brain in it were that of a genius, would be hell. When genius and character are combined, we have the highest type of manhood or womanhood. Read the pathetic story of Charles and Mary Lamb, and observe how strong, CHARACTER BUILDING. 129 resolute character sustained genius and made the most of life in the midst of troubles terrible enough to make failure excusable, if it ever is. Yet in this record of self-denial, patience, industry, cheerfulness, we see only the beautiful realization of Ruskin's ideal of those " who have determined that they will do something useful; that whatever may be prepared for them hereafter or happen to them here, they will at least deserve the food that God gives them by winning it honorably; and that however fallen from the purity or far from the peace of Eden, they 'will carry out the duty of human dominion, though they have lost its felicity, and dress and keep the wilderness, though they no more can dress or keep the garden." Note well those italicized words, for they describe the supreme discipline of character. Duty performed even under circumstances which render its performance a pleasure, will result in dignity and excellence of character; but duty carried out when felicity is hopelessly lost, must lift man to the very bosom of God, and make him the envy of angels. I have said that the divine secret of peace is in being, not in doing; but this does not preclude the highest ambition. I would not, if I could, dim the splendor of that dream of future greatness which lights the step of every youth and maiden noble-born. Have confidence in your powers. Pursue your art, whatever it may be, with all the strength of your nature. Not for its own sake, however. We degrade art when we make it an end instead of a means. " Art for art's sake " is another devil's maxim. Aim at perfection in art as a means for obtaining perfection of character, and that perfected char- acter will inform your art with higher and holier beauty than you could win for it, though you had the skill of men and angels. Desire success. Strive for it. But neither rejoice in success nor grieve over failure, until you have held counsel SIGNAL LIGHTS. with your own soul and seen the effect of either on your character. That is not success which brings self-sufficiency, base pride, and contempt of those less gifted. That is not failure which makes you more humble, more aspiring, more dependent on God and more sympathetic towards your fellow- men. Character is genius in embryo. Carlyle expressed in words the lofty sentiments which his unlearned father uttered in deeds. One preached a gospel of self-denial and sincerity ; the other lived it. Which demands our admiration, the sage of Chelsea, writing stern philosophy by the bookful, and acting alternately the spoiled child and the madman, or the grand old peasant, the "real man of God's own making," who "feared God and worked diligently on God's own earth with content- ment, hope and unwearied resolution?" Did I say "genius in embryo?" Character is genius itself flowing through the channels of ordinary life. Genius influ- ences only through the medium of words. Character com- mands and awes by its mere presence, and is eloquent in silence. The power of all great military commanders lies in character. We call it personal magnetism, whereas it is only the spell that character weaves around all who come near it. This was the " magic " that lay in Gordon's " wand of vic- tory;" and in lesser degrees and in humbler ways it is a " magic " that hundreds may claim who have neither talent nor genius, as these terms are commonly understood. " Every man has in himself a continent of undiscovered character. Happy is he who acts the Columbus to his own soul." Begin at once to search for the sleeping powers that may lie within you. You may not be able to celebrate in glowing language some heroic deed, but you may come to be the doer CHARACTER BUILDING. 131 -of the deed. You may not be a poet, but you can be the embodiment of that " sweetness and light " which is the poet's inspiration. To Milton in his blindness, lamenting his inability to work, there came this divine message: " God doth not need either mail's ijoork or his otun gifts." Of intellectual greatness the world has enough, and to spare. But he does need the per- fection of your character, for through this he is working out the redemption of the world. Dr. Arnold, writing in his journal the night before his death, said: " There are works which, by God's permission, I would do before the night cometh; but, above all, my oivn personal work, to keep myself pure and zealous and believing." " I shall be satisfied when I awake in thy likeness," said the Psalmist. What a commentary on kingly glory, strength of intellect and unbounded wealth. If these in their perfection could not satisfy the soul of King David, could the small measure of one or all that you, by much striving, might attain, satisfy your soul? Do not believe it. But if with a steadfast will you aim at perfection of charac- ter, then weariness, unrest and disappointment pass away, and failure vanishes forever, and your life becomes a thing of ines- timable worth. The strength of living is always greater than the strength of thinking. You will be " strong to live," and " the vision splendid " that came to you in youth will never " fade into the light of common day," but brighten into a glory that nothing can eclipse, save a dawn celestial. Were you a sculptor, you would not brook a blemish in the statue that grew beneath your touch; were you a poet, you would not send your verse into immortality with any defect of rhythm or rhyme; and should you be less careful of your " uncarved soul " and the measure of your daily life ? Statue 132 SIGNAL LIGHTS. may crumble to dust, and poem be forgotten, but character is immortal, and, of our earthly works, " only what we have wrought into our character during life can we take away with us." Begin the work at once, and take for guide these golden rules : " Look out and not in, Look forward, not backward, Lend a hand." REV L. R. FISKE, D. D., LL. D. MUSIC IN THE HOME. BY REV. L. R. FISKE, D. D., LL. D. 7T USIC has always had a place the church, and very gen- erally in the social circle; it has been made welcome in political gatherings, and has successfully put forth its claims .for rightful recognition in the public schools. The home is the primary church, the most impor- tant school, and it is both the social and political unit of the race. A home without music is only in part a home. " God setteth the solitary in families." In order that the race might exist "l\y//lr''' and work out a pure and sublime destiny, marriage was ordained, and family life and relations were instituted. As is the family such the world will be. The great universal family draws its inspiration from the individual families which compose it. The perfection of home is not wrought out by the rigor of law, nor, indeed, by the correctness of the precepts inculcated, 133 134 SIGNAL LIGHTS. but by the spirit that pervades the life. Running through this spirit must there be honesty, truthfulness, and the authori- tative voice of a quickened conscience, but these are only the framework within which humanity abides; they are the law of the soul but not the living, breathing nature in which alone the heart dwells. While the eye is the special avenue to the intellect, the principal part of our knowledge of the external world and that which is most valuable being gained through natural vision, the ear is to a very large extent the avenue to the heart. The sensation of hearing is usually more decided than the sensation of sight, and the emotions sustain an intimate relation with the impressions made upon the ear. The elo- quence of the orator, the voice of love, the cry of anguish, the wail of despair, the song that breathes of tenderness, of sorrow or of joy stir the heart as no scenic representation can do. And the power of music is even greater than that of elo- quence; it plays on all the strings of the heart with a quick- ness, a range and certainty of touch found in no other form of ommunication between soul and soul. While it is the office of the parent to instruct the child, to awaken the household to an interest in the wide field of learn- ing, to give constant attention to the intellectual culture of the young God has placed under his supervision, that which most distinguishes home life is, and certainly was intended to be, the delicate and enduring fibers of affection which make of the family a unit that nothing can dissolve. If unselfishness is promoted, if the sympathy of one for another becomes an all- pervading reality, if truest love breathes forth from every heart, the .special purpose of the family is realized. The home-culture, therefore, ought, in an eminent degree, to be a heart culture. As a means to this end music has a most important office to perform. MUSIC IN THE HOME. Music, the right kind of music, is refining. True refine- ment does not consist of outward ceremonials, set convention- alities, but of purity and delicacy of soul. It is not the observance of rules of etiquette, it is an inner life which abhors that which is coarse, which gives play to the, finest sensibili- ties, which delights in the pure and perfect. Acquired refine- ment* is a spiritual inhalation, and has its abode in the heart. The melody of music softens the feelings, dispels discord from the soul, and when accompanied by moral and lofty sentiment its influence for good is of inexpressible value. The home ought to be the happiest place on earth. It is in the nature of music to be enjoyable; enjoyability is a funda- mental element of music; take this away and it would cease to be music. In an eminent degree is music sociable. It provides pure companionship; by means of it soul comes in contact with soul, and genuine communion is secured. Those households in which music has a distinct place possess one source of happiness others do not enjoy. It is a question of special practical interest how to influence children to choose the home in preference to associations which are foreign to the companionship of the family. I do not speak of positive regulations which hold by the force of law, keeping at home because the child does not dare to be away, but keeping at home because he prefers it to any other place. That this choice shall be made there must be more in the home spirit and employments to attract than any social loadstone at any other point. Only in part does family gov- ernment consist of formal teachings the existence of a healthy preceptorial atmosphere but the supplying of a pure, sweet, drawing home-life, which teaches not by words but by the infusion of a holy, cheerful spirit that wins by attraction instead of restraining by power. In such a home music natu- rally belongs; and, on the other hand, music, if wisely em- 136 SIGNAL LIGHTS. ployed, will help engender such an atmosphere in any home. In the representations of heaven the joy of that delightful land finds expression in music; but there is no music in the world of lost spirits. The heart sings when it is happy. In planning for the best and most attractive home-life the thoughtful parent will not forget to bring in the harmony which music awakens in the soul. " That which I have found the best recreation both to my mind and body, whensoever either of them stands in need of it, is music, which exercises at once both body and soul; especially when I play myself; for then, methinks, the same motion that my hand makes upon the instrument, the instru- ment makes upon my heart. It calls in my spirits, composes my thoughts, delights my ear, recreates my mind, and so not only fits me for after business, but fills my heart at the present with pure and useful thoughts ; so that when music sounds the sweetliest in my ears, truth commonly flows the clearest into my mind. And hence it is that I find my soul is become more harmonious by being accustomed so much to harmony, and so averse to all manners of discord that the least jarring sounds, either in notes or words, seem very harsh and unpleasant to me." (Bishop Beveridge.) The power which music possesses, however, makes it some- times an agency of great evil. This is a liability that attaches to all forms of power except the energy inhering in moral per- fection. Music, because of its attractiveness, is capable of floating almost any sentiment into favor. There is nothing else so terribly pernicious as a vicious song. Eloquence, with all its inspiration, employed in a bad cause, is far less effective. Make all the songs of a nation vile and the government would plunge into ruin, civilization would recede, crime would tri- umph on every hand, and moral putrefaction would take the place of virtue in all our households. Music in the home! but MUSIC IN THE HOAfE. 137 it should be pure. It may and should be angel-wings; it can, but it ought not to be, a syren-voice alluring to death. The opportunities for musical culture have come to be abundant, and so easily secured that a knowledge of music can be gained by all. Conservatories are found in every state, the public schools are beginning to supply instruction in this branch of study, and instruments of music are within the reach of almost every one. The piano has long main- tained its place in the parlor. The organ has been regarded as a valuable aid in the rendering of sacred music. The violin has been redeemed from associations which have been considered objectionable, and now fittingly mingles it charm- ing strains with voices that are lifted in praise to the Father and His Christ. And more than ever the study of vocal music is being appreciated, and the young are taught to give ex- pression to the emotions of the soul in the melody of song. Music in every home music of the voice, music on some instrument, music that breathes pure and lofty sentiment, music that charms the ear and engages the heart, and there- fore music which finds its way into the life of the children of our homes for their purification and guidance. This ought to be universal, this will be universal, when we all come to employ the wisest methods for making the family what the Divine Intelligence intended it to be. CULTIVATE A DESIRE TO PLEASE. BY MAR V ASHLE Y TO WNSEND. N the ossified map of man's abil- ities, which phren- ologists have made of the human skull, F-" h to one bump is given spe- cial prominence. Like Jove among the Olym- pian gods of old, it holds the loftiest place. Differ as they may on the other points, Gall and Spurzheim, Combe and their successive brothers in the science of mind, all agree in locating benevolence on the very pinnacle of the cranium. They not only assign to it the highest position in localizing psychic func- tions, but they freely acknowledge its dominating influence as a moral faculty, and formulate what they call "character," according as this bump is a protuberance or a depression amongst its fellow cranial embossments. From it flow, as trickling waters from hill-top springs, all those approximating faculties which fertilize the heart and quicken it to the growth MARY ASHLEY TOWNSEND. CULTIVATE A DESIRE TO PLEASE. 139 of human nature's noblest products. It is the parent of self- abnegation, of honest forgiveness, of warm sympathy with our fellow-creatures, of love, of tenderness, of patience, of constant consideration for others, of that lofty generosity which is great alike in giving and withholding. The culmination of all these qualities is a desire to please, which, in a cultivated man or woman, is admitted to be a crowning grace. Although at first glance the subject may strike the careless mind as one of those "trifles light as air," scarce worthy of a moment's serious contemplation, a little reflection will convince the most indifferent that the art of pleasing is a momentous power, exerting an incalculable influence upon all matters appertaining to the affairs of men and nations. Its significance may be noted in a thousand forms, in a thousand places, by any observing individual, in a single day. The home, the street, the mart, the most ordinary and familiar scenes con- nected with daily life, afford ample opportunity for the study of this puissant agent, and are gladdening or dispiriting in pro- portion as its spirit governs those who people such walks. It is not a new thing. It is old as the ages, and its power both for evil and for good has notched itself all along the centuries. Beneath its assumed beauty, the serpent concealed his hideous- ness when he whispered into the listening ear of the first mother. Jacob gave tacit acknowledgment of its supremacy in the twice seven years he served for Rachel. Shefca under- stood its importance when she arrayed herself to appear before Solomon, and it inspired David when, harp in hand, he played before Saul. If its sway cannot be strictly limited to good, it is only because wrong recognizes its merit as a mask, and uses it in the same way that hypocrisy uses religion, and vice uses virtue. But its healthful influence so far outweighs its possibili- ties for ill, that the latter need not be taken into consideration, The mere forms and observances of etiquette, valuable as 140 SIGNAL LIGHTS. they are in their way, do not in themselves constitute those ennobling qualities which spring from an innocent desire to please. Manner is the currency of good society, yet too much manner is a dangerous thing, and betrays a lack of the very capacities it aims to express. We may conform coldly to all social usages, omitting no ceremony and scrupulously observ- ing all customs, yet possess neither a winning address nor the first quality which goes to make up that vivifying and benefi- cent influence, which emanates from sincere warmth of heart. We are taught by one whose knowledge of human nature was as profound as it was unerring, that " one may smile and smile and be a villain," and the same master shows us that "to crook the pregnant hinges of the knee, where thrift may follow fawning," is a manner apart from the nature of genuine cour- tesy. Richelieu points out the doubt that is born of empty etiquette, when he says of the departing courtier, " He bows too low." [See initial letter.] Franklin bids us to look beneath the cloak of sycophancy for the axe to grind, and by more than one high authority we are warned to beware of him who professes too much. Thus the dangerous surf of shallow ceremony threatens all who move upon the social seas. The earnest cultivation of a pure and lofty desire to please is the Massoola Boat which shall bear them safely across the treacherous breakers. In these days when our flowing rivers are strangled with the dust of fallen forests, as countless mills convert them into the multifarious forms demanded by the wants of mankind; when our skies are blackened with the smoke of thousands of fac- tories and furnaces ; when the railways of traffic spread every- where under our feet, and the railways of thought stretch everywhere over our heads; when the mountains and seas bow down before the genius of man; when electricity shines out upon the earth like a new born planet, and the steam- CULTIVATE A DESIRE TO PLEASE. 141 engine is heard upon all sides champing its bit like an impa- tient war-horse eager to be guided to new battles and fresh victories; when discovery treads upon the heels of discovery, and breathless invention feels that it must rush " into this breathing world but half made up," lest another just behind should overtake and snatch away its treasure; when all is hurry and worry, and excitement, and time seems lessened as work seems increased, the amenities of life stand with fright- ened faces, uncertain which way to turn. They realize the fact that they are in the way, and in imminent danger of being trodden under foot and out of sight. They lift appealing faces to the hurrying crowd, they put up piteous and implor- ing hands, they plead in moving accents to be spared! Alas! too often are their beseeching lips unheard, and, like flowers in the path of a surging throng, they are ruthlessly trampled down or thrust aside, or put away till to-morrow, with that ever increasing watchword of the age, no time. They have a hard fight for a poor existence. Shall the day come when they will exist no longer? when their presence shall be as the presence of strangers in places where they should be as the sacred lares and penates? Daily we behold them thrust fur- ther and further from the public walks of life, put away from the lips, from the heart, from the lives of men, and relegated to few and especial places. If we throttle the amenities, need we have no fear that the Eumenides will take their places? Can the day of such things ever come ? Can it be said there is not any danger that it will come? The whole tendency of the times is toward obliteration of those associations which unfold in the character those gracious and graceful qualities which constitute a desire to please. We daily behold the young inattentive to the old, the old inconsiderate of chil- dren, and the children themselves infected with the spirit of the day, and ready to say, as a little lad said, when told to 142 SIGNAL LIGHTS. take off his hat to a lady, " Oh, I'll just smile at her this time, and take off my hat another clay; my hands now are so full." Even so with us children of a larger growth; our "hands are so full,"- so full of the arts, and sciences, and the literatures, and business, and baubles of the day that there is no 'room for the flower of courtesy; its sweet and delicate aroma is allowed to lose itself among the rank and pungent odors of the leeks and onions of daily existence, a whole bunch of which is not worth one of its dainty petals. In our large cities, club life is gaining harmful ascendancy over men, and crowding down much of the refinement of their natures. The club, together with the restaurant and its ready- made meals, militates against the love of home, of domestic happiness, and a taste for the society of pure and cultivated women. Too many men, both married and single, prefer to lounge in rooms paid for out of a member-purse, rather than fit up a home for which the individual pocket is adequate. This leaning toward exclusively male assemblies, in preference to the refinement of ladies' society or the pleasures of a home of one's own, has a baneful influence. In the one, perhaps economy would have to be studied; in the other, a man may not smoke, nor loll, nor gamble. In the club, economy and its pressures are not felt, and the code is one easily conformed to. At his restaurant he can eat when, where and how he chooses, with no restraints beyond an observance of the most common decencies of life. He may, moreover, call in his boon companions and give his " orders " like a lord, and throw away, on a single repast, more than would serve as home-market money for a month. The married club-man usually finds retrenchment very necessary at home. The wife hears per- petually of hard times, that he may have easy times himself. She must be economical in order that he may be extravagant. CULTIVATE A DESIRE TO PLEASE. 143 She hears of expenses and retrenchments, and necessity of still greater economy in the home, until she feels life too costly to live, yet dreads to die and so incur the expenses of a funeral! The selfish life of the man binds him to the unselfish life of the woman, her patient, motherly toil is all unnoticed by him, and both are sacrificed to a false mode of living in which the wine and cigar bill plays no small part, and with which a true spirit of amenity has very little to do. The constantly added business avenues that open and allure men's energies, is another cause of lessening courtesy. Strength of brain and heart and muscle are absorbed to such an extent that, often, a man is actually too tired to be polite! Life and health are given up to the acquirement of that dross which can purchase neither the one nor the other. When such values are tossed ruthlessly away, there can be no hope that things deemed of lesser worth shall not follow. It is an age of money, and men are willing to find their fame in their for- tunes. 'Tis true that money goes where manner will not take one; but on the other hand manner admits one free where money could not force an entrance. Still, manner must go to the wall in the estimation of him who devotes his life, his for- tune and his sacred honor to the accumulation of property, and who only finds at the grave a point where he can cease to work. Now, whilst there is always a necessity for work, work is not always a necessity, and business is often a cry of " wolf, 1 ' where there is no wolf. Give a man work to do which is remunerative, or which appeals to his intellect or intelligence, and it becomes a passion. Toil has its enticements and fasci- nations and dissipations, like idleness ; it becomes the absorbent of pleasure, time, life, and the repellant of joy, sunshine, happi- ness. Friends speak commiseratingly of a man's incessant labors, of his being chained to the wheel of business, when, in .reality, he is hugging those very chains, finding enjoyment m 144 SIGNAL LIGHTS. their weight, adding new links to them now and then, as he finds opportunity, and giving himself up utterly to their burden, to the exclusion of sweeter and tenderer claims upon his existence. Meanwhile the crust of selfishness grows thicker and thicker about his heart, and renders it impervious to softening and ennobling influences. "No time" he cries, when a child's face is lifted for a kiss "No time " when the exigencies of a friend demand sympathy and attention. Verily, when the world's work becomes so tyrannical, so exacting, that it leaves man no time for the exercise of the art of pleasing, no time for the exercise of those little courtesies which, in the aggregate, make the sum total of human happi- ness, then is the world a monster! Its voracious maw threatens to devour love peace, serenity, the home, the church, eveg Christianity itself. Lured on step by step by those fasci- nations which work, that appeals to the intelligence, weaves about all earnest workers, a man hurls himself into the vortex, leaving friends and children upon the brink to welcome him when he shall emerge. But he never emerges ! He has gone down to a power that sits with him at his meals, follows him in his walks, is with him in his up-risings and his down-sittings, goes with him to his couch and makes his rest restless and his pillow thorny. One by one the graces of speech and the beauties of manner fall from him like petals from a frozen flower, leaving but a leafless stalk possessed not of beauty, nor fragrance, nor attractiveness. He has allowed his work to come between him and all ties dearest to his manhood. Its murky shadow has enveloped all. Under its influence he has steeped himself in a self-indulgence nearly as fatal to happiness as vice itself. His child is almost a stranger to the father, the father almost a stranger to the child. The inner nature of both is as unstudied by one another as the cuneiform charac- ters on the bricks of ancient Babylon, the man finds himself CULTIVATE A DESIRE TO PLEASE. 145 isolated in the very midst of his own domain. His wife fears him, and his children hold themselves aloof from him. What wonder? His long unpracticed home courtesies partake of the nature of cruelties, so distorted is the manner of their doing The desire to please is as a lamp left long unlighted and neglected in his heart. When his awkward hand would rekindle it, it cannot. His spasmodic efforts to do so are painfully futile, and those about him remember the light only by the darkness its extinguishment has made. Too late he realizes that his whole life is soured for himself and those he cares most for, because of the sweetness he thought too inconsiderable to attach to it. Why is it that when we encounter in a man refinement, politeness and a graceful desire to please and propitiate those about him, we point him out as " a gentleman of the old school"? Why should high breeding and the admirable qualities that belong to it be assigned only to the old school? They are as appropriate to-day as they were a century ago. Customs may change and advance with the progressive spirit of the age, but the essentials of manner do not change any more than the nature of steam changes, whether applied to the first little Hudson River steamboat of 1807, or to the ocean monarch of 1888. Possibly one cause of an indifference to the courtesies of life is ignorance or forgetfulness of the influ- ence which individuals exert upon one another. Each man is prone to regard himself as a unit independent of the whole, and neither acting on nor being acted upon by it. But men cannot regard themselves as gravestones, each standing alone and communicating nothing to the rest, each being in himself a mere record of dates and numerous virtues. A man can have no pleasure and no pain which does not in some degree, more or less remote, affect another human being. The way in which he leaves his family in the morning gives color to the 146 SIGNAL LIGHTS. household all the day ; the greeting he gives a friend he meets is a cloud or a sunbeam to be communicated to the rest, and the rest, and the rest, just as motion is communicated to the standing train of cars. There is no act which does not, like water added to the sea, circle into ever widening circles until it touches at last upon distant and unknown shores. A joyous word, a bitter jest, a reckless deed, an unkind glance, each may seem but a trifling thing; yet, like the pressure upon a single electric button, it sets in motion a world of unseen wheels for good or ill, unknown to him who touched the subtle spring. For woman, to whom the delicate graces of courtesy seem naturally to pertain, the day and the hour have their special dangers. Her sphere of life is constantly broadening; assum- ing new duties, filling new vocations, she is thrown into rela- tions and associations with the world which, in her hitherto sheltered life, were wholly " undreamt of in her philosophy." A new code of ethics meets her on the new plane of her exis- tence, often startling her with its painful surprises. She must take care that the niceness of taste, and delicacy of perception which are naturally hers be not impaired, and that contact with rougher scenes do not injure the beauty of mannerliness which constitute' one of her greatest attractions. She must remember that the responsibility is not confined to herself. She has in her hands the moulding of children's minds, and from her they must receive such guidance as shall enable them to combine with dignity and discrimination the graceful art of pleasing. The development of those qualities which constitute a desire to please cannot but materially aid in shaping a kind character, and should be held as an essential part of all educa- tion. It was not overlooked in the instruction of Athenian youth and it should not be disregarded in teaching the young of the nineteenth century. A child should be taught to consider CULTIVATE A DESIRE TO PLEASE. 147 politeness as a sixth sense to be as easily and naturally and unconsciously used as his eyes and his ears. Courtesy should be as much insisted upon as cleanliness. When this is done children will not be so much given over to the charge of nurses, and so constantly excluded from the society where they by right belong. There is no reason why a well-bred, healthy child should be more irksome than the singing birds or house plants admitted to our parlors. They are observing and imi- tative and they should be permitted to move with those whose good manners and refined conversation they insensibly absorb, instead of being turned over to servants to listen to witches' tales and ignorant superstitions. To witness the treatment some children receive, one would suppose certain men and women regarded them only as the missing link. They belong in the presence of parents, and the friends of parents. A child derives more education from association than from books. He should be taught to observe closely and be allowed to speak whenever propriety warrants it. The day when little ones were reared in accordance with the adage which recommends that " children should be seen and not heard " has gone by. How many a poor, awkward creature, brought up on the plan of utter self-repression, endowed by nature with good qualities but denied by education their proper development, has found himself in society utterly incapacle of doing himself or his attainments justice and been forced to hide his light under a bushel, the miserable victim of that abominable old law! Agreeable manners should be made one of the habits of youth that they may be worn as habitual garments, not as new and unaccustomed raiment. As Christianity is pure in pro- portion to its simplicity, so is courtesy beautiful in proportion as it is natural. So soon as a child is capable himself of being pleased or being wounded, he can be taught to please and to avoid giving wounds. He can be taught to hold his good 148 SIGNAL LIGHTS. nature with the reins of good judgment, and to know that to yield and to exact both belong to the art of pleasing. He must learn that too much patience is equivalent to apathy, and too much kindness is equal to a wrong. Children are quick and keen observers and can readily learn that the sweet pleas- ure of pleasing is in itself ample compensation for its constant practice. It is a common thing to see little ones of the most tender years, taught with most scrupulous care to read, to know the catechism, to be perfectly decorous at church under services they do not enjoy, and under sermons they cannot possibly comprehend. Discipline ranks all considerations of their delights, and they are forced to study what they cannot understand, while left in grossest ignorance of the very ABC of address. The alphabet of manner-language is as untaught to them as Hindoostanee or Hebrew, and too often deemed as useless; yet knowledge of it is essential both to their happiness and prosperity. It is the tongue that shall speak for them when they themselves are silent; the evidence by which they shall be judged. In those flashes of human intercourse which admit of no opportunity and grant no time for close knowledge of mind and morals, it is betraying characteristics and associa- tions. It makes the attractions of childhood, the beauty of youth, and is one of the most winning attributes of old age. It is conceded that much is to be pardoned in the young and tolerated in the old; but surely age is no excuse for selfishness and impertinence, nor youth for incivility and boorishness. There would be less to condone in both if the cultivation of a desire to please were begun in their earliest years and permit- ted to grow with their growth. As we cannot expect fruit from a seed that has never been planted, we cannot expect from age the qualities which were not cultivated in youth. We all know the force of habit; how it grows upon us until we per- form, mechanically, arts which we acquired only by the exer- CULTIVATE A DESIRE TO PLEASE, 149 <:ise of the greatest pains and patience. Just as the fingers of the piano player progress from the tedious awkwardness of the genesis of his art to the easy velocity and brilliant execution which mark the finished performer, so the constant practice of pleasing finally becomes an integral part of one's nature, a habit which sits upon one as an endowment. Too often he who has the directing of young lives, puts off this material part of education, and "hugs the flattering unction to his soul " that it will all come of itself; that a pleas- ing and cultivated manner is the natural outcome of good morals and an amiable disposition ; that it will burst into efflo- rescence as a natural consequence of intercourse with the world ; that it is inborn like the senses, and will develope with the need for it ! As well might one expect to find Japanese lilies growing spontaneously on a granite hill in New Hampshire, as the graces of good manners leaping suddenly to adorn a character which has given no heed to their cultivation. It is not enough to possess the ability to do, if one has no knowl- edge of what to do. The untutored impulse is not to be relied upon, for it as often leads astray as aright. Manner is an acquirement, not a gift; and one's nature must be trained to a ready use of its own capacities even in small things, or blush with a sense of ignoble failure at every unexpected call upon its resources. There are those who, under a mistaken view of the art of pleasing, give themselves up to the most belittling vanities. Who cannot call to mind persons who make themselves look old in their perpetual efforts to appear young, and who fret good looks into absolute ugliness because they possess not absolute beauty ! It is piteous to think how much time is wasted in idle lamentation over beauty denied to a face, or straightness to a limb, or gracefulness to a form, when it lies in every one's power to create for himself a beauty excelling 150 all of these. The proper cultivation of a desire to please enlarges the heart and mind, and, like the lamp behind the ala- baster vase, reveals a loveliness which was all unguessed before. This is lovelier and more lasting than mere perfection of fea- ture and complexion. It is this which makes beauty beautiful and lends an irresistable charm to the plainest face. Our bodies are made for us; our manners we make for our- selves. As one forgets his own defects, they cease to impress others, and as one considers the happiness of those about him, his own increases accordingly. Madam de Stael was ac- counted the plainest woman in the court of Napoleon ; but to such an extent had she cultivated a desire to please that a noted writer said of her that she could talk herself beautiful in five minutes. Manner is a magician and works marvels. Its home is in the soul. The face and form are its assistants to be made beautiful by the constant expression of beauty. To make ourselves agreeable surely is a duty we owe not only to ourselves but to all with whom we are thrown in contact. Every one acknowledges neat and careful dressing to be a necessity; why, then, is not a gentle and pleasing demeanor so likewise? All must agree that when we go into society we naturally seek out the most genial and pleasant persons. We avoid the " yes, yes " and the u no, no " people who always coincide with us; we fly the selfish, the cross, the sar- castic, and we shun, as we would a pestilence, the man whose boast is that he always u speaks his mind." That type long since made itself synonymous with overweening vanity, narrow-mindedness and impertinence. We slip from the mordacious and the slanderous, and those whose wordy professions are " but as sounding brass and tinkling cymbals," and we turn to those who know how to distinguish between discretion and deceit, frankness and rudeness, who would CULTIVATE A DESIRE TO PLEASE. 151 blush to bear false witness against a neighbor, and who are able to unite the graces of true courtesy with those of dignity and self-reliance. It can not be denied that the power of pleasing is a potent factor in the whole social and moral structure. It is the ani- mating principle of all happiness, call it by whatever name we will. It is the underlying stimulus to all noble effort. It is the base of eloquence, the soul of oratory. Demosthenes on the ocean shore, shouting to the waves, was aiming to please as well as to sway the hearers he was conquering him- self to fluently address. It is the light of friendship, the life of love, the very essence of all practical Christianity. What was chivalry but a lofty form of courtesy, embracing honor, courage, self-denial, a desire to please! Such courtesy should hold high rank among human attainments. In its practice lies as broad and as sweet a humanity as in charity itself and in truth; one virtue involves the other, for, in that " charity which suffereth long and is kind, which vaunteth not itself, which is not puffed up," lies the loftiest imaginable courtesy. The physician and surgeon know the value of having culti- vated a desire to please, and recognize its power as a co-adjutor in the healing art. They know that a cheerful air and an agreeable and re-assuring manner carry with them an influence even more efficacious than drugs and probes. A noble desire to please is the lover's strongest ally. Domestic serenity is dependent upon it. Governments, in their inter- course with nations, look to it for potential aid and chose their plenipotentiaries with a special eye to their qualification in the art of pleasing The optimism which outlives the destruction of dearest hopes, the crash of ruined schemes, the dissolution of those brilliant financial projects which faded into nothingness at the 152 SIGNAL LIGHTS. supreme moment when they seemed resolving themselves into splendid realities, owes its survivance not alone to individual fortitude, courage and recuperative force, but, next to faith in God, to the kindly assurances, the timely sympathies and extended hands of those in whose hearts the desire to please has taken root and grown into that Christian virtue set before us in the Golden Rule. This power to please might justly be written as the synonym for success, since it is the open sesame to so many of life's successes. It is the king behind the throne, of church, of state, of society, casting its weight into the scales of religious, political and commercial events. It is one of the fundamental elements of Christianity, as shown in the lofty precepts of the Ten Commandments, and those sublime say- ings of Christ which lie pressed, like sacred flowers from con- secrated rites, between the pages of the New Testament. Let us not have too much demonstrativeness, but let us cherish courtesy as a cardinal virtue, and unite, with a desire to please, that dignity and common sense which will not cringe to kings, nor wound the feelings of a pauper. Let the light of amenity shine before men, not as a holiday candle to be borne aloft in ostentatious pageants, but revealed in look and word and deed, the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace. MRS. M. L. RAVNE. HOW TO MAKE FRIENDS, AND HOW TO KEEP THEM. MRS. M. L. RAYNE. LEASANT words, bows and smiles are the " small change " of the world of fashion, and make up the sum of social reci- procity. Without these, the L gay assembly would be as dis- mal as the funeral march. ^ They are not confined to one set or division of society, but are universal wherever a company has gathered, and the pleasant greeting is responded to by the cordial welcome. These small, sweet courtesies bind a nation together as firmly as the edicts of legislation. They are the unwritten laws, which command alike the king and the subject. It is related of a certain philosopher, that he desired to carry the beautiful courtesy of ball-rooms and assemblies into the practical atmosphere of every-day life. Accordingly, he greeted all whom he met with a genial smile of recognition, in order to put his theory to a test. The result was most disas- trous He soon found himself involved in a series of difficul- ties. His intentions had been good and his theory admirable, but he was in advance of his time. The people upon whom 153 154 SIGNAL LIGHTS. he smiled were accustomed to blank stares, or grim looks from strangers. They regarded his smiles as insults to their intelli- gence, and questioned the sanity of the venturesome philoso- pher. They were like the Englishman who was such a stickler for conventionality that he preferred to drown, rather than be rescued by a man to whom he had not been formally introduced. The sun shines upon the earth, and the earth responds with an outburst of bud and bloom. All nature is reciprocal. Something bright or beautiful is continually offered to us, and, if our eyes are not holden that we can not see, we reach out eager hands to draw the treasure to us, and in return we give smiles thanks our heart's best hospitality. Sometimes we do not see the angel holding the crown: it is when we are groping for worthless jewels in the mire of selfishness and worldliness, and the reciprocal chord in our natures is silent to the sweep of angel fingers. But it never fails, if we seek Heavenly recognition. How many rare and jeweled oppor- tunities we lose by our own churlishness, it would indeed be impossible to estimate. Congenial souls pass each other by, and no gleam of social reciprocity escapes from their zealously guarded windows to awaken recognition. They look into each other's faces with unseeing eyes or stern repelling glances, and each passes by on the other side. The unwritten law has decreed that they can not recognize each other without the formality it has designed for their protection. And the social law is right. But it shows our intelligence at fault, our reason less protective than instinct, and the whole code of social education weak where it should be strong. " What is he worth?" we ask of a new acquaintance. Not, what is he worth in character, in intellect, in moral equipoise, in all the integral forces that go to make up a perfect manhood ; but what is he worth financially? How much money has he ? HOW TO MAKE FRIEXDS AND HO IV TO KEEP THEM. 155 Is he the owner of a fine house, a handsome equipage, a lux- urious table? If he has all these, we want to know him. He may possess all these, and yet be poor indeed; but here the law of social reciprocity gives to him, in exchange for his vulgar wealth, the infinite riches of learning and genius. He invites learning to sit at his feast. Goodness and worth enjoy social distinction at his bidding, and endow him with a sem- blance of their own virtues. Beauty presides at his banquets. Every guest brings some grace of character or accomplish- ment in return for a lavish hospitality. It may be only a smile, but it is worn like a flower in the button-hole of occa- sion, and gracefully fulfils its mission. The waves of social reciprocity mean something more than the ebbing and flowing of the flood-tide of society. The flotsam and jetsam are rich with the affluent overflow of its deeps. Each one bears some treasure away a pearl in the oyster-shell of treasure-trove a word a look as souvenir of the occasion. "Why should we invite that dowdy Miss Blank?'' enquires some leader of the social world. " She is in our set, of course, but she dresses like a fright, and has no style. I cannot im- agine what people see in her that is attractive!" Miss Blank is duly invited, however, and, unconscious of any social criticism, takes much pleasure in accepting, and as all social events are surprise parties in some sense, takes her con- tribution to the feast with her. It is her voice. It charms and soothes, it flatters and bewilders, it makes friends for her wherever she goes. It is low and sweet, an excellent thing in woman. Some one asks her to sing. A few stop to listen, but the majority, with the license of society, babble on with their small talk. Then it ceases, and there is rapt attention. It is only an old song, that every one has heard, but it brings back to hearts that are arid the sound of the rain on the roof, 156 SIGNAL LIGHTS. the memory of a mother's good-night kiss, the prayer that was lisped at her knee. Then it rises, clear, jubilant, and the sweet, regretful pain is gone, the tension broken, and the spell removed. Song and singer are of the earth again, but they have given to each a foretaste of heaven. And they never think of Miss Blank again as a dowdy, or without style. This is what she gave her hosts in return for their entertainment. It is related of Adelaide Phillips, a singer eminent in her profession, that she was once invited to a musical com- posed of amateurs, who sung, for her delectation, their most ambitious airs. When it came to Miss Phillips' turn to sing, she seated herself at the piano, and sung " Kathleen Mavour- neen " with such thrilling sweetness that the young Irish girl, who was setting the supper table in the next room, forgot all her plates and spoons, and, thowing herself into a chair, sobbed as if her heart would break a reciprocal emotion that the accomplished singer declared was the greatest compliment ever paid her. Longfellow, in speaking of his friend Prescott, the historian, said: " There is Prescott, always pleasant and merry." And again, " My last remembrance of him is a sunny smile." Could there be a more beautiful souvenir of an absent friend than the memory of a "sunny smile?" And the smile that challenges reciprocity comes from the heart, or it would chill with its unresponsive glow, like the snow on the crests of the frozen glaciers. There is no courtesy so perfect as the native tact of a good heart. In the warmth of sunshine that comes from such a source, the sternest nature dissolves and becomes congenial. We might all wish to deserve the eulogy contained in these four lines: "It was only a glad 'good morning/ As she passed along her way, But it left the morning's glory Over the livelong day." HOIV TO MAKE FRIENDS AND HO IV TO KEEP THEM. 157 The "morning's glory" is nature's highest perfection expressed in a simple greeting. A prosperous business man, who had catered to the public for many years, and was prominent in his profession, was asked what incident had made the most lasting impression upon him. As he had feasted civic dignitaries and titled opulence, it was supposed he would recur to these. But he answered that giving a breakfast to a poor working girl, who had lost her purse, was the only thing of importance he could recall. " I can never forget the look of sweet humility with which she said ' I can not pay ; I can only thank you, and pray for you.' Her voice was like that of a little child saying its evening prayer, and I felt that it was she who was giving and I who was receiving." And this goes far to verify the poet's words . " A simple maiden in her flower Is worth a hundred coat-of-arms." How beautifully has Sydney Smith remarked that " Man- ners are the shadows of virtues." A portentous frown can raise a storm in the most serene social atmosphere. Its own reflection will cloud the fairest skies, and ruffle the most tran- quil waters. It is useless to apologize for a rude, surly, dis- agreeable nature, by assuming that it is the mask to a good heart. Any goodness that emanates from such an exterior is only a tardy apology dictated by selfishness. A good heart never prompts its possessor to incivility. True politeness is considerate and reciprocal. " A beautiful behavior," said Emerson, " is better than a beautiful form." There are people, meeting us constantly in society, who always see us in full dress and on guard. We are using our company voices, our company manners, taken off and put on with our company 158 SIGNAL LIGHTS. clothes. What a shock it would give them to see the fero- cious glance, the withering frown and the caustic sneer we keep for " our own " in the family circle. To hear the unmusical voice without its company inflection. Would we not be as tinkling cymbals and sounding brass ? But they are not shocked, for they had pierced our subtle armor of veneer- ing long ago. They had appraised us at our own value, and, so far as they are concerned, we could discard our whole piti- ful make-up, and at least be honest brass! Then we would receive sincerity for sincerity, instead of hypocrisy for our duplicity. What are we worth? What have we for the formation of character, for the ennobling of a*ll the- powers which constitute the higher life of man. " To have known her was a liberal education," was said of a grand woman. Can we convey our education, our accomplishments, our integrity to those with whom we come in contact diffusing an aroma of intellectual sweetness, as we do the perfume of roses of our garments? Then, indeed, have we not lived in vain. " Soul, be but inly bright, All outer things must smile, must catch The strong, transcendent light." REV. SYLVESTER F. SCOVEL. THE INFLUENCES OF NATURE. REV. SYLVESTER F. SCO V EL. AN may claim to be above nature but he cannot be independent of nature. Having within him a spark of divinity with a moral resemblance to his Maker and an invin- cible free-will, he be- longs in one sense to the supernatural; yet he is as clearly allied to nature as he is distinct from it. The chain of being, in which he is a " distinguished " link, is as vital from below as from above. The one column of existence nature the pedestal, man the shaft, and God the capital has much more than a mechanical connection. The life of nature is in man as surely as the life of God is. The body is bound to nature as both body and soul are bound to God. And as the soul is so interwoven with the body that even a perfect eternity is inconceivable without this reunion, nature must through the latter profoundly affect even the former and thus 159 1(30 SIGNAL LIGHTS. influence the whole being. We are not slaves to nature, as materialism would make us; but we lie so close to it, are so fed by it and fixed in it that we cannot but feel it. Our sen- sations are the background of our life, and can the picture be dissociated from that into which it is painted ? Because man's place in nature is so distinctly at the top, as fixed by science and religion both, he is not the less but the more affected by nature. To him nature can now come with all her finer sug- gestions as well as with her rougher ministries. He is not only to be fed but he can think and feel and will about nature, and every power of his varied being may be approached and enlisted. The more there is in man and the loftier the point occupied as to nature and the larger the trust for the manipu- lation of nature given him, the more points of contact there must be between the two and the greater the reciprocal influ- ence. God has most to do with nature and man has more to do with it the more he is like God in his position towards it. We can no more live without being influenced by nature than the root can sustain the tree without drawing upon the ele- ments of the soil surrounding it. Thus, as Whittier writes, nature " Holds in wood and field Her thousand sun-lit censers still, To spell of flower or shrub we yield Against or with our will." Nature invigorates life physical. Contact with the soil and sun are plain conditions of race-strength. No Hercules can kill Antaeus until he holds him away from the vivify- ing touch of Mother Earth. The modern city is in danger of becoming a Hercules. Strong bodies underlie all symmetrical development, and we are won by nature to bodily develop- ment in a thousand ways. For many, beside the wayward boy, she pries open the doors of close houses and provides THE INFL UENCES OF NA TURE. 161 such marvellous feasts for eye and ear and every sense that we must follow her into the fields. Thence we return with some information, but also with that which is yet more im- portant, the vitality which conditions our use of all the inform- ation we either have or can gain. How we walk, or ride, or long to possess this or to see that until (the better because unconsciously) nature has become one free gymnasium. This way we reach that wonderful culture of the senses shown in the distance-penetrating sight of the sailor, or the hearing of the Indian, or the touch of an artist. We can mark in great lines across our race-maps something of the details of nature's influence upon physical strength and its accompany- ing virtues. We know, in general, what to look for from the man of the north and the man of the south, from the denizen of the plain and the bolder mountaineer. The closer to na- ture we can live the more correctives shall we have for the attending evils and some of the dangers of a highly artificial civilization. Nothing is clearer than that the noblest culture of the world of to-day either springs from the soil or implies nearly constant contact with nature. The city must drink ever fresh streams from the country, or stagnate. The Eng- lish peerage lifts up " the axe upon the thick trees " an ancient test of strength, and all customs tend to bring all populations to nature, in the summer. Thus nature, skillful mother that she is, half unconsciously develops for us bodies which partake of her own energy and grace, and become the handsomest and best instruments of usefulness, as well as the most sensitive means of enjoyment. But no less distinct or important are her influences in educating our minds. Begin with the baby, wondering in its cradle-world. The very unsteadiness of that cradle (more, I fear, a convenience to nurses than a benefit to infancy) may well typify the uncertainties of the awakening mind- We 11 162 SIGNAL LIGHTS. know little enough of its emergence from dreamland, but it seems well ascertained that we come to ourselves by the aid of external objects, i. ., of nature. The first discriminations among the confused mass of things, the acquirement of the perception of externality, the naming of things and the remem- bering of the names with the classification of the things remem- bered all these are hints of nature's processes in evoking mind. Then the immediate value of things begins to attract us, while pain forbids us and with powerful aid from the now awakened tastes and preferences the education goes rapidly forward. Mind is now aroused to attack at every point that, storehouse for all our possible needs we call nature. An infinite variety of motives presses us from within but the exer- tion of mind is the uniform result. And how remarkably true has this been since men began to study nature sincerely, inductively ! When man endea- vors to learn what is, instead of to find what he thinks ought to be, he makes rapid progress because then he fits his processes into nature's grooves and finds her seams and seizes the pendent strings to each of which its own little world of facts lies attached within the shadows. Thus we are ever influ- enced mentally to push on. " En avant Messieurs!" cries our greatest teacher. (That noble French teacher was but an echo of nature.) Ever rewarding but ever displaying new vistas or alluring into new crevices by the light half-bursting out of them, ever difficult but not inaccessible, unrolling her scroll and interpreting it just rapidly enough to reward atten- tion and yet to stimulate curious inquiry, ever leading higher but ever pointing the kindled Alpine ardor to heights just beyond, there is no such stimulus to mind as that which nature furnishes. And how marvelous it is that there should be in matter what should thus so appeal to mind! A moment's thought THE INFLUENCES OF NA TURE. 163 .and the marvel carries us to that goal we must not now anti- cipate. There is mind in nature! These orderly arrange- ments that yield such infinite products when coy nature " drops an apple at Newton's feet as an invitation to follow her to the stars," are not born of matter alone. This steadi- ness of nature's laws, without which we could not even think correctly and with which we instinctively underbuild all our acting as well, mean the mysterious nearness of an informing soul a true over-soul. However men may account for it, it must remain incontestably true that because there is mind in nature it is most admirably prepared to lead out, and to lead on and up, the mind that is in man. What radiant triumph of our great century is so marked as man's conquest of na- ture's forces ! And yet it is only nature's influence, through her own highly organized and vital system, appealing to and evoking the capabilities of man. In our intellections and emotions these influences are con- fessed by all. The impressive phenomena of nature stir us so profoundly that some foolish men attempt to make them the sole origin even of our religious feelings. This mistake only marks their real power. Select for an instant the fact that this globe of ours hurtles along its orbit at the rate of .sixty -eight thousand miles an hour 7 "What matchless proof of mighty power ! A thousand miles a minute !" It stops your breathing to come anywhere near such a fact! It is like standing on the platform when the express thunders by ! Were there an obstacle met even so slight as to graze the keel of this great air-ship what a new sense of the motion we should* have! But the movement is neither felt nor seen, "So silently the vast machine obeys the law of heaven!" The wonder grows that we are going so and yet so safely and that it is the same from age to age. Why, the mental education of a single fact of such proportions is incalculable! All large thoughts 164 SIGNAL LIGHTS, can find a place in the mind which knows that. A man becomes a cosmopolite indeed, a true citizen of the cosmos, who feels himself traveling through it at such a rate. Necessarily, now, nature must furnish marked elements in literature and thus manifest its mental training power anew. Literature is but the form in which the last results of study gain final currency and credence. It is fact mixed with thought. It is man's life mingled with nature. Take any species of literature and extract the nature from it, if you can. Little danger of literature's becoming less while nature becomes more. Science will not harm poetry but strengthen its wings and put directing power in the " tail of its judg- ment " besides. Fiction, even, will be all the better the more natural it becomes, though there be many reasons for choosing amid the various realisms which it may portray. And the same thing will be true in general of the education before, and in, and after school. All education, general and special, will only be more useful and more productive of enlarged mental power the more we know of nature. Parents and children will be delighted fellow-students in the new marvels. Teacher and pupil will be fellow-investigators. Society will not drop nature with a single remark about the weather, as though our own bodily comfort were all nature had to take care of. Summer vacations will no longer be danced or slept away, but new acquaintance with ever fresh surfaces will recuperate mind and body alike. Hail the day when the mind-awaken- ing influences of nature shall be more thoroughly understood *and more eagerly welcomed and less hinderd by fashions and folly. But now as we enter another realm we encounter the phenomena of free-will, and the inquiry meets us : Can nature make character? Must not her suggestive influences fade away here and have as little to do with the real man as the THE INFLUENCES OF NA TURE. 165 mist-wreaths have to do with the mountains they so fantasti- cally bedeck ? We answer the first query with a round Yes ; but add, of course, that it must be indirectly. Though indi- rectly, however, not less powerfully, for thus it only comes under the law in harmony with which everything does its work on character. And just at this point the degree of nature's power to mold character we need caution. If we are clods, no matter how highly organized, nature can reach and mold us whether we will or not. Indeed, then, we have no will. But, being more than clods and more than nature, we expose to her influences a surface on which the finest, deepest, largest, aye, the most lasting impressions may be made; and yet a surface of such peculiar texture that nature cannot do all the work, nor bear all the responsibility. We can have no affinity with the Eastern mysticism that makes matter equal sin, nor with the " Wilde " doctrine that " Salva- tion is by Beauty." In nothing is nature more remarkable than in the absence of assumption either to be aught other than she is, or to do aught beyond her proper mission. Indeed nature ought not to be held responsible for man. Moore's description of the Vale of Cashmere -is said by good authority to be inadequate so exquisite is the scene. But the same authority adds : " Perhaps nowhere else can there be found so much sin and suffering concealed with so much natural loveli- ness. The Eden smiles of nature appear through tears and thorns and the shadow of death." (Orbison.) Did not Bishop Heber write " Though every prospect pleases, and only man is vile"? Though not everything, yet much. The extremes of nature make the Esquimaux narrow and the South Sea Islander indolent. But this only proves that the impulse to toil which her severity imparts is beneficent until men forget or fail to learn how to modify her rigors; while kindlier influ- ences open the way to leisure though men abuse it. 166 SIGNAL LIGHTS. There are easily definable directions in which nature en- courages the development of our noblest characteristics. This moral function makes the Universe a University for man's formation, and lies very close to its real reason for being. The energies of a plant end in a seed because the seed contains life in itself, and the energies of nature reach their very highest results in man's character because that is an immortal product. Can any man doubt that the promises of spring cultivate hppefulness and good cheer, or that these have much to do with life's success, or less plain is the peace and sobriety of feeling which come with the mature fruitage of autumn? " So in my heart, a sweet unwonted feeling Stirs, like the wind in ocean's hollow shell, Through all its secret chambers sadly stealing, Yet finds no words its mystic charms to tell." And, noting the birds flitting noiselessly from spray to spray,. the same writer adds: " Silent as a sweet wandering thought that only Shows it's bright wings and softly glides away." No wonder that Whitter, who has always lived so close to nature's heart, declares that " We lack but open eye and ear, To find the Orient's marvels here; The still, small voice in autumn's hush, Yon maple wood, the burning bush." He adds. " The summer and the winter here Midway a truce are holding, A soft consenting atmosphere Their tents of peace enfolding." How distinctly we find patience taught by nature's endur- ance of imprisoned forces in winter! The observer gathers THE INFLUENCES OF NATURE. 167 perseverance from the gnarled cedar on the cliff's side, or the tenacious grip of the last leaves. In animal life, of course, there are many direct lessons, but how strikingly confirmatory of our deepest outgoings of soul are the migrations of birds and 'the instinct of the carrier dove ! We find every moral impression deepened when we reflect upon that radical differ- ence between our own nature and that which surrounds us, which enabled Kant to stand unmoved despite the contrast between man's physical insignificance and the vastness of the stellar universe. If we have an " imperative " within, we have also a susceptibility- which allies the moral nature, with its great jewel, to all that is without, and makes soul-culture har- monious with that of body and mind. Many associations of nature suggest purity, and familiarity with it is the best aid in calming dangerous excitements. Here we may learn self- control by other society than that of men. So Bryant says : " But let me often to these solitudes Retire, and in Thy presence re-assure My feeble virtue. Here its enemies, The passions, at Thy plainer footsteps shrink And tremble and are still." Every soul feels the invitation to introspection and self-ac- quaintance (the condition of all character) which any resort to nature suggests. The influence of nature is always toward humility. So vast is it beyond us, so inscrutable beneath our feet, so intricately interwoven where we know it best, that even discoveries do not encourage vanity. Even when we contemplate soul as greater than material we are at once reminded that essentials are universal, and when we think of the greater Mind in nature we are only overawed the more. Dependence is inseparable from even ordinary knowledge of nature and it is like the ballast of a ship in its moral office. 168 SIGNAL LIGHTS. Industry is the incessant undertone of nature's busy hum. The world teems with industrious life. Major and minor forms of life are always visible, seizing opportunities and working out at once their mission and their salvation. He must fail in sensitiveness who does not feel that a lazy man is a contradiction to the law of things. And even in that prince of virtues, self-imparting, there is the amplest foundation. Is there anything which exists for itself? Does even the " strug- gle for existence " really contradict the assertion that anything is made for everything? He who seeks to turn everything toward himself is out of harmony with either the mineral, the vegetable or the animal kingdom and belongs nowhere. He who receives all and gives nothing is " creation's blot, cre- ation's blank." Even the germs of a brotherhood as com- prehensive as the race may be discerned. The nobler types of life which surround us should make us ashamed, also, of a careless and thoughtless life. Even the midget has its pur- pose. The bee will not go to " London or Rome." First lessons in natural philosophy have a good philosophy of life in them. And when we look at the grandeur and sweep of nature, how can one be content to live a life of frippery and folly! Amid such stupendous marvels, a greater, because more unaccountable marvel is the human butterfly. We must be sobered by witnessing the onward sweep of the things which surround us. Men furnish the only loafers in the uni- verse. How deep the purpose of a good life which may be learned from nature. " Be it ours to meditate In these calm shades Thy milder majesty, And to the beautiful order of Thy works Conform the order of our lives." BRYANT. THE INFLUENCES OF NATURE. 169 We may even go beyond the individual life and find traces of these powerful moral influence^ in the popular character- istics of nations and in society's most permanent formations. Scarcely any one can have missed the frequent assertions with regard to the mountains and the sea in their influence on liberty. If " ye crags and peaks " was uttered by a myth, it was a Swiss myth and means freedom. The whole world, taken together, has furnished a grand theatre for a great race. Nature is meant to be the nurse of great men. Upon a single condition this effect is really produced. The moral teachings of nature cannot sustain us against corruption from within, but they can go with us (the inner man being steadied by the one correct standard) with most helpful force in all moral development. When we have found God, through nature, we receive the proper correctives and sustaining motives. With Him retained in our knowledge, we are pre- vented from debasing nature itself. Without Him, we are speedily given over first to the misunderstanding of nature's witness to Him, and then to the neglect of its ennobling influences upon ourselves. We are prepared, therefore, to ask the question, with some sense of v/hat depends upon the answer: Can nature influ- ence us in our religious being? If we must turn away from nature to reach God it will go ill with us after having been so profoundly influenced by nature's subtle forces in all that precedes. And yet we have seen that we must reach God or abuse nature. Profoundly thankful may we be that our life is not thus torn apart. Torn apart it certainly would be if God and nature were separated. We should be deprived of nature's aid just at the point of our highest need. Religion enfolds our highest possibilities and makes corresponding de- mands. Here, then, we shall need more of nature, and make more demands upon her as more are made upon us. And 170 SIGNAL LIGHTS. can we think for a moment that a Divine Intelligence would create a world with such a fatal schism in it as would obtain were the man dissociated, when he would know God, from all by which he had hitherto been surrounded and molded? All the presumptions of sound thought and common sense are in favor of expecting to find nature's influences strongly and definitely religious. No doubt this has been denied. Nature has been too often studied in a dark closet and by artificial light. This method of exclusion has resulted in the non-religious or even anti- religious view. Pride of intellect has aided to make the new sense of power tne mother of self-sufficiency. Increased facts for investigation have been suffered to lead onward and away from the great question of origins. Minute knowledge com- ing close to life has been mistaken for knowledge of the mys- tery of life itself. Great generalizations have seemed large enough, almost for worship. New discoveries, when it had been thought the ultima thule had been reached (as in the lengthening of the spectrum), have made man's lease of power over nature seem too absolute to admit of a higher Absolute. But, notwithstanding all this, the true view is so trans- parently reasonable and so satisfactory to mind and soul alike that the greater learning leads men back to God. Men are adoring Him more, now, as revealed in nature, than ever before. They reverence the " Creator of the ends of the earth " more profoundly because they know, at least a little more amply, what " creation " means. The " Great Com- panion " is not dead. Nature was never before so broad a mirror for God and never so brilliantly polished. The visible is becoming daily the ornamental peristyle of the invisible. The voice of God walks again in the garden. This becomes clearer when we set the religious view of nature over against the three defective views which are com- THE INFLUENCES OF NATURE. monly held. The mere scientist stops with nature's materials. Those who handle nature as only so much organized matter to be torn to pieces by analysis, and scrutinized with lenses, and revealed in large and little to the eye of wonder or of use, never receive any religious suggestions. Alas ! some of them hear within her " long-drawn aisles " only the melancholy monotone of agnostic despair. For the very regularity and beauty and symmetry of the statue they deny the Artist. One may fence all the vistas of nature with a materialistic suppo- sition and thenceforward there is no prospect. Even wide generalizations and magnificent laws that remain are doubled back upon themselves and really end nowhere. Devotion and religion, there can be none. And more's the marvel when we remember that Newton and Darwin were alike in dealing with practical infinities the one of space, the other of time; and that therefore there need be no more reason to fear Dar- win's evolution than Newton's gravitation. Both must infalli- bly lead nearer to God (granting, for the moment, their equality in scientific value). Either way or any way to the Infinite must bring the " supernatural " into our thought and life, and thenceforward (as Proctor has it) " There is nothing to do but to bow the knee." The mere sentimentalist finds in nature only an echo of his own voice. He makes of her a nose of wax to be twisted into the image of his own fancies. Such men hear and see nothing of God in nature. Tympanum and retina are both preoccupied. As the Scotch say: " Wha's like our ain sel's? n Sentiment is not to be depreciated, and for its . just use nature is prepared with inexhaustible store of parallels to human experiences and subtle correspondences with human moods; but sentimentalism simply imposes itself on nature and rarely finds anything, much less God. Those who take the com- 172 SIGNAL LIGHTS. mercial view only see so many acres woodland, upland or bottomland with such and such capacities for grain or gra- zing. In the trees they see shade or merchantable timber. To the skies they never look except to keep the " weather- eye open. "From them is hidden half of the beauty of nature as well as the higher half of its utility. The pride of posses- sion comes in to distract the mind here, as that of intellect and feeling came to the others, and he is ready to say, " My barns and my goods," with an emphasis which is apt to bring God upon the scene with a startling, " Thou fool." See how the really religious suggestions of nature accept all that is true in each of these views and then go beyond. Mere science opens the scroll and describes the hieroglyphics, but the religious suggestion gives them a meaning, and the perplexing symbols reach their noblest meaning in causing our minds to touch the Divine Intelligence, and putting the hand of our weakness into that of Infinite Power. Mere sentiment- alism tricks out nature in the tawdry gauds of half-unreal and half-wicked feelings, while the religious suggestions would present her with all possible power of sympathy, yet arrayed in the pure and dignified garb which artists always give to angels. The merely commercial view has less of mind and soul in it than either of the others, and is to be apologized for only by the strong necessities which bend men in that direc- tion and gradually dull their vision to all else. Nature's religious suggestions are not hostile to commercial values far from it; but they do not surfer men to brutalize the won- ders of God's creative work by treating them as only material for trade. Everything good in each common view of nature is assimilated and, indeed, glorified by the religious uplook. Nor are these suggestions to be counted the property of any select few. Nothing is plainer than the universality of the susceptibility to these loftier influences of nature. Derz- THE INFLUENCES OF NATURE. 173 bavin's great poem, for example, is known to be a " household word of culture in twenty nations," is printed all over the West and gleams out of the embroideries of the East. Hear how it links God and nature: " O, Thou Eternal One, whose presence bright All space doth occupy, all motion guide ; Being above all beings ! Mighty One Whom none can comprehend and none explore ; Who fill'st existence with Thyself alone, Embracing all, supporting, ruling o'er, Being whom we call God, and know no more ! God ! thus alone my lowly thoughts can soar Midst Thy vast works, admire, obey, adore. And when the tongue is eloquent no more, The soul shall speak in tears of gratitude." The religious influences of nature are so pronounced that peasant and philosopher share them. Even Goethe called nature "a dialogue between God and man." The world's religions, despite all their horrors of cruelty and their debasing corruptions, bear perpetual testimony to God's witness of Him- self in nature, and sometimes with wonderful force and beauty. Humanity could never lose all the original impres- sion and information given when the true God was known universally as the Author, Owner and Disposer of nature. He who planted the race in Eden that nature might be known from the beginning at its best and loveliest, meant to enfold mankind in memories which should so easily be aided by daily vision that His voice and presence should never be lost out of sun and sky and earth and air. And when He came nearer in the special revelation to the Hebrews, how amply was nature interwoven with the divinely prescribed methods of worship. Think of the new moons, and the first- fruits, of the booths and water-drawings, of the lights and textures and colors of tabernacle and temple. Far from the 174 SIGNAL LIGHTS. nature-worship of the decaying nations, it was equally removed from the denial of nature's worship of God which characterizes blind unbelief to-day. There is ever increasing proof from the growth of knowl- edge, from the refinement of emotion, from the development of taste, that nature will become an ever greater aid to worship. To the threshold of the larger discussion concern- ing the. certainty with which and the methods by which and the .attributes in which nature reveals God, we have just come. Space fails, and the reader is committed to the rich literature of Natural Religion for further investigation. But especially is he commended to the simple and natural expedient of laying together the Word and the Works of God. The open Bible spread upon the larger leaves of nature's great book will fill and thrill the thoughtful and candid mind, will let " knowledge grow from more to more," while " more of reverence with her dwells " ; will elevate to loftier views of the Divine Majesty and win to better conceptions of the Divine Goodness; will aid in hours of holy communion, and help to prepare for a share in that song-burst of the repre- sentative powers of heaven and earth: "Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory, and honor, and -power : for Thou hast created all things, and for Thy pleasure they are and -were created.''' 1 Rev. iv., n. W. G. ELIOT, D. D. MANNERS CONSISTENT WITH RELIGION. BY REV. WM. G. ELIOT, D. D. ^ HE student of human nature can scarcely help being impressed by the fact that the minds of no two per- sons are exactly alike. Moved by the same passions, influenced by the same desires, cherishing the same hopes, that wonderful complex unit, the human soul, may find its counterpart, but never its exact image. Analyze and classify the faculties until the list is exhausted, they are simply manifestations of that mysterious creation of God which, lord of itself, eludes the curious eye of the psychologist and fails to fulfil his predictions. Yet this personality, having the power to screen itself from observation, betraying its secret working to God alone, unconsciously leaves a record of itself from day to day, from hour to hour, in the hearts of those nearest itself, and this unwritten testi- mony is the revelation of a man's character. When a culprit is brought before the bar of justice in order to extenuate the evil deed, as an exceptional one for him, or to prove the moral improbability of his having committed the 175 176 SIGNAL LIGHTS. act, he appeals to those with whom he has had daily inter- course to testify to his good character. If they do so, the value of their testimony depends upon the harmony between his inner life and its outward manifestation. He who has uni- formly shown himself kind, generous and forgiving, is it pos- sible that he betrayed his friend? He who has apparently guarded his honor as the apple of his eye, has he been en- gaged in a fraudulent transaction? It may be. In the secret chambers of the soul, perhaps, lurk bitter passions whose existence is unsuspected by a man's friends until he yields to some strong temptation. There are few persons, however, whose living testimony concerning themselves is thus false and when this does occur, the record of the past often changes its aspect in the light of succeeding events. It is we who have not rightly interpreted the meaning of word and deed. The physiologist informs us that the brain is covered with lines, crossing and interlacing in every direction. In the head of a young child these lines are few in number, but with age and thought they become indefinitely multiplied. Could their language be read by a higher intelligence, they would betray the secrets of a life written in hieroglyphics. A simpler record is stamped upon the face of the adult, which often he who runs may read. It is seen in the eye, cold and hard, or soft and sympathetic, in the mouth, which is per- haps the most tell-tale feature, and in every line traced by thought or feeling. If, then, it be so difficult to dissemble, to conceal the real character, where shall we begin if we wish to acquire the grace of beautiful manners ? Are they like a gar- ment that can be purchased and thrown on the wearer to con- ceal the deformity within, 6r the mantle of a king carelessly worn and only half concealing the richer fabric beneath? Fine manners are not a cloak for ugliness, they are the fitting apparel of a royal nature. Let us begin then from within. MANNERS CONSISTENT WITH RELIGION. 177 We can send our children to dancing school to learn " gen- teel deportment." Why should we not? Society establishes certain rules that govern social intercourse, and to these it is best to conform. Frequently they bring order where other- wise would be chaos. Most of its regulations, however, pre-suppose a higher law underlying them, and giving them its sanction. Without this they would be mere dead form, and upon this they depend for their life. This law is the law of the inner life, and has its root in elevated moral and relig- ious feeling. Without this, social forms are a mockery. Any one can learn the rules of etiquette can any one acquire fine manners? The desire to do so aids in the attain- ment, but he is most successful who strives first to reach the higher sources from which these flow. Fine manners are the graceful and beautiful expression of the teaching of Christian- ity. If the fine setting makes the jewel appear more radiant, let us have it, but first the jewel why should we attempt to set off that which is but paste and has no value save through a deception! Manners, to be fine, must have dignity and repose. These qualities should naturally attend that elevation of soul which produces calmness. He who is undisturbed by the petty anxieties of life, who realizes the greatness of the destiny to which every human being is born, will not be affected by every untoward circumstance. With steady hand guiding the helm, with gauge unalterably turned towards the promised land, the storms that pass by leave him calm amid the tumult. Striving towards an ever higher ideal, trusting in the " power which makes for righteousness," he can wait for the kingdom of God, " which cometh not with observation." It was such elevation of soul, such calm confidence in the ultimate triumph of right, that sustained Washington through the misfortunes and discouragements of the Revolutionary War 178 SIGNAL LIGHTS. and still more trying events at its close. Under all circum- stances, self-possessed and calm, he was a spectacle for men to admire. A like greatness of soul withheld Lincoln from any vulgar exhibition of passion, and from the alternations of extravagant elation or hopeless despair, when burdened with a responsibility almost too great for human endurance. It is this undisturbed serenity which makes Christ a central figure, towering above the rest of mankind to the height of moral grandeur. He who wishes to be dignified, to bear himself as one worthy of the respect of others, must first respect himself. We can not hide from ourselves; and the consciousness of unworthiness betrays itself in subtle ways to our fellow-men. " Know thyself." Yes, and honor the divinity within. First self-respect, and then respect from others. Let not self-respect, however, degenerate into self-conceit. Self-respect is quiet and contained, self-conceit aggressive and loud. Self-respect tends to induce reverence for one's supe- riors ; self-conceit exaggerates its own ability at the expense of others. The self-respecting man never obtrudes his personal- ity; the conceited man is never content to remain in the background. This is perhaps one of the faults of the so-called Young America, though let us remember that there are two Young Americas, one forward and bold, the other having all the loveliness and modesty of youth. We hope that the latter will increase at the expense of the former. It is fitting and beautiful that the inexperience of youth should yield pre- cedence to the wisdom of age. He who is willing to receive instruction in his youth, may in his turn impart wisdom in his old age. Vain and shallow are those young people who have no reverence for age, and who treat their superiors with care- less indifference. How can their manners be improved with- out striking at the root of the evil and imparting to them MANNERS CONSISTENT WITH RELIGION. 179 that spirit of reverence for whatever is above them, which finds at last its culmination in the adoration of the Supreme Intelligence ! Another quality whose manifestation is alike beautiful in age and youth, is sincerity. Flattery may please the foolish, but it inspires sensible people with contempt for the flatterer, and suspicion regarding his motives. Nothing is more accept- able than a kind appreciation of one's efforts, but this is very different from flattery. Flattery is not the language of friendship, but of diplomacy, and betrays a soul so vulgar that it appeals to the base, rather than the noble qualities of human nature. He who flatters, thereby acknowledges his inferiority. Kings do not flatter they leave that to their sycophantic followers. Although sincerity is opposed to flattery, it does not require a rude assertion of unpleasant truths. When fidelity in friend- ship demands that I tell one, whom I love, of some mistake he is making, some fault of which he is unconscious, let me do it tenderly shrinking from the infliction of pain, save where it is necessary. There are some blunt people who go about " speaking their minds," and dealing blows right and left. Such indiscriminate execution creates more bitterness and ill- feeling than the amount of evil it uproots, and there will always be more or less suspicion that the zeal of these self- constituted reformers is partly inspired by a questionable motive. The unlovely manners suggest an unlovely spirit. It is the old story of the wind and sun trying to force the traveller to remove his cloak. Courtesy and kindness will succeed where rudeness only makes the traveller draw more closely around him the cloak of error. An indispensable requisite of fine manners is amiability, and those who do not possess this quality must at least have sufficient self-control to manifest its semblance. The kind 180 SIGNAL LIGHTS. word, the winning smile, the thoughtful act, are these not beautiful in themselves, and a part of fine manners ? Amiabil- ity not only accepts the kindly forms of society, it creates for itself new forms ; for a warm heart is spontaneous. A truly amiable person, one who loves his fellow-beings, and who, in addition, sees and appreciates their finer qualties, does he not both create and discover new beauty everywhere? Such a one, if he possess tact, seems always to find the missing notes which will change discord into harmony. Tact, which is very necessary in social intercourse, is largely attained through the amiable desire to give pleasure and avoid the infliction of pain. We frequently hear this quality refer- red to as though it belonged to an essentially worldly nature; but it is equally desirable in a Christian gentleman, who should be a man of the world in its best sense in the world, though not of the world. Why have we any more right to inflict mental than bodily pain? Tact can make the deformed for- get their deformity, the awkward their shambling gait, restor- ing to them the beauty of unconscious action. It can render eloquent those who are silent and shy, and create happiness where else had been disappointment and chagrin. Tact is the gentle touch, which transmutes everything within its reach. In social intercourse, nothing is more distasteful to persons of refined nature, than undue familiarity. We should be shocked if one who was a comparative stranger walked into the house with muddy boots and made himself perfectly at home. Is this any worse than intrusion into the private life, into those personal experiences which should be sacred? Always an open, frank, kindly manner, but never obtrusiveness. The dissembler has much which he is ashamed to reveal, the sincere man much which is too sacred to reveal. There is nothing more unpleasant to a sensitive person than to be made the subject of a personal remark. We have known an MANNERS CONSISTENT WITH RELIGION. ill-timed jest, a careless sneer, to end, at its beginning, a real attachment. Rash is he who touches with rude hand the delicate mechanism of human feeling. What better test is there of the tone, the refinement, the manners of guests at any social gathering, than the discussion or avoidance of personalities. As we listen to gossip we feel that we are drifting among the rocks, the shoals and quick- sands of social life; but let some topic of general interest be introduced and again we are out on the broad ocean of eternal truth, breathing the pure air of heaven. Shall we not so interest our young people in all the living issues of the day, in science and art, in truth and beauty, that their minds will be too full of other interests to cherish a morbid desire for gossip ! Fine conversation is one of the most elevating and refining influences, and happy are those who can sit at the feet of wise and eloquent teachers. And these teachers ! Their eloquence alone lends them grace. When poor Samuel Johnson, the most gifted, and the most afflicted of men, discoursed like a god, the twitchings of his feet, the rolling of his great body and his asthmatic puffings, were forgotten in intellectual delight. What is the intoxication of wine, compared with the intoxication of fine speech! The good manners of any person are an inspiration to all those with whom he comes in contact. They are to the eye what the eloquence of speech is to the ear. Subdued by their charm, he who is ordinarily careless and rude, becomes for the time being courteous and refined; for manners are learned through example. As life is a perpetual imparting and receiving, it is desirable to seek for ourselves and our children the society of the good, the wise and the intelligent. Intercourse with them is a per- petual uplifting to higher levels, especially for the young, who are more sensitive to the atmosphere in which they live than 182 SIGNAL LIGHTS. are older people. In the presence of some whom we know r what is beautiful, true and fitting seems the only natural action. Of a noble and good man, it was once said that his presence was a perpetual benediction. What is evolution in morals and intelligence but a natural interchange of help in which every man is consciously a guide and helper to* those below him, while the inflowing spirit of God, ever in communion with man and received in the fullest measure by the soul most open to its entrance, draws the race onward and upward. If we seek the society of our superiors that we may advance,, we must not refuse all aid to those who see less clearly than we. Even an inferior may be strong in some direction where we are weak. A really superior person never exhibits conde- scension to an inferior, for greatness is content to give and receive out of the fulness of its life. Indeed, condescension is always the mark of a shallow nature, as well as an index of poor breeding and manners. He who condescends to the lowly, cringes to the great. As the qualities which produce fine breeding are transmitted from generation to generation, we find them inherent in cer- tain families. We say of such that they have " gentle blood," thereby expressing our belief in the laws of heredity. He who is " to the manner born " is more fortunate than the child of uncultured parents, who themselves never possessed the advantages afforded to their children through industry and self-denial. This is so common in America it fails to excite remark. I have seen the " old people " sit comfortably and cosily by the kitchen fire, discoursing in homely phrase, while an elegant daughter entertained her company in the parlor. In such cases the " old people " are inclined to over-estimate the importance of social advantages and sacrifice too much that their children may possess them. It sometimes requires several generations of wealth before the responsibilities which money MANNERS CONSISTENT WITH RELIGION. 183 brings are rightly understood. Those who have never felt the want of money attach less importance to its possession than the nonveraux riches. Yet the self-made man, after he has acquired a fortune, seeks for his children not so much riches as social prestige, for his sons, through following a profes- sion rather than a " trade," for his daughters, through alliance with some old family. The self-made man is not always like Mr. Howell's repre- sentation in " Silas Lapham." Some there are who, born in small towns, among an ignorant population, and receiving their only education in the little log school-house, yet, through their innate refinement, have exhibited courtly man- ners when worldly success brought them into intercourse with well-bred people. It is the glory of our republican country that any man can assert his native power, and that there are no barriers to ability and determination. It has been said that in England every man's foot is on the neck of the man next below him, and his knee bent to the one above. Here no one need to cringe or grovel; nothing is required but the courtliness and kindliness of good manners. How beautiful, how grand is this simplicity! Although the " claims of long descent " are worthy of consideration, yet nature is democratic and recognizes no privileged class. Our scientists and scholars, our soldiers and statesmen, are many of them " from the people." Good, sturdy stock they generally are, for blood does " tell," but not always of distinguished ancestry. Wealth may be monopolized; talent can not, nor does it always run in families. Perhaps no one of the descendants of a great man will inherit just that combination of qualities which peculiarly fitted him for some noble work. As in mind, so in manner. The scion of a distinguished house may be a boor through perversion of nature, while some one whose family name had 184 SIGNAL LIGHTS. never been seen in the " annals of his country," or in the society announcements, shines as nature's gentleman. The country cousins may at first appear shy and awkward, but give them a winter in the city and, if they have innate refine- ment, the awkwardness will soon wear off. They may be even more pleasing in their manners than their city -bred rela- tives, if they retain the freshness of their enthusiasm, a quality which is too apt to be lost in the giddy whirl of pleasure, season after season. That man must be callous who can remain long among refined people without acquiring something of their good breeding. His first sensation, perhaps, is one of discomfort. When the loud laugh is not re-echoed, he feels the reflex influence of the disagreeable impression it has pro- duced, yet can not at once learn to practice self-restraint. Let the iron of mortification enter his soul it is a good teacher. The necessity of self-restraint in all things which society imposes is one of its elevating and refining influences. Are you angry? The drawing-room is no place for the exhibition of passion. Are you pleased? Express your satisfaction in courteous phrase, not through violent hilarity. Has nature given you a good appetite? Satisfy the craving at home, if you will, but in your enjoyment of the delicacies at the table of your host, do not forget that reasonable self-restraint which politeness enjoins. The controlling principle of good manners, as we have already said, must be found in strict morality. The laws of social usage must yield, when there is conflict, to the law of right. Even hospitality loses its true charm when inviting the guest to unwise or dangerous self-indulgence. Yet good society counsels " moderation " in the use of stimulants, and so far from enjoining abstinence, rather discourages it. The host falsely imagines that hospitality requires him to offer MANNERS CONSISTENT WITH RELIGION. " just one glass " or "just one glass more," as the case may be. The recipient of this often cruel kindness too frequently sup- poses that politeness demands an acceptance of the attention, no matter what may be the consequences. Strange that there should be no disapproval associated with the drinking freely of wine, and that the disgrace seems to consist only in not being able to do so without intoxication. When this point is reached, and not before, society feels the necessity of express- ing its displeasure. Even if, in the refusal of the proffered glass, there were a sacrifice of manners to religious conviction, the lesser principle should yield to the greater. This is, how- ever, not the case. There is no discourtesy in refusing wine, but there is rudeness as well as wrong in urging an unwilling guest. When will people learn that the great object of social gatherings is not the eating or drinking together, but the interchange of thought and fancy! Let the wine-cup be for- gotten and dainties remain untasted while we listen to one who has something to say and who knows how to say it. If the epicure and drunkard be the slaves of appetite, we, who are still free, will not forge our own chains, or strengthen theirs. We hear much concerning French manners and English manners, and especially the latter. English manners may be better for an Englishman, but do they not in an American suggest affectation? The manners of superior people every- where are really very much the same, differing only in un- important details. A gentleman is a gentleman in every land. In the respect with which women are treated, no nation excels the American, and the status of women determines the degree of civilization. All honor be to that spirit of chivalry which manifests its respect even for the humblest and least attractive. 186 SIGNAL LIGHTS. There is a crown of womanhood of which no woman can be deprived, save through her own fault. It is a birthright which once lost can never be regained. The courtesy, the little attentions offered to a lady, should not be refused in a spirit of independence, but accepted with recognition of the kindness. Why should she insist upon standing in a crowded car? Why should she refuse the prof- fered aid in alighting? Rather acceptance and thanks. We are all, men and women, better for the interchange of little attentions. Generally, good manners depend upon the breeding. No- matter how much innate refinement a child may inherit from a civilized ancestry, he comes into the world with more or less of the savage, or of the " old Adam " in him. Accord- ing to Spencer, his egoism is greater than his altruism, through a wise provision of nature. Now the manners of those who- surround him are much more real to him than their precepts, He has weak powers of reasoning, but possesses the imitative- ness of the ape. If gentleness and courtesy are the rule in the family circle, he will insensibly acquire these qualities. If, on the contrary, he sees others rude and selfish, how can he understand the beauty of unselfishness? Thus he receives his breeding, and how much of his happiness or unhappiness depends thereon ! It either makes of him an Ishmaelite, with his hand against every one, or a useful member of society, happy and beloved. The rude word, the angry tone, become at last a matter of such habit that even when moved by gentle emotion the ill-bred man knows not how to express himself fittingly. He finds rules of etiquette totally inadequate to counteract the effect of early influences and to change the boor into a gentleman. Such an one is much to be pitied, if he realize his deficiencies without being able to correct them. MANNERS CONSISTENT WITH RELIGION. 187 We sometimes hear the manners of the people of our east- ern and western cities compared, to the disadvantage of the latter, but this is hardly just. The faults of western society* are those which are incident to the society of any new place, and they rapidly disappear with the lapse of time. Those who emigrate to a new country generally do so in the hope of making money. If they succeed, they become the prominent men of the little town, and in time the " old settlers " of the city. They are perhaps not men of education and refinement,, yet they have what, under the circumstances, is more to the purpose in a new country, "energy and practical ability. They are too busy preparing the way for their descendants, to devote much time to culture and reading, or, indeed, to anything but the practical questions of the day. Yet they realize the value of education sufficiently to procure for their children its advan- tages, and the second and third generations have all the polish of the residents of the older cities. So long as a city is grow- ing rapidly, however, its society must be more or less hetero- geneous and the attempt to make social distinctions, difficult* It is said that in one of our western cities the aristocratic and phebeian inhabitants are distinguished as those who made their money before a certain great fire swept over the city, and those who made it afterwards. If, in such a new city as we have described, there did not arise an interest in something beyond the making and spending of money, there would be no hope for it. We must first labor for the sustenance of the body and the supply of its natural wants. With the leisure which comes with the accumulation of means, no longer exhausting their strength in the supply of daily individual needs, they can interest themselves in litera- ture and art, in science and discovery of truth, or devote them- selves to some ideal pursuit. Unless these higher interests 188 SIGNAL LIGHTS. are aroused in a new community where fortunes have been rapidly made, wealth will be wasted in luxury and vulgar "ostentation. Western people have been accused of being " loud " and showy. There are such people everywhere, and they always move in a new civilization rather than in an old where is less freedom, and where the lines are more firmly drawn. This is, however, ceasing to be a characteristic of western society, in distinction from eastern, and the time may come when eastern people may have something to learn from their western neighbors as regards eloquent manners. The hospitality of the old time, the cordiality and warmth of heart, still remain as in former days, and something else has been added. The intercourse between all our cities and large towns is too regular and constant to allow any very marked differences of manners to last, yet there will always be " circles " and " sets " in which elegant manners degenerate into mannerisms. When social rules become inflexible and every violation meets with unkind criticism, then, indeed, Mrs. Grundy would do well to emigrate and widen her mental horizon. There is such a thing as an esthetic, literary society into which we enter with a feeling of suffocation, and leave with the thought, " if this be culture, a little less culture and more human nature." It is said that trifles make up the sum of human life. Little kindnesses, thoughtful attentions, slight in themselves, contri- bute largely to the sum of human happiness. Nothing is great, nothing is small, to the eye of the philosopher. We may not be able to array ourselves in silks and velvets, but the adorn- ment of fine manners is within our reach, and that is worth striving for. We can more easily dispense with music, paint- ing or sculpture than with the harmony of beautiful action. MANNERS CONSISTENT WITH RELIGION, ]_g9 Kind smiles, looks and words, are the largess of a noble nature which gives, nor asks for a return. In answer to the query whether manners are consistent with religion, we will say that religion without good manners is a contradiction. If love to one's fellow-man is an essential part of religion, shall we cherish the feeling, yet act as if the heart were full of indifference or hatred? There may be persons so unfortunately constituted that they continually belie them- selves, since a rough exterior may hide a gentle nature. Such as these are to be pitied, for they are always liable to be mis- understood, and such being the case, it is their special duty to cultivate the grace of fine manners. To associate these with the seductions of the world, is entirely wrong. Good breed- ing is not the mask of a worldly nature. The selfish man of the world may wear the mask of courtesy, it is but a mask, a disguise, which a keen observer may detect. There is no spontaneity in his actions; he has learned his lesson by rote, not in the spirit but the letter. The world! What is the world? It is you and I, our friends and neighbors; and, like ourselves, it is made up of good and evil. Shall we flee from it ? Those who have done so have discovered that the Tempter pursued them into the wilderness. The evil of the world is that which is in my heart and yours. Banish it, and the world will be that much the better! When the kingdom of God comes, the "world " will be the " communion of saints," and every Christian life brings that time nearer. Christ withdrew into solitude only to pray for renewed strength to " redeem the world from sin," and this must his followers do. When the " kingdom of God " does come upon the earth, beautiful thoughts, elevated emotions, will find their fitting expression in action and speech. The inner life and its outward manifestation will be in har- 190 SIGNAL LIGHTS. mony. There will be no misunderstandings, but faltering lips shall grow eloquent, and words find their confirmation in deeds. If truth and goodness are divine, so also is beauty, and a religious life cannot afford to hide its light under the " bushel " of repellant manners. J. D. MOFFATT, D. D. REGARD FOR PUBLIC OPINION. BY J. D. MOFFAT, D.D. HAT will people think? " With a large number of persons this is "the question of the hour " - and of every hour. They stand in awe of public opinion. They are careful to avoid doing or saying anything which their part of the world may disapprove; they are eager to do everything which the public they respect may be likely to expect of them. They dress, they walk, they talk, they hold their hands, they move their eyes, after the manner which the public may for the time approve, and for no other reason than that such actions and attitudes are considered by a certain set of persons as constituting good style, or "form," as it is now termed. Not long since many ladies belonging to this class were making most absurd attempts to imitate the graceful carriage attrib- uted to the Grecian lady, and walked about with a stiff motion, an unnatural inclination of body, and a dangling of 191 192 SIGNAL LIGHTS. hands in front of them as if their wrists had been paralyzed, until the boys on the streets felt constrained to call attention to the " Grecian bend." No considerations of personal con- venience, decency or good taste would ever lead ladies to adopt such a mode of walking. In some mysterious way the fashion was started, and the impression was made that the fashionable world approved it, and straightway the people whose one great question is, "What will people think?" adopted it. And as soon, again, as it became evident that the people thought the fashion absurd, it disappeared. What tyranny public opinion exercises over all whose regard for it is allowed to become excessive ! How rapidly their fashions change, and from one extreme to its opposite! Says an Eng- lish essayist, "A wise nation, unsubdued by superstition, with the collected experience of peaceful ages, concludes that female feet are to be clothed by crushing them. The still wiser nations of the west have adopted a swifter mode of destroying health, and creating angularity, by crushing the upper part of the female body. In such matters nearly all people conform. Our brother man is seldom so bitter against us as when we refuse to adopt at once his notions of the infinite. But even religious dissent were less dangerous and more respectable than dissent in dress. If you want to see what men will do in the way of conformity, take a European hat for your subject of meditation. I dare say there are twenty-two millions of people at this minute, each wearing one of these hats in order to please the rest." Nor is it in the matter of dress alone we see a regard for public opinion that must be denounced as excessive and hurt- ful. Men often advocate or Oppose important measures out of regard to the wishes of others, and against their own con- victions, or the convictions they would reach if they could be persuaded to study the subject without regard to the opinions REGARD FOR PUBLIC OPINION. 193 of others. There were whole ages during which the maxim, Vox populi, vox Dei, " The voice of the people is the voice of God," held sway in political affairs. Men who con- demned as absurd the maxim, " The king can do no wrong," swallowed without an effort the equally false idea involved in the vox -populi, vox Dei maxim, which identifies the voice or opinion of the public with that of the Creator as equally infal- lible. The maxim has been abandoned in modern politics in a great measure at least. The voice of the people has so often proved to be the voice of the devil that the human race is fast losing confidence in it. Yet it still secures a degree of respect among those who so esteem the will of the majority as to condemn the minority for still advocating their convic- tions, as if they were less loyal or patriotic than they esteem themselves to be. But whilst no political leader would ven- ture to deify public opinion, how many of them exhibit, in cer- tain emergencies, the fear of it, which makes them silent when we most desire to hear them speak out. They are not sure whether the new measure which has forced itself before the public mind meets the approval of the majority of their party, or not, nor whether its advocacy might not cause the loss of more votes than would be gained. They must wait until these important questions are answered with a reasonable degree of probability, before they speak ; or, if compelled to speak, with what excessive caution do they frame every sentence so that they may swing to either side, according as time may show which is the more popular ! Perhaps we are wrong when we say the former days were better than these, and ask where are the Madisons and Jeffersons, the Websters and Clays of to-day; but it does often seem as if our parties have no leaders, but only advocates, and our country no statesmen, but only partisans. We suffer because there is a regard for public opinion that is excessive. And then, too, in communities and 13 194 SIGNAL LIGHTS. social circles how many there are who accept and never seem to form their opinions, drift with the current, care more for public opinion than for self-respect, crave the flattery of public applause, prefer the approval of the crowd to that of con- science, are indifferent to the fact that they are bears in their own families, so long as they are esteemed models of gentle- ness and courtesy on the street or in other people's homes, who always do in Rome as the Romans do, whether that " Rome " be in its golden age or in its last stage of corruption, live a fawning, obsequious life for the sake of fame, and die satiated, if successful, crying at the last, "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity"; or, if unsuccessful, die broken-hearted, express- ing contempt for the idol so long worshipped. " It is," says Longfellow, " an indiscreet and troublesome ambition which cares so much about fame, about what the world says of us; to be always looking in the face of others for approval; to be always anxious about the effect of what we do or say; to be always shouting to hear the echoes of our own voices." Such excessive regard for public opinion has not only ended in dis- appointment, but, in many cases, in bringing down upon those guilty of it the contempt and hatred of that very public. A dramatist makes one of his characters use these scornful words toward one of this class : " While you, you think What others think, or what you think they'll say, Shaping your course by something scarce more tangible Than dreams, at best the shadows on the stream Of aspen trees by flickering breezes swayed Load me with irons, drive me from morn till night, I am not the utter slave which that man is, Whose sole word, thought and deed are built on what The world may say of him." From this point of view it is evident that regard for public opinion may be excessive and a hindrance to true culture. REGARD FOR PUBLIC OPINION'. He who allows himself to be shaped entirely by his surround- ings, or who determines his actions and manners with supreme regard to the opinions of other people, necessarily suppresses those tendencies of his nature which, cultivated, would give him individuality, personal power. On the other hand, it is at least conceivable that one may attain to a per- fect degree of moral, intellectual and social culture, and yet at times be justified in defying public opinion. The great reformers began their career by antagonizing custom, the leaders of the world's history have often been in the outset the leaders of the minority. In such cases regard for public opin- ion would have brought great enterprises for the advancement of humanity to an abrupt end. But the opposite extreme is just as carefully to be avoided. There is no virtue in defying or disregarding the opinions of others. In any case of justifiable defiance, the virtue consists in the end sought, such as adherence to principle, the correc- tion of commonly received views, etc.; the defiance is simply an unavoidable accompaniment or result. To set at nought the opinions of others for the sake of exhibiting indifference to them, simply expresses one's indifference to his fellow-men and to the esteem in which they may hold him, and it merits a retributive indifference. Eccentricity is tolerated in men when it is seen to be an accompaniment of well-meant efforts to do right; but justly held in contempt when regarded as an affectation of the singular. It lowers our estimation of Admiral Sir Charles Napier when we read of his riding all day through the streets of a foreign town, attired in a fantastic costume and followed by a crowd of boys, to win a wager from a tailor. Such indifference to opinion was a weakness, a harmless one, perhaps, for the whole action was trivial, yet one exhibiting a character that might break down on some more important occasion. It should not be overlooked that, 196 SIGNAL LIGHTS. while regard for common opinion may cause one to continue in a course after he is convinced that it is a wrong course, disregard may open the way for the pursuit of a wicked course. The thought, " people will condemn and despise me," may be, in the case of a large proportion of men, the only bar- rier in the way of their following those lower passions which incite to a vicious life. It may even be said that the man who appears on the streets in slovenly dress, because he cares not what notice he attracts, is one step nearer the kingdom of darkness than he who does care what people think even of his dress. Many a man's untrammelled pursuit of the drunk- ard's career to the grave has been retarded for years by his fear of being seen to enter the common saloon; but when at last he could march boldly in, his most hopeful friends lost their hope because that last barrier had been broken clown. We are forced to recognize the fact that, where men have gone down from respectable society to mingle with the drunken and the vile, regard for property, for character, for family, and for the immortal soul, have given way long before regard for public opinion. But regard for public opinion is not only a barrier against an evil life. It may become a most powerful incentive to right and useful living. The love of esteem is a mainspring of human conduct, both moral and immoral. Desire to stand well with our fellow men is a natural impulse and universally felt, except where it may have been crushed out by an unnat- ural mode of life. It is essential to the existence of social relations and institutions. Let eccentricity become universal and the social fabric is endangered. It is a most powerful and constantly active principle. Consider how powerful it is. Arthur Helps has not exag- gerated when, in writing of the fear of non-conformity, he says that it " has triumphed over all other fears ; over love, REGARD FOR PUBLIC OPINION. 197 hate, pity, sloth, anger, truth, pride, comfort, self-interest, vanity and maternal love." All classes of society have been dominated by it. So great a man as Lord Nelson chuckled over the fact that Mr. Pitt had attended him down stairs to his carriage. The winning of a naval victory could scarcely have afforded him more pleasure than this simple token of the high esteem with which ' the Prime Minister regarded him. At the opposite social extreme it might be difficult to find one so low and so utterly indifferent to the regard of others, as to feel no strange thrill of pleasure when skillfully complimented. In ancient times, poets, warriors, statesmen, were not only incited by the love of applause to put forth their greatest exertions, but did not hesitate to avow their purpose to gain the good opinion of their countrymen. A striking change in this respect has taken place, and men who have gained eminence will scarcely allow themselves to imagine that they have ever been influenced in their actions by any desire to stand well in the eyes of the public. Horace, on the other hand, makes no concealment of his purpose to strike the stars with his lofty head, nor of the gratification he experienced when pointed out as one of the eminent men of the day. The sense of duty, the desire for property, and the thirst for knowledge are powerful incentives, it is true, but the love of esteem is often seen to be more powerful than any of them, since all of them are often sacrificed when a good opportunity of rapid advancement in popularity occurs. Dr. McCosh, in his work on " The Emotions," has given us an admirable sketch of the range and power of this feeling, both in its nor- mal and perverted state, a passage that may well be tran- scribed here. " There is a love of esteem, commendation, praise, glory, appearing also in early life, and capable of becoming a dominant passion. It is apt to associate itself with the motive last mentioned the love of society, and 198 SIGNAL LIGHTS. the young delight in a smile, an approving word, or a gift from those whom they love, or with whom they associate, from father, mother, teacher, and, sometimes stronger than any others, from companions. This principle, the desire to keep or retain the good opinion of others, often makes the tyranny exercised over boys by their companions, in workshop, in school, in college, more formidable than any wielded by the harshest master or rulers. As persons advance in life, it becomes a desire to stand well with the circle in which they move, their professional circle, or the gay circle, or the good moral circle, or the respectable circle, say their congregation r or the denomination of which they are members. The fear of losing the esteem, or incurring the censure of their social set or party, is sometimes a means of sustaining good resolutions,, and of keeping people in a straight course ; quite as frequently it tempts to cowardice, as they have not the courage to do the right and oppose the evil, since it would make them unpopular. In the case of many the desire becomes a craving for reputation, a passion for fame, burning and flaming, and it may be consuming the soul. This often leads to great deeds in war and in peace, in the common arts and in the fine arts, in literature and in science. But being ill-regulated, or carried to excess, it is often soured into jealousy or envy, or issues in terrible disappointment. The passion may become so strong as to need .no aid from the pleasure derived from it nay, may lead the man to injure his health and incur suffer- ing, in order to secure posthumous fame of which he can never be conscious." Surely so powerful a motive for good or evil is not to be despised nor ignored. If it has lead men with so much power to do great deeds of courage, endurance and perseverance, it would not be wise to deny it a place among the motive forces which lie back of all forms of culture. If it be not allowed the supreme place, it should not be denied any REGARD FOR PUBLIC OPINION ^99 place. If it is not the highest motive for conduct, it may be one of the lower, which, kept in subordination, may add to the power without detracting from the character of the supreme motive. We are bound to consider, too, the increased influence for good resulting from a good reputation. Other things equal, the word of the most favorably known man outweighs the equally good or true word of one less favorably or extensively known. The common-place remarks of noted men attract attention, while the same remarks or better ones, uttered by men who have not yet attained distinction in popular esteem, fall flat upon the ear and prove ineffective. A story is told upon a gentleman of New York which illustrates this point. After earnest solicitation he accompanied his wife to hear Mr. Moody, listened with rapt attention to the sermon, and remarked on the way home that if their pastor could only preach like that he thought he could go to church every Sun- day. "Why," his wife replied, "the preacher you heard is our pastor, who took Mr. Moody 's place to-day." Not having heard his wife's pastor very often, and failing to recognize him at the distance he was seated from the platform, he lis- tened to him as he would have listened to Mr. Moody, whose praises he had read and heard sounded on every side. That a man's good reputation adds to his power for good scarcely needs proof or illustration. It is a fact of common experience and observation. We not only see men of inferior abilities accomplishing good work because of a good reputa- tion, but men of superior abilities shorn of power and living comparatively useless lives because of some stain, sometimes a slight one, upon their reputation. The civil law recognizes every man's right to as good a reputation as his character and conduct will bear; and every human being ought to recognize his duty to secure as good a reputation as lies in his power by 200 SIGNAL LIGHTS. the use of proper means. As we are morally bound to main- tain our health, to cultivate our powers and add to our knowl- edge that we may be thoroughly qualified for our work, so are we bound, and for the same reason, to maintain a good name. The teacher is under obligation to be popular with his pupils. If he fails in popularity, he is shorn of his power to incite them to diligence and interest in study; for the pop- ular teacher, with knowledge but little in advance of his pupils, can cause them to learn more rapidly than the splendid scholar whom the children hate. The statesman who would promote the general welfare, dare not despise popular favor, for the greater people's regard for him, the greater his influence over them. Even the preacher of the gospel, bearing a message from God to men, may not wisely feel indifferent to his per- sonal popularity. Though he is God's ambassador, yet he is expected to deliver his message in the most effective manner; he is charged, as far as lies in his power, to bring about recon- ciliation; he is to regard himself as the servant of the church as well as of Christ, and to labor to please them as well as Him. Paul would be " all things to all men," do anything to avoid offending them, do anything to please them, not inconsistent with his pleasing his Lord, that he might " save some." It may not be easy to lay down a principle, or prescribe a set of rules, by which it may be determined when we may disregard public opinion, and when we should regard it. Per- haps it is enough to say that in matters involving right and wrong no regard for the opinion of others should ever cause us to swerve a hair's breadth from what we believe to be right ; while due weight should be allowed to public opinion when it would join other considerations in deterring us from wrong, or urging us on in duty. In matters involving only expediency or propriety, a more important place should be given to public opinion. There may be cases in which we should be guided REGARD FOR PUBLIC OPINION. 201 wholly by custom, and there may be other cases in which quite as much, or more, weight should be attached to the demands of personal convenience, comfort or taste. Even within the realm of the merely expedient, there are limits to popular demands, and personal liberty has a claim to be regarded. It is not to be forgotten that public opinion is only the aggregate of private opinions, and that each one, therefore, has something to do with the determining of the character of the opinion of his community. This gives to each person the right, it places each person under the obligation, of endeavor- ing, in some measure, to shape the common opinion according to his own ideas of fitness. If there be no attempt to exercise personal liberty, public opinion can not be improved, but must from age to age remain as unchangeable as Chinese customs. The fact, too, can not be ignored that public opinion is often unreasonable and tyrannical in its demands, condemning what it should at least tolerate, and tolerating what it ought to regard as an alternative which may with propriety be chosen. We must sometimes criticise and antagonize the public only let us be sure we have some reason for it, other than the desire to defy or to be eccentric. Perhaps the proper course to be pursued may be best sug- gested by considering some common demands made on the individual by public opinion. In dress we may conform so closely to the common standard as to escape remark, commendatory or otherwise. If we depart from this standard for the purpose of making an u impression," the public, or our circle, may properly describe the " impression " made, whether it be the impression we sought to make, or its opposite ; and we can not complain if it be the latter. If the public show a disposition to modify the common standard, by following a fashion in conflict with our taste or notions of convenience, we have the right to protest, 202 SIGNAL LIGHTS. we ought to protest ; but our protest need not be a permanent one. Sometimes these protests are successful. If they are not, then, often, the " ugly " fashion in time ceases to seem " ugly " because so generally adopted by people of good taste, and people on whom nothing ever seems " ugly " why should we longer protest ? Our holding out will not effect a change, and our appearance in the old fashion may cause more dis- pleasure in others than their new fashions cause ii us. If, however, the public demand the adoption of a fashion injurious to health, or indecent, its opinion should be boldly disregarded. There is also a common standard for manners, our behavior in the presence of others, compliance with which does not ordinarily require any sacrifice of principle, nor any disregard of our personal comfort or convenience, that we ought not to make willingly for the pleasure of others. For the principle in us which leads to the best manners is the desire to please others; and, as Emerson puts it, "A beautiful behaviour is better than a beautiful form; it gives a higher pleasure than statues and pictures; it is the finest of the fine arts." Nor can any better rule for cultivating good manners be laid down than this: In your speech or silence, in your movements and pos- ture, in your demands on others, or your response to other's demands, be sure that you are governed by a sincere, unselfish regard for the feelings and welfare of others. True kindness of heart and sympathy are the foundations of true politeness. This is doubtless what Sydney Smith meant by saying that " manners are the shadows of virtues." It is not true, indeed, as some say, that " manners make the man," but it is true that manners mark the man; they are modes of exhibiting our regard for others except when assumed as a cover for hypocrisy. As good manners spring from regard^ for others, bad man- ners spring either from disregard, or from inordinate self- REGARD FOR PUBLIC OPINION. 203 consciousness constant thought about one's self as if he were the most important member of the circle. Both the nature of good behavior and the best mode of acquiring it are illus- trated by what Archbishop Whately has described concerning his own experience. When at college, his dress, a white, rough coat and a white hat, and his awkward manner, caused him to be known as " The White Bear." He tried to improve his manners by an attempt to imitate accepted models, but failed; such a mode only serving to increase his shyness and self-consciousness, from which his awkwardness resulted. At last he said to himself, " I have tried my very utmost, and find that I must be as awkward as a bear all my life, in spite of it. I will endeavor to think as little about it as a bear, and make up my mind to endure what can't be cured." As soon as he aban- doned the effort to improve his manners by imitation, and began to carry out the impulses of his noble nature, he began to lose his awkwardness and to take on the posture and move- ments of the gentleman. " I succeeded," he says, " beyond my expectations ; for I not only got rid of the personal suffer- ing of shyness, but also of most of those faults of manner which consciousness produces; and acquired at once an easy and natural manner careless, indeed, in the extreme, from its originating in a stern defiance of opinion, which I had con- vinced myself must be ever against me; but unconscious, and therefore giving expression to that good "will towards men 'which I really feel / and these, I believe, are the main points." Here, it may be observed, good manner came not from regard for public opinion, but from regard for the public itself, yet it was the former that led to the effort to throw off an awkward manner an effort that succeeded only when regard for other people was given its rightful place of superiority to regard for and thought about self. It is not only a law of good manners,. 204 SIGNAL LIGHTS. but of good morals as well, that, when we are in the company of others, we should seek to please them, whether by making an effort to converse agreeably or to listen with interest; to avoid unpleasant subjects and the arousing of unpleasant feel- ings, or, positively, to produce as much happiness as possible. In addition to our dress and manners, public opinion takes notice of our attitude towards all movements in which the -public feels special interest; and pronounces us public-spirited, good citizens, benevolent, useful members of society, patriotic, or denies our right to such desirable titles, according to our treatment of public movements. Here, again, it is to be noted that the underlying principles in conflict are selfishness and interest in others, and that morality is clearly on the side of the latter. Whoever lives in society and only a hermit can live out of it derives benefits from society which create the obliga- tion that he should be a giver as well as a receiver. The public has a right to demand of us the performance of political duty, that we act with one party or another according to our conscientious convictions after unbiased investigation. The public has no right to demand that we continue to act with the party with which we have been acting in the past, nor that we should follow or approve all the measures taken by our party. Every one ought therefore to be permitted to change his party affiliations, when the change is honestly made, without being cursed by the one party, and received with coolness by the other. When public opinion demands patriotism, it should be regarded; when it demands partisan- ship, it should be defied. A similar position may be taken with respect to our attitude towards the voluntary movements of society. To be regarded ,as public-spirited, useful members of society, or benevolent, is a laudable ambition. In proportion as one's intellectual and REGARD FOR PUBLIC OPINION. 205 moral nature is cultivated, his power and wisdom and tact in aiding and directing and organizing movements for the public good are increased; his services are needed, and should be cheerfully given, because he may do a work no other is so well fitted to do. And, on the other hand, if intellectual and moral culture are aimed at, there is no better way known to man to promote that culture than by a practice of his powers and a use of his knowledge in the affairs of real life. No man is made strong in his library, any more than physical strength is developed at the table; no man is made morally strong or holy by life in a monastery. " I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil." The world has little need of people who selfishly cultivate their intellectual and moral nature, refusing to use their superior powers for the benefit of others nor cares how soon they may be taken out of it. HOME ATTRACTIONS AND AMUSEMENTS. BY REV. JAMES H. POTTS, D. D. If those who are the enemies of innocent amusement had the direction of the world, they would take away spring and youth, the former from the year, the latter from human life. Balzac. HERE should be a home for everybody, a home where the dearest treasures of life can be gathered, the purest pleasures [' enjoyed, the richest comforts and conveniences pre- served, and where God can smile benignly upon adoring hearts and give prosperity and faithfulness, peace and gladness. "Who has not felt how sadly sweet The dream of home, the dream of home, Steals o'er the heart too soon to fleet, When far o'er land or sea we roam ? Sunlight more soft may o'er us fall, To greener shores our bark may come; But far more bright, more dear than all, That dream of home, that dream of home. 206 REV. JAS. H. POTTS, D. D. HOME ATTRACTIONS AND AMUSEMENTS. 207 The dream of home is universal. Those who have no home, dream of having one sometime, and those who have only poor ones, perpetually dream of better. The heart wants a home. People who hang about hotels and boarding- houses, living nomadic lives, tucked up in trunks and band- boxes, are not satisfied, or, if they are, it is generally a proof that they are peculiarly fond of idleness and flirtation. Home should be attractive. It should be the center around which the hidden life keeps turning. The dear word ought to be indelibly written on the heart. So sweet, so felicitous, so charming, ought all its relations, associations and memories to be, that the heart can never leave it, or leaving, never cease pining to return. The best home attraction to begin with is an agreeable wedded companion. Pity the man or woman who is tied up to an uncongenial mate. Such a person never will have a home. He or she may own a dwelling, well finished and well furnished, but it will not be home. Home is where the heart is. Where love is not, the heart is not. Where there is no respect, there can be no love. Without loving inmates, no house is a home. Nearly as unfortunate is a married pair, however loving, either of whom is incompetent to manage a home. And, as the affairs of our American homes are generally committed to the wife, we are, of course, prepared to commiserate that husband whose wife is a general know-nothing, a fuss-feather, a slattern, or a money-scatterer. Love for such a woman will die out as sure as the fates. Then, if home is not hell, it is, at least, the ante-chamber, and no number of attractions can counterbalance the effect of this vital evil. An intelligent, loving, devoted wife, beautiful in graces of character, charming in domestic ways, reigning a queen in the realm of home, rswaying by purest love the hearts that are knitted to hers 208 SIGNAL LIGHTS. such a wife will make a home anywhere, in the desert, in the wilderness, or in the thick and din of city life. The heart of the husband doth safely trust in her. She holds him by the silken cords of love wherever he goes. Like Tom Moore, in his wanderings, he is compelled to sing: " Her last words at parting, how can I forget ? Deep treasured through life, in my heart they shall stay ; Like music, whose charm in the soul lingers yet, When the sounds from the ear have long melted away. Let Fortune assail me, her threat'nings are vain ; Those still-breathing words shall my talisman be ' Remember, in absence, in sorrow, and pain, There's one heart unchanging, that beats but for thee.' "From desert's sweet well though the pilgrim must hie, Never more of that fresh-springing fountain to taste, He hath still of its bright drops a treasured supply, Whose sweetness lends life to his lips through the waste. So, dark as my fate is still doomed to remain, These words shall my well in the wilderness be ' Remember, in absence, in sorrow, and pain, There's one heart unchanging that beats but for thee.' " Beautiful and dutiful children are another home charm. Noble-minded parents find in their children an attraction superior to anything else in this world. What a joy to the mother is a splendid baby boy! What a delight to the father is a spirited baby girl ! And what a source of comfort to both are the confiding and innocent little prattlers, learning wisdqm every day and taking on their own individuality as the years of wedded life roll on! Many a father has been saved from temptation by the thought of his innocent child. Many a mother has been spurred to nobler womanhood by the sense of the responsibility which motherhood brings. He is a base man, she a worthless woman, in whose hearts have not been kindled warmer, truer, sweeter, and purer senti- HOME A TTRACTIONS AND AMUSEMENTS. 209 ments, by the presence of those blessed little ministers which ought everywhere to be the fruit and crown of domestic life. And surely, to make home a happy place for the children, should be the study of all parents. There are moments in child life when a single word of cheer, a look of approval, a simple song, may make an impression that will last forever. In the very zenith of his fame, Dr. J. G. Holland confessed a charm upon his soul from the recollections of his boyhood felicities. He said: "The pleasant converse of the fireside, the simple songs of home, the words of encouragement as I bend over my school tasks, the kiss, as I lie down to rest, the patient bearing with the freaks of my restless nature, the gentle counsels mingled with reproofs and approvals, the sym- pathy that meets and assuages every sorrow and sweetens every little success, all these return to me amid the responsi- bilities which press upon me now, and I feel as if I had once lived in heaven and, straying, had lost my way." Yet Dr. Holland here specifies nothing beyond what should charac- terize the language and bearing of every parent toward the child, yea, of all inmates of the home toward one another. Wear a bright face at home. If you must frown anywhere, frown in your office when nobody is in. Let your children see the sunshine play on your countenance. Make them glee- ful and jubilant. By promoting their jocularity, you help your own. Rev. Philip Henry, eminent for piety and good sense, used to say to his children: "Please God and please yourselves, and you shall never displease me." Why was not that a sensible view? A lively, active, mirthful home life is generally a healthful life. " Laugh and grow fat," is the trite expression of popular belief in the connection betwixt cheerfulness and good digestion. Don't get blue, or if you do, charm it away with a merry heart. Seek cheerful and happy company. Three or four jolly old friends, together can eat a 14 210 SIGNAL LIGHTS. hearty meal, crack their jokes, laugh for an hour, and enjoy perfect digestion; while the morose, business-pushing man bolts his food in silence, even in the presence of his family, and rushes to his desk to writhe in dyspeptic pains and grow haggard and lean as his uncomfortable ' existence wears on. Of what use is such a life? He who lives it does not enjoy it, and they who witness it disapprove of it. Dr. Greene, in his "Problem of Health," says that there is mot the remotest, corner or little inlet of the minutest blood-vessel of the human body that does not feel some wavelet from the convulsion occasioned by good, hearty laughter. The life principle, or the central man, is shaken to the innermost depths, sending new tides of life and strength to the surface, thus materially tending to insure good health to the persons who indulge therein. The blood moves more rapidly, and conveys a dif- ferent impression to all the organs of the body, as it visits them on that particular mystic journey when a man is laughing, from what it does at other times. For this reason, every good, Hearty laugh in which a person indulges, tends to lengthen his life, conveying, as it does, a new and distinct stimulus to the vital force. Doubtless, the time will come when physicians, conceding more importance than they now do to the influence of the mind upon the vital forces of the body, will make their prescriptions more with reference to the mind, and less to drugs for the body, and will, in so doing, find the most effective method of producing the most required effects upon the patient. Nothing is too good for the home, whereas some people seem to imagine nothing is too poor. They eat and wear what they can not sell, and buy only that which can be had for nothing, or next to nothing, no matter how illy adapted to their wants. We speak not now of the dependent classes. Poverty compels many families to live as they can, not as they HOME A TTRA C TIONS AND AMU SEMEN TS. 211 would. Some even require our charities, not our criticism. Only pity have we for those who are destitute in spite of themselves, especially when they are clean and cheerful, as all may be. Contempt on the unclean slattern or sloven, whether man, woman or child. The homes of such are well described in the following pen picture: A slovenly dress, a shabby pate, The fence is down, a broken gate; Pigs in the garden, weeds very high, Children unwashed, no meat to fry; An empty barn, not a spear of hay, Cows in the clover, horse run away, Pipes and tobacco, whiskey, neglect, Drag in their train, as all might expect, All sorts of trouble to fret away life, But, worst of all, an unhappy wife. Poverty is not necessarily a bar to home attractions. These attractions are of various grades, each grade suited to homes of its kind. Some log houses in the wilderness have more and better attractions for their inmates than many mansions in metropolitan cities have for theirs. There are home charms which can not be purchased with money, nor torn away by penury. Graces of the heart, adornments of the character, virtues of the life, are priceless gems as often found in humble cottages as in princely palaces. So there are devices of art, whether the art be rude or refined, a thousand times more attractive to those who construct them, and perhaps to the guests who observe and use them, than the rarest ornaments and furnishings which fabulous wealth from the richest markets can command. A rustic swing or couch or table or chair; a home-made doll or dress or sled or rocking-horse, may serve its purpose better in the home of the poor than the fancy furniture, glittering toys and antique ornaments, in 212 SIGNAL LIGHTS. the homes of the rich. A devoted parent, ordinarily gifted with inventive genius, can supply home with incidental attractions, no matter how light the purse. Many of the novelties constructed in the home work-shop by the father for his children, or by an elder brother for the family group, become priceless treasures as mementoes when childhood days are numbered. It is the bane of modern domestic life that all our ideas of attraction and beauty concentrate in one word, cost. Everything is elegant that costs much. " Give me money," says the wife, " and I will give existence to your ideal home. Place the means in my hand, and your house shall not annoy your taste, nor waste your time." "But," as Emerson says, " that is a very inglorious solution to the prob- lem, and therefore no solution. Give us wealth. You ask too much. Few have wealth; but all must have a home. Men are not born rich; and in getting wealth, the man is generally sacrificed, and often is sacrificed without acquiring wealth at last. * * * * * It is better to say, l Give us your labor and the household begins.' A house should bear witness, in all its economy, that human culture is the end to which it is built and garnished. It stands there under the sun and moon, to ends analogous and not less noble than theirs. It is not for festivity, it is not for sleep: but the pine and the oak shall gladly descend from the mountains, to uphold the roof of men as faithful and necessary as themselves; to be the shelter, always open to good and true persons; a hall which shines with sincerity, brows ever tranquil, and a demeanor impossible to discojicert, whose inmates know what they want ; who do not ask your house how theirs shall be kept. They have their aims; they can not pause for trifles. The diet of the house does not create its order, but knowledge, character, action, absorb so much of life and yield so much entertainment that the refectory has ceased to be so curiously HOME ATTRACTIONS AND AMUSEMENTS. 213 studied. * * * * * Honor to the house where they are simple to the verge of hardship, so that there the intellect is awake and reads the laws of the universe, the soul worships truth and love, honor and courtesy flow into all its deeds." Make the attractions of your home such as will attract and not repel. Buy or make such furniture as will bear usage. So arrange the articles in your rooms that guests will feel at home in spite of themselves. " The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it. There is no event greater in the life than the appearance of new persons about our hearth, except it be the progress of the character which draws them. The great man is he who can call together the most select company when it pleases him." Provide sensible attractions for your house. Consider your circumstances. Go not beyond your means. Stop not short of your real ability. Remember that " whatever brings the dweller into a finer life, whatever educates his eye or ear or hand, whatever purifies and enlays him, may well find place in the home. And yet, let him not think that a property in beautiful objects is neces- sary to his apprehension of them, and seek to turn his house into a museum. Rather let the noble practice of the Greeks find place in our society, and let all the creations of the plastic arts be collected with care in galleries, by the piety and taste of the people, and yielded as freely as the sunlight to all. Meantime, be it remembered, we are artists ourselves, and competitors, each one, with Phidias and Raphael in the produc- tion of what is graceful or grand. The fountain of beauty is the heart, and every generous thought illustrates the walls of your chamber. Why should we owe our powers of attracting our friends to pictures and vases, to cameos and architecture? Why should we convert ourselves into showmen and append- ages to our fine houses and works of art? If by love and nobleness we take up into ourselves the beauty we admire, 214 SIGNAL LIGHTS. we shall spend it again on all around us. The man, the woman, needs not the embellishment of canvas and marble, whose every act is a subject for the sculptor, and to whose eyes the gods and nymphs never appear ancient, for they know by heart the whole instinct of majesty." Yet we would not undervalue the line instruction and not inconsiderable satisfaction which statues, pictures and other ornaments give. Obtain them if you can. Hang them upon the walls. Set them in the niches. Strew them upon the mantels. Cover the tables with them. Many guests will count your house a paradise if allowed free access to numberless curiosities. Above all things, make a careful selection of books. Get those best suited, to your time and taste for reading. Use them yourself. Master their contents. Be able, if need be, to call attention to the most salient points, and to explain, when asked, difficult pas- sages. Have " light reading " that is pure and wholesome, and solid reading that is bright and helpful. Don't be afraid of buying too many books; your only danger is in making a poor selection. Pure books of any degree of interest are better than none at all. If you live on a farm and distant from literary markets, lay by in store your books for entertainment during the long winter evenings. Farmers are always provident enough in respect to their bodies. They fill their granaries and cellars with poduce and provisions. But it is to be feared that many of them are not equally careful to provide for the wants of the mind. "It is certainly better," tritely remarks the Herald and Presbyter, "to have some definite aim for leisure hours of the long winter evenings, than to spend them idly about the fireside. Those who have borne the heat and burden of the summer days may have some excuse for not undertaking severe intellectual work during the winter, but there are other HOME A TTR ACTIONS AND AMUSEMENTS. 215 members of the family who may engage in such exercise. But even the hard-working farmers who have no time to devote to books or papers during the greater part of the year, must feel the need of replenishing their stock of ideas, and getting even with the world in some manner on the lines of its .intellectual advancement. A few sound and useful books may be read during the winter, if nothing more history, biography, travel, or some popular treatise on a branch of natural history. Much may be gained in every way, and many delightful hours passed, by having some member of the family circle read aloud. All may enjoy a good book then by only taking the trouble to listen. Such reading always furn- ishes fruitful topics for conversation, and stimulates thought and research. It requires no great effort to take up some subject, like that of the United States history for example, and devote an hour or more to it every evening all winter, in read- ings and discussions. Or some subject directly connected with farm work and agriculture may be taken up and studied and talked over. The history and origin of plants, the simpler principles of botany, zoology, geology and natural philosophy are among the topics to be suggested. Life on the farm would lose half the monotony and dulness of which many, and especially young people, complain, if there were a more general understanding of the wonderful processes of nature, and the history of common things that are continually under observation. The hard, wearying toil of the farm need not necessarily rob any man of all the pleasures of superior knowl- edge. It is always best to have something good and useful to think about while the hands are employed. More study and reading of good books on the farm would, after a while, drive out the pestilent gossip and petty backbiting, the bane of so many country neighborhoods." 216 SIGNAL LIGHTS. Give attention also to music, provided there is any music in you. " Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast," only when it is good. Poor music would not soothe the tamest man. Cultivate your musical talent for all it is worth, and if it does not prove to be worth much, don't try to make much of it. What a mistake it is to spend money for pianos, organs, and such like, when neither husband, wife, parent, child, friend nor lover can ever hope to play a tune acceptably, and when the money is urgently needed for practical uses. Such musical instruments are not attractive. They are monu- ments to the folly of their owners, and would better be dis- placed by something promotive of comfort and cheer. Look to the immediate out-door surroundings of your home. Plant the best fruit trees. Trim the shade trees artistically. Root out the briers. Cut down the weeds. Cultivate pleasant lawns. Keep the grass trimmed. If you must enclose your house with a fence, keep it beautiful; keep it well painted. Construct play-houses somewhere for the little girls. Make room for the boys to run and jump and turn somersaults. Set a pattern to them. If too old and stiff or lazy to do this, pause a moment, at least, and witness their efforts. See that they have no occasion to lament the paucity of sports and pastimes under and around the old home roof. Count de Lesseps, the great canal maker, at the age of eighty, was a wonderful example of paternal zest and hilarity. With his family of twelve children, he would roam in the park, entertaining the oldest as well as the youngest with delightful conversation, pastime , and buoyant exercise. A traveler says of him : " It is a fine sight to see him in the park with his family. When the children are drawn up in line, you notice that their sizes are mathematically graduated. Their father intends that, if possible, they shall live to as good and HOME ATTRACTIONS AND AMUSEMENTS. 217 vigorous an old age as he enjoys. He inures them to hardship. In summer time he makes them run barefooted, bareheaded, barelegged, and, in fact, as nearly naked as the usages of civil- ization allow. And, at his country home, he has fenced in a play ground for them in which they spend an hour or two daily, in the original garb of Adam and Eve. As a result, their skins are as tough and healthy as that of an Indian. They never catch cold. They are never sick. In these respects, they differ much from most French children, who, as a rule, are what the English call ' coddled ' too much." The example of De Lesseps may not be, in all respects, suitable for us to follow, but the spirit of it is just the thing. Go in for lively times with your children. Praise them when they succeed well at their tasks. Pet them. Win their confidence and love. Interest yourself in what interests them rabbits, pigeons, dogs, innocent games. Then tr-y to interest them in higher things. Get them to help you in home decorations, office duties and routine work. Show them, in the most agreeable way, how you earn your living and their living too. Don't try to make old folks of young children, but do endeavor to prepare them for noble manhood or woman- hood. Talk with them much. Talk sensibly. Answer their questions. Have them answer yours. Draw them out. Make them wise, as soon as they need such wisdom, at every vital point of life. Don't leave them to gain knowledge from vicious associates. Keep them at home evenings. Amuse them, or let them amuse themselves. Never mind if they do scatter things books, pictures, toys and garments. Don't chide them too much for making a noise. Let the boys whistle. Let the girls laugh and sing. There are times when it is almost cruel to repress the bounding impulses of childhood and youth. There are times when it is dangerous to do so. " We would stand aghast," says one writer, " if we could have 218 SIGNAL LIGHTS. a vision of the young men gone to utter destruction, for the very reason that having cold, disagreeable, dull, stiff firesides at home, they sought amusement elsewhere." In his city ballad, " The Boy Convict's Story," the poet, Will Carleton, graphically portrays a graceless youth, in the hands of a sheriff, on his way to prison. The boy begs leave to occupy a seat in the end of the car because he feels " sensi- tive-like among strangers," and he is there permitted to unbosom himself to the official. He speaks of his former good prospects, his acquaintance with the Bible, his father's house, his free access to the pantry, his tidy bed-room, his decent apparel, and all that, but goes on to picture his home as a dreary place, cold and dark and utterly destitute of innocent attractions for a boyish heart. Then, as if in answer to the sheriff's questions, he goes on to say: "And hadn't I a father and mother? O, yes! just as good as they make. Too good, I have often suspected (though may be that last's a mistake). But they'd travelled so long and so steady the way to Per- fection's abode, They hadn't any feelings for fellows who could not, as yet, find the road; And so, till some far advanced mile-post on goodness's pike I could win, They thought of me, not as their own child, but as one of the children of sin. And hadn't I brothers and sisters? Oh, yes! till they somewhat had grown; Then, shivering, they went off and left me to stand the cold weather alone. For I had the luck to be youngest the last on the family page, The one to prop up the old roof-tree the staff of my parent's old age; Who well understood all the uses to which a mere staff is applied; They used me whenever convenient then carelessly threw me aside! HUME A TTRA C T/OJVS A ND A M U SEMEN TS. 219 And hadn't I any associates? Oh, yes ! I had friends more or less, But seldom I asked them to visit our house with the slightest success; Whenever the project was mentioned, they'd somehow look blue-like and chill, And mention another engagement they felt it their duty to fill ; For now I am only a convict, there's no harm in telling the truth My home was a fearful wet blanket to blood that was seasoned with youth. Not one blessed thing that was cheerful; no festivals, frolics or games ; No novels of any description 'twas wicked to mention their names! My story-books suddenly vanished, my checker-boards never would keep, No newspaper came through our doorway, unless it was first put to sleep! And as for love well, that old song, sir, is very melodious and fine, With ' No place like home ' in the chorus I hope there aint many like mine! And so, soon my body got hating a place which my soul couldn't abide, And pleasure was all the time smiling and motioning me to her side; And when I start out on a journey, I'm likely to go it by leaps, For good or for bad, I'm no half-way I'm one or the other for keeps. My wild oats flew thicker and faster I reaped the same crop that I sowed, And now I am going to market I'm taking it over the road ! Yes, it grieved my good father and mother to see me go sadly astray, They deeply regretted my downfall in a strictly respectable way; 220 SIGNAL LIGHTS. They gave me some more admonition, and sent me off full of advice, And wondered to see such a villain from parents so good and precise. Indeed, I have often conjectured, when full of neglect and its smarts, I must have been left on the door-step of their uncongenial hearts! My home in the prison is waiting it opens up clear to my sight \ Hard work and no pay-day a-coming, a close cell to sleep in at night. And then I must lie sad and lonesome, with more tribulation than rest, And wake in the morning with sorrow sharp sticking like steel in my breast ; But may be the strain and the trouble won't quite so much o'er me prevail, As 'twould be to some one who wasn't brought up in a kind of a jail. You've got a good home, Mr. Sheriff, with everything cosy and nice, And 'tisn't for a wrist-shackled convict to offer you words of advice; But this I must say, of all places your children may visit or call, Make HOME the most pleasant and happy the sweetest and best of them all; For the Devil won't offer a dollar to have his world-chances improved, When Home is turned into a side-show, with half the attractions removed ! Don't think I'm too bitter, good Sheriff I like you: you've been very good ; I'm ever and ever so grateful would pay it all back if I could. I didn't mean to slander my parents I've nothing against their good name, And as for my unrighteous actions, it's mostly myself that's to blame; Still, if Fd had a home But the prison is only one station ahead I'm done, Mr. Sheriff ; forget me, but don't forget what I have said !" HOME ATTRACTIONS AND AMUSEMENTS. 221 To this it may be objected that the picture is overdrawn; that the real danger in our domestic life, as a people, lies not in too rigid asceticism, but in too indulgent liberalism.. The immense circulation which children's story papers, for instance, have attained within six or eight years, is proof that few homes are barred against this sort of literature, and, as for " newspapers, festivals, frolics, and games," there is almost no end to them. In this respect, society has undergone a great change of sentiment within thirty or forty years. The recreations and pastimes which once were denounced, are now welcomed and courted. At the same time, the diversions of the last generation have passed out of date. With the intro- duction of croquet, lawn tennis, and other such plays, the old- fashioned spelling school, husking bee, " raisings," paring bees, and hard-cider, shag-bark-hickory-nut parties took their exit. Occasionally we hear a sigh for their return, as Mr. Yates, in his Pioneer Ballad, makes the "old man" sing: " Though I am old, dear Nancy, I'd like once more to see, And join in the noisy frolic of the merry huskin' bee. I got the ' red ear' often, from many a pretty girl, Because I slyly stole a kiss, or pulled an auburn curl. Then came the apple parin', round hearthstones warm and bright, Where, with our songs and stories, we lingered half the night; The lassies, with long parin's and cheeks as red as flame, Would toss them o'er their shoulders, to spell their lover's name. Ah! Those were days of happiness, as well as days of toil, At eve we drove our cares away, by day we tilled the soil: The innocent amusements of fifty years ago, Gave girls and boys the sparklin' eye, and set their cheeks aglow." In this country, there is a tendency toward extremes in everything, and some think we are going too far in the matter of amusements. The national game of base-ball, for 222 SIGNAL LIGHTS. instance, is becoming little else than a national nuisance, asso- ciated, as it is, with expensive training and travel, violent exertions and accidents, betting, gambling, drinking and other unseemly things. Equally objectionable, on account of their surroundings and associations as well as their practical influ- ences, are the public dance, theatres, regattas, shooting tour- naments, and other similar sports. Even the splendid exercise of walking has been abused for mercenary purposes, and the Christian duty of fasting has been turned into disgusting exhi- bitions for selfish and sordid ends. Nevertheless, innocent recreations, especially in the home, are rightly defended and justly popular. We know not who has more discreetly voiced the best religious sentiment than the Rev. Theodore L. Cuyler, D. D., whose piety and orthodoxy can not be ques- tioned. " Let it be understood," he says, " at the outset that the law of Christianity is an not an iron-clad asceticism. God never made man to be a monk, or this bright world to be a monastery. If life has its times to weep, so hath it times to laugh. Our blessed Lord more than once shed tears; but may he not have often smiled, or even indulged in the good old Christian liberty of laughter? Holiness signifies whole- ness, -wholth, health; and health breeds innocent mirth. If mirth may be innocent, recreation is not only innocent, it is indispensable. Martin Luther relieves his stern polemics with the Pope by cheerful songs at the fireside and by decorating Christmas trees for the children; old Lyman Beecher lets off the steam, after an evening's work at revival preaching, by capering to the music of his violin, until his prudent spouse protests against his saltatory exercises, lest he wear out his home-knit stockings; Gladstone, the king of living statesmen, recreates with his axe; Spurgeon, the king of living preachers, recreates with his game of bowls; the saintly McCheyne, of Scotland, with his gymnastic poles and bars. All these were HOME ATTRACTIONS AND AMUSEMENTS. 223 men; not angels. God has ordained that men should play, as well as labor. The friction of the care and toil requires this lubrication. Childhood is a type of wholesome piety, both from its fund of faith and its fund of innocent playfulness. It is a true saying that ' no creature lives which must not work and may not play.' What is recreation ? We reply : everything that re-creates what is lost by life's daily frictions and fatigues. Whatever makes the body healthier, the mind clearer, and the immortal powers more vigorous, is Christian recreation. To deny our- selves such wholesome reanimations may be hazardous folly; but to restrain others from them is an infringement upon Chistian liberty. The rights of Christian conscience are sacred here, as elsewhere; but conscience requires solid prin- ciples of truth for its guidance. We lay down, then, this principle, that whatever tends to improve the body and mind is right; whatever endangers the moral health and inflames the evil passions is wrong. The one strengthens ; the other only stimulates and often poisons. The one refreshes; the other ruins." And some of our lead- ing divines even go farther than to assert the propriety and rightfulness of home amusements ; they take up the aggressive side, and insist on parental attention to the wants of children in this particular. Thus Rev. Dr. Arthur Edwards, in a recent issue of the Northwestern Christian Advocate, came out in strong language, favoring ample substitution for every game and festival discriminated against. "If any subject," said he, " is written and preached and argued quite to death, it is the 'amusement question.' Lame men declaim against dancing; those who cannot correctly define ' fiction ' cry out against 'the novel'; the rinkns condemned by men who can not stand upon skates; theatre-going is outlawed by some who never read a Shakespearean play, and cards are pounded by some 224 SIGNAL LIGHTS. injudicious persons who do not discriminate between an inno- cent ' game of authors ' and euchre, or croquet and billiards. The intention is all right, but many methods in this warfare are all wrong. Those who condemn all fiction have no right to expect a hearing. Others, who castigate young people because they seek amusement of some kind, make the problem all the more complicated by unwise and undiscriminating opposition. A boy or girl, threatened by any real evil on the amusement question, deserves the most kindly, patient, con- siderate, loving treatment. The tendency among the young to assemble for entertainment is as natural and right as for the old to assemble for prayer. When this tendency shows itself, the church and home need their longest-headed and biggest-hearted generals to guide the youngsters aright. Never try to assassinate the youngsters' love and desire for play. Let them frolic, and then see to it that the frolicsome youngsters are guided into innocent fun. If you do not want damaging freshets of aggregated tendency in wrong directions, see to it that you dig legitimate channels in which those young spirits can flow. Remember that a bit of industrious work to provide 'substitutes' will do more to keep things right than can thirty sermons, forty lectures, and fifty scoldings. When you take away a bad book, you are in debt to the boy until you give him a safe book which is just as interesting as the one you took. If you make war on an unsafe party, go right along and plan a safe party. If you defeat a social dance, you are under bonds to organize some substitute that will make the boys and girls glad you spoiled their original programme. Substitution, substitution, substitution points out the golden path to safety and solves the knotty problem. Public discus- sion has its place when public opinion is divided, but wise, calm, loving, home administration is the real point of power. Some dear, stern, unsympathetic, repelling saints do downright HOME ATTRACTIONS AND AMUSEMENTS. 225 harm when they rail at the young without stint and never lift a finger to brighten a child's life. Such people actually sug- gest evil, when they incite youngsters to plan something that will make such uninfluential saints scold. We have known boys to conspire to do something to horrify 'Uncle Acid,' or 'Aunty Pickle.' Do you plan to make the life of the young- sters brighter? If you do, you may find that you have taken a long step toward attracting them into Christ's church." 15 THE VALUE OF THE CULTIVATION OF THE ENNOBLING INFLUENCE OF SELF-RESPECT. A. R, TA YLOR, M. A. teaching is, "Love thy neighbor as thyself." Here lies the key to all good action, to all profitable intercourse. The meas- ure of love for our fellows is love for self. This is the least we are ^permitted to give. The patience, the charity, the service due our neighbor, is thus easily determined. Whatever one would do for himself, he should be willing to do for his neighbor, not for the next-door resident, but for the man who is needing help. The Master does not condemn self-love, but simply asks that the same respect, the same love, which one cherishes for himself be given to his neighbor also. Now, if self-love or self-respect be small, how little of glory would there be in the Christian religion, how little would it accom- plish for mankind. That natural, universal principle which moves us in seeking comfort, happiness, education, wealth, position, is made the line by which we may ascertain our duties to our fellows. Self-respect is not exactly self-love, but very akin to it. Self-love, inordinately developed, becomes selfishness, and self 226 A. R. TAYLOR, M. A. SELF-RESPECT. 227 ishness is the mother of self-indulgence. But self-love mani- fests itself thus only when the love for mankind is not thus correspondingly developed. Respect precedes love. It is hardly possible to love without respecting. Yet respect may exist without love. The maiden says, and may say truly: "I respect you, Mr. Jones, but I can not love you." Mr. Jones, though a very ordinary man, knows what that means. A says: "I know B is a good man. I respect him, but I have no love for him." C says: "I know my obligation to D is great, but I do not even respect him; how then can I love him?" Even the filial spirit sometimes dies out as one loses respect for a parent. What is it to respect another? It is to honor him, to esteem him worthy of favor, to have regard for him, to have consid- eration for his feelings, his opinions, his age, his idiosyncrasies. We respect a judge when we have due regard for his decisions, a leader when we obey his commands, a neighbor when we recognize his rights. We may respect the office and yet have little regard for the man who occupies it; may respect one simply for his discoveries, his inventions, his genius, his ser- vice to his country. When, however, self is the object of the respect, it is impossible to lose sight of the whole of one's life and character. Memory, judgment and consciousness are too faithful to permit a partial view. In spite of all that can be done, too often some " damned spot will npt out " and self- respect becomes a loathing. We know ourselves thoroughly, our thoughts, our desires, our envyings, temptations, ambi- tions, though we know very little of others. Perhaps 'tis well! Byron protests against lifting the veil from off our fellows, for it is best to remain ignorant of "The hell that's there." Frankly, is he not a rare man who could respect and love 228 SIGNAL LIGHTS. and confide in a neighbor, did he know that he possessed such a history as his own self? The importance of intelligent moral training from earliest childhood becomes alarming. Though one may carry his own secrets through life, though mother, sister, wife be blissfully ignorant of them all, how surely do they return in hours of triumph to dim its brightest glories, in hours of devotion to disturb its most hallowed reveries ! That only obtains true respect and genuine homage which has the semblance of virtue. Virtue only retains such respect. This is true of self as well as of others. Few men become so degraded that they do not have some regard for that which they conceive to be pure and hoi} 7 . The selfish boor becomes generous and tender to the" mute appeals of the blue-eyed babe. The coarse jester plays not with the name of a sainted mother. The heartless libertine trembles before the indig- nant remonstrance of innocent beauty. It is equally true that few become so dead to the perception of the hideousness of sin that they really respect it, even though it welcomes them to gilded palaces and sumptuous feasts. The wild mobs that sometimes assume to vindicate the majesty of the law are not composed entirely of the most immaculate of citizens. It is now well recognized that the desire for the esteem of our fellows is natural and commendable. It is, however, like all other desires, liable to gross abuse. It may become an absorbing passion, and every noble sentiment may be throttled in the effort for its gratification; and yet, it may be the means by which one may be kept in the paths of probity and virtue. The desire brings true happiness only when the consciousness of merit is well defined, and the applause of the multitude becomes sweet music only when the highest tribunal, the human conscience, joins in full accord. Conscience, then, is the arbiter, and self-respect is based upon its judgments. SELF-RESPECT. 229 Though friends may misinterpret, and confidence be wanting, a sweet, an abiding solace supports him whose self-respect remains. Given, powers like unto God, the great universe of matter and of truth at his service, heirship to immortality. This is man, and this is why " Thou art mindful of him." Why should he not respect himself? In him is unlimited possibility, empire, dominion. Why should he repress and contemn his longings for discovery, for development, for the realization of the beautiful, the true and the good? Why should he, a veri- table ingrate, abuse himself and curse the day that gave him life? His respect for the gift as well as for the Giver is shown by his treatment of it. A man who deliberately burns his own home or squanders all of his property is said to be insane, but what must be true of him who destroys that most precious of all possessions his own soul? This phase of self-respect regard for self as constituted by nature lies at the base of all laudable endeavor. " For what I am God is responsible; for what I shall be I am responsible " is full of fruitful sugges- tions on both phases of the subject. Everybody ought to understand that, and, when understood, its truth is incontro- vertible. If one have talent, he is responsible for its use; he ought to be thankful for it, and seek every means for its culti- vation. It is only in this way that he can show his apprecia- tion of it or gain any profit from it. Without a past, but equipped for a future, the child soon begins to make history. His thoughts, his acts become a part of himself, and these develop that aggregate of attributes which is called character. It is evident that the higher the regard for the mind upon which the character is to stamp itself, the greater will be the solicitude for wise thinking and wise acting. How important, then, the knowledge of one's self even at a very early age. Good old Samuel Smiles says: " Man cannot aspire, it he look down. If he will rise, he must .230 SIGNAL LIGHTS. look up. Self-respect is the noblest garment with which a man may clothe himself. The most elevating feeling with which the mind can be inspired. This sentiment, carried into daily life, will be found at the root of all the virtues clean- liness, sobriety, chastity, morals, religion." He quotes Mill as saying " that the pious and just honoring of ourselves may be thought the radical moisture and -fountain-head from which every laudable and worthy enterprise issues forth." " Honor the soul," says Plato, " and the best way to honor it is to make it better. The worst penalty for evil doing is to grow up into the likeness of the bad; for each man's soul changes according to the nature of his deeds for better or for worse." A German writer says there is nothing of absolute value except the will directed by the right. So firmly is this im- planted in the human heart, in whatever way it may find expression, that such actions always command respect. The honest man applies the same criteria to himself. Then, in self-culture, is not the way plain? If virtue is worth anything in thy neighbor, is it not worth more in thee? If charity becometh thy companion, is it any the less ornamental to thy- self? If patience crowneth thy mother's virtues, doth it detract from thine own ? If manly courage in thy friend awaken thine admiration, will it do less for thine own manhood? Again, if falsehood debase thy neighbor in thine eyes, will it make thyself more desirable? If passion bring shame to thine enemy, will it not also be unseemly in thyself? If greed manifest itself so notoriously in thy grocer, will it be more attractive in thyself? No, no ! Whatsoever things are lovely in thy neighbor would also be lovely in thine own nature. Those things which make thee respect thy neighbor, and those only, as thou knowest full well, will permit thee to respect thyself. This difference appears: though thou mayest mourn for thy neighbor and withdraw thy respect, his waywardness does not make thee SELF-RESPECT. 231 altogether unhappy, but the contemplation of thine own short- comings may both destroy thy self-respect and make thee inexpressibly miserable. Such a punishment as this, the loss of self-respect is a great and may be an irreparable misfortune. A happy relief may indeed come again and again on an appeal unto the rectitude of thine intentions, but it is dangerous to rely upon it. One who loses self-respect will soon lose the respect of his fellows. The story betrays itself in the expression of the eye, in the coun- tenance, in the manners. Sooner or later it is read of many men. Think not that it can be hidden. If one have no regard for the furniture of his own home, he must not expect his neighbors to handle it carefully. If he does not hold the honor of his children in high esteem, he must not be surprised to find it lightly regarded by other people. If he dares nothing for his good name, he will not have one long. What more piti- able sight than that of the man who is totally dead to all sense of self-respect ; whose manners, dress, language, mien, all betoken utter abandon. To him, what mean the chaste perfume of the fragrant lily, the glad carols of spring-time's merry messengers, the tender tokens of loving friendship, the hallowed songs of sweet devotion? He is indifferent even to death itself! The man who acts from base motives soon imagines everybody else to be doing the same thing. Virtue silenced in himself, he responds not to its generous rhythm in others. A sham himself, all others are masked. Filthy within, as a Thersites he strives to befoul all his fellows. With the flight of confidence in self, has gone all trust in man- kind in general, and, frightened at his own conjurings, he lives, a friendless hermit in the midst of joyous laughter and generous cheer, a garrulous dyspeptic at boards groaning beneath the weight of steaming viands and smiling plenty. With self-respect, everything has gone, independence, ambi- 232 SIGNAL LIGHTS. tion, grateful tribute, sweet content, loving service. Have high regard, then, unto thy self-respect. Live thine ideal. Be what thou dost seem. In times of danger, be brave ; in temp- tatiqn, be incorruptible; in times of want, be generous; to the lowly, be gentle and courteous as well as to the more favored of earth. Build carefully, build well. The conquest of self is victory. Such victory is its own blessedest reward. Emer- son says: "Rectitude is a perpetual victory, celebrated not by cries of joy, but by serenity, which is joy fixed or habitual." Self-respect being the foundation for self-dependence, every grace should enter into self-culture. It begets stability of char- acter. The man who does not value his own powers, who has no regard for the sacred demands of his own better nature, for his own good name, will be driven about as the cork with which -yonder eddy sports. Unswerving regard for his own integrity, for his own happiness, for the right, makes him an ornament to society, an honor to his race, and an inspiration to a nobler manhood. The eyelashes stand as sen- tinels to guard the eye, so self-respect guards the soul. The best heritage to man is the inspiration to love virtue and to be virtuous. Cherish it as thy life! The perversion of self-respect is easily seen in obstinate adherence to a former view though now convinced of its error, to plans for pleasure despite the desires and inconvenience of others, in the attempt to avenge an injury, to resent a slight, in the acceptance of a challenge to fight a duel. All such procedures do violence to one's better nature and fill the mind with false ideals of manhood. They mislead, confuse, obscure. They defeat the end. Man must act from higher motives, if he attain a just claim to his own self-respect. To deserve well of thyself and of thy fellows, then, avoid every appearance of evil. Shun the lewd, the coarse, the envious, the contentious. Let the words of thy mouth, the desires of SELF-RESPECT. 233 thy heart, the thoughts of thy mind, be such as thou wouldst not blush to have thy mother know. Be manly, be industrious, be frugal, be truthful, be generous, be thoughtful, be coura- geous, be faithful, be devoted, BE! PRACTICAL LIFE. BY G. de LAZARRE, Ph. D., LL. D. OW trite is the saying, that man is the only reasoning, religious, and political animal, which, indeed, is very true potentially, rather than actually; for, since the days of our forefathers, more have acted without reason, religion or polity, 'than with them. Man, however, has been so much the sport of prejudice, of [custom and habit, so many opinions come to him with the hoary locks of time, or in the more capti- vating attire of novelty; and fashion is so lordly a prince, his mandates being practiced without any inquiry as to their reasonableness, that there are few who can endure to look upon the resplendent face of unveiled truth, and the many have, therefore, an unseemly way of con- sidering those as impertinent pretenders ar.d intruders upon their rights, who essay to rebuke their follies and to breathe 234 G. DE LAZARRE, PH. D., LL. D. PRACTICAL LIFE. 235 into the " torpid breast of daily life " their chiding counsels. And this is especially the case if the reproof be lengthened into essays or dissertations with few of those verdant spots by which they seek to release themselves from the cheerless and arid wastes of moral instruction. Some men fail in conversation, having neither ideas nor facts ; others, by force of memory alone, treasure up facts in great abundance, but still make a sorry display of them from the want of ideas ; while a third class live in regions of their own creation, spurn facts, and lose thereby the charms of illustra- tion and the logical force of induction. When individuals of these three classes happen to grow ambitious in conversation, observant philosophy could foretell, with almost unerring certainty, how the so-called argument would be conducted, and how brought to an end. Folly, wisdom, modesty, and abstraction are the character- istics which designate the four classes of silent men. In the first, one may perceive in his scrutinizing observations, when in society, a person almost inflexibly silent, wandering about the rooms, vacantly gazing upon the various objects of furniture, and sometimes intently staring on those engaged in animated discussions in which he could take no part, because he is under the influence of folly; not absolutely so by nature, but from the total absence of culture. In the second class, one may observe a person seated in an apparently moody silence for a while, absorbed by thoughts, then taking part in the conver- sation, speaking but little, but always strictly to the .purpose. He shows that he has read much, digested all, and seems free enough to speak when excited by the least hope of a fair exchange of marketable ideas. This person is, consequently, prudently tactiturn, and when lounging on a sofa, is apt to have one eye half closed, while the other is intent on all around him ; he mentally distilling the remarks of others, and never 236 SIGNAL LIGHTS. failing in due time and season to apply to useful purposes the essences thus extracted. In the third, one may observe that the modest person's silence originates in his own unjust estimate of his admirable powers and acquirements; for he has seen but little of society and, therefore, imagines that the world must be wiser than he will soon find it. In the fourth, a silent, but abstracted person, may be seen in company, but when aroused none can shed more true light upon the subject. He then becomes eloquent, animated and highly instructive. Had society in general the good sense to hunt up, in every circle, these four classes of silent men, and view them as they are, how much of the human mind might be developed; how many valuable elements might be rescued from comparative obscurity and inaction. All Christians, no doubt, have observed that Jesus' holy name sometimes embraces two systems of human conduct, very distinct in their origin and end; the one having heaven for its- author and its hope; the other born of earth worldly policy and aggrandizement for its single object. The Jesuits, with all their piety, their learning and refinement, thought earth worth winning as well as heaven, and con- trived a scheme of such matchless detail and complexity, as had well nigh proselyted all governments and all people to their political sway! Happily the year 1876 limited the speed of this powerful machine of proselytism. How often does heathen philosophy put us Christians to the blush; and the errors of our religious, moral and intellectual education make us trespass on rules held sacred by the pagan world ! There are men who can never say " no," who yet are as far from doing as if they had used, with emphasis, that significant particle. They will promise anything, be it by word or writ- ing; perhaps faithfully meant at the time, and always with an apparent intention of performance, and yet without the slightest PRACTICAL LIFE. 287 forethought as to their ability, and but little remorse at the consequences of the necessary or voluntary violation of their plighted faith. Many people in the world may be observed to have two faces as distinct as winter and summer; the one strictly domestic, the other equally public. At home they are usually as crabbed and morose as a surly winter sky, seldom extend- ing a civil word to any one ; out of humor with all when there is no stranger present, but bland as a summer's day when some one steps in, or they step out. This versatility and capacity for changing rapidly greatly surprise the household, to whom it is mainly visible, and teaches them deception, while it impressively instructs them also from the striking contrast in the color of civility and the fascinations of their parent's joyous, refined, apparently amiable, but hypocritical manner. The ways to poison our happiness are numberless, but none are so infallible as the habit of comparing, to our disparage- ment, the goods we have with those enjoyed by others. By this dangerous habit we place in ourselves a perennial source of evil and consequent unhappiness, and instead of prompt- ing ourselves to laudable exertions to realize our jealous wishes we gradually diminish the stock of our actual comforts. Would it not be wiser to contemplate the scale of human hap- piness from its nether point to the station we occupy, and gratefully to contrast our blessings with the miseries of others? How often does the restless course of a son who has nothing to lose involve a whole family in undistinguished ruin and unutterable grief! How often does the wild and unprincipled ambition of the partisan enrich him, while it poisons the very sources of national prosperity ! Those who act thus, whether in private or in public life, are often selfish and calculating. They bring the avalanche on others, but rest, themselves, in 238 SIGNAL LIGHTS. the strongest fortresses of security or, may be, they are crushed by the same ruin after they have lost all worth possessing. The graceful conferring of favors and the receiving of them in like manner, are among the strongest criterions of a pol- ished mind and a good heart. The " to know to do," in such matters, is everything; and if either be ill done, it is sure to cause unamiable feelings where, possibly, the best ought to have obtained. Some think that benefits are acceptable and gratefully received only so far as those obliged are capable of returning them, and that if this be exceeded, hatred is apt to be returned instead of thanks. This is true only under certain circumstances; for if the benefit be generously and gracefully conferred, the result is gratitude, and hatred can scarcely arise from the mere inability to disburden one's self of the obligation imposed. U A man of honor!" This is a phrase of most equivocal and even contradictory meaning, which, to explain and recon- cile, might swell this volume into a folio. There are, however, some curiosities about what is called honor that may be briefly noted. Fortunately for its admirers, the term has never yet borne the chains of a definition, its very vagueness constituting much of its efficiency for how often does it happen that if the word be conceded, insulted honor cares little for the thing! Religion is honor, but honor is not religion! Virtue is honor, but honor is not virtue! These paradoxes involve important distinctions, not always sufficiently made and regarded. Honor is sullied by a word, and vindicated by a murder ; honor is tarnished by an. accusation, and restored by an apology ; honor may strain at a gnat and swallow a camel ; honor, to the eye, may walk on stilts, when she is groveling in the mire. The expressive words, quackery, charlatanry, humbug, are PRACTICAL LIFE. 239 too narrow to embrace the comprehensive import of the art of puffing, which has become a science! It pervades every order and ramification in life ; eclipses or, rather, extinguishes all modest hopes; plants its foot upon silent merit; has a vocabulary of its own; perverts the meaning of well known words; abounds in expletives and in grandiloquent terms; extracts merit by a double distillation out of nothing; lavishes on the merest duties of life the most inordinate praise; vaunts the most ordinary successes as matters of pith and moment, meriting very special notice; and gives to men, events and things, a coloring which formerly belonged only to genius of the highest order, to phenomena of rare occurrence, and to things the most recherches. This is a crime against language, against the order of nature, against truth and against the well-being of society, and indicates a moral, religious, political and literary decadence much beyond what is generally suspected. "Politeness costs nothing, and may gain you many a pound, " was the amiable and practical saying of an accomplished, venerable and learned man. True politeness springs from the best feelings of our nature, from good associations, and mental cultivation; it lies not so much on the surface and exterior of manners, as in the thoughts and inner heart. But it must not be confounded with those arbitrary rules, sometimes ostentatiously practiced by certain persons, which separate those uninitiated by the accidents of birth and fortune nor yet with that ultra ease which banishes all the utilities, with the view of getting rid of what is called the artificial mannerism of the old school. Virtue, like precious odors, is most fragrant when incensed or crushed, for prosperity doth better discover a vice, but .adversity doth better discover virtue. There would be fewer vices, and faults of all kinds, if we 240 SIGNAL LIGHTS. had but time to think. When the mind, from any cause, is brought to contemplate itself, it is sure to grow wiser and better. In prosperity we are in full sail; the delights of the present moment, and the pressing anticipations of the future, occupy us too much to permit us to think deliberately of others, and perhaps even less of ourselves; but in adversity the mind is necessarily turned upon itself, and dwells more feelingly and soundly upon every duty and relation of life. Metaphysicians have been greatly puzzled by a certain anomalous principle which exists in our nature, the gratifi- cation often experienced when peacefully contemplating the sorrows and misfortunes of others! Man is, indeed, sufficiently selfish, but would feel only pain were he to contemplate a scene of sorrow, without curiosity and without hope; nor would he derive any satisfaction from contrasting his own security with the peril of those in misfortune, were he, at the same time, incurious or certain as to their unhappy fate. It is a practical thing, that other's sorrow may be the source of our pleasure. How often does the world perceive every virtue in those surrounded with palaces, paintings and perfumes, who, perhaps, only a few years before, were condemned, being then without any of these appliances ! And how it fails to see the qualities and value of those who, only a few months before, being surrounded with the above appliances, and now being without them, it considers unworthy of notice! We should not, therefore, value a man for what is merely about him, but for what is in him, without being influenced by his sur- roundings or his wealth. Nothing, to a generous mind, is more grateful than to yield commendation to the worthy ; but he who debases himself by seeking it, is not worthy at the time, however meritorious the particular object for which he ingeniously or importunately seeks for praise. PRACTICAL LIFE. 241 There is so much delicacy in the beauty of genuine modesty that, like an airy dream, it scarce reveals itself even to the imagination, and refuses to be described in words. Modesty is truly in the mind; is noiseless, unconscious, and would rather seek to hide her pain, when really felt, than to transmit it to those around her. The world is wonderfully oblivious of those whose necessi- ties force them into obscurity, and the noble hospitality, the public spirit, and the very name of those who once filled so large a space in the eye and in the adulation of society, are nearly forgotten, sometimes even more by their own than by the succeeding generation. The moral atmosphere, as well as the natural, has its poi- sons. If, in the latter, we find pestilences that waste the body with divers disgusting maladies, and level to corruption and dust the stoutest constitutions, so is the former oc- casionally visited by such hurricanes and tornadoes among the pursuits of life as play strange havoc with the heart and affections, dissolve their strongest ties, reveal the most selfish passions of our nature, reduce the proudest spirits, and often bring a moral ruin and death as swift and fatal as are the shafts of the plague. It is a curious and melancholy trait in our nature, that calamities, whether of body or of mind, when they threaten to become general, are so apt to bring into high relief the dark features of the heart, to indurate its affections, poison the sources of its sympathies, render us selfish and unfeeling and, sometimes, even to annihilate every vestige of those bright emanations breathed by his Maker into the soul of man to dis- tinguish him from all other living creatures. Respect for women is a strong criterion of the civilization of nations, cities, or individuals. Still, this remark leads to no very definite conclusion, unless the nature of the habitual 16 242 SIGNAL LIGHTS. respect paid on the one hand, and of the kind of civilization indicated on the other, be clearly ascertained. If, by respect, we mean attention, civilities, adulation, bows, and every kind- ness and indulgence, it is, indeed, evidence of one species of civilization, but none whatever of an elevated, intellectual and really refined state of society, for all these may exist in primi- tive and even plebeian communities and individuals. Nor, by civilization, as connected with this subject, is meant learning, science, and mere mental illumination, for all this may like- wise be present with few of those graces and genuine refine- ments which spring from well regulated and highly polished minds. This respect, then, should have its seat both in the mind and heart, and its steady object should be the elevation of woman to the high order of human intelligences ; and should by no means rest satisfied with those little courtesies, kindnesses and adulations, which have their source in the affections, and yet manifest little of that deference and true respect which centres in the mind, and places woman beside man, as his companion for consultation, his friend and his rational and intelligent sympathizer in every emergency. How often do fathers and brothers extend to their daughters and sisters their most unlimited affection and devoted tender- ness, and yet leave the important matter of early education, and a subsequent course of reading, to crude instructors, and to the fashionable, ephemeral, redundant issues of the press, which weekly load their centre-tables, shining in various colors, and often gorgeously decorated at more expense of labor in the artisan than in the author ! Would not respect for women, and its attendant civilization, be of a much superior order, were our daughters and sisters thoroughly educated; and were fathers, brothers and husbands hourly to consult the most suitable works to be read and studied by their daughters, sisters, or wives! Were this the case, the tone of society PRACTICAL LIFE. 243 would be greatly changed; and fathers and brothers, and husbands too, would manifest a respect truly worthy of being considered the test of civilization. If wave succeeded wave in the ocean of literature, as in that of the waters, the inquiry would be of little moment, as one wave would be about as powerful and as limpid as the other; but this is.far from being the case. The works under which the press has lately groaned are not unknown to us; and one might even admit that were a judicious course of reading selected from these materials alone, and strictly followed, many a bright author might repose in dusty undisturbedness. But the evil of which we complain results chiefly from the astonishing multiplicity of ephemeral, jejune and trashy productions which obtrude themselves hourly on the notice of the young, to the almost total exclusion of every sterling work of this century and those past. The love of ease seems to be the prominent characteristic of the age, and affects our manners, government, and even religion, in common with our studies, if studies they can be called which deal so largely with the day-fly volumes of present times. There are now so many books to be tested or swallowed, and so few to be chewed and digested; there is now so much reading by deputy, that studies have become mere amusements, leaving few durable and valuable impres- sions on the mind. Much time and many words are needed and used when the current of thought is turbid and sluggish ; but when the stream of thought is deep and limpid, the clear idea starts upon us as the goddess of wisdom from the head of the God of Olympus, instantly clothed in the perfect armor of a few expressive words. Tedious circumlocution, and forceful sententiousness, are the faithful indices of the inner man; the one a sure criterion of a dull and chaotic mind, the other of an active and 244 SIGNAL LIGHTS. orderly one. Habit has scarcely any agency in either of these modes of conversing, but they spring from mental organiza- tion, and remain nearly unaltered by education in the one case, and neglect of it in the other. The only legitimate use for language is the communication of thought. Every word, therefore, should have a substantive import or be a necessary auxiliary to those which have that import. The addition of terms which are wholly exple- tive indicates poverty of ideas and vulgarity of education, as nothing betokens mental refinement more than an easy exactitude of language, which neither forbids ornament, restricts the imagination, nor represses the just ardor of our feelings. If we would gain knowledge we must be inquisitive; but there are various other modes of being so than by asking numerous questions ; and when this course must be taken, we should never lose sight of the proper time and manner and, above all, of the character of the person interrogated and the answer sought ; whether it be really worthy the seeking, or is likely to be, and whether it ought to be communicated at all, and if so, to us. Nothing, however, argues so frivolous a mind, and such a want of just feeling, as the habit of asking idle, impertinent and pumping questions; as of a statesman, his opinion of some great measure on which he is most likely soon to act; of a lawyer, what he thinks of his client's case; of a merchant in difficulties, how money matters go with him ; of an author, his opinion of his avowed rival ; and the thousand and one other strange inquiries put so mal d propos, and with such infinite mal-addresse by unreflecting persons. There is but one way with such remarkable persons, viz: to answer their numerous questions by a series of others in quick succes- sion, all of which should be much beyond the grasp of their mind: silence is the sure result. PRACTICAL LIFE. 245 It would be no easy matter, even for a truly wise man, to decide whether his most fervent prayers should be against the gale of prosperity, or that of adversity. The sensualist, perhaps, would decide against the latter; the pure in spirit against the former. The complaint as to the evils and dangers of each is trite enough; but the mass of mankind are sufficiently vain to believe that prosperity could have no dangers for them, and that they would be sure to find all her paths peace. In a well regulated mind, prosperity should raise a perpetual fountain of gratitude from which should flow copious streams of benevolence. In the like mind, adversity, however extreme, should also have its fountain of gratitude and its streams of benevolence; for "whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth "; and if man, the immediate instrument, be not then an object of gratitude, he has, for its never ending exercise, a more enduring and glorious one in his Maker. As benevolence in such a case as this, consists more in gener- ous wishes than in actual disbursing of bounties, he has greatly the advantage of the prosperous man, it being then as bound- less as the universe! In discoursing of friendship in this, our day, we fear the sentiment itself is not so ardent as when the speaking and writing thereon were guided by the instructive and exemplary story of Damon and Pythias. For now such stories are condemned of fashion; and he would be considered a bold man who would write of "friendship." Nor can one venture, however briefly, to set forth the three most excellent fruits of friendship; the first, which eases the heart by revealing its emotions of joy or grief to a friendly bosom that reduplicates the former, and divides the latter; the second, which extracts honey from sweet counsel, and comparison of thought; and the last, which shows the thousand things unseemly for a man to 246 SIGNAL LIGHTS. do, but which are so meet for the deputation of a friend. These salutary and delicious fruits are set forth in many volumes, and there may they seek them, who desire counsel beyond the limit of their own hearts. The most insidious of all hypocrisies is the affectation of great humility. Like all of its class it is a " homage which vice pays to virtue"; at the same time, it is so peculiarly art- ful in its origin and ends, as to give assurance that he who practices it would be a most willing adept, were occasion to offer, in every other hypocrisy that swells the dark catalogue of false assumptions. As genuine humility is the consummation of virtue; as it is the crowning victory over sin, the conquest over self, the triumph of grace over the Prince of Darkness, the extirpation of the last lingering remains of our fallen humanity; and, at the moment of this annihilation of the impress of evil, is that which, on earth, allies man by anticipation to the angelic host; so is false humility the highest treason that man can commit against his Maker, the last act that fills to repletion the cup of his iniquity. Of all heaven-directed qualities, humility is the most to be venerated when real, and yet, from its rarity and difficulty of attainment, the most to be suspected; and when officious, or apparently excessive, it ought to awaken our liveliest vigilance. A man of true dignity who is soundly veracious, will not be suspected of even the most trivial deflection from truth. How dangerous, then, is the practice of telling improbable, though perfectly authentic stories! And what an idle gratifi- cation is it for a sensible man to amuse others or himself by detailing anecdotes and histories which, though true, are sure to be questioned by some. Such persons should ever bear in mind that, if they charm their auditors ever so much by their narrative talent and amiableness in its display, they PRACTICAL LIFE. 247 encounter some risk from the incredulity and ingratitude of some present; and that, while they give them credit for telling the matter infinitely well, they have suffered in a correspond- ing degree with them, and perhaps with others, in their dig- nity and, possibly, in their character for high veracity. Persons of intelligence, and even of sound morals, some- times indulge habitually in a certain random mode of speaking that may well call both into question. Endued with much humor, and a strong liking for whatever provokes laughter, they practice, and countenance in others, the least happy turn of thought that may occasion amusement, though at the expense of using metaphors and allusions which are as offensive to morals and religion as they certainly are to sound sense and pure taste. All men of this class should remember that enemies impute the worst of motives to them; discreet friends are much pained, and can make but a feeble defense for them, and that strangers mostly decide upon what comes within their own cognizance, and are at no pains to seek for, or to listen to explanations. There are known instances of the kindest-hearted men in the world, whose love of humor, of an equivoke, of some verbal, though unintentional, severity, was so uncontrollable that through life they passed with most people as malicious gossips. A man speaks sensibly of the beauty of moderation, but, in nearly the same breath, is himself excessive; he is indignant against rash opinions and slanderous innuendoes, but patroniz- ingly, arid as if in a privileged way, he indulges in many severe remarks; is an extreme admirer of inflexible veracity, yet illustrates its odiousness by highly colored and almost imaginary examples; laughs at the folly of much that is fashionable in dress, without any consciousness of the extreme peculiarity of his own; strongly inculcates the beauty of humility, and still delivers his own opinions with no little 248 SIGNAL LIGHTS. impatience at contradiction. He is often much surprised at the provincial and surprisingly contracted views of the society in which he moves, but perceives not that his own are rather peculiar and of by-gone days; is judicious in his remarks on the idle gossip of the day, but listens to it carelessly, and winds up with some equally novel and amusing anecdotes of the same class ! That man knows not himself. Surely the human heart is mysteriously deep, tortuous and deceptive! The above mentioned facts show not hypocrisy in the man; his error lies in reflecting a good deal on the exterior world, and not at all on the numerous springs and motions of his own mind; he knows more of everything else than of himself. If one hears an artist, when commended for his chef-d'oeuvre, say it is tolerable, but he fears this and doubts that; or a pretty woman complain of feeling wretched and looking miserable from the last night's entertainment; or a politician affecting diffidence at the applauses of the people; or an author professing discontent with some parts of an admired volume; or a lawyer making light of his argument in some great cause, he knows that each and all of them are angling for praise, and for a pabulum as essential to their happy existence as motion and salt are to the purity of the ocean. Insensibility to praise is brutality a morbid thirst for it, the meanest and most incurable of mental diseases. Although mind itself may be a unit, and all minds that ever - existed may have been, in essence, precisely the same, yet the mode in which each is obliged to manifest itself is as various as the features or expressions of the human face, no two ever having been exactly alike. A man of genius differs from a fool only in the greater perfection of his organization. The mind is capable of indicating itself only through the numerous outlets or vehicles of the body, and though one differs entirely PRACTICAL LIFE. from the materalists, whose doctrine he dislikes, yet he can readily conceive that He who fashioned the union of mind and body occasioned only an ostensible difference in minds, and that this difference may arise wholly from a more or less perfect organization of the mediums through which mind indicates itself. Though no two things in nature more widely differ than mind and matter, and mind is very far from being a machine, yet its association with the body, in being compelled to use its organs, is such that every mind / may be said to have its own allotted fund of excitability, as every watch spring has its particular strength and elasticity, this mental excitability being drawn upon and, sooner or later, exhausted, according to the use made of it. Some men's minds may be said to tick incessantly and also much faster than others they live more in a month than others do in a year, and as they live more rapidly, they run down sooner. The man of no mental disturbances seems to be a mere annuitant, and, as such, he spends so much and no more, every day and every year, out of his fund of mental energy ; and if, by any unforeseen event, his mind be unusually exercised, he has a happy facility of going into winter quarters until he restores the hiatus made by this heavy draft upon the treasury of his excitability. Among a few also, even of the rapid mental livers, one finds a recuperative energy that partially winds them up or, rather, delays their final running down; but these, on the other hand, are extremely apt to cease their motion suddenly and forever, just like the instantaneous and unexpected breaking up of a very taut chain in which were some unperceived links nearly worn through. A lover of the moral sciences finds himself sometimes in the vein to extract from things the most simple in life, lessons of 250 SIGNAL LIGHTS. much practical wisdom, and in forms no less impressive. To the lover of moral science, nothing in nature is too trifling to be made some use of in the laboratory of his analogical and inductive mind. He extracts broad philosophical truths from such little matters as the microscopical forms living in the water, or from the little cloud made by one's breath on any polished surface, which, as he observes, breaks up first in the skirts and last in the midst. It has often been said that truth lies at the bottom of a well. If so, it is no little consolation that the path to its adytum is so direct and, when straightly pursued, is so surely found there. It may, indeed, be said that truth is ever the point at the end of the straightest possible line; and though the road be sometimes long, and the point be, therefore, nearly invisible, yet is the conviction most cheering that it must eventually be reached yea, with the unerring certainty with which birds do travel to their remotest destination ; for if, like birds, we do but preserve a steady eye on the direct course, regardless of every attractive path to the right or left, we find no disappointment at the end of the line. There can be no solid basis of liberty except the virtue and intelligence of the people, for little reliance can be placed on their leaders. This is the case, though not in the same degree, in every conceivable form of government, but increases in proportion to the political liberty enjoyed by the people. Even in governments the most despotic in form, a salutary control is exerted over their rulers by the virtue and intelligence of the people; but when, both in law and in fact, sovereignty resides in the people, their liberties are hourly in danger when they are either corrupt or ignorant. The constitution and laws are but dead letters against the artifices of aspiring and clever men, if the people know not how, or have not virtue enough to watch over their rights. PRACTICAL LIFE. 251 In such a state of things the people may, for a time, cherish the belief that they are free, but their more enlightened leaders will finally convince them that, though theoretically sovereign, they are practically slaves. Sincerity is the most compendious wisdom and an excellent instrument for the speedy dispatch of business ; it creates con- fidence in those we have to deal with, saves the labor of many inquiries, and brings things to an issue in few words ; it is like travelling in a plain, beaten road, which commonly brings a man sooner to his journey's end than by-ways in which men often lose themselves. In a word, whatever convenience may be thought to be in falsehood and dissimulation is soon over; but the inconvenience of it is perpetual, because it brings a man under a continual jealousy and suspicion, so that he is not believed when he speaks truth, nor trusted when he means honestly. Nothing can be done rightly in this world except by hard, unwearying, humble study and practice. The first possibility of strength comes to a man when he recognizes his own weak- ness, tries to fathom the depths of his own ignorance and, in true and manly humility, sets to work to find out what he can do to make himself strong, useful and wise. TO-DAY AND FIFTY YEARS AGO. BY MRS. HENRY WARD BEECHER. IFTY years ago there would have been no difficulty in defining the distinctive marks of really good manners, morals, and also the peculiar talents or accomplishments demanded of those who would claim the character of " perfect ladies and perfect gen- tlemen." This is an expression frequently employed, but each time with widely different signi- fication, if one may judge by the varied characters to whom it is applied. Sometimes it is the dress, sometimes it is the deportment, and sometimes the position of the individual, which has been the potent cause which directed that expression, " a perfect lady." But fifty years in this progres- sive age have greatly changed definitions of many things, and nowhere does one find the change more remarkable than in the strangely modified laws that are supposed to govern the rules and habits of society. It is quite bewildering to observe the license in speech and behavior permitted among many whose position, either inher- ited or wrought out by patient industry, places them among 252 MRS. HENRY WARD BEECHER. TO -DA Y AND FIFTY YEARS AGO. 253 the leaders in all that one naturally expects to find refined, intellectual, elegant or fashionable. In the steady advance of time and thought, one must recognize many admirable and beneficial changes; but we can not believe that the great revolution in deportment and conversation, now so noticeable among many where we should least expect it, can conduce to the richest growth in high moral and intellectual development for our young people. Very soon they must take the places of their elders in honest endeavors to place our fair country where every true patriot ardently desires and believes she will stand among the foremost people on earth. Are our pros- pects encouraging? Can they be if those now rapidly approaching the line which separates youth from maturity are not more carefully guarded and restrained? But if our chil- dren go astray and are content to live only for pleasure and amusement, growing into manhood and womanhood with no aspirations for anything higher, will not the parents, and especially the mothers, be held, in no small degree, responsible for those wasted, frivolous lives? One sees many women, most truly dignified, lovely and refined, modest and gentle in their manners, and faithfully trying to lead their children tenderly in the same way they endeavor 'to pursue themselves ; such are accepted, without a moment's criticism, as perfect ladies. But we also meet mothers who have all the natural gifts and graces of true womanhood that the most fastidious could require, but the voices of fashion and pleasure have so blunted their finer feelings that modesty and delicacy seem to them as obsolete ideas, relics of the past ages. They are seen at fashionable assemblies and entertainments, with bare arms, neck and shoulders, very bare. It is impossible for a truly modest woman to remain unabashed in their presence and see young men, in the extreme of absurd fashion (the latest discovery, a 254 SIGNAL LIGHTS. dude, we think), stand by them, lavishing upon them silly compliments or extravagant flattery ; and, worst of all, to find these women who, if fully attired, one would expect to find dignified and queenly in deportment, receive their gross and disgusting badinage with a simper and toss of the head, and replying in the all too common slang, " Oh, get out!" " None of your nonsense!" "Shut up now!" This is no exagger- ation, and those who allow such low familiarities are wives and mothers who will tell you that they do not care for balls, have no taste for parties, but deny themselves to chaperon their daughters. " Chaperon, to attend, to protect in pub- lic " is Webster's definition of that word. What hopes for the future can we have for daughters thus protected? All the delicacy and sweetness of fresh, modest girlhood must wither in such an atmosphere. In young men and maidens, loud talking and boisterous laughter, emphasized by coarse expletives that were once never known out of the stable, race-course, or gambling den, or among the coarse, untutored gamins of the streets, now pass unnoticed or unrebuked at the table, in the drawing-room or stylish entertainment. Fulsome compliments, uttered in the free and easy tones that a genuine lady would resent as an insult, are often answered by rude raillery and repartee, in quite unlike the gentle and refined tones that one expects to hear from rosy lips. If, " as guard and protector," a mother take her daughters into the bewitching circles of fashionable society and in their presence accept frivolous speeches and rude familiarities, with no sign of reproof or disapprobation, but encourage such famil- iarities by replying in the same tone, like a hoydenish girl, can she expect that they will demean themselves with such dignity and refinement that no man will dare approach them but with respect and reverence? Can she be surprised if her sons and TO-DA Y AND FIFTY YEARS AGO. 255 daughters develop the same offensive and reprehensible habits which they have seen her practice, and "with additions strange." We trust we will not be understood to imply that all in fashionable society are so forgetful of the beauty and refine- ment of cultivated manners, particularly as the symbol of the purest womanhood. Oh, no! Far from that! There are many bright and shining lights among those who move in the most brilliant society, and it is to that class we must turn for help to counteract the influence of those less careful of their words and actions. Possibly all do not realize how much of the future happiness .and usefulness of their children must depend upon the example of their parents, particularly of their mothers, whom they so readily and instinctively copy; but, however perfect, the teaching of the mothers may be sadly weakened or destroyed, if they do not scrupulously shield their children from the con- taminating influence of those of their age and station who are allowed unrestrained license in word and deed. We see, with great pain, how slang phrases are taking root and are in habitual use among the young of both sexes, even with those whose fine educational advantages should have taught the great vulgarity of such expressions. It is singular how quickly the young are fascinated by this pernicious habit, and how eager they treasure up and seek occasions to use these rude phrases; how soon our girls and boys, our young men and maidens incorporate them into their general conversation. With girls, this habit may be expected to develop and foster other unfeminine traits. It is a source of deep regret to see young ladies (?) in the streets, in the stores, or standing on the sidewalks, imitate the unrefined, swaggering manners of fast young men, instead of the dignified, lady-like carriage that is always regarded as indicative of really good breeding, a sure token of true refine- 256 SIGNAL LIGHTS. ment and innate modesty. If young ladies walk the streets with masculine strides, hands thrust into the pockets of their ulsters, the " Derby " tipped to one side, too like the hilarious, half tipsy young man across the way, talking and laughing loudly as they pass from one store to the next, can they blame the poor, ragged gamins if they mark them as lawful victims for their rude jests and ribaldry? If the elder members of a family indulge in this free and easy manner and are not choice in their language, the little ones, whose prattle should be as gentle as the birds', will inevitably imitate. Instead of the respectful morning greeting, we now too often hear those apt imitators, even before they are able to speak plainly, burst into a room exclaiming, "Halloo, papa! Halloo, mamma!" In their childish play, in the streets, the bad example of older brothers and sisters follows them, and children of the most reputable parents will accost those who pass with jeers and rude language. Parents who do not take the trouble to pro- tect their children from these pernicious influences would be grieviously mortified could they see to whom their little ones address these rude expressions when allowed to play in the streets, out from their sight. This evil is becoming very common, and no efforts appear to be made to stay its progress. If there were any sense in the strange adjectives thus employed, one might look at the increase of the evil with more patience, but there is neither rhyme nor reason in any of it, and very seldom any suspicion of wit or humor; one must be poorly supplied with wit if he can manage to find it here. Not long since, two charming young ladies met at a store, one entering, the other leaving it, and this was their elegant greeting: "Halloo! who dug you up this stormy day?'* "And the same to you, goosey! but I'm not easily squelched by a little rain; it takes more than that to make me squeal, TO-DA Y AND FIFTY YEARS AGO. 257 you bet!" "Oh, get out! we all know you are a brick. But say, did you suppose you should meet any of the dudes, eh!" and, giving her friend a slap on the shoulder, as one rude boy might give another, she passed on. It is by no means agree- able to see reputable young men indulge in rakish manners, even when by themselves, and far worse, if before .ladies. But how can we respect young ladies who try to imitate them? We look to them for sweetness and delicacy, and to find the reverse is humiliating and painful. It is difficult to account for the seductive fascination so many people find in such rude language, and particularly the young, unbalanced mind; but of its effect on all the best impulses of the mind, and that it relaxes moral dignity, even if it lead to nothing worse, there can be no doubt. It is an evil that weakens the inborn delicacy of the young as well as the old; when first heard it is repulsive, but, like sin, each time it is heard and as the mind becomes more familiar with the words, " we first endure, then pity, then embrace." Boys are more liable to come under the influence of unruly, vulgar associates, and therefore in more danger of contracting bad habits, than their sisters, who are, or used to be, less on the streets and more constantly under the mother's influence; therefore, young lads are more in danger of contracting bad habits before their parents suspect it. They are easy victims when temptations are not at once repelled by home influences. If they venture to soil their lips with low and vulgar talk, it will be found that profanity is lurking near to entrap the unwary. Girls seldom learn to use profane language, at least girls with any claims to respectability, but many of the un- couth, unladylike expressions, now unhappily so common, and in which they are tempted to indulge, often savor very strongly of profanity. If home influences are not strong enough to restrain or correct this, how can we avoid thinking 17 258 SIGNAL LIGHTS. that their mothers do not realize the priceless treasures God has committed to their charge and are not guarding their jewels as they should feel bound to do. It is said that sisters contract these unwomanly habits from their brothers' example; in part, it may be so, but this is given more by way of excuse than from general fact. Sisters were sent to refine, soften and beautify the coarser natures of their brothers, and how much to be lamented it will be if they stoop to imitate the ruder natures of these brothers, instead of fulfilling their mission by showing them how easy it is to become graceful, dignified and refined, in word and act. The same general rules and cautions by which we strive to educate our girls into the higher types of true ladies will, like- wise, if followed, enable our boys to become true gentlemen. A perfect gentleman holds a true lady in high estimation, and they may be on the most intimate and friendly terms, but he at once sinks below that standard if, for an instant, he takes advantage of that friendship to utter a rude, careless word in her presence, or is guilty of a coarse, unmanly act. No lady will, for an instant, brook such an insult. But, as every lady has the power to fix the metes and bounds of the liberty or familiarity a friend may take, he must have an element of evil that has not been suspected, or she is lacking in true womanly instinct, if any disturbance occur. Much of the old regime we have no wish to recall, for in most things we have advanced to a better and a higher state. But, toning down somewhat of the stiffness and exaggeration noticeable in the manners of our ancestors, it would, indeed, be refreshing to see again the modest deportment which taught the gentlemen of the old school a reverent and defer- ential bearing in the presence of ladies. CHAS. O. REILLY, D. D. COMMERCIAL VALUE OF GOOD BREEDING. BY RE V. CHARLES O. REILL Y, D. D. BP Si HAT it costs nothing to be civil, is an adage so old and so universally ac- cepted that it would be difficult to fix the exact proportion of its re- sponsibility for the too prevalent impression that it is 'worth nothing to be civil. Of course, the intrinsic worth of that qualification which makes men mindful of the sensibilities of others on all occasions, is in no wise called in question. No one would be found to dispute the supe- rior excellence of the soul amply endowed with such an estimable disposition, as compared with the mind quite desti- tute of its instincts. None of us envy the mental structure of the man who is habitually disposed to disregard the feel- ings of those with whom he comes in contact. It goes with- out saying, that a habit of politeness is incomparably supe- rior to rudeness of demeanor, intrinsically estimated, nor does the adage referred to compromise more than the commercial value of good manners. 259 260 SIGNAL LIGHTS. A few words on this particular phase of the general sub- ject of good breeding may not be without their use to Amer- ican readers, as we pride ourselves on being a practical peo- ple, and rarely, if ever, deny what is attributed to us as a national characteristic, viz: a disposition to reduce all factors to a denomination of dollars and cents. It is, moreover, unde- niable that a certain eccentricity of demeanor, not infrequently carried to the borders of brutality, has attempted to obtain a professional recognition, and, as a fact, is not without its mar- ket value in our somewhat undeveloped civilization. The bullying barrister, " the rough old doctor," the impatient and unsympathetic preacher, possess for some minds an attraction which, although inexplicable, is not always unprofitable. The attorney who treats his client like a convict, for this does not always lose him. The physician who informs the patient's nervous husband that, " I don't care a - - if your wife does die before I get there," is not infrequently the one for whom people will wait all day. The story is told of a Scotch divine, who convinced his hypercritical congregation of his entire orthodoxy and spiritual power, on occasion of his first sermon, by impatiently inter- rupting himself in the midst of his discourse, and imperiously ordering the sexton to " shut the doore." Those who were incapable of discerning the nice points of his doctrine were not left in darkness concerning his character. He " wor bonny on the doore " positive enough, to be sure, for pre- destination ante -praevisa merita. A reason can be given for everything, and the notion that any one, not endowed with very superior ability, would not dare to so indulge the common humors of mankind, is one to take possession of an irreflective mind and an irreflective mind only. A want of ordinary self-restraint is a curious argument of superior education. Although strong-minded men have, here and there, attained COMMERCIAL VALUE OF GOOD BREEDING. 261 \ eminence and a fair proportion of success, despite the disad- vantages of unruly dispositions ; yet may it be doubted if such instances are sufficiently numerous to render affectation in this direction at all dangerous. This much is certain, that whatever superstitious regard may have attached to rudeness in the past, its influence, as a commercial factor, is perceptibly diminishing as civilization continues to advance, and the rules of good breeding are brought into more general application. The class of people who were accustomed to accept it as a certificate of superior worth, or at least as an evidence of extraordinary honesty, is becoming comparatively small, and the marks of good breeding are now generally looked for to betoken the mental discipline of the proper professional man. The impression that rudeness should afford an evidence of honesty, is no less grotesque than the notion that would make it an index of intellectual superiority. The French, whose civilization is certainly in a more advanced stage than ours, entertain the correct idea of polite manners, for they call an honest man and a civil man by the same name honnete homme. No charlatanism can be conceived, at once so outrageous and contemptible, as the premeditated assumption of rude manners. Every gentleman owes to himself and to society the duty of denying, at the outset, that any good intention can be masked by the manners of a thug. " But it is not enough not to be rude," says Chesterfield, "you should be extremely civil * * * and, depend upon it, your reputation and success in the world will, in a great measure, depend upon the degree of good breeding you are master of." This great master of sentences of civil life, has left us the draft of a definition of good breeding, in which it is to be regretted that he seems to have classed the essential quite as an accidental element of the qualification, without 262 SIGNAL LIGHTS. which he declares that " all the talents in the world will want all their lustre and some part of their use, too." He defines good-breeding to be " the result of much good sense, some good nature, and a little self-denial for the sake of others, 'with a vie-w to obtain the same indulgence Jrom them" Now, if we consider man as an individual, we cannot but recognize that he has been peculiarly constituted with a view- to the preservation of himself and the promotion of his own interests. Physiologically, his activities and passions, appetites and instincts have been exclusively ordered to the accretion of his own conveniences. They go out from and return to a common centre, the core of which is self, and ever appear to us on that one peculiar errand bent the gratification of physical propensities. The same conclusion is arrived at from a consideration of his psychological being, so that only the last clause of the definition, viz : '''with a view to obtain the same indulgence from others" saves it from a denial; and, inas- much as this " view " - which is likewise conceded to be self- ish is induced from an experience with " others" it must be attributable to education, and we are therefore forced to the reflection that man, in so far as he is a well-bred, is essentially a self-restrained creature. What is the commercial value of this self-restraint? Is it difficult of attainment? Is it worth the price demanded? As an answer to the query touching its attainment, we cannot do better than quote the illustrious author on etiquette, already referred to. He says: "I hardly know anything so difficult to attain, or so necessary to possess, as perfect good breeding." The question of its commercial value must be approached from an a -priori consideration of the subject, and thus viewed, it seems to present two distinct phases of computa- tion a negative and a -positive one, upon each of which let us hazard a few reflections, with the hope that they COMMERCIAL VALUE OF GOOD BREEDING. 63 may prove conducive to a more deliberate examination of the subject, on the part of those who may be immediately concerned in it. Its negative value, then, we derive directly from what it is in itself, viz: a habit of self-restraint. Good breeding is self- restraint made easy by frequent repetitions of the actions that call it into exercise. This consideration of the subject immediately introduces into it all the calculations of that peculiarly valuable economy which is born of good breeding. Now, it is patent that good breeding is the mother of good taste; and, consequently, to this first consideration of the sub- ject, belongs the estimate of the incalculable change which good taste, universally established, would work in the com- mercial world the elimination of all useless extravagance. For, that all such extravagance is in bad taste, requires no demonstration. There is no keener contrast between well-bred and ill-bred people than is observable in the administration of money. Self -restriction induces that decorous economy which all sensible and well-bred people commend in the man of means. It gives a caste of modesty to his conduct, which at once suggests his good judgment, and convinces us of his native dignity; whereas, wasteful habits furnish undeniable evidences of an undisciplined mind. There is hardly a vul- garity that offends so pungently our sense of propriety as that which manifests itself in the prodigal expenditure of recently acquired wealth. To discuss the difference between such habits, from a commercial stand-point, would necessitate a treatise upon the pecuniary advantages of becoming econ- omy. For economy carried to the extreme of parsimony is an evidence of defective education no less than is reckless profusion. Of the two, the penurious propensity were to be preferred, as being the more easily corrected. It is the effect of discipline not fairly tempered by discretion, whilst prodi- 264 SIGNAL LIGHTS. gality proceeds from instincts untutored by education. Ill- bred and ignorant people may present examples of marvelous endurance under compulsion, but they seldom, in their habits, give evidences of self-restraint. Suffering sustained, and pri- vation self imposed, are very different things, the one being indicative of only passive potentialities, and the other betok- ening a command over active energies. The commercial value of such command will be exactly proportioned to the sphere in which it is exercised and the time it is continued in operation. It enables the individual to regulate the expendi- tures of every-day life by a rule of good sense, which cer- tainly takes into account a tasteful provision for the future. A well-bred man will be a provident man, for he will avoid giving to society, which he reveres, the offense that poverty is to our civilization. A prudent economy, exercised through an entire life, will afford a competency at its close. Indi- gence, on its face, is accepted as an evidence of ill-breeding, because it is suggestive of some prior improvidence. This, after all, is the hard feature of poverty. The privation it imposes considering how little man absolutely needs is of comparatively trivial account. But it makes against him a prim a facie case of improvidence, convicts him thereby of being ill-bred and turns him into ridicule. It is hard to be poor only because it makes a man ridiculous. It is a piece of bad behavior which society requites with a supercilious compassion. Any breeding, in our clay, which did not con- template the avoidance of poverty, would universally be pro- nounced unqualifiedly bad. To be improvidentiy poor, is, in the light of our civilization, to say the least of it, in very bad taste. With this admitted, we must leave every one to determine, each for himself, the commercial value of the com- modit}' which precludes such improvidence. Coming, then, to a consideration of the positive value of COMMERCIAL VALUE OF GOOD BREEDING. 265 good breeding, from a commercial standpoint, we have to dis- tinguish between the indirect and direct influence it exerts upon success. It is said that few men are the architects of their own good fortunes; a thing to awaken less surprise the more we reflect that comparatively few of those who have accumulated fortunes, have the correct knowledge of where their success in life really came from. In this field of unknown quantities the indirect influence of good breeding could scarcely be over-estimated. Many a millionaire is indebted to a civil demeanor for his first vantage ground on the slope of financial fame. Many a great lawyer owes his extensive clientage more to a court- eous address than to great talents. Many a successful practi- tioner has won his way into the palatial residences of the rich by commendations of the poor whom his deportment had favor- ably impressed. Most of these, I mean to claim, are wholly ignorant of the true source of their own success; nay, such is the nature of good breeding that, save by accident, its possessor remains quite unconscious of the advantage it con- fers. So much more the value of it, since it is owned without anxiety, and does its work incessantly. Shiel relates how, after a brilliant debut at the bar, he fell entirely out of notice as a barrister, and after years of ceaseless effort was reduced to the verge of despair, when, on attending a party one evening, to which he had actually been forced by a friend, he had the good fortune to be obliged to do the agree- able to somebody's daughter or somebody's niece, and next morning received his first brief. He facetiously styles the in- cident "dancing into practice," but, all the same, his agree- able manners at a party effected more for him than the encomium of O'Connell, delivered in his favor at the Four Courts. To enter upon an enumeration of incidents illustra- tive of this point of the subject, would be a task of despair, 266 SIGNAL LIGHTS. and this all the more, as, however many and striking examples we might take in, there would still be ample reason to more than suspect that the most striking and most numerous were still left out. Chesterfield roundly informs his son that he may as well despair, at once, of success at court unless he is gracious and polite to every scullion he passes in the halls or on the stairs, since each has influence some place, and it requires so little ability to inflict an injury. Now, it is need- less to deduce the reflection that Life is a great court, and success the embassy of all who frequent it; needless, too, it is, to add that in view of the number and nature of the unavoid- able obstacles that guard the audience-chamber, few, if any, can afford the gratuitous ill-will of the fifth groom's dog that is chained in the stable-yard. The suggestion that this con- sideration of the indirect influence of good breeding upon success in life makes it burdensome, because it extends to so many, is superficial and altogether at issue with the question; for good breeding comprehends all persons and acommodates itself to all classes. Its manifest is due no less to one than another, and each will take care to repay it in kind. There is no situation conceivable in which it is not one's interest, by his own good breeding, to secure a return to himself of the same commodity from others; for, people will repay, and with interest, too, inattention with inattention, neglect with neglect, and ill-manners with worse, which will engage one in very disagreeable affairs; as men sooner forget a gross injury than a considerable affront; and what wounds human vanity is seldom made venial out of want of appreciation on the part of the recipient. But it is the direct influence of good breeding upon success which, of course, makes up most of its commercial value. Utility introduced good breeding as much as it introduced commerce. It is little else than a commerce of conveniences, in the interchange of which each, COMMERCIAL VALUE OF GOOD BREEDING. 267 upon the whole, finds his account. It is a great mistake to consider good breeding exclusively designed for company. A man who is ill-bred is quite as unfit for business as he is for company. Good breeding alone gives that ease and freedom, and imparts that graceful and proper assurance, which are the prerequisites to success in any line of business. Think of a man who cannot approach another in a natural and easy man* ner; who cannot address himself to others without manifest embarrassment; who is immediately ashamed in the presence of people of superior attainments; who does not know how to express what he wants; who is disconcerted when addressed and at once goes out of countenance for a sense of his own deficiencies and what will you do with such a one? Urge that he has sense, learning, and talent, and so much more the shame; for good breeding is the peculiar ability he wants in order to be able to turn his talents to any account. Life is too short to afford opportunity to /ryand to find out individual character; your entree must depend not so much upon what you are as upon what you appear to be. We have not the paucity of population of the times of the patriarchs, that made individual comparison a possibility, nor their longevity that allowed of ages of personal experiment. This is a multi- tudinous generation and a hustling age, and cursory observa- tion is all that any one can claim from the vast majority of those with whom he comes in contact. This is by no means intended to read to the detriment of enduring talent; I would be very sorry to be so far misunderstood as to seem to cast discredit, in ever so little, upon the necessity of solid attain- ments for ultimate success in business. It is only saying that the penetration of the multitude seldom goes deeper than the surface. Men, in general, must be engaged by a surface presentation. All can see, few can weigh, even of those who have the time and disposition to do so. Where prejudices 268 SIGNAL LIGHTS. are to be disarmed or affections enlisted, it is luster, not solid- ity, that must make the first overtures; but then intrinsic worth and substantial attainments must immediately move up, and support and secure what good breeding has acquired. And to this suggestion, too much importance cannot be attached. For, to disappoint, is to outrage; and the every- day experience of the world will amply attest that there is nothing for which a man is more liable to be over-punished than for the unpardonable offense of having been over-esti- mated. Saying that Doric decoration is best designed to engage the idle eye in observation of your architecture, is not gainsaying the necessity of Tuscan solidity in wall and found- ation to sustain the inspection thus induced. So, too, assert- ing that good-breeding, an easy, engaging manner, an insin- uating address, are absolutely necessary to secure a considera- tion of your intrinsic worth, far from intimating that more solid attainments may be dispensed with, presupposes you possessed of them. Learning, honor and virtue are indis- pensable, if you would retain the esteem your good breeding has enlisted ; but it is the latter which must still be detailed for the recruiting service required for your success. It is not too much to say that good breeding is half of any man's business training; for in whatever walk of life he finds himself, the utility of his talents will still, in a great measure, depend upon it. Learning, without it, is unwelcome and tiresome, and of use nowhere but in a man's closet which is equivalent to saying, of no use at all. High station, without it, is simply grotesque ; and the higher the station the more uncomfortable an object to contemplate is the ill-bred occupant. Wealth, without good 1: reeding, suggests the idea of a raid upon the providence that is held responsible for a misappropriation of the benefits it has lavished upon a boor. The losses it compels are simply incalculable, inasmuch as the wealthy man who wants educa- COMMERCIAL VALUE OF GOOD BREEDING. 269 tion feels constantly obliged to make compensation therefor, and has no other resource to draw upon than his pregnant purse. He must buy that toleration in society to which his manners do not entitle him, and " society," long accustomed to this social phenomenon, has engendered a fatal familiarity with the levy of fines that rightly belong to it. A subscrip- tion is required for some social event: " Oh, there's Mr. - ; he must give." An entertainment is to be devised demand- ing an extraordinary outlay on the part of some of the projectors? Mr. - - is just the man. Mr. - is worked in. Mr. is walked through. Mr. is made miser- able, and pays the - - bills with a sigh of relief that the nonsense is over. Speaking seriously, the man of wealth, unaccustomed to the ways of " society," undertakes an expen- sive experiment in entering it at all. It is rather an argument of innate good breeding and a vin- dication of good taste in men of this prosperous class, when they decline the proffered patronage of a society that cannot regard them but with ill-concealed disdain. Next to a thor- ough conversation with society life, we admire the sturdy independence that refuses to ape its formalities or accept its constraints. But, quid ad rem? Certainly for such as are disposed to court the mystic circle of all-elegant littleness, politeness possesses an incalculable commercial advantage. You have never duplicated a pleasure-trip to any part of the country without discovering that your inexperience and igno- rance of the route and location and customs of the place had cost you disproportionately, both in money and comfort, on the occasion of your first visit. So it is with " society ". It will cost the man who is unfamiliar with its workings indefinitely more than the one who " is native and to the manner born." Add to this the consideration that its " ways are so dark " and its " tricks are so vain " that, unless its " habit " is SIGNAL LIGHTS. acquired while young, it is never quite easy and each can determine for himself whether, from a commercial stand-point, politeness is worth the price that undeniably has to be paid for it. To enter upon an enumeration of the eminent men whose lasting success in life has seemed a happy reflex of the first favor their manners had secured, would be an endless task, nor are we sure that it would exclusively serve the object of this article, viz: to set forth the commercial value of good breeding, since, in every such instance, the external deportment has been efficiently supported by more substantial ability. The truth is, that excellent behavior should be joined with deep learning, and is almost as necessary. They should ever accompany each other for their mutual advantage. For mere learning without good breeding is pedantry, and good breeding without learning is frivolity; whereas learning adds solidity to good breeding, and good breeding gives charms and graces to learning. It is a subject of considerable doubt with us, if sufficient attention is given to this rare qualification in our universities and other seats of learning. It is here, especially, its knowledge should be inculcated and its maxims made operative; since, if acquired young, the cost is imma- terial, and it will, moreover, always last and be habitual the only good breeding, let us say in conclusion, which is effectively felt and proves perseveringly profitable. ALICE E IVES. SOCIAL CULTURE. BY ALICE E. IVES. HE power of manner is incessant an element as inconcealable as fire," writes Emerson, and who is there that shall gainsay him. One may success- fully hide his meanness, envy, hatred and all uncharitableness, but he can not cover from the light of day his manners. These shall always exalt or betray him, and he who runs may read. Let us have truth, sincerity, heroism, but let us also have good manners. The gifted men and women who in the preceding pages have taught us the value of character, moral and intellectual culture, self-reliance, unselfishness, kindness and sympathy, have raised on strong foundations a noble temple; but shall not the temple be swept, and garnished, and adorned, as fits its great proportions? Aye, truly, else it does not invite us to enter in and enjoy. A man of education, strong character, and Christian virtues, hav- ing the manners of good society, is a power in the world; his eloquence shall persuade thousands. But, though one have the 271 272 SIGNAL LIGHTS. virtues of St. Peter, and shall repel by his behavior, his influ- ence will be narrow and his friends few. True, some great men have been ill-mannered, but not one in ten thousand is great. Much is excused of genius because of its exceeding rarity. Diogenes and Dr. Johnson were notably ill-bred; and very possibly the latter might, in these days, still put his tea spoon into the sugar-bowl and be forgiven for the sake of his great attainments, but it is not at all prob- able that the illustrious cynic would be allowed to flash his lantern in people's faces many days outside of a lunatic asylum. " Euripides," writes Aspasia, " has not the fine manners of Sophocles; but the movers and masters of our souls have surely a right to throw out their limbs as carelessly as they please on the world that belongs to them, and before the creatures they have animated." It is best first to be sure that you have created a world, before you can afford to take liberties with it. Just so high as you make people reach to overlook your short-comings, must you rise to pay them for their trouble. The thing must be balanced somewhere; no one will put himself in the way of an annoyance unless he is sure of a greater good with it. An4 even supposing you are entirely forgiven, there is always some one to speak of having seen the score, even after it has been erased for years. It would have been better, even if you are great, not to have done a very uncouth thing, or spoken a rude word. We hear, every few days, of certain intolerant remarks and surly actions told to the discredit, and, in the eyes of some, even to the dimming of the fame, of one of the most original, profound and celestial lighted minds the world has ever known Thomas Carlyle; and we who bow before his genius can only sorrow in our hearts that this blot was upon him, and that the world must be ever pointing its finger to that which SOCIAL CULTURE. 273 was earthly, to the forgetting of that which was heavenly and of God. It is true that the man of base aims and immoral character can so envelope himself in the mantle of good breeding that you shall receive him into your house, and at your table. But will he become your friend? No, for a revelation is speedily at hand. The garment he wears is thin, and there are always times coming when its poor quality will be unexpectedly tried. Some sudden contact or collision causes it to suffer a bad rent, and behold, there is, underneath, the teeth of a cur, or the leer of a demon. While the Christian virtues are undoubtedly the best foun- dation for that fine structure called a gentleman, it is also a well-known fact that people of the best intentions in the world, by ignorance of social usages, or carelessness of certain forms, make themselves decidedly obnoxious to those who are so much accustomed to the atmosphere of good breeding that a blast of boorishness strikes them like being caught in an east wind without an overcoat. Even the strong and sturdy Con- cord philosopher says : " I could better eat with one who did not respect the truth or the laws, than with a sloven and unpresentable person. Moral qualities rule the world, but at a short distance the senses are despotic." And this is the language of a man who was one of the most thorough respecters of truth and the laws this country has ever known; but it is also that of a refined, sensitive nature, that feels the contact of anything which is unlovely, unfitting or gross, with a sort of pain, of which the coarse-fibred are forever unconscious. Fine perceptions and tastes are a source of much happiness to their possessor, but the law of compensation is severe; if you enjoy, you pay. If you are strung up to this fine pitch, you require others to be in accord, or else harmony is at once destroyed. It is upon this rule that the different strata of 18 274 SIGNAL LIGHTS. society are formed. Do you say it is wealth and poverty that make the distinctions of society? I answer they are indeed strong, but not so strong as manners. These are the sieves that sift and grade humanity most thoroughly. Is the refined man happy in the society of the coarse, or the vulgar man comfortable in the company of the elegant? But if he be not vulgar or coarse in the inmost fibres of his nature, he will easily shake off the mire with which a long association with boors has covered him, and take on the graces of more con- siderate men. The densely ignorant are sure to ridicule or despise that which they do not understand. The man whom a back- woodsman should catch reciting a Greek tragedy, would doubtless be dubbed by the latter a gibbering idiot; and the one who should be seen taking off his hat to a woman would be a proper object of scorn to those who were above such fop- pish trifling. In fact, in some sections the individual who regards his finger nails or his linen is one whom the entire community consider it their particular duty to chastise and reform. To the ancient Greeks all foreign nations were bar- barians; and even to-day, in the great civilization of the nine- teenth century, there are still those to whom the man with strange dress or habits is either a barbarian or a fool. To him who knows no other etiquette than that of the mines or lumber camp, and whose strength of muscle must gain for him those rights which are the every-day currency of the polite man, given and taken as naturally as he eats, the customs and observances of the latter are the natural targets for derision. Some one tells a story of a backwoodsman who stood look- ing over the shoulder of a stranger, who was reading a letter he had just taken from the country post office. The latter glanced up once or twice in an annoyed manner, and, as the SOCIAL CULTURE. 275 intruder seemed to take no notice of the gesture, moved away with still stronger marks of disapproval; whereat the rustic exclaimed: "Wai, ye needn't be so stuck up, if ye hev got a letter." To such a man the refinements of polite society were a dead language to which he had no key. The reasons and motives for certain usages, he had never thought upon. He would doubtless put his spoon, fork or knife into the dish from which you were to be helped, hand bread to you with his fingers, or come into your private room without the formality of knocking. He would argue that what was good enough for him, was good for you; but there would, after all, come times in his experience, when the aggressions of some one of his fellows would become too much for even his callous temper- ament; and there must be heroic treatment for a diseasfe allowed to gain such terrible headway. Fisticuffs and knives, and the whole settlement torn up into rival factions, is the result, when a little understanding of the common courtesies of daily inter- course would have prevented it all, and made life easier every hour. It has been most truly said: " Manners aim to facilitate life, to get rid of impediments, and bring the man pure to energize. They aid our dealing and conversation, as a railway aids travelling by getting rid of all avoidable obstructions of the road, and leaving nothing to be conquered but pure space." To the uncultivated but sensitive man, fine manners seem either the gift of the gods or an unsurmountable science of which he can never become the master. Let him once see that it is all made up of trifles which he can command by tak- ing care, and caring to know; let him once understand that it is eternal vigilance over the liberties and rights of others, and unceasing abnegation of self; and, if he is willing to put him- self under a strict course of silent instruction, and has even an ordinary capacity for remembering, he will, at the end of a 276 ' SIGNAL LIGHTS. year, be a reasonably well-bred man ; at least he need no longer fear that he will be called ill-mannered. Once within the circle of the initiated, he shall find himself " in a more transparent atmosphere, wherein life is a less troublesome game, and not a misunderstanding rises among the players." Equality is a necessity of cultured intercourse. Unless a man's appearance or address at once proclaim him very much your inferior, you have no right to think him such; neither should outward show establish for you the fact of his superior- ity. We have little patience with one who, in a continual perspiration of apology, seems to imply that we want his heart's blood; or with the domineering individual, who apparently considers us his born thrall and slave. If you become convinced that one is greatly your superior, at least do not widen the chasm between you by being anything less than a man; you can meet him on that footing, if you are true and honorable and worthy of the name. The real gentleman dislikes nothing so much as to have the fact of his superiority thrust servilely before him. If you are convinced of another's inferiority, shun him, rather than lower yourself by tyrannizing over him. If morals influence manners, manners also influence morals. In the last century, when etiquette permitted at the table the drinking of wine until the guests slid from their seats under the festive board, and women and men interlarded their con- versation with language not only vulgar but profane, the morals of society were a match for the manners. We may turn with disgust from the works of Congreve * or Wycherly, but we must remember that the dramatists but recorded the social life of their times. The people who permitted and encouraged coarse vulgarity in their drawing-rooms were not to be shocked by the same thing on the stage. Neither would SOCIAL CULTURE. 277 they have been interested, satisfied or amused by a less fam- iliar and rankly flavored picture of social life than that to which they had become accustomed. What was an every- day occurrence in society of the upper strata in those days, would, in these, be apt to offend a whole community. Not only were their manners but their morals worse than ours. Says George Macdonald : " There is one show of breeding vulgarity never assumes simplicity." Nothing could be truer than this, because simplicity is in itself a necessity of good manners. The person who in any way seeks to impress you with the importance of his social position, at once leads you to suspect that he has not long enjoyed the elevation, that it is very much on his mind, and that, like a boy with a pair of new boots, while his elation is very visible, you are quite sure they are pinching him somewhere. Pomposity overawes only the vulgar or shallow; it amuses or disgusts the sensible or well-bred. " Polite behavior and a refined address," says Sir Joshua Reynolds, " like good pictures, make the least show to ordinary eyes. " Those who, by inheritance or circumstances, have always been thrown among fine-mannered people, and who, having this for daily diet, are instinctively well-behaved, know nothing of the hard and troublesome responsibility of those who are obliged to be continually on parade duty, lest each new comer be not duly impressed with the number and superiority of their forces. The well-bred man wears his fine manners as one wears an easy garment, without thinking of it. Emerson has most gracefully expressed the delicate texture of this gift of Olympus, when he says: " I think Hans Ander- sen's story of the cobweb cloth woven so fine that it was invis- ible, woven for the king's garment, must mean manners, which do really clothe a princely nature." Dignity is also a necessary element of good breeding, and should not be confounded, as it is by many, with stiffness or 278 SIGNAL LIGHTS. pomposity. A dignified person is not necessarily hard to approach. To be sure he makes it a little difficult to offer him an intrusive familiarity, but he does not make it hard to ask of him a kindness. He hedges himself about with a sort of palisade that is the terror of social tramps and marauders, but there is always an entrance where the latch-string is hung out for a friend or equal. The latter does not refer to birth, wealth or station; the finely-bred man recognizes higher dis- tinctions than these; his equal is the individual whose manners approach him with the royal pass-word of Arthur's court; his- friend is the one whose heart and soul are worthy of their fine exterior. Aggressive, kmd-mouthed riches or social standing may storm the palisade as persistently as they will, there is ever in the quiet dignity of the person not to be approached a still, small voice which they can not hear for their noise, but which is yet ever saying : " There can be nothing between thee and me." The person who has dignity will excite respect ; but the one who unites with dignity a ready sympathy will be sure of love also. No man is entirely sufficient unto himself alone; he finds a deep satisfaction sometimes even a necessity in sharing his thought, his doubt, his aim or his inspiration with another. What then if his idea find no response, and he has beaten his heart against a stone wall ; will he again come there for comfort ? No, he will as quickly seek a friend in the north wind. There are times when we like to watch the antics of the polar winds; they amuse us, and we may even let them blow in our faces, but we do not open our hearts to their cold blasts. And so with unsympathetic or selfishly preoccupied people, they may interest or amuse us, but they do not reach our hearts. We will keep that for those who want it, and will be more tender of it. " It is good to give a stranger a meal SOCIAL CULTURE. 279 or a night's lodging. It is better to be hospitable to his good meaning and thought, and give courage to a companion." Even a cynic, who distrusts, or pretends to distrust, all humankind, still wishes to be liked. He may say that the latter is quite immaterial to him, that he shall not trouble him- self about the impression he makes, but will he go where it is very plain to him that he is disliked? No; and though he slap society on the right cheek, he expects it to go on turning unto him the other one also. The chronic railer and misanthrope still seeks some one kindly tolerant enough of him to listen to his sniffs and growls. Has it ever occurred to him that society only bears with him because it cannot bring itself to be as rude as he is? Has he ever asked himself what he has given into the general fund where all are asked to contribute, and why he is not bodily turned out of a temple whose entire creed is reciprocity? Doubtless not. The mild cynic who, while evincing a wariness of human nature, can still play the martyr and immolate himself on the altar of good manners, by exerting himself to be witty, inter- esting or sympathetic, we shall doubtless always have with us ; and after all society owes him something, and appreciates this fact. He adds to the fund, and his small show of venom is likely only to raise a laugh. He is more agreeable to well- bred people than the man with a confiding, unsuspecting heart, who has a poor way of showing it, and is taciturn when he ought to be responsive, and obtrusive where he ought to be quiet. Let no one imagine that he is of so little importance that his behavior shall pass unnoticed. Society is a sort of silent police which is ever on the alert. " We are," says Addison, " no sooner presented to any one we never saw before but we are immediately struck with the idea of a proud, a reserved, an affable, or a good-natured man." And not only are we 280 SIGNAL LIGHTS. noted, criticised and classified, but even the most insignificant is a pattern and a power to somebody. No living human being is without some influence. Sometimes it is by constant contact with certain ones, or it may be by the divine right of parenthood; but still we are an oracle to somebody. Let us by all means have truth, truth the divine essence of all fine morals, but don't let us have it thrust at us on the point of a sword, or administered with vinegar and gall. Such a mode of procedure brings even virtue into disrepute. It is bad for the cause, and defeats the very end for which it is working. Of such advocates Truth might exclaim: "Save me from my friends ! " The inquisition was a very forcible way of setting forth the value of religion, but it led the disaf- fected to say I want nothing of a faith that has to push its claims by fire and the rack. Injudicious severity is also apt to produce a revolt and strong reaction. After Cromwell came Charles II. Doubtless the grim, unlovely manners of the early Puritans had much to do with the violent rebound from iron bands to license. In a lesser degree, too much bluntness of truth-telling in one generation, may be the cause of too much suavity and insincerity in the next. " Nothing," says Sir Richard Steele, " is more silly than the pleasure some people take in ' speaking their minds.' A man of this make will say a rude thing for the mere pleasure of saying it, when an opposite behavior, full as innocent, might have preserved his friend, or made his fortune." But aside from the foolishness of the thing, and the fact that such a per- son may make remarks of this character out of sheer brutality, the really genuine, noble-minded man, who thinks that he may speak his mind at all times, is more than likely to be thought simply belligerent and disagreeable. You may step on a corn with the very best motive in the world, but the victim is exceedingly apt to forget the motive, and remember only the SOCIAL CULTURE. 281 pain. The individual who would be a power for good, and would reform social life, must not let his subjects know that they are being reformed. If you tell a man he is an arrant knave, even though he be one, he will tell you that you lie. Seneca has most wisely said: " The manner of saying or of doing anything goes a great way in the value of the thing itself. It was well said of him that called a good office that was done harshly and with an ill will, a stony piece of bread: it is necessary for him that is hungry to receive it, but it almost chokes a man in the going down." Even fine gifts and attainments are of little worth if we have not the faculty of setting them forth agreeably and attractively. Says Locke: "Courage in an ill-bred man has the air, and escapes not the opinion of brutality; learning becomes pedantry, and wit buffoonery." If a delicate and sensitive soul has found for us a fine way of doing a thing, and it has been called good by such souls ver since, let us be glad that it was discovered before our day, and lose no time in learning the formula and profiting . by it ; for if it is the right way to treat some one else, it is the way in which we ourselves would wish to be treated, and the law is for our protection as well as our restraint. There is always a best way of doing a thing, if it be to sweep a room. If we are willing to give much time and labor to the attaining of proficiency in handling a chisel or drawing a line, shall we not give as much to the mastery of those things which shall, in a great measure, make the success or failure of our lives? Do you say: " But these are mere hollow forms, these rules of fashionable etiquette." I can only answer: even form is built upon reality, and all courtesy means love. Have we a higher law than love? There is very little danger of the true lady or gentleman becoming a mere martinet, " a thing of shreds and patches " 282 SIGNAL LIGHTS. of form and ceremony. The fragrance of the rose will always distinguish it from the French imitation, be it ever so clever. Mankind, which can not be long deceived by base metal, even with the guinea stamp, will also be sure to know the sound of pure gold when it rings. u What if the false gentleman almost bows the true out of the world?" says the philosopher. Real service will not lose its nobleness. All generosity is not merely French and senti- mental; nor is it to be concealed that living blood and a passion of kindness does at last distinguish God's gentle- man from Fashion's." Place the matter in whatever light we will, we can not afford to ignore the rules of polite behavior. A subject which has engaged the attention of great men, philosophers and poets, from Bacon and Spencer down to Emerson, is certainly one deserving of attention. Edmund Burke, the great and eloquent writer on philosophy and politics has even asserted: " Manners are of more importance than laws. Upon these,, in a great measure, the laws depend." Rev. W. C. WOOD, A. M. THE SABBATH DAY AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE. (A Paper on the Sabbath.} BY REV. WILL C. WOOD, A. M. N earth as in Heav- en," prayed our Lord, and taught to pray; and of all means to make his prayer a real- ity Heaven upon earth none can equal the Day of Rest given to man. ling; though "it pleased God by the preaching to save men ; " for there is _ like the Sabbath calm ; and preaching needs the restful opportunity and serene back-ground of the Sabbath, and preaching is little without the silver trumpets and pealing bells which call to the Sabbath worship. Not the Ministry, nor the Church, nor the Sabbath School, nor the Home ; for all these depend for much of their efficacy upon the Sabbath. And over and above the gracious power which it lends to these means, the Sabbath has a quiet efficacy of its 283 Not preach foolishness of no preaching 284 SIGNAL LIGHTS. own to make Heaven in the great world the world of labor. This is a theme great enough and important enough to be the subject of this paper, which will aim, therefore, to set forth some considerations 'which arise, as ive associate in our minds the 'words, " Sabbath" and "Heaven" In other diction, and interrogatory form of speech, what has the " Sabbath " to do wjth " Heaven? " Is there any connection between the two words and facts, more than a mere sentimental and fanci- ful one, a " visionary gleam," " a light that never was on sea or land"? Is there some real and logical connection between these two words, two of the dearest realities to the Christian heart? We shall see. It will deepen our insight, our rever- ence, our joy in the Sabbath-day, if we discover a real con- nection, and that the Omniscient designed the Sabbath to be to man a figure of Heaven. Three general propositions will be all we can embrace in this paper. i. THE LORD'S DAY is A DAY OF HEAVEN. The natural and obvious thought is that the Sabbath as a day of rest from toil and moil is a type of man's final rest after the labors of life are over. " Sabbath " means " Rest; " it is one of those institutions which beautifully carry on their forefront a significant name, like Aaron's consecrat- ing gold-plate on his mitre, showing to what high pur- pose they are consecrated. The Hebrew verb " Shabbath " signifies " to rest from labor, to lie by, to keep holy day," says Gesenius. " The wayfarer resteth," (Is. XXXIII, 8). " The land rests," when untilled, (Lev., XXXIV, 35). Our old Anglo-Saxon forefathers transferred the exact idea conveyed in " Sabbath " into their perhaps uncouth, but really fine word, "Reste-Dceg" Sabbath, then, is primarily, Rest-Day; and Rest THE SABBA TH DA Y AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE. 285 implies that toil has preceded; for if there has been no toil, why rest? what has there been to rest from? All, therefore, which there is of Heaven in the word ,Rest, and rest after toil and moil, is in the idea of Sabbath. " My chief conception of Heaven," said tired and sick Robert Hall, " is perfect rest." In somewhat of the same mood, Arnaud, the incessant and indefatigable, was urged, " Why do you not rest? " " Rest! Rest! I shall have all eternity to rest in." How wearisome does toil become ! not because the Infinite Father laid upon man burdens greater than he could bear, in his original strength; but because sin weakened, degraded, confused man, drove him forth from the Garden, easy to "keep and dress," to wrestle, in impaired strength and powers, with the thistly and rocky earth, and to eat bread in the sweat of the brow. Earth and man are out of accord. Some kinds of work, even now, suggest what work there was in Eden, what work was meant to be to all, the work of the glass-cutter, or of the embroiderer, delightful work, where "joy is duty," the work of Wagner and Liszt, the work of Nillson and Jenny Lind. But, for the large part of men, there is so serious a misadjustment of mind and body with estate and task, due, doubtless, in the last analysis, to sin's disarrangement, that work is not the natural and unforced activity the man craves and delights in; but work, his work, as circumstances have forced it on him, has an unpleasant sound; too often it means drudgery, and drudgery which not only wears, but wears out. How men and women, and, alas ! children, pour forth from the factory or manufactory, or store or shop, glad of heart when the evening bell strikes their release. The first natural rest of toiling man begins, the blessed rest of Night. " Sleep is the gift of God," sang old Homer, as it descended upon the tired combatant Greeks around old Troy. " He giveth his beloved sleep," sang ;he Sweet Psalmist of Israel, on his psal- 286 SIGNAL LIGHTS. tery, words which Mrs. Browning has caught up and sung in one of her dearest poems: " Of all the thoughts of God that are Borne inward unto souls afar, Along the Psalmist's music deep, Now tell me if that any is, In gift or grace, surpassing this ' He giveth his beloved, sleep! ' ' And how wonderful is God's boon of Night. Night, when you come to reflect, is a proof of the Creator and of Infinite wisdom so striking that the Night alone would prove a God. "Man goeth forth unto his labor until the evening. Thou makest darkness and it is night." The sun has hastened to go down; its mid-day glare has long since passed; its tempered light has tamed and soothed the restless noontide life; the western skies are all aglow with wonders of gold and color which have a thousand times suggested the departing of the saint into the eternal glory; the evening breezes and coolness are come. Toil is over; rest has begun. The sunlight glare which all day long was as the blare of an exciting trumpet, has ceased. The struggles and strifes of the day are over. " The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea, The ploughman homeward plods his weary way; *#*#### Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight, And all the air a solemn stillness holds." In twilight, or firelight, or shaded lamp-light, men become quiet and serene. Man is ready to rest. Ten hours of ordi- narily severe labor he considers enough to task his powers pro- portionately to their strength. He craves repose ; and now, just now, and not before for that were needless, but just now when so needed and opportune, God draws the curtains of the dark, and man may sleep. The laborer seeks for a proof of THE SABBA TH DA Y AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE. 287 a God; here it is for you the night. Have we ever consid- ered how it would be were there a day and a night of twice the duration? Take a mid-summer day of this doubled-day, the sun would rise at eight, man would be at work at nine, and would toil till this double-day's noon at our midnight hour; then he would toil on till our noon of the next day twenty -four or twenty-six hours " on a stretch ; " then would come a tedious night of eighteen hours. How happens that it is not so? Simply because the Omniscient and Omnipotent decreed to make the earth turn on its axis once in twenty-four hours, and not once in forty-eight. It is God who made the earth turn at all on its axis, so curtaining a time and an obscurity for man's slumbers. It is God who once in twenty- four hours closes the curtain, just when man needs the rest, slowly bringing on darkness to predispose mind and body for repose; and again draws aside the curtain to call man to sun- light and to work. God has made Night the first sweet rest after toil. Is it any wonder the poets, voicers of human expe- rience, from Euripides to Longfellow have sung of Night ? " O holy Night! from thee I learn to bear What man has borne before; Thou layest thy finger on the lips of Care, And they complain no more. " Peace! Peace! Orestes-like, I breathe this prayer! Descend with broad-winged flight, The welcomed, the thrice prayed for, the most fair/ The best beloved night! " In yet another particular, Night furnishes a type of Heaven;' for while, to be sure, it brings darkness, and so shuts out the sunshine which we associate with glory, it yet, by another ordainment equally wonderful, magnifies and reveals the heavens above our heads ; it is then that " the heavens are telling the glory of God," and myriads of orbs are displayed, and unknown depths of space are disclosed. 288 SIGNAL LIGHTS. " The darkness shows a million worlds That were not seen by day." So is the infinite Hereafter, its depths of eternity, its myriads of brightnesses. But to a day not to a fragment of a day, a mere hand- ful of hours to a day God gave the name Sabbath, " Rest," and so made it the type of all the rests which are His to be- stow. Now we have a declared and designated foretaste of heavenly rest. Night is soothing, and sleep " Knits up the ravelled sleeve of care, Sore labor's bath, balm of hurt minds, Chief nourisher in life's feast." But it rests man but in part. The physiologists have come to know this. The most striking exhibition of what the Sab- bath does to supply needed rest is presented by Dr. Haegler, of Bale. His researches were long and profound; he embod- ied the result in this speaking illustration: " By the following simple but graphic diagram, Dr. Haegler exhibits the expen- diture and partial recovery of the forces in the ordinary daily labor and nightly rest, and the need and effect of the supple- mentary rest of Sunday, to maintain them at the level of highest efficiency. THE SABBATH DA Y AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE. 289 " Beginning on Monday morning, each downward stroke to E (evening), marks the daily expenditure of energy, and the upward stroke the nightly recovery, which does not rise quite to the height of the previous morning; so that there is a gradual decline during the week, which only the prolonged rest of Sunday repairs. The downward line shows the contin- uous decline of the forces when they are not renewed by the weekly rest." Unerring Wisdom called this a sufficient rest orje entire day in seven and was not ashamed to set it forth to the universe with His signature and seal. Men who bravely worshipped " Reason," thought even a less frequent day a suf- ficient boon of rest. " When I was in Paris," says William von Humboldt, " during the time of the Revolution, every tenth day was directed to be observed as the Sunday, and all ordinary business went on for nine days in succession. When it became distinctly evident that this was far too much, many kept holiday on the Sunday also, as far as the police laws allowed; and so arose, on the other hand, too much leisure. In this way, one always oscillates between the two extremes, as soon as one leaves the regular and ordained middle-path." " Proudhon, who practiced neither religion nor medicine, arrived at the same result when he said, " Shorten the week by a single day, and the labor bears too small a proportion to the rest; lengthen the week to the same extent, and labor becomes excessive. Establish every three days a half day of rest, and you increase, by the fracture, the loss of time, while in severing the natural unity of the week you break the numerical harmony of things. Accord, on the other hand, forty-eight hours of rest after twelve consecutive days of toil, you kill the man with inertia after having exhausted him with fatigue." A Day it was, then, one day in seven, on which God stamped 19 290 SIGNAL LIGHTS. the word REST as he gave it out of his hand to man; because, unlike the Night, however blessed, this is, for man's general purposes, a sufficient rest,' and so it is a foretaste of Heaven. Not a fragment, like the Night, but a complete period; not like the Night, a period of sleep and oblivion, but of broad day-light, sunshine, perhaps, such as we always hope for the Sabbath men love sunny Sabbaths; wakeful life there is, yet not hurried and harried by factory bell and steam whistle, and exacting tasks; but serenity and quiet, long continued, prevail under the broad light of day, a time not of sluggish and inert rest from toil as was the Night, but of active and jubilant rest, of sweet and glad duties, worship and family love and kind and benevolent thoughts of all men. And these very exercises are appointed for this very day, worship and home life, and beneficence, " it is a day of rest unto the Lord in all your habitations." It certainly means for the time Heaven, Heaven descending from God to earth. 2. God rested from His labors on this Sabbath. This adds emphasis to the idea that the Sabbath was meant to sug- gest Heaven. It is not a Rest-day put upon us in which He has no interest; but it is primarily His own Rest-day, and He says, u God rested the Sabbath-day." "Be ye therefore imitators of God, as dear children." The first mention of the Sabbath is in connection with the cessation of the great periods, or creative days, in which God made the world. What is work? and what is rest? It is sometimes thought that God was tasked in making the uni- verse; but philosophic thought cannot allow us to regard Him as weary or exhausted to any degree. Work is exertion with- out present fruition. What was the fruition -at which God was aiming during the creative week? Was it not the joy of the impartation of himself to man whom He was to create in His image, Eden, and then Eden extended, as the earth THE SABBA TH DA Y AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE. 291 became peopled to embrace the whole round globe ? The who)e six periods of creation, passed in exertions and labors, without and lacking that companionship, were days or peri- ods of work. This is the grand idea of the original Sab- bath, that it is the period when God, having made his vast preparations to form a home for man, and a world, a universe, which should fitly display His love and wisdom to man, and having introduced man into the world, paused and sought the fruition of his labors in imparting himself to man. The name " Rest," may, indeed, be fitly given to this period because it marks the cessation of creative labors, as geolo- gists affirm that it really does; but it may be given, on quite as good grounds, because God now commences the fruition of His work. We therefore regard as the first Sabbath the present period of the world's existence, in which, by God's plan, He was no more to occupy Himself with azoic rocks and senseless saurians and decaying carboniferous forests, but He would devote Himself, in this vast and amply furnished world which he had constructed for them, to loving his chil- dren and being loved by them. This is the seventh day and God's rest. And until man marred this original plan, the time and the spot were Paradise, a foretaste of the final Par- adise of God. 3. But another -work and another Rest-day of God meet our eye. Man failed to carry out his Maker's plan. He did not enter into God's Rest-day. He brought unrest, distur- bance, into the restful world as God had completed it. He broke away from that communion and companionship which, in the most favorable circumstances, God commenced with the human race in Eden. He broke a slight command, but in a way which involved an unwillingness to be a child of God, and an intention to be only the equal of God; of course com- panionship with the Infinite could not go forward on these 292 SIGNAL LIGHTS. terms. He became alienated from God by a wicked work, hid from God even amid the beauty of His creatidns, and was banished from Eden. Another six days of work God was now obliged to inaugu- rate, the labor of bringing man back to Himself; instead of " Paradise Lost " to make " Paradise Regained." It was an old Talmudic thought, shared by some of the early Fathers, and we have always thought most likely to be the true one, that the world is to last seven thousand years; 2000 Tohu va- Bohu, "formless and void," i. e., without the Law; 2000 under the Tor ah or Law; and 2000 under the Messiah. These are the new six days in which by Nature, by Law, by Grace, God is obliged to exert himself if He would bring back what man lost in his folly; and in these six days He is working toward the seventh day, the millennium, the restoration of the human race to its original union with God. We do not say that m some sort, even if man had not sin- ned, the seventh millennium would not have been the crown- ing glory of earth, the best of the feast; but since man did sin and nullify God's rest, the six days of a thousand years are absolutely necessary for the ushering in of the great millen- nium, the Sabbath-day, through grace, of the world, which is to be righteousness and peace. Only the millennium of res- toration will be no more than a thousand years, while God meant the whole period of man upon the earth to be His divine Rest-day of righteousness, peace and joy in Him. The Jewish Sages referred the ninety-second psalm, "A psalm or song for the Sabbath-day," to the millennium. Our hymns, some of them, combine thought of the millennium and the Heavenly rest. "O, long-expected day, begin, Dawn on these realms of woe and sin." THE SABBA TH DA Y AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE. 293 It is sometimes difficult to tell in the Apocalypse, where the prophecy of the restored Eden, and the promise of Heaven, run into each other. Dr. Hessey has very worthily set forth the Sabbath as a type: " The Creation labor and rest were exemplary, typical and consolatory, and were so understood by the writers of Holy Scripture, and by the Fathers, the antithesis being: "Labor and rest, generally: " Israel's labor in Egypt, in the wilderness, and rest in Canaan: " The old Dispensation and the New: " The Christian's labor on earth, and the Divine Peace which alleviates it. " The Christian's general course in this world and his rest in the world to come." We have been observing that this Rest-day does, in a gen- eral way, suggest and prefigure Heaven, the final rest. We are now prepared to take a great stride and make an immense step forward in important and new thought. 4. Especially and precisely does the LorcTs day, the first day. stand as the type of Heaven. Any day of rest, after six days of toil, the seventh day, the original Sabbath, would sug- gest Heaven, and be a sufficient type of it, in a certain indefi- nite way; but the first day, the Lord's day, the new day of rest, is a precise and exact type of the rest of Heaven. We will elucidate this; for it meets one of the most important problems about the Sabbath which is abroad, one concerning which the study has not been fundamental enough, and of which we think long study has given us the solution. Why do we not Sabbatize or keep the seventh day? This was the day of God's original appointment. He went further. As if to emphasize the sacred number in the history He was 294 SIGNAL LIGHTS. conducting for man, he appointed other seasons on the Sab- bath plan, seasons so marked that the most stupid mind must consider that something was intended. The readers of the Scriptures will readily recall this remark- able series of Sabbatic rests. After the seventh day came the seventh week (Deut., vi., 9, 10), "the feast of weeks;" then the seventh month, pre-eminently the sacred month in which came the great festivals; next the Sabbath year (Ex., xxiii., 10) in which the land was to lie fallow; then after stretching on for seven times seven years, (seven weeks of years), came a sacred year, and that remarkable institution, the Jubilee Year. Dr. Gordon grandly remarks : " In the Hebrew calendar, there was the seventh day pointing onward to the seventh week the seventh week to the seventh month the seventh month to the seventh year the seventh year to the seventh year of years, which introduced the Jubilee; each Sabbatic period thus conducting to a larger, and all seeming designed to carry the thoughts on to some final era of blessed fruition and release, as the successive barrels of a telescope conduct the vision onward to a star. We are only asking that the spoiler may not tear down the way-marks to the millennium; that he be not permitted to obliterate the guide-posts which direct our toiling and tired humanity to the golden age of its redemption." Why, then, do we not Sabbatize or keep the seventh day, which has been so emphasized in the history of God's chosen people? Why has not the church kept the seventh day, but on the contrary, in all its history, turned resolutely from it to keep the first? Since the whole drift and gravitation in the creative and millennial rests, and all the rests divinely ordered, which are memorials of creation or anticipative of the millen- nium, is towards a seventh day of rest, a rest after labor, wha't is the philosophy of a first day of rest, instead of the seventh?' THE SABBA Til DA Y AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE. 295 It would seem sufficient to set the first day in our thoughts that Christ's Resurrection the rest after the completion of Redemption, as the Father had celebrated His rest changed the day to the first. His own after hallowing of the day, apostolic usage and perhaps ordainment, the spontaneous re- ception of this day by the early church, the universal church, as " the chief and queen of days " would account for the change. Agreed; we admit that the day has been changed. But this does not set the mind at ease. There are unex- plained remainders. It is true that Christ's completion of his redeeming work by the resurrection does sufficiently stamp the day as the chief day of the week. Yet it remains that first come six days of toil and then rest; not first the rest and then the toil. Not first the bright, and after that the dark, But first the dark, and after that the bright; First the thick cloud, and then the rainbow arc, First the dark grave, then resurrection light. " 'Tis first the night, stern night of storm and war, Long night of heavy clouds and veiled skies, Then the bright shining of the morning star, That bids the saints awake and dawn arise." Still, in our dispensation, all the analogies are true of the new life after the old, the peace and calm after the unrest; still, emphatically, earth looks forward to her millenium, the seventh thousand years, and this by the Divine will. We can not wonder that many minds which have been im- pressed with the great Sabbatic idea, should be unable to accommodate their feelings to \hefirst day rest. The indications are striking that there is this strong inclina- tion towards the Sabbatic rest of the seventh day. ' The anal- ogies, as we have said, at first seem all in that direction. The 296 SIGNAL LIGHTS. reasons for keeping the seventh day seem more potent and philosophical than those for keeping the first. God kept the seventh day; man rests after six days of work. Still we expect earth to plod on, through its weary six millenniums of years, to find its rest in the seventh. Prose and, poetry dwell on this idea, "O, long expected day begin, Dawn on this world of woe and sin.' If we may coin a word, this afterness of the rest is not abolished. The gravitation is evermore with full and undi- minished weight towards the rest after toil, the seventh mil- lennium after the six of struggle and martyrdoms. Who has not felt this great difficulty? What is its solution? This difficulty has found expression in several ways which have become prominent even in the full blaze of Christ's resurrection and its celebration. One of these has been an actual return to the observance of the seventh day by the Christians of one of our western towns, where the Saturday is kept as the Sabbath. These people not only dwell on the fact that the creation Sabbath was never formally abrogated, but behind this, they can fall back on what would seem a far greater matter to a philosophic mind, that the seventh day stands forever as the " way-mark to the millennium." Another expression of this troubled thought for no per- sons are more scrupulous to do right than these men is the theory, lately elaborated by two or three writers of some abil- ity, that the " first day " of Christ was the real and original seventh day of creation; that the first day is, in fact, the sev- enth day restored. The feeling that has argued this point so earnestly is the one we have spoken of, that it is strange that God should have abrogated the real creation day for another, THE SABBA TH DA Y AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE. 297 and that it would seem the after-ness of the rest should be pre- served as pointing backwards and forwards, memorial and prophetic. We are free to confess that while these views have never commended themselves to us as the true ones, and somehow not consonant, but dissonant, with Christian feeling, we have felt the full force of the objection as to the incongruity of se- ting aside the great creation day, and, more especially, of turning back the great tendency of the mind towards the great rests after toil, consummating in the millennium. It would seem that the millennium ought to be symbolized by the seventh day, and not by the first. What reference is there in the first day to all those rests after toil? On first view the objection seems insuperable. We seem to have a chief of days, which is not in accord with the great Sabbatic idea on which the whole history of man, from crea- tion to millennium, is constructed. We do not wonder that this view should lead some men into theories which are not in accord with Christian feeling, authentic church history and sound exegesis. For Christian history and Christian feeling must certainly be set aside before we can leave the Lord's day for the old seventh day; and the theory, after candid study, must be considered a strained and improbable, not to say baseless one, that the first day is really the old seventh day restored. What is the philosophy of the first day rest? What is the rationale of it ? What is the place of a first day of sacred repose, in lieu of the seventh, in a system of revelation and course of history which are from beginning to end Sabbatic, " Calming itself for the long- wished- for end, Close on the promised good." It is true that we may take things on trust. We believe because rightful authority speaks. But the mind rests when 298 ' SIGNAL LIGHTS. one climbs to the philosophy of the subject, as when one stands on an eminence and gets an all-around view of ten miles. If we can climb to a point where we can see the whole philosophy of the first day in its connection with the week, we shall never again, I am sure, be cramped to any narrower theory. Can we gain such a view? Deeper reflection and a broader understanding will vindicate the Lord's day, and will show why we instinctively repudiate such views of the Rest-day as throw it back upon the seventh day. Reflection will bring us to a plane where we could, indeed, rejoice in the seventh day as the emblem of millennial bliss, but keep the first day as the true day of glory. We shall see that the first day has not only its place, but is neces- sary and essential to a history of the human race which is Sabbatic, yet more than Sabbatic. Premise, then, two things: first, that Christ could have ordered his resurrection so that it would have taken plate on any day he chose; that, therefore, it was by design and fore- ordination that, so to speak, he purposely " timed " the ter- minal events of his course that he should be " three days " and not four days in the grave, and should rise one day after the seventh, and not before the seventh not two days or three days after the seventh, nor, what many have wished with regret, on the seventh itself. We are reminded how our Lord abode still in his place when he heard Lazarus was sick, purposely absenting himself, and saying afterwards, "I am glad for your sakes that I 'was not there" In the same way, Christ, knowing what day he was to be crucified, purposely avoided rising on the great Rest-day of creation. From express design it was that he rose after the seventh day, and just one day and no more after the seventh. Then premise, secondly, that Christ knew the whole course of human events, for in Him " all things consist," and nothing could have been THE SABBA TH DA Y AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE. 299 further from his intent than to set aside the method of history. Advance upon it he might; set it aside, never: he came not to destroy, but to fulfill. Long reflection, climbing which reaches the mountain top, gives us the true coup d ceil of the whole subject which lies in one fact, this, namely, that Christ's resurrection secured and disclosed Heaven, the new ivorld of the life beyond. Just as really as Columbus, on the memorable day of October, 1492, disclosed a new world, so truly did Christ, on the day He rose, disclose eternal life as secured to men. Indications, indeed, there were of eternal life before this; but absolutely the first official announcement of Heaven secured to the human race, was the Lord's resurrection. The seventh day does, indeed, represent the millennium, but the resurrection secures and assures that which is just beyond the millennium, which is Heaven. The grand key to the whole matter of the change of the Sabbath from the seventh to the first day is that, until Christ came, the greatest day had been God's creation-rest; thereafter it was the resurrection-rest of Christ; before that, the most perfect consumation man could attain was the earthly millennium, the final blessed period of earthly history; after Christ's resurrection, and by it, another period more glorious first opened to man, the eternity beyond the grave; until the Lord's resurrection, consummations and rests after toil and moil were sought; after that, new beginnings, every one a rest from the past, in the first step on a higher plane, as of one mounting terraces. All this becomes possible only with the resurrection; nay, not possible only, but essential. After the resurrection, therefore, it is unphilosophical to keep the sev- enth day as the Rest-day and the best day; until that, the seventh day is, philosophically, the best of all the seven. In a word, with the resurrection, beginnings which are evermore beginnings of a labor and life which are all rest, are the new 300 SIGNAL LIGHTS. word ; up to that time consummations were man's best word. The seventh day is not to be despised; it still is the emblem of earth's best rest; but the first is the chief of days, because each Lord's day is to introduce a better week than the past; resurrection introduces a risen life to those risen with Him; the millennium is good, Earth has nothing better ; but Heaven has, and the resurrection makes possible the dawn of eternity. Among the many considerations which fall in with this view, it is instructive to take up the Fathers and see how with their, in many respects, unsettled notions as to the Lord's day, this idea seems to stand before them, somewhat dimly, it must be confessed, and not sufficiently enunciated, but yet, after all, so prominently that at least we can see that the idea was strug- gling to become conscious and clear to them. It is seen strik- ingly in their frequent reference to the Lord's day as "the eighth day ivhich is also the first" The " Epistle of Barnabas," written, probably, about the end of the first century, has an interesting statement of this view which is so valuable that D we must view it entire: " The Sabbath is mentioned at the beginning of creation. And God made in six days the work of his hands, and made an end on the seventh day, and rested on it, and sanctified it. Attend, my children, to the meaning of this expression, He finished in six days. This implieth that the Lord will finish all things in six thousand years, for a day is with Him a thous- and years. And He Himself testifieth, saying, ' Behold, to-day will be as a thousand years. Therefore, my children, in six days, that is, in six thousand years, all things will be finished.' And He rested on the seventh day. This meaneth: when His son, coming, shall destroy the time of the Wicked Man, and judge the ungodly, and change the sun and the moon and the stars, then shall he truly rest on the seventh day. More- over, He says, 'Ye shall sanctify it with pure hands and a THE SABBA TH DA Y AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE. 301 pure heart. * * Then we shall be able to sanctify it, hav- ing been first sanctified ourselves,' when we, ourselves, having received the promise, wickedness no longer existing, and all things having been made new by the Lord, shall be able to work righteousness. Further he says to them, ' Your new moons and your Sabbaths I can not endure.' Ye perceive how he speaks: your present Sabbaths are not acceptable to me, but that which I have made, when, giving rest to all things, I shall make a beginning of the eighth day, that is, a beginning of another world. Wherefore, also, we keep the eighth day with joyfulness, the day also on which Jesus rose again from the dead; and when he had manifested himself he ascended into the heavens." What light this lets in upon the whole subject. The day was, indeed, the first day of a new week, but as regards the seventh day, it was the eighth an advance upon it. Justin Martyr indeed, brings out the firstness in a well-known pas- sage: " On the day called Sunday, because it is the first day in which God dispelled the darkness and the original state of things and formed the world, and because Jesus Christ, our Saviour, rose from the dead on it. Therefore it remains the first and chief of days." But they add, " the eighth day which is also the first," that is, the eighth day as regards the seventh and all the past days, but also the first, that is of a new and better time and order. We may note right here that it is a misapprehension to imag- ine that we are to reckon the first day by going back to begin over again. That would, indeed, be a retrogression inexcus- able.. We are not to count from one to seven, and then go back to repeat the same in a never-ending round. Far differ- ent is the real numeration of these days. We are to reckon them as we -would count octaves on the key-board of some 302 SIGNAL LIGHTS. mighty instrument, first finishing one octave, then striking eight, which is also one of the next higher, and so on, in a glorious, never-ending successton of octaves. Such are man's weeks on earth since the risen Christ gave a glimpse of eter- nal dawn. They "go from strength to strength," they are the eighth day which is also the first, they are evermore new beginnings of better weeks which are brightening towards the perfect first day of Heaven. Athanasius says: "The Sab- bath, the end of the old creation, is deceased, and the Lord's day, the commencement of the new creation, has set in. Cyprian, Hilary and others use that same expressive phrase, " the eighth day which is also the first" The Pentecost, just after the seven times seventh day, and the Jubilee, just after the seven times seventh year, were fore gleams of the Christian Sabbath. Our thought, summed up, is this: There is, since Christ's resurrection, a day beyond the seventh day and better, " the eighth day which is also the first." There is, indeed, a Sab- bath of the earth, the seventh day; and all life gravitates irre- sistibly towards the rest after toil. That is true; but beyond that day is a new beginning on a higher plane, as a butterfly begins after inertly resting as the chrysalis of a caterpillar. That is " the eighth day which is also the first." The best that earth affords, were there no resurrection, is the last mil- lennium, and of that the type is the seventh day; but there is a resurrection, there is something beyond the millenium; " that which is the least in the kingdom of God is greater," Heaven begun; and there is something better than the seventh day which is " the eighth day which is also the first." Thus is explained our irresistible feeling that somehow there is a degradation in seventh-day keeping, and in the forced attempt to prove that the first day is the primitive seventh day. Prove this if you can ; but in doing so you indicate that THE SABBA TH DA Y AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE. 303 the seventh day and the millennium are the best you hope for, and deny the dawn of our resurrection. Thus, while God hallowed the seventh day because of His cessation of creation, and the cessation of His great work of man's restoration in the millennium, Christ hallowed the first day because he commenced the resurrected life on earth, and by the resurrection hope secured eternal day, that Lord's day in which His people shall be " forever with the Lord." The seventh day is, indeed, the day of creation and the day of the millenium, but the Lord's day is the day of Heaven. What Christian can go back from the first day to the seventh day? The Hebrew sages used to say, " To deny the Sabbath is to deny creation." To go from the first day back to the seventh is to deny the resurrection and the heaven it secured and announced to men. The answer to all keepers of the seventh day is this: You observe the day which means creation and millennium; we observe the day which signifies heaven. We pass to another important line of thought in which Sab- bath and heaven are associated ; that THE DAY OF REST is CALCULATED TO MAKE HEAVEN UPON EARTH. In other words, the tendency of the observance of the Sabbath is to produce a state of things which agrees with our ideas of heaven ; and, as a matter of fact, continued Sabbath observance actually results in such a condition as accords with our notions of celestial felicity. The Rest-day tends to make heaven, because in the first place it secures rest of the body. A " dragged out " state has no affinity to heaven. A rest of one day in seven gives a new elasticity to the body and recuperation to all its powers; it gives man the power of the lark to mount and sing. The testimony to the importance of the Sabbath for man and animal has long been accumulating, and it is abundant and well known, and of exceeding great interest and import- 304 SIGNAL LIGHTS. ance. Here is a testimony as to the need of the Sabbath rest to the animal frame. There a re many such cases reported: " Two neighbors, in the State of New York, each with a drove of sheep, started on the same day for a distant market. One started several hours before the other, and traveled uni- formly every day. The other rested every Sabbath, yet he arrived at the market first with his flock in a better condition that that of the other. In giving an account of it, he said that he drove his sheep on Monday about seventeen miles, on Tuesday, not over sixteen, and so on, lessening each day till r on Saturday, he drove them only about eleven miles ; but on Monday, after resting on the Sabbath, they would travel again seventeen miles; and so on each week. But his neighbor's sheep, which were not allowed to rest on the Sabbath, before they arrived at the market could not travel without injury more than six or eight miles a day." The important testimony of John Richard Farre, M. D., of London, given in 1832 before the British House of Lords, has often been quoted and re-affirmed by bodies of medical men. "I consider," concludes Dr. Farre, "that, in the bountiful provision of Providence for the preservation of human life, the Sabbatical appointment is to be numbered among the natural duties. This is said simply as a physician. But if you con- sider further, the proper effect of Christianity, peace of mind, confiding trust in God, and good will to men, you will per- ceive in this source of renewed vigor to the mind, and through the mind to the body, an additional spring of life imparted from the higher use of the Sabbath as a holy rest." The same restfulness comes to brain and mind as to body. A distinguished financier, charged with an immense amount of property during the great pecuniar}' pressure of 1836 and 1837, sa ^' "I snou ld have been a dead man had it not been for the Sabbath. Obliged to work from morning till night THE SABBA TH DA Y AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE. 305 through the whole week, I felt on Saturday, especially Satur- day afternoon, as if / must have rest. It was like going down into a dense fog. Everything looked dark and gloomy, as if nothing could be saved. I dismissed all, and kept the Sabbath in the good old way. On Monday it was all bright and sunshine. I could see through, and I got through. But, had it not been for the Sabbath, I have no doubt I should have been in the grave." All society is pervaded with more of that wholeness of mind and assured prosperity, which are celestial, from Sab- bath observance. " The stokers on the Thames said that the steamboat blew up because they were worn out and disturbed in mind by Sabbath work, which made them reckless." Heaven is Heaven because God is there; and the Sabbath makes Heaven because it sets Him in the firmament of our knowledge, our adoration, our love. "Hallowed be thy name," is the Sabbath prayer. Montalembert writes : " There is no religion without worship, and no worship without the Sabbath." The knowledge of God, his character, and his will since He is a righteous being naturally produces virtue and mor- als. Righteousness is taught and learned. Be ye imitators of God as dear children." The more we say " Our Father " to God, the more we say " my brothers " of men. The Sab- bath with mighty prayer, though voiceless, like that of the silent starry heavens, says: "Hallowed be thy name; thy kingdom come; thy will be done on earth as in heaven." There is an essential relation, therefore, of the Fourth Com- mand to the whole Decalogue. The Sabbath Command is the key-stone of the whole arch, by which they all stand, and in removing which they all fall. Unless God meant to have the whole fabric of religion and morals fall, He never intended to smite out the key-stone command. So held those 20 306 SIGNAL LIGHTS. mighty men of law and metaphysics, Sir Matthew Hale and Jonathan Edwards. The first of these " was so absolute a master of the science of law," says the Lord High Chancellor, his successor, " that one may truly say of his knowledge of law what St. Augustine said of St. Jerome's knowledge of divinity, ' What he did not know, mortal never knew.' ' Sir Matthew Hale declared: " The morality of the Fourth Com- mand is transferred to the first day of the week, being our Christian Sabbath; and so the Fourth Command is not abro- gated, but only the day changed; and the morality of that command is only translated, not annulled." Jonathan Ed- wards said the same: "It is sufficiently clear that it is the mind and will of God that one day of the week should be devoted to rest and to religious exercises throughout all ages and nations; and not only among the ancient Israelites until Christ came, but even in these gospel times, and among all nations professing Christianity." A very interesting historical fact it is, that while the early church declared against Sabbatizing, no passage is found against the fourth command. Unless God has ceased His gracious purpose to make a heaven upon earth, He can not have abrogated the holy Rest-day. Joseph Cook says: " There can be no diffusion of conscien- tiousness adequate to protect society from danger under universal suffrage, unless a day is set apart for the periodical moral and religious instruction of the masses. Sunday laws are justified in a republic by the right of self-preservation. The Sunday is the only adequate teacher of political sanity. The enemy of laws providing opportunity for the religious instruction and the physical rest of society, is the enemy of the working masses. Among the enemies of the masses, therefore, are to be reckoned railroads that break Sunday THE SABBA TH DA Y AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE. 307 laws ; Sunday theatres and public aniusements ; the opponents of the law for closing rum-shops on Sunday; churches, Romish or Protestant, that turn half of Sunday into a holiday; and secularists who would abolish all Sunday laws." And in just and ringing words he exclaims: "How are men to be made honest without a time set apart for moral and religious cul- ture? The population which habitually neglects the pulpit or its equivalent one day in seven can ultimately be led by char- latans and will be. As just as it was eloquent was Dr. Peck's outburst in the Massachusetts Sabbath Convention in Boston: " At least nine-tenths of the Christian work of America is done on the Sabbath. Overthrow the Sabbath and you para- lyze, at a stroke, seventy-five thousand Sabbath schools, stop the work of eight hundred thousand teachers, and orphan seven millions of the youth of the land of their chief religious instruction. Overthrow the Sabbath, and you silence sixty thousand pulpitSj the tremendous artillery which God has planted to bombard the fortresses of wickedness and immoral- ity; you silence sixty thousand trumpets calling sinners to repentance, and inspiring the hosts of Israel in gospelling the world for Christ." All good flows from this holy day. "The river of water of life flowed from the throne of God." Gilfillan calls atten- tion to the fact that " the family flourishes where the Sabbath is observed, and nowhere more than in Great Britain and America." Madame de Stael and Tocqueville laud the con jugal happiness of these countries. Burns' " Cotter's Saturday night " is as logical as it is beautiful " From scenes like these old Scotia's grandeur springs." President Hopkins has a weighty discourse on " The Sab- bath and Free Institutions," demonstrating that " without the 308 SIGNAL LIGHTS. Sabbath religiously observed, the permanence of free institu- tions can not be secured." Joseph Cook says: "I am no fanatic, I hope, as to Sunday; but I look abroad over the map of popular freedom in the world, and it does not seem to me accidental that Switzerland, Scotland, England and the United States, the countries which best observe Sunday, constitute almost the entire map of safe popular government." Long ago, Jefferson remarked to Webster, on a quiet Sab- bath at Monticello, " The Sunday schools present the only legitimate means under the constitution of avoiding the rock on which the French republic was wrecked. Raikes has done more for our country than the present generation will acknowledge." Daniel Webster used to say, " The longer I live the more highly do I estimate the Christian Sabbath." Permeating all society is this benediction, this celestial presence of the Sabbath. Henry Ward Beecher says: "The the one great poem of New England is her Sunday. Through that she has escaped materialism. That has been her crystal dome overhead. When she ceases to have a Sunday she will be as a landscape growing dark, all its lines blurred, its dis- tances and gradations fast merging into sheeted darkness and night." Penetrating now within all the commands to keep the day holy, what do we discover is the one celestial purpose which is the fountain of these celestial results we have been observing? God's ideal He sketched by the negative stroke, " In it thou shalt not do any work; " then by these positive strokes: " The seventh day is a Sabbath of rest,' " it is a holy convoca- tion'^ The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy Godf " it is the Sabbath of the Lord in all your dwellings" "And remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the Lord thy God brought thee out through a mighty THE SABBA TH DA Y AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE. 309 hand and a stretched out arm ; therefore, the Lord thy God commanded thee to keep the Sabbath." Translated into our speech, what is this but saying that all labor and thought of labor laid aside, tools and implements untouched, the stock market put out of mind, the day should be negatively one of rest and recreation, in its highest sense, and positively a day to the Lord, a day to the Lord in the family, a day to the Lord in the holy convocation, thereto called joyfully by the Sabbath bell or silver trumpets, a day not lacking patriotic gratitude, a day mindful of servants and of the hard-worked animals. These are only a few strokes, but rightly thought on they cover a large ideal, God, family, friends, humanity, the kingdom of heaven, and all that will make man's spirit live in them. Were I called to select one word which should comprehend all that is in the ideal of the Sabbath, it would be LOVE, the fruitions of Love, the cher- ishing and developing of Love, Love Divine, Love Human, and all which unites them; this ideal would exclude all which would make force or skill or even intellect or taste predomi nant. For this day these are in abeyance. To speak in another way, it is the day of the heart in man. In yet other phrase, it is the day of the other world, as Coleridge so pro- foundly says, u It is not the next world but the other world." That is, it is not the day of productiveness of physical or even intellectual fabric or impression or satisfaction; it is the frui- tions of love. It is the world in which the great thought is love, God's love, family love, friend love, humanity love, and everything which tends to make them regnant and glad. And what is this but saying in another form that it is the Day of Heaven? for the day which is philosophically and actually the day of the fruitions of love, is the Day of Heaven. " There we shall breathe in purer air, With heavenly lustre shine; Before the throne of God appear, And feast on love divine." 310 SIGNAL LIGHTS. One consideration more is needful to complete our view, which is that THE SABBATH SHOULD BE KEPT AS THE DAY OF HEAVEN. It is a type, a prefiguring, a foretaste of Heaven. It is to be spent in Love and the fruitions of Love. " No productive work is to be done," said the Jewish sages. Any- thing misses the aim of the Sabbath, even if it do not violently transgress it, which gives scope primarily to the physical, the intellectual, or even the aesthetic. Unnecessary labor, of course, is to be put aside; as to what are allowable activities, there is some question. Two classes of institutions and activities seem ranged as antagonists to the ideal Sabbath, the Sabbath as it should be, the day of the other world, the Day of Heaven. The most dangerous class of antagonists to the Sabbath are those institutions and arrangements whose end first and means afterward are to break down the Sabbath. Their distinct aim is to secularize the day ; these are destructive of the Sab- bath, and Christians should have but one mind about them, to move against them with destructive purpose. The most deadly antagonist of our American Sabbath, the head and front of offending, which flings its dark shadow athwart the land, is the " Sunday newspaper." Not ''Sab- bath newspaper," nor " Lord*s day newspaper;" first secular- ize the day and its name, then supply it with secular occupa- tions. No " Sunday paper " in the land dares call itself a Sabbath paper the "Sabbath Herald," the " Sabbath Globe," the "Sabbath Record." It would be a lie and misnomer on the face of it; no paper would be so religiously irreligious. No, nor would care to; it would shear down its circulation one-third the day it dared try to be a religious paper; people do not buy it nor want it as religious; they buy it because it is secular reading. The end, as well as means, of the Sunday THE SABBA TH DA Y AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE. 311 paper is vicious. Its end is secular, that is to keep the mind attached to this sceculum or world. There is no "other world ; " there shall not be a day in which this world of business and pleasure and care shall be shut out. Our aim is to keep you in this world by thrusting before you in the most attractive sheet we can prepare, the news, advertisements, amusements, scandal, of the world of worldliness. This these papers certainly accomplish, as a glance at them and the advertisements of them readily show. And to " give a sop to Cerberus," and still the protest of the Christian heart, they prepare from five to ten per cent of valuable articles, even by such of the min- istry, of dull perceptions, as they can hoodwink into this spe- cious scheme of Sabbath breaking. So came the destructive white horse into Troy under cover of sanctity. " Timeo Danaos dona ferentes " I'm afraid of the Sunday newspaper, even with a sermon in one corner of it. The aim of the Sunday paper is enough to ban it from all Christian hands and homes. Its means, of course, are vicious. Five hundred newspapers in the United States are aiming to make the day "Sunday" and not " Sabbath." In and about Boston alone they subsidize i, 2 50 newspaper carriers and 400 newsboys from 4 till 10 A. M.; also the Sunday trains the " paper trains," they are rightly called. Similar is the secularizing end, as well as Sabbath work, on Sunday mails, Sunday trains, Sunday freights, and Sunday excursions. Remembering: that there is a God whose favor O makes the fate of empires, a lover of his country can not hear with unconcern that 30,000 persons make Sabbath holiday at a beach, without a hymn or a lesson of righteousness. Insidious, specious, yet, in the end, destructive, because having the same secular aim are the art galleries, public libraries, Sunday lectures, zoological gardens. 312 SIGNAL LIGHTS. Creditable it is, indeed, ^English sense, as well as to Eng- lish Christianity, that while 62 organizations, with 45,482 members, voted for Sunday opening of museums, 2,412 organ- izations, with 501,705 members, voted against the opening. " We do not read anywhere in the scriptures," as Hamilton of Belfast tersely puts it, " that among the recognized modes of worshipping the Almighty is the contemplation of the stuffed specimens of the museum, or of the chefs cT ceuvre of the academy, or the spending of hours over the pages of Punch in the reading-room of the public library." A Ruskin, or the Ruskin in a man, might lead through an art gallery which a Ruskin had selected Bible pictures, church history, home scenes, portraits of the world's good men and women for a Sabbath feast; but any ordinary art gallery, at the day's close, has given full scope to the taste, the aesthetic; but does the day's twilight give assurance of any addition to love divine or human, to righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost? The exercise and development of intellect and taste, or joy in their productions, is not the aim of the Sabbath; they may not, in all circumstances, be gross violations of the Sabbath, but they certainly miss its aim the fruitions of love. The second class of activities are those whose end and intent are not secular, but involve some Sabbath work. These require judiciousness and breadth in forming an opinion; and generally we must be content with our own personal action, with modest judgment as to other men. The horse-railroads and local trains, within church-going radius, belong to this class. I must content myself with quoting Dr. Atterbury, in a kind answer to my query whether he considered the horse- railroad a necessity. He would not give a decided answer, but said: "I remember Mr. Norman White telling me an answer to a gentleman who urged our committee to fulminate THE SABBATH DA Y .tND ITS SIGNIFICANCE. 313 against horse-cars 'You use a carriage on Sunday, sometimes, at least, to attend communion on a rainy Sunday, or to take your wife to church when she is too feeble to walk. Others have to do the same. In a city like this there must be much driving on Sunday on errands of necessity and mercy. One man and one pair of horses in a car will do the work of half a dozen carriages. On the whole, is there not less work done by using the cars than by using private vehicles?' He, him- self," continues Dr. Atterbury, "would not ride for his own pleasure or convenience, but only on such errands as would have justified him in hiring a carriage." And Dr. Atterbury adds, " This is about my own view of the case." One specimen this is of the second class; work on the decorations for an elaborate Sabbath school concert is another, where the end is entirely Sabbatic and religious; each man's judgment is to guide him in deciding how much activity is allowable where the end is Sabbatic and religious. " The priests in the temple profane the Sabbath, and are blame- less." But leaving the negative, how we should not spend the Sab- bath, the positive view is that it should be the Day of God, and therefore of Heaven, the day of " the other world," the day of love and fruitions of love. Here we would like to expatiate if space permitted. It is the day of love ; of course it should be the day of large enjoyment of God. Dr. Alden has well pointed out that the great " Sabbath Question " is the giving man a heart to love God; that is what is needed rather than adaptations of the day to man's unregenerateness. As the sturdy Puritan, Thomas Shepard, used to say, " The overflowing and abund- ant love of a blessed God will have some special times of special fellowship and sweetest mutual embracings." It is the day of Christian convocation and love. It has 314 SIGNAL LIGHTS. been so from the beginning; and Justin Martyr wrote, about 120 A. D.: " On the day called Sunday all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place; and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read as long as time permits. The reader having concluded, the pres- ident delivers a discourse instructing the people and exhort- ing them to imitate the good things which they have heard. Then we all stand up together and engage in prayer, after which bread is brought in with wine and water. The presi- dent offers up, according to his ability, prayers and thanks a second time, to which the people express their assent with a loud amen. Then follow a general distribution and partici- pation of the things for which thanks have been given, and a portion is conveyed to the absent by the deacons. The more affluent contribute of their substance as each is inclined, and the remnant is intrusted to the president, wherewith he re- lieves the orphans, widows and the like. We all assemble together in common on Sunday, because it was the first day that God, having changed darkness and chaos, made the world, and because on the same day Jesus Christ our Savior rose from the dead." It is a day of love for humanity and extraordinary efforts for man's redemption. The Christian should no more com- plain that the Sabbath is his busiest day than the harvester that the harvest is his busiest season. Yet even to the most laborious Christian worker there are sweet hours of personal repose, and he can sing: "One more day's work for Jesus, O yes, a weary day; But heaven shines clearer, And rest comes nearer, At each step of the way; And Christ in all, Before His face I fall." THE SABBATH DA Y AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE. 315 The day of the fruitions of love we have called it. One of the old " Blue Laws " is said to read it is in what Trumbull calls the "forgeries of Samuel Peters" " No one shall kiss his or her children on the Sabbath." Exactly the contrary; every one shall kiss his or her children twice as much on the Sab- bath. To-day is the leisure day of the heart. The heart exclaims: " The Sabbath is mine; business, intrude not; even intellect and taste, if to-day you enter, come only as hand- maids to me; it is the heart ? s own day." It is the day of reminiscence of friends and scenes of friendship; the day of looking over albums of loved faces and cherished autographs; the day of untying the ribbons of old bundles of letters; the day of recalling the places where our lives have been cast and sending our thoughts and salutations thither; a day of remembering " the whole family on earth and in heaven." " One family we dwell in Him, One church, above, beneath, Though now divided by the stream, The narrow stream of death." how precious and dear their remembrance! it is the day of counting up the friends we still have with us, of presenting them at the mercy-seat, of walking to the house of God in company, of kind, thoughtful deeds, or of friendly correspond- ence; it is the day of " looking in " upon friends not of formal calling or visiting; yes, again we say it, it is the Day of Love and its fruitions. It is the day of visiting the sick; of the heart's leisure to contrive kind and charitable deeds; of kind, cordial, cheering salutations to every one ; of happy deeds and speeches to little ones, to the aged, and to any upon whom the burdens of life press heavy or sore. Peculiarly and emphatically is it the family day. Henry 316 SIGNAL LIGHTS. the Fburth of France used to say that he " wanted France to be so prosperous that every peasant in France might have a fowl in his pot on Sunday." Grahame's lines are beautiful truth: "Hail, Sabbath! thee I hail, the poor man's day! On other days the man of toil is doomed i To eat his joyless bread, lonely; the ground Both seat and board; screened from the winter's cold Or summer's heat, by neighboring hedge or tree; But on this day, embosomed in his home, He shares the frugal meal with those he loves." The devout Jew made a strong hedge against Sabbath labor, devoted the Sabbath to worship and " philosophy " ; but he made it a glad day, the day of the best dinner, prepared beforehand. With all its severe rabbinic restrictions, the Sabbath was a delight to the Jew, as even in its severest ways of observance it has always been a blessing. The Talmud tells us that " Rabbi Chanina wrapped himself in his festal cloak, and when the Sabbath eve was on the turning point, he said, i Let us go out to meet the Sabbath the Queen !' Rabbi Jannai dressed in his best on Sabbath eve, and used to say, 'Welcome, Bride ! Welcome, Bride." How entirely the Jewish idea was to put the man into " the other world" is seen in the remark of Rabbi Simon ben Lakish, that " man receives a second soul on the Sabbath; 1 ' we also see it in this pleasant reading from a Jewish breviary: " Let thy apparel be such as shall denote mirth and rejoic- ing. Consecrate the lights or candles of the Sabbath to the end they may burn well. Leave thy business on Friday; and take care thou be provided in the evening with fish, fowls, aromatic wine, confects and other of the most delicious prepa- rations for the table which thou canst come at; and give thy- THE SABBA TH DA Y AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE. 317 self up to all kinds of pleasure. Walk leisurely, for the law requires it; as it does likewise longer sleep in the morning. Garments of silk and fine linen are costly; and they who appear in them are honored. The Sabbath day is holy. O, blessed is he who observes it carefully. Though spiders are nestling in your chests and drawers, vex not at the matter; and be resolute and merry, though ruined in debt. Prepare thee a table, and cover the same with fish, flesh and the most excel- lent wine; so shalt thou be amply rewarded here and here- after. Ye women, light up the candles nimbly; that shall be for your blessing in child-bearing. And if ye have spiced cakes, ye shall be happy in children." A similar " string of precepts " has these jocund instruc- tions : " Cease from all thy labor which regards the world. If thou hast a hundred thousand men and maid-servants, prepare for the Sabbath with thine own hand ; for the Sabbath is worth all the commandments together. Be cheerful, and think thy- self rich. Put on thy most sumptuous and elegant apparel; for the Sabbath is 'called the Bride. Purchase the best of everything. Meet the Sabbath with a lively hunger; let the seats be adorned with beautiful cushions; and let elegance smile in the furniture of the table. Assume all thy sprightli- ness, banish sorrow and vexation from thy heart, dressing and behaving as if all things went according to thy wishes. Re- joice with thy wife and children at a table furnished for three plentiful meals; utter nothing but what is promotive of mirth and good humor." How well they understand that it was to be the day of " the other world," " The day of the Lord, in .all your habitations." It is never to be forgotten that it is a holy day, a day to be sanctified. " Sursum Corda " is the word ; " We lift them up to the Lord." " Ye shall hallow my Sabbath." 318 SIGNAL LIGHTS. " There we shall breathe in purer air, In heavenly lustre shine." It is the day of the Lord Jesus' resurrection, of the risen life with Him; it is the first day, the day of Heaven. The individual or the people who are not up to the spend- ing of one day in the week, when called to it by silver trump- ets, on the high plane of God, home and family, friends, sacred music, communion with the good and great, living and past, in conversation and books, but must have sport to eke out the day, are either in barbarism, just emerging from it, or fast descending into it. o See to it, also, that every other man, woman or child within your reach, has the Sabbath free to spend in " the other world," untrammeled by care. Shame upon a man who will buy a Sunday newspaper, when he knows the boy who brought it is kept unchurched and secular by it. Scorn upon a man who makes his servants spend their Sunday forenoon preparing him a big Sunday dinner. Shame upon the forty Boston bar- bers who compelled the other 460 to work on the Sabbath, against their will. Shame on corporations which declare might gives right to us to defy God's day and oppress our employees. See to it that as far as your power and your influence go and they may go further than you think every man shall have this day of heaven, home, humanity. The day should be made a " delight and honorable," so spake the Holy Ghost. I sometimes think we have not begun to know how to keep the day, to get from it all the benefit and delight the Lord of the Sabbath intended. It should be made delightsome to the children from infancy, not by letting down the day, but by varying the hallowed pleasures they may have upon it. Asa Bullard, of the " Well Spring," says: " I believe the Sabbath may be made a welcome day, a day the children will delight to have return; such a day that they THE SABBA TH DA Y AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE. 319 will be prepared to enter into its services and find it one of the most delightful of the week. In regard to my own practice, a large number of Scripture illustrated cards were purchased, and a large number of blocks with religious engravings were put into .their hands, never to be seen except on that day. The consequence was the Sabbath always came to them as a day of delight, giving them employment and much instruc- tion." Have the best dinner of the week, prepared beforehand, to be enjoyed at leisure, at 4 o'clock, or whenever the daily ser- vices are over. Set a bouquet on the table every Sabbath, in honor of the Lord's day. Two rabbis once met a man who had two bunches of myrtle. He explained that they were to smell of in honor of the Sabbath. " Why two?" "One for remember, one for keep. Remember how much the day has done to make heaven on earth, by its worship, its instructions, its calming and uplifting power. It is New Jerusalem coming down from God out of heaven; and men walk its streets of diaphanous gold; for what is diaphanous gold if not love? Christopher North says: "A day set apart from secular concerns, and as far as may be from the secular feelings that cling to them, even in thought, has a prodigious power, sir, over a' that is divine in our human. It is as if the sun rose more solemnly, yet not less sweetly, on the Sabbath morning, and a profounder stillness pervaded, not the earth only, but also the sky. The mair Christian the people, the mair Christian the Sabbath; there- fore, let the Sabbath be kept holy, as I believe it to be in Scotland, and then the blessing of God will be upon her, and as she is good, so shall she wax great." The great test of our Sabbath keeping is how much of heaven it has brought us, and how much of heaven it has led 320 SIGNAL LIGHTS. us to impart to others. Wherever and however we have spent the day, do we feel it has been an "Angel to beckon me Nearer, my God, to Thee ? " God, Heaven, Home, Humanity, are all these dearer to us through the day? Love the light of that jasper-stone of the Holy City descending, has that shone about us, and in us, and through us? So kept, and not otherwise, the Sabbath- day is the transfiguration of the world. ~\ MRS. KATE BREARLEY FORD. THE PRACTICAL EDUCATION OF OUR DAUGHTERS. MRS. KATE B RE A RLE Y FORD. "Therefore, with all thy gettings, get a specialty." Frances Wittard. "It is not talent that men lack, but purpose. The three steps in gaining an education are intention, attention, and retention." Anon. HE topic education is not a novel one; it appears and re-appears on the written t page, ever since man began thinking and doing and his thoughts and deeds were fossilized into history and song. But the education !%, of our daughters, that this should demand consid- eration and perchance action, this is a new thing under the sun. I will not go into foreign lands or back into the Dark Ages for examples of what has not been done. Enough can be found in the annals of our own country. Here, as elsewhere, we can expect not many works without corre- sponding faith ; and it is not yet a universally accepted fact that woman, side by side with man, physically, intellectually, and morally, can hold her place unfailing in the forced marches and prolonged struggles of life. 321 21 322 SIGNAL LIGHTS. A change, nevertheless, has come over the popular heart, seemingly sudden and unaccountable. Says a Western paper: " It is like the descent of a new spirit of Pentecost in our midst, teaching the men of this age, as the unbelieving Peter was taught in another age, that men and women all belong to the same category of human beings." How strange now to read from the preface of a book written in good New England a century ago, " I have selected only short and simple words, and have avoided deri- vations from the Latin and Greek, in order that women may understand and be benefited by what the book contains." A few years later a sanguine schoolmaster of the same region declared his intention " to carry a class of girls through vulgar fractions." To such proceedings the wise school-committee put a stop at once, with the utmost gravity denying a woman's mind to be capable of comprehending anything so difficult! We read in early colonial history how the Puritan fathers, before they permitted themselves comfortable homes, set aside a liberal sum for founding and sustaining a college. This institution was " for the higher education of the young," which being interpreted meant the young men; for, while the mothers were allowed an equal share in the labors and econ- omies requisite for so great an undertaking, the daughters were never once considered in the accruing privileges and benefits. And the interpretation at that time has come down through two hundred and fifty years, with little if any change of meaning. It is recorded that in the winter of 18523 a few pupils of the Massachusetts Normal School made applica- tion to the authorities of Harvard University for permission to attend the lectures of one of the professors, their object being to qualify themselves to teach a science they could not elsewhere acquire. Strange as it may seem, their application PRACTICAL EDUCATION OF OUR DAUGHTERS. was refused. Within recent years, while the trustees still keep without the hungry and persevering daughters, their hearts have become so far softened that a sort of woman's court has been added to the temple, known and referred to by the unregenerate as " the Annex." Is it a daring thing to prophesy that it will not require another two hundred and fifty years to demolish this useless and wretchedly designed structure? Then the failure to satisfy the examining com- mittee the same committee that tries the souls of the sterner sex will be all that can keep the daughters outside the sacred doors. The colonies and States boasted much of their " free schools;" but what education was granted the girls came to them as " an especial privilege," when they might safely be smuggled in to make use of the otherwise empty seats. In the Boston grammar schools girls were not admitted at all until the year 1789, and thereafter for full forty years their attendance was limited to half the year. In 1826 this city made an effort to establish a high school for girls, and that without instruction in Latin and Greek. The experiment was said to have " such alarming success " that after eighteen months of existence it was abolished, lest the daughters who accepted this opportunity with such eagerness should thereby be led to step beyond the boundaries of " woman's sphere." Twenty-five years went by, when a normal school for female teachers had a beginning. In the course of study were many of the branches belonging properly to the high school, but not till 1872 was there begun in this conservative town a girl's high school on an equal footing with that enjoyed by their brothers. The year 1870 was almost completed, and no woman had ever been enrolled as a member of Michigan's great univer- sity. The one courageous little woman who waited alone 324 SIGNAL LIGHTS. outside the classic halls, did not knock in vain. To-day only seventeen years from that date three hundred and more young women read the old Greek and Latin authors, wrestle with the mathematical problems, and talk philosophy with as much ease as do their learned brothers. Every year since 1872 an increasing number have passed out with honors from this temple of learning, carrying with them only memories of unvarying courtesy and kindness from instructors, classmates, and citizens. But the pioneer, Madelon Stockwell, learned the meaning of contempt and marked neglect, and that from the women of the beautiful town, from whom her own digni- fied and womanly behavior and truly remarkable scholarship should have won the highest respect. My cheeks tingle with shame while I write this down, and I am glad that time is for- ever past. This year we record with exceeding joy the many oppor- tunities for higher education offered the daughters of our land. And does it not augur well for their future that at the very dawn there should come to them and to the patient mothers at home such queries as: Is the progress of woman in keeping with the increase of her advantages? Is she gaining the dis- cipline which will help her to live to a purpose? And, what is a truly practical education? The term practical education is not infrequently employed in a very narrow sense. Education is held to be a knowledge of books, a something that belongs to libraries and class- rooms, and becomes most apparent on graduation day. A practical education seems to mean an intangible something which brings about a tangible result, a kind of coin that cancels debts and pays for bread and butter, hence more than all things else, to be desired. We must not set aside intellectual culture as worthless. It is not a waste of time for my daughter to study the binomial PRACTICAL EDUCATION OF OUR DAUGHTERS. 325 theorem; but should I wish her to write a simple receipt or compute the interest on a note, I am right in being displeased when she can not do it. She may read Plato in the original, provided she loves to read and is ever a student of her own mother tongue. Referring to our best authorities on such subjects, we find that " practical " comes from a Greek verb meaning " to do, to work, to effect ; capable of being turned to use or account ; useful, in distinction from ideal or theoretical." An education is practical, then, when it brings about a corresponding prac- tice, when by it we have increased power " to do, to work, to effect." If the past is worth anything to woman, she has learned that the old creed, beautiful as it is and hallowed by long association with all that is poetical and romantic, that women are made to be dependent on man and ever obedient to him, is not the creed that can be lived by. Experience has taught her that, " if a woman will not work, neither shall she eat." Dinah Mulock Craik says, " Generally speaking, a woman at any age out of teens, being well-educated, prudent, and possessed of a tolerable amount of common sense and ordinary gumption, can take care of herself fully as well as any man can do it for her; and, except in the love-phase of life, when help is so delicious and helplessness so sweet, most men prefer a woman who will and can take care of herself. It saves them a world of trouble." Perhaps people are not aware, or if they are, give the mat- ter little thought, how many women, married and single, are earning their own livelihood. And they do not stop here. Parents or other relatives are dependent upon their industry, or accept their proffered bounty. A mother is left with a family of young children. She keeps them together in some way, provides for and educates them; all day she takes the 326 SIGNAL LIGHTS. father's place, going out for menial service, it may be, and returns at night " to begin all over again " and do the mother's work, toiling to the midnight hour, month after month and year after year. When the father is left in a similar condition the family is often broken up at once, the children scattered among relatives and friends, perhaps placed under the care of perfect strangers, and the father does just what he did before the mother's death the work of one. An eminent American educator once said, " Respecting woman's sphere, when this matter is rightly understood, I think it will be found that what is so currently spoken of as the ' sphere of woman ' is only a hemisphere." I believe what I learned years ago, that "nature abhors a vacuum," and many are with me in this view; so what wonder is it, when a man creeps into some out-of-the-way nook of his own hemi- sphere and passes his precious time sleeping or goes foraging over into his wife's hemisphere, what wonder is it that she looks after the whole domain? It is pleasant to imagine what a comfortable and delightful time woman would have if in every case, protected and cared for, she were left at liberty to make a true home, and take up in addition such studies and occupations as her taste, inclina- tion, or genius might lead her to choose. But we must take the world as it is. Good sense dictates that we wake from our delicious dreams, that we comprehend what we have to do, and then proceed to enumerate what we have whereby all these things are to be accomplished. In other words, we read from the book of experience that women have duties multi- form and difficult, which they can not set aside; there is some- thing every woman can do, and do well; the number of occu- pations for women is daily growing greater; what shall her education be all through her childhood and youth, to fit her- for what lies before her? PRACTICAL EDUCATION OF OUR DAUGHTERS. 327 But 'we do not want our daughters to receive the place assigned them by Providence, thinking only of burdens and cares. " Duty is a prickly shrub, but its flowers will be hap- piness and glory." " Self-denial, the bearing of the cross, are stated by Christ as indispensable conditions to the entrance into his kingdom; and no exception is made for man or woman. Some task, some burden, some cross, each one must carry; and there must be something done in every true and worthy life, not as amusement, but as duty." Is it not an encouragement that Jesus at no other time while he was upon earth let fall such words of royal commendation as concerning three women? Of the poor widow He said, " She hath cast in more than they all ; " of the Mary who broke upon him her alabaster box of ointment, " She hath done what she could; " and to the praying mother for the daughter she loved, " O, woman, great is thy faith; be it unto thee even as thou wilt! " Are comparisons of any worth to us? The Greeks in their best days the Greeks from whom we have so much that is excellent in literature and art kept their ideal women as goddesses and their real women as slaves. The appreciation of women in our republic is well put by one of her sons, who says, " The only recognized aristocracy in America to-day, is woman." Why not make this aristoc- racy one that is genuine? Old words come to have new meaning sometimes. Woman makes up a "privileged order." She is privileged to be, to do, to effect, to work ; and through her labor shall be exalted. It shall be said of her in the future, as in the past, " She hath done what she could ; " " O, woman, great is thy faith; be it unto thee even as thou wilt!" Each new year opens with new avenues for women, and the ratio of the increase is simply wonderful. We all know how limited were her occupations a few years ago. A recent writer has rilled a book with what women now may do. No 328 SIGNAL LIGHTS. less than five hundred employments are described, ranging from the easiest mechanical labor to that which is intellec- tual, requiring broad culture and a mind-power of no ordi- nary type. Those employments requiring the least time and expense for preparation will always, of course, keep busy the largest class. Cleaning, washing, ironing, and general house- work, are the most common. The time is very near at hand, however, when no little skill will be required in these heretofore simplest of vocations. Doubtless, in the time to come the work of the home will have lost much of its per- plexity by being distributed to many hands. In the depart- ment of cookery alone, we are learning what a multitude of articles may be manufactured outside of home walls. Fruits, vegetables, preserves, jellies, pickles, etc., etc., are purchased everywhere. And for those who much prefer good, clean, home-made articles, an industry is springing up in many house- holds, which will supply at a moderate expense all the de- mand. A lady who has never been accustomed to earn her own livelihood, suddenly driven to extremities, inquires of her- self what she can do. She has always enjoyed superintend- ing her own cooking, and knows that she has the reputation of being an excellent housekeeper; so, securing a few regular purchases, she tries baking home-made bread. She does her best, always using only the choicest materials; and the de- mand for her product soon becomes so great she is compelled to enlarge her business by added appliances and abundant help. She takes up with this, other lines of cooking, plain cake, cooked meats, etc., and finds that her name attached to an article always brings a good price and ready sale. She learns that it pays here, as it does elsewhere, to stir in every mixture a plentiful supply of brains and conscience. But I hear some one say, " Cooking and sewing are not taught in schools, and how shall these be acquired?" For they may PRACTICAL EDUCATION OF OUR DAUGHTERS. 329 be said almost to rank among the fine arts. The chemistry of cooking ought to be in the regular course of school study, and the student in drawing, that so-called " useless accom- plishment," will be the better -artist of the needle by and by, for the skill acquired while pursuing her regular lessons in school. Whether or not sewing and other kinds of handiwork will have their place in our free schools, will doubtless be settled within the next few years. There will be established " indus- trial schools " everywhere, and those who will avail themselves of the training there to be obtained, will not be few in num- ber nor all of an inferior grade of people. Such statements as the following appear frequently in the daily journals, and indi- cate the public feeling in regard to such matters: "A com- petent statistician has estimated that ignorant cooking and bad management in the providing of food waste $5oo,ooo,ooo every year for the people of these United States. It would pay to give the girls who are going to do the cooking for the next generation a better start in life." President Gilman of John Hopkins University, in a recent lecture on the import- ance of industrial education, speaks from careful observation, and his opinions are of weight in deciding this all-important question. He says, "In educating the hand the brain is reached also. The two react upon each other and strengthen each other. On the average, the handicraftsman who culti- vates his brain is the better workman, and the better handi- craftsman a literary man is, the more accurate an observer will he be, the clearer thinker, the readier of conception and fancy. The hand and eye together are invaluable in the cul- tivation of the brain." Until polytechnic schools are more common, it would be possible to introduce for supplementary leading such books as Johnston's " Chemistry of Common Life," and various books 330 SIGNAL LIGHTS, of trades, etc., if it were not deemed best to use them for formal study and recitation. Then everywhere special and technical schools are being multiplied, so that a parent who wishes his child to understand physiology, chemistry, botany, and other studies that enter practically into every-day life, will find such instruction within his command at a nominal expense. What is there to hinder a scholar in chemistry from becoming a successful druggist as well as a cuok, if her pref- erences tend that way? Women are demonstrating to the unbelieving part of this world that they can be wood engrav- ers, patternmakers, turners, shoemakers, florists, landscape gardeners, fruit raisers, etc. Few days go by at Washington but from the Patent Office comes some favorable verdict as to women's inventive power. They are becoming designers for prints, oil-cloths, and wall papers. They are filling the ranks of copyists, telegraphers, photographers, typewriters, and mapmakers. They learn banking, and serve as amanuenses and book-keepers, proof readers, reporters, and book reviewers. In preparation for these industries, and they are each representative of a class of similar possible or existing industries, a practical education must be obtained, and the foundation principles should be laid early. But we would not think of a practical education in this light alone. Aside from bread-winning, how much more people would get out of their education if it enabled them better to understand and appreciate music, poetry, architec- ture, and other fine arts; to know what the progress of the age means on its different lines; to read the news under- standingly in the light of geography and history, and to travel and visit intelligently! Verily, man does not live by bread alone. An education that accomplishes, that " effects," in the broadest sense of that term, means a physical, mental, and moral education. PRA CTICAL ED UCA TION OF OUR DA UGHTERS. 33 1' Women have always had a reputation for fortitude in suffering, and for perseverance in overcoming obstacles. But pitiful it is to me to see these burden-bearers, of their own free will, add to their burdens and pile up obstruc- tions in their own pathways. It matters not how a woman is employed, she will do better mental work, as well as work to which she puts her hands, if her body is strong and untrammeled. Irregularities brought about by bodily conditions have made her an unsuccessful competitor with man; hence, if she would secure the most desirable posi- tions and hope for equal remuneration, the excuses she finds it necessary to plead must be reduced to the minimum. This is only one of many reasons why women should not ignore the care and education of the body. How much more vigorous the intellectual activity, when the physical organization is well. Then, we sometimes forget that the " higher nature," so frequently referred to, must act through this lower medium, whether it pleases to do so or not. This agent must see for us, hear for us, bring to us the beautiful creations around us, and carry us to them; must interpret, guide, and correct. How can the body move to the mind's bidding with promptness, grace, and ease, while all bound and burdened by dress? During twelve months the stormy days are not few. With how much more comfort might a woman meet her business engagements, if her dress was short enough to keep entirely clear of dampness and soil, and loose enough to admit of free movement in every direc- tion! Have you never noticed how a lame neck or shoulder was affected by walking? We forget that all the muscles of the body, more or less, are employed when we walk, and so are hindered in movement by binding waist-bands or too great a length and weight of skirts. Walking would be pre- ferred to riding, if shoes were broad and well fitted to the 332 SIGNAL LIGHTS. foot. Women are prone to believe that beauty dwells in the contour of the face alone. A well-shaped face, with a color that shows poor circulation, wretched food, lack of exercise, or, worst of all, ungoverned passions, is never a beautiful face. And a grace of movement, a beautiful manner, has a wonder- ful power. Walking gracefully is almost a lost art in America. In a tight waist and pinching shoe too frequently lies the cause of the chronic back and side aches with which our girls so often become afflicted. A man who is respected for his good sense and business ability, never allows himself to be thus hindered by what he wears. This education of the body can not be longer ignored. A young girl should feel that it is a matter of the most serious regret when she is unable to keep up with her brother in active out-door employments or in athletic games. Gymnas- tics should have a place in every school. The pupils need it for rest. They are learning meanwhile promptness, obedience, and time. Grace of action is one result, and one who often visits a school-room knows how sadly needed is some plan by which a thorough ventilation can be effected. It takes a very short time for air breathed by fifty or more pupils to become foul in the extreme. A window opened either above or below brings a draft upon somebody. About the only course of action that can be followed, is changing the air completely now and then, by opening doors and windows, and exercis- ing to prevent any dangerous results. The school-room is not the only place where physical educa- tion is carried forward. Parental convictions ought to result in better ventilated homes, in wholesome food, in more sensi- ble dress. I have been in households where family prayers and much admonition filled a goodly portion of every day, but the discomfort of the surroundings hindered the religious instruction from entering at all into the lives of the recipients. PRACTICAL EDUCATION OF OUR DAUGHTERS. 333 " Grace is often said over most graceless food." Doubtless the spiritual nature can grow in spite of most adverse sur- roundings, but such a growth is the exception, not the rule. Too often a peevish disposition, an unreasonable sensitive- ness, comes from the habitual violation of physical laws. I believe a sound mind in a sound body is a happy one. We can all find sufficient means of grace outside of ourselves. It can not be that Providence expects us to attain a high plane of life by perpetually warring with the ills of the flesh, cer- tainly not while these ills are the outcome of over-rich food, glove-fitting dress-waists, late nights, and a lack of oxygen. There is here a what-not-to-do to be learned, and the prac- tice must keep pace with the knowledge, if there is any hope for our women of the future. This law-breaking, added to the hurry and worry of business life, will render American women objects of pity wherever they are seen, unless they come to see the real condition of things. There is something depress- ing and discouraging in always having an invalid in the fam- ily, and it takes a rare disposition, much divine grace, and a world of kindness, to make a sufferer peaceful, patient, and happy. First in importance, then, as it must be first in order of time, the body should receive the most careful nurture and training. On a higher plane, also, we meet women coming into com- petition with men. We have a goodly list to-day of women who have proved by their deeds that they have not been out of their proper place while influencing the world's thought or adding to the world's treasury of art. What a height has Maria Mitchell gained in astronomy and Harriet Hosmer in fine art ! It was said years ago of Catherine Beecher, that she was " a whole social-science association in constant ses- sion." It is an accepted fact, at the present time, that the greatest novelist in America if a writer is great because of 334 SIGNAL LIGHTS. the wide-spread influence her writings have exerted is a woman. It was a woman who introduced into America, and .against manifold hindrances planted in republican soil, Froe- bel's child-garden for the instruction of the future mothers, not less than for the betterment of life for their children. The excellence of children's literature is due, in a very great .degree, to the strong and sensible women who have put their best vital forces into their work, exemplifying in their lives the motto of the great German educator, " Come, let us live for our children." What a transformation has been accom- plished by such periodicals as the " Wide Awake " and " St. Nicholas" both owing their excellence to the pens of women ! And child-literature is helping older people to realize that, except they become like little children, they can- not enter the kingdom. In the field of poesy how few are the writers who have left more tender memories in the world's heart than such singers as Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Frances Ridley Haver gal ! .Seldom have been written better letters of correspondence than those of Mary Clemmer; and rare are those who have moved to better thinking and living by the simple power of truthfulness and heart-earnestness than Anna Dickinson, the lecturer of years ago, and Frances Willard of the present time. Among writers we need not stop with the names of those ,only who have wrought with most effect. With the limited .education and pay allowed women, they have quietly stepped into the newspaper offices and publishing-houses; they have become proof readers, reporters, book reviewers, essayists, correspondents, and art critics. They sit in the editor's sanctum; they write books, sometimes treatises on profound subjects. Woman vies with man in music, painting, sculp- ture, architecture. She has left him hopelessly behind in PRACTICAL EDUCATION OF OUR DAUGHTERS. 335 many grades of teaching. She even reaches out to the learned professions. / It was Plato who said, many centuries ago, " All the pur- suits of man are the pursuits of women." Also, "Many women are in many things superior to many men." These statements were doubtless true in the abstract, but not in the concrete. Mrs. Livermore, in one of her lectures, says, " Two hundred years ago the only faculty a woman had the opportunity of cultivating was that of suffering." From the great educator Horace Mann we quote : " My theory assigns her an equal if not a superior share in the beautiful domain of the fine arts, a full participation in one, at least, if not in two of the learned professions, as much of the Parnas- sian land of poetry, literature, and science as she may please to occupy, and more than half, and the better half, of the divine work of education." Elsewhere, from the same source, we find: "Pharmaceutics, or the art of preparing medicines, requires the application of the very faculties which woman possesses in superiority. Chemistry is the foundation of this curative art, as it is of the disease-preventing, health-creating art of cookery." With regard to the practice of medicine, he gives the opinion of many when he says, "And what more appropriate vocation for woman can be conceived, than some of the departments of the healing art? * And it is not enough to say that there is a fitness and a propriety in having female physicians for the mother, the wife, and the daughter ; but I feel bound to say it is often barbarous to have any other. * * There is no custom of savage tribes more unseemly and abhorrent than that of sending every young doctor or fresh graduate from the medical schools, with all their levities and pruriency, into the sick chambers of those women whose natural instincts of delicacy, 336 SIGNAL LIGHTS. by the influences of a refined education, have been elevated into a morality and consecrated into a religion." Concerning the preaching of the gospel, I should be sorry to have women mistake their " calls," as too many men do. I believe that if practicing were made first and foremost, more good would be accomplished. There seems to be a want, however, in the field of preaching to the children a profes- sion to which men are poorly adapted by nature, and in which many fail, no matter how elaborately prepared in the theolog- ical schools. Have we not many women who could talk to children sensibly and well, as they now instruct them in our schools, should they make the matter a life-work and bend all their efforts in that one direction? How true in this con- nection are Frances Willard's words, " The Saxon word for lady means ' a giver of bread,' and is full of beautiful signifi- cance; but America's new century shall evolve another mean- ing, freighted with greater blessing for humanity 'lady: giver of the bread of life." Speaking of work for children, I must put in a plea here for their instruction. What employment can take a higher rank than laying foundations for human beings' lives? A person with a gift for managing and instructing the young, should count herself among the favored and honored of the earth. I believe with Mrs. Diaz that " the wisest and best, and most angelic, and most beautiful-looking persons in the land ought to be picked out and educated into teachers for the little chil- dren; and they ought to be ordained and set apart for their calling, and consider it a sacred one." Everywhere the duties of the teacher are becoming exalted. The vocation which has been only a "profession" in the almost meaningless term " Professor," before long will be admitted to that dignity in reality. And already the number PRACTICAL EDUCATION OF OUR DAUGHTERS. 337 of women who have attained to high rank as teachers in every grade of college and school, is remarkably large. But here and there women are certainly called, by peculiar adaptation or unusual circumstance, to work in what may be pronounced unseemly places. I would not say one word to hinder a woman from commanding a Mississippi river steamer, provided she does it well. What wonder is it in these days of apathy, double-dealing, yea, of wickedness in high places, that a woman's overfilled heart finds utterance in words? That there was once upon a time a Napoleon does not argue that all men can be Napoleons, and that Joan of Arc followed what seemed to her a divine command does not prove that all or many women are called to the battle-front. The decision as to what a woman can and ought to do is best made by herself. She certainly knows of some preference or fitness for an occupation, if she is willing to be occupied. It can not be that a man or woman is ever created without a special gift for doing something. A gift for doing is of itself an assurance that means and opportunities are at hand. As an American writer puts it, " The wing of a bird means air and the fin of a fish means water, just as plainly as though their Maker had labeled them with the names of those ele- ments respectively." In Miss Willard's words, "As iron filings fall into line around a magnet, so make your opportu- nities cluster close about your magic gift. Cultivate your specialty, because the independence thus involved will lift you above the world's pity to the level of its respect, per- chance its 'honor. Understand this first, last, and always: The world wants the best thing it wants your best." Mr. Moody, the evangelist, said, " The world will always go for the best wherever it can find it." Margaret Fuller, with her true womanly heart believed that " no woman can give her hand with dignity, or her heart with loyalty, until she has 338 SIGNAL LIGHTS. learned how to stand alone. 1 ' " The people who spend all their strength in absorbing are failures and parasites" a bright woman expressed it; "it is alike the business of the sun and the soul to radiate every particle of light that they contain." Strange as it may seem, a woman was once commanded to talk, and that in public. It is recorded in the Bible that Miriam was told to " speak unto the children of Israel, that they go forward." I have talked thus far of various occupations for women, not alone on account of their bread-winning qualities, but because a life having a real purpose in it so far transcends an idle, aimless one. And I have reserved for the last, because it is the occupation for the many, and because I believe it the highest, best thing a woman can do the making and keep- ing of the home. As time goes on, and science steps into the domestic circle with her magic wand, the manufacture of things in immense numbers, and the division of labor every- where, will relieve the housekeeper of many of the vexed duties she has been compelled heretofore to perform. The days of home-spinning, weaving, knitting, etc., are long since past, and sewing, cooking, and laundry-work will soon be classed in the same category. What the coming half-century will bring in labor-saving inventions and appliances for home comforts will undoubtedly equal, perhaps exceed, what have come to us from the last fifty years. The maker of a true home must be an artist, but results never come spontaneously. The making of homes as bright, cheery, and beautiful as they can be. means effort, industry, real work for some one. Little children, girls and boys, should receive daily lessons in order, cleanliness, and economy. Their play will be far more enjoyable if they begin early to be help- ful. They can shut doors, bring things from another part of PRACTICAL EDUCATION OF OUR DAUGHTERS. 339 the room, help put away their own playthings, care for ani- mals and plants, amuse younger brothers or sisters, etc. Instruction in these matters should begin at home, but need not end there. As soon as a little girl is old enough, she can aid in the care of her own room and clothes. I need not further particularize. Everything is summed up in this: Let the daughters learn to appreciate a home by having a share in its creation. Instead of the mother carrying all the responsibility, performing or directing all the labor, every member of the family should have something to do, and so learn by thoughtful doing the innumerable essentials of a well-managed home. A part of every young woman's education should also be elementary anatomy, physiology, and hygiene, including, of course, the care of the sick. How much ignorance prevails as to what is comfortable and what is uncomfortable in the sick-room, and what virtue there is in simple remedies ! How few know what a remedial agent we have in hot water skill- fully administered and applied! Added to these I would advise a memory drill of antidotes for poisons of the most common kind, and what to do in cases of accident. Duties, however, need not center upon self. Let the home work reach out to the neighborhood. I have known of fam- ilies that were like self-constituted mission stations, always " lending a hand ; " preaching little, but carrying home with them wherever they went. " If I were asked the mission of the ideal woman, I would reply," wrote Frances Wiliard, "it is to make the whole world home-like." Horace Mann wrote, " In no age or country has woman ever been elevated for her reflex power of elevating others. By proper development and training, she could add another octave to the compass of human enjoyments." With too many housekeepers, I am aware, instead of their 340 SIGNAL LIGHTS. keeping the house, the house keeps them; and everywhere they go, as Mrs. Livermore says, " follows the clatter of kettles and pans." But a broader culture will correct this tendency. It is said that it takes the knowledge of about ten things to teach one thing well. As true is it that it takes the knowledge of ten things to be able to do any one thing well; hence the need of the broadest culture possible, if a woman would fill her station with honor to herself and benefit to others. No matter what is a woman's position, she will hold it better for a good education. If she have the means and time, I see no reason why she should not have advantages equal to those enjoyed by men. If she moves the world by her influence, why should that not be an enlightened influence? If the homes make the men, let us have just as much culture and tact and ability in the housekeepers as we can. What power a mother can exercise over her sons and daughters and over her husband also when, with keen faculties and that reserve of power that comes from years of discipline, she meets with them their difficulties, helps them keep heart when discouragements test the strength, and is ever with them a learner in the great field of truth. I believe it a woman's duty to obtain the highest education practicable, not for self- ish ends, but because she has something to do in the world's progress. The notion that woman can not study all that is now given her brother is fast becoming a fiction too absurd for repeti- tion. President Angell, of Michigan University, speaks in no doubtful manner. " Our experience in the University of Michigan, where women have, since 1870, been admitted to the class-rooms and subjected to precisely the same tests as the men, is identical with that of Oberlin college and all other colleges which have educated the sexes together. There is no branch taught in college which women have not PRACTICAL EDUCATION OF OUR DAUGHTERS. 341 shown themselves entirely competent to master." And this evidence is but one of many that might be given. Nor should we stop with what a woman has the capability of doing. Capabilities, privileges, bring duties. One who has observed and thought much upon this subject says, "More women study to-day than men; a greater proportion travel abroad for purposes of culture; a larger share are moral and religious. Half of the world's wisdom, more than half its purity, and nearly all its gentleness, are to-day to be set down on woman's credit side." There is, then, an obliga- tion binding upon woman to make the most of her life and surroundings. If she can not command the best privileges for study, a selection should be made, keeping in view the place she is to occupy. She can not afford to be ignorant of the world about her. A knowledge of plant and ani- mal life, physiology, physics, elementary chemistry, arithmetic, and algebra, she can ill afford to be without. But, along with everything else, she should study her own English language. Little children of five now begin to write when they begin to read. Ideas seem perishable, indeed, if not expressed. The coming generation will have few among its numbers, we hope, who always "know, but can not tell." When school-days from necessity must be few, the course of study becomes limited. The schools as they are sadly meet the wants of the individual, and while our educators are every- where working with the vexing problem, demands press upon our daughters from the home, society, the state. Even from people of lands remote comes an imperative call for intelli- gent work. But culture need not cease with attendance upon school. The Chautauqua circles, and various other clubs for home study, offer opportunities for people of all ages and circumstances to be students at home. In these associations, directed by our 342 SIGNAL LIGHTS. * best educators, excellent work can be done, and so the mother need not lose the habit of study and drop behind her growing boys and girls. I wish I might emphasize this matter of home study and reading. A mother overwhelmed with cares,, confined within doors month after month, does not know till she has learned by experience what rest, what help she can obtain from the regular reading of good authors, even if the time so spent be extremely limited. And an hour's discussion with a few friends of what she has met in her reading gives her a breadth of thought, an elasticity of spirit, a reserve of strength no other resources will supply. Music is usually set aside as an accomplishment, but to me it seems one of the most essential branches of a practical edu- cation. The school or family that sings is a happy one. Good songs are uplifting; they tend to soothe ruffled tempers, calm in times of worriment, and comfort when there is real trouble. Martin Luther said about music, " The youth must always be accustomed to this art, for it makes good and virtuous citi- zens." Whatever we can do to prevent wrong feeling and acting is far better than attempting the cure. Let us give our children songs about nature, songs that will make them love home always, and be true to their native land. Let us teach them God's love, and the sympathy of their fellow-men, by singing it into their hearts. It has been observed, "A man often forgets his friends, his native land, and sometimes his language; but the songs of childhood *and youth never fade from his memory." John Eaton, late Federal Commissioner of Education, points out the natural relationship or affinity music has with peace, hope, affection, generosity, charity, and devo- tion, and the equally natural repugnance between this art and fear, envy, malevolence, and misanthropy. As the formation of a correct musical taste is going on, the spiritual nature is PRACTICAL EDUCATION OF OUR DAUGHTERS. unconsciously becoming deeper, and thus more sensitive to evil and more in agreement with good faith. Then it is an accepted fact that the mind makes its best efforts when under the influence of the delight and enthusiasm that come from the practice of music. This art also has its own disciplinary advantages. A voice that has had the cul- ture of musical instruction is improved as well for speaking; and what charm equals a clear, sweet, winning voice? Either vocal or instrumental music tends to give keener perception for the beautiful, wherever found. Physically it enlarges the chest, develops the lungs, quickens the circulation, and in fact at times seems to infuse life into the entire body. It is estimated that 95 per cent of all the children attend- ing school can learn music. Must we, then, afford to do without its practical benefits in the school-room, at the home, and all through life, substituting in its stead the branches now belonging to our customary courses of study? A few years ago a musical instrument was too costly to be thought of in the homes of the poor, but to-day the small sum needed to purchase a really excellent one can be saved from a moderate income; the happiness the family will realize from its use will repay a hundred times the economy needed for its purchase. It is found that children in the first primary grade can learn to read music and enjoy the lessons. If I were called upon to decide what my daughter must have in her course of study, I would say at once, give her less, if necessary, of arithmetic, geography, technical grammar, etc., and teach her, from her first entrance into the school-room, music. She should be taught, also, observation of the world around her, politeness, kindness, self-control, truth, purity, and temperance. She can gain much additional knowledge in after-life, but she can not develop into a true, lovely woman unless her education in 344 SIGNAL LIGHTS. these most essential matters is first in time and first in importance all the way. And here I wish I might preach a long sermon on the exact teaching theue should be in all our primary schools; on the habits of order, neatness, accuracy, and obedience learned from the ever-present examples at home and in school; on the absolute necessity of the little girl beginning in the infant classes what will enter into her success when she grows to woman's estate. It matters very little to her or to those about her whether she can ever give correctly the islands, rivers, or mountains belonging to the map of Asia. It does concern us all that she learn prompt and unquestioning obe- dience, and comes to know while very young that there is a difference between mine and thine. If she learns to have a real love for truth while playing with her school-mates, in what portion of her after-life will not this acquisition be of service? Think of it: A young girl succeeds in passing at a hundred per cent in her examinations; but, while she is writing, she is not one moment free from the watchful eye of her teacher. The fact is, she can not be trusted, and every one who is at all acquainted with her knows it. I once knew a teacher who kept her pupils for months on the topics of least common multiple and greatest common, divisor, and, oh, how their lessons in politeness, unselfishness, purity, and truth, were neglected meanwhile ! How truly has it been said, " The worst education that teaches self-control is better than the best that teaches everything else, and not that." More than 2200 years ago Plato said, "The purpose of education is to give to the body and to the soul all the beauty and all the perfection of which they are capable." Compayre, a French writer on education, says, "A poor workman gives his children a liberal education if he strives to open their intelligence and to fortify their moral energy, PRACTICAL EDUCA TION OF OUR DA UGHTERS. 345 even though it is within his power to teach them nothing else than the elements of the sciences." And if we take the most sordid view of this question, and argue for it only from the standpoint of material gain, it is easy to see that, other things being equal, that person will succeed best in business who gains a reputation for strict fairness in all dealing and who is self-possessed, courteous, orderly, and accurate. Victor Hugo says, " If you would reform a man, you must begin with his grandmother." The same is true of educa- tion. If we really desire that our daughters shall so live, by and by, that they can respect themselves and be a help and comfort to others, we must take the time necessary for their instruction while the faculties are just awaking and their first impressions are being gained from the world around them. It will not do to wait till, dwarfed by lack of nutritious food and bent hopelessly earthward by storms they have struggled with alone, they are weak and misshapen beyond all hope, and then expect them to become suddenly transformed by a few years of practical education. The forming processes must receive direction at home and in school. The parents need to study the principles of education and learn why certain methods are more in accordance with nature than other methods. From the very nature of the case, this sup- plementary teaching will devolve more upon the mother than the father. It is surely coming to be a part of the work of the home-keepers, and so should enter into the training of the daughters. " Very early I knew," wrote Margaret Fuller, " that the only object in life is to grow." And this growth proceeds from the very springs of life. Deep down in the heart must be stored away the true wealth of character, else we shall never see the daily results which we so earnestly crave and 5/JVV.//, /./; litz and Marathon, through the silent ^banquet halls and amphitheatres where flit the ghosts of mighty empires, out into the starlight 0f mythology, where all that is human in history melts away in the dissolving view of doubtful legendry, and the voice of man, in the hoarse guttural of cave and den, is lost amid the roar of beast and the scream of bird. Still backward this vast war trail of nature would lead us through the narrowing con- 874 C. E. SARGENT. A. M. THE UNIVERSAL CONFLICT. 375 ditions of life, past the forms of mighty beasts transfixed with tooth and tusk, whose outlines are chiseled in the eternal rocks, till the formula of the universal conflict would find expression in terms of elemental strife. A principle so prominent in nature and so far reaching in its relations as - that of conflict can not be regarded as acci- dental. When we follow it through the successive stages of natural development and note the various modifications which it successively takes on to meet the changing conditions of increasing complexity we are struck with the inseparable relation which it sustains to the law of evolution. It is found to be the one force in nature that renders possible the law of progress. It furnishes, too, that principle of unity which all efforts at philosophic synthesis presuppose, and without which there can be no true philosophy nor broad generalization. The relation which the law of conflict sustains to the great social problem that just now is forcing its demands for imme- diate solution with such mighty earnestness, throws much light upon it and will appear more -clearly as we proceed. The conclusions to which the law leads will be more forcible and authoritative in consequence of a preliminary survey of the broad field of its operations in the physical world. Before attempting, therefore, to show the bearing of the law upon that which constitutes the prime purpose of this chapter, let us notice its modes of action and the specific relation which it sustains to development in each successive stage, from the lowest to the highest ; from that stage in which physical science postulates the infinite diffusion and homogeneity of matter, to that which unfolds the lofty attributes of humanity. The following statements may safely be made, which, if not quite axiomatic, will appear obvious when their true significance and bearing upon the subject are perceived. 376 SIGNAL LIGHTS. First. Polarity everywhere prevails in nature. Every posi- tive force has its negative. In the inorganic world every form of attraction has its corresponding form of repulsion, while in the world of consciousness every affection has its correspond- ing aversion. Second. The simultaneous action of two opposing tenden- cies in whatever form, whether physical or mental, must give rise to a corresponding form of conflict. Third. The manner in which conflict results in develop- ment is by the elimination of the weaker or less persistent force and the consequent increase of the stronger or more persistent force. Fourth. Each type of conflict prepares the way for the next higher. Fifth. Each type of conflict subsides or ceases to be dom- inant before the next higher commences, although it tends to persist after its work is accomplished, and thus for a time to check further development, giving to evolution its epochal character. There are three distinct types of conflict pertaining to the inorganic world. Of these, only a brief description will be given, since their bearing on our general purpose is but remote and indirect. The earliest and simplest may be termed the chemical con- flict, being that which prevailed among the atoms of primeval matter in its original diffused and chaotic state. It has been mathematically shown by the ablest advocates of the nebular hypothesis that from this conflict of atomic attraction and repulsion would finally result, by the gradual dominance of specific affinities, a gathering into centers or nuclei thus de- stroying the original homogeneity of the mass, and giving rise to revolution about a common center. Thus at the very outset the conditions of development are seen to be those of conflict. THE UNIVERSAL CONFLICT. 377 The second type of conflict in nature is that which exists among the forces acting upon matter en masse. Action and reaction; the law of the composition of forces in mechanics, and the centrifugal and centripetal tendencies all exemplify this type. The formation of the nebular rings and the break- ing up of them into planetary masses were rendered possible only as a compromise, so to speak, between these two great forces, the centrifugal and the centripetal, engaged in what may be termed the mechanical conflict. The third type is the crystalline conflict, that attending the process by which the igneous planets were solidified. Crys- tallization may be regarded as a kind of molecular "natural selection." It is not dependent on chemical affinity like the chemical conflict. There is a forcible selection and rejection of molecules, although the substance crystallizing is not chemi- cally changed. The molecules take their assigned places with great force as is evinced by the expansive power of water and other liquids in freezing. The unfit molecules are rejected also with great force. Salt water, in freezing, becomes fresh, because the salt, notwithstanding its very strong affinity for the water is forced aside, and is not permitted to enter into the select molecular society. A more than fancied analogy may possi- bly exist between these phenomena and those which charac- terize the present order of human society. Although crystal- lization is silent and hidden in its operations, it is seen to con- sist of the very essence of conflict, and since there is a stage in planetary development in which its forces play the most import- ant part, it may be regarded as one of the types in nature. There is thus seen to be a rising series of inorganic con- flicts, out of which have issued successive stages of develop- ment from chaos to solidified planets fit for the abodes of organic life. There will now be seen to be a like rising series of organic conflicts. The first of them may be termed the vital conflict. That 378 SIGNAL LIGHTS. such exists is attested by all the phenomena of living organ- isms. That mysterious force of vitality which draws the inorganic elements up into the realm of organic life is antago> nized by all the forces that surround it. The power of living bodies, by which they maintain an unvarying internal tem- perature in the presence of extreme external variations, is one of the most wonderful in nature. This principle of vital conflict is still more strikingly exemplified by the manner in which the life force resists the constant tendency to dissolu- tion. Oxygen, which seizes upon the organic structure the moment life is extinct and carries it back to the inorganic world, is for years held at bay by an unseen resisting energy. That this energy yields at last serves only to make it more clear that life itself is but the issue of a conflict. The vital, then, may be regarded as the fourth type in nature's ascend- ing scale. By the triumph of the organic force the earth was filled with living forms with powers of reproduction far beyond the natural means of subsistence. It is said that, if none of the fish were destroyed by others, the ocean itself would in a short time become a solid mass of living organisms. This mighty rush of inorganic matter into forms of life, which furnishes the basis of the Malthusian doctrine, also furnishes a field of operation for the next higher type of conflict, which brings us to the modern doctrine of " natural selection." The relation which conflict sustains to evolution may be still more clearly perceived at this stage. Natural selection is the law by which the strongest and best specimens are permitted to survive and propagate their species in larger numbers, while the weak and unfit perish, or are prevented from propagating their species in larger numbers; so that the best qualities, as strength, beauty, size, activity and courage, are continually subjected and re-subjected to the law of heredity, and thus from generation to generation continually increase while a THE UNIVERSAL CONFLICT. 379 reverse process is taking place with the opposite and undesir- able qualities. Hence the necessary result is development or evolution toward higher and more perfect species. But inasmuch as the weak and unfit have the same instinct- ive desire to survive and propagate as the strong and fit, and, unless prevented, would do so, it follows that the law of natural selection would remain inoperative unless energized by some external principle. Nature has here again made use of the element of conflict. Natural selection is of two kinds, sexual selection and natural selection proper. The former depends on the successful rivalry, usually among the males for the favor of the females. It is accomplished in two ways, by the stronger killing or driving away the weaker, and by dis- playing before the females more attractive qualities. These two methods of winning the favor of the females in sexual selection operate conjointly in the case of almost every species of the animal kingdom. Either method usually presupposes a fight, for the privilege of displaying his charms of color, strength and beauty, is gained by successful conflict. By sexual selection the weaker and less attractive males are pre- vented from pairing with the stronger and more highly vitalized females, and if they pair at all, are compelled to do so with the smaller and less attractive females. Their off- spring possessing disadvantages inherited from both parents would be certain to perish in greater numbers. Natural selection proper depends, irrespective of sex, on the successful rivalry of certain individuals in their contests with each other, and with all the hostile conditions of life. It is evident that the strongest and fleetest will not only obtain food most readily but will escape in larger numbers from the attacks of their natural enemies while the reverse will be true of the weaker and less fleet. Of these two forms sexual selection is by far the most important, and so dependent is its efficiency upon conflict,. ;;,so SIGNAL LIGHTS. that many of the most peaceable animals, those which never fight on any other oeeasion, become pugnacious during the breeding season. Mr. I )ar\vin says: "Most male birds are highly pugnacious during the breeding season and some pos- sess weapons especially adapt ed for lighting with their riyals." "With mammals, 11 says the same writer, " the male appears to win the female much more through ' the law of battle ' than through the display of his charms, the most timid animals, not possessed with any special weapons for lighting, engage in desperate conflicts during the season of love." Thus, throughout the whole animal kingdom, the law of physical progress is the law of battle in which the stronger survive and the weaker perish. The work of this fifth type of conflict was accomplished when man appeared upon the earth, but, in accordance with one of the principles stated at the outset, viz., that each type tends to persist after its work is accomplished, it still continued to reign for long ages as the dominant type in human history. Accordingly, the his- tory of the early ages presents no other phenomena than that of continuous war. Not all the wars of history, however, fully exemplify this type of conflict, but only those which were actuated by motives of conquest, extermination, or revenge. The wars of modern times usually grow out of higher, moral considerations and for the most part arc reluc- tant resorts to undesirable means. So that they belong partially, though not wholly, to higher types of conflict yet to be considered. The interest of tin- theme deepens as we approach the m -\i type, that which charactcri/cs man as a social and intellectual being, and which constitutes the one distinguishing feature of modern civilization. We are thus face to face with the unsolved problem of human life and its relations, up to which we have been led by a crimson trail that stretches across the universe. THE UNIVERSAL CONFLICT. 381 Man is now under the reign of the sixth type of conilu i which is one of intellectual and social warfare. Like each preceding type, it had a fivblc beginning. It began with the birth of human society, increasing not only with every ad- dition of its own product, intellectual cunning, but with every diminution of the hindering physical conflict, till at last it has CTJ 1 */ reached a most intense culmination in the general intellectual acuteness, and especially in the industrial and commercial warfare, of the present age. All the peculiar features of the popular intellect, with its strong bias toward selfish activity, and with its tact in rivalry, are the products of this intellect- ual conflict, as the physical peculiarities of species are the products of physical conflict. The mode of action of the intellectual conflict, however, differs slightly from that of the physical, inasmuch as those possessing the weaker intellects are not killed by their rivals, nor prevented from reproducing. It is not, therefore, a conflict of natural selection. Its devel- oping power consists in the necessity which it imposes for con- tinual mental activity. Where each individual is arrayed against every other, and in the great competitive Struggle for life, must depend upon his wit and intellectual foresight for success, there are present the conditions of rapid intellectual development, though not of the most exalted character. This development, through heredity, is rendered perpetual from generation to generation. Our intellectual progress has been in a constantly increasing ratio. This is doubtless largely due to the fact that the developing force has acted in conjunction with a constantly diminishing retarding force, that is, with the gradually weak- ening persistence of the physical conflict. It has now reached a point where the intense cerebration is encroaching upon the resources of vitality. The ceaseless mental activity and excitement of the present age amount almost to madness, 382 SIGNAL LIGHTS. while our public schools and seminaries are forcing the intel- lect of the rising generation far beyond the point of perpetual endurance. This fact in our civilization negatives no assumption con- cerning previous ages of progress or retrogression. There may have been other civilizations with intellectual develop- ment as brilliant as our own which have lapsed into barbarism. It will appear farther on that a period of high intellectual culture alone is necessarily a critical one in national life. It has marked the zenith of the proudest nations in history. It is a point at which a nation must commence an era of moral development or all progress must cease. It can not be denied that our own nation is in that critical period to-day, for its intellectual development is out of all proportion to its moral. This is attested by the dearth of moral principle that enters into the industrial and commercial transactions of men; by the keen, shrewd villainy with which the centers of population are permeated and with which all the competitive relations of life are infected. Symmetry is nature's ideal, and, working through the intui- tions of men, she is now striving to bring up the rear of morality in her scheme of development, and to usher in the moral conflict, the seventh and crowning type. There is a deep significance in the present unprecedented agitation of the social question. The air is full of the discussion of the all- absorbing problem, while the question of a higher standard of justice in social relations is forcing itself upon the world's attention through a mighty flood of literature, such as never before has appeared. The nature of the moral conflict needs little comment. It is that warfare between good and evil which reveals itself to the moral intuitions of all. Exalted to the prevailing type its effect will be, not the abolition of all other forms of militant THE UNIVERSAL CONFLICT. 383 relation, but their subordination and co-ordination, making o them means to moral ends. Not until man is reached in the ascending scale, does the principle of conflict become sub- jective to the acting agent, for not until then is the organic selfishness antagonized by the altruistic impulses. The manner in which conflict in general leads to develop- ment by the final triumph of the stronger or more persistent force finds no exception in the mode of action of the moral conflict. Since virtuous conduct must, in the nature of things, 7 O / bring its reward of increased happiness both to the acting subject and to the community, it follows that the tendency to such conduct in the average individual must constantly increase, while the opposite conduct necessarily resulting in the general disapproval would naturally exhibit a tendency to diminish. Virtue, therefore, being a more persistent force than vice, must ultimately triumph. The issue of the moral conflict will thus be. a larger and clearer sense of right; the exaltation to supremacy of a broader and more funda- mental sense of justice freed from all the gross alloy of expe- diency and an unwavering insistance on the injection of such into all the relations of human life. The incitement to conflict, both physical and mental, is the resistance offered to desire. In the absence of the higher sentiments which the ascendency of the moral conflict pre- supposes, the chief resistance to desire would be the antago- nistic desires of others, and thus the principle of militancy would find a personal objective. But one of the most import- ant issues of the moral conflict will be the transfer of this principle from the personal to the impersonal. At the transi- tion from physical to intellectual conflict a portion was left behind sufficient for the necessary executiveness in the physi- cal world. So in the transition from the intellectual to the moral, a residue will be left sufficient to maintain an imper- sonal militancy in the intellectual powers. 384 SIGNAL LIGHTS. The two great contending forces in the moral conflict are egoism and altruism, or selfishness and benevolence. The gradual triumph of the latter, which is presupposed together with that higher and broader intellectual development which, it will yet be seen, would result from the moral conflict, would necessarily produce a more reasonable and equitable adjust- ment of human relations, so that the resistance to desire would come in a continually lessening degree from the antag- onisms of others' desires. At the same time the higher intel- lectual and moral conditions would lead to a still further attempt to subjugate the forces of nature to the wants of man. But by a law of mechanics, resistance increases with the force applied. To double a given velocity the force must be doubled twice. This law finds its counterpart in that of the " diminishing returns " in agriculture. If, then, the opposi- tion to desire and the consequent incitement to militant effort comes in a gradually diminishing degree from personal rela- tions, and in a gradually increasing degree from impersonal relations, it is only a matter of time when this transfer shall be complete and " men shall beat swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks." In the light of this philosophy the quoted prophecy is most significant; for the beating of the instruments of warfare into those with which nature's salutary resistance to human effort is overcome, symbolizes this very transfer of human militancy from the personal to the impersonal, in nature. Egoism differs from altruism as ordinary patriotism differs from universal philanthropy. It is an expression of limitation. The undeveloped mind can comprehend and love only so much of beauty as it finds embodied in concrete form, but the artistic mind can comprehend and love beauty unem- bodied except in thought; egoism and altruism are both forms of a love of happiness; but while the egoistic mind is able to comprehend and love only so much as falls within THE UNIVERSAL CONFLICT. 385 the limits of its own consciousness, that is, its own happiness, the altruistic mind comprehends and loves happiness per se, whether experienced by itself or others. The power of abstract thought, though it does not constitute nor necessarily result in altruism, is nevertheless one of its essential condi- tions. The intellectual conflict by awakening this power thus paved the way for the moral conflict, just as each of the other types has ushered in the next higher. But the intel- lectual could do no more than thus to furnish the conditions which made possible the moral conflict. No moral develop- ment, bearing any proportion to the present intellectual development can ever result except as the issue of an impend- ing conflict. This impending conflict can not acquire the essential supremacy until the still dominant intellectual con- flict subsides. The problem thus becomes one of peculiar interest. Its solution involves the elimination from society of all forms and degrees of personal militancy. This result must ultimately be effected, for it lies along the line of moral evolution, and can- not be evaded without stemming the tide of universal tendency. The intellectual conflict has accomplished the great work assigned it, and nature's hand is on the brake. She will bring its now disastrous persistence to a speedy close, or she will destroy in the attempt, our civilization, for whenever her work is long obstructed, she destroys it and begins anew. The. civilizations of the past have perished just at that bril- liant but dangerous period when the transition from the intel- lectual to the moral conflict should have been made. Greece and Rome went down into the darkness of moral night while haloed with intellectual glory. It is not to be understood that intellectual development will cease when the intellectual conflict gives place to the moral. Although the human intellect could not have originated and developed its present power without conflict, yet, it does not 386 SIGNAL LIGHTS. follow that its continued development will always depend upon the same means. The cessation of the physical conflict has not resulted in physical degeneracy. It is a significant fact that the civilized man not only lives longer than the savage, but is more than a match for him in any fair test of strength and endurance. The higher any form of development is car- ried, the less dependent it becomes on the original instru- mentality. The physical stamina that was acquired by physi- cal conflict is now not only maintained, but even increased by the systematic physical exercise which the conditions of the intellectual conflict supply. Intellectual activity cannot accom- plish its own ends without great physical activity also. In the same manner, when society shall become subject to the reign of the moral conflict, the motives and necessities orig- inating in that conflict will take the place of those now originating in the intellectual, and there will be no check to true intellectual progress. Moreover, a great improvement in the quality of intellec- tual power will result from the supremacy of the moral con- flict. The intellectual activity of the present age is of a com- paratively low quality as indicated by the kinds of intellectual success which excite % the greatest popular admiration. The lofty powers of the philosopher and the scientist are but little admired, while great financial success everywhere creates an almost maudlin admiration, especially if it involves the defeat of a rival. Men pay but little heed when, the Emersons, the Darwins and the Longfellows die, though they move in mighty columns with drooping banners, in the funeral trains of warriors and politicians. The conditions of intellectual activity which would originate in the exigencies of the moral conflict would tend to reverse this order, and give to the nobler powers of the intellect their proper rank. But, before considering further this phase of the subject, it THE UNIVERSAL CONFLICT. 337 will be well to examine more specifically the evils which must result from the persistence of the intellectual conflict, espe- cially as exemplified by the great industrial warfare of com- petition. A close analysis of the relations of life reveals the fact that hardly two persons can be found whose interests do not in some manner conflict. It is for the interest of the agricul- turist that food should be as costly as possible. The hunger and want of the great city are the favorable conditions of his prosperity. It is, moreover, for his interest that the tools with which he tills the soil, but which are manufactured in the cities by workingmen for wages, should be as cheap as pos- sible. Were he allowed to determine the conditions of his own prosperity, famine and starvation would stalk through the streets of the city. On the other hand, were the inhabitant of the city allowed to determine the conditions of his prosper- ity the farmer would be helpless in the midst of plenty. The tiller of the soil and the inhabitant of the city, the two great factors in our civilization, are thus made mutual enemies through that principle which fosters and encourages the brutal attitude of every man against every other, by which the larger part of all human energy is dissipated and wasted. The coal miner rejoices in the early and long winter that causes untold suffering among the poor. The mason and the carpenter are enriched by the conflagration that leaves moaning desolation in its wake. When the dreaded pestil- ence fills the air the doctor and the undertaker find it dif- ficult to hide the joy of prosperity amid the pitiful cries of the widowed and the orphaned. The lawyers and the judges would become paupers were crime and dishonesty to cease. Is it any wonder, when each finds his prosperity and hence cause for rejoicing in the misfortunes and sufferings of others, 388 SIGNAL LIGHTS. that the claims of a higher justice should be scoffed at as sen- timentalism, " Utopian, and impractical? " One of the ways in which the persistence of the intellectual conflict checks moral development, is thus clearly seen. But still more forcibly will it appear when it is perceived that not only are the inter- ests of the various trades and professions arrayed against those of the masses, but that the evil principle permeates every corner of the social structure, and renders every man the econ- omic enemy of every other. Not only are classes pitted against classes, but each individual of the class against each and every other. It* is not necessary to show by particular examples, how the different clases of producers are arrayed against each other, the farmer against the farmer, and the manufacturer against the manufacturer, each with various wiles and tricks, competing for the market. Successful competition for the market means the offering of goods at the lowest prices. This means cheaper production, which in turn means not only adulteration for the millions, but the crushing oppression of the laborers that produce the inferior goods. Thus the good of competition will always be found to be only apparent. To believe that it can have any tendency to equalize the relation of strength and weakness is to entertain a fallacy as wild as that of perpetual motion, or the alchemistic search for the philosopher's stone. No matter how involved the relations, no matter what or how many operations may be indicated in the great algebraic equation, when all are performed the value of x will be found to be the cruel oppression of the weak and poor. The one form of competition that might reverse this ten- dency never operates, viz : the competition for laborers. Like every other intrinsic evil it evades every situation and rela- tion that might evolve a good. Laborers at all times are in THE UNIVERSAL CONFLICT. 389, excess of the demand and hence are compelled themselves to compete for opportunities. That form of competition which is most oppressive is not that existing between the rich and the poor, nor between the rich and the rich, but between the poor and the poor. The poverty and despair of life are due to the great struggle in which thousands barely fail because other thousands have barely succeeded. Under the present order almost with the precision of nature's polarity a success presupposes a corresponding failure. If fifty hungry dogs were confined within an inclosure, with meat enough for only twenty-five, the result would not be that each would have half enough, but that twenty-five would have almost enough and the other twenty-five merely a taste. So under the law of conflict in human society, it is the cold and the hungry, who are not only the oppressed, but the oppressors. The myriads of small fish in the sea are not eaten by a few monsters, but by other myriads only a little larger than they, and who, in the very act of pursuing their prey are being pursued by others still larger. Competition, so far as it relates to labor, is wholly on one side, for the reason already given that there are more laborers than are required under the wage system. According to the United States census of 1870, the average annual income of wage workers was $425.00 per capita, while, according to the census of 1880, it was $325.00. The latter year, too, was one of unusual industrial activity. The fourteenth annual report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor shows that in 1875 the wages paid in over two thousand establishments averaged 24.68 per cent, of the value of the production, while in 1880 it averaged only 20.23 per cent, a decrease of one-sixth in five years. Laborers are striving to reduce the hours of labor in order that all may have an opportunity. The entire country is 390 SIGNAL LIGHTS. infested with innumerable tramps. Only a few years ago Congress was petitioned for an appropriation for the coloniz- ation of surplus labor. In view of these facts, and of the ceaseless scramble everywhere observed for opportunities to labor, the meaningless talk about the competition of manufac- turers for laborers becomes grimly ludicrous. Service for service is the law of civilization, but it is obvious that under a system of free individual competition the strong, that is the wealthy and intellectually cunning, will succeed in obtaining from the weak a greater amount of service than the weak can obtain from them. When all the individuals of a community strive for the possession of a substance that exists in quantities insufficient to gratify the desires of all, it may positively be stated that the given substance will accumulate in the hands of the stronger to the deprivation of the weaker. This would be true even if the initial possession gave no added facility for acquiring further possessions. Hence the almost inconceivable inequalities that exist in the conditions of men. So familiar have we become with these inequalities that we accept them as a part of the necessary order of things and pass them by unnoticed. We have become hardened to the want and anguish and crime that swarm in the dim alleys of our great cities. Wherever humanity is massed together, each individual is crowded down by the general struggle into a position deter- mined by the resultant of this pressure and his own power of resistance. The effect is a great cleft dividing society mid- way between the top and bottom. Above the cleft are those who have succeeded in the struggle, below it are those who have failed. It requires no unusual discernment to see that every hour the breach is widening. According to the testimony of Charles D. Kellogg, the organizing secretary of the Charity Organization Society of THE UNIVERSAL CONFLICT. 391 the city of New York, there are in that city alone eighty-six thousand families, averaging at least four persons to each family, that are maintained or aided by charity. Over a fifth part of the entire population of that great city helpless and hungry in the fierce bread battle of competition! What an awful satire on the prevailing theories of political economy! But these figures give only the faintest idea of the reign of poverty in that city. It is only in extreme cases where pov- erty has crushed out the spirit of manly and womanly pride that people will call on charity for aid. By far the greater amount of suffering from poverty is endured by those from whom the charity officials never hear. The above figures do not include that army of pale, wasted women who, in their dim-lighted garrets all night, in the grim pantomime of anguish, sing the " song of the shirt." Nor do they include that other army, all unnumbered, who pause amid their weary work at midnight while the spectral form of starvation slips his long, lank arm through theirs, and whispering awful words of temptation in their ears, leads them silently forth into the streets and bids them sell God's noblest gift for bread. There is still another army, not included in the figures given, that evades the statistician, moving in silent ambush through the dark jungles of society, those whom poverty and the general demoralizing forces of the social warfare have driven into crime, not wholly chargeable to them, whose filthy dens are depots for stores of articles pilfered by little children driven to their tasks by threats inhuman; where hideous creatures sit and lie about the rooms in drunken stupor, yet on whose dark, keen brows there are the traces of a philosophy of life, which written, would libel man and blas- pheme God. There is a prevalent and shallow optimism, crueller than the darkest cynicism, which looks down from the serene heights 392 SIGNAL LIGHTS. of prosperity with the conscience-appeasing comment, " they surfer by their own fault." This may be true to a limited extent in the case of the criminal classes mentioned, but a thoughtful study of the matter would doubtless modify the views of most people even with reference to this class. Those little children referred to who are driven to their tasks of theft by threats which executed often send them to their wretched beds at night weak with hunger and with limbs smarting from the lash, can not, by any system of ethics, be held fully accountable for the awful blight that withers their tender lives. Their whole education and training from their earliest infancy is the exact reverse of that received by ordin- ary children. They are praised for deeds of crime and punished for every virtue. This is not a fancy picture, but, as the readers of " Oliver Twist " may suspect, one which fairly represents a terrible evil in our great cities. So widely prevalent is this evil of enforced crime on the part of children that instances not only find prominent places in the plots of novelists, but are represented in the most popular dramas of the day. Is not such environment of the children, without resorting to the omnipotent argument of heredity, sufficient largely to exonerate even this criminal class? Whatever may be our views concerning free will and moral accountability it must be admitted that these attributes exist under certain limitations. Much injustice is done in the world by not acknowledging these limitations. As the power of muscular volition is limited so is that of intel- lectual and moral volition. If a few pounds be added to a weight which has taxed to the utmost a person's mus- cular strength it of course becomes an absolute physical impossibility for him to lift the increased weight. So if a certain requirement be added to that which has taxed to the utmost the moral powers it becomes a moral impossibil- THE UNIVERSAL CONFLICT. 393 ity for the person, unaided by outward circumstances, to comply with the additional requirement, or longer to resist temptation to evil. If the physical powers fall below .a cer- tain point, the person becomes a physical invalid. If the intellectual powers fall below a certain point, he becomes an intellectual invalid; and in the case of the moral powers, a moral invalid. Those low criminal classes are the moral invalids in society, and although they can not be held wholly blameless, yet in most cases without the aid of a more favorable environment it remains practically impossible for them to rise out of the moral quicksands in which they are sinking. All this may justly be said in behalf of" the lowest and vilest, the confessedly criminal. What, then, may be said in behalf of that class whose only crime is an inherited men- tal weakness and an awkward lack of deftness in their fingers? Hereditary forces for generations have been at work rendering them inefficient and helpless. They are the intellectual invalids, and for society to hold them responsible for their sad condition, or to allow them to suffer not only deprivation, but, what is worse, the anxiety and nervous strain of unnatural and unremitting toil, is as cruel as would be the refusal to care for the insane or those phys- ically injured by accident. This class, which may be broadly grouped under the head of the inefficient, is almost incredibly large and is rapidly increasing. Its aggregate suffering from poverty and want is inconceivable. It is not contended that there is no blame attached to this class. There is very much of thriftlessness that is mere indo- lence, and yet this indolence may plead generations of hered- ity and false education. Besides, it must be born in mind that there is no other class, and no relation in life, in which the confession is inapplicable, " we have done those things 394 SIGNAL LIGHTS. which we ought not to have done, and have left undone those things which we ought to have done." But there is still another class against whom not the slight- est blame can be charged. They are moral and upright in their characters ; they are frugal in their habits, and are strain- ing every nerve to meet the cruel conditions of success in life, and yet they are doomed to be numbered with that mighty legion, whose name is unskilled labor, whose wages through the law of free competition, have fallen to that point designated by political economists as " the lowest point at which men will consent to labor and reproduce." The laborious lives of those who belong to this great class as they glide swiftly through the morning twilight to their factory tasks, and back through the evening shadows to their scanty meals and ill-furnished homes is an unanswerable argument for the overthrow of the iron-sceptered monarch, Competition. One of the chief causes of the failure of this class to succeed in life is the possession of higher mental faculties, which by a law of the mind seldom exists in conjunction with that peculiar physical executiveness which gives mechanical skill. There is no fact in pyschology better established than that mechanical skill rarely exists together with any tendency to superior powers of abstract thought, however slight may be the tendency. It is often remarked that those who are the most skillful in certain forms of mechanical execution know the least about the scientific principles involved. A thinking man is almost certain to be awkward and unskillful in the use of tools. This is not a mere matter of superficial observa- tion. It is an established fact of mental science. Now there is an astonishingly large proportion of unskilled mechanical laborers who are naturally thinkers. They may not be liter- ary or scientific, and yet their minds belong to the medita- tive order. They may even be unable to read or write, yet THE UNIVERSAL CONFLICT. 395 they inherit a tendency to subjective mental operations, and this is all that is necessary to crowd out that opposite ten- dency to physical execution, which alone can make them " skilled laborers." This principle explains the proverbially wretched hand- writing of professional men. The intenser activity in the intellectual lobe of the brain correspondingly diminishes the tendency to activity in the organ which gives the power of muscular co-ordination, which is located in the base of the brain. The rapidly increasing number of educated men, even graduates from our colleges and universities, who are engaged in menial forms of labor at extremely low wages, has a simi- lar significance. They are not necessarily weak men, but they are those for whose peculiar powers there is no demand. The narrow form which the intellectual conflict has taken, that of industrial and commercial competition, confines to correspondingly narrow limits the range of intellectual pow- ers for which there is a demand. The manner in which competition ultimately results in the oppression of the weak may not in every case be apparent without a closer analysis. Competition among traders is popularly believed to have a salutary influence, causing them to vie with one another in supplying the best goods at the lowest prices. There is a superficial plausibility in this view of the subject, which is very taking to the uncritical masses. But let us suppose a village in which there are ten stores which are considered ample for supplying the people with goods of all kinds. The prices are fair and the goods of good quality. Now let ten other stores be opened in the town Surely, if there is any good in the principle of compe- tition, it will manifest itself here. Each will have to compete with twice the number, and hence must offer twice the induce- ment to purchasers as before. Certainly nothing could be 396 SIGNAL LIGHTS. more plausible than this. But plausible theories must not be allowed to obscure the facts. The people will not buy more goods than they want if a hundred new stores are opened. The same quantity of goods that before were sold by ten stores will now be sold by twenty. The result is that each one can sell only half the quantity. Is it to be supposed that, because each store-keeper is compelled to content himself with the profit on the sales of half the quantity of goods, he will sell that half at a lower price than before ? By no means. In all such cases the traders take in the situation, and by a tacit agreement among them, the prices are maintained, and, in many cases, are even raised, in which case the evil effect is of course chiefly felt by the poor. But if the prices are not raised, another and far more serious evil results. The loss, consequent on the diminished quantity of goods sold by each store-keeper, will be largely compensated for by adulteration and by an inferior quality of goods. Hence the wide-spread and alarming adulteration of the present day, the result of which is that hardly any genuine commercial article can be obtained except at an exorbitant price. This evil falls heavi- est on the mentally weak who have not the wit to detect the spurious, and on the poor who cannot afford to pay the higher price for the genuine article. It is not denied that there are circumstances under which competition may lower prices. A forcible example of its tendency to do so is seen in the sudden fall in the price of a manufactured article on the expiration of the patent. It should not be forgotten, however, that most patents of suffi- cient value to interest manufacturers command liberal royalties, so that, even if there were no competition, the price of the article would naturally fall when the patent expires. Any tendency which competition may have to lower prices, under certain circumstances, is many times overbalanced by its gen- THE UNIVERSAL CONFLICT. 397 eral cost to the community. The vast and complex mechan- ism of competition cannot be run without expense, which must be met from the resources of society. This fact alone should be sufficient to convince all that competition, on the whole, must raise instead of lower the ultimate cost of things. It is certain that a large proportion of the stores throughout the country are unnecessary so far as any direct benefit to the community is concerned,, It is also certain that they would not exist were it not for that principle of free competi- tion whereby each person acts for himself regardless of the common good. Now, it is simply a mathematical axiom that the general community not only pays the running expenses of these innumerable unnecessary stores, but enriches their pro- prietors in addition, and still further, it ultimately pays for the damage and waste resulting from the scattering of goods in small quantities in millions of stores, and for the greatly increased cost of carriage. A similar effect of competition is seen in productive indus- try in its tendency to multiply producers, and thereby to cause a waste of energy and material. Competition becomes a burden to society by the many fail- ures and bankruptcies which it causes. It stimulates the so-called Yankee propensity to buy and sell, and thus causes vast quantities of capital to be absorbed in unproductive com- merce which might otherwise be invested in enterprises bene- ficial to the community. One of the more serious evils of competition is the corrup- tion of government which it inevitably engenders. The distinguishing characteristic of competition is its tendency to break up the solidarity of society into conflicting classes. The votes of these various classes can of course beecured only by promises to plead their special interests. Under these g98 SIGNAL LIGHTS. circumstances it is evident that each legislator will be sub- jected to a moral test by the temptation of bribery. Were all human relations co-operative, instead of competi- tive, it is plain that there could be no such thing as class interests as against the general interests. But without such class interests there could surely be no legislative bribery, and without bribery the self-interest of the legislator could not be enlisted against his conscience, and to contend that he will vote contrary to his convictions without such enlistment of his self-interest is to give an unqualified endorsement to the doc- trine of total depravity. Hence there is no conceivable means by which a representative government can become corrupt except through bribery. The uninitiated would be appalled to know the extent to which systematic bribery enters into the processes of legislation. Bribes may be paid in money or in various forms of political service, but it is the principle of bribery, and that alone, in one form or another, by which legislators are corrupted and their votes secured for the interests of the rich and powerful and against those of the poor and weak. There are still deeper and more vital evils growing out of the competitive relations of society which remain to be con- sidered. In this connection those delicate and subtile con- ditions on which national progress depends, and also the Mal- thusian doctrine, so strongly intrenched behind the bulwarks of 'a false social system, demand attention. It is obvious to the reader of history that national progress is by no means constant. It is not even a necessary attendant of national life, and in the light of history it is doubtful if it will be found to be. the rule. It is said that the people of India are not only destitute of all desire for progress, but are actually unable to comprehend it. They even look with suspicion upon the efforts of the English to engender among them the THE UNIVERSAL CONFLICT. 399 spirit of a progressive civilization. To them change is the synonym of evil, and when urged by the English to make changes for the better, they not only regard such urging as a confession, on the part of the English, of previous wrong-doing, but they can not be disarmed of their suspicion, that there is concealed in it a sinister motive. Progress is not dependent on any of those superficial causes on which it is generally supposed to be conditioned. It does not depend upon national wealth, but the converse is true, the acquisition of wealth depends upon the principle of progress. Under the reign of individualism where all wealth tends to flow into the hands of the more powerful, progress is checked instead of accelerated by great national wealth. The treas- uries of those stagnant nations which for centuries have hung as dead stars in the firmament of nationality are overflowing with wealth. Rome was glittering with the jewels of afflu- ence when she fell to pieces by the crushing burden of her own wealth. Mental science seems to justify the conclusion that there is a certain mutual correlation between desire and effort which can not be overlooked without serious consequences. The general tendency of nature in all her departments to observe certain mathematical relations and ratios has been expressed in the adage " Nature geometrizes." There are many evi- dences which go to show that in the relation of desire to effort is to be found one of the many instances of fixed mathematical relation; that every effort put forth, whether physical or mental, in order to be normal, must be actuated by a desire whose intensity bears to it a definite ratio. If the effort required for the gratification of a given desire rises above this natural ratio the vital instincts are aroused in resistance, and just in the proportion that the required effort becomes too great, will the law of self-preservation assert itself, which is 400 SIGNAL RIGHTS. said to be the first law of nature. This law is often made the excuse in certain perilous situations for acts which under other circumstances woujd be regarded as the most cowardly and brutal. The absolute selfishness displayed in panic-stricken crowds is the necessary result of the law of self-preservation when that law is supreme. Men have often been known in the panic of shipwreck to snatch a life-preserver from the hands of a frail woman and leave her to perish with the sink- ing vessel. All are familiar with the fact that this law, under such circumstances, possesses the power temporarily to paralyze every higher element, and in an instant, as it were, to transport a human being back through untold eras of evolution, making him for the moment a veritable brute. The action of this instinct, however, is not confined to such occasions, but is always excited by fear, its intensity corre- sponding with that of the fear. It may be a fear of bodily harm, of financial loss, of social disgrace, of defeat in rivalry, or of the sudden necessity for some great effort. What is true of the effects on the character of its most intense action is true, only in a less degree, of the milder action excited by these lesser fears. In all degrees of activity it is essentially and purely selfish, and hence is antagonistic to the develop- ment of the higher sentiments in which true progress consists. In the equation of human life the amount of energy ex- pended in behalf of self, plus that expended in behalf of others, equals the entire energy of life. Now, the entire energy of life is a definite quantity. Hence whatever in- creases the first term in the first member of the equation must correspondingly diminish the second term. All those circumstances, which render necessary a greater expenditure of energy in self-defense and self-support, by just so much diminish the energy that is left to be expended in efforts of general beneficence. THE UNIVERSAL CONFLICT. 401 The advance of civilization may therefore be completely checked by simply increasing the ratio of effort to desire among the people. This principle shows how it is possible for a nation to progress rapidly up to a certain point, and then retrograde or for ages to remain stationary like China. Under the reign of competition the few strong oppress the many weak, till the " struggle for existence " becomes so great that the efforts required to gratify the legitimate wants of life rise above the normal ratio, and the instinct of self- preservation is excited to increased action. Nature has not left us in the dark in this matter. She has sharply marked the bounds within which variation is harm- less, and has instituted a danger signal which unmistakably indicates when these bounds are passed in either direction. As soon as the required effort becomes too great it becomes painful, just as food becomes nauseating after the appetite is gratified. All living beings are endowed with an appetite for muscular and mental exertion for its own sake, which confers a positive pleasure independent of anything to be gained by the exertion. This fact is too obvious to require even an illustration, which, however, may be seen in the apparently aimless running and jumping of lambs, dogs and boys. It is not until this natural appetite for exertion is satisfied that one of the fundamental assumptions of political economy becomes true, viz: that labor is inherently irksome and that men will not engage in it unless driven to by the necessities of life. When the ratio of the effort to the desire falls too low, nature sounds a different alarm, in the form of a nervous and restless impulse to let off the accumulated vital energy by some form of exercise. If this impulse be habitually crushed down, the result will be inanity, inefficiency and disease. 26 4-02 SIGNAL LIGHTS. Thus the effect of a too high and of a too low ratio of effort to desire are alike seen to be great evils. The evidences in support of this view are not confined to the consistency with which it explains social phenomena. The doctrine may be subjected to a personal test. Every one who has known want, or the fear of want, knows how abso- lutely incompatible with such want or fear, is the exercise of the higher and nobler feelings. As a fountain in the midst of a desert is dried by the scorching sun, so are the springs of religious thought and noble emotion dried by the blistering heat of poverty, and want, and unrequited toil. It is not necessary that there should be absolute want on the part of the great mass, in order that the aggregate result of poverty should be evil. The most stupendous changes in nature have been wrought by imperceptible causes. So, in order to cause a rapidly progressing nation to halt and remain stationary, or even to retrogade, it is only necessary that the influences tending to excite the instinct of self- preservation should be increased beyond a certain point by ever so little. The secret of rapid and continual national progress, then, is to keep the instinct of self-preservation, among the people, in a state' of quiescence. This can be done only by maintain- ing nature's nice adjustment between desire and its cognate effort, and this in turn can be done only by the abolition of competition by which the strong are enabled to oppress the weak. The many lofty characters who amid the deepest poverty and the darkest trials maintain their nobility of character and even seem to derive a moral ministry from their very hardships, are apparent exceptions to this doctrine, but the exceptions are only apparent. Such individuals either through their implicit trust in a higher power, or through rare 7'JIE UNIVERSAL CONFLICT. 4Q3 peculiarities of constitution are destitute of fear. They meet the hardships of life with a calmness which allows the instinct of self-preservation to remain quiescent. But such lofty characters may be eliminated from our consideration since they are not representative of the possi- bilities of the great multitude. Among the latter there is little probability that the divine command, " Love thy neighbor as thyself," will be obeyed, while from the cruel captain of competition, whom to disobey is to die, comes the stern command echoing across the battle field of life, " Love thyself and hate thy neighbor." To show that the arguments which have been used to sustain the Malthusian doctrine in its application to the human race derive all their validity from conditions which are the direct result of competition, it is only necessary to re-state the doctrine in the light which the law of conflict throws upon it. As propounded by Malthus himself, with more precision than by his followers, the doctrine teaches that population in the absence of artificial checks tends to increase in a geometrical ratio, while the means of suste- nance tend to increase only in an arithmetical ratio. So that there is a continual "pressure of population on the means of sustenance," giving rise to a general struggle for existence in which the resulting hardship holds population in check. This doctrine when applied to the human race meets with much embarrassment in the presence of the significant fact that from some cause the check to population is found only among the opulent and comfortable, just where, according to the doctrine, it should not be found, while population swarms among those on whom the hardship of the struggle falls with the greatest weight. The doctrine, as has already been seen, is a corollary of the vital conflict. The immediate victory of the organic 404 SIGNAL LIGHTS. forces over opposing tendencies gave a powerful impetus to the reproduction of life. But immediately the conflict of natural selection began, a sifting process by which the larger part of this life was destroyed, and only the best, most highly organized and complex forms were conserved. Now, the more highly organized and complex an organism, the greater amount of organic force is consumed in the main- tenance of its life. All development and progress, as Herbert Spencer has demonstrated, is from the homogeneous or simple, to the heterogeneous or complex. Hence every degree of advancement would make a larger requisition on the original stock of organic force. If, then, a larger amount of force is consumed in the maintenance of each organism, it follows that there must be fewer organisms, that is, the tendency to reproduction must diminish with every stage of development and with every added function. Thus the conditions of the Malthusian doctrine, which exist in the lower orders of life, become less prominent with every advance towards the higher. This view of the subject not only clearly defines and limits the doctrine, but it explains the otherwise anomalous fact already stated, that those most severely pressed in the strug- gle of life are most prolific. They are nearer to the original source of the organic impulse. They have fewer active functions, their intellectual powers, being weak, absorb but little of the organic force, and their moral faculties almost none. A larger per cent of the organic force is therefore left to be expended in reproduction. The families of such often include nearly a dozen children while those of persons possess- ing an average degree of intellectual and moral culture do not usually include more than three or four, in which the conditions of the Malthusian doctrine are but feebly discerned. These conditions vanish altogether in the case of those of the THE UNIVERSAL CONFLICT. 405 highest culture, whose lives have passed under the reign of the moral conflict. A subject so complex cannot, of course, be reduced to mathematical accuracy. Many notable exceptions to this law may be found, but so thoroughly does it accord not only with philosophic deduction, but with universal observation that it cannot be invalidated by such exceptions. Again the reproductive function is rapidly developed and brought into prominence by "arrested nutrition." This vital paradox, with reference to plants, was taught many years ago by the German biologist, Wolff. An apple tree which bears luxuriant foliage, but no fruit, may be made to yield abundant fruit by the simple process of " ringing," that is, by taking off a narrow ring of the outer bark from the trunk. Its imme- diate effect is to check the flow of sap, and thus to arrest nutrition. The tree may also be made fruitful by cutting off a portion of its roots, and still again by impoverishing the soil. By any of these processes young fruit trees may be made to bear several years earlier than they otherwise would. Mr. Spencer has shown, by an array of facts which leaves no room for doubt, that this law obtains not only throughout the vegetable kingdom, but throughout the animal as well. The early marriages and wonderful prolificness of the poor and degraded are examples in the human world. That their poverty diminishes nutrition needs no argument. It is dimin- ished nutrition. The remedy for poverty then becomes the remedy for overpopulation: It now becomes plain that those conditions of the Malthusian doctrine which still linger in the lower strata of the human race and which have given rise to such wide-spread miscon- ception, and thus far rendered unavailing all attempts fully to refute the doctrine so repugnant to our higher sentiments, are, when traced to their ultimate source, due to the still reigning 406 SIGNAL LIGHTS. evil of competition, for if men's relations were co-operative instead of competitive, the one and only condition of certain success would be honest and moderate endeavor, but under the present system there is the added necessity of first crowd- ing aside a rival. The larger part of human energy is expended in this mutual crowding. The great majority hav-e not sufficient energy to fulfill the natural conditions of success, and at the same time to hold a hostile community at bay. The result is the terrible poverty and degradation already considered, which constitutes the only condition on which the Malthusian doctrine becomes applicable to the human race. The evil of intemperance, the gigantic outlines of which are just beginning to appear before the startled vision of Christen- dom, is one which takes its place beside those already enum- erated, and points its accusing finger at the one all-embracing evil of competition. All craving for artificial stimulation is the organic expression of nervous exhaustion. This is regarded almost in the light of a physiological axiom. Statis- tics have shown that intemperance among different classes is nearly in proportion to the exhaustive tendency of their occu- pations. Type setting exhausts the nervous energy with great rapidity, especially when done in the night. Accord- ingly a larger proportion of night compositors have been found to be addicted to intemperance than of any other class of laborers. The bearing of these facts is obvious. The harder men are pressed in the " struggle for existence," the greater the efforts necessary on their part, and hence the greater expenditure of nervous energy and the consequent craving for stimulation. Men are pressed in the struggle just in proportion to the fierceness of competition. To contend otherwise is to deny the most obvious facts of mathematics. Intemperence exists first among the professional men, who exhaust their nervous force THE UNIVERSAL CONFLICT. 407 by mental work; second, among those whose associations lead to late hours and an exciting mode of life; and, third, among the great hosts of unskilled laborers, whose wages yield them a bare subsistence, and who are subjected to the additional exhausting influence of continued care and anxiety. It is a significant fact that the farmers and those who have neither an excess nor a deficiency of worldly goods are seldom intemperate. Among the very poor, who are almost universally intemper- ate, the insufficient food, its poor quality, the impure air, the absence of sunlight, the early marriages, the immorality and the inherited weaknesses, all combine to render the necessary overwork of life a terrible drain upon the nervous force. Nature's great cry is heard and answered at the grog shop. Not that alcohol furnishes any element of nutrition to the exhausted nerves, but it goads them on to increased activity and so for a time relieves the negative pain which results from the tendency of the nerves to sink into a low state of activity for the purpose of recuperation. If they were allowed to recuperate, all would be well, but their possessor impatiently refuses to forego the little pleasure they can give him, and so with alcohol arouses them again to activity, as one might shake a drowsy friend, refusing to let him rest because desir- ing his company. The friend, by such treatment, at last would become so exhausted that his company could give no enjoy- ment. So the nerves of the drunkard at last refuse to yield him pleasure, even when shaken by the hand of alcohol. An inestimable good would undeniably result from the legal clos- ing of the saloons, but the temperance problem would thereby be only partially solved. If the social conditions of poverty and vital exhaustion were to remain, there would not only be a vast increase in the consumption of tobacco and coffee, but a rush to the drug store for the more deadly substitutes of 408 SIGNAL LIGHTS. opium and chloral. The remedy for intemperance must embrace the remedy for poverty, and this, as already seen, can be found only in the elimination of that system which allows the stronger to use his superior strength to his own advantage against a weaker brother. The army of intemper- ance to-day is camping in quiet complacency behind the massive earthworks of competition. Thus in all the relations of life the intellectual conflict in its most notable form of industrial competition is seen to be a vast and immeasurable evil. It has accomplished the work which was assigned it by the law of evolution, and the energy now required for its continued operation is worse than wasted. It does not kill the physically and morally degraded, hence there is no natural selection, and it not only has no tendency to prevent propagation, but, as already seen, the reverse is quite true. Thus, by a strange reversal of methods, the con- flict is now actually undoing the work of natural selection. It causes the survival in larger numbers of the physically and morally unfit. This is confirmed by the obvious tendencies going on in the great centers of population, which are fast becoming the abodes of the few very rich and the many very poor, but from which the middle class is departing. The one great obstacle that stands in the way of the last and highest transformation of conflict is the wage system, which lies at the basis of all forms of industrial competition. Under the physical conflict the relation which the employe sus- tained to the employer was that of slaver}'. Under the moral conflict it will be that of brotherly co-operation, in which capital and labor shall be represented by the same individuals and in which capital shall take its proper subordinate position as a mere tool in the hands of labor. The present wage system holds a middle ground between these two, as would naturally be expected, since it is the offspring of that form of THE UNIVERSAL CONFLICT. 409 conflict which holds a middle ground between the physical and the moral. It is a kind of transition form of slavery in which the individual, instead of being fed and clothed directly by the master, is given the necessary means and allowed, out of compliment to his increased intelligence, to purchase his own food and clothing. The operation of the " iron law of wages," by which they constantly tend to fall to " the lowest point at which men will consent to labor and reproduce," is only an indirect method of " bringing back the change " to the master. The primitive man knew no higher right of possession than that which superior strength conferred. In forcibly appropri- ating the possessions of others, his feelings were probably the same as when he overcame so much inanimate resistance. Hence a weaker fellow-being would naturally be appropriated as a slave. But when equals came together, after repeated contests in which neither could gain a permanent victory, a compromise was effected and slaves became their common property. Thus human society had its beginning in a part- nership of superior strength on a basis of slavery. When the first faint idea of moral obligation dawned in the mind of the most intelligent savage, it was of an obliga- tion between equals only, and did not touch the relations of strength and weakness. But, in accordance with the law of evolution, the tkne came when the sentiment began to dawn concerning the relations of the strong and the weak, but was undoubtedly regarded as a revolutionary innovation, just as the advanced thoughts of a higher social justice are now con- sidered. The thought triumphed over opposition and became established, but there was not, even in the minds of the reformers, the remotest thought of an equality of obligation between the strong and the weak. The new sentiment took the direction of a little less cruel treatment of the weak by 410 SIGNAL LIGHTS. the strong, and along this line it has progressed till the present. But this sense of justice between the strong and the weak, being of later origin than that between equals, would naturally lag behind it in its modern development. This accords with the undeniable fact that only those of the highest moral culture are able to feel the same degree of obligation towards their inferiors as towards their equals and superiors. The wage system in which only the claim on the person and liberty of the worker is relinquished, while the labor, as before is rewarded with the bare means of subsistence, is a striking exemplification of this peculiar feature in the develop- ment of justice. Nature's classifications over-lap one another and no distinct line can be drawn between her epochs. One form of conflict does not wait until the preceding form has wholly subsided before it commences. On the other hand, it is the tendency of the succeeding form to assert itself "that compels the subsid- ence of the preceding form. Thus the moral conflict, though feeble yet, compared with the intellectual, has nevertheless already accomplished great results. Humanity has developed a potential morality of which we little dream. It does not strongly manifest itself because of that competitive spirit which pervades human relations the very nature of which is to crowd back the manifestation of the higher sentiments. But all the while beneath the surface of conduct there has been gathering a latent moral force, and when it shall once break through the obstruction which holds it in check, it will follow the law of all forces long obstructed and suddenly released. It will leap into ascendancy with a rapidity and energy that will astonish and bewilder men. While it is impossible exhaustively to consider all the forces that are conspiring to enthrone the last and highest member THE UNIVERSAL CONFLICT. 4.1 1 of the mighty heptarchy it is necessary to examine more or less minutely the following agencies: first, voluntary co-oper- ation; second, labor organizations and trades unions; third, legislation; fourth, Christianity and the moral development of man. By voluntary co-operation is meant the usual form in which co-operators associate themselves together for the purpose of carrying on some industrial enterprise, productive or distribu- tive, with capital contributed by themselves. In some cases, however, a portion of the capital is hired. The object is to unite the functions of capital and labor in the same hands, and thus to avoid the strife between employer and employed, not by adjusting, but by annihilating, their relations. The term voluntary co-operation is used in distinction from that more radical form as yet untried, in which the means of production and distribution are to be owned by the community at large and operated like the post office on the public account, the profits accruing, not to the management, but to the people, or to those performing the labor. Co-operation of the former kind has been carried on much more extensively than is generally supposed. Not only in Eng- land, France, and Germany, where it has achieved great results, but even in our own country, where the conditions in many respects are far less favorable than in those countries. The his- tory of co-operative efforts in production and distribution in the United States is extremely interesting. Not only as show- ing a gradual growth of sentiment in its favor, but chiefly as showing the constantly diminishing ratio of failure to success. The early experiments were nearly all failures. Their average length of life was extremely short. This large per- centage of failures was due in almost every case to disagree- ment resulting from a lack of discipline and knowledge of the best co-operative methods. Each failure, however, left its to 412 SIGNAL LIGHTS. valuable legacy of experience and suggestion, so that the law of evolution has here been at work. As we come down through the decades from the earliest experiments a gradual increase in the duration of the enterprises is noticed. In the first attempts there was the disadvantage resulting from the fact that co-operative business must be conducted in a manner differing considerably from that of ordinary business, so that its methods are not revealed by the time-honored maxims. There was an equal disadvantage resulting from the fact that few workmen could be found who understood much, even of the ordinary methods, or who had been trained in the exercise of any kind of industrial superintendence. As the proper business methods were gradually ascertained by the slow and costly process of failure, it is but natural that the result should have been as above stated. It is easy to see how the impression obtained such preval- ence that co-operation in our country is a failure. It is simply the survival of the old impression obtained from the results of the first experiments. No idea could be farther from the truth as the statistics of later enterprises will abundantly show. Co- operation in the nature of things works insidiously, and its results do not reveal themselves to superficial observers. It is only through the reports of the labor bureaus and by the most careful investigation that the extent of co-operation in any of the States can be fully ascertained. It is no wonder, there- fore, that the impression made upon the public mind during the early periods in which almost every effort at co-operation failed in a few months should still exist. The city of Philadelphia has acquired the enviable title of " the city of homes," wholly through the phenomenal success of the building and loan association which originated there, and which is purely co-operative. Through this association over 80,000 poor people have become owners of property in THE UNIVERSAL CONFLICT. 413 that city. Similar associations are now springing up all over the nation. So rapidly have they spread that their number throughout the country is estimated at from 3,000 to 5,000, in which not less than 2,000,000 individuals are supposed to be personally interested. The aggregate capital of these associations has been- estimated at $75,000,000. Although the building and loan association is the form of co-operation that has met with the highest degree of success in our country, yet other forms present figures which, to those who still retain the original impression that American co-operation is a failure, are quite astonishing. Until recent years efforts were directed chiefly to the establishment of co-operative stores, or to what is callei distributive co-operation. Indeed, so great have been th. difficulties attending productive co-operation that few at tempts of the kind have heretofore been made, and those have nearly all proved failures. But so strongly, within the last few years, has the current of popular sentiment been set- ting in the direction of co-operation that even this latter and most difficult form has been attempted, and in many cases with wonderful success. In 1874 there was organized in Minneapolis a co-operative barrel association with a capital stock of $15,000. So great was the success of this institution that others followed one after another, till in 1881 there were five. Three more have since been added and the combined business of them all amounts to over a million dollars annually. Their stock ranges from $15,000 to $100,000. A letter from Minneapolis to the Christian Union says among other things concerning the co-operators: " They consult dispassionately, vote fairly, submit without hesitation, work faithfully, choose their best men always, obey implicitly, and have unlimited faith in the co-operative effort. During their existence the eight shops 414 SIGNAL LIGHTS. have had not less than a score of officers entitled to handle their money. Out of this number not one has given any security, not one has proved careless or dishonest, and not one dollar of deficit or defalcation has been charged against them. After their eight years' experience it is now admitted they are unassailable and unconquerable while united, and this fall will probably see every 'boss ' cooper extinct." The success of these barrel associations alone renders unnecessary any reply to that superficial and groundless objection so often urged that the substitution of the co-opera- tive for the competitive system would take away the stimulus to activity, and render men inane and non-progressive. In 1885 a few workingmen organized a co-operative asso- ciation at Lisbon Falls, Maine, composed of twenty-six mem- bers with only $600 of capital. They opened a grocery and provision store. The business increased so rapidly that they have built a large, fine block, containing stores, offices and a public hall. The first month's sales amounted to $385. About the twentieth month they amounted to $2,000. The first six months they declared a dividend of ten per cent; the second six months, twelve per cent ; and at the end of the succeeding seven months, fifteen per cent. About one hun- dred members received as dividends, in seven months, $1,274.67. The Girls' Co-operative Clothing Manufactory of Chicago is a new and promising enterprise incorporated in January, 1887. It is composed of sixty girls, all of whom are Knights of Labor. They have fitted up a large room with thirty sewing machines, and have bravely gone to work as their own employers. It is the first experiment of the kind tried in this country, and the result will be watched with great interest. FHE UNIVERSAL CONFLICT, 415 The following, clipped from Work and Wages, shows how urgently popular opinion needs revising concerning the possi- bilities of American co-operation: "The International Union cigarmakers have formulated one of the most comprehensive and promising plans for organizing and extending co-opera- tive production that has ever been proposed. Some six years ago co-operation was under consideration by the central body of the union, and the plan now adopted is the result of long study. To raise capital each member of the Union has been paying into the general treasury five cents per month as his share of the co-operative dues. By May first (1887) this sum will have reached $67,000 which they consider sufficient to start the enterprise. Of this $50,000 is to be used this year, to buy a large factory and raw material. The factory is to be in New York, and will be a sort of co-operative training school. They expect to buy the entire plantation crop just as wholesalers do now. To run the factory fifty of the best men in the country are to be selected, and their support, and extra capital to be used in the case of emergency, will be the remaining $17,000. The idea of the leaders in the move- ment, in case it proves successful, is, after a certain time, to take competent men and open a co-operative factory in Chicago. This extension of their factories will be repeated as often as justified by the progress made. It is the provision for training men in co-operative principles and management, so that they shall be competent to organize new co-operative companies from time to time, and in. their turn still other men, that is the peculiar and promising feature of this plan. 11 The Philadelphia Industrial Co-operative Society has been regarded as the most brilliant success in the country. It is not in any way connected with the Building and Loan Asso- ciation of that city. There are many other notable successes 416 SIGNAL LIGHTS. in various parts of the country, but space will not permit even the briefest mention of them. The co-operative board of the Sociological Society of America has begun the publication of a quarterly journal called the Co-operative Nevus of America, "which willpublish authentic reports of co-operative progress, articles by practical co-operators and hints to new societies." So powerful and unmistakable is the tendency towards co-operative effort that an attempt has recently been made to- form a great national confederation of co-operative associa- tions, and with this end in view, a society has been formed with head-quarters in Zanesville, Ohio. Although voluntary co-operation may be limited in its scope, yet it has a wider significance than the mere minim- izing of the cost of living on the part of the individual co-operators. It has an ethical and a prophetic significance. It is a most powerful agent of moral discipline. Based as it is on the very idea of interdependence and mutuality, it imbues men with an ever-deepening sense of obligation. By identifying the selfish interests of the individual with the interests of others, it compels his selfishness gradually to give place to a broader desire for the prosperity of all, and thus the altruistic sense, which is at first an economic necessity, becomes at last habitual and organic. In this way co-oper- ators are being educated and fitted for a higher social state and a more radical form of co-operation, and herein lies the prophetic significance of voluntary co-operation. It heralds the swift on-coming of the co-operative commonwealth which has been the dream of philosophic minds from the days of Plato. It is a part of that mighty and irresistible process of social integration by which the fragmentary interests of ^humanity are being brought together into one stupendous whole. THE UNIVERSAL CONFLICT. 417 The present impetus in the direction of co-operation is co-extensive with that in the direction of labor organization. Almost every successful co-operative enterprise has been inaugurated by some labor union or fraternal order. The two are so closely related that they cannot well be considered separately. Both alike derive their chief significance not from the number of dollars saved, nor from the number of successful strikes engaged in, but from the fact that they indi- cate the operation of a great natural law in the social world, that of cyclic development. The profoundest philosophy of our age is becoming deeply impressed with the glimpse of strange phenomena, the full significance of which it cannot yet interpret - those which give to the circle an ever-deepen- ing symbolism. It is beginning to be felt, perhaps rather than perceived, by gifted souls, that nature's progressive movement is not in a straight line, nor in a broken zigzag line, nor yet along the far expanding branch of the infinite parabola, but in a circle with a moving center. Whether this moving cen- ter itself describes another and a grander circle in the far immensity of time no finite mind may answer. We only know that nature almost strikes her own trail at vast intervals. The experiences of ten thousand generations have crystallized into the significant adage, " History repeats itself." Through the investigations of Lubbock, Taylor, Spencer, and others, it clearly appears that the earliest life of man was purely individualistic, while Sir Henry Maine, in his " Studies of Ancient Law," as clearly demonstrates that the earliest form of society, which this original atomic humanity assumed, was communistic, that for long ages men at peace with one another, dwelt in perfect harmony, as the joint owners of the land and its products. But gradually the common lands began to be appropriated by tjie stronger and more selfish, and thus the current of 418 SIGNAL LIGHTS. tendency again set in the direction of individualism, which reached its culmination about a century ago in the inflorescence of the competitive philosophy, the teachings of Adam Smith. Thus within the field of the historic view has been com- pleted one grand revolution, and history has again moved slowly round the aphelion of its orbit, and now with a mighty rush is sweeping down towards its perihelion, back again to an era of social synthesis. Not to the communism from which it started, for at each revolution nature seeks a higher van- tage ground. Under the law of absolute individualism the social units would undoubtedly sustain a relation fitly symbolized by Mr. Spencer's mechanical illustration of the cannon balls and bodies of other regular shapes. The force of the illustration is in the fact that the possible shapes which a pile of such bodies may assume and be in stable equilibrium may be mathematically determined in advance by the shape of the units. The application of this illustration to the social body is made to enforce the idea that society is as the units com- posing it, and that all effort to secure concerted action of a higher type than that dictated by the moral character of the average individual, is therefore useless and unscientific; that no social advancement can be made except as the result of the slow progress of organic improvement in the individual. But if material aggregation is a fit symbol of the social, it is reasonable to suppose that the two modes of material aggregation, mechanical and chemical, correspond to a like two-fold mode of social union. Heterogeneity favors chemical union, while homogeneity allows only mechanical union. It would seem, then, that chemical union would constitute a much more fitting symbol of that most heterogeneous of all unions, human society. But the latent attributes of the chem- ical unit reveal themselves only in combination. The atom THE UNIVERSAL CONFLICT. 419 of nitrogen, the most inert of all known substances, surely gives no clue to the character of the terrible dynamite, a few ounces of which may lay a city in ruins. So the social unit, examined in its isolation, becomes an enigma, furnishing but a O ' O faint clue to the vast possibilities of aggregate achievement. The great and sudden reformations of history are the expres- sions of this principle by which the latent and highest possi- bilities of the individual character become actual and effective only in the process of chemico-psychic union. Chlorine and hydrogen remain inert till brought into proximity and placed in the sunlight, when they explode with great force. So human minds possess vast and unrealized powers which remain potential till the minds are brought into contact in the sunlight of truth. The scientist as well as the religionist should recognize the truth that " where two or three are gathered together " in any noble cause there is manifested a moral power unwarranted by the known character of any one of the individuals. Fraternal orders and labor unions thus find their warrant in the highest philosophy. As already shown, it is competitive relations alone which prevent the immediate ascendancy of the moral conflict. Competitive relations can be eliminated only as co-operative relations take their places. The solution of the social prob- lem, then, becomes synonymous with the universal establish- ment of co-operation. But successful co-operation has been seen to depend on mutual confidence and fraternity. It is the outflowering of the spirit of brotherhood. And thus again does the highest philosophy emphasize the justification of fraternal organizations, where this spirit is fostered and developed as nowhere else. Especially do the Knights of Labor deserve to be. commended. The unique social phe- nomenon which they exhibit is the organic correlative of that in the inorganic world by which crystals form in clusters 420 SIGNAL LIGHTS. strongly cohering. A crystallization of crystals, the Knights of Labor, therefore, represent a more advanced stage of social amalgamation than has ever before been inaugurated. A fraternal union of fraternal unions, the discipline by which they are rendering their members amenable to reason and conscience and obedient to their chosen leaders, is one of the instrumentalities by which the masses are being fitted for universal co-operation. The Knights of Labor are drilling the mightiest army of history for the noblest crusade the world has ever witnessed. Their movements constitute the most significant phase of that general process of integration and social synthesis by which the great temple is to be reared. Not like the temple of old, "without the sound of a hammer." There will be the sound of many hammers, mingled with the discordant shouts of warring masters and the creaking of unwieldy timbers as they swing reluctantly and ill-fittingly into their places, and, perchance, " by reason of breakings they will purify themselves." The Knights of Labor are becoming wise through failure and mighty through success. They are reading the political economy and social science of Karl Marx, John Stuart Mill, Herbert Spencer, Henry George, Louis Blanc, Robert Owen, A. R. Wallace, Charles Kingsley and others. They will not long be contented with their present narrow policy. Their enlarged intelligence will not permit them forever to stand behind the toy guns of the boycott and the strike. They are deep in the spell of thought, and the silence is ominous. The world knows little of the Knights of Labor except through their more aggressive movements, in which the pub- lic interest is often disadvantageously affected. Hence the widespread prejudice against them. This is in accordance with the characteristic short-sightedness of the people when their selfish interests are involved. No account whatever is THE UNIVERSAL CONFLICT. 421 made of that influence which constitutes by far the most important phase of organized labor, viz: the educational influence. Men willfully shut their eyes to the beneficent and ennobling influence which must inevitably result, when large masses of illiterate men, accustomed to spend their evenings in the saloons, become interested in a great order in which intemperance is discouraged and the members hail one another as brother or sister. There is one evening, at least, in each week when these lowly men take off their soiled garments, and put- ting on their " Sunday clothes " go to a public hall, where men and women of all degrees of intellectual endowment and acquirement meet to discuss the great economic and social problems that underlie our civilization. Through this discus- sion and interchange of thoughts, the low and so-called dan- gerous classes, are beginning to open wide their eyes to truths which they never before conceived. And if, under the sudden inspiration of great but half-learned truths, these illiterate but well-meaning men say and do many wild and unwise things, let us not condemn them, but remember rather that those who caught but a faint glimpse even of the everlasting truths of righteousness and immortality, with torch and fagot and rack, also did many wild and unwise things. He who perceives this mighty undertow of educational and developing influence in organized labor, especially as exemplified in the Knights of Labor, and who still opposes and discourages because of prejudice and lack of sympathy with the toiling millions, is deserving of no better epithet than traitor to his country and his kind. Such objectors who are necessarily either thoughtless, weak-minded, or dis- honest, are prone to appeal to that most marked American weakness, an over-sensitiveness to supposed encroachments on personal liberty. This represents an inflamed spot in the American brain. In a monarchial government it is a safe- 422 SIGNAL LIGHTS. guard against oppression, but in a democratic government it is extremely liable to become a source of hindrance to rapid social development. Men do not realize that the individual characteristics which are most to be commended under a tyrannical government, are the very ones least to be com- mended under a system of self-government. That spirit of obedience together with a carefulness not to assert one's indi- viduality to the detriment of others' interests, is the condition that enables a monarchial government to work its greatest curse to man. But it is the condition that enables a republic to work its greatest blessing. The Knights of Labor, by cul- tivating this spirit, are not only educating and fitting the laboring masses to become better citizens, but are holding in check with a steady hand, a rising tide of dangerous but in- evitable revolt. But co-operation and labor organization must be brought- into closer and more vital relations with the social organism through the instrumentality of that which now claims atten- tion the functions of government. A century of self-government in our own country has not been sufficient fully to eradicate from the minds of the people the false impression that all government must necessarily emanate from a source objective to the governed. This instinct has come down to us, through the channels of hered ity, as an unwelcome legacy from untold ages of tyrant rule. The now unphilosophical doctrine of laissez-faire j that is, that the government should interfere as little as possible with the affairs of the people, but calmly stand aloof and watch the fight, is the modern expression of this false instinct. Either there is no meaning in the word self-government, or else it means that it is simply a joint agreement to act in a certain manner. Legislators are simply messengers who carry the expressed wills of majorities to the places where THE UNIVERSAL CONFLICT. 423 they are formulated into laws. If they are more than this, it is through the stupidity of the people. Republican .govern- ment is nothing apart from the people. It is not an entity to be over-burdened with functions. It is itself only a function of the social organism, and sustains the same relation to it, that volition sustains to the individual. To talk of over- legislation then, in a government of the people, and by the people, is as unphilosophical as to talk of over self-control in the individual. Modern science has shown us that the term " social organ- ism " in this connection is not a metaphor, but represents a veritable reality. That social bodies necessarily follow the biological law of development is now the basic postulate of social science. The essential thought originated in the mind of Plato, although the imperfect knowledge of biology in his time prevented its fullest fruition. It was greatly extended, though mixed with some vagaries, by Hobbes. But Spencer and other recent investigators have taken the conception out of the field of speculation into the realm of scientific certainty. The early development of social organisms corresponds to that of the lower animals. Simplicity of function character- izes alike the lowest animal and the rudimental society. Progress in each is attended with a multiplication and special- ization of parts. As there are radiates, articulates, and verte- brates in the animal kingdom, so there are degrees of social development corresponding to these. The first process in biological development is differentiation or the formation of distinct organs with special functions. This corresponds to the division of labor in the social body, by which each indi- vidual performs a particular kind of work. Among savage tribes there is little or no division of labor. The degree to which it is carried measures the degree of industrial and economic civilization. 424 SIGNAL LIGHTS. The second process in organic development is cephalization, or the centralization of controlling and co-ordinating power in the brain with a continually increasing dependence of the bodily functions on cerebral influence. The brain of a social organism is the governmental head. Social cephalization is the increasing of states' functions. Just as certainly as the degree of organic development is measured by the number and complexity of the brain's func tions, so certainly is social development measured by the number and complexity of the state's functions. Progress is directly proportionate to the rapidity with which government assumes new and more responsible duties. Theoretically there may be danger from a too rapid devel- opment of the social brain, as there is sometimes danger in forcing the mental growth of a child. But the boy whose motto is " the less brain activity the better," and who refuses to go to school, can not possibly be in such clanger. So the nation whose motto is laissez-faire is not likely to surfer from over social cerebration. Such boys and such nations require to be urged instead of restrained. The most unjust as well as unphilosophical doctrine is that of laissez-faire. The language of the Rev. Heber Newton in this connection is no less true than forcible: "Of all the cant of a canting age, there is none more nauseous than the solemn chant of the gospel of laissez-faire, which, whenever a labor bill is under discussion, is raised by the very men whose fortunes have been builded up by special legislation." But a rapid change is taking place. The one-sided appli- cation of the doctrine of laissez-faire is fast becoming unpop- ular, and right in the face of the loudly protesting mob of monopoly, whose badges of power have been pinned on by the harlot fingers of special legislation, the enlightened masses are pressing on towards the scientific solution of the govern- THE UNIVERSAL CONFLICT. 425 mental problem. They are beginning to ask why the cry of "over legislation 11 is always raised when the subject of discussion happens to be a labor bill, and " developing our resources " when it happens to be a capitalistic scheme. The}' are reading and thinking and talking about the nationalization of the land, the governmental ownership and control of the railroads and telegraphs; a graded income tax, and the limit- ation of the right of bequest; and they are beginning to think that possibly the " eternal order of things " would not be dis- turbed even by these radical measures. They cannot see how government aid and encouragement to co-operative enter- prises would endanger our institutions any more than that same aid and encouragement so lavishly extended to great railroad corporations. They are beginning to regard with suspicion that policy which answers with laissez-faire the demand for the reservation of our future mineral resources as public property, and at the same time clothes a mighty coal m6nopoly in the purple of special legislation, and arms it with the power of an oriental dynasty by which half a dozen men amid the hilarious clink of champagne glasses and the fumes of costly Havanas, by the simple scatch of a pen are enabled to force up the price of one of the prime necessities of life, whereby desolation and despair are enthroned upon the icy hearths of a thousand homes. It is not our design in this chapter to discuss the specific measures by which government could and should hasten the tendency toward industrial and social solidarity, but rather to guide the people into comprehensive modes of thought, whereby they may be enabled to determine for themselves what measures are, and what are not, in harmony with the fundamental laws of social development. The influence that most seriously retards the process of social cephalization, and thus emasculates the might)' powers of government for good, 426 SIGNAL LIGHTS. is the popular uncertainty as to whether a proposed measure is in the line of progress or of retrogression. What to one seems an advancement, to another, equally honest and intelli- gent, seems a relapse toward barbarism, and amid the wild panic of opinion, men know not which way to turn. It is evident, then, that what is needed is some mode of thought, in harmony, with the monism of universal philosophy, that shall interpret and unify all cosmic and social phenomena, and link them with the fundamental laws of life and growth. Should the Knights of Labor, as an order, turn their atten- tion in earnest to the subject of co-operation, they would naturally establish the same mutual relation and co-ordination among the different enterprises which they have established among the labor unions of which they are composed; and thus a network of interdependent co-operative enterprises would in a few years assume national proportions. And as it is obvious to every student of social phenomena, that organ- ized labor is about to exert a controlling influence on the * politics of the country, the line seems clearly indicated along which may be established a much more vital relation between these enterprises and the people. As the immediate management of co-operation, in the very nature of the case, is representative, like that of government, there seems at once to be established, by virtue of the analogy, a kind of natural affinity between the two. There is reason to believe that in this natural affinity lies the solution of the industrial problem in accordance with the scientific concept! on of the proper functions of government. The industries of the country, first being prepared by becoming co-operative through labor organization, will pass quietly and without danger into the hands of the government, and thus in the ownership by the people and for the people, of God's gifts to UNIVERSAL CO XI- LI CT. 427 man, will be realized the logical sequel to that triumph of the last century, government by the people and for the people. The importance of the relation which this doctrine of serial conflict sustains to Christianity cannot be overestimated. As plainly as language can express a thought, Jesus taught the transformation of conflict from the intellectual to the moral basis. For its fullest expression we would fall back upon those words which compass it in a single sentence: "Whatso- ever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them." Christianity inculcates no duty not consonant with the instincts of the highest moral development. It is the divine inflorescence of human nature. The Sermon on the Mount flashed its divine light through the moral darkness of the ages, revealing the finger of evolution pointing steadfastly toward God. That sermon would have met with no response in the human heart had it not sustained a relation to its innate possibilities like that of sunshine and shower to the bud. It was because it sustained such a relation that kt the common people heard him gladly." The trend of evolution is in the direction of constantly increasing altruism and diminishing egoism. As the coronal and anterior portions of the brain expand and increase in activity, the motives prompting to beneficent action become more and more powerful and controlling, while the reverse is true of all the selfish motives. It is therefore only a mat- ter of time when the motives originating in man's moral nature will overshadow those now originating in his selfish nature, and will become the mainsprings of activity in all the industrial and social relations of life. The intellectual and moral faculties are capable of furnish- ing stronger motives to activity than are the selfish faculties, as proved by the almost insane passion of the naturalist and the heroic conduct of the martyr. Nothing could be farther 428 SIGNAL LIGHTS. from the truth, than the claim so often urged, that the substi tution of the higher motives for the selfish as the basis of industrial activity, would necessarily make society inane and non-progressive. The words of the poet Willis in " The Scholar of Thebet Ben Khorat" in which he describes the devotion of the Arabian astrologer to his science, do not over express the power of the intellectual faculties to furnish efficient motive to long and laborious endeavor, " Till the stars melted in the flush of morn, The old astrologer knelt moveless there, Ravished past pain with the bewildering spheres.'' The desire for praise constitutes -a spur to activity almost infinitely more controlling than the mere desire for gain. Philosophy sanctions the conclusion that the peculiar pleasure which the gratification of this desire confers, rather than extra pecuniary compensation, constitutes the natural reward for the exercise of extraordinary powers devoted to the general good. The greatest and most laborious efforts of history have been put forth with a contempt for their pecuniary rewards, which shows that there are in human nature other springs of action more potent than those recognized by our competitive philosophers. . The highest possible development of the social organism will not be reached till the poiver of the individual becomes the recognized measure of his duty, and his needs, depending on the scope of his life, the measure of his recompense. The sum total of human activity, which is consonant with a given climatic environment, can not materially be diminished nor increased, for physical and mental activity are correlatives of vitality and heart beats. The amount of life,and consequently the strength of motive impelling to action in some direction, is THE UNIVERSAL CONFLICT. 429 the exact equivalent of the food assimilated and the carbon oxydized. If you cut oft the motive to action in one direction, you as surely increase it in another direction, as you would widen and deepen the one channel of a forked river by damming up the other. The fact that spirituality is a more prominent factor in eastern civilization than in western, is the exact correlative of a correspondingly less degree of materialism. Our civiliza- tion is an intensely materialistic one, hence we are materially active, but spiritually sluggish, while the eastern is intensely spiritual and metaphysical, hence physically sluggish. The crying need of our civilization to-day is some element that shall check this nerve-consuming and brain-maddening mate- rial activity, and sooth the delirium of our merchantile insanity. Many who perceive the danger believe that there is great promise in the rising tide of transcendentalism in the form of Indian Theosophy with which our material science is now being inoculated. But there is vastly more promise in that rising tide of universal industrial brotherhood which bids fair very soon to inundate the ragged headlands of human selfish- ness. All true and profound advocates of social progress sincerely hope that the universal application of the co-operative prin- ciple will have exactly the effect which its opponents have urged as an objection against it, viz., that it will greatly diminish the wild speculative and commercial activity which characterizes the present age. By so doing it will turn the American mind more strongly in the direction of the ancient Grecian in a search for those higher objects of life, the " beau- tiful and the good.' 1 The strong and irrepressible tendency to activity which characterizes the American mind would then produce results that would dazzle the world by their 430 SIGNAL LIGHTS. brilliancy, in the lines of aesthetic, intellectual and moral culture. Despair is the most depressing of all influences ; hope is the most stimulating. The impulse to activity and enterprise is always quickened with the quickening of hope, and hope is quickened by success. Is it> logical, then, to contend that a larger and more equitable share in the products of their labor would make men indolent? The very prevalent doctrine of the intrinsic depravity of human nature as an insurmountable hindrance to the realiza- tion of great reforms is without scientific foundation. What would be thought of a parent who should continually remind a child that his innate sinfulness rendered hopeless all efforts to be honest and upright, and should therefore ridicule the child's attempt to reform and live a true and noble life. Such a parent would be judged by any court as incompetent to have the charge of his own child. Yet this would not differ materially from the acts of those teachers whose business it is to teach mankind and to lead them to right views of life, but who continually prate about the intrinsic sinfulness of human nature as an obstacle to all except the very shal- lowest reforms. Is it to be expected that society will reform and renounce its vices under the influence of such teachings ? The fact is, science searches in vain for any trace of essential depravity in human nature. All depravity is the expression of false relations and the maladjustment of environment. Righteousness is the normal condition of the soul, as health is the normal condition of the body. But as health is impossible when the mucous surfaces are constantly inflamed in a self-defensive effort to cast out poisonous matters and to re-adjust false vital relations, so righteousness is impossible when the instinct of self- preservation is constantly excited, when the duties and rela- THE UNIVERSAL CONFLICT. 431 tions of life are all self-defensive. If the militant relations of life could cease, men would turn to the doctrines of Jesus as the migratory birds come back to us when the elemental war of winter gives place to the sunny peace of spring. Human- ity is ready and waiting to embrace Christianity in all its full- ness, and to make its sweet and peaceful teachings the guiding star in all the relations of life, in the workshop, the factory and the busy mart. All sinfulness is the exaltation of ego- ism over altruism, and the seeking of selfish gratification at the expense of the general good. Now if social relations were adjusted so that the aggregate activity should redound to the simultaneous advantage of each acting unit, just as the aggregate vital processes of the human body result in the simultaneous nourishing of all the individual members, there would be no occasion for selfish activity outside of that which would equally contribute to the general good, and thus the foundation of the monstrous doctrine of the intrinsic sin- fulness of human nature would vanish from beneath the airy structure. The great and heroic deeds of life are performed by those who are neither rich nor poor, whose instinct of self-preserva- tion is absolutely quiescent, and who take no more thought for the morrow, "saying, What shall we eat? or what shall we drink? or, wherewithal shall we be clothed," than "the fowls of the air,' 1 which " sow not, neither do the} 7 reap nor gather into barns." Let social relations become co-operative; let interests be massed and amalgamated, and thus let the necessity and the opportunity for the defensive attitude of the human soul be prevented and the great problem of life will be solved. This solution calls for no higher moral development than -already exists. All that is needed is a knowledge on the part 432 SIGNAL LIGHTS. of the people of the mighty possibilities that slumber within them. It must be admitted not only that human nature to-day is- much nearer to the Christian ideal than in former ages, but that, by a recent impetus, each decade now adds sensibly to the manifestations of a rapidly developing spirit of popular beneficence. The fact that the teachings of Jesus are now accepted as the axioms of ethics, confirms the claim which constitutes one of the central thoughts of this essay, viz., that the degree of moral power that has already been developed in human nature is almost infinitely greater than that which is manifested, because of the constant and high degree of activity, in the instinct of self-preservation. Jesus expressed the scientific relation which this instinct sustains to the higher life in the words: "Whosoever will save his life shall lose it." On account of the universal prevalence of personal rivalry in its many forms, whereby mens' moral and religious organs are rendered inactive, conversion is a rare phenomenon. But let the social foundation of this personal rivalry be swept away and men will rush to the feet of the lowly Nazarene in Pentecostal throngs. It is simply a psychological impossibility for men to love one another with that profound love which Christian- ity enjoins and at the same time to exert all their powers in mutual combat on the industrial battle field. The literal and personal application of Christianity is utterly and forever incompatible with our present order of society. If the white flag of truce could be raised and the great battle of life could cease but for a day, there would instantly follow such an exaltation of moral power throughout the civilized world as men have never witnessed, and such as they have learned by contact with that depravity which can origin- ate only in the instinct of self-preservation, never to expect. THE UNIVERSAL CONFLICT, 433 This degree of moral power already exists latently in human nature. It is only waiting to be released by the suppression of selfish conflict. It is the spirit of human brotherhood, gathering its omnipotent power beneath the jar and rumble of conflict, that soon, with the force of a mighty blast, shall open the quarry of humanity and release from its stony prison the white angel that is lifting its snowy arms, "At sound of sledge and drill, and booming fire, Imploring for release." It is just now scientifically fashionable to ring the stale changes on the law of the " survival of the fittest " and to regard the inequalities of life as the result of nature's stern decree, and hence unavoidable and incurable. Ah! wonder- ful discovery, ingenious device to hush the cry of a hungry world. But there is danger in the inculcation of this doc- trine. There is danger in the air when the fierce but open resentment engendered by the sense of human wrong passes baffled into the sullen silence of despair engendered by the false sense of nature's wrong. The red banners of anarchy are borne by men conscious of deep wrong but who have not the philosophic insight to pierce the mazes of sophistry, which centuries of false teaching have woven around this problem of problems. Men who have succeeded in life delight to talk about the survival of the fittest. They may separate, for modesty's sake, by many irrelevant sentences, their premise and conclu- sion, but when brought into close proximity they stand thus: " The fittest survive," " I have survived." The fat, lazy and selfish son of a rich father rides past a party of sturdy, intelli- gent and generous-hearted laborers and profoundly ( ?) mor- alizes thus: "These inequalities of- life are unavoidable, the fittest survive, the weak and unfit 'must go to the wall.' ' 28 434 SIGNAL LIGHTS. But the fittest bodies are surely found among the moder- ately poor. The ceaseless contest sharpens their wits and in sound judgment makes them the superiors of the indo- lent rich. Our common school system, which knows no dis- tinctions, prevents them from falling much behind their wealthy neighbors in general education. So that it may safely be asserted that the fittest minds are also found among the moderately poor. The poor to-day are really the fittest in every sense of that word which does not involve an absurd- ity. Can any one doubt that if the artificial advantages which the rich enjoy were removed, the rich and the poor would change places? Then how can it be said that the fittest survive? Our artificial and unnatural social order reverses all nature's methods, and accordingly it is the unfit- test that survive. Throughout the length and breadth of civ- ilized society to-day the iron heel of the unfit is on the neck of the fit. Not by virtue of superior strength, but by vir- tue of the illegitimate advantage which comes from artificial and unjust social relations. It is the relatively fittest but intrinsically unfittest that sur- vive. In the animal world the individual which is most gentle and least selfish, that is, the one which has made the greatest advance toward a higher stage of life, and is hence fittest for permanent survival, is almost invariably the one in which the physical conditions of immediate survival are least favorable. But, it may be asked, if only the perma- nently unfittest survive, how are we to account for permanent improvement and development? The explanation is to be found in the doctrine of serial conflict. The immediately fittest survive till the limit is reached in those qualities which give immediate survival. The tendency is then, of course, toward equality of development. The compromises which are rendered necessary by equal combat give rise to THE UNIVERSAL CONFLICT. 435 the social instinct and at the same time force a resort to strategy and cunning, in place of direct combat. Thus nat- ural selection starts off in the direction of the survival of the fittest intellect. Simply because the limit has been reached in the direction of physical fitness. Were it not for this limit, development would forever be confined to the physical, and all the spontaneous variations in the line of gen- tleness and higher intelligence would be eliminated as unfit qualities. In the same way intellectual fitness having reached the limit allowed by the law of symmetry will overflow, so to speak, into the moral realm. Evolution is, therefore, of two kinds, continuous and epochal. The former is the result of the gradual triumph of the fittest force in any given type of conflict. The constant improve- ment of species in the fifth, and intellectual progress in the sixth, are examples. Epochal evolution results from the tri- umph of one type of conflict over another, in a sort of com- pound conflict, or conflict of conflicts. The passage from physical to intellectual and from intellectual to moral conflict are examples of epochal evolution. It is this form with which we are most concerned. As its name implies, it takes place only at intervals, after long periods, during which no progress is made. For long ages, during which men's intel- lectual powers were being developed, there was no moral progress. Every advance in knowledge seemed to result only in the refinement of wickedness, selfishness and cruelty. But during the past few centuries the world has been upon the border of a great epochal crisis. This is a critical moment in the life of existing nations, like that during which Rome trembled in her zenith, and, refusing to comply with the eternal conditions of life, fell like a falling star. The survival of the unfittest is therefore as truly an institution of nature as 436 SIGNAL LIGHTS. the survival of the fittest. Each expresses its own peculiar phase of nature's operations. The law of the "survival of the fittest," in the minds of su- perficial thinkers, is not only made to justify all the inequalities of life, but is even made a pretext for encouraging the continu- ance, " with interlocked and grappling brains," of that pro- gram which nature began in blood and death, and thus the progress of the universal drama is stopped in the sixth act, just where the plot deepens and darkens into midnight mys- tery, and the toils are closing around the feet of innocence. So well has the great law of the survival of the fittest played his part, that though his hands are bloody, and damaging evi- dence thickens and darkens around him, he has nevertheless carried his audience by storm, and now, in response to the applause of those who have mistaken the climax of a cruel act for the close, he comes before the scenes, and so the play is interrupted. But be assured, it will go on till the blood upon the hand of the accused shall be seen to be that which stains the surgeon's hand and not the murderer's, till slowly the cunningly woven plot shall be unraveled, and every trace of conjured evidence that implicates the star in nature's troupe shall vanish with the breaking web of falsehood, and the accused shall stand vindicated and triumphant in the dazzling glory of the closing scene. Nature marks the steps of her own progress by serial changes in her definition of the-" fittest." At the lower end of the scale of life it means the strongest body, fiercest in combat. Mid-way between the top and bottom it means the sharpest wit and deepest cunning, but at the top it means the soul most ministrant to human need. The ignoring of this latter form of survival is a scientific as well as ethical mistake, for the ultimate survival of the fittest soul is as much a part of nature's scheme as that of the fittest body or mind. THE UNIVERSAL CONFLICT. 437 Moral philosophy and Christianity are thus inseparably linked with evolution. Nature utilizes her own products as fast as completed. When vital force blossomed into consciousness she made the resulting affections and aversions the basis of the survival of the fittest body. When intellect was evolved, intelligent selec- tion became the instrument of further evolution in the same direction and thus resulted in the survival of the fittest mind, and when at last the ethical instinct dawned dimly in the human soul the resulting moral impulses at once became the seed, the fruition of which shall be the survival of the fittest soul. The animal and human instincts at each stage of this serial survival accord with the work to be accomplished. The sick bird is killed by its healthy comrades and the savage mother strangles her crippled infant. But the instinct of the civilized mother is as much a product of nature as is that of the savage mother, and it prompts her freely to give her own life in wasting vigils at midnight by the cradle of her physically unfit child. The formulas of these three survivals are : " I will kill thee," " I will outwit and cheat thee," " I will reach down to thy station and lift thee up." Darwin and others have tried in vain to account for the higher development by the first formula. Adam Smith based his philosophy on the second, which is now being weighed in the balance and found want- ing. But over eighteen centuries ago a system of philosophy which the world scorned and rejected was based on the third formula. Its founder was the gentle Jesus, in whose soul there was no conflict save that which at last shall conquer wrong and lift to earth's throne, glory-crowned but clad in work day garb, the holy form of justice. 438 SIGNAL LIGHTS. There is nothing more supernatural in the self-sacrificing" instinct which reverses the order of combat and makes the militant party the direct helper of the weak, than there is in the sexual combat of natural selection which kills the weak. The law of evolution is emasculated and shorn of its beauty if we omit, or relegate to some other law, its most significant operations. What means the helping hand of strength that is beginning to be outstretched toward weakness all over the civilized world? It means that nature is reversing the order and making conflict the direct instead of the indirect instru- ment of development. In the survival of the fittest body, she could not use this principle of mutual helpfulness, in which the conflict is subjective to the helping agent. She could only hint at it in the survival of the fittest mind, but she can use it altogether in the survival of the fittest soul. At the base of Calvary the weed has choked the flower. Half way up the rugged steep the two are interlocked in fierce but equal strife, while on the summit, triumphant in eternal bloom, the flower has choked the weed. Go follow in the storm's wild wake, While tear-drops dim fair Nature's eyes, And learn that through her wide domain The fittest is the first that dies. The opening bud that promised well Will ruthless on the ground be cast, While petals of the loveliest rose Will strew the footprints of the blast. Go gather garland rich and fair From out thy perfumed garden bower, And place it in thy silver vase, And watch it for a brief sweet hour. The first to fade and droop away And fall from out the rosy band, Will be the flower you loved the best And nurtured with the tenderest hand. THE UNIVERSAL CONFLICT. 439 The tree that bears the sweetest fruit We need to guard with watchful care, And shield it from the icy blast, That raves through winter's frosty air. The purest life on mother's breast, That pauses thoughtful in its play, Is that which soonest wings its flight, From out- grown chrysalis of clay But 'neath this mystic law of life There lies concealed a meaning deep, That holds within its jeweled palm A message for the souls that weep: " The fittest on the earth survive " Hath meaning yet beyond our ken, And holds an unexplored realm, To modify the thoughts of men. For that which yields, the readiest prey On earth, to storm and angry sea, In all that maketh life divine, Seems fittest for the great To-Be. Where souls, at top of being's chain, Turn back to view the pendent links That mark the still unbroken line From silent dust to that which thinks; / Where thought's mysterious power gains rule, O'er Nature's elemental law, And builds a world of mighty love Above the reign of tooth and claw; On Nature's heights the tables turn, The brutal law she doth o'erwhelm, While mercy, justice, love and truth Are crowned the fittest in her realm. INDIVIDUALITY IN WOMAN. BY MISS FRANCES E. WILLARD. E are but the third genera tion from our revolutionary foremothers. If each of us could clasp hands with our mother and she with hers, I these links would bridge the distance that separates us from Abigail Adams, the mother of the revolution; Martha Washington, its most stately lady, and Molly y Pitcher, its most notable heroine. Like ourselves, those women bowed before the cross and were devoted to, the flag; like us they were the allies of the men who amid storms of shot and shell declared for " revolution "; like us they staked their all upon the triumph of the cause to which these men had pledged " their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor." My own dear mother, to-day in the tranquil brightness of her Szd year, has often told me of her New England grandfather, who once found himself the only revolutionist present at a public dinner, whereupon an attempt was made to coerce him by the toast, " King George's health, 440 Miss FRANCES E. WILLARD. INDIVIDUALITY IN WOMAN. 441 and it shall go round." At this he entered his brave protest in the words, " Washington's health, and it shall go round" upon which he was reviled and buffeted, that little act of loyal courage almost costing him his life. But his prophecy came true, and to-day it is Washington's health that still " goes round," only the revolutionists of to-day, both English and American, drink it in God's own beverage cold water. What would not our ancestral records reveal of heroic sacrifices made for the success of the first national revolution by those from whom we inherit the fortitude to be soldiers in the last! I remember a roll-call at our Boston temperance convention in 1877, which revealed the fact that among our delegates were descendants of Governor Bradford, John Alden, General Warren, and a score of equally historic names. But no contrast in American history could be greater than that between the revolutionary mothers of to-day and those of one hundred years ago. Then, as now and always, women were the inspirers and allies of the best men. But it had not then dawned upon the hardiest brain that the woman who is most completely individualized herself is the most adequate helper of men. Our foremothers did not perceive that if the woman's view of home affairs is the needful complement of man's view, the law of mind which makes this so, applies equally to woman's view of state affairs. They did not see that if a man and woman are stronger together than either can be separately in the home, by the same law of mind they are stronger together than either can be separately in literature and science, in business and professional life, in church and state. They did not see that, by the laws of being, men and women must go hand in hand if they would not go astray ; that equally do man and woman need, not an echo, not a shadow, not a lesser nor yet a greater self, not "like with like, but like with differ- ence," so that when these two, with their individual outlook 442 SIGNAL LIGHTS. upon destiny, shall together set their heads to any problem,, or their hands to any task, they shall unite in that endeavor the full sum of power that this world holds. They did not see that to be the utmost force she can be as an individual, is each woman's best gift to the race. Because we so believe, and act on such believing, we are the last analysis yet reached in that development of personality which seems to be the supreme purpose of Christ's empire on the earth. Noble and gracious were mothers and sisters of the old time revolution. But they were all of one kind in manner of dress and in domestic toil; all alike, also, in narrowness of education, while among us, individual majesty that only lasting patent of nobility asserts itself in great variety of head-gear, hair dressing and wardrobe, while difference in occupation has given us repre- sentatives in every learned profession, besides many trades and lines of business, and our educational advantages have been without restriction, while our purposes, varied and wide- reaching as man's unconquerable mind, are for that reason all the more powerful when focused upon the extirpation of humanity's twofold curse brain-poison and heart-impurity. If I were asked to-day why mea vita vota (my life is a vow) is our motto; why, putting aside the books we fain would read and the companionships we would so gladly cherish, we unite what persuasion we have with Heaven and what power we have with men for the overthrow of those two iniquities which now enslave the human race, I would answer, ' ; All this we do and dare because this slavery renders impossible the development of that complete, well-poised, benignant individ- uality which allies mortals most nearly to their Maker." For the ultimate object of every conceivable reform is to give each individual of the human mass more completely back to him- self; to restore to all the clear, perceiving brain, the strong, firm hand, the steady beating heart. INDIVIDUALITY IN WOMAN. 443 Look over the past decade; how those years have individ- ualized each one of us for good, although not for personal development and growth have we consciously toiled. But the best gifts come to us unsought, and while we spent our- selves "for God and home and native land," His trusty laws of matter and of mind had us in hand and were steadily at work carving low .into high relief; developing the negative into the picture, making each one of us more and more her own best self. Sometimes in the battle's heat we have heard the tempter's words : " He saved others, himself He cannot save." But with the power of an endless life already born into our souls, we have replied, "I know in whom I have believed and that He is able to keep that which I have committed to Him unto that day." Man's physical make-up, no less than his limitless capacity for growth, proves that he must evermore move on. Watch the pattering footsteps of a little child; his whole bent and inspiration are to step onward and evermore right on. Nobody can step backward gracefully save a society belle, a well-drilled acrobat, and a Republican or Democratic politi- cian! The five senses are set like jewels on the forward side of this house we live in; the back of a man's head or a woman's bonnet are strangely uninspiring. The eyes look straight on ; the brow bends towards the future, not the past ; the feet would turn to clubs if turned any way but forward ; and the fingers break before they would grant a backward grasp even of gold. All going forward leads to the finding and the firm possession of one's self. How pitifully narrow and false the cry of " personal liberty," echoing to-day from the saloons which exist, but to bewilder first, enslave next and at last destroy. Personality, balanced and benignant, alone can drive the car of progress. Trace the reformation ; its gleaming lines all converge and center on the monk of 44A SIGNAL LIGHTS. Wittenberg; trace Methodism you come straight to John Wesley; trace this republic it merges in George Wash- ington, whose generals would have made him king, but he indignantly repelled them; trace the Christian world it centres in the heart of Him whose name it bears. " For forms of government let fools contest, That which is best administered is best." We care more for the officer than for the law; we believe that personality is the final factor in the state; we have learned that the candidate is key to the position, and that discovery has landed us in prohibition politics, as the twin brother of prohibitory law. Differentiation is the changeless law of progress. Once all houses were white, now they are green, red or blue, according to the owner's fancy, and what would have been thought a freak of insanity by the simple folks of simple days, is now a token of individual taste, and is, as such, approved. Once writers used a nom de -plume to conceal their personality, now each one signs his name, or if starting with a nom de plume, as did George Eliot and Charles Egbert Craddock, speedily avows himself in propria persona. Once, after death at least, ^all human beings were dressed in the same color, now, each wears the garb peculiar to himself in life, and individuality puts beside that good man's coffin the little handkerchief given to John B. Gough by a grateful wife who had often moistened it with tears, but would do so no more since he had saved her husband, and places in the cold hands of Rev. Dr. Calvin Stowe the Greek testament that he had studied so long and reverently. There has been quite too much of differentiation in dress, manner and condition, based upon rank, color and sex. In every country but America, Switzerland and France, the ruler is set apart by a manner of dress which none may INDIVIDUALITY IN WOMAN. 445 imitate, and in some countries the clergy wear a costume of their own, and the working class, by the cut and color of their attire, reveal their station. Missionaries of great intelligence have said that in China, where distinction of sex is less accent- uated by outward garb than in almost any other civilized land, there is less immorality than in so-called Christian nations. We are approaching an era when not the personality of a class, but of each individual, will be mirrored in all the exter- nal phenomena of each life. " O freedom, deepen thou a grave Where every king, where every slave Shall cast in crown and chain, Till only man remain." Into" that grave shall go every artificial distinction, every false custom, every enslaving habit. The flowing bowl shall there be buried beside the fuming cigarette, the malodorous pipe and the greasy pack of cards; there the corset and the high-heeled shoe, the trailing skirt and the stove-pipe hat shall share a common and blessed oblivion for all time. That grave is digging; heaven -speed the funeral obsequies! Im- pressed to a degree never before realized, by the significance and sacredness of personality and by thought of the un- matched school for its development, no less than by the co-ordinate thought of our growing unity, comradeship and esprit de corps, I am ambitious to have every woman make an individual impression, and to feel that her own reaction upon the thought of all the rest of us is a duty that she owes herself. So shall the white ribbon best win its widening way, and instead of claiming America only, woman's gospel tem- perance work shall comfort, and lift up in strong motherly arms, this wide, wide world. If men of the world keep the peace for sordid ends, how much more we, for ends so great and holy. If Buchanan and 446 SIGNAL LIGHTS. Clay, so bitterly opposed in politics, yet kept their private friendship unbroken, to the extent that the former lent his only white vest to Henry of the West, that he might appear resplendent at Bodisco's wedding, and wore black himself when he was wont to carry elegance of toilet to a punctilio; if Garfield and Lamar, as the former proudly told me, could go out arm in arm from Congress, where they had spent the day in sternest controversy, what ought we to be capable of doing who profess to take for our guide the Book which teaches us on every page that a soft answer turneth away wrath, but grievous words stir up anger; we who have called Master and Lord, the only great non-combatant of his- tory, " who when he was reviled, reviled not again! " Let me quote a golden sentence from our own Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew. It occurs in an off-hand private note recently received from her. She says: " Truly, it is difficult to recon- cile justice with love. But whatever has to be sacrificed in my human limitations, the law of charity must not be. The thirteenth of first Corinthians is the flaming sword which, turning every way, guards my spiritual paradise." May I put with Mrs. Andrew's golden sentences this one, which I wish might share with them the place of golden motto to us in the year to come? " BE NOBLE, and the nobleness that lies In other men, sleeping, but never dead, Will rise in majesty to meet thine own." I am told that it is my habit to praise too much, and very likely I have erred in this, but somehow I cannot help believ- ing that the world will be a better and happier place when people are praised more and blamed less; when we utter in their hearing the good we think and also gently intimate the ^criticisms we hope may be of service. For the world grows INDIVIDUALITY IN WOMAN. 447 smaller every day. It will be but a family circle after a while. Note this curious two-fold evolution: the strength and sacredness of personality increase, but frankness of inter- change increases just as fast. With swifter communication and interchange of thought and place, people will be less occult. Invention makes it as easy to stamp one's autograph as to have his name printed upon his book. The autograph gives more of individuality so he chooses it, and his reader is all the better pleased. Photographs are so cheap and so rap- idly multiplied that they become anyone's property who cares for them. The telephone repeats our very voices and the phon- ograph preserves our smallest utterance; the pneumatic tube is capable of carrying our letters and packages from New York to San Francisco in sixty seconds; the bicycle and tri- cycle are but studies for the individualizing of our methods of locomotion; the growing leniency of fashion and of etiquette give elbow room to individuality of appearance, cdnduct and the use of time, but every one of these and a thousand other subtle transformations tend toward easier interchange of thought, more frequent intercourse and a better understand- ing. As the world grows kinder we shall trust each other more. Our ideal world is never solitary but peopled by pres- ences, loving and gracious, from whom we would not wish to hide a secret indeed, as the angelic world interspheres more closely with our own, we shall have fewer secrets to hide. Light and not darkness is the emblem of the heaven toward which we all aspire and in the proportion that we gain it, we shall find that in us there will be no darkness at all. Selfish- ness or shyness, one or both are at the root of secrecy. We must have more frankness, more of mutual confidence, and it must come a long time before the Kingdom of Heaven can be set up on earth. Therefore I stoutly defend more openness and frankness in our dealings with each other, both for praise 448 SIGNAL LIGHTS. and blame, but especially the former, for if we are encour- aged and believed in, all that is heavenly in us will respond and our blameworthy traits will grow less prominent. For my own part, I have seen many a negative developed into a positive by honest praise. It is akin to being loved that greatest grace which can fall upon a human spirit in any world. More than any other stimulus, discriminating praise develops a true ambition, which is the love of love and the desire of power for ends wholly beneficent, an ambition which makes one smitten by it supremely desirous to be lov- able. Said Mills, of Williams' College, " No young man living in the nineteenth century, and redeemed by Christ, ought to think of living and dying without an effort to make his influence felt around the globe." From the love in that heart and others like it, radiates a force that resulted in the American Board of Foreign Missions. If that was a sacred ambition for a man in the nineteenth century, what shall we say of woman's ambition in the twentieth, which is but a few years away? What shall not that century behold of wonder and surprise of purity and hope? Napoleon's great word was " glory," the Duke of Welling- ton's was " duty." Both were words of strictest personality, and each led him who cherished it to a world-wide renown. One name shines with the brilliant but fitful light of a comet, the other is serene and steadfast as a star. In our measure each of us is guided in the development of personality by the love of duty or the love of glory. One is a will-o'-the-wisp which lures but to destroy; the other, patiently pursued, will light us to the presence and companionship of Him who sit- teth at the right hand of God's own blazing throne. Let us, then, take for our own this motto: INDIVIDUALITY IN WOMAN. 449 " Do the duty nearest, Cling to truth the clearest, Face the ill thou fearest, Hold thine honor dearest, Knowing God is good." Doing this, we shall discover with the Laureate that " The path of duty is the way to glory, He that walks it, only thirsting For the right, and learns to deaden Love of self, before his journey closes He shall find the stubborn thistle bursting Into glossy purples, which out-redden All voluptuous garden roses." THE EDUCATION OF BRAIN AND MUSCLE. BY THOMAS LA WRENCE, D. D. DUCATION means a draw- ing out. That which is drawn out must in some sense be within. u You can not draw blood out of a stone." "Ex nihilo nihil fit" out of nothing comes nothing. Education does not create, it only develops. A pebble will not grow into a tree. You must plant an acorn if you want an oak. The tiny cup contains the germ of a massive tree, nay, of a thousand oak forests. But for every acorn that germinates, a mil- lion perish, crushed 'neath the foot, rotting in the earth, or devoured by the beasts. That there may be a tree, or plant life, there must not only be a germ, but that germ must be placed under circumstances favorable to its develop- ment. Were you to suspend an acorn in the air, cast it into the water, or drop it into a hollow stone, it were in vain to look for a tree. The germ must be lodged in suitable soil, the dews and rains of heaven must moisten it, the genial heat 450 THOMAS LAWRENCE, D. D. THE EDUCA T20N OF BRAIN AND MUSCLE. 451 of the sun must visit it. It must have room to thrust its roots downward into the earth, and spread its branches outward and upward into the light and air of heaven. The tree as it stands in its strength and beauty is nothing more than the living germ which was in the acorn and the organism which, in connection with the process of nature, it has wrought for itself out of the earth, air, water and sunshine. These are the materials out of which, with unerring plant instinct, it has built its massy trunk, moulded its gigantic limbs, twisted the fibre of its pliant branches, and woven the green velvet of its leaves. The storms and calms, the sunshine and showers of a thousand years have had to do with it, have entered into and have become a part of it. It is the product of them all. The influence of these several agents in its development might not. inaptly be designated the education or drawing out of the tree. As the oak is in the acorn, so is the man in the boy. " The boy is the father of the man." But man's nature is more complex than that of plant or even animal, and his edu- cation is more complex still, nay, is rather the result of a number of distinct and widely differing processes carried for- ward at one and the same time. The immaterial soul inhabits, animates, dominates, acts through the material body. The body is not only the house in which the mind or soul lives, but the instrument through which it acts, or, rather, it is a number of instruments or organs combined into one complex machine, which is not so much me as mine. The soul does not wake suddenly to the consciousness of its full-orbed powers, as Minerva is said to have leaped full-armed from the brain of Jupiter. The mind is developed by the exercise of its faculties, not only mediately through the senses in con- tact with things external, but immediately, as when the mental act has its origin within and terminates upon the mind itself, as in reflection, memory, imagination and the judgments of 452 SIGNAL LIGHTS. the moral sense. These several powers grow with exercise. The mental horizon expands with the strengthening vision. As it is with faculties of the mind, the regal mistress, so is it with the powers of the body, the servant of the soul. In either instance strength and facility come through exercise. The act repeated, be it of the mind or body, crystallizes into the mental or physical habit, and the formation of such habits as shall clothe the mind with power to range widely, think clearly, decide wisely, and train the hand to execute unerringly the behests of the will, is the end of all true education. In the brief space allotted, it were unwise to attempt any formal or exhaustive discussion of a theme so vast as that of popular education. We would seek simply and briefly to suggest some changes or modifications in the system of in- struction provided by the State, which would enable it the better to secure the beneficent ends for which it was designed, the safety and prosperity of the commonwealth through the intelligence and virtue of the people. First of all every boy and girl should be trained to use their hands. The time will never come when the mass will cease to live by the labor of their hands. The education of the individual should be such as to render life's burden as easy as possible to himself, and his labor, to himself and others, as profitable as possible. The material prosperity of people in the same stages of civilization depends upon the proportion which the product of their labor bears to that which they consume. Old age, infancy, the helpless and infirm must be fed, add to these the thriftless and incompetent, and the burden of society is increased; and if these non-pro- ducing classes are sufficient to consume what remains after the laborer is fed, the community is and must remain poor. Society should see to it that there are not too many drones in the hive of industry and that the individual receive such THE EDUCA TION OF BRAIN AND MUSCLE. 453 training as shall enable him in the greatest possible variety of circumstances to bear his own burden, not only support him- self, but contribute to the commonwealth. The school which the Stab; provides should secure to each citizen such a train- ing as would with health practically render him independent in such a land as ours. And such is every one who earns mofe than he needs to supply his own wants and knows how to care for what remains after his own wants are supplied. Three-fourths of our population are engaged in agricultural pursuits, are tillers of the ground, and the larger number of the children, which from year to year gather for instruction in our public schools, are destined to the same pursuits; than which -there is none more ancient and honorable. It only degrades such as regard it degrading. Teach children that the highest order of nobility in the world is that of honest labor, " Adam delved and Eve span;" Noah was a shipwright; Paul made tents, and our blessed Lord Himself was a carpenter. There is something wrong with the man or woman who contemns the more useful and ordinary forms of manual labor, who thinks it less respectable to patch a boot or make a horseshoe than to measure tape or drive a quill. Something wrong with that woman's educa- tion who deems making a loaf of bread or cooking a meal, less noble employment than embroidering a slipper or patching a crazy quilt. It is just such a prejudice as this which is heap- ing up our population in crowded cities, where they are jost- ling and shouldering each other in their struggle for bread, while millions of acres lie uritilled, fairer and more fertile than which the sun does not shine upon. The rising generation must needs be taught that there is no more honorable thing in the world than honest labor, whether of the hand or the head : This sentiment must be inculcated in the home and in the school and from the pulpit. 454 SIGNAL LIGHTS. The training of every child should, in part, be industrial, and this part of his or her education should not be left any more than the other portion of it, which is gotten from books, wholly to parents, who are oftentimes incompetent and more frequently careless. The young man and woman should be taught to regard labor not as a drudgery, not merely as a duty, but as a vocation. They should be taught to go to their daily tasks in the spirit of the Apostle : "Whatsoever ye do," whether it be to 'hoe cotton, plant corn, break stones, teach school, heal the sick or preach the gospel, " Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily as not unto man but unto God." There were noth- ing degrading in labor gone about in such a spirit as this. This were to make work worship and labor an acted prayer. We believe in the gospel of work. The man who makes two blades of grass grow where but one grew is a public benefac- tor. Labor is ennobling; pity the man who feels his daily task, if honest, degrading. God put the first man of men, the kingliest in the garden to keep it and dress it. He who con- temns manual labor could have had no place in Eden, casts reproach on our Lord as He toils in Nazareth: Surely that which did no dishonor to Christ's manhood cannot degrade ours. There is a need for a change in our modes of primary education; the child must be started right. We believe that a wonderful revolution is impending and that the model for our primary school, in the no distant future, will be that of Froebel or Pestalozzi, modified it may be, but still retaining its essential features. Froebel gave to the school into which the child is first introduced the name of the Kindergarten. He was a German, and this beautiful word means child-gar- den, a garden where children are the plants, the teacher is the gardener, and where, in an atmosphere of as perfect free- dom as is consistent with the repression of perverse tenden- cies the child life is permitted to expand; where the place in THE ED VGA TION OF BRAIN AND MUSCLE. 455 which the teacher is, (and I would have that teacher for the first years a woman) is nursery, play ground, school-room all in one ; where study is play and play study ; where the education of life first months in the home will be continued under the same methods in the school. The child during the first three years of its life learns more than during any subsequent period of twice the duration, being the while, too, pretty much his own master; he learns to use his hands, feet, ears and eyes, tongue and touch; he acquires a difficult language. His mind grows as fast as his body and both are alike hungry for food. He meddles with all knowledge, asks questions that all the philosophers in the world could not answer; has a finger in everything, some- times, it is true, getting into the crack of the door, puts his foot into more things than an Irishman; studies botany by pulling up mamma's plants to see how they grow; knocks a hole in the looking-glass to get at the fellow behind it; takes his father's watch to pieces to find out who is talking within, and turning the wheels round, and all the watch-makers in the kingdom could not put it together again. Look at him, body, soul, instinct, emotion, intellect, reason, will and con- science (the last, perhaps, more slowly), all expanding like a tropical plant in a tropical summer, and when he escapes out of the nursery into the sunlight, where nature becomes his teacher, what a wonderful revelation is made to him! He is in fairy-land, his eyes are veritable lamps of Aladdin. There is a beauty and loveliness in bush and shrub and flower that is lost to our purblind vision. There is a music in the voice of beasts and bird and breeze, which our duller senses can- not hear. The child is orator, poet, philosopher, prince, dem- ocrat and despot all in one. Such was the boy when the old-fashioned schoolmaster got hold of him, proceeded to put blinders on him, fastening him 456 SIGNAL LIGHTS. to the tread-mill and harnessing him to the multiplication table, no wonder the colt kicked and nature protested ; and in many quarters it is not much better to-day. For the first half dozen years the only faculty of his mind that has anything to do is memory, and that has nothing to do with the nature but simply the names of things. There is no symmetry about his training; he is educated in spots. What would you think of a system of calisthenics which would aim simply to develop a hand, a foot, or a thumb, or big toe? Would you call that physical education? Just about as one-sided has been the training of our children in their tender years. Give a child a slate and pencil, and what does he do with it? He falls to drawing a horse, a cow, or a pig. Why not help him embody the thought which is struggling in his brain? See him playing in the sand; he is building a house. Why not take hold and help him develop his constructive talent? Or, see him throwing a dam or bridge across some tiny rill; why not come to the assistance of the little engineer? Now, with soiled hands, he is moulding in clay; why not help him work out his imagination at his fingers' ends? He loves form and color, which are the very poetry of the the world of vision; why should not the eye and the hand be trained to discover and group both, in such combina- tions as would gratify and delight the tastes? The growing child is restless and active; he ought not be kept still or tethered to a seat too long at a time; the limbs must have exercise or they will dwarf, tie the hand to the side, and the arm withers on the trunk. Exercise is the law of growth. Nature withdraws the gift which we fail to use, witness the eyeless fish in the Mammoth Cave. Childhood is as full of motion and music as a bird ; why not make light gym- nastics set to music a daily exercise in school-rooms? Why keep the little one bending over a desk till his back becomes THE EDUCA TION OF BRAIN AND MUSCLf.. 457 crooked, the chest hollow and the eye dim? Physical health is the absolute condition of life's highest achievements, but perfect physical health is impossible without perfect physical development. The ancient Greek was the consummate flower of humanity. He reached a perfection in the arts of eloquence, poetry, painting, sculpture, philosophy, and in the science of govern- ment and war, which the moderns have vainly striven to imitate. He passionately loved the beautiful. The Greeks were not only in their achievements the grandest race of yore, but of all time physically the most perfect; physical training was an essential part of their education; mind and body were alike trained in school ; a deft hand, a strong arm, a swift foot and a clear eye were no less prized than a cultured brain or an eloquent tongue. The victor in the games was crowned in the presence and amidst the plaudits of all Greece. The true end of all education is fittingly expressed in the classic maxim, ''Sana mems in corpore sana" a sound mind in a sound body. The realization of this axiom is the prob- lem before the educator. God speed its solution. Perhaps it is conceded that such a change as suggested in our primary school teaching were desirable, but objected that it would make the early portion of the child's training too expensive in time and money. We might make answer that the most expensive thing in the world is that which is wasteful of human life and destructive of human happiness; but, aside from this, the modifications suggested are wholly practicable, would in the end be attended with little additional expense, and would greatly add to the efficiency and improve the hygiene of the school. The methods in question, we are happy to say, are no longer an experiment, but have been successively tried, with the most gratifying results, in the schools of some of the larger cities of our land. Such a 458 * SIGNAL LIGHTS. system of primary education would naturally prepare the way for the training of the pupils in the elements of industry in connection with the studies of a higher grade. There is no reason why the use of tools might not be taught in our higher schools and academies. We do not see why such instruction might not be profitably given in connection with grammar, geography, arithmetic, algebra, philosophy, geometry, the elements of the language, and the like. Trades cannot be taught in schools at a public expense; to make the attempt were to make the whole system of public instruction too burdensome, and, as a matter of fact, the skilled laborers of no great people have ever, in the history of civilization, been taught in schools. Our children will have to learn their trades where their fathers learned them at the bench, on the wall, in the shop, or at the forge. Whilst trades could not be taught in schools on the score of economy, the elements of industry and the use of tools should be taught as a matter of economy to prevent waste of time, talent, and loss of oppor- tunity. This much could be accomplished without materially adding to the burden which our system of public instruction imposes. The writer visited an institution recently in which the student, as he may elect, receives a normal, scientific, or clas- sical training, and where provision is made for giving the students in these several departments thorough instruction in the use of tools and the principles which underlie the mechanic arts, and we were informed that the expense for material in the department of carpentry did not exceed one dollar and a half a year per pupil, and the expense for those working in iron would not be relatively greater. The establishing of such a course in connection with our public schools of a higher grade is certainly practicable and in the highest degree desirable. ' The advantages to be derived THE EDUCA TION OF BRAIN AND MUSCLE. 459 from such a partial industrial course are many and obvious. A committee appointed by a school board of the city of Bos- ton to enquire into the matter, reported, strongly recommend- ing the providing of an industrial department in connection with their school, urging among other reasons therefor, that it would in a measure prevent the widely spread and often fatal effects of over-study. The pupil would find rest in change of employment. The exercise of the body would pleasurably alternate with that of the mind, and thus the educa- tion of the whole man would be symmetrically carried on and the cultivated brain would be furnished with an adequate instrument in the trained and skillful hand. Such a training would tend to develop in the pupil a feeling of conscious power as he realized his ability to subdue the material world to his service, and begets in him a spirit of self-reliance, which the ordinary youth can not feel, who leaves school or college with barely enough mechanical knowledge to enable him to dis- tinguish between a hoe and a hand-saw, an ax-helve and a plough-handle. Such partial preliminary industrial training will, moreover, enable the youth more readily to determine the matter of his future vocation. The aptitudes of the boy have already been so far developed that this, to a certain extent, can be intelligently done, -and he is prevented from spoiling a good blacksmith in making a poor minister, turn- ing out an indifferent lawyer when he might have become a first-class mason. That this is not mere theory is most conclusively demon- strated in the report of the president of Girard College, made a few months ago in connection with their anniversary. In accordance with the provisions of the will of its founder, the scholars after graduation were to be bound out to suitable occu- pations, as those of agriculture, navigation, arts, mechanical trades, manufactures, according to the capacities and acquire- 460 SIGNAL LIGHTS. ments of the scholars respectively, consulting as far as prudence will justify, the inclinations of the several scholars. For a time the officers of the college were able to find places for the boys after they had finished their college course, where in addition they might acquire some industry or trade: Gradually the old apprentice system fell into disuse; boys, however intelligent, who could not use tools were not wanted, and the trustees of the college were necessitated to keep the boy until he was eighteen, then cancel his indentures. A few years ago a manual labor school was established in connection with the college, in which the boys are taught the use of tools, and as a result the demand upon the trustees for apprentices far exceeds the supply, and whilst formerly the boys leaving school preferred clerkships and other light occu- pations, to the arts and trades, since the establishment of the manual labor school they prefer to learn something which will give them a start in some one of the great producing industries of the day. The pupil leaves such a school as this knowing how to handle tools, with his natural aptitude for work discovered, and to some extent developed and is ready to begin at once to learn a trade or art without either loss of time or waste of material. If training of manual labor were provided for in the schools where all classes are taught, it would tend to do away with .the prejudice against the labor of the hand, which is one of the evils of our civilization and which in our large cities is fast transferring almost every department of skilled labor into the hands of foreign work- men. Manual labor would cease to be regarded as degrading and the skilled workman less a gentleman than the merchant or lawyer. Perhaps, too, some of the serious questions which have arisen between capital and labor, and which threaten to convulse society, may ultimately find their solutions in the people's schools. THE EDUCA TION OF BRAIN AND MUSCLE. 461 The future employer and employee, whilst not only conning the same lessons, but also working out the same mechanical problems at the same desk, may happily be brought into such mutual sympathy with each other as shall keep them from drifting so widely apart, when their relations shall have changed and their interests become seemingly diverse. But can training be insisted upon and the scholar maintain, at the same time, a fair standing in the ordinary school studies? " The proof of the pudding is the chewing of the string." The Superintendent of the Washington Home School of Industry bears testimony as follows : " Although four half- days in the week are devoted to instruction in various indus- tries, the standard of scholarship is fully up to the average," and the experiments made in the schools of Boston and Phil- adelphia in this direction have been equally satisfactory. There would seem no longer any reasonable doubt that a course of education may be devised in which study and man- ual labor may interchange with and relieve each other whilst the student maintains as high a grade in his purely mental studies as if they had been pursued singly and alone. The State must provide for the symmetrical training of her chil- dren, she needs whole men and women who will have some aptitude for life's duties, physical, mental and moral vigor to bear its burdens, solve its problems, meet its temptations. She must make provision for the training of the head, heart and hand of the child ; just as the hand of the individual is rude and its cunning small, is his support precarious, the man who can handle a saw or wield a pen as well as swing an axe has the odds in life's struggle against the mere rustic hewer of wood. Every added aptitude discounts the future. That is the most efficient preparation for life which fortifies the individual against the greatest number of life's possibilities. Hence the wealthy Jew taught his son a trade, and the 462 SIGNAL LIGHTS. children of royalty to-day are instructed in some useful calling. Let the common school then give the boy such a training as will fit him for the higher school or the work bench, and the master mechanic will make a place for him in his shop, teach him willingly the mysteries of his craft, or if destined to a profession, the chances of making a man and a scholar of him will be all the better when he presents himself at the door of the university, nor even there should the culture of the hand and brain part com- pany. Art and science are twin sisters. When knowledge in the head and skill in the hand are wedded together, the offspring is power. What would intellect avail in man's struggle with nature if the human hand ended in the hoof of an ox? So far as the hand lacks skill the intellect is crippled and human thought still-born. If intellect is king, the hand is prime minister; but if the servant be weak, the kingdom will suffer. Then let intellect and hand together go to school and college; thus accompanied, we believe we could make better scholars certainly sounder, stronger limbed, clearer eyed, leveler headed men. Nor should we be forget- ful of the moral element in man's nature. The hope of our country is in schools dominated by Christian influences. Despotisms may exist without schools, but a republic never. Self-government is impossible to the many if the many be ignorant, and just as impossible if the many be vicious; the heart and the conscience must be educated as well as the hand and brain. The training of the body alone would give us an animal; the culture of the intellect alone would give us a devil; the symmetrical development of body, intellect and conscience gives us the Ideal Man. GEO. B. STEVENS, PH. D., D. D. HOW TO GOVERN OUR THOUGHTS. BY REV. GEORGE B STEVENS, Ph. >., D. D. N our stud}' of this interesting theme we shall use the word " thoughts " in the popular, com- prehensive sense in which it em- braces our imaginations, purposes motives, as well as our reasonings. In this sense every man has thoughts to govern. Did we speak merely of those profound and subtle reflections upon high and diffi- cult themes, there would be but a small part of the human family to whom our discussion could apply. Most people do but little thinking in the severer, logical sense. But all men have practical principles of con- duct; all men have plans and purposes which they hold before their minds, and which become shaping powers in their action and characters. It is of these that we now speak. Before we attempt to answer our question, " How shall we govern our thoughts?" there are two or three things which we ought to call to mind. One of these is, the difficulty and importance of self-control generally. There is no point in which the weakness of men appears more plainly than in their lack of self-control. The 463 t 464 SIGNAL LIGHTS. man who has not learned this difficult art, however, can not be a man of fully rounded character or of great power among his fellows. Every person comes frequently into situations where self-control in word and act is the only safety. The man who can not rule his temper, can not control his words or acts. The man who can not curb his appetite or lower impulses, is unable to maintain a high character or standing. If a man's mind is under the control of his bod}*, instead of being its master, that man is a slave, not a true freeman. Every man is a slave who is obedient to anything which is beneath his true life. If the highest in us that is, the mind, the reason does not rule, then we are not our true selves ; so- far as the lower nature rules us, we are living the mere animal life. For the difference between the animal and the human life is explained by one word : reason. The animal lives the mere life of impulse. Man should live the life of reason and thought, ruling his words and acts by the principles of right- eousness and love. How pitiable is the sight of a man who has lost self-control. My reader will be able to think of such among his own acquaintances. Take a man who easily gives way to the passion of anger. On the least occasion he is provoked and becomes sour and morose. How difficult it is to get along with him! You constantly fear to offend him. No one can safely offer him any advise or correction. He will not permit criticism, much less severe censure for his conduct. You scarcely dare oppose his opinions, even though you know he is wrong. However unreasonably or wickedly he may act, his friends know that rebuke will only enrage him. He will not take a reasonable view of himself, because reason is dethroned in his life. How disagreeable he is in his family! His wife and children fear him and find it difficult to love him. He does not treat his children with allowance for their HOW TO GOVERN OUR THOUGHTS. 465 weakness and imperfect judgment. He is as weak or weaker than they, so far as moral judgment is concerned. As they grow up, it is they who have to indulge him and study con- stantly not to provoke his unreasoning and selfish passion. How disagreeable is such a man in society! His neighbors learn that their only safety is in having nothing to do with him. Pity the man who has lost self-control! His life is a burden to himself and to others, and a failure in the great purposes and principles of helpfulness and love, which alone make life worth living. To learn this great art of self-control is one of the chief and most difficult disciplines of life. Well might the wise man assure us that he who ruleth his own spirit is greater than he that taketh a city (Prov. 16, 32). Many a man has ruled armies and governed empires who could not govern himself. The little world within us is the most difficult world to conquer. Then think how wonderful h this power of thought which men possess. Thought is the most subtle power in the uni- verse. It is the great creative power. A man's thoughts can rise heaven-high or they can sink to the lowest depths of sin and crime. The power of thought is not, like the power of sight and hearing, imprisoned within the limits of our physical organization. It is fettered by no limitations of language. It is swifter than the lightning. It sweeps in an instant to distant lands or distant worlds. It ranges through all the past; it revels in the future. It makes all times, all scenes, all events, .the perpetual heritage of the man who has developed sufficiently this wonderful power. Thought is the great builder. It can rear more stately structures than the eye has ever seen. It can paint more glorious scenes than genius of artist has ever pictured. It can frame ideals of life and character higher than human nature has ever actually attained. It can set before the imagination of every man a 30 466 SIGNAL LIGHTS. purpose worthy of his life, and can fix upon a definite plan of striving to attain it. Surely a power like this, so central and controlling in human life, ought to merit the attention of every human being. A power that can lift man so high, or sink him so low, must be well controlled and directed, or life will end in disaster. Thought builds the homes in which one would like to live; thought surrounds us with the associations which we would choose for ourselves; thought sets before us the ideals of character which we long to attain. Our thoughts become the intellectual and moral atmosphere which we breathe, and which either invigorates or poisons us. Our thoughts are the test of our characters. A man is really noble or low according as his thoughts are noble or low. "As a man thinketli in his heart, so is he" Make the fountain pure, and the stream will be pure. The inner life rules the outer life. The thought is father to the deed. As the stream can not rise above its fountain, so our lives can not rise above the purposes, plans and hopes out of which they spring. It is clear, then, that the first problem in character-building is the problem how to govern and direct our thoughts. For thoughts plans, purposes, ruling principles every man must have. He may not be fully conscious of their presence or character. But they are there, guiding and shaping his life and giving it an upward or a downward direction. To live without " thoughts," in this sense, were to live something less than a human life. The ideals and ends of action which we hold before our minds are " thoughts," whose character will determine in large measure, every day's aspiration or effort. It is through this power of thought that the future plays so great a part in our lives. The present is never large enough for us. Thought will reach out and lay hold of hopes HOW TO GOVERN OUR THOUGHTS. 467 for the future. Just as the plan of the house, which is made in some man's mind, before the sound of hammer is heard upon it, becomes the ideal determining the choice and use of the material, so every man's thought of what he would make his life, determines the material which he daily builds into his character. All the operations of nature illustrate this principle. For every form of plant or animal life there is a plan. The Author of nature had a thought which each kind of life was to realize and this thought determines every step of the growth to an appointed end. Every form of life has its type. ' The rose, the lily, the pine can only grow toward the realization of this type which is God's thought for that form of life. This " thought " lies like an ideal before every plant of any given species and, as it were, draws the plant on through the various steps of its growth toward itself. No plant or animal ever turns aside in its growth and becomes some new kind of creature. The type draws it unerringly on toward the goal. The forces that determine what it shall be, lie not alone in earth and air and sustenance, but in the secret plan of Nature God's thought which goes before it and conducts it to its goal. If this be true of nature^ is it not much more true of us? Is there not a divine ideal for each human life? Is nature all order, plan and thought, and human life chance and arbitrari- ness? This is impossible. There is a thought in the divine mind of what each human being might be and ought to become. It is not the same for all, as the plan for the oak, the maple and the pine is not the same in each case. But it is a true thought a noble plan the best for us in our conditions and with our possibilities. One of the great problems for every human life, then, is to enter into and possess one's self of this high and noble thought ; to rise nearer and nearer to this perfect ideal whose 468 SIGNAL LIGHTS. attainment would be the highest possible goal for each indi- vidual. It is clear that we can enter into this highest and best thought for ourselves only gradually, and that, having pos- sessed ourselves of it more or less clearly, we can only grad- ually learn to bring our whole lives under its sway. The question how we may best do this, is the problem before us. How can we rise to higher thoughts of life? How can we direct the thoughts which we now have so that they shall become purer and nobler and shall exert a controlling influence for good upon our daily words, acts and choices? On these important questions we present the following hints: i. We must practice constant and rigid self-discipline. We must take ourselves in hand, if I may use such an expression. We must cultivate thoughtfulness. We must think what life means. We must truly inquire what duty requires of us; what life ought to mean to us. This done, we must train ourselves to act according to our best concep- tions and convictions. We must honestly note and con- fess to ourselves our failures. We must be candid with ourselves. We must slay the spirit of self-righteousness and self-justification. When we see that we are wrong, we should acknowledge it. Not to do this, is only to confirm ourselves in self-deception, which is one form of selfishness. We must study ourselves, not in any morbid spirit, but with an honest purpose to discover and correct our faults. The most imperfect people are those who see no imperfections in their lives. They are the most hopeless people and the most difficult to help. When, now, in the process of self-knowledge, we have found our weak points, we must stand guard over them. It is at the weak point of the citadel that the sentinels are to be stationed. The old Greek fable which relates that the hero Achilles had only one vulnerable point his heel is a parable of human HOW TO GOVERN OUR THOUGHTS. 469 life. Every person has weaknesses, either natural or acquired, where he must station the sentinels of watchfulness and prayer. Otherwise, when the soul keeps a " feast of indifference," he will be surprised and captured by some temptation, as the Babylonians were overwhelmed by the Persians while they gave themselves up to feasting and riot in Belshazzar's palace. Self-discipline involves two things: first, the possession of a ivill to do and attain that which is noble and right. Every- thing turns on having the will set right. The will is the rud- der of life. Some one has significantly called it " the spinal column of personality." The will must give direction and assume control. Hence right character depends primarily on the will. If the will is firmly set in the right direction, it will extend its sway over the total man. It was scarcely an over- drawn statement when a distinguished philosopher (Kant) said: "Nothing can possibly be conceived in the world, or even out of it, which can be called good without qualification, except a good will" The next thing which self-discipline requires is, that the whole life shall be brought under the sway of this " good will." The will is the power by which our thoughts must be con- trolled. .A weak will or a perverted will can not rightly control and direct them. Our power of choice must therefore assert itself and lift its scepter over every act, choice and word. We must acquire the power to withdraw our thoughts from unworthy objects; we must check vain and impure imagina- tions; we must exclude from the sphere of the soul all evil purposes, all unworthy principles, all false motives. We must fortify our hearts against temptation by a settled, permanent choice of good. Our greatest temptations spring from within us. These enemies of our peace and virtue we must arrest, try and condemn before the judiciary of the soul. We shall never learn self-control, we shall never accomplish the long 470 SIGNAL LIGHTS. work of self-discipline and self-culture, until the will is estab- lished in a permanent choice of good and has secured the con- trol of the imagination, the impulses and the passions. All the powers of man act and re-act upon each other, but among these the will holds a pre-eminence, which justifies us in mak- ing, as our first rule of self-control, this law : A good will con- trolling and directing the whole life. 2. We can only rightly govern our thoughts by fixing them upon worthy objects. Our whole lives are determined in their quality more by the objects toward which they are directed than by anything else. It is one of the highest capac- ities of our being that we can choose the ends toward which we will direct our action and can direct our energies toward their attainment. The power to control our thoughts is like the power of the pilot to control his ship; he can hold it steady in its course toward an appointed end. By help of chart and compass he can direct the ship toward a distant port, and by means of the rudder steer it steadily on its way. In human life truth and duty, good principles and aims, are the chart and compass, and the will is the rudder. And what is true of life in general, in this respect, is especially true of those activities which we call " thoughts." They must be directed in order to be controlled. The ends we aim at, in life will become more and more the objects which will absorb our thoughts. Where the treasure is there will the heart be also. Our interests gradually center about our occupations. The man who devotes his energies chiefly or exclusively to amassing wealth is likely to care less and less for any other object, and to sum up the meaning of life in its opportunities for accumulating a fortune. Every man by his employment, tastes and enjoyments makes a little world for himself, in which he moves and beyond which he cares little to go. Thus the world is largely what we make it. What HO W TO GOVERN OUR THOUGHTS. 471 ive are determines in great measure what the world will be to us. We wear our grooves of thought and action and there we stay. Habit makes settled preferences; tastes grow fixed. Character grows confirmed for better or worse, and it determines both our desires and our enjoyments. As our characters and choices grow fixed, we care less and less to change any of our ways or objects of life, and we are less able or likely to change with every passing year. These principles are very important for the point under consideration. He merited the name of " wise man " who said : " Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life." The " heart " is not only the center of feeling, but of thought. Where the heart goes the whole life goes. The direction and object of our thoughts are likely to be the direction and object of our lives in general. The objects of thought determine the quality of thought. The mind takes its color from the things which it holds before itself. That in which one is interested will be that about which his thoughts will chiefly revolve. If every young person would ask himself these questions : "In what am I chiefly interested ? About what do I think most constantly and eagerly?" he would have a true test of the quality and tendency of his life. And if he finds that life does not have for him the serious and earnest meanings which it ought to have, he can be sure that the reason lies in the fact that he has not fixed his chief interest and thought upon worthy objects. We think, then, that one answer which may confidently be given to our question, How to control our thoughts? is this: Choose worthy subjects of thought. Give the mind some- thing noble on which to dwell. Resolve not to be occupied with mere frivolous pleasures. Take an interest in ideas. Resist upon the very threshold of the mind the approach of unworthy objects ; reject impure suggestions ; permit the mind 472 SIGNAL LIGHTS. to dwell on no belittling or degrading themes. This can be done. The ivill is given you for this purpose. The more it is done the more easily it may be accomplished ; while, if the evil object is entertained to-day, it will be doubly hard to exclude it to-morrow. Here is a great lesson in overcoming temptation. An apostle wrote: "Each man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust and enticed." (Jas. 1:14). If, then, we would escape the power of temptation, we must prevent its rise and growth in our own hearts and desires. It is true that temptation may come to us from without, but it can never become harmful to us, or gain power over us, unless it find some desire or wrong thought in us to which it can appeal and through which it can establish a point of contact with our lives. But few men meet temptation as a commander of a castle might meet a besieging enemy, by preventing even his approach to the citadel. Most men let the enemy capture the outworks and then they must contend, as for very life, for the bare possession of the fortress. But he is a better commander who uses all his skill and power to prevent the enemy's approaching or gaining any advantage. If he can repel him in the first hostile movement he gains an easier victory and gains with it courage for future conflicts. But if it come to a life and death contest, though he be victorious, he wins only at cost of bitter loss and his defenses are almost certainly weakened. It is only by shrewd and vigorous generalship that we can keep the citadel of our thoughts. But this we must do with all diligence, else we are in constant peril. Let us, then, hold steadily before us some high, ruling purpose on which our thoughts may be increasingly centered. This purpose will at length become controlling and will draw all subsidiary pur- poses into the line of its direction and action. Let us wall HOW TO GOVERN OUR THOUGHTS. 473 our lines round with true principles and we shall be strong in a character which will repel evil as a healthy man repels dis- eases. What the true purposes and principles of life are, my reader does not need to be taught. They are expressed in such words as love, righteousness, usefulness, sympathy, help- fulness. We cannot better sum up this part of the answer to our question, than by quoting the words of St. Paul: " What- soever things are true, whatsoever things are honorable, what- soever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatso- ever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things." (Phil. 4:8.) 3. The thoughts cannot well be controlled unless they are employed in some useful occupation in life. So far as pos- sible, every person ought to have some definite business. There is a close connection between idleness and vice. The man who has nothing to do is the man who will have time for evil or idle thoughts. Thought will be occupied with some object. It is a busy power, even in the life of the indolent. However superficial its activities or trivial its objects, it will still be busy; if it were not, it would no longer be thought. The person has a great advantage who has a definite occupa- tion. His calling organizes his time and the activities of his mind. It furnishes the line along which his energies shall work. It provides an escape for mental and physical forces which, otherwise, might be ill-directed. It does not fall within the province of our discussion to con- sider the choice of callings in life. All employments are honorable which are pursued honestly and with good motives and aims, and which promote the welfare of man in some way. Faithful work in any honorable employment is digni- fied. The humblest labor is more honorable than idleness. No man need be ashamed of manual toil. By it he may as 474 SIGNAL LIGHTS. truly serve his fellowmen and contribute his share to the wel- fare of mankind as by a so-called " learned " profession. There are many poor professional men whose work is by no means so honorable to them as the skilled and faithful labor of many who toil with their hands. A trade or an art requiring chiefly physical labor requires also thought in order to its successful prosecution. One reason why so many work- men are inefficient is, that they regard their callings only as a mechanical exercise. They do not put thought enough into them. There is a sphere for greater thought and better judg- ment in ' the callings of hand-workers. It is only thus that real skill is developed. The difference between a bungler and a masterworkman is the difference between little thought and much thought. Almost every business offers opportunity and occasion for constant study, and therein consists largely its dignity. The nobility of an employment is measured not alone by the objects with which it deals, but by the care, skill and thought with which it is pursued. If a person takes up a business or profession with right aims, and determines to so follow it as to make it honorable, his thoughts will tend to flow along the lines which his energies take. Whether this calling shall give an upward or a downward tendency to his thoughts, will depend very largely on the spirit with which he follows it, and the end which he sets before himself to attain by it. If a man make his busi- ness subserve merely his own personal interest; if he pursue it in the spirit of mere grasping and greed, it can give no very high direction or useful employment to his thoughts. But this no man has a right to do. The law of duty is that no man liveth unto himself. Selfishness is the paralysis of all high and ennobling thought. Every man must protect and promote his own true interests, since they are his and he is most responsible for them, but he must not sever in thought HOW TO GOVERN OUR Th 'OUGHTS. -i<-3 his interests from the interests of other men. He must not isolate himself and " think only on his own things." Every person ought to think of his own occupation and the activities of his life generally, as simply his contribution to the great business of the human family, in which not only him- self, but all who have to do with him, ought to be profited and blessed. Every true man's life is one thread in the great fabric of human society. He who contemplates his life and his work in this relation, will see that his daily toil opens a useful sphere of thought to him. Even the common and homely tasks acquire a dignity in this view, and the work which seemed to us almost belittling and degrading, becomes honor- able, because it is now set in some relation to human welfare. If we think of our life-work thus and try to make it have this meaning, it will be a perpetual help to the control and direction of our thoughts. With the new meanings which life assumes will come new inspirations and associations. What was dull and commonplace will become interesting and important, and life will be full of occasions of moral thoughtfulness which we had never seen before, and a new temper of thought will accompany all our commonest tasks and a new atmosphere will breathe itself around our daily cares and troubles. 4. We shall be greatly aided in governing our thoughts by surrounding ourselves with helpful associates and means of culture. It is true that our life unfolds from within; it is not determined by its surroundings. Hence we have laid chief stress upon inner principles and purposes. But we are greatly influenced by our environment. We can never safely be indifferent to it and can never wholly resist its impressions upon us. Our surroundings and our inner lives act and re-act upon each other. What we are determines chiefly where and with whom we shall wish to be, but our associations help to make us what we are. No one can breathe a vitiated atmos- 476 SIGNAL LIGHTS. phere and not become harmed. We unconsciously appropri- ate the influences amidst which we live. We build into the framework of character, in the main, the materials which are nearest at hand. These considerations emphasize the importance of living in a good, intellectual and moral atmosphere. The books we read, the company we keep will not lea^ve us the same as they found us. No man can read a bad book and not be harmed by it. His imagination is defiled; the tone of his mind is lowered. If he reads a bad book to-day, he will be doubly likely to read one to-morrow and less likely to read any better book. So character is very subtle in its influence. We cannot breathe the air of the bar room and not be poisoned. We cannot habitually hear foul language or trivial or im- pious jesting without contamination. As well might a man expect to thrive in an atmosphere of noxious and poisonous gases. For young people especially the value of good associates and pure and healthful means of culture is incalculable. The world is full of them. There is not the slightest occasion that any person keep bad company. There is plenty of good. To read bad books, or even poor books, is inexcusable. The world was never so full of good and cheap literature as now. With all these helps, so numerous and ready to every person's hand, it is doubly sad to see bright minds turning themselves downwards instead of upwards; to see young people choosing the trivial and the low. This is the loss of high possibility; of rich opportunity. What ought to be noble is low; the soul is losing its capacity and desire for goodness; the power of thought which might rise so high and bear the whole life toward heaven with it, is degraded; the promise of life's spring-time is unfulfilled; fond hopes are disappointed; the HOW TO GOVERN OUR THOUGHTS. 477 one life-chance is lost, and the early years come no more back forever! 5. By developing a taste for ennobling pleasures. There is no more fundamental test of character than taste. A com- pany of young people come down the street at evening. Gradually they separate. Some find their way to concerts, libraries, reading-rooms; others to saloons and low theatres. One might note the different tone which the conversation of some has from that of others. What makes all this difference? It is taste. The low-minded man can only find enjoyment in low pleasures. The enjoyments which interest and delight the good and pure are excluded from the coarse and vulgar. Taste is very fundamental, it reaches to the depths of char- acter. Tell me what a man enjoys and I will tell you what he is. The formation of settled tastes is the formation of char- acter. " I have no taste for reading," people often say. Put into other language this means : " I have no intellectual inter- ests; I do not care much for ideas / I have a feeble intellectual character." Others have no "taste," they say, for religious service or exercises. We understand them perfectly. What they confess (often with apparent pride) is, that they have no interest in religious truth; that they are willing that their own higher nature should lie uncultivated ; that they care little for the spiritual life or for spiritual culture. Such a confession ought to be a confession of shame, rather than of boasting. We can not, then, too carefully guard the formation of tastes. A department of knowledge is half mastered when we have formed a taste for it. Those who have a taste for reading will read; no others will. Those who have a taste for pure, ennobling pleasures will pursue and enjoy them ; no others will. If we can keep our tastes, we can keep our thoughts. In intellectual and in moral life the first care should be to rigidly direct the will in its permanent preferences, 478 SIGNAL LIGHTS. and tastes are simply fixed preferences. Hence men will study successfully only that in which they develop a thorough- going interest. Shakspere has remarked this: "No profit goes where is no pleasure ta'en: In brief, sir, study what you most affect." What, now, are some of the tastes which have most import- ance for intellectual and moral culture? I notice first a taste for good literature. There are many young people, and still more older people, who lament their limited opportunities in school. In some ways the loss of a good literary education in school is 'irreparable, but not in all. In an important sense, all the world is in school yet. Means of culture lie thick on every hand. The average man has far greater opportunities than Socrates or Plato ever had. The world is a vast uni- versity. The greatest and best men of all the ages have become, through their books, the teachers in this great school. It is an era of cheap books. Much excellent literature in poetry, history and fiction is offered to the public in good readable editions for a few cents per volume. It is true that the bulk of our cheap literature consists in worse than weak and worthless novels, but our point is, that there is plenty of good literature to be had at as low prices as those at which trashy books are offered. Fifty dollars would purchase more than a hundred volumes of standard works in history, fiction, poetry and religious literature. A library like this in any home would furnish material for years of occasional oppor- tunity for reading, and might be made the means of forming a good and pure literary taste. Could anything help us more to govern our thoughts than to keep them associated with worthy themes? Our thoughts will be elevated if they keep the company of pure and noble thoughts which others have embodied in literature. If we form such tastes, we shall always have sources of pleasure HOW TO GOVERN OUR THOUGHTS. 479 V open to us which will cheer and satisfy us when more trivial .and fleeting delights take their flight. Wherever we live we shall be sure of good company in our books. We shall have fellowship with the best minds. The noblest souls of earth will deign to commune with us and will lift our own thoughts into harmony and sympathy with their own. I conclude what I could wish to say on this point with a few words quoted from Dr. Channing's works (p. 23), " God be thanked for books. They are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages. Books are the true levellers. They give to all who will faithfully use them, the society, the spiritual presence, of the best and greatest of our race. No matter how poor I am, no matter though the prosperous of my own time will not enter my obscure dwelling, if the Sacred Writers will enter and take up their abode under my roof; if Milton will cross my threshold to sing to me of paradise, and Shakspere to open to me the worlds of imagination and the workings of the human heart, and Franklin to enrich me with his practical wisdom, I shall .not pine for want of intellectual companionship, and I may become a cultivated man though excluded from what is called the best society in the place where I live. " Another elevating taste is that for art. There is a close kinship between the beautiful in form and sound and the moral emotions. We are not to make the mistake of identi- fying the aestethic and the moral or religious; but we may maintain that a pure appreciation of music, painting and sculpture is a help to elevating thought, not without moral -.significance and value. The true province of art is to em- body beautiful conceptions in beautiful expression. True art is an interpreter of thought. Its province is to express ideas, the inner beauty through the outer. So far as art is merely imitative it has an important use. If it will copy 480 SIGNAL LIGHTS. nature, it must study and appreciate nature. Often a natural scene presented in miniature will attract and impress us as nature itself had never done. Painted copies of great master- pieces are exceedingly useful even though imperfect in enlarging people's acquaintance with the great mas- ters and their works. By means of engraving and photography the same result is still more widely se- cured. Thousands of people are well acquainted with the greatest works of Raphael, Rubens and Titian through photographs, who have never had the opportunity to visit the galleries of Europe. It is possible to procure, at na very great cost, a collection of photographs representing the great masterpieces of ancient and modern art. To do this is within the means of most families in comfortable circum- stances. By such available helps the basis for an appreciation of artistic beauty could be laid in the children and young people of the family. This means of culture, if used, will not fail to have its influence upon the tone of our thoughts. It will give us a new source of pleasure and will afford us a pastime for leisure hours which will, at length, exert an easy and natural controlling force over our minds and hearts. A word ought here to be said for the appreciation of nature. Here are inexhaustible sources for those who learn to draw from them. How few, comparatively, have an eye for the beauty and majesty which surround them in earth and sky every day they live. " There is," says Robertson, " a rapture in gazing on this wondrous world. There is a joy in contem- plating the manifold forms in which the All-Beautiful has con- cealed His essence the living garment in which the Invisible has robed His mysterious loveliness. In every aspect of nature there is joy, whether it be the purity of virgin morning, or the somber gray of a day of clouds, or the solemn pomp and majesty of night; whether it be in the chaste lines of the HOW TO GOVERN OCA' TIWL'GUTS. 481 crystal, or the waving outline of distant hills, tremulously vis- ible through dim vapors; the minute petals of the fringed daisy, or the overhanging form of mysterious forests. It is>a pure delight to see." And, yet, how few appreciate all this! How many look upon nature as a dead, mechanical thing, instead of looking upon it as the house which the great Father has built and fit- ted up for His children, and in which He has expressed His own beautiful thoughts. The dwellers among the Alps culti- vate their few acres in utter forgetfulness of the awful grand- eur which overshadows them. Too often we are like them in forgetting, while we pursue our business or pleasure, to look about us and see the daily handiwork of God in the laws, pro- cesses and scenes which this wonderful world presents to our view. Fitly has Bryant reminded us that: " To him who in the love of nature holds Communion with her visible forms, she speaks A various language: for his gayer hours She has a voice of gladness, and a smile And eloquence of beauty; and she glides Into his darker musings with a mild And gentle sympathy, that steals away Their sharpness, ere he is aware." Thanatopsis. 6. Our solution of the problem, How to govern our thoughts, would be incomplete did we not give chief emphasis in closing to the importance of setting clearly before us the Divine Ideal of life given to man in Jesus Christ and of seeking every aid, human and divine to attain it. In order to govern and direct our own thoughts we need to bring them under the sway of the purest motives, the loftiest principles and the highest ideals. This can be done only in discipleship to the one per- fect Life. The testimony of history to the unexampled power of the life of Jesus among men is unmistakable. He still leads 31 482 SIGNAL LIGHTS. mankind in its highest aspirations and development. In Him all men confess a peculiar power; in Him even unbelievers have found a wondrous charm and beauty. The principles of life which He exemplified love, sacrifice, helpfulness are acknowledged by all to be the only true principles on which society can be prosperous and happy, or on which men can realize the true joy of living. Jesus Christ has revolutionized this world. His doctrine and spirit in working out its results in humanity, has broken the shackles off millions of slaves, elevated woman from the position of a drudge to her true station of dignity and influence, introduc- ed feelings of tenderness for all weakness and suffering, founded thousands of institutions of charity and benevolence, ennobled the idea of man, taught the divineness of duty and opened to mankind a world of new and elevating thought concerning God. How shall man come to his best life unless he put himself under the power of this world-transforming spirit? How shall thought reach its highest elevation if it be not directed toward this Person and character in whom we behold the pattern of what God would have us to become? Nothing but the Highest is an adequate Ideal for man. If this is set clearly before us, it will steadily and surely attract us to Itself, will lift our daily thoughts and common tasks into new dignity and fill every duty with new meaning and inspir- ation. S. H. PEABOUY, PH. D., LL. D. OUR COUNTRY'S NOBLEMEN. BY SELIM H. PEABOD Y, Ph. D., LL. D. T. is said by men who study the sources and the germs of words that noble and knoiv have a kinship; that they spring from the same root. The noble man was the knowing man. Thus early the dignity and the vital power of knowledge was recognized, and thus its recognition left its stamp upon language in its fresh and receptive state. This does not agree with that other notion that the early leaders were so by the masterful power of muscle and brawn, unless we farther remember that the force of muscle and the weight of brawn was guided and restrained by the intelligence of brain. These words, noble and know, are not the only ones in which this idea has come to us as part of their inmost mean- ing. The old king, or konig, was the can-ing man; he who was canny; he who could do or had power to do; which power of doing rested mostly in his knowing, or kenning, or cunning. So now the man who can do, is he who kens or knows how to do. I can, not merely because I am strong, 483 484 SIGNAL LIGHTS. gross, huge, having stalwart bones and thews, but because I know how to guide these grosser forces which nature has trusted unto me. The nobleman is the knowing man. But this knowing must be taken in its highest, not in its lowest sense. The knowing man is not simply the man who remembers, even though the memory is a grand aid in knowing. The memory is the iron chest which safely holds, and readily delivers that which has been given to its keeping. Simple remembering is not knowing. To produce proper knowing there must be added the large vital power of using, of applying, of adapt- ing, that which has been gained, whether of material things or of immaterial thoughts, to the working out of some pur- pose, the development of some design, the accomplishment of some end. The notable thing is not the knowing, as of late we have limited the word, it is the knowing how. It is not passive, slumberous, mephitic, but active, directive, an inspiration. There is more meaning than is usually found in the old motto, credited to ruder days : " Let him take who has the power, and let him keep who can." Taking is the easy victory of brute force; keeping is the far more difficult task won by the larger grip of intelligence. The symbol of the one is the effigy of Goliath, his spear-shaft a weaver's beam. The symbol of the other is the image of David, with smooth stones cunningly chosen from the broods bed, and skillfully sent to pierce the forehead of his foe. By 'his knowing the nobleman came to be lifted above the abundant herd of the ignorant, that is the unknowing. For, as 'we have seen, the larger knowing became intelli- gence, and this became reactive, working reflexively, upon the knower, as well as outwardly in all manner of useful effects. The man of larger intelligence found himself on a OUR COUNTRY'S NOBLEMEN. 485 loftier summit; he scanned a wider horizon; he saw with greater clearness the nearer and the remoter relations of things, and actions, and influences. His aspirations were lifted. His judgments were clarified. His wisdom became loftier and more ethereal, as well as broader and more practical. He became distinguished from others for wisdom and for probity; for foresight and for farsight; for banish- ment of petty conceits, foolish animosities, childish piques and quarrels. As he rose to loftier eminences of character, as he came into the possession of the sublimer elements of manliest and even of divine attributes, these transcendent glories so marked his elevation that they came to be recog- nized as the distinctive qualities which made him notable, and as the signs and symbols of the largest and most com- prehensive intelligence, and of that which we now deem the true essence of nobility. Thus hath the knowing man, in and through his knowing, come to stand as a type of that grand character which we call noble, and which we are ready to respect and obey, even to venerate and adore, when found untarnished by weak, or foolish, or false qualities of mind, heart, or life. This is an account of an ideal. Yet by its ideals human- ity shapes its courses and tests all its realities. Nor would we assert that the elder nobleman was a nobler man than the noblemen of to-day. True nobility does not exist by royal patent; can suffer no attainder; can not be entailed; yet is sometimes inherited. But heritage brings no assur- ance.. The father may be noble, the son ignoble. Under the influence of subtle and inscrutable causes, words often shift from the thing to the sign, and conversely, and at last the meaning takes a quality far remote from the original. Thus the word-masters say that the word charac- ter meant first a stone-cutter's sharp tool; then the symbol 486 SIGNAL LIGHTS. cut by the tool in a block of stone; then any symbol,, graven or written, by which the quality of a thing might be known; then the quality signified by the symbol; then the quality itself, whether symbolized or not. In like man- ner a nobleman was first a knowing man; then one whose character had been exalted by the breadth and depth of his intelligence; then one whose conditions of living were such as might have been expected to secure for him the intelligence, the wisdom and the lofty character which the world recognizes as true nobleness. Hence the force of the old motto, "Noblesse oblige" The conditions and the opportunities of nobility carried with them obligations which pressed as rigorously upon the wearer of the emblems of nobility as upon him who should come within the illumination of their radiance. The man clothed in the insignia of rank must not so far forget him- self as to stoop to acts unworthy of his rank, his honor, or his dignity. That these maxims have always controlled those called noble, no reader of history can truthfully assert. Yet history is full of examples, like that of Philip Sydney on the* stricken field of Zutphen, which yet keep freshly in our thoughts the lofty significance we find in the word noble. There is, indeed, another way in which a kinship is found between the words know and noble. To the man of rank was given the right to blazon upon his shield certain emblems, devices and colors by which he might be known, even when he was so encased in complete mail that his visage could not be seen. He was known by these emblems as an army or a ship of war is to-day known by the colors that are displayed upon its silken banners. The common man, devoid of rank, might wear no emblem, save that of his lord, whose vassal he O UR CO UN 77v' V S NOBLEMEN. 487 was and whom alone he could serve. But this does not suit our purpose. In our new, western world a titled nobility has taken no root. Under that ancient provision of law which forbade that a freeman should be taken, or imprisoned, or otherwise dam- aged, but by the lawful judgment of his peers, punishment for felony or treason might not be inflicted upon a person of high rank, a nobleman, except upon the verdict of that order of the realm to which he belonged. A nobleman was to be judged by noblemen; a common man by common men. Hence originated that familiar phrase, " a jury of one's peers," whose full significance few now understand. In our land there is no class called peers, since before our law all are peers. For us, then, nobility wears no insignia of rank; it can not be the appanage of an estate; it may not be won by service, or thrift, or fawning, from the monarch of the hour. Our nobility rests on the solid foundation where Burns found his: " A king can male' a belted knight, A marquis, duke, and a' that; But an honest man 's aboon his might, Guid faith he maun na fa' that! The rank is but the guinea stamp, The man 's the gowd for a' that." No patent engrossed upon parchment, bearing a royal sig- nature and attested by a great seal of state has any validity to give any man's blood a bluer tinge, his name a grander resonance, or his person a greater sanctity. The American nobleman is known, not by his coat of arms, emblazoned with sable, argent, or, or gules, but by his character, transparent and luminous, known and read of all men. His nobility is attested by his intelligence and his integrity. From these flow all the noble, all the grand issues of life. 488 SIGNAL LIGHTS. There is a fashion which decries the present and lauds the past. The fashion is not new. It springs from a tendency or habit of the human mind. It is true that Shakspere makes Antony say " The evil that men do lives after them, The good is oft interred with their bones," but it must be remembered that Antony had a purpose to accomplish, and it does appear that the facts seem to run con- trary to this statement. Good acts and noble qualities are they whose memories mostly endure. Men forget the petty annoyances, the little ills of days long since gone ; they remem- ber with love and with reverence the larger good, and the overmatching benefits. The days of the revolution were grand days, and the spirits of '76 were spirits of fine sensibil- ities and of enduring fidelity. But these days were not the grandest which the nation has witnessed, nor were those spirits in any respect more worthy of our admiring homage than those others which blazed out in the later days when Sumter fell, or when Gettysburg's effulgence vied with Vicks- burg's glory; or when the sad requiem over a martyred President reverberated in one long and mournful cadence from the Aroostook to the Golden Gate. Sound and wise philosophy finds no place for either pessim- ism or optimism. The one strangles effort; the other smothers it in intoxication. The millennium is not here; it is far, very far away ; but it comes. Year by year, decade by decade, century by century, the world rolls on toward that consummation when the earth shall be the Lord's with the fullness thereof. And as sure as it is that this progress is going forward, so sure is it that the grandest period in the world's history is that period in which we now live, and move, and act. The reason why this is so, and the proof that OUR COUNTRY'S XOBLEMEN. it is so, lie in the fact that the aggregates of intelligence and of integrity are now larger and are more secure than at any former time. There are yet many evils. We may not forget nor think lightly of them. But we must not forget the grander achievements of good, or suffer ourselves to lose courage and to faint in the warfare. No one will doubt or deny the larger intelligence of to-day as compared with that of any time in the past. The progress in science, in discovery, in invention, in art, in literature, in learning of every kind, has been too magnificent to be forgot- ten. The diffusion of knowledge and of intelligence has not been less wonderful than its increase. Take away from the common incidents of our daily lives, and from the things that form our most useful conveniences, those which have been introduced within the last fifty years, and the best parts of our resources for living, for labor, and for enjoyment, will have vanished. On many lines of thought and of invention the world has learned more within the last century than all that it knew before. In some lines all that it now knows has come to it within even a briefer period. Nor should anyone feel that there has been less constant and notable progress in integrity. The gathering unity and autonomy of so many European peoples ; the advancement in so many quarters of constitutional governments; the very struggles now going on toward the amelioration or the re- moval of hoary and grievous abuses; arbitration between nations; less frequent resorts to the dread ordeals of war; the recognition of many principles of private right, which make war less horribly destructive; a larger sense of responsibility in governments; a quicker detection of malfeasance in office and a surer punishment therefor; larger and more systematic benevolence, public and private, in caring for the poor, the unfortunate, even for the criminal; a greater attention to the 490 SIGNAL LIGHTS. needs of education, and a broader provision for its dissemina- tion among all classes, the lowly as well as the lofty; the abolition of slavery and serfdom throughout the civilized world, and its restriction even in barbarous lands; these with a multitude of other items that will occur to each thoughtful mind, all of which are written in the history of the past, which was but yesterday the present, are the facts which show that the world has grown better as well as wiser; and that the grandest epoch which the world has ever known is the epoch of to-day. In this grand development America has had its share. It might not be wise, it surely can not be possible, to weigh out and to measure off the precise part which our people has accomplished in this increase of intelligence and this develop- ment of integrity. It is enough for us that the American people have not lingered by the way, that they have not faltered in effort, that they have not failed in accomplishment. Particularly has the effort been notable in the larger dis- semination of intelligence among the masses of our people, with the corresponding influence in bringing to a higher level a public sense of integrity and of just dealing. There is yet corruption in American politics; dishonesty in officials, public and private; laxity in morals; illiteracy; intemperance; riot- ings; lynchings; anarchism; crime; but these evils are not, after all, indigenous to the soil. They thrive mostly in large cities where the worst elements collect. They are imported from foreign lands. But there is a vast range of free air be- tween the Atlantic and the Pacific waves; between the crests of the Alleghanies, the Rockies, and the Sierras; between the great lakes and the greater gulf; in these New England valleys; on these grand mountain slopes, scattered over these broad and teeming prairies, there are millions of freemen nota- ble for their intelligence, known for their integrity, the bone O U CO UN TR ' S NOBLEMEN. 491 and sinew of the republic, and so part of the impregnable stuff that forms the bulwarks of the world. These constitute the noblemen of America. They may be described in three grand divisions, including many subordinate classes. First. They who wrest from the grasp of mother-earth the stores which she has hoarded in anticipation of their bur- glarious attacks; whom, using the name of the larger part as typical of the whole, we may call agriculturists. Second. They who receive the goods wrested from the earth-mother's grasp, and by all immediate or remote arts, labors, and processes, fit them for the uses of the users; whom, wanting a better term, we may call artisans. Third. They who in any way direct the others, either to more skilled labor, or to wiser living, whom we may name teachers. America's noblemen will be found within these ranks. Yet it will not follow that, all the multitudes so ranked are noble- men. The nobleman will be a worker; the worker may or may not be a nobleman; that depends. Too much has been spoken and written about the dignity of labor, chiefly by those whose knowledge of the subject has come from observation rather than by experience. To forty-nine men out of fifty, to forty-nine million souls out of fifty millions, labor is simply a necessity, as certainly as breathing is a necessity. The question of labor is not a question of dignity, or of disgrace, any more than that of breath. Stop a man's breath, he suf- focates, stop his work, he starves; death comes only a little later to one than to the other. Talk to the. farmer, the miner, the smith, at the end of a long day's toil, when he is weary and worn with the struggle and sweat, and he will tell you that the labor is a burden grievous to be borne, and more; that it is a tyrant, implacable in its demands, and in- 492 SIGNAL LIGHTS. exorable in its penalties. He is happiest who makes no quarrel with the overmastering power, whether he counts it providence or fate, but keeps his spirit reconciled to the in- evitable. He is most successful who guides his labor with intelligence. He is wisest who governs himself as to labor and its outcome, as to his fellow-laborers, among whom he will count all the world about him, and their relations and rights, with integrity and uprightness of heart. Among those whom we have named the agriculturists, including, as the economists say, all those who depend on nature to supplement their efforts, whether in growing crops, or gathering fish from the sea, or winning ores from the mines, or getting lumber from the forest, the farmer may be taken as the type, as he is in the majority. The farmer is the great conservative of the state. He is distributed, not aggregated. He is separated from mankind, working mainly by himself, under the blue sky, in the broad and open field, not hived with others in shops, in villages and towns. His walks and his communings are with nature, whom he finds sometimes smiling and beautiful, sometimes frowning and shiftless. Too much of this knowledge comes from tradition or rumor. Too little comes from study and from books. He would be wiser, better, happier, if he could amend these conditions in no small degree. But in the main his heart is right. He means to be honest; to pay his just debts; to live at peace with his neighbor; to bring up his family to be sober, virtuous, and to love labor, as he himself loves it. The farmer of to-day, that is the farmer who is progressive, prosperous, thrifty, and is becoming " forehanded, " has changed from the farmer of the last generation, as the times have changed. Let us look at him at his best, trusting that -all will aspire to emulate his example. The successful farm- O UR CO UN TR V S NOBLEMEN. 493 er becomes such, first by what he knows; second, by what he is. Few men require a minuter or a more comprehensive information than that which a really skillful farmer posses- ses. In no other business are the details more numerous or more intricate than in the annual routine of the farm. In a part of the year his skill is directed to the production of crops. To this end he must acquaint himself with the nature of the soils in the various parts of his farm. He must study their essential qualities, deficiencies, adaptations, and the action of the elements upon them, whether of rain or drouth, scorching sun or disintegrating frost. He must learn what stores of plant food are secreted in the earth, and what processes of tillage, with what methods of fertilization, are needful to develop and secure its wealth, or to supplement and counteract its poverty. Next he must understand with a very considerable degree of certainty the nature of plant life in general, and of his crop plants in particular, so that he may select those which fit the conditions of the soil and of the seasons, and shall yield him their due returns, either in crops that he may harvest, or in fertility of soil which may be the assurance of future harvests. He must know how to estimate and how far he may provide against the evils that threaten his products, whether cold or heat, water or drouth, insect or fungus, and so to mitigate, at least, the misfortune he may not altogether prevent. Parallel with this knowledge of plant life must run a knowl- edge of animal life, in necessary contact with all varieties of domestic animals, in health and in disease. The entire round of breeding, rearing and feeding of domestic animals, whether for food or for the dairy, for wool or for work, will in a greater or less degree be his constant care. The choice, per- petuation and improvement of breeds for some definite and 494 SIGNAL LIGHTS. intelligent purpose is matter to which he must give his con- stant thought. In these days the farmer must be in no small degree a machinist. Especially on the broad and level lands of the great Mississippi valley, hand-work has mostly passed away, and is replaced by some form of machinery of more or less complexity. No more does the weary child drop from his tiny hand, wherever two furrows cross, five grains of corn, " One for the black-bird, one for the crow, One for the cut-worm, and two to grow." No more does the tricksy urchin make his thriftless neighbor hoe his field a second time by setting the hoe back in the rows fifty paces at lunch time. No more is maize shelled at the edge of a shovel projecting over the edge of a washtub. Sel- dom do we hear the clink of the mower's whetstone in the hay field before the dew is off the grass. No more does the monotonous rhythm of the resounding flail keep tally with the ascending stars in the early dawning that ushers in the short and cheerless days of winter. All these, and many of the other forms of manual labor at which the farmer toiled forty years ago, have given place to the work of machinery. The sulky-plow, the grain drill, the cultivator, the mower, the tedder, the horse-rake, the stacker, the reaper, the thresher, the sheller, the feed mill, the wind wheel, the steam- engine, portable and stationary, are all doing the farm- er's work and demanding the farmer's careful and intelli- gent management. Besides this the farmer should be car- penter enough to mend his own sheds and fences, surveyor enough to measure his own fields, engineer enough to lay his own drain tile, make and mend his own highways, and keep his own bridges in passable condition. OUR COUNTRY'S NOBLEMEN. 495 And, then, the farmer must be a good, common-sense man of business. He should know enough of law to keep out of it: enough of commercial forms to make and to J O demand valid and intelligible contracts; enough of the intricacies and snares of commercial paper to avoid endors- ing notes for his friends or signing blanks for swindlers to fill out with words and figures. Especially is it needful that he should know enough of the commerce and trade of the world to give him some ground for judgment as to the times for buying or for selling; the times to withhold his property from the market and the times to stand from under, even at a loss, lest a worse misfortune befall him. No one should misunderstand this partial enumeration of the many things which if well known will so greatly enhance a farmer's success, and which if unknown will so often ensure his irretrievable failure and ruin. It is not meant that the suc- cessful farmer must be accomplished in all or in any of the sciences of botany, chemistry, entomology, meteorology, physics, comparative anatomy, veterinary science, mechanics, law, finance, and all others of the train. It is hardly possible that he should attend to his farm and his family and be expert in any one of these. But his farming is surrounded by all of these specialties. It keeps touch with them all. Their underlying prin- ciples pervade all his work, and the more thoroughly he can be familiar with these underlying principles in a common- sense and practical way, the greater is the probability that he will be able to surmount and to conquer those hindrances, apparently occult, that in so many instances prevent success. Men who possess the general practical intelligence which has thus been outlined are not too plentiful. There are enough within the acquaintance of every reader to illustrate ,the principle and to demonstrate the rule. 496 SIGNAL LIGHTS. But the successful farmer becomes such not more by what he knows than by what he is. It may be taken for granted that every man is to be honest, ingenuous, law abiding, tem- perate, virtuous, a good husband, a good father, a faithful citizen, upright and manly in all dealings with himself, his family, his neighbor, and his God. These things are obliga- tory upon the farmer as a man, and upon him neither less nor more than upon other men. But there is needed for him a certain large and expanded breadth of character, a certain clearness of insight, a certain intellectual grip and grasp, which may become the greatest factor in his success, but which many farmers themselves affect to despise, and many persons not farmers insist is not indigenous to this class of men. This power will show itself in a broad, clear, and deliberate judgment; in an intelligence which both sees facts and interprets their meanings; which comprehends their rela- tions to each other and to the purposes which he desires to forward; which has the virile vigor to accept situations, and the intuitions to understand them, with discretion to act as the emergency requires. The good and successful farmer is to be a man of force as well as of intelligence. His broad vision shows him that many of his most important enterprises require a large cycle of time for their completion. That his success is not to be measured by this year's full harvest, nor by last year's meagre harvest; by corn one year at thirty cents a bushel, nor by corn another year at eighty cents a bushel; but by the rounding up of a series of years, in which the good and the bad mutually provide for each other's extravagances. He is a man of hope and courage, for he knows that intelligence and vigor and persistence are pre- cisely the elements that nature loves to recognize, and to which she joyfully submits. UR CO UNTR V S NOBLEMEN. 497 It will be admitted, I suppose, that the good farmer whom I have sketched is a pretty good sort of man, and that such a man should be successful in any calling that he might choose to pursue. It will be objected that he is above the average, indeed a man so rare as to be a man of mark wherever he may be found. But there is no reason why any, nay every, young man should not set up for himself an ideal standard fully equal to this, and strive with all his powers to realize it in his own life and character. Certainly no father should be satisfied with any less exalted model to set before his boy, and everywhere may be found examples which show that its realization is possible. How may such a character be builded? The first requisite is a right example. The father ought always to be the noblest model for the son's imitation. If there are any acts or habits which one would wish his son to avoid, the surest way to win disappointment is to practise those habits one's self. If, for example, one dreads to see his boy drink whiskey or chew tobacco, he should keep whiskey and tobacco out of his own mouth. "If one would have his boy as honest as sunshine, and as upright as a plumb line, he should never let that boy detect him 'in an underground or crooked transaction. It is a sorry time for both when a boy discovers that his father's promises were not meant to be kept. If one would have his son grow up to be an honest, honorable, courteous, chivalrous, generous, and loyal citizen, the best schooling that he can possibly get will be that which comes from his father as his teacher. Next to this right example, found by the father's hearth- stone, may stand right associates, whose ideas of life, its in- centives, its purposes, and its ends, have been formed upon equally correct lines. Into a boy's life enters a constant re- action of concurrent forces, within him and without him. 32 4:98 SIGNAL LIGHTS. "The boys" what they do, and think, and feel is the name given to a most indefinable, and yet most potent factor in the development of each one who makes one of the circle. Like public opinion in other forms, the common opinion of a coterie of boys is a force, large, vague, inperious, hard to influence, and resistible only by the soundest, wisest, and most loving counsel of the home. The prescience almost of inspir- ation is required to guide this opinion upon right principles and to direct it to noble purposes. Next we count the influence of the school and the teacher, the social circle, books, reading, and numberless remote forces, more subtle and more intricately commingled than the forces which in nature's economy influence the growth and develop- ment of nature's germs. The grand balance wheel of all this complex and delicate mechanism is occupation. Not necessarily that which is laborious, distasteful, irksome, although the needs of food and clothes often leave little choice of occupation, but prefer- ably something that interests, awakens thought, attracts, stimulates. It is a great safeguard to a young life that it shall be fully occupied ten hours a day with work suited to the strength, either- physical or mental, seasoned with recreation enough to keep the spirit fresh and buoyant, but not so much as to run into dissipation, idleness and ennui. In this respect the farmer's boy has now an advantage over almost every other boy of equal rank, in that he has a con- stant and ever varied supply of healthful employment, not too severe for his proper physical development. And although Saturday eve finds him tired, soiled and ready to wish for some softer place and sigh for some easier tasks, his sleep is sweet, his spirits are buoyant, and his pulses throb with vig- orous, honest, industrious, and virtuous life. OUR COUNTRY'S NOBLEMEN. 499 Six millions of farmer's boys under fifteen years of age dwell in the United States. In them lies the hope of the stability of our government and of the perpetuity of our insti- tutions. Out of this host will come to the front the leaders in every department of the nation's life, power, enterprise and prosperity. Here lie hidden multitudes of our nation's future noblemen. Gathered in villages, towns, cities, is another grand army. Its life is more confined. Its field of view is more restricted. Its resources are more apparent. It deals less with nature's occult forces, more with such as are visible and within grasp the sprites that dance in the water and the wind; the demons that lurk in fire and steam. It does not ask the frost to help pulverize the soil; it does not sow, hoping that the warm sun and the gentle rain will tint with fairy touch the growing corn and gild the ripening grain ; but it tears asunder the boles of sturdy oaks and tapering pines that nature builded with centuries of patient labor; it smites the glowing metal, pulls and tugs, cuts, crimps, fashions, hammers, and step by step, blow by blow, piece added to piece, fabricates a loom, a harvester, a printing press, a locomotive, or a giant ship of war, leviathan and monarch of the sea. One hundred years ago this army fought in squads, separ- .ated, isolated. Now it unites its forces and goes to battle with a solid column, whole brigades marching under a single commander. The contrasts called to mind between the farm- er's former and later methods can be more than paralleled in the methods and results of the artisan. One hundred years ago! Then now! " Behold the former things have passed away and all things have become new." How little does the present generation know of the narrow lives of their grand- fathers, when fleet-footed boys outstripped the wind to carry home fading coals of fire bedded in ashes in their bare hands 500 SIGNAL LIGHTS. as the only means of securing the Promethean blessing and a breakfast. In the army of artisans we include every person whose toil of hand or brain lends its aid to fit the crude products of nature to meet the wants or satisfy the desires of men. The inventor who designs process or mechanism; the capitalist whose wisdom and enterprise organizes and directs; the master who oversees workmen; the workman whose eyes and hands form and frame, fashion and fit; they who wed brawny force with brainy skill ; they who fetch and carry, ride the locomotive, guide the steamship; these are they whose toils and triumphs mark the grandeur, of this the latest of the centuries. The mechanical achievements that excite our wonder and our admiration are the products of three elements united as factors. They are the forces of nature, and the skill of the hand, controlled and guided by the mind of man. Reversing the order we name these factors, science, skill, force. The brain guides the hand which grasps the lever that moves the world. Even yet we but dimly see the true values of these elements; and for that cause often contend unwisely as to their relative importance. Nature conceals her powers until the intellect of man finds them and masters them. Then they become so many blind Samsons, grinding at his mill. Nature gives to every man a delicate and complex mechanism in his hand; mechanism of marvellous and unmeasured capacities. These hands and these finger tips, when rightly trained, respond to the impulses of the brain, as the keys of a grand organ answer the capri- cious moods of the musician. The substances of nature are material, gross, crude; her forces are grand, titanic, but blind, remorseless, lacking intelligence. The skill of the hand which in this relation includes all the organic man is also O UR CO UNTR V S NOBLEMEN. 501 blind, thoughtless, purposeless, until informed, directed, vivi- fied, inspired, by the ethereal and almost divine power of the thinking mind. The artisan, then, is a composite of two natures. The one outward, material, a bodily organization, capable of wonder- ful adaptations. The other inward, spiritual, an intellectual organization, capable of marvellous development. The inner is the master; the outer is the servant. The master may not demand service beyond the scope of the servant's powers; the servant can not guide himself. The musician most needed in Theodore Thomas' sublime orchestra, is he who can be, and will be, most obedient to the command of the maestro; playing fast or slow, loud or soft, or being silent, as the wand and eye shall dictate; but the music, with all its masterful sympathies, lives in the heart of the master, who holds a hundred instruments and a thousand fingers responsive to the dreams, the impulses, the glorious harmonies that live within his inmost soul. But a musical box hath no music in its soul. The training of the artisan should combine that which may discipline his powers of mind, and that which may develop the obedient skill of his hands. Manual training will be needful for him that he may the better do; mental training that he may the more clearly think. If it be claimed that thinking does but slightly aid the doing, it will be found equally true that doing does not aid the thinking. Otherwise all good workmen should be good philosophers. The young man who hopes to make his living or his fortune at any handi- craft, should aim to secure, first a thorough mastery of him- self, with perfect command of his best powers, next, a thorough mastery of all the details of his business. He may be sure that all which he may learn about the odd, unusual, and remote items that bear only occasionally upon the trade he would live by, will at critical times and in unsuspected 502 SIGNAL LIGHTS. ways turn the scale between plenty and want, between suc- cess and failure. Beyond this there can be no rules for the conduct of life for the artisan different from those which fit the farmer or the good citizen of any rank or walk in life. For all, there exist the same incentives for right living, right thinking, intelligent effort, and the development of a noble character. I have often tried to get the measure of the mental horizon of the lower class of laborers. I use the word lower with no purpose of invidious distinction. Their work is needful, or it would not be sought. Such as it is, it is well done, or it would not be paid. But it requires small skill, less thought, scarcely more than mere muscular effort. Without meaning any evil, I may take as an example the carrier of burdens, say bricks in a hod, up the long ladders of a high building. The man works, eats, smokes, sleeps, to-day, to-morrow, and to- morrow. He reads none, his thoughts are few, his vocabu- lary is small. He talks little, and that between hodfuls, when he is not smoking. In some European lands the vocabulary of such men is said to contain not more than 300 to 500 words. Now I find it very difficult to understand the mental calibre or quality of such men. They work hard, but the work is of mus- cle, not of brain. If I were to intimate to one of their number that I also work hard, though in a different way, and that I may be as weary at nightfall as he, he would probably aver that I know nothing whatever of work. He certainly knows nothing of my toil; do I understand any more or any better concerning his? I believe I do; for I have toiled in ways not unlike those which give him fatigue, while he has never done that work which now brings weariness to me. The incapacity for appreciating the labor which is of the mind is illustrated only the more forcibly by the extreme case OUR COUNTRY'S NOBLEMEN. 503 of the hod-carrier thus taken. The same doubt that any effort is work which does not involve physical activity, nor bring physical fatigue, prevades in some degree the great body of those who earn their bread by the sweat of their brows. I am therefore prepared to find that when I name as work- ers those whose labors consist in directing those who work with their hands to more effective methods of working, or to better ways of living, inciting them to nobler thinking, and to nobler effort I shall find myself but very imperfectly understood by many of my readers. Many will reckon the physician's weary ride and sleepless vigil as work, who find none in his anxious care over a patient whose symptoms indi- cate imminent danger. So when the division is made be- tween producers and non-producers, the teacher, the clergy- man, the physician, the lawyer, the legislator, are counted among the non-producers, since their work grows no crop for harvesting and a market ; nor does it help directly to put such a crop into a more merchantable, or a more desirable form. The fallacy of such conclusions, the error of such judgments, lies so near the surface, that it ought to be more readily seen. The farmer and the artisan do not so reason about their own affairs. The farmer knows that drainage, for example, in- creases the productive powers of his land, because it removes causes which if present are obstacles to production. The machinist well understands that losses of heat, or from fric- tion, are waste, and that value attaches to any appliance, or any skill that will obviate such losses. A week's instruction to a fireman may save annually to his employers an hundred fold more than the cost of such instruction. Every workman can illustrate the thought by examples drawn from his own practice. Let us note a few examples whereby society in the aggregate finds material compensation for the work of those 504 SIGNAL LIGHTS. whom we group together as teachers, and whom others refuse to recognize as workers: 1. The population of the United States at the last census -was fifty million souls. Twenty millions of these were children of parents born in other lands; either they or their parents were immigrants. Yet those twenty millions two-fifths of the whole number have been so absorbed ai^d assimilated as to be counted good American citizens; the exception being too small to be notable in the general aggregate. Much of this result must be credited to the intent of the immigrants themselves. But more largely has this result been due to a series of causes, among which are to be named: first, the public schools, with their army of teachers; second, the press, with its battalions of writers and editors; third, the churches, with their hosts of religious teachers; fourth, political enfran- chisement; fifth, social relationship, etc., etc. The homo- geneity of the American people, made up from so many sources, is one of the marvels of the age, unparalleled in history. 2. The malevolent influences of intemperance can scarce- ly be overestimated. Nor can we deny that great progress has been made towards curtailing and controlling this monster evil, even though we admit that a great work yet remains to be done. The church and the school are the really efficient enemies of intemperance, and the benefits they have conferred upon the state in this respect only, are worth all that both have cost, publicly and privately. Yet we are told that the consumers of liquor in the United States pay for them annual- ly nine hundred millions of dollars v The interest of this at eight per cent, would pay the entire annual appropriation pro- posed by the measure lately before congress known as the Blair Educational Bill. What might be done with the prin- cipal? OUR COUNTRY' S NOBLEMEN. 505 3. Of the fifty millions of people in the United States, one-third were workers, earning at least one dollar a day, or three hundred dollars a year. Their aggregate earnings were for one year, five billions of dollars. To assert that the work of an educated body of men is worth at least ten per cent, more for that reason is to make the premium ridiculous- ly small. Yet at this ratio the value added to these workers by their education amounts to five hundred millions of dollars per annum, which is more than five times the cost per annum of the public schools of the country. This enumeration ceases, not for want of material, but for want of room, and because enough has been made to serve our purposes. It will be observed that these questions have been discussed upon their lowest, material pecuniary plane. This has been done purposely. If on these lines we show that the great bod} 7 of workers, whose labors are given to guide the way to better lives and nobler thoughts, are the most efficient pro- ducers in the land, how much more shall their value be appre- ciated when to these measurable benefits are added those which are beyond computation in any units known to the science or laws of wealth. Here, then, we find a multitude of the noble men and women of these United States. They who have trained the children and youth of the land in intelligence and integrity, in all ranks, from the district school to the university; they who have used the press as an irresistible engine to spread the truth and to extirpate evil; they who, as the ministers of Christ's gospel, have led and lifted the people upon higher planes of faith, and hope, and charity; they who, in minister- ing to the sick, have prolonged human life, or have mitigated the anguish of the dying bed ; they who have defended the right as known before the law, or have flung abroad the law's 506 SIGNAL LIGHTS. serried lightnings to punish wrong, or to prevent crime; they who have guided the ship of state wisely, in smooth or in dangerous waters, maintaining the integrity of the nation, the justice of its claims, the prowess of its arms, the perpetuity of its institutions; they who with voice or pen have pleaded the cause of the poor, the lowly, the enslaved; they who have lifted the hearts of the people, filling them with nobler aspira- tions, higher wishes, grander purposes; they who in any of these, or in a myriad of other ways, have done what they could for right, justice, humanity, fatherland, God and His Christ, these are OUR COUNTRY'S NOBLEMEN. O. N. STODDARD, LL. D. THE SUN'S INFLUENCES. BY O. N. STODDARD, D. D. R E A T principles underlie everything a man learns or does. The most simple things have relations that extend beyond our sight. The boundaries of knowledge recede, like the horizon, as we advance; but there is always an unknown beyond. It must be so when finite minds are related to the Infinite. The simplest facts of science are, in their last analysis, beyond our reach. Everything begins in mystery and ends in mys- tery. Our years here are just as much a part of eternity as those in the future world. We are now in eternity a little detached portion of it with its peculiar surroundings. The changes in passing from this to the other world, leaves untouched the essentials of our being. We awake from the dream of death and know ourselves to be ourselves. Memory, with its links of steel, bridges the chasm, and a conscious- ness of identity lives on forever. O the tiny rivulets of knowledge here, nay, the drops that make them, spread out 507 508 SIGNAL LIGHTS. into a boundless ocean hereafter! The ability to know increases with every truth learned. One truth flashes its light upon a second ; the two combined pour a brighter beam on a third; and thus through the ages lesser lights gather into suns, and suns into systems, still a blaze of glory fills the mental firmament. Thus the mind becomes almost divine in its power to know ; but, be it remembered, that no limit can be reached in this progress in knowledge; no exhaustion of the yet unknown can bar farther advance, because God, the source of all knowledge, is infinite inexhaustible. As long as the unknown rises to view dimly in the distance, men move eagerly forward. The human mind is insatiable in its desire for knowledge. To find the end of one's knowledge, but not the end of the truth, leaves no peace to the soul. It must go forward, for it cannot retrace the ground already passed, nor stand still. Objects force themselves upon the mind; the eyes must see and the ears hear. Nature is never silent and never at rest. She shouts her chorus by day, and plays her silent music by night from the firmament. Few so stupid as not to interpret these inaudible voices. Motion, like God, is everywhere ; globes, awful in magnitude, are in giddy whirl, sweeping through space with a velocity that makes the swiftest cannon ball a laggard. The sightless air is making its daily circuits; and great silent rivers are hastening to the ocean, and then float back in vapor above the- mountain tops. The sullen ocean is always heaving; and everything that hath breath, each in its own way, is moving in its destined path. O Nature, what a teacher thou art! And this is Science, rather God's Will manifesting itself in matter. All these, and a thousand other operations in nature, are divine means for securing, beyond peradventure, human progress. Some de- gree of mental cultivation must be attained when the text book of nature is kept persistently before man, its pages THE SUN'S INFLUENCES. 509 turned day by day by an unseen hand. " Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge." But the fact that our knowledge of any subject is, at the best, only partial, is the strongest stimulus to farther research. Man's mind is not and never was an entire blank. God touches at its birth the springs of thought, and intuitions are embedded in its very being, ready to welcome and join hands with every new-comer. There must be some foundation in our natures, on which thought may begin to build its palace; which will not be completed here or hereafter, but will grow in majesty and beauty forever. Nature, and God in it, and our relations to Him, constitute a supply of mental food which eternity cannot exhaust. The unknown will literally and always be infinitely great- er than what man can possibly know. The treasures of knowledge, though drawn from daily, remain, like the widow's cruse of oil, always full. God is the scource of all knowledge, and He is infinite. Plainly our knowledge will always be partial, but can always be increased. Curiosity will ever be getting satisfied, but will never be satiated. There is around every one's footsteps a circle of light, more or less extended; beyond is boundless darkness. But forms suggesting the highest beauty gleam out dimly from the shadows, and urge us to learn more. There is a region of mystery around every thing known, even the most common. Unsatisfied desire to know makes the great worker. Great fields of thought in any department, sparkling with beauties, awing by their sublimity, dim shadows flitting in the surrounding twilight, are irresistibly enticing. This longing to know, to increase knowledge, has led the great army of discoverers, step by step, to the lofty heights now reached. These heights are rounds in the ladder which Jacob once saw, its foot on the earth and its top in the clouds 510 SIGNAL LIGHTS. around the Eternal Throne. Angels might well covet the privilege of ascending its steps; but it illustrates more par- ticularly man's mode of progress, not by leaps, but step by step sometimes weary ones up toward the source of all that can be known. And the culminating thought in all this, so comforting to tired and discouraged souls, is that no fixed boundary will ever stop one's progress. Eternal Progress! a Bible doctrine, necessarily implied in the salvation of men by Christ, but astounding and incomprehensible to finite minds. The views thus far presented are suited to any subject, but are better understood and enforced by the examination of scientific questions. Human pride and conceit are the most insurmountable obstacles to advancement. The fool is scarcely more certainly shut out from mental growth, than the conceited man who thinks he already knows almost everything. A modest man, other things being equal, makes less show and splutter, but he is a power which the ages will find out. There has been no roar of cataracts along his channel, but quietly he has ploughed deep and made many new ones. The burdened steamer may move safely through the deep cleft, and no one think of the agent that has dug it, but God knows; that is enough, the reward will come. Man's work as a member of society, as a mechanic, as a professional man, indeed in every relation in life, runs in deeper channels than he ever dreamed of. He cannot shut himself up without becoming conspicuous by his absence. His secret thoughts impress themselves on his whole being, and he cannot walk the streets and not leave traces of his influence. All these may be very quiet, but more potent on that account. Quiet forces are, after all, the most powerful in making changes. Gravity is not cognizable directly by any one of the senses, and can float a feather gen- tly and gracefully to the ground ; and yet it holds the universe THE SUN'S INFLUENCES. 511 of matter with the awful grasp of a God. We know some of the laws according to which it acts, and that is all. What it is, is still buried among the unknown things. It is not certain whether it pulls or pushes bodies together. What is known concerning it is far less, probably than the unknown. Are we satisfied? Oh no! Man uses the few laws discovered to construct a rational and orderly scheme for the wonderful harmony of planetary motions, and there his search is, at pres- ent, arrested. Must we surrender all hope of better acquaint- ance with this majestic force while denizens of earth? By no means. u Hope," it is said, " springs eternal in the human breast," and there is quite enough known here to feed its flames. Let us take another example electricity to show how much, and yet how little we know of it. To be honest our way is blocked at the start, for no answer has yet been given that tells us what electricity is. Yet we know the conditions under which it acts ; laws of attraction and repulsion between charged bodies; the great and prime law of induction; rapid- ity of transmission through bodies; the various modes of production; the varied phenomena of continuous and disrupt- ive discharge; its intimate relation to, if not identity with, magnetism. And then all these and many other facts have been put to experimental test by that prince of electricians, Michael Faraday; and thus made to reveal still deeper facts. Besides, such men as Gauss, Maxwell, Thompson, and others, have subjected its known laws to the severe and inimitable logic of the calculus, revealing laws still more startling, but only making its deep mysteries still deeper. And then its applications: The sun departs hoping the earth will take a nap; but electricity without so much as ask- ing the king of day, " By your leave," floods our towns and cities with light from new suns. 512 SIGNAL LIGHTS. Without ostentation it carries to the most remote points, and along the ocean's bed the messages of business and love. The vibrations of a friend's voice are transmitted by this agent, which seems almost divine, along a wire to listening ears. And Great Nature, to keep us modest in the possession of such knowledge, touches the springs of this strange force in the firmanent above and the earth beneath, and we bow our heads with reverence at the awful flashes and the sublime roar. Now it is admitted that the knowledge of the electric force, merely defined in the above brief and concise state- ments, is very great. Familiarity with it can hardly be acquired in a life-time. Is not about everything that pertains to this intensely interesting subject, now known? Alas! a few lines, at the most a few pages only, have been translated from out a ponderous volume. At the very threshold we are compelled to admit that we do not know what electricity is. We cannot tell how it shivers to fragments the hardest trees as if trains of dynamite were laid along every fibre; nor how it can melt in an inappreciable fraction of a second the most in- fusible metals; nor how such a sturdy force can be wrapped up in the soft vapor of the cloud; nor how it can be conduct- ed along bodies under favorable conditions, as shown by Wheatstone at the rate of 188,000. miles a second. These effects are said to be violent molecular disturbances. That is doubtless true, and it is an important fact; but molecules of matter do not lay violent hands on themselves, and create dis- turbances by their own voluntary action. Matter is inert, without power in and of itself to do anything, or to resist anything done to it. What is it that can put in motion every molecule of a wire 188,000 miles long in one second? or that can make the circuit of the earth twenty-three times in that second ? THE S UN' S lA'FL UENCE S. 513 Let it be remembered that these questions could not be asked unless there were a previous knowledge to suggest them. Questions multiply fast and tread close on the heels of knowledge. Thank God, we do know much that is pre- cious, invaluable, but the infinite field of truth lies before us untouched, unreaped. Enter in ye hungry, thirsty ones and reap in this life; you will take up your scythe in the great future and swing it without weariness as a pastime for- ever ! But there are very many common things, every day occur- rences, the more striking because common, which every one thinks he fully understands; and yet these, in some points, are beyond our comprehension. The board cleft by the saw; the shaving cut off by the plane ; the iron softened by fire and fashioned by the hammer, call to mind that mysterious some- thing we call force-energy. You may trace the revolutions of the saw back along the belt to the shafting, to the engine, to the steam, the fire, the coal, the oxygen of the air, and chemical action between the coal and the oxygen. All these are valuable items and well worth knowing, but they afford no solution of the great ques- tion the origin and nature of force. A tyro might answer that heat produces the steam, and the latter moves the piston, and chemical reactions produce the heat. All very true as a statement of facts, but not an explanation of them. For the enquiry is not satisfied, but still pertinently asks, What are heat and chemical action? In modern parlance heat is a " mode of motion," and chemical action is the result of attraction between different kinds of matter. But a " mode of motion " requires force for its production, and chemical attraction is itself a force, or the result of one. So we are compelled to admit a prior force to account for those in question, and 33 SIGNAL LIGHTS. another still farther back, till you reach the eternal absurdi- ties, or the paradise of fools. Some scientific men and the writer is one of them are simple-hearted enough to place a Divine Will as a first cause somewhere in the series of steps, in order to make a begin- ning, where, otherwise, there could be none. It is not without a purpose that the writer brings out these deeper instructions of science in what is intended to be a popular article; for there are able minds, to whom the world is deeply indebted, who seem to see in science nothing but a system of laws, which are not expressions of modes of action of some Great Ruling Will; but which somehow came of themselves and execute themselves. This view, the writer verily believes, is nearly as fatal to progress in science as to that reverential spirit in which all great subjects should be approached. The ringing blow of the hammer on the anvil plunges us, at once, if we choose to think of it, into the very depths of these great questions. If we leave out the mind whose will determined to strike, there remains the body with its wonderful adjustments, and its beautiful and delicate structure, perfect beyond compari- son. There are the nerves to carry stimulus to the muscles to produce contraction; the blood, like hidden streams at the roots of the plants, to renew the wasted strength ; the bones and their hinges; and the tendons stronger than steel. You can call the body, when doing this work, a steam-engine, if you choose. The resemblances are more numerous than most would suppose. The stomach is furnace and boiler, heated up to one hundred degrees; the lungs are the bel- lows, the heart its pump, and the arteries its connecting pipes. Indeed heat is here, as in the engine, the worker. THE SUN'S INFLUENCES. 515 But what of the anvil ? It quivers under the blow ; the air takes up the motion, sound is produced and a thousand ears hear the sturdy strokes. The hammer and the air are heated, and the heat passes off to earth and air, and mingles with the com- mon stock. What conversions it may undergo there, or what work it may do is beyond human search. It may aid in gen- erating the lightning's flash and thus the blow of the hammer again becomes audible in the thunder's roar. There is no scientific question of more significance to us as inhabitants of the earth, or more interesting to scientists than the nature of the sun, the origin of its intense heat, and whether it has a constant supply or is destined ultimately to burn out and become a dark, cold body. It is difficult for us to get a distinct idea of the magni- tude of the sun. The later .measurements make its diameter about 860,000 miles. If it were a mere shell one hundred and eight globes of the size of the earth if laid in a straight line inside the shell, would not quite reach across. If the earth were placed at the centre of the shell, our moon could revolve inside at a distance of 193,000 from the surface of the shell. Place a shot 1-6 of an inch in diameter by the side of an eighteen inch globe and you have the relative sizes of the earth and sun. Its density is about ^ that of the earth, and the quantity of matter in it 330,000 times that of the earth. Its attraction on the earth is enormous even at a distance of 93,000,000 miles, and yet the curvature of the earth's orbit is not quite l /% inch in twenty miles. To prevent the earth from falling to the sun, it must have a velocity in its orbit of nineteen miles a second, or fifty times the velocity of a rifle ball. It is certain that the sun itself is not fixed in space, for that would require equal attractions in opposite directions. It is equally certain that no planetary bodies can move in 516 SIGNAL LIGHTS. straight lines. Other bodies along their path would deflect them into some curve, and of course be themselves deflected. There is no safety to our solar system except in the revolution in closed curves of the primary planets, attended by their secondaries around the sun. And our sun cannot be safe in the midst of millions of others like it, except by some harmonious adjustment of revolutions, around some remote centre of gravity common to the whole. Let the orbital motion of any planet cease and it would at once begin to move towards the centre around which it was revolving. Moons would soon reach their primaries, primaries ^ their suns, and suns in regal splendor with their retinue of worlds would meet in horrid din in Nature's last battle. Some of the more distant bodies would require centuries to reach the field of battle, but would rush to the conflict with a velocity of between three and four hundred miles in a second. The crash and the ruin would be utterly beyond all human comprehension and the heat produced by impact vastly greater than that of our sun. Mind lives by its ceaseless activities, and the universe of matter is saved from destruction by motion. Nature of the Sun's Body. The intense heat leaves no doubt that no solid matter, nor indeed any liquid in the true sense of the word, can exist in the sun. All bodies in it are not only fused by the intensity of the heat, but are dissociated from all chemical bonds, and reduced to the simplest forms possible. But the enormous pressure from the superincumbent mass- some 430,000 miles in depth would reduce the heated vapors and gases not to mobile liquids, but to viscous, pasty masses, incapable of free motion. Observations can never verify these conclusions touching the interior condition of the sun. They can be deduced only from the known properties of gases and vapors THE SUN'S INFLUENCES. 517 when compressed under high temperatures. Some sixteen, and probably more, bodies, well known on earth, are found in the sun. Iron, sodium, potassium, lime, nickel, cobalt, hydro- gen, and probably zinc, copper and gold, are a part of them. Most of these are vaporized with difficulty, requiring intense heat to effect it. Each of these impresses special character- istics its trade mark on the luminous undulations it sends forth. Our prisms in the spectroscope translate these marks at the distance of 93,000,000 of miles with almost absolute certainty. This solar telegraphy casts into the shade our earthly system. It sends its dispatches 93,000,000 of miles in a little more than eight minutes, and makes no mistakes. It would seem a matter of course that the denser bodies in the sun, which require an exceedingly high temperature to vaporize them, would lie lower in the sun's surface, and would be the principle radiators of its intense light and heat. Such is really the case, and this layer is sufficiently. defined to be properly called the photosphere. Above this float the more incondensible and lighter gases, as hydrogen. These form reddish-colored flames, and are detected with difficulty except in total eclipses. This is the chromosphere or colored layer, and forms the red protuberances of the tongues of flame which shoot out from behind the dark disk of the moon at the moment of totality. But beyond the chronosphere, the total eclipse reveals another investure seen only under these conditions, and called the corona. It extends outwards in radial form a distance equal, and sometimes greater than the radius of the sun, with star-like prolongations. What it is, none can certainly state. The more probable opinion attributes it to heated or illuminated gases far rarer than hydrogen. It resembles, says one writer, the glory with which the old painters invested the heads of saints. What- ever the explanation, it is one of the most beautiful sights our 518 SIGNAL LIGHTS. heavens ever exhibit to mortal eyes. The king of day crowned at the moment of seeming extinction! It is not the first time a crown has been won at the moment of apparent defeat. It is in the chromosphere that the tremendous outbursts and upheavals, due to the intense heat below, are already seen. The changes are on a scale that defies description. Cloud pillars and billows are heaved up, according to Lockyer, 27,000 miles high; and Prof. Young measured these eruptions extending along the sun's disk 224,000 miles. They are solar storms of prodigious magnitude and violence; gigantic hurricanes in which this earth might be embedded. Their rains are pitiless peltings of melted iron and potash and soda; and their winds red hot vapors and gases blow at the rate of eighteen to one hundred and forty-seven miles in a second. On our earth the most furious cyclones seldom reach a veloc- ity of one hundred and fifty feet per second. The sun's gales have a velocity fifteen hundred times those on earth. The Temperature of the Sun. Experiment is evidently the most satisfactory mode of determining the temperature of the sun's surface. A very delicate thermometer if exposed to the sun's rays, making due allowance for loss by transmis- sion through the atmosphere, and then exposed to melted iron or steel, would give a tolerable idea of the relative tem- perature of the two bodies. An ordinary mercurial ther- mometer would be useless for the purpose, not being sufficiently sensitive. The thermopile, invented about fifty years ago by Melloni, will be affected by the warmth of a passing cloud; and the bolometer, the invention of Professor Langley, is so exceedingly sensitive to heat, as to show a change of one ten-thousandth of a centigrade degree; and will detect traces of heat from the stars. Prof. Langley experi- THE SUN'S INFLUENCES. 519 mented with both these instruments upon the heat from the sun, and from the melted steel in a Bessemer converter at Pittsburg in 1878. His conclusion was that the heat radiated from the sun is eighty-seven times hotter than that from the molten steel. He also estimated that the light emitted from the sun was 5,300 times more intense than that from the metal. By com- paring the electric arc from the most powerful dynamo, it is believed that the brilliancy of the sun's light is about four times greater than that of the arc. The Amount of Heat Radiated by the Sun. The determin- ation of this question is not so difficult as most persons would suppose. The question is a grand one, and its solution might seem entirely beyond our reach. If the amount of heat that falls on the earth can be determined, then the whole amount discharged into space is known. Effect of Sun's Pleat in Evaporation. The annual fall of water on the earth gives the annual evaporating power of the sun's heat on its surface. The water from the rain, snow, and dew has been evaporated from land and water by the heat of the sun. The annual rain-fall is becoming well known in civilized nations and approximately in others. The estimate by Johnston in his physical Atlas cannot be far from the truth. He gives five feet over the whole surface, if equally distribut- ed. It is easy to tell the number of cubic feet in that quantity, but it will not be easy for the reader to comprehend it. In round numbers it is (30,000,000,000,000) thirty trillions of cubic feet ! Counting this number at the rate of three per second for ten hours each day would consume 77,260 years. This amount of water would cover the United States in the Mississippi valley from the Rocky Mountains to the Alleghany. and from the British possessions on the North to the Gulf of 520 SIGNAL LIGHTS. Mexico on the South, to the depth of 157 feet. And this enormous mass is evaporated yearly by the heat from a body 93,000,000 of miles from the earth. Even this does not tell the whole truth. A very large amount of heat is consumed in the growth of vegetation and in producing the movements of the atmosphere. But it may help our conception of the sun's prodigious energy if we look at the lifting and transport- ing power indirectly exerted through gravitation and atmos- pheric currents upon the vapor. The vapor of water is lighter, bulk for bulk, than air. It must, when evaporated from bodies of water or moist land, be driven upwards by the superior gravitating force of the air. It will ascend till by partial condensation its density- equals that of the air. Heat has prepared the vapor for this ascensional effect from gravity, otherwise there would be no motion. Heat, therefore, is truly the agent that causes the winds to wrap the vapor in their arms, and gently almost tenderly to bear it above the loftiest mountains where it sifts down a veil over the rugged peaks. Descending into the valleys and out onto the hills and plains, it sheds its dew and rain, and tarrying around the roots of every plant covers the earth with its forests and flowers and fruits. Slowly the gathered waters make their way to the ocean, and are soon sent forth again by the monarch of the heavens, on their beneficent mission. This is the beautiful and poetic side of this incalculable heat energy given out by the sun. It cannot be held within strict mathematical boundaries, for it includes almost everything that is gorgeous and beautiful on earth or in the sky. Air alone would have but one aspect, monotonous, unchanging. Poets and painters would find nothing in the landscape and no ever changing sky to call forth their sense of the beautiful or sublime. For the stern and rugged facts of THE SUN'S INFLUENCES. 521 the wonderful energy of the sun's heat we must look at another aspect of the question. All the rivers of the globe have been evaporated from the earth by the sun's heat. If we knew the water discharged by all the rivers into the oceans making clue allowance for the water lost in its course to the ocean, we would have the rain- fall on the land. Careful measurements of the annual discharge of some of the most important rivers have been made by competent engineers. The water passing over Niagara Falls yearly equals 5,270,000,000,000 cubic feet. In passing from Lake Erie to Lewiston, the river descends 326 feet. The force exerted in the descent to Lewiston is 9,200,000 horse power. To obtain the same power from steam-engines would require 156,400,000 tons of coal. The mechanical power of the river through the 326 feet of fall is equal to three-fourths the steam power of the globe. All the mechanical work done by steam in the United States could be executed by the Falls alone and still leave a surplus of power. The coal mined in the United States in 1872 equaled 40,000,000 tons; while in Great Britain it amounted to 1 17,000,000 of tons; the aggregate being 157,000,000 of tons. It would take nearly the whole annual production of both countries to obtain by the steam-engine the power exerted by the descent of the Niagara River from Buffalo to Queenstown. That steady, ceaseless plunge of the great waters, and the sullen roar, point significantly to the sun's heat as their cause. The basin of all the lakes, whose waters form the Niagara river, has an area of 335,505 square miles. The area of the earth is, in round numbers, 197,000,000 square miles. Nearly one-fourth of this is land, which is 49,000,000 square miles. Divide the last number by 335,505 square miles, and we get as a quotient 146. That is the whole land surface of the earth would make 146 basins, each equal to that which supplies the Niagara river. Granting the average 522 SIGNAL LIGHTS. precipitation to be the same as on the basin of the lakes, it follows that all the rivers of the globe discharge a quantity of water about equal to 146 Niagaras. Let us look at the Mississippi river in reference to the enormous quantity of water discharged into the Gulf. The river drains a basin whose area equals 1,244,000 square miles. According to Abbot & Humphries, United States engineers, it discharges annually into the Gulf 19,500,000,000,000 of cubic feet. From Cairo to the Gulf the descent is 291 feet. The quantity of water is 3.7 times that of the Niagara. The amount of coal to generate in the form of steam the same power the river exerts, in its fall from Cairo down to the mouth, would be 139,680,000 tons, three and a half times the quantity mined in the United States in 1872. Recollect that every pound of force the river exerts in its descent from the dripping crags of the mountain peaks to the Gulf, is caused by the heat of the great sun after passing 93,000,000 of miles of space. But even this gives a very partial view of the work the heat has done on the waters of the Mississippi. Some of the vapor has been lifted up thousands of feet into the atmosphere, and carried thousands of miles to the head waters of the Mississippi and Missouri. Some of it has climbed the lofty peaks that border the western edge of the basin, and drenched them with its drops, or wrapped their summits in snow; while another portion has scaled the moun- tains from the Pacific slope and finally mingles the waters of the Pacific with the Atlantic ocean. The human mind is incapable of gathering up more than a few of the details of this magnificent subject. Many of them are too subtle and recondite to be clearly grasped. In the return of the waters they have touched with their magic power the plant germs bedded in earth, and awakened them to life. They have dis- solved the dead dust and commissioned it to serve the living, THE SUN^S INFLUENCES. 523 and, lo ! the mosses cover the crags and feed on them ; stately trees clothe the mountain sides, shade the valleys, and fringe every rivulet. The winds whisper, the brooks ripple and the cataracts thunder in a chorus of voices. And the sun looks down on his handy-work, and its heat, unseen, is busy every- where. All this is no fiction, but facts stranger than fiction; and he who runs may read them if he will. It has been stated that the basin of the Mississippi is 1,244,000 square miles in area; equal to one-fortieth of the surface of the land on the globe. If the fall of rain on it is about the average of the precipitation on the whole earth, then there could be on the land only 40 Mississippis, or 146 Niagaras. Carrying with us these two rivers as terms of comparison, as far as their flow is concerned, we' will advance another step. As incomprehensible as are the quantities of water flowing in forty Mississippis, they are quite over- shadowed by the effect of the sun's heat on the oceans. Take the Gulf-stream on our eastern coast. Whether it is caused by the heat of the tropics making the water specifically lighter there than toward the poles ; or by the interchange of cold undercurrents from the polar seas with the warmer sur- face water of the tropics; or by the great currents of the atmosphere acting on the surface water; or, as is probably true, by all these combined; this is certain, the heat of the sun is the cause, however it may act. The lowest estimate of the volume of water flowing in the Gulf-stream, is fifty miles broad, one thousand feet deep, and a velocity of two miles per hour. In a year this amounts to 24,421,478,400,000,000 cubic feet. It is impossible to get a just conception of this enormous number. Comparison with some quantity a little more within our comprehension may aid us to catch a glimpse of the greater. The Mississippi is quite 524 SIGNAL LIGHTS. too large for us to handle, yet it is a rivulet compared with the Gulf-stream. The volume of water passing through the channel of the Gulf-stream for channel it has, though its banks are water, is equal to 1,252 Mississippi rivers ! Now the water that falls on the whole land surface of the globe, cannot possibly make more than forty rivers like the Mississippi, while the Gulf- stream is equal to thirty-five times these combined Missis- sippis. This it simply saying that as much water runs in the Gulf-stream as in all the rivers of the globe! But even this does not begin to exhaust this mode of viewing the sun's heat. The Japanese current flowing between the Asiatic coast and the islands of Japan, is believed by some to be larger than the Gulf-stream, c Besides the whole oceanic basins from pole to pole, composing eight-elevenths of the earth's surface, is a complete net-work of currents, interlocking, curving from impact of current with current, or with a sinuous coast line, and moving as steadily as the rivers down their channels. And all this because that Great Sun, sitting on his distant throne, breathes his warm breath on the waters, and they leap to obey the call. Great Sun! Blessed Sun! No wonder that in times of deep ignorance men worshiped the apparent giver of so many blessings. One other topic will complete this view on the question. If the sun were enclosed in a hollow sphere whose radius reached the earth, then the whole heat would be stopped at that surface. The heat falling on that surface will be found to be 2,200,000,000 times greater than that which falls on the earth. The heat which passes by us into space exceeds, by the above enormous quantity, that which works such wonders on earth! A very small fraction of the heat radiated from the sun is arrested by the planets ; the remainder is dissipated in space. It would seem that there is a tendency to equilibrium of THE SUN'S INFLUENCES. 525 temperature throughout all space, which must finally be reached; unless some restorative process be applied and all things begin a new cycle of changes. We will ask the reader to make one more effort to grasp this great subject. There are many millions of suns, some of them, perhaps many, larger than our own, which are also dissipating their heat through space. How long have they flamed in regal splendor; and how long ere they sink to cold and dark bodies? What magnificent problems does the universe of matter present for investigation to the lovers of Science! The mind is constantly meeting new heights which bound its inquiry; but it scales their summits and behold ! other fields lie before it in unspeakable beauty and grandeur. And no end will ever come to its progress. But let us return reverently to our sun. There are many enquiries touching it which are not yet answered. Source of Surfs Heat. The natural answer to this query would be: The sun is a burning body. If by this is meant that it burns, as wood or coal in our fires, by chemical reactions between the fuel and oxygen or some other suitable gas, then it will in time burn out, and a body once burned is no longer combustible. The years would pass and the great sun would finally flicker like a dying taper and expire. A vast globe of cinders and ashes would be left. If the sun were a body of coal and were to furnish heat at the present rate, it would last only 5,000 years. Fifteen hundred pounds of coal must be burned on every square foot of surface per second, to maintain its present temperature. This would be consuming every second a layer of coal ten feet thick covering the whole surface of the sun. The heat from every square foot would run a steam-engine of 7,000 horse power. The SIGNAL LIGHTS. whole heat produced would, according to Johnston, be capable x> melting in one second 287,200,000 cubic miles of ice. Surely the sun's heat cannot be supplied by ordinary com- bustion. Let me remind the reader that we are now doing the work of the world by the old, very old sun-heat, which was stored up in plants, then buried age after age beneath the massive rocks, and finally changed to coal by heat. That coal now gives back to us the light and heat which was shot from the sun long before Adam and Eve awoke to the bliss of Paradise. That heat has woven threads of steel, like the warp and woof of the loom, over the earth's surface; and the clatter of the wheels, and the puff and roar of the engine vex every plain and forest, and break the silence of the mountain tops. The trackless oceans listen, and part their waters to give passage to the innumerable ships that trust their treacherous depths. And the night almost shames the day by new suns begotten by their great Parent, but born on earth. Ah! that catching sunbeams, condensing them to a solid state and laying them safely away had some end in view. But shall I chase this question of the sun's heat a little farther? Dr. Mayer, of Heilbrom, Germany, thinks the heat of the sun is caused by the fall of meteors, comets, and perhaps small planets into the sun. It is well known that when one body strikes another, heat is produced. All we need to know is the velocity of the body, and the quantity of matter in it, in order to- determine the amount of heat. A blacksmith can hammer a piece of cold iron into a red heat. A ball from one of the monster guns of the present day fired against an iron target produces intense heat and a brilliant flash of light. One pound of matter as we estimate it here, falling into the sun from a very great distance, would cause heat enough, if THE SUN'S INFLUENCES. 527 used in a steam-engine, to lift 1,000 tons five and a half miles high. A writer says, it " would fling the Warrior, an English iron-clad with all its guns and other equipments, over Ben Nevis," a mountain 4,400 feet high. It is easily proved that a block of coal falling from the earth to the sun, would cause by the blow 6,000 times as much heat as by merely burning it on the sun. Let me again state that the heat from the collision of bodies is not guess-work. Meteors,, composed mostly of iron, gleam like sunlight when they strike our atmosphere at a velocity of thirty miles a second. In this case they are heated at an elevation where the air is exceedingly rare and light; and where the resistance would be slight compared with the lower strata. Besides, a body falling to the sun from the orbit of Neptune would acquire a velocity of 390 miles per second. Were the earth to fall into the sun, the impact would keep its heat for 60 years. If the kingly Jupiter were to come crashing into the body of the sun, they would both flame with regal splendor for 30,000 years. This bombardment of the sun to keep it warm is subject to insuperable objections. To toss into it every century a body as large as the earth would, in a long time, so increase the attraction of the sun as to accelerate the orbital motions of the planets and thus shorten their years. No decrease in the length of the earth's year has been detected for the last 3,000 years. We therefore very cordially withdraw the charge against the children of the sun doing so unfilial a thing as to wage a hot warfare against a venerable parent, who enlightens, clothes, and warms them. For the credit of the planetary system we are glad the charge is not sustained. 528 SIGNAL LIGHTS. There is another, and far more favorable view of the sun's heat, first presented by Prof. Helmholtz of Berlin in 1853. He advanced the theory that the sun had been con- densed by gravity gradually into a smaller compass; and by this means secured a constant supply to replace the heat radiated into space. And just here it may be well to state that the heat caused by the condensation of a body is well understood and easily estimated. Air may be suddenly condensed, and heat pro- duced so as to set fire to combustibles. A small lead shot flattened between the teeth becomes warm. Hot iron bars passed between rollers become hotter where the compression takes place. The sudden compression of the air along the path of the electric discharge, is partly the cause of the intense light and heat produced. It makes no difference whether the contraction be sudden or gradual, the same amount of heat will have been produced. According to Helmholtz, if the sun was originally, as is highly probable, a mass of very thin gaseous matter, filling an immense space,, then its condensation by gravity to its present size would supply its radiation for 20,237,500 years. If this gas was intensely hot from collision or any other cause, before con- densation, then we can account for 50,000,000 years of addp tional heat. Helmholtz shows that a contraction of 250 feet each year in the sun's diameter, would supply its present waste. At the above rate the sun would decrease in size 450 miles in 9500 years. This change, even if it has occurred, in the above time could hardly be detected by the most perfect instruments. At our distance from the sun the diminution in diameter would be only one second of arc. No objection can be made to this theory, because we see no apparent change in the size of the sun's disk. Had measurements been made 5000 years ago with the present unrivalled instruments, the THE SUN'S INFLUENCES. 529 change would now be inappreciable. The views of Helm- holtz are more in accordance with our present knowledge of the nature of heat, and the modes of its production; yet Nature may have her secrets touching this great question to be revealed to earnest seekers at some future time; and which will change the present views. " Learn and wait " is the true motto; but never block progress by the assumption that there is nothing more to be learned even on the best known subjects. A craving to know, courage to try, and modesty in reference to attainments, are prime conditions for progress in everything that is good. From these views of Helmholtz we are able to assign not more than 18,000,000 of years as the sun's past history; and 30,000,000 in all when it will be burned out, and then live on in the darkness and chill of its own ruin. On what a lofty pedestal science stands, and how majestic the truths it unfolds! It takes us back to points in time,, beyond which no human mind has passed, to heights where no arrow shot by man has pierced ; and to depths where no lead dropped by human hands has ever sounded. On the outskirts of knowledge everywhere lie mysteries, some of which will by and by be mysteries no longer. Science fixes an approximate limit before which the sun did not shine, and a limit after which its fires will be extinct. There is one more point which must not be omitted in estimating the influence of the sun's heat on the earth. Everyone knows that the rains and rivers are planing down the surface of the land and depositing the solid matter in the ocean. But the magnitude of this abrasive and solvent action requires careful study to comprehend it. Navigable rivers are often obstructed at their mouths by the deposit of silt; and to keep an open and navigable channel is often difficult, and always expensive. The deltas at the mouths of great rivers 34 530 SIGNAL LIGHTS. are enormous deposits of mud brought down by the stream. The front of the Mississippi delta is 120 miles broad, and the blue clay, which is characteristic of the silt of the river, is found by soundings to extend two hundred miles each way, east and west ; and fifty to one hundred miles from the land. The area of the delta is 38,600 square miles, a little less than the state of Ohio. Messrs. Humphreys & Abbott, United States engineers, made a very able and elaborate report upon the hydrography of the Mississippi, and the facts stated in this article are taken from their report. Very careful experiments were made year after year of the quantity of water discharged into the Gulf, and the proportion of solid matter contained in it, and also the amount of heavier sediment slowly pushed along the bed of the river. The yearly discharge is 7,474,- 000,000 of cubic feet of mud. The basin that supplies the water, and of course the sedi- ment, has an area of 1,244,000 square miles. Suppose the mud were made as dense as the rocks from which it has at some time been worn, and then spread out uniformly over the whole basin, it would cover it to the depth of one-six- thousanths of a foot. At this rate there would be carried off on an average one foot in depth over the whole basin, in 6,000 years. According to Humboldt, the average height of North America above the ocean is 748 feet. This last number multiplied by 6,000 gives 4,488,000 years to reduce North America to the level of the sea. If we take 1,000 feet for the height of the continent, then the time would be 6,000,000 of years. Approximate estimates only can be reached in such a case. The higher limit, 6,000,000 of years, is probably too great. The following table compiled by Prof. Geikie, shows that the proportion of sediment in some other rivers is larger than in the Mississippi, the Danube only excepted: THE SUN'S INFLUENCES. 531 The Danube would reduce its basin one foot in . 6846 years Mississippi " . 6000 Ganges " ' ,,_ ^ ^ 2358 Rhone . . 1528 HoangHo " " " " " " . . . 1464 Po " " '! " " " . 729 These estimates are very significant, even if we make any reasonable allowance for a decrease in the rate of wearing, as the land approaches the level of the sea. It adds another item to the great work of that great sun. The water that softens and wears, and transports, has been driven into the atmosphere by heat, and carried by winds to its destination. The flow of all the rivers of the globe had its origin in the sun. It is a long distance, 93,000,000 of miles, to reach out its fiery hand and smooth down the rough places of earth. Though the time to complete the work is long, there is no delay and no rest. God is never tired. The most important thought that springs from this discus- sion is, that all the changes caused in the universe of matter by natural energies must have had a beginning, and will come to an end. Changes approaching a termination must have had a beginning else the possible changes would have been exhausted long ago. The sun radiates its heat and light into space. Unless there is some unknown mode of restoring the loss, the supply must give out. The slow rising of portions of the earth, which delay the wearing down to the water level, cannot last forever. Things that are finite v because they are approaching their end, must also be finite with reference to a beginning. No thing can make itself. That which made it must have existed before it. Science requires as a postulate a Creator, and thus substantially recognizes a God. Science can sometimes fix a probable limit to the time when the change began and when it will end. It is believed by 532 SIGNAL LIGHTS. some that the present rate of radiation from the sun cannot continue more than 10,000,000 of years; and that its begin- ning does not extend back more than the same period, making its life under existing conditions 20,000,000 of years. If 5,000,000 of years are added at the beginning and end for a lower rate incapable of supporting life as it now exists on the earth, we get 30,000,000 of years from its morning to its evening twilight. A long day for the sun to work out its light giving history! It is born, lives, and dies in one day, but they are God's clays. Change is the order of nature, but that makes it certain that the end is approaching. If it comes slowly, as we count time, yet it never halts. Even our earth, seemingly so fixed, is drifting to the great deep. So are we ; pilgrims both one to the fathomless abyss, the other to boundless time. The earth has not existed forever, else there would be no dry land. It is nevertheless getting old and its heart growing cold. For millions of years it has buried its children under the sod; and over some, the frailest and weakest, it has built a mausoleum of rocks miles in depth. It strews its memento of flowers yearly over their graves, and waters them with tears from the skies. What shall be its fate in the coming ages none but God can tell. JOHN CLARK RIDPATH, LL. D. HISTORY AND HISTORICAL STUDY; THE LESSONS OF THE PAST FORETELLING THE EVENTS OF THE FUTURE. BY JOHN CLARK RID PATH, LL. D. "We may gather out of history a policy no less wise than eternal. Walter Raleigh. 2 -NTIL men lose their inter- est in what is human, the story of the past can never cease to fas- cinate. So long as homo thinks more of homo than he does of ursus, so long will he turn with sympathy and delight to the record of the past achieve- ments of his race. Humanity is the very essence of the theme ; and for this reason it may well be claimed that History is the grandest subject presented to the understandings of men. It may be truly averred that the story of the social, civil and intellectual emergence of the human race, toiling upwards by hard stages from the fenlands of barbarism to the great plateau of light and freedom, transcends in interest, if it does not include in its scope, every other subject of inquiry. 534 SIGNAL LIGHTS, History is the epic, not of angels, but of men. Turning our faces to the past and fixing our attention upon the shadowy figures that flit into our field of vision, we at once recognize ourselves. It is not forsooth the story of some alien and unknown race, but of our own. We perceive at a glance that these beings of the moving panorama think our thoughts, speak our speech, do our deeds by day, dream our dreams in slumber. When the old shipwrecked ./Eneas stood gazing upon the frescos of the Trojan battles in the royal hall of Dido, he there beheld himself among the actors. His frame quivered and his eyes filled with tears as he recognized the very heroes with whom he had fought and suffered in the defense of his fated city. There were his friends and kinsmen, the fugitives of his broken house and kingdom, and last and most illustri- ous that gray and glorious Priam in the last hour of the earthly doom. Such a fresco is every true historic page. For in this historic page we recognize, first of all, a heroic ancestry. These actors here in the foreground of the scene are our fathers, and further on are their fathers makers of a mighty past, progenitors of a mightier present. Those who walk afar by the Tiber, by the Ilissus, by the Euphrates, by the Indus, are they not all of our own race and kindred? The blood that streaks the clay on the further bank of the Granicus, that stains the battle-ax of Martel, that drips from the block in the Place de la Revolution, that reddens the powder-smut on the rocks of Gettysburg, is it not all of a common hue and heat and passion, thrown by a common life- and-death throb from the heart of a common humanity? They of the past have suffered and toiled and travailed even as we, their descendants; and our sleep shall presently be like theirs. From the beginning until now the story is as con- tinuous and the interest as persistent as the life of the human HISTORY AND HISTORICAL STUDY. 535 race a drama that can never fail to fascinate except in the case of those whose intellectual abodes have neither windows nor hearthstones. Strangely enough, however, this general view which places History at the head of all the subjects of human inquiry is de- rived from right reason rather than from experience and obser- vation. When we say that History is the one theme worthy of our noblest powers we speak the very truth, but it is a truth deduced from philosophy rather than from the actual practices and illogical habits of mankind. It is one of those peculiar cases in which the theory seems to stand at cross-purposes with the facts, and human preference is contradicted by the syllogism. The transcendent interest and importance of History over all other departments of inquiry is admitted as a truth by nearly all who are capable of right thinking, but the truth is felt as a motive and transmuted into conduct by very few. As a result of this palpable break between right reason and bad method a large majority of men even under conditions of high enlightenment have found and still find for them- selves a quicker interest and perhaps a deeper profit in the investigation of questions that are non-historical. As a rule the attention of the intelligent student will be more easily fixed by the peculiarities of hexameter verse than by the peculiarities of the ostracism at Athens. He will be more ready to place on the board a summary of the one hundred and thirty-five adjectival inflections of Greek than to present an outline of the laws of Numa. He will commit a table of paradigms in preference to a list of dynasties will be more interested in an account of dynamite than in the story of Cromwell's boyhood. Instead of the historical lecture room, where he must give ear to the annals of political transforma- tion, the birth and development of institutions, the rise, the 536 SIGNAL LIGHTS. culmination and the lapse of states and nations, he will generally elect the hall of physics, where he may watch the action of sunlight on iodized paper, the crystallization of molten sulphur, the formation of an electrotype, or the sudden arrest of the venom of the rattlesnake by the injection of alcohol into the half-curdled blood of the bitten animal. Even in the case of the adult thinker, with his steadier views and maturer judgment, this anti-historical disposition of mind may be readily discerned. He too will choose to study the working of natural laws, the evolution of tangible phenomena, rather than to contemplate the complex move- ments and toilsome progress of human society. On his way with friends to the evening lecture he will prefer that the Uses of Electricity rather than the Influence of Magna Charta shall be the speaker's theme. He goes to Machinery Hall in preference to the Museum. He would sooner witness the explosion of Hell Gate than to see the mummy of Ramses, and would rather own a microscope than the Turin Papyrus. Strange enough, however, he prefers to be thought a scholar rather than an engineer, a historian rather than an experi- menter, a builder of states rather than a builder of bridges. In short he will wish, if he do not declare, that the topics to which his thought is mainly directed shall be wholly, or at least principally, drawn from the laws and processes of mani- fest nature rather than from the laws and processes of humanity. For this apparent and, indeed, real contradiction in the thinking and doing of men, and for the actual indifference of our age to historical studies, two general grounds of reason may be ascribed. In the first place, it is one of the peculiar- ities of our time as it may have been a peculiarity of all ages to care but little for the past. "Dust to dust," says HISTORY AND HISTORICAL Sl^UDY. 537 the unspoken thought of the world. "Forward! and let oblivion claim its own," is the echo. " Let the. dead past bury its dead," is the aphorism that expresses the well-nigh universal senti- ment of mankind regarding whatever is . ended. Down with the curtain, and make ready for the ensuing scene! There / O may be a sigh in the aching heart, but it is unheeded; the heavy door swings to, and the ponderous iron bolt flies into its socket, saying hoarsely, finis. Tears for the fading past give place to reviving wit. Sympathy for the thing accomplished soon sinks into mere interest, interest into curiosity, and curi- osity into apathy and indifference. Men think, if they do not say, that the present and the future are sufficient; that their good is enough, that their evil suffices. To scrutinize the narrowing past seems like a reversal of the telescope like an about-face in the eternal marches of man and of the stars. Nor is this disposition, bad though be its philosophy, to be rashly decried. It is true that the book of the past is closed that the hasp is covered with dust. It is true that the graves of all events are so many moss-grown mounds of earth. It is true that man can not stand forever looking back and weeping; but he ought not to forget that from beneath the brazen hasp of the shut book and out from those mossy mounds of earth flashes upon his present station and progress the only effulgence worthy the name of light. The second general reason for modern indifference to his- torical inquiry is found in the difficulty of the subject, and also in the failure of our methods and, maybe, of our abilities to remove that difficulty by adequate instruction. This fountain with its double sluice has contributed powerfully to raise an embankment between the human race and its own past history. The drama of the world is thus thrown below the horizon; 538 SIGNAL LIGHTS. and he who would gratify his vision with a glimpse of the actual movements of mankind must ascend the dyke of diffi- culty, clamber through the wrecks of bad method, and then be content to view a landscape obscured with fog-mist and overhung with drooping clouds. Reflect for a moment on the difficult nature of the subject- matter of History. How vague is even our clearest concept of a past event! How shifting is the outline how hard of apprehension ! How elusive are the shifting scenes of that wonderful panorama! How they blend and re-form and dis- appear! How chance and chaos and confusion with their obliterating brushes dash out the lines of a rising cosmos as the whirl goes on ! Is there here anything like order, anything like law? To gain an adequate idea of those events called historical requires indeed one. of the largest and most comprehensive efforts of the human mind. It demands a steady view, a sweeping vision. It implies that the curtain shall part which stretches with its flat and pictured surface between us and the past, and that there shall be revealed an actual landscape on whose slopes and hills afar the beholder shall see men as trees walking. It means the development of historical perspective, the opening of vistas almost infinite, stretching from the fore- ground broad and clear to the far and fine horizon. It signi- fies the scientific use of the imagination whereby a living interest may be excited in events long mouldering in the grave, but now quickened from the dead. More than all this, it requires a power in the mind to rise from among the facts which it is considering, to hover above them, to remove to that distance near or remote from which the most favorable view, the most instructive observation may be taken, to brood over the facts until they take form and classification, until they gather into significant groups, until cosmos appears and law HISTORY AND HISTORICAL STUDY. 539 holds forth her scepter. Such are the essential difficulties which impede the study of historical events. The other kind of impediment flowing from the last is found in the oracles which the student of history must consult for his information. These are more uncertain than the Pythian responses of Delphi, or the half-syllabled utterances of Jove in the oak woods of Dodona. Mark this well: The events of the past are seen only by reflection. We must be content with a looking-glass. Caesar is dust. No man shall see him more. Gettysburg is only a picture surviving as yet in the quick memories of men, but ere long reduced to mere words, to pigment on a canvas, to lettered tablets, to bronze, to stone, and finally to the dust of dust. The past must be viewed in some reflecting surface held up by the agency of man, and of these media there are but two that are not warped into deformity, cracked and flawed and twisted. These two are found, the one in art, the -other in letters. Both are of absolute fidelity. The first is the Monu- ments; the second is the Drama. Of the trustworthiness of monumental remains it is not needed to speak. The Birs Nimrud tells the truth ; the pyramids lie not ; the Sphinx is faithful to her trust. Viewing these relics of the ages long silent we stand again face to face, not indeed with the man of antiquity, but with his works. In the case of the drama the light is caught by a glance sidewise. If the dramatists (and the epic poets may well be included) had aimed to write history they would have failed. It is exactly because they did not aim to produce a historical narrative that they have succeeded in doing so. So far as history is concerned their work was unconscious; and for this reason the personal equation disappears. They knew not, in their wonderful delineations of human life and character, that they were producing a historical record of vast importance to after 540 SIGNAL LIGHTS. times. Their pages are so many photographs of the varying aspects of a vanished society, but the pictures were taken with no view to the enlightenment of posterity. The drama appeals to the sentiments and passions of the passing age. It seeks to move men to admiration, to pity, to anger. It would open the fountain of tears and the pearly gates of laughter. It strives with breeze and gale and storm to sway and bend the multitude as the winds agitate the forest; but while this is the conscious purpose of the dramatist, he is all the while making an unconscious transcript of the manners of his age-: a picture which presents the very form and fashion of the epoch. And necessity makes the transcript true. In the drama the magnate of Lapland does 'not send his servant for a fan; neither does the lord of Timbuctoo order out his sledges and furs. Charlemagne does not menace Ibn al Arabi with a pistol, and Czar Peter does not telegraph to New York for a battery of Gattling guns. The same necessity which constrains the dramatist to accuracy for the purposes of his art assures to after times the historical fidelity of his pictures. And thus it happens that Homer and Sophocles and even the chattering Aristophanes have con- tributed as much to our knowledge of the ancient Greeks as Herodotus and Xenophon and Thucydides. Turning to the professed historians, we find indeed more nar- rative, but less truth. Here it is that self-consciousness and the natural bias of the writer come in to color and pervert the record. Charity will concede to nearly all the historians the intention to be truthful ; but the good intention is not enough. The mind of the true historian must combine within itself a number of rare and extraordinary qualities. First of all the perceptive powers must be well developed and strong; the mental vision, clear. The memory must be like wax to receive like adamant to retain. The judgment must be comprehensive. The logical HISTORY AND HISTORICAL STUDY. 541 faculties must spring with nimble bound from confused and heterogeneous facts up the sloping ladder of induction, and descend with equal agility and swiftness from the broad plat- eau of general laws to the particulars which they govern or explain. More than this, the historian must possess the peculiar faculty of artistic combination. It does not suffice that he be an intellectual mechanic an artisan a mere cobbler, pegging fact to fact and sewing piece to piece. He must possess something of the power of the dramatist some- thing of that creative instinct called genius. Besides these gifts of intellect his ethical nature must be robust and full of generous health. Stand off, O thou Narrowmind, O thou Bigot, and touch not History ! Avaunt, O thou temporizing Partisan, thou superserviceable Shuffler, thou base laudator temporis acti, and touch not the uncorrupted page with your ooze-dripping pen of prejudice and passion! Back to your own place, O thou poor political Juggler, thou dress-coated Sycophant in the halls of power, thou soft-handed Flatterer of mean men and mean manners, and utter not a syllable in this cool chamber of truth and justice ! But even if we grant to the historian all the intellectual and moral prerequisites of his high office, if we concede to him a breadth of understanding as great as the greatest and an ethical constitution tall as the pine and sturdy as the oak, we must still expect to find his work disfigured with imperfections, if not deformed with things monstrous.' For if it be difficult to attain to historical knowledge, what shall we say of the diffi- culty of writing history? Who is sufficient for if? If the his- torian do his best and be the greatest of human intellects, still how far from perfect must be his work ! Is there any mirror that gives back all the light? Is there any that does not distort the image? And yet a looking-glass has no prejudice. It has no favorites no enemies. It speaks no particular Ian- 542 SIGNAL LIGHTS. guage, has no national bias, is not provokable to passion. It belongs to no sect or party, and has no recollections of the Middle Ages. But your historical looking-glass what of it? Albeit, we are speaking of a glass as good as may be, and not of one of those partisan affairs which, like the cylindrical mirror hung up in the Arcade, makes you one way as short as a toad and the other way as tall as a giraffe. But let us drop analogies. How hardly can the historian doing his best produce a single chapter equal to the burden of his subject-matter; ho\v hardly a single page ! Is there, indeed, in all the books of the world a single paragraph that will bear the test of destructive criticism? bear it absolutely, and come forth as the molten gold comes out gold and is gold forever? I have given attention not a little and for years not a few to historical writings, and I should hesitate to select such a paragraph. I reach forth across the table and the book 1 accidentally touch is the first volume of Carlyle's French Revolution. I open it at random: it is page 15. This is what he is saying of Louis XV. : " The world is all so changed; so much that seemed vigorous has sunk decrepit, so much that was not is beginning to be! Borne over the Atlantic to the closing ear of Louis, king by the grace of God, what sounds are these, muffled, ominous, new in our centuries? Boston harbor is black with unexpected tea. Behold a Penn- sylvanian congress gather; and ere long, on Bunker Hill, democracy announcing, in rifle volleys death-winged, under her star banner, to the tune of Yankee-doodle-doo, that she is born, and, whirlwind-like, will envelop the whole world." This is a graphic picture of our Revolutionary business in its earlier stages, but is it true? Few writers are more care- ful than Thomas Carlyle, but observe what happens to his HISTORY AND HISTORICAL STUDY. 543 picturesque paragraph as soon as it is put to torture. Note well: Louis XV. died on the loth of May, 1774. Boston harbor became u black with unexpected tea " on the evening of December i6th, 1773. The sound of this transac- tion might well have reached the ear of the dying Louis. The " Pennsylvanian congress " did not gather until Sep- tember of 1774. How could the closing ear of Louis catch the sound of that? Bunker Hill was fought June I7th, 1775. Louis had been dead more than thirteen months! The " star banner " of democracy was not invented until June loth, 1777. The rifle volleys of the New England democracy could hardly fly horizontal across the Bunker Hill meadow under the folds of a " star banner " yet uncreated by nearly two years ; nor could the sound of such volleys provoke the dull, cold ear of death in the vault of St. Denis. And yet such a paragraph is by no means exceptional. On the contrary, it contains more truth than the average. It is true in art, if not in fact ; and it is better that the chronological flaws should exist than that the dramatic grouping of events should be wanting better that curious criticism should chuckle over a whole litter of anachronisms than that Pegasus should be harnessed to a dray. But, after all, what is History the thing so difficult to apprehend, so impossible to write? The penetrating mind of the Greeks gave us the verb historeo, signifying to inquire into a thing, to scrutinize it for information, to learn there- from ; to extract from facts a knowledge of their nature, and to embody such knowledge in the form of learning or philoso- phy. The product of such investigation, the embodiment in some form of record of the knowledge obtained by the inquiry into facts, the Greek writers called historia history. From 544 SIGNAL LIGHTS. this germinal meaning the term has expanded into its present significations. It has drifted, like many another linguistic fragment, from dialect to dialect, from country to country, from age to age. It has added an idea here and another there, until the word has dropped much of its old-time distinctness and hangs like a nebulous star in a sky of haze and dimness. The word " history " has, in fact, become a generalization, and has lost in definiteness of outline as much as it has gained in extension of. sense. It corruscates with many meanings, and its spectrum shows a complexity of lines only equaled by that of the stars. As in the case of the words progress, laiu, civilization, and the like, the term history must be defined from the general usage of writers and from popular acceptation; but the definition must nevertheless be carefully deduced from the most authentic sources and be drawn with absolute fidelity. Let us note, then, what the competent have said of the true sense of that great fact called History: History is philosophy teaching by examples. Dyonysius Halicarnasseus. History is a compound of poetry and philosophy. Macaulay. It is a record of the follies and crimes of mankind. Ibid. It begins with the novel and ends with the essay. Ibid. History is the essence of innumerable biographies. Carlyle. It is the first distinct product of man's spiritual nature; his earliest expression of what can be called Thought. Ibid. It is as perfect as the Historian is wise, and is gifted with an eye and a soul. Ibid. History is a voice forever sounding across the centuries the laws of right and wrong. Froude. It is a child's box of letters out of which you can spell any word you please. Ibid. Truth comes to us from the past as gold is washed down from the moun- tains of Sierra Nevada, in minute but precious particles, and inter- mixed wi'.h* infinite alloy, the debris of centuries. Bovee, HISTORY AND HISTORICAL STUDY. 545 Industrious persons, by an exact and scrupulous diligence and observation, out of monuments, names, words, proverbs, traditions, private records and evidences, fragments of stories, passages of books that concern not story, and the like, do save and recover somewhat from the deluge of time. Bacon. m History makes haste to record great deeds, but often neglects good ones. Ballou. History is the science of sciences. Buckle. History casts its shadow far into the land of song. Longfellow. What want these outlaws conquerors should have But History's purchased page to call them great ? Byron. The list of definitions and opinions might be multiplied ad infinitum. Is it possible, then, to make up the definition out of these multiform expressions? Possibly for most of them are true. Each is touched with the idiosyncrasy of the individual mind from which it proceeded. Each is a partial display of the truth. In the first, it is easy to discern the acute philosophizing of the Greek intellect. In the next three, the rapid and brilliant, but frequently hasty, generalizations of Macaulay are quickly discovered. The half-German mind of Carlyle leaves its impress unmistakably in the extracts from that deep critic and fierce Hun of the English language. In the first quotation from Froude we ma)' see the Calvinism of boyhood strained through the brain of an adult skeptic. The second excerpt from the same author is simply false. How any philosophic mind, capable of producing a reputable historical narrative, could say that History is a child's box of letters out of which you can spell any word you please that is to say, give to a historical event any interpretation you please is one of those strange freaks of eccentricity which must be accounted for by some whim of training or caprice of heredity. If the universe of things were searched with a 35 546 SIGNAL LIGHTS writ for the discovery of that particular analogy which shall give us the best idea of what History is not, the child's box of letters might well be selected. Why should any writer, who believes and dares say that the significance of human events is merely mechanical and forced, weary himself with the study of records and the infinite toil of composition? It were better for him to spend his time and energies among the mysteries of the 13-14-15 puzzle. In the other quotations it is easy to trace the mental quali- ties of the several writers from the discursiveness of the Baconian mind to the misanthropy of Byron. Putting them all together, we might form a jewel of many facets, each reflecting the light after its kind; but, after all our lapidary's alchemy, we should have a subjective rather than an objective (and therefore true) idea of History. The latter can be obtained, not indeed by looking backwards upon ourselves into ourselves tracing there the shadowy outlines of things after they have been warped and twisted out of form by the refracting media of our consciousness, scarred and indented as it is with a thousand prejudices, but only by looking straight out at the facts themselves with the cold, clear eye of reason and dispassion. History may be defined as an authentic narrative of human events arranged on the lines of the forces that produced them that is, on the lines of universal sequence and causation. It is only in recent times that a true concept of the general plan of History, or even of the facts composing its subject-matter, has been obtained. In the old school,, facts were viewed without respect to their relations. Events were considered as mere islands in the sea of time and space. The movement of History was not seen, but only the aspect. It has remained for the clearer vision of our day to discover that the move- ment is everything and the aspect nothing. Because the HISTORY AND HISTORICAL STUDY. 547 historians of former times dwelt upon the aspect and noted not the movement, their work took the form of description rather than explanation. They were delineators, and not expositors; they painted, but could not interpret. They saw the thing, but not its antecedent ; they > described the fact, but not its causes. With varying skill they drew the outlines of events and put them into woof with the threads of chro- nology and geography. But the finer lines of antecedence and consequence, of causation and concomitancy, of producing force and necessary result, were neglected, unnoticed, unknown. They dealt with mere tangibilities, the form and contour of things, and not with relation and dependence. They knew the fact, but not the law, and wrote of phenomena rather than principles. Instead of viewing the historical universe as everywhere in a state of transformation, progress, evolution, they saw it as a dead result, a mere residuum, motionless as a picture, fixed as a photograph or the stone leaves of geology. Different as can be from all this is the method of to-day. Now has shot out of the nebulous fire-mist a beam of sunlight and the way is brighter for its falling. Though our vision be not yet thoroughly purged of film and cloud, we nevertheless do see; and with the first glimpse of actual sight we perceive that the various parts of the human universe are constantly changing from a lower and simpler to a higher and more complex system; that every part is in process of adaptation to some end better than any previous result; that there is, in brief, progress, development, everywhere manifested in the affairs of men, if only the mind's eye be able to discover and mark the forward march. This idea of substituting the movement of events for the aspect is, with the writer of History, the first element of achievement, and with the student, the first condition of pro- gress. From that hour in which the historian first fixes his 548 SIGNAL LIGHTS. attention upon the evolution of civilized life from the lower to the higher forms, he begins to grasp the essentials of his prob- lem. This concept is the axiom and postulate of the whole question. The only reason in the world why fiction reads with an ever-swelling interest to the close, why the denouement is accompanied with the splendid excitements of tableau and naming calcium, and why, on the other hand, historical nara- tive palls and darkens and sinks to an inane finale, is because the former is constructed on the lines of natural sequence and development, while the latter is produced by the mere arbi- trary grouping of events. The first depicts the movement of things; the other only the things. A novel or drama written on the same plan with most of our histories would be an intellectual lusus naturae, having the same interest as that excited by other monstrosities. A history constructed on the plan of the drama would, as Lord Macaulay has hinted, be in such demand that not all the printing presses and libraries in the world could appease the clamor of the buyers and readers. These distinctions, as it respects the bottom ideas in pro- ducing and in studying historical narrative, are fundamental to an understanding of the question. The Ptolemaic system of astronomy did not differ more radically from the Coper- nican than does the old and spurious method in history from the new the method of the future. The heliocentric concept of the solar group is not more necessary to an under- standing of the laws and processes of planetary motion and of the beauty and unity of our world-cluster, than is the nomo- centric and progressive idea to an understanding of the true order of human affairs. Perhaps no one has yet succeeded in systematically applying this natural method to the composition of history. Perhaps no one has ever yet read the annals of mankind with the spirit and with the understanding. But it is already the dawn, and the coming of the day is certain. It HISTOR Y AND HISTORICAL STUD Y, 549 will not be long until some genius will write and the multi- tude will read a history which shall begin with the germs of events, scattered here and there in the soil of possibility, and shall be constructed wholly on the lines of natural growth. Development shall take the place of pictorial representation, and progressive order be substituted for bas reliefs. The world-wide law of evolution, involving germination, expansion, leafage, fruit-bearing and decay, shall be taken as the clue of whatever is, and around this vital thread shall be created a living form as like to the original as photograph is to fact. As it respects historical narrative the composition of human story by one mind and its study by another our age is transitional. We are passing from one epoch to another, and our views are colored with the light from both. A little more than a hundred years ago English literature was irradi- ated with a glorious outburst of history. Hume, Robertson, and Gibbon appeared in close succession, and by their genius and industry reared, each after his kind, an enduring pillar of fame. In the writings of these great men, especially in those of Gibbon, it is possible already to discover the germs of a growth of which they were themselves quite unaware. Ever and anon we strike some splendid paragraph or chapter in which the writer has half-unconsciously seized the vital thread and followed it with consistent zeal. But it is only for a season that we are thus delighted. The narrative breaks; the method of the mediaeval annalist is resumed, and not even the superb intellect of the philosopher of Lausanne is able to preserve an interest in what he has created against the laws of nature. Sweeping into our own century we note the rapid trans- formation of historical method as illustrated in Macaulay and and Buckle. The former was the most brilliant and the latter the most comprehensive historian which the magnifi- 550 SIGNAL LIGHTS. cent literature of England has thus far presented. In Macaulay it is easy to observe the confluence of opposing tides rolling in on the one hand from the deeps of the past and swelling up on the other from the floods of the future. His intellectual life was stormy, and the product of his genius was fragmentary and disordered. As a delineator of historical phenomena he has perhaps had no equal among men. Nor was he wanting in that kind of ability that might have brought him to immortal farrie. But on the whole his method remained that of the annalist, and though as a painter of the aspect of human affairs he rises with easy majesty above all rivals and com- petitors, as an interpreter of the orderly movement of events towards higher forms and nobler combinations, he falls into the second rank. In the case of Buckle, I speak not of the results at which he seems to arrive, but only of the method adopted by him and defended with such multifarious learning and cogency of reason. As a methoclist he is peerless. Inferior to Macaulay in style, he surpasses him in breadth of view. To Buckle the movement of affairs is everything. The orderly progress of events catches his eye, and fixes his attention. To him the cause, the tendency, the development of the fact are more than the fact itself. They are the life of the fact, and with the evolution of that life he is principally concerned. This it is that gives him his higher view, his sweep of vision 1 . Having in his hands the vital threads of events and following them in the direction indicated by the arrows of progress, he is able to see farther into the maze and complexity than any other writer who has essayed the crea- tion of a Science of History. It is hardly an unwarranted eulogium to say that, as it respects the comprehensiveness and validity of his method, every other historian from Thucydides to Von Ranke must yield the palm to Henry Thomas Buckle. HIS TOR Y A ND JUS TORI C A L STUDY. 551 But his results are unequal to his method. His work is only a tremendous fragment, broken off like the shoulder of a mountain. Doubtless some of his assumptions are rash, and many of his conclusions wide of the truth. It is not of his assumptions or his conclusions that we speak, but only of his method that lucid and orderly concept of human affairs in accordance with which, if- ever at all, the history of tfye future will be composed. Buckle himself is cited in this con- nection simply because great in conception and plan, ineffect- ive in execution he furnishes the best example of that great transformation through which History as a science is now passing. The work of this noted young Englishman, con- sidered merely as a product of industry and literary skill, may, in the lapse of time and the vicissitude of things, go down into dust and oblivion; but the just sentiments of the heart of man and the outward forms of civilization must indeed be greatly changed ere the remembrance and tradition shall pass away of him, who, first of Britons, penetrated the shadows, and caught up and wove into the imperishable formulae of English speech the sublime principles of human History. In one respect historical literature is stongly discriminated from every other department of formal knowledge. It is this: The construction and the sttidy of History are more closely related, more interdependent, than in any other kind of inquiry. This is to say that the historian and the student of History the maker of the narrative and the reader of the book are more at one than the) 7 can be in any other field of inves- tigation. The dependence of the latter on the former is absolute. Without the historian the student can do nothing at all. How can he, without the help of another, take the first step towards a knowledge of the past? With the exception of a few monumental remains and the known laws of human conduct, as illustrated in the every-day life of man, the student of his- 552 SIGNAL LIGHTS. tory has absolutely nothing to light him on his way. With only these monumental remains and these known laws of human conduct the attempt to reconstruct the history of the British nation or of the Roman Empire would be chimerical and absurd. The written record is a necessity that can not be obviated. But for this, that stupendous fact called the Past would be only fine dust and thick darkness. In other departments of knowledge it is not so. In these the fact remains as well as the record of the fact. And the former is more valuable, more trustworthy, than the latter. The record may be false, but the fact is always true. The student of History has only the record; the student of other sciences has both the record and the fact. He may appeal from the record to .the fact and thus verify his knowledge at every stage of the investigation. If he study physics, the actual fire burns before him more brightly than the wood-cut fire does in the illustrations of his text. For him, as well as for Galileo and Newton, the pendulum swings and the apple falls. For him, as well as for Franklin and Herschel, the electric flash descends the kite- string and Uranus holds on in his orbit. If he study chemis- try, what need of a text? The whole laboratory of nature, open day and night, is his free arena. For him, as well as for Galvani, the frog's leg twitches and the zinc bubbles in vinegar. For him, as well as for Davy and Bunsen, the water parts into oxygen and hydrogen under the galvanic cur- rent, and the burning compound reveals its elemental secrets in the beautiful lines of the spectroscope. If he study astron- omy he may begin as though he were the first born son of the Chaldees. Though there be no book of star-lore in all the world, still for him the majestic wheel of heaven rolls over and under as when the evening and the morning were the first day. If he study geology the earth is his from the azoic bot- tom up to the debris of the drift: he reads the same stony * HISTORY AND HISTORICAL STUDY. 553 pages with Hugh Miller and Lyell, and finds no contradictions in the text. If he study metaphysics he possesses in the cells of his own brain a better text-book than was ever yet con- structed in the languages of men. For him, as for Gautama and Plato, all the myriad forms of intelligence and sensation stand naked on the shores of consciousness; there he may see them as they are. For him, as well as for Abelard and Spencer, the cogitations of the waking mind troop by in legions, and the dreams of the night take wing from all the ruffled lakes of slumber. If he study physiology he finds his own body to be nearer to him and more manifest than any other fact in nature. The beating of the pulse may be seen in his own wrist, but not in any book or on any monument. For him, as well as for Servetus and Harvey, the blood springs from the central engine and, coursing through artery and vein, returns to the throbbing fountain. For him, as well as for Jenner and Lady Montague, the Minerva-eyed heifer of Jersey keeps at bay the horrid specter of small-pox. If he study biology the leaves of the infinite book of life are turned for him with every breeze: he has only to read. Nor is there any other book so splendidly illustrated by so vast an array of artists. No fact or process of all this teeming universe is a thing of private interpretation. For the student of the natural history of life every valley is a laboratory and every mountain soli- tude a lecture room. For him, as well as for Cuvier, the four divisions of the animal kingdom stand fast, and Teutoboch becomes a salamander. For him, as well as for Darwin, the Quaker throat of the rock-pigeon is capable of wearing the violet gules of the ring-dove, while the house-cat becomes the guardian angel of red clover. But if he study History ah, there's the rub! What shall he have if he is a student of History? He shall have books, books, books. Excepting the dry chips of archaeology, a few monumental remains, and 554 SIGNAL LIGHTS. the known principles of human conduct, he shall have nothing but books. As for the facts which are supposed to furnish the subject-matter of these books what of them? Alas, the facts are no more. They have passed forever from mortal ken. They are swallowed up in darkness and oblivion. Only the written account remains, and of this not only the writer is dead, but all the witnesses and the descendants of the witnesses to the seventh generation. Even the author of the record with only a few exceptional instances was not himself a beholder of the things recorded. He only heard or read that they were so and so. The events which he delineates were far removed from him in time and place. Centuries had elapsed and oceans lay between. He is but the reflector of other reflectors, and they of others. Suppose four men at a game of whist. They sit at the table and are absorbed in a contest which depends for its issue partly on the skill of the players and parti) 7 on what seems to them but is not chance. Suppose two mirrors to be set up near by at an angle enclosing the table. Here we have the phenomena of the jury-box. Each mirror catches in its surface and flings into the face of the other, back and forth, the duplicate picture of the players. A long array of counter images is formed, growing dimmer and dimmer down to the further end of the narrowing gallery. Suppose the surfaces of these mirrors to be sensitized, like the plates of the photographer, so that they shall retain as well as receive the outlines traced thereon by the pencil of the sunbeam. Sup- pose finally that the table and the players are taken away, that they perish, that they pass into oblivion, and that the first ten and most distinct of the images are also obliterated. That which remains of the broken picture gallery, especiall} T the dimmer images of the further end, is History ! Not in all respects, however, is the student of the past at HISTOR Y AND HISTORICAL STUD Y. 555 so great a disadvantage as compared with his fellow-students in other departments of inquiry. Though the facts which constitute the subject-matter of his investigation, have passed into eternal silence, though he have nothing but the records left, though he may not readily appeal from the account which he distrusts to the certainty which may not be distrusted, he has nevertheless some rational claims to superiority and a few solid grounds of vantage. In the first place the multi- plicity of the writings which have been preserved enables him to institute comparisons among them, to confront each witness with the rest, and thus to sift and purify the testimony. The examination of a past event becomes like the conduct of a cause in court. The historian is a judge on the bench, and the student one of the twelve. There is the submission of documents, the institution of pleas, an infinity of cross-examin- ation and some sharp practice. If the judge be sound in his intellectual and moral constitution there will be surprising revelations of the truth and much hubbub among the attorneys ; but the charge will go to the mark like the flight of a Shawnee's arrow, and the verdict will stand in the court above. In the physical sciences the constant accessibility of nature has greatly diminished almost destroyed the value of textual treatises. If a holocaust were made of all the scien- tific text-books in the world, Science herself would immedi- ately arise, Phoenix-like, from the ashes more glorious than she was before. For this very reason, however, the scientist looks with a certain measure of contempt on the books in which the processes of nature are explained and illustrated. He knows nothing of that infinite reverence with which the historian and the student of History come to regard the records of the past. As he walks and muses this is the theme of his reverie: That if even the Principia of Newton should be destroyed the Principia of Nature would still stand fast 556 SIGNAL LIGHTS. forever. The scientist is thus comparatively a stranger to those methods of research by which the truth is elicited from the examination of documentary evidences, and as a result he loses much of that discipline and intellectual expansion which come of comparison and the critical method of correcting testimony. Great elevation of the understanding, breadth of view and power of generalization are the sure characteristics of him who becomes a true student of History, and these are the very qualities in which, I believe, the men of science are most likely to be deficient. The very difficulties with which historical study is embarrassed insure to him who masters them a peculiarly broad and comprehensive development of mind, the possession of which is too frequently wanting in the student of science. In the second place the historian may justly claim some advantage in this, that the past has not 'wholly perished. Something remains, here and there, of ancient renown. It is not much, but of exceeding value. Scientific knowledge rests upon a single principle the uniformity of nature; but the uniformity of nature is a hypothesis. It can not be established t>y certain proof. History on the other hand, has v jier proofs, not many, but certain. She has the ruins of Borsippa and Nineveh. She has the foundation of Babel and the cave of Elephanta. She has Troja and Mycenae. She has Khorsabad and Psestum. She has Herculaneum and Pompeii. She has the tumuli of Britain and the limestone woman of Guadalupe. She has the kitchen-middens of the prehistoric Norse-folk, and the stoical god-pots of the old Peruvians. Science has her hypothesis. It is not meant that the fundamental assumptions of scien- tific knowledge are unsound. Doubtless, nature is uniform. Doubtless, the torch carried by Caesar's elephant to light the master home, burned in precisely the same manner as that HIS TOR Y AND HISTORICAL STUD Y. 557 carried by the Kentucky Caesar hunting the coon. Doubtless, it required the same column of mercury to balance the air in Athens as it does in San Diego. Doubtless, the back of the pet cat of Pharoah's daughter sparkled when stroked in the dark just as does the back of Colorado Tom. Doubtless, the grass on which the browsing Nebuchadnezzar fed was dyed with the same percentage of chlorine that colors to-day the outdoor Brussels of the Pennsylvania pastures. But, never- theless, the uniformity of nature is a hypothesis, and not a certainty. It is possible that among the multifarious forces and occult processes of the material world many changes are going on some slow and orderly, others rapid and catastro- phic which may put at fault the closest observation and invalidate the best of inductions drawn from the law of uniformity. It is for these reasons, I believe, that, relative to the same subject-matter, History is sometimes more able than Science to give a satisfactory answer. Take, for example, the problem of the Egyptian sculptures. These were executed with bronze chisels on the face of granite. The work was done with such profusion in quantity and with such elaboration of details as to suggest the fanaticism of a whole nation and the leisure of ages. The carving was executed with as much apparent ease as though the material carved had been so much soap- stone. The inscriptions are elegantly embossed and counter- sunk and ornamented with unnecessary variations to a degree that must ever excite the wonder of mankind. At the pres- ent about six sets of the best steel tools, or which is the same one set six times sharpened and retempered, is neces- sary to carve a simple name and date on a granite slab. No steel implement has been found anywhere among the debris of ancient Egypt; but bronze chisels are frequently picked up in the old granite quarries where they were dropped by the 556 SIGNAL LIGHTS. forever. The scientist is thus comparatively a stranger to those methods of research by which the truth is elicited from the examination of documentary evidences, and as a result he loses much of that discipline and intellectual expansion which come of comparison and the critical method of correcting testimony. Great elevation of the understanding, breadth of view and power of generalization are the sure characteristics of him who becomes a true student of History, and these are the very qualities in which, I believe, the men of science are most likely to be deficient. The very difficulties with which historical study is embarrassed insure to him who masters them a peculiarly broad and comprehensive development of mind, the possession of which is too frequently wanting in the student of science. In the second place the historian may justly claim some advantage in this, that the past has not wholly perished. Something remains, here and there, of ancient renown. It is not much, but of exceeding value. Scientific knowledge rests upon a single principle the uniformity of nature; but the uniformity of nature is a hypothesis. It can not be established t>y certain proof. History on the other hand, has v jier proofs, not many, but certain. She has the ruins of Borsippa and Nineveh. She has the foundation of Babel and the cave of Elephanta. She has Troja and Mycenae. She has Khorsabad and Paestum. She has Herculaneum and Pompeii. She has the tumuli of Britain and the limestone woman of Guadalupe. She has the kitchen-middens of the prehistoric Norse-folk, and the stoical god-pots of the old Peruvians. Science has her hypothesis. It is not meant that the fundamental assumptions of scien- tific knowledge are unsound. Doubtless, nature is uniform. Doubtless, the torch carried by Caesar's elephant to light the master home, burned in precisely the same manner as that HISTORY AND HISTORICAL STUDY. 557 carried by the Kentucky Caesar hunting the coon. Doubtless, it required the same column of mercury to balance the air in Athens as it does in San Diego. Doubtless, the back of the pet cat of Pharoah's daughter sparkled when stroked in the dark just as does the back of Colorado Tom. Doubtless, the grass on which the browsing Nebuchadnezzar fed was dyed with the same percentage of chlorine that colors to-day the outdoor Brussels of the Pennsylvania pastures. But, never- theless, the uniformity of nature is a hypothesis, and not a certainty. It is possible that among the multifarious forces and occult processes of the material world many changes are going on some slow and orderly, others rapid and catastro- phic which may put at fault the closest observation and invalidate the best of inductions drawn from the law of uniformity. It is for these reasons, I believe, that, relative to the same subject-matter, History is sometimes more able than Science to give a satisfactory answer. Take, for example, the problem of the Egyptian sculptures. These were executed with bronze chisels on the face of granite. The work was done with such profusion in quantity and with such elaboration of details as to suggest the fanaticism of a whole nation and the leisure of ages. The carving was executed with as much apparent ease as though the material carved had been so much soap- stone. The inscriptions are elegantly embossed and counter- sunk and ornamented with unnecessary variations to a degree that must ever excite the wonder of mankind. At the pres- ent about six sets of the best steel tools, or which is the same one set six times sharpened and retempered, is neces- sary to carve a simple name and date on a granite slab. No steel implement has been found anywhere among the debris of ancient Egypt ; but bronze chisels are frequently picked up in the old granite quarries where they were dropped by the 560 , SIGNAL LIGHTS. of History a sort of sea-chart by which he may safely traverse the trackless deep. No one, indeed, is prepared to enter suc- cessfully on the study of historical events until he has, in some measure, acquired the habit of glancing from earth to sky. He who can sleep at night without knowing which way is north, can hardly become a historian. Of old time it was believed that human conduct is lawless that caprice, and not order, is the mode of man's activities. By this belief, with its demoralizing corollaries, the progress not only of historical science, but of civilization itself, has been greatly retarded. He who can accept it as true that a given event has sprung from caprice, may well regard all history as a whim. To such a mind human life must seem a mere hazard, man an accident, and society a confluence of follies. . The formulation of customs, the establishment of institutions, the stretching out of laws over a chaos so pro- found and turbulent, appears the wildest of chimeras. Under the dominion of such belief the rational development of the social life of man is impossible. Wherever confusion reigns, the forces of growth are paralyzed, and progress becomes retrogression. In the Land of Disorder, thought is a halluci- nation and reason a specter of the night. In the World of Chance, Socrates is a court fool and Caliban is king. As a secondary result of this acceptance of caprice as the law of human conduct, the past ages of the world have been in great measure given over to credulity. The mind of man, unable as yet to grasp the concept of universal order, has been willing to believe in anything that might be imagined and repeated. The human faculties, under the supposed rule of confusion, have stood with mouth agape ready to swallow all. Wonder was the mental mood of antiquity. To the man of the Old World the solid food of reason, requiring the slow and laborious processes of assimilation, seemed less HISTORY AND HISTORICAL STUDY. 561 grateful and satisfying than did those effervescent marvels which might be taken at a gulp. In the intellectual life of the ancient peoples were blended the confluent streams of phan- tasm and reality; and the record of that life was a melange of truth and fable. As were the writers so were the readers of old time story. Both were as credulous as children. With the Egyptian priests Horus and Ammun were as real as Khufu and Amenophis, and the hymn to the Male Cat of Ra was as sincere as the eulogium of Ramses. In Berosus the two-headed Fish-god Oan is as true a personage as Nimrod, and in Herodotus a dream is as good as an affidavit. But what are those general principles or laws of events, in the light of which the history of the past may best be read and interpreted ? Do such principles really exist ? What are they? It is with unfeigned diffidence that I venture to sug- gest a few of these ascertained -principia of historical science : 1. Nothing impossible has ever happened. 2. Nothing has ever occurred contrary to the existing conditions. 3. Like antecedents will as a rule produce the same results; but 4. The conduct of the individual is more variable than the conduct of society. 5. The influence of the individual constantly diminishes with the progress of civilization. 6. With nations the' determining motive of action is self- interest. 7. Bona bom's / ma/a malts, Good for the good, and bad for the bad. It is possible that this brief list of what may be called truisms of historical inquiry might be safely extended; but the ground of such extension would be strewn with contro- versies. Some even of those here given may be disputed; 36 5.62 SIGNAL LIGHTS. but it is not believed that the axiomatic verity of any can be seriously disturbed. If enlarged and expanded these principles would, in their exemplification and proofs, well-nigh fill all space. The annals of the human race would be the subject- matter of the argument, and the common reason of mankind the orator. He who, even for a brief time, studies with care the history of the past must soon perceive how through almost every page and every line some general law, larger than the event described, is struggling for expression. He must soon perceive that the fact is but the embodiment of a principle, and that the phantasm is only an interpolation in the nar- rative. He must soon perceive that the mixture of the phantasm with the fact is the work of human credulity; that the fact is a part of the eternal substance and reality of things, and the phantasm a mere hallucination of the brain; that the real event is credible in all its parts, and that the impossible is the thing that is not. Among the metaphysicians the limitations of possibility have never been clearly determined. One class of thinkers, taking their clue from the etymology of the word, have put the. case absolutely by saying that whatever can be is possible, and whatever can not be is impossible. Others have taken conceivability to be the measure of the possible, and others still have narrowed the definition to credibility. In which of these three senses of the term is the historian warranted in saying that nothing impossible has ever occurred? If only in the first, then there would seem to be no statement of a principle at all; for impossible and can not be would mean the same thing. But if we take the second sense, the case is o ' different. When conceivability is made the measure of the possible, the phantasm disappears from History. If the definition be narrowed to cedibility, then the marvel goes out HISTORY AND HISTORICAL STUDY. 563 with the phantasm, and only the reality is left, in -puris naturalibus. It were certainly a desirable thing that the limiting circle of historical truth be drawn in to the line of credibility- It is doubtless injurious to the intellectual integrity of the student that he is ever required to accept the incredible as true; but if he be not pressed beyond the limits of conceivability his ethical soundness can be preserved. Beyond this line neither historian nor student can pass in safety. Whatever is incon- ceivable must be dropped from the historic page as a thing offensive to the intellectual and moral constitution of man, and it were well if the incredible should follow the inconceiv- able into the limbo near the moon. It is credible that the vestal Rhea Silvia cast away her children in a basket by the overflowing Tiber. It is not credible, but conceivable, that a she-wolf came and nursed the famous twins into life and vigor. It is not credible, not conceivable, and not -possible, that Romulus in the hour of battle was borne to heaven in a whirlwind to become the god Quirinus. It may be necessary to admit a she-wolf into the Sanctum of History, but the law of gravitation is in the way of the apotheosis of the robber chieftain. It is credible that old King Numa lived and reigned in half-fabulous Rome, and that he gave rude laws to the bandit citizens of the Seven Hills. It is not credible but conceivable that some (human) nymph named Egeria sat with him in the grotto and suggested his legislation ; for the female brain is sometimes abler than the male. It is not credible, not conceivable, and not possible, that Egeria was converted into a water fountain. It may be necessary to admit the inspiration of the nymph, but the laws of chemistry and physics forbid the fountain. It is thus that History sets up her Termini and establishes her frontier lines. 564 SIGNAL LIGHTS. The credible occurs; the conceivable may occur; the impos- sible has never occurred and can not. Every historical event hangs suspended in the midst of the facts by which it is conditioned and held in place. In the world of History no single thing is insulated or can be. Nothing is detached from its relations and dependencies. It is in the nature of things that the whole web of human deeds and thoughts shall hang together, and be accordant in its parts. The historical universe is absolute and whole. It is an integer in process of evolution; and it is not only incred- ible, but unthinkable, that any part should be reckoned out of its correlations with all the rest. After Newton, it became impossible to consider any particle of matter apart from its counter-dependencies with every other in the vast concave of space. Matter is only a phenomenon of force, and force in its ultimate analysis is one not many. The fundamental unity of nature is established on this line. And so in the world of History. Events are but the phenomenal expression of historical forces which are ultimately reducible to one. In the domain of life nature is ever busy with a single pur- pose the preservation of the species. In the domain of History all things tend to a single result the highest devel- opment of man. In this complex and glorious whole, of which all events are but the component parts, one of the elemental qualities is harmony. By this is meant that each thing is finally accord- ant with the rest. When the whole instrument is considered, no single key is out of tune. Even those notes which., sounded by themselves, bray horrid discord melt into solemn symphony in the great diapason. It is thus, O blinded race of men, that even your crimes and horrors are resolved and blended with the music of holy choirs. It is thus that the clatter of the counterfeiter's die is but the drum's tat-tat in HISTORY AND HISTORICAL STUDY. 565 the distance, and the wild shriek of raving Mutiny is only a swirl among the chords. It is thus that roaring and murder- ous Battle, outhowling the thunder of the skies as he storms through the oak woods of the Wilderness, is only a heavy bass in the majestic anthem of freedom and humanity. Sup- porting the sweet strains of peace, and bearing up the tender melodies of love, is the low, muttering agony of Faust, and deep down in the orchestra the discordant groan of Sin is heard under the swelling glories of Trovatore and Messiah. This, then, is what is meant when it is said that nothing occurs contrary to the existing conditions that nothing jars, that nothing is inharmonious with the whole. It is from this point of view that the historian and the student of History must consider all the events of the past and the present. If he do not, his senses will be stunned with noises and his per- ceptions be clouded with mists. He must stand off and cor- rect his vision, else the nearer performers will appear taller than giants. He must avoid the seats against the orchestra, else he will hear nothing but the shriek of the piccolo or the bang of the anvil. He must take such station and hold it against all enticements as will enable him to consider the drama as a whole, and to view the parts in their relations and dependencies. Otherwise he must content himself with the simpler problems of life, and not aspire to know. He may learn to make an escapement or a lever, but can not hope to comprehend the chronometer in which it is to stand. Such an intellect must ever remain blind to the magnificent order of the world, and grope on through chaos to the end. The present aspect of civilization is the exact expression of a result. Things are as they are in the world because of the action of forces that have made them so. The historical present has been born out of the past by the pressure and compulsion of growth and evolution. The antecedents lie SIGNAL LIGHTS. just behind the aspect the cause behind the effect. It is the business of History to discover these antecedent forces and to estimate their value. It is the business of the student to reflect upon them and to observe their operation. In a general way it has been for a long time acknowl- edged that events are the results of causes; but that all events are the results of causes, that the results are neces- sary, and that the sum of the causes contain precisely the aggregate potency of the event have seemed to be propo- sitions too exact and scientific and absolute to be used in the interpretation of human affairs. Yet this is one of the very features in which the new History differs most distinctly from the old. A closer study of the thoughts and deeds and institutions of mankind has enabled us to discover the law of the persistency of force in things human as well as in things material. There is in the affairs of men the same correlation and conservation of energy that holds all physical nature in its generous bonds. Every historical event is projected in obedience to this law, and is merely the quantivalent expression of its causes. Even the seemingly incidental and trivial features of whatever is are determined by their antecedents a sort of historical heredity that gives to each descendent fact the face and form of its ancestor. Like cause and like result is the principium of Universal History. It is in this undeviating course from antecedent to conse- quent, along the endless lines of causation, that all things go forward in the stately marches of progress. It is in this manner that constitutions are created, that great societies arise, that states are moulded into form, that revolutions burst forth from the impact of human heat with combustibles. It is from this high seat of observation that the vast move- ment of History is to be contemplated by whosoever would HI STOP Y AND HISTORICAL STUDY. 567 hear its nobler harmonies and understand its meaning. Doubt- less in all the tides of time no man has yet arisen with powers sufficiently sublime to pierce the maze of our world-drama through .and know in full its inner mysteries. But much may be seen by many, and something understood by all. The thoughtful student of History, however, will soon discover that while events en masse and all the larger parts of human destiny appear to move by law, the actors themselves seem lawless. While society as a whole goes steadily forward as if by plan and purpose while the great orb of civilization traverses in majesty the heavens the motion of man himself is seemingly erratic and fitful, like that of insects darting hither and yon in the solar glow at sunset. Of all the path- ways terrestrial or celestial the most difficult to trace is the orbit of the planet Homo. His equator is tossed up at right angles to the ecliptic; his equinoxes lie north and south; his motion is zig-zag, and his orbit a triangle. Though it may be readily discerned that the system to which he belongs is orderly and grand though the course and goal of that great globe on which he hastens to and fro be clearly revealed in sunlight his own movements are eccentric and whimsical. His actions and cogitations are not ridiculous because of his manifest sincerity and serious demeanor. Only in his higher and rarer moods is he able to consider himself and laugh. But the eccentricity of man is only seeming. It appeals to the eye, and not to the inner sense of truth. Such apparent irregularities are discoverable even in the skies. Venus and Mercury, like their sister planets, ascend the western arc of heaven as though they would go over to the east ; but at a certain point their progress is retarded, and then ceases. For a day they hang suspended in skyland as if doubtful of their course, and then turn back towards the sunset. The rest go on and over, after the manner of all stars soever. As for 568 SIGNAL LIGHTS. Venus and Mercury, even the astronomer adopts the language of sense and says that their motion is "retrograde." But at the same time he knows that there is no retrogression at all, and that if his station were removed to the sun, the mystery would disappear amid the splendors of regularity. So also of man in his little place below. He seems to fly about and dart and dive and circle, and arrive at nowhere. Nevertheless, O short-sighted brother mine, he does go somewhere and arrive. He has his mission and his destiny. His course is onward. Though he seems to start and stop and oscillate, his path lies yonder, and he goes blindly, it may be, but he goes. Consider the bees of the field how they swarm. At the appointed hour Her Imperial Majesty comes forth from the parent colony, followed by her royal suite and humming multi- tude. The action of the swarm is easily discoverable, but the action of the bees? As for the swarm, the movement will be, first, to the apple-tree, here in cluster to await the agency of man. If he come not to the rescue, then, with the return of the scouts, the movement will be resumed course a little to the south of west away to the distant forest with its capacious hollow trunks and wind-flaws. The whole programme of the new colony is easily understood and may be foretold with more certainty than the course of the clouds or the coming of frost. The method of the swarm is known, but what is the law of the bee? Suppose that each of these circling creatures should leave a line behind him as he flies. Suppose that all should trace such lines, from the moment of leaving the colony until they cluster in the June-tree and afterwards are housed in hive or hollow trunk. Suppose that the diagram thus drawn in air were laid before Laplace with the calculus beside him, and he be required to tell us whither the bees are going. Here are the curves; now, whither? He who drew HISTORY AND HISTORICAL STUDY. 569 the system of all worlds in the Mecanique Celeste sits dum- founded before the diagram of the bees. The bee is the man; the swarm is society; the movement is progress. To the larger facts society and progress the testimony of statistics and the doctrine of averages have been applied ; and thus by observation and right reason the general course of civilization and humanity has been determined. For the smaller fact for man himself with his rapid and capricious activities no such principle of interpretation has been found. Of him it is sufficient to say that his conduct is more variable than the conduct of society, and that he is the last fact in universal nature to come under the Reign of Law. The thoughtful student of History will not have gone far in his work until he discovers yet another law of sequence in the affairs of men. This has respect to the relative potency of the individual in different epochs of our race-career. It is a part of the method of human development that the influence of man, as man, shall diminish with the progress of civiliza- tion. The principle does not indicate an absolute decline of human power, but the relatively more rapid march of society. The social and institutional forms of civilized life have, by their magnitude and complexity, somewhat outgrown and overshadowed the object of their existence. While the stature of man has increased a cubit his structural contrivance has- risen to the clouds. While his hinder parts have been disen- gaged from the hill-side of barbarism his fore parts have become entangled in the meshes of civilization. He is less by comparison and slower of growth than the tremendous formulae with which he is enveloped. At first, man was strong and society was weak. Adam had great influence in the state. Governor Nimrod was not afraid of the Opposition. Admiral Deucalion was not annoyed with adverse rulings of the secretary of the navy. General 570 SIGNAL LIGHTS. Alexander the Great was not obliged to abandon a siege by the failure of the Macedonian budget, or forced into a prema- ture campaign with the hope of influencing the fall elections. Even the mediaeval Kaiser Charlemange was not alarmed by the ambitions of great commanders battling with Wittikind, or troubled with the schemes of the politicians of Aix. But with the growth of social forms and the development of poli- tical institutions the counter checks of a complex and power- ful public life begin to impede the display of individual great- ness. Civilization first obscures and then abolishes the hero. The license of man is revoked, and the tremendous sweep of his energies is narrowed to a circle. Already, in the feudal ages, we see Sir Knight Dick Plantagenet whirling his battle- ax on the hills around Jerusalem. But the blow does not fall, and the Holy City is not taken; for the great crusader beholds in a spectral mirage across the western sea the phan- toms of the treacherous John and the plotting barons of Britain : he must away, or be no king. With the march of* events the check upon personal audacity and grandeur becomes every- where apparent. Man as an individual is held back, hampered' and restricted in his activities. Even the greatest is no longer free. Behind Abdalrahman are lines of force stretching away to Mecca and Baghdad. Henry IV. is a veritable Caesar, but Hildebrand is in Italy, and the castle of Canossa is waiting with its snow-covered court-yard for the visit of a barefoot emperor. One chord depending from the crown of the Grand Monarch is held at the further end in Netherland, a second at the Escurial, and a third in the fogs of London. Mark well Napoleon not the Little, but the Other. In all the centuries no stronger than he has trodden the streets of this humble world or slept on battle-fields. And yet he had not liberty I It is the old, old story of Prometheus Vinctus. The Corsican also is chained to the rocks, and the living vultures not of HISTORY AND HISTORICAL STUDY. 571 the Caucasus, but of Bourbon and Hohenzollern, of Brunswick and Braganga, of Hapsburg and Romanoff are at his vitals. Genghis Khan was free, but not Napoleon! Victoria is Empress of India, but she herself is ruled by a parliament of kings. So also in the world of intellectual renown. Here, too, the limits of individual power have not widened as fast as the limits of the structural parts of civilization. Formula has expanded more rapidly than the brain of man. Human genius, as well as organic prerogative, has had a bit put into his mouth and a spur against his flank. Why it is that man has chosen to construct the perishable parts of progress on a scale disproportionecl to his own growth may not be easily determined. History is only able for the present to note and describe the phenomenon without explaining its causes. That this fact of the relatively slower expansion of individual grandeur in our world of thought and action does seem to be a law of human development is, I believe, one of the prime misfortunes of civilization. Sad it is to see the glory of man- hood so deeply immersed in the shadow of organic grandeur. Our epoch contemns individuality and praises formularies. The swing of the uplifted arm is impeded by every kind of scaffolding and contrivance. The modern actor is so entan- gled in the theorems and equations of social algebra that he no longer thinks sublimely or walks with freedom. In attempting to regulate himself he has adopted constitutions- and by-laws until the vigorous man of nature is extinct, and his skeleton hangs museum-wise and wind-shaken in the web that strangled him. As a result of all this, modern society, unable to get on with its great man, sends him into exile. A startling catalogue might easily be produced of the most illustrious offspring of the English- and French-speaking races who have been driven 572 SIGNAL LIGHTS. forth to banishment and death because of some rupture with the existing order of society. Only the Germans have had sense enough to permit their great men to die at home. Goethe could not have lived at South Kensington, or Liszt in Boston. Hugo wrote Les Miserable? in exile, and the great- est history in the world was composed by an Englishman at Lausanne. Young George Washington suffers the horrors of small-pox under the burning sun of the Barbadoes, and the author of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage dies amid the marshes of Missolonghi. The biographies of hundreds of the most famous men and women in western Europe and America have been converted into myths in order to make them conform to the alleged and accepted antecedents of greatness. For what should happen to the ethical teaching of the age if it should be proved that it is THE STRONG, rather than the good, who live and reign in story? It is the tough and impenetrable Reynard, and not the innocent Lampe, who dies secretary of state in the Kingdom of the Beasts. ci? If the historian pause in the delineation of events and in tracing the lines of historical sequence, and turn his thought to the discovery of the prime reason why societies and nations act in this way or in that, he will soon find himself in posses- sion of the secret. He will discover almost without an effort that the bottom motive of human conduct is self-interest. This is not said of the individual, but of society. Whether in the personal life of man self-interest is the -primum mobile of action is a question not so much for the historian as for the philosopher and the casuist; but with organized communities of men the case is clear. As for man himself let us hope that he may indeed be moved by all the high and heroic inspira- tions which the happy poets have attributed to his nature; tmt with the movements of society at large the conduct of communities and nations there is no such reason for enthu- HISTORY AND HISTORICAL STUDY. 573 siasm. I am not aware of any single instance in the history . of the world in which a nation has acted contrary to what it conceived to be its interest. The ultimate analysis of every historical event will show this cold and bitter precipitate in the bottom. It may be that our moral natures are shocked, or at least startled, with the discovery of such a law in human conduct. It may be that, offended at what appears to be a libel on mankind, and jealous of the reputation of our race, we would fain beat about and find some nobler spring, some purer and sweeter fountain feeding the turbid waters of life. But the search is vain. The sour and inhuman floods roll on to the gulf, and civilization steams and welters under the fog in the valleys. In History it must needs be that offenses come and selfishness is one of the worst. The old and witty Greeks were wont to avow it as their motive of conduct. Like other nations they broke their faith when it was profitable; but unlike others they frankly gave the reason. The Spartan ambassadors, brought face to face with a willful and flagrant violation of their compact, dryly answered that it was not their interest to keep it any longer ! It was the most truthful confession ever made at a diplomatical conference. From the time when the shrewd Jacob at the water-troughs of Haran overreached his father-in-law, down to the day when Disraeli and Bismarck glanced at each other with Machiavellian eyes across the table at the Congress of Berlin, self-interest has presided over the quarrels and treaties of mankind. For this the great wars of history have been waged. For this the solemn engagement of the Consul Postumius was repudiated by the Senate of Rome ; and for this the Saxon, the Dane and the Norman swore and unswore their faith a thousand times in the bloody struggles of mediaeval Britain. For this the Catholic and the Protestant diplomates, after a hundred and 574 SIGNAL LIGHTS. twenty-eight years of conflict, sat down at the council-tables of Westphalia and signed a solemn intrigue. For this the hapless Poland was cut in three with the terrible shears of power, and for this the ocean was splashed with blood and battle-rack as the dying Nelson took his last look at the sea and sky through the smoke of Trafalgar. But are nations and peoples never just and true? Yes when it is their interest to be so. It happens in the nature of things that the prime motive of national conduct lies many times on the side of justice, and sometimes on the side of mercy. It is not always profitable to plot and rob and kill. It is not always of advantage that your competitor shall sicken unto death. . It is not always well that the rival and the enemy shall be utterly wasted and consumed. It is not always wise to take and gorge until society falls down of aplopexy and civilization staggers with paralysis. Policy- even humanity comes in to assuage the havoc of ambition, and prudence and expediency act as sedatives on the burning lusts of power. Nor shall it be denied that human society often believes itself to be inspired by noble motives. History is no pessimist. She does not scorn and mock the feeble race of men. She cheerfully, gladly, concedes to her children whatever goodness they sincerely claim. It is only when they become conscious hypocrites and liars that she sends them to prison and the pillory. She willingly admits that virtue is in the thought, and that generosity has its home in the heart. She honors the hero, though his name be on the pension roll, and loves the patriot, though it be of advantage to fight for native land and kindred. She allows to poor mankind all noble motives when they are consciously entertained, and scoffs not at any heroic deed. But has History no morals ? that is the question. If we turn from the ordinary laws, in the light of which the affairs HISTORY AND HISTORICAL STUDY. 575 of men are to be interpreted, and from the common motive and reason of human conduct, to consider the general end and result towards which the forces that govern the world are driving their legions onward, shall we be able to find an} 7 principle of rectification, justifying some things and condemn- ing others? Is there any corrective tendency any natural righteousness in the world? Has History a preference? or are all things alike and of the same moral timbre before her O cold bar of judgment? Are all the multifarious events that drift through time and space, embodying the deeds and pur- poses of men, of a common hue and substance to the color- blind eyes of this sphinx-like divinity? Is there not a right and a wrong? and shall not the one be praised and the other be scourged and branded? Is it possible that in this vast world of human hope and endeavor, rolling and tossing through the centuries, bearing on its ocean breast the sighs .and tears of ages, there is only the crush and swirl of Force and Fate, the roaring of wild maelstroms, the heaving up of shining bubbles, and the sinking of the sodden dead? Or is it not rather true that in all events soever in every deed and purpose of the human race, and in every aspect of the world of life there is a law of moral sequence and an ethical order by which all things are rectified and brought at last to the standard of eternal truth? The answer is briefly this: History has indeed her moral code. It is the briefest and most inexorable in the world. Philosophy can not amend it the oecumenical council can not abrogate or abridge a single clause. All the powers of earth are impotent before this solemn Duologue of civilization and of man. And thus is it written in the simple speech of our fathers: " GOOD FOR THE GOOD, AND BAD FOR THE BAD." When the old king of Saxony ordered Bona bonis, jnala malt's, to be engraved on the steel blade of his 576 SIGNAL LIGHTS. headsman's ax, he wot not that his simple aphorism con- tained the moral theorem of all history. But so it is, and the principle can no more be expunged from the affairs of men than the law of gravitation can be snatched from the planets and stars; In all historical events there is this underdrift of tendency bearing on to the vindication of truth and the establishment of justice. The beautiful appears; the good is seen afar; at evening it is light. How stately in the market-place of this world is the Pillar of Truth! The column of Trajan does obeisance to it, and the summit of Khufu's pyramid is not half so high. The arch of Constantine crumbles away to dust, but the Arch of Justice is eternal. The sculptured face of Cleopatra's granite needle is bitten smooth by the sand-blast out of the Libyan desert, but the inscription on the Obelisk of Right is as sharp and clean as on the morning of the first day. The old gods of almighty Rome have fallen from the niches of the Pantheon and gone down to the oblivion of the under world, but the statues of Love and Hope, of Trust and Virtue, of Fidelity and Courage, will stand forever in the Pantheon of Man. But what is that goodness which survives the ordeal of human conflict and is purified by fire? It is the goodness of strength and manhood, of vigorous devotion and trans- forming force. It is the goodness of valor, of action, and of enthusiastic power. It is the goodness that defends the weak and challenges hypocrisy; that calls Beelzebub a liar to his face; that pulls down the Bastile of tyranny, and volun- teers in the forlorn hope of freedom and progress. Negative virtue is as impossible as negative wind and thunder. History does, not teach that the weak shall inherit the earth simply because they are good. She teaches that the strong shall take it and keep it forever. But she denies her gift of HISTOR Y AND HISTORICAL S TUD Y. 577 strength to any but the just. It is not meekness but wisdom, it is not humility but courage, it is not contrition but audacity that prevails and conquers and reigns. But wisdom is unwise when it is folly, courage is cowardice when it is conscienceless, and audacity is insane when it waves the flag of falsehood. It is not the tearful face but the fiery eye of battle, not soft petition handed up but blank defiance handed down, not innocent tapers nodding in the night but the blazing torch of insurrection swung beacon-wise by brawny and rebellious hands, that wins the peace and brings repose and lights the path through darkness to the dawn. But the eye of battle darts no fire when it glares in the socket of crime; defiance loses his bugle when he sounds the tocsin of tyranny, and the torch of insurrection drops into blackness when it is raised against the temple of truth and concord. Such then are the moral force and trend and preference of History. She chooses the good, exalts the true, and crowns the beautiful with lilies. Not in haste art thou, O majestic Vindicatrix of all events and of all men! Sometimes thy way seems tortuous and hidden and dark as the Memphian labyrinth of old; but thou doest the work. And in the last days thou wilt see that to the river's end and ocean's verge and heaven's hanging fringes, justice shall reign and right be done and truth be told and heeded. How then shall some men say that things do not go well in this brief camping-ground of earth? The greatest genius of all time, bending - in the person of Antonius over the dead body of the greatest genius of the ancient world, has told us that " The evil that men do lives after them, The good is oft interred with their bones." But, for this one time at least, the eye of Avon's glorious bard was clouded with thick mists. He caught not the higher 87 578 SIGNAL LIGHTS. law of History. He saw not the broad and sweeping river of humanity, but only a turbulent vortex and eddy near the shore. With vision purified and strengthened he would have seen that good is everlasting; that truth outlives the ages. He would have beheld in the conflicts and struggles of life only the high winds that agitate the sea and shake from his green waters the sediment of evil. There at the bottom let the foul bed lie until it is converted into stone, to be upheaved and quarried by the men of another world. The end of all civilization and the endeavor of all History is but to usher in the day of human grandeur the rising of the perfect man. And the moral law by which this vast and complex drama is carried forward to its close is only the simple aphorism on the Saxon headsman's ax: BONA BONIS, MALA MALIS. r/ 2^x- ^o PROF. ALEXANDER WINCHELL. LL. D. GEOLOGY AND THE BIBLE; THE TESTIMONY OF THE ROCKS REGARDING THE TRUTH OF REVELATION. BY ALEXANDER WJNCHELL, LL. D. HERE is no part of the Bible whose subject matter approaches so closely and so broadly as the first chapter '* of Genesis, to the territory com- Kr monly held as belonging to science. f! i Those who accept the Bible as a " v ; : supernatural communication must, p therefore, feel a deep interest in the ^ question whether the determinations of science respecting the early conditions of the world corroborate the statements found in Genesis or conflict with them. If a substantial agreement exists, that must be regarded as greatly strengthening the credibility of the scriptures at large. If a conflict is discovered, or thought to be discovered, it becomes a matter of the highest interest to ascertain whether it is real and irremediable, or only appar- ent. If a seeming conflict is capable of reconciliation, it is of first importance to bring out the real harmony. The claims of the Bible concern so profoundly the welfare of man that no taint of invalidity should be allowed to remain. Nor should the * 579 580 SIGNAL LIGHTS. suspicion of possibility of an error be permitted to throw a cloud over the sacred page. If only the possibility of conflict exists, there are willing rejecters of the Bible who will hold the possibility as a certainty, and will disparage the Bible as if it were demonstrated incredible. We must exclude the possibility of cavil, or the antagonism of those predisposed to doubt will be positive and unreserved. i. GENERAL RELATIONS OF THE BIBLE AND SCIENCE. It may be useful to offer some further and more specific statements respecting the attitude from which we ought to estimate the congruity or incongruity of scriptural and secular teachings on subjects lying within the domain of science. What I am thinking of suggesting is applicable both to the relations between Genesis and Geology and the relations at large between biblical utterances and scientific doctrines. Expressly important is it to bear in mind that what we ordinarily speak of as the Bible is only a translation of the real Bible. The Old Testament records in their true charac- ter stand in a tongue which has so long been " dead " that great difficulty exists, in some cases, in attaining to the real signification. The difficulty is greatest in those passages which have long been misinterpreted; and those are the pas- sages bearing upon the truth of the natural world, since our interpretations of these were made at a period when our knowledge of the natural world was crude and often erroneous. In arriving at the meaning of any passage touching natural truth the translator must necessarily exercise his intelligence. Both knowledge and good judgment must be brought into exercise. The requirements are the same as in translating from the Greek the histories of Herodotus or the philosophic, essays of Plato. A translator ignorant of history, ethnography and archaeology would no more be qualified to give us GEOLOGY AND THE BIBLE. 581 Herodotus in the English tongue, than one unfamiliar with philosophic conceptions and unversed in Greek thought, could give us an adequate version of Plato's Gorgias or Timseus. Rawlinson, the most learned of historians and antiquarians, has produced the most exact translation of Herodotus. No one unacquainted with the natural history of the Mediter- ranean shores could fully reproduce, in another tongue, the writings of Aristotle on "Animals." If Aristotle had been in full possession of a knowledge of the primitive history of the world, as it has become developed in modern times, and had recorded some concise general statements based on such knowledge, I venture to say that Aristotle, in those particu- lars, would have remained an enigma for two thousand years ; or that his translators would have attempted to adapt his utterances to the scientific conceptions of their times. What I wish the reader clearly to perceive is the fact that the translator of a treatise embodying scientific statements and allusions, must necessarily perform his work in the light of the science of his time. If the best science is crude or erroneous, he will give an inadequate or misleading coloring to his translation; since he would be accused of making non- sense of his r author should he ascribe to him opinions in science which all the world rejected. Now, everything which can be made a matter of observa- tion belongs* to the store of scientific facts. Whatever can be found out by observing and reasoning belongs to science. Assuredly, science has access to a multitude of facts respect- ing plants, animals, rocks and worlds. It has, then, the data from which it may reason respecting the former conditions of plants, animals, rocks and worlds. Questions respecting the earlier conditions of the earth and its populations lie within the domain of science. Science has the right to an opinion 582 SIGNAL LIGHTS. on such questions ; and it is even conceivable that science may arrive at substantial truth about these things. But these are the very things of which the opening chapter of Genesis treats. And these are the very things of which the world knew almost nothing until modern science found out the probable trifth. It was in this original ignorance of the subjects touched by the first chapter of Genesis that our translators attempted to tell us what Genesis teaches. Is it probable, to the slightest extent, that they have given us the true and full meaning of the original, so far as translation requires knowledge of the subject and a good judgment on the themes treated? By no means. The knowledge which they possessed, and which guided their renderings, was the knowledge of their time, which, upon cosmogony, was only profound ignorance. The light in which they translated our sacred text was the traditional Jewish dogma that the world was 6000 years old, and that it was brought into existence with all its populations in six literal days. What, after all, is science? It is simply a knowledge of the truth respecting anything about which our knowing faculties may be exercised. It is a knowledge of the truth respecting the condition of the world six thousand years ago ten thousand years ago any length of time ago. It is a knowl- edge of the facts which render it probable or improbable that more than six thousand years have passed while the earth has existed. What is the origin of the truth about things? Is it not the same as the origin of things? If we hold that God is the author of all that exists, then we hold that God is the author of that truth which science seeks to acquire. If there is anything true in science, the Creator of the world is the author of it. Can we find anything profane about such science? Can we find anything which is not sacred? If not, then the truth of science is sacred truth, and the truths found GEOLOGY AND THE BIBLE. 583 out through scientific research are as sacred as those which come to us through inspired revelation. Now reflect again under what conditions of former ignor- ance of the truth of nature, attempts have been made to reproduce, in our own tongue, the statements of truth in our Sacred Writings particularly those which are simple enunci- ations of truths ascertainable by scientific research. Is it not inevitable that some conceptions of natural truth received from a mistranslated Bible, may be found in conflict with con- ceptions of truth as ascertained by the latest scientific research? In the light of what precedes, the question implies the answer. Now, we should not feel unreasonably tender about our traditional understanding of biblical statements as long as those understandings are subject to such chances of error. Remember, it is not the meaning of the original about which we have reason to feel uncertain, but only that representation of the original which has been given to us by translators unavoidably ignorant and ill prepared on certain points. But it is natural to look upon the translation as the Bible; and to regard the purport of the translation as the real sacred truth embodied in the original. Generally it is so, beyond all ques- tion; for, on linguistic grounds, the translators of our Bible were fully competent. It seems at first, however, a singular fact that religious affection should cling as fondly as it does to understandings about matters strictly scientific, which at the same time are involved in such chances of error as have been pointed out. That it should be so reluctant, for instance, to admit that the world is more than six thousand years old ; or that there may be inhabitants on the other planets, beyond the probable reach of redemptive efficiency exerted on this planet. But, on second thought, this very devotion to a pro- position which the religious nature once received and conse- 584 SIGNAL LIGHTS. crated as divine truth, is understood to come from the fidelity of the religious nature to its objects; and truly typifies the changelessness of these spiritual truths which alone are the legitimate objects of religious faith. Adherence to tenets, which good reason refuses to sanction, we style bigotry; but even bigotry proclaims that something exists within the scope, of religious activity which is worthy of inflexible devotion, and therefore intended to receive unfaltering defense. The persistent devotion of the religious nature to unworthy objects arises from the lack of intellectual light. The relig- ious faculty is not a discerning faculty; and so it summons into its service the same discerning faculties as we employ on all other subjects. If the intelligence serves it truly, the religious faculty acquires real truth on which to rest. If it supplies information which is erroneous, the religious faculty consecrates it with the same affection; but is doomed, by and by, to the pain and mortification of finding some of its objects of faith discredited by a more enlightened intelligence. By a law of its being, the knowing faculty is ever reaching a broader comprehension, a juster conception of the truths of nature. To the extent to which this is accomplished, the older teachings formerly accepted and consecrated by relig- ious faith are shown to be false, and faith is robbed of some of its cherished objects. Faith is distressed and blindly feels that progressive science is its foe. This appearance of conflict is not altogether an evil, since religious devotion to effete science would end in a religious system unfit for intelligent beings. In fact, such devotion is an impossibility. The religious faith of enlightened believers will show docility to the teachings of science, or it will decline, and become merely the faith of the ignorant and superstitious, while an enlightened faith will supplant it in the acceptance of progressive intelligence. If representatives of the religious GEOLOG Y AND THE BIBLE. 585 creed persist in inveighing against scientific positions strong in scientific sanction, they stultify themselves and repel those accessible to intelligent conviction. If, for instance, the clergyman from the pulpit, as I have sometimes heard him, declares no harmony possible between Moses and geology, then those who feel the conviction which the facts of geology bring, will consider themselves warned away from the church by the very voice sent to win them to it. If the religious teacher stakes the truth of his religious system on the recog- nition of the negro as the descendant of Ham, then those who have followed Ham's descendants into regions never populated by negroes, will choose to accept the lead of intel- ligence rather than that of unenlightened tradition. I feel moved to interpose an obvious reflection on the solemn responsibility of religious teachers who neglect to fol- low the great advances of scientific truth; or, at least, receive with humility and gladness the grand enunciations of science in the domain of natural truth; feeling, as they have a right to, that these truths are sacred arid reflect the character and mind of God, and are in solid union with the whole system of truth. As the human intelligence is consti- tuted, man must yield credence to evidence. Scientists are not to be conceived as pestilent lovers of error. None are more devoted to the search for truth; none are more willing to humiliate themselves and change their opinions when dis- covered in error. But yet they must yield to evidence; they will believe according to the evidence; let prelate or pope or priest denounce as loudly and as fiercely as he will. This is the spirit /)f the native human intelligence. This is the char- acter of the dawning intelligence of the boy at school, or the expanding intelligence of the young man in college. The teaching of nature, meantime, reaches them. The evidences which sustain great scientific doctrines inevitably come to 586 SIGNAL LIGHTS. their knowledge. They contemplate, they reason, they con- clude. There is no power on earth which can urge intelligent conviction out of the line of the evidence. Suppose now the young man, trained to faithful attendance at church, hears his pastor warning against the peril of such and such beliefs, which to him seem irresistible. Suppose he hears his pastor affirm such and such scientific teachings are incompatible with the Bible, hostile to a religious life, synonyms of materialism and practical atheism and yet the evidence sustains them as true. This is a painful dilemma for an ingenuous, truth-loving young man. Yet I have to testify that it is the dilemma in which a large proportion of the educated young men of the day are placed. They are not all worldly-minded. They are not prejudiced against religious belief. They feel the need of religion. They would gladly ally themselves with a form of church belief which gives free scope to scientific conviction. But the constituted religious teachers present him a creed stuffed with effete science, and call that the sine qua non of a religious life, declaring that the effete science must be taken with the religious truth or the distracted seeker is forever lost. In this dilemma what is a young man in the closing years of the nineteenth century likely to respond? Sorrowfully, but firmly, he turns away from the church, declaring his convic- tions more sacred than her authority. " If your religion," he says sadly, " is not reconcilable with the truth which my best intelligence brings me, it is not the religion for which I feel a need." So the church loses his alliance. So the church loses the strength which his intelligence would bring. So the church tends to grow progressively feebler and more imbe- cile, and the "independent" and "rationalistic" organizations grow in strength. To many, undoubtedly, there is something startling in such GEOLOGY AND THE BIBLE. 587 suggestions. I have long felt that they ought to be made with boldness and force and by a friend rather than an enemy. There is no reason to despair of the final interests of religion. It is only for the time being that much of the best intelligence may feel alienated. It is only for the bigoted and imbecile creed that peril threatens. These effete relics of outlived creeds will ultimately be swept away, and the puri- fied and generous creed will be recruited by all the brightest intelligence of the people. I beg to remind the' reader that the statements just made are not intended to be " wholesale." They have in view only a portion of those who speak for the church, though unhappily, a noisy and conspicuous portion. They have in view the controlling influence which this portion exerts in preserving the antique form of the creed, and in waving away those who maintain unswerving loyalty to their intelligence. All honor to those who stand by the complete system of truth scientific as well as ecclesiastic albeit from time to time, they find them- selves in imminent peril of being counted out as heretics a limbo that has lost its influence in the decisions of synods and conferences. All these general principles have their bearing on the par- ticular case which I wish to present to the reader. We have in Genesis a history of the beginnings of the world's existence. It is by far the most ancient document in the possession of man. It is commended to us as the gift of inspiration, but in a cold examination of its credibility, we can not yield to any claim of authority. Does it state what we have found true in this age of the world? That is the only question. Preliminarily, we must ascertain what it really states not what our translation of it states, or assumes. In doing this, we may contemplate the account as a whole, and then more carefully consider its several parts. 588 SIGNAL LIGHTS. II. THE BIBLICAL RECORD. The Composition Poetic, In general conception as a com- position, it bears the stamp of poetry. Great facts are recorded under figures of speech. For instance, intervals of time are defined by inclusion between evening and morning'; the earth is commanded to bring forth grass, and the waters to bring forth moving creatures. The beginning of existence is called the head; and in the midst of the chaos, the spirit of God brooded over the abyss. I think we may trace the imagery farther. In the origination of Eve, she is represented as formed from a rib of Adam, which is a poetic conception of the intimacy appointed to exist between man and woman. So Adam and Eve were placed in a garden, and the evil which tempted them is figured under the insidious form of a serpent. The structure too, of the composition is strophaic distinctly so in the first chapter. Perpetually recurring are the phrases "and it was evening and it was morning; " "and it was so; " " and God saw that it was good." The Procemium. Still further, the first and most general narrative appears to be introduced by some brief announce- ments which serve as a procemium. The procemium, or proem, is the passage which states the theme of the poem which is to follow. Its use has been practised by all the great epic poets. All the great epics are thus introduced. When Homer, the oldest of the epic poets of Greece and "the father of epic poetry, 11 introduced the Iliad, his greatest work, to the world, he began thus: l< Achilles' wrath, to Greece the direful spring Of woes unnumbered, heavenly goddess, sing." And the poet then proceeded to narrate the consequences of the ire of Achilles. GEOLOG Y AND THE BIBLE. 589 When Virgil, his imitator, opened the beautiful epic of the , he announced his argument as follows: "I sing of arms, and the man who driven by fate from the shores of Troy, came first to Italy and the Lavinian shores," and then launched into the midst of the incidents which attended the wanderings of ./Eneas from the sack of Troy. So when Milton, the greatest epic poet of the English language, enters upon his great theme, he says: " Of man's first disobedience and the fruit Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste Brought death into the world, and all our woes, With loss of Eden," etc. Then follows the heroic recital. So when the epic poet of an age older than any of these, writing upon a theme more grandly heroic than any of these, prepares the way for his formal recital, he opens with the prooemium the prototype and archetype of all procemiums, and says: " In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. " These are the first two " verses " of the English text. These embody the announcement of the theme. The details of the events follow. The Four Documents. In further considering the creative account as a whole, we find it to be the first of four distin- guishable documents treating of the primitive history of the world and its inhabitants. The first ends with the third verse of the second chapter of Genesis. It presents a broad outline of the entire work of creation. The second document ends with .590 SIGNAL LIGHTS. the fourth chapter of Genesis. It takes the later events of the creative work, and gives them a fuller amplification and unfolding. It carries the history over the establishment of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden ; the fall, and the chief incidents in the life of their son Cain and his immediate descendants. The third document ends with the ninth chap- ter of Genesis. It follows the subject with new details, and extends it to a later date speaking of the ages of the patri- archs; the depravity of mankind; the deluge, and God's covenant with Noah. The fourth document begins with the tenth chapter of Genesis, and further unfolds the history of man in the posterity of Noah. This method is a true evolu- tion of the subject, and typifies the method of nature in every field of activity. Interpretation of the Prooemium. Now, confining our attention to the first document, let us examine the significance and force of particular words and phrases. In the first verse, Elohim, God is plural. This use of the plural is often called the plural of majesty. Bara, [Pronounced baiv-raiv. It is the third person singular. The citation of some of the characteristic Hebrew words, transliterated into English, will not diminish the popular character of this exposi- tion, since all these may be omitted in reading, while it is hardly practicable to avoid mentioning them in an attempt to attain a true meaning of the text. Many readers, moreover, will be glad to see them.] which is translated " created," signifies primarily, to cut, to cut out, to carve; and secondarily, to create, to produce, Hashamayim, the heavens, is plural, though rendered "heaven" in our text. The particle eth, which stands before the words rendered " heaven " and "earth," is sometimes regarded as merely the sign of the .accusative [objective] case; but by others it is thought to denote the substance of the thing named. GEOLOGY AND THE BIBLE. 591 In the second verse, the earth is said to have been tohoo -vau-bohoo, desolate and empty. The very words have an onomatopoeic signification that is, their sound conveys some idea of their meaning. The conception here is precisely that of the Greeks and Romans. Ovid, the Roman poet says: " Primevally, the sea and land and sky which covers all, pre- sented one aspect in the whole circuit of nature which they call Chaos a crude and formless mass. Nothing existed but inert matter a conglomeration of the discord- ant germs of things not yet combined together." It is to be noticed that it is the " earth " of which this statement is made. At the epoch here referred to, the earth existed. A nd darkness ivas upon the face of the deep, continues our version. The word here rendered "deep" tehom signifies a mass of raging -waters especially the ocean. From the connection it appears that this deep was upon the earth. The earth's surface was " a mass of raging waters." And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the 'waters. The word mayim here used, signifies only -waters, and merahepheth denotes brooding over, as a hen broods over her young. This is a remarkable expression, and a remarkable conception. To some it suggests the ancient Hindoo notion that the earth was produced from an egg. To me it suggests rather the thought which is embodied in the later expressions, let the -waters bring forth, let the earth bring forth. The spirit of God, the vehicle of the power of God, fecundated the waters, and when they brought forth "swarms innumerable," God who made the heavens and the earth was their Father and Originator. The elements of nature orily bring forth when the spirit of God broods over them. When the divine fecundating principle imparts the reproductive potency, even 592 SIGNAL LIGHTS. the waters become the mother of living things, and the land teems with generations of terrestrial beings. Examination of Lange. So much I think must be regarded as " procemium." I am aware that Lange and many others consider the history as beginning with the second verse. But let us consider what is the subject of the statement in the opening of the second verse. It is the earth which is " deso- late and empty." Now, according to those who begin the narrative with the second verse, this was before the existence of light even "cosmical light" the luminosity of the mat- ter out of which the earth was to be made. This involves a contradiction. Next, the succeeding clauses, as I have already reminded the reader, depict events in relation to the earth. The raging waters on which was darkness, and over which the spirit of God brooded, were terrestrial waters. These " waters " belonged to the earth. But Lange and others maintain that these waters are u quite another thing from the water of the third creative day." Having assumed that the procemium does not include the second verse, they are under the necessity of maintaining that the word which signifies " waters " on the third day signifies something else in this con- nection. So they translate it "vapors." Well, if they are thinking of aqueous vapors, the rendering may not be inadmis- sibly strained. But by these " vapors " they refer to " the fluid (or gaseous) form of the earth in it first condition." But the vaporous state in which the earth existed in its first condition, was a state of fiery vapors dry vapors or at least, mixed vapors. To suppose the writer of this narrative styled these fiery vapors tehom, and then, after a few sentences, applied the same term to the waters of the ocean, is to cast upon him the charge of needless inconsistency. Moreover, though the matter of the earth was truly involved in the fiery GEOLOGY AND THE BIBLE. 593 vapors, as long as they existed, the earth was not isolated from the promiscuous mass until long afterward; and it would be an extraordinary stretch of language to begin to speak about the " waters " of the earth, or even the fiery " vapors " of the earth, while yet no earth existed except in potency. The points which come to light in this examination of the procemium are therefore the following: 1. The disclosure of God as originator of the heavens and the earth. 2. The desolate and empty condition of the earth (at the epoch of its first differentiation from the common cosmic mass, as we shall see). 3. The darkness which enveloped the earth (when the gathered clouds excluded the light of the sun). 4. The mass of raging waters (which prevailed while the primeval rains were descending). 5. The myriad forms of life hatching from the divinely fecundated waters. Creation of Light. Now begins the narrative. Without ostentation without apparent consciousness of the sublimity of the thought, the writer puts in five words the most tremend- ous conception which the mind is capable of forming. There was only darkness. The realm of infinite space was filled with gloom which no ray yet pierced. Then with a word, infinite space was luminous. The magnitude of the transition from infinite darkness to infinite light cannot be comprehended. Yet how simple the phrase in which the event is recorded : yehi or vay-yehi or [Sound the i like ee and the o long. The e too, should be pronounced like the French unaccented ,that is, like u in nut^\ let light be and light -was. To Moses Longinus concedes credit for the highest example of moral sublimity. 594 SIGNAL LIGHTS. The Septuagint expresses the sublime thought with greater sonorousness : Gen-es-tho phos, kai phos egeneto. [Pronounce the g hard, and give o the long sound. For the effect, repeat the sentence many times.] Use of Tom. The creation of light, we are told in the fifth verse of 'our translation, completed the work of the " first day." The Hebrew says: And it -was evening and it was morning yom one. [Pronounced yome. The plural of this is ydmim, pronunced yaw-meem.~\ Now, what length of time is implied by the word yom? Undoubtedly, it commonly signifies, as here rendered, a civil day. But I find it employed in various senses. Sometimes it signifies the -period between sunrise and sunset, as in Gen. I, 14, to divide the day from the nighty Gen. VII, 4, forty days and forty nights ; Gen. XXXI, 39, stolen by day or stolen by night. Sometimes it signifies the civil day of twenty four hours, as in Gen. VII, 24, the waters prevailed upon the earth a hundred and fifty days; Gen. L, 3, and forty days were ful- filled for him; Job III, 6, let not [that night] rejoice among the days of the year ; Ps. LXXXVIII, i, / have cried day and night before thee. Sometimes it signifies the light of day, as in Gen. I, 5, and God called the light day ; Zech. XIV, 7, but it shall be one day which shall be known to the Lord, not day nor night. Very often it signifies an indefinite time, as in Zech. XIV, 13, 1 6, and it shall come to pass in that day that a great tumult from the Lord shall be among them. * Every one that is left of all the nations which came against Jerusalem- shall even go up from YEAR to YEAR, to worship the King; Judges XVII, 30, unlil the day of the captivity of the land; Is. XLVII, 7, before the day when thou heardest them not; Job XI, 32, it shall be accomplished before his day, [our GEOLOG Y AND THE BIBLE. 595 version says "time." This use of the word is very frequent in the plural, as, i Kings II, 1 1 , the days [time] that David reigned over Israel iv as forty years', Gen. XL VII, 9, the days of the years of my pilgrimage are a hundred and thirty years. Such expressions as the day of our king, the day of Jezreel, the day of calamity, the day of yehovah, are of frequent occurrence. In Gen. II, 4, it denotes an interval six times as long as in the first chapter: These are the generations of the heavens and the earth 'when they 'were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens" Since the word yom is employed in senses so various, and so many times in an indefinite sense, it seems quite allowable to suppose it was not intended in the first chapter of Genesis to express exclusively a literal day of twenty -four hours the more so, as this chapter itself employs it in three senses, and the fourth verse of the second chapter, in an extended sense. Still more must it be maintained that the literal day is not intended, because so far as the natural evidence goes, the results were not accomplished in six literal days. I was once confronted in a public assembly by a learned and highly respected doctor of divinity and biblical commenta- tor, who declared that the word yom could not be taken in any sense but that of a civil day. When reminded that in point of fact, the events did not occur in six civil days, he felt no inconvenience from the conflict between his interpretation and the facts. The facts were very unfortunate; but his judgment could not be amended. A notion older than the Christian Era was more sacred than a nineteenth century truth. A young man in the audience declared that for his part, he preferred to assimilate the truth of the nineteenth century. What else could be expected when a high represent- 596 SIGNAL LIGHTS. ative of Christian theology declares his tenets incompatible with the accepted fundamental truth of geology? I feel satisfaction in assuring my intelligent friend that he may retain his respect for the Bible without committing outrage on his intelligence. The Bible has friends who do not presume to parry the blows of modern skepticism with the armor of the dark ages. Meaning of the "Firmament" We come in the sixth verse to the creation of the firmament. This word signifies something firm. It comes from the Latin term firmamentum, which, though also designating the vault of the sky, expresses as a word, the idea of firmness. The idea of firmness is adopted from the Greeks, who fabled the vault of heaven a floor of brass; and the Seventy, who gave us the Greek version of the Old Testament, expressed this idea with the word stereoma. The Hebrew word rakiang also conveys commonly the conception of a solid expanse. The notion of solidity, however, when applied to the celestial vault, must have been but the vulgar impression. In any event, the thing here denominated rakiang was neither a solid vault nor the celestial vault at all. We notice that God said, Let there be a rakiang in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the rakiang, and divided the waters which were under the rakiang from the waters which were above the rakiang. Thus the rakiang was something above waters below, and below waters above. Are there any waters above the celestial vault in which the stars appear to be set? Certainly none which sustain any relation to the earth. There are none between the terrestrial atmosphere and the moon. The waters above the rakiang could not be above the atmosphere. They must be borne in the atmosphere. Then the waters under the rakiang must GEOLOG Y AND THE BIBLE. 597 l>e supported somewhere in the atmosphere or beneath the atmosphere, or on the eartWs surface. Finally, we are told in verses 9 and 10, that the waters under the heaven are "the seas." In this state of the requirements, what reasonable resort have we except to regard the watery clouds as the waters above the rakiang, and the watery oceans as the waters under the rakiang ? In this view, the rakiang was the interval between them. It was an "expanse," but not a " firm expanse " nor that expanse in which the stars appear set. For " firmament," therefore, we may read " expanse." And yet this expanse above us seems, when we look upward, projected on the vault of the stars; and the stars appear in it, and we see the whole " heaven " of which the first verse speaks; and accordingly we are told that "God called the rakiang shamayim, heaven or heavens. Land and Vegetation. The narrative next proceeds to the separation of the land from the water that is, the formation of continental surfaces. In immediate connection, we learn of the introduction of vegetable life. In the mention of vege- tation, the broad scope of the conception is indicated: i. In the use of the verb ddshd [pronounced da-w-sha-w\, which, in the Hiphil conjugation, here employed, signifies to cause to sprout. It has reference then to whatever sprotits both higher and lower forms of vegetation. Our translation, there- fore, in saying "grass" is misleading. 2. In the use of the same root in the expression the herb yielding seed. The original says nothing of " herb " or " seed " that is a fancy of the translators. The original reads deshe, shoots, whatever grows / and the whole sentence reads: Let the earth cause to sprout shoots. This also is perfectly general, and includes vegetation of every rank. 3. In the express designation of the higher and conspicuous types '-gneseb, green herbs caus- 598 SIGNAL LIGHTS. ing to scatter seed, and gnets, tree yielding fruit. 4. In the command to the earth to produce vegetation, though much vegetation flourishes in the sea ; since the earth is the ultimate source and supply of aliment, even for aquatic plants, whether rooted in the bottom or floating in the water. Sun, Moon and Stars. Here it will be noticed that it is not said God now created these luminaries. The verb used is not bard, as in the first verse when speaking of originations, but gnasah. The primary idea, says Gesenius, " lies probably in forming, shaping, cutting"; but the leading conception in the various uses of this verb is to do, to make or cause. From this the signification to appoint is not remote; and this sense is common, as may be seen in i Sam., II, 6, // is the Lord tuho appointed Moses, where our version says advanced; 1 Kings, XII, 3 1 , A iid he made priests of the lowest people ,* 2 Chron., XII, 9, And have made you priests after the man- ner of the nations. In Ps. CIV., 19, the same verb gnasak is rendered " appointed " in our version, when referring to this very subject He appointeth the moon for seasons. We may legitimately, therefore, understand this passage of Gen- esis as declaring that the sun and moon were appointed on this fourth day, to rule the day and the night. Our own word make admits of the same, usage, since we may say, " I make a horse stand still," " The king makes you his ambassador." Marine A nimals and Birds. In proceeding with the nar- rative, we learn that the work of the fifth yom was the creation of marine animals and birds. It is noticeable that the form of expression implies that organization sprung from the fecun- dated waters. It is next noticeable that, as in the introduction of vegetation, the general announcement embraces every grade GEOLOGY AND THE BIBLE. 599 of organization in the kingdom. Literally, the text reads, Let the -waters creep -with cra-wl ing animals yishretsu sherets. Everything in the water crawls. The next verse informs us that this includes every living- creature which the tuaters brought forth. v It is noticeable in the third place, that though God commanded the waters to bring forth, it is still said, in verse 21, God created bard. This means that God creates by causing intermediate agents to serve. Besides the general announcement of the creation of all living marine things, the account specifies tanninim, and our translation makes it mean u great whales " a very inadequate rendering. The word is used in the Bible for all sea-monsters. It is also applied to serpents [Ex., VII., 9; Deut., XXXIL, 33; Ps., XCL, 13,] and crocodiles [Ez., XXIX., 29, and XXXIL, i ; Is., LI., 9,] and fearful marine monsters in general [Jer., LL, 34; Ps., LXXIV, 13, 14.] It will be especially noted that " fowl " are mentioned three times immediately after marine creatures, as forming the later part of the work of the fifth day. To the popular appre- hension, the winged creature inhabiting the air possesses so little affinity with the dweller in the ocean, that the close and constant association of the two in this narrative is a striking circumstance. Land A nimals. In the formula, Let the earth bring forth the living creature literally, creattire of life we have sug- gested, as in the last case, the conception of every grade of animals proper to the situation. This general conception, like the other, is then unfolded in its particulars. We find specified behemdth, a dumb beast which our Bible puts down as " cattle " this seeming to refer to the four-footed creatures, with body uplifted above the ground; and then the creeping 600 SIGNAL LIGHTS. thing, which seems to embrace limbless animals, and all whose bodies are dragged over the ground. \ Man. Finally, we are told that God created man as the concluding work of the sixth day, and of the creation. The verb bard is here employed; and it is said that God created ha-adam, the man; and it is added, in his own image created he them. The plural pronoun implies that -woman came into being at the same time and in the same manner. The subse- quent account, then, of the fashioning of Eve from a rib of Adam, is plainly a poetical amplification, intended specially to typify the intimate relations of the two. This history is repeated in the second document of Genesis, with additional particulars. In Gen., II., 5, we learn There 'was not dddm to till the addmdh. In verse 7, Jehovah Elohim formed the dddm of the dust of the adamah. In verse 8, There [in Eden] he -put the dddm whom he had formed. In verse 9, And out of the addnmh made Jehovah Elohim to grow every tree. In verse 19, And out of the addmdh Jehovah Elohim formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air, and brought them to the dddm to see what he would call them; and whatever the dddm called every living creature, that was the name thereof. In verse 20, And the dddm gave names to all cattle. * But for dddm there was not found a help-meet for him. As far as this last mention of dddm, the word is uniformly, except in Gen., II., 5, preceded by the definite article ha; and in this instance, a particle is prefixed. There can scarcely exist a doubt that it was conceived as a common substantive, and not a proper name. Our translators have treated it as a common substantive, and translated it "man," until they reached the nineteenth verse, where for the first time, they assume it as a proper name, and no longer translate it. In * GEOLOGY AND THE BIBLE. 601 the following verses of this chapter, the text treats the word also, as a common substantive, though our translators make it a proper name. In the story of the temptation, hd-dddm still signifies "the man," though our translators regularly give it to us as Adam. In the fourth chapter of Genesis the same usage continues, though Eve is evidently a proper name. It is only at the beginning of the fifth chapter, or third document of Genesis, that dddm is first employed as a proper name, with- out the article. There is reason to believe that this Adam does not refer to the same individual as hd-dddm of the preceding chapters. Here in this fifth chapter, we have the man whose posterity is traced to Noah; and in subsequent chapters, especially the tenth, the information is given which enables us to identify Noah, and therefore Adam of the fifth chapter, with the Mediterranean Race. This Adam preceded Noah by only about a thousand years, and was only nine generations before him. On the contrary, the dddm mentioned in connection with the origination of the world, was the first man] and we have no means of ascertaining the interval of time between him and Adam. The man, therefore, which God is representing as creating in the beginning, is not Adam. The early Hebrews fell into a confusion of thought. They traced their lineage back as far as possible, and there assumed that they had reached hd-dddm of the creative account ; and so called him by emphasis, "Adam." How far they had failed of reaching back to hd-dddm they never knew, and preferred not to know. Thus they gave the world the erroneous impression that the Adam who was born but a thousand years before Noah, and was a well character- ized Caucasian, was the progenitor of all the diversified races of the earth, some of which were known to the Egyptians a thousand years before the flood. 602 SIGNAL LIGHTS. III. THE GEOLOGICAL RECORD. Let us now turn to the testimony of the rocks. It cannot be expected in this essay, to go beyond a concise presentation of the conclusions of science, without elucidation of the grounds on which they rest. Nor can those conclusions be presented except so far as they stand related to the biblical account which we have just passed in review. The Original Nebula. It is almost universally maintained at present, that the earth has had a primordial history common to itself and the other planets of the Solar System. It is almost universally believed by those who have investigated trie subject of cosmogony or world-making, that the common matter of the worlds of our system once existed in a state somewhat analogous to that exemplified before our eyes in the nebulae, or clouds of faint luminous matter, revealed chiefly by the aid of the telescope, in the distant regions of the firmament. We have reasoned to some extent on the probable previous conditions of that matter. We have investigated probable causes of its luminosity, but we must pass such inquiries by. [The reader interested in the ..general questions connected with cosmogony may consult the writer's World-Life or Comparative Geology, 12 mo, pp. XXIV 642^ with illustrations. S. C. Griggs & Co., Chicago.] Good evidence exists that the nebulae are in a state of luminous incandescence; and it is held that the original nebula from which our system was formed, was similarly in a state of incandescence and luminosity. Let this be admitted, and we perceive at once, that the great phenomenon of the prim- ordial condition of the matter of the world was luminosity. This matter must have existed in a state of rotation. It is. next to a physical impossibility that any mass of matter should GEOLOG Y AND THE BIBLE. 603 exist in the material universe except in a state of rotation. This heated matter must also have radiated its heat. As a consequence of loss of heat, the mass cooled and contracted. When a rotating body contracts, its velocity of rotation must necessarily increase. Rotation causes a protuberance of the rotating body around its equatorial belt, and increased rate of rotation causes an extension of the equatorial protuberance. In other words, a rotating sphere becomes an oblate spheroid flattened at the poles. With increase of rotational velocity the flattening increases. The rotation of an oblate spheroid causes parts upon the surface to tend to fly off. This is called the centrifugal tendency. It is greatest at the equator. The central attrac- tion of the general mass tends to hold these parts on the surface and prevent their flying off. This is called centripetal tendency. This tendency cannot become greater or less while the mass remains the same, but the centrifugal tendency continually increases as long as the velocity of rotation increases. At length the centrifugal tendency about the equator becomes equal to the centripetal tendency. Things at the equator now have no weight. In the case of the nebulous spheroid with which we are concerned, a time would arrive when the matter around the equator would be held in a state of equilibrium between centrifugal t and centripetal forces. Then, when further cooling caused further contraction, the equatorial parts would not fall down, but would be left balanced in space. The main mass would shrink away from the equatorial portion thus in equi- librium, and that portion would remain as a ring detached from the main mass. This ring would be itself in a state of motion, exactly the same as before it became detached. How long it might con- tinue as a ring would depend on many circumstances which 604 SIGNAL LIGHTS. can not be calculated. But it can be demonstrated that the ring woufd sooner or later be broken, and then all its matter would be gathered into a globe. This globe would still move as the ring had moved, and the old place of the ring would become the orbit of the globe. It would also acquire a rota- tion on its axis, .and that would be in the same direction as the rotation of the original mass. This globe would be a planet in a primitive condition. Other planets would come into existence in a similar way. This series of changes has been reasoned out on the prin- ciples of physics; and we feel quite certain that the early history of the matter of our system was much as stated. The earth then was once in the condition of such a globe. It was not yet solid; it was not even liquid. Its temperature was still so high that it existed as a fire-mist that is, a vast sphere of fine liquid particles of mineral matter suspended in space, held near each other by mutual attractions, but perhaps prevented from immediately coalescing by the intervention of other matters actually in a gaseous state. These particles of fire-mist had formed through the process of cooling, as aqueous mist forms and floats in our atmosphere. With further cooling, the amount of fire-mist was augmented and the drops were enlarged. Then a fiery rain began. Drops of molten matter descended toward the centre of the great mass, and there they accumulated. There a globe of molten matter grew into existence and continually enlarged. The fire-mist was corre- spondingly exhausted; and when it had all rained down, a molten globe existed of nearly the size of the present earth. A fervid heterogeneous atmosphere enveloped it, composed of all the materials remaining gaseous at the temperature then attained. Next, in the process of cooling, a crust of solid mineral matter began to form over the surface of the molten globe. GEOLOG Y AND THE BIBLE. 605 This of course was still highly luminous. At the tempera- ture existing there were many substances which had not passed out of the gaseous state. One of these was water. All the water which now belongs to the earth was then an invisible gas mingled with the other gaseous constituents in an atmosphere of a very heterogeneous character. The sun was in existence. The sun was the residual mass of the original fire-mist from which had been detached the rings destined to become the planets of our system. The sun remains that original mass to-day, still retaining its partly fire- mist and partly gaseous condition. The moon was also in existence. The moon had been detached from the earth as a ring during the earth's fire-mist period. Thus conceive the sun, the earth and the moon. The sun and moon sent their light as now to the earth, but through an atmosphere copious and heterogeneous. The earth how- ever was not a dark globe as at present. Though incrustation was in progress, the crust was still so thin that the internal heat kept it at a glowing temperature. The earth was then another sun to the moon; and if the earth were in the same state as the sun, it would have yielded twelve and a half times as much light and heat as the sun did, to the possible lunarians then in existence. The Formation of the Ocean. But we remember that the successive events in the world-history which we are tracing were all incidents in a long history of cooling. We must reason out the nature of events which would ensue during the further continuance of the cooling process. We may feel cer- tain that the time would arrive when, in the upper region of the atmosphere, the temperature would be sufficiently reduced to permit the invisible gas of water to condense into the con- dition of visible vapor. The presence of the vapor was 606 SIGNAL LIGHTS. revealed in a thin haze dimming the brightness of the sunlight. This thickened by degrees, and in the course of ages, the envelope of vapor made twilight over the earth or there would have been twilight but for the continued glow of the forming crust. The dense vapors were a mantle of cloud and wrapped the earth on every side. In the course of time the rains began to descend; but in mid-air the fervent heat dissipated them to vapor, and they re-ascended to the clouds. The descent of rain and the ascent of vapor disturbed the electrical equilibrium, and flashes of lightning illumed the convolutions of the clouds. It was as when in the heat of summer, the friction of the rising vapors of the midday breeds the thunder-storm of the afternoon. But the primeval storm was world-embracing. The battle of the elements was waged over a field as wide as the atmosphere, and the lurid and blinding discharges of electricity followed in quick succession during the time of the geologic age. The respon- sive voices of the thunders rolled around the world. This was the reign of chaos. But the conflict had not yet settled to the earth's surface, and the still glowing crust sent its paling gleam upon the field of battle. Some aeons later the rushing rains, so long repulsed, fought their way to the solid surface. Fiercer than before the conflict waged for a time. But the waters were predestined to be victorious. They held the surface; they spread in a universal film around the world. The primeval ocean had come into existence. It was an ocean of boiling water resting on the heated arch which covered the vast molten nucleus of the earth. The floods continued to descend. The lightnings still flashed. But the crust was no longer luminous. The sunlight remained excluded, and " darkness was upon the face of the ' abyss.' " GEOLOGY AND TJIE BIBLE. 607 Here was the separation between the waters which were above the rakiang and the waters which were beneath the rakiang. The space between the clouds and the sea was the rakiang. Germs of the Land. Other ages rolled by while yet the primeval storm was raging and the vast ocean was accumulating. Meantime the process of terrestrial cooling continued, and the cooling mass of the earth contracted. But it will be noticed that the portion within the crust parted continually with some of its heat, but received none; while the crust, though parting also with heat by radiation from the surface, received all the heat which escaped from the inner portion. The inner portion therefore grew cooler, while the crust remained nearly of a uniform temperature. The interior therefore contracted, while the crust contracted less. If the crust when first formed was closely adapted to the nucleus, it became, after a time, through the unequal contraction of the crust and nucleus, too large for the nucleus. Being too large, it would wrinkle; and the wrinkles, once started, would grow from age to age, until they attained such prominence that some of them rose above the level of the shallow sea. These were the germs of the great continents which were to be. Thus, after aeons of shrinkage, the waters were gathered together in one place, and the dry lands appeared destined indeed to become further emergent in later aeons, with broadened bases and deeper oceans between. Meantime the turbulence of the waters was subsiding. Their boiling had ceased. The war of the chemical elements in them had been waged. The overburdened clouds had been o relieved, and a new twilight dawned upon the world. Now the situation existed to which some low forms of organic life 608 SIGNAL LIGHTS. might be adapted; and the spirit of God brooded over the face of the waters; and the lowest forms of vegetation sprang into existence in the midst of them. They were forerunners of the great vegetable type which, from the beginning, con- tinually expanded until its representatives acquired power to hold the land as well as the sea, and developed into the noblest forms of the forest and the plain. These primeval marine plants unfolded in vast profusion, and their remains, drifted in masses upon the ancient shores, became consolidated into those beds of graphite with which our crayons are provided. The plant which grew in this twilight of the world afforded the material for writing its own biography. Close of the Primeval Storm. The escape of the world's primitive heat never ceased. The chill which prevaded the atmospheric region condensed the whole of its aqueous vapor, and the cooling sea returned a diminished amount of steam to the clouds. The mantle which was once so thick as to exclude the solar light, and later, transmitted a brightening twilight, grew constantly thinner. A geologic day was dawning. It had been evening, and now it was morning. In the course of the earth's revolutions on its axis, bringing the periodic dawn and alternating paling of the gray light, a day arrived when the thinned clouds were parted, and the bright sun, ascending its forenoon steeps, poured a full beam of golden light through a rift in the long worn mantle of vapors. The new sunlight fell on the surface of the wide ocean, and illumed its dusky depths. New forms of plant-life were evoked from slumbering germs, and the rudest types of conscious animal organization assumed appropriate stations on the floor of the ocean. Now for the first time had the phenomena of day and night sunrise and sunset been a possibility on the earth. When GEOLOGY AND THE BIBLE. 609 the clouds began to gather, and excluded the light of the sun, the earth itself was luminous. The sun had shone upon it for thousands of ages, but no shadow was cast behind ; and no night succeeded the dazzling day. Now the world had been darkened; and when sunlight returned to it, one hemisphere was illumined and the other was in night. Now for the first time could the sun and moon serve as " rulers " of the day and night. Life in the Ocean. The career of life had been fully inaugurated. The records of the times have been well preserved on the stony tablets filed away from time to time, as the history of the world was enacted. Earlier records wer written on the changeful elements, and vanished with the age ; but the tablet of the cold rocks was enduring. With the story which they have preserved, the science of inductive geology begins. The deciphered legends inform us that the lands were yet narrow, and that all the life for which the world was yet suited was marine. Vast aeons of time rolled by, and with the progressive improvement in the conditions of the sea, progressively higher types of being appeared. The waters were once the exclusive home of the lowest type of coral-builders. The trilobites dominated for a brief time, but were superseded by great rapacious molluscs. Fishes next assumed the sceptre of the sea monsters, uncouth, armored, and death-dealing to all their foes. These yielded empire to the dynasty of marine saurians great tanninim, in which dominion over all the other creeping and crawling and swimming things in the sea was finally crowned. Reptilian Life. The period had now arrived when the lands, with soils accumulated from the decay of ages, were fully clothed with multitudes of primitive vegetable forms. 39 610 SIGNAL LIGHTS. Here was food for the land-dwellers, and the opportunity invited them into being. No habitable place in the history of the world has ever been allowed to waste without its appropriate inhabitant. Humblest and feeblest forms of crawling amphibia first inhaled the vital air; but the next age saw more powerful and more highly organized reptiles assuming the role of sceptre-bearers. The reptilian type holds a sort of central position among vertebrates. Almost all vertebrate classes sustain important structural relations to it. The amphibia trailed their slimy lengths along the very boundary between fishes and reptiles. And now, while the fundamental type of the age was reptilian, the reptiles them- selves bore prophecies of birds and quadrupeds. Some of the reptiles spread out leathery wings and soared like birds. Some gathered their straggling lengths in the more compact fashion of the quadruped, and ambulated like oxen over the plain. Others, suggestive in another way of the bipedal bird, uplifted themselves and marched as bipeds through the reeking jungles. All these were closely related in structure and instincts to the reptiles whose home was in the sea. They lived contemporaneously with them, and many ancient reptilian types whose home, like that of the alligator, was essenti- ally on the land, resorted habitually to the water for conceal- ment. In one broad glance, the whole horde of reptiles sustain such relations to aquatic homes, that they may well be conceived as creatures of the water. Just as the reign of reptiles was declining, the real bird appeared upon the scene fowl which flew in the air the blossom of reptilian organization sustaining by far a more intimate structural relation to reptiles than any other type of vertebrates ; and thus rendering most appropriate the biblical mention of birds in immediate connection with reptiles. GEOLOGY AND THE BIBLE. 611 Mammalian Life on the Land. Even before the close of the reptilian rule, small, inconspicuous mammals had skulked in safe hiding-places among the homes of the cruel and dom- ineering sauriahs. Now, however, at the time appointed for the dominion of a superior type, the ponderous and stolid reptiles shrank back, and the procession of mammals passed through the portal of life. It was now the age of the world styled Csenozoic. They assumed dominion of forest, and crag, and plain. They suited themselves to every condition. They grew into gigantic and uncouth forms, and mingled strangely the traits of diversified types of animals. As time advanced, these comprehensive embodiments underwent progressive resolution. At length each family type became disengaged from those with which it had been bundled in the early distributions of mammalian traits, and the beasts of the earth stood forth, each in the guise under which it was to be introduced to the final possessor of dominion over land and sea. Man in the Light of Geological Evidence. No trace of man has been revealed to scientific research among the records of those ages which witnessed the long history over which we have glanced. Now, however, at the end of the dominant career of this succession of dynasties, man stepped on the earth and began to exercise authority. The lands had been wasted in the service of the dumb creatures which had preceded, and a renovating process brought soil and surface suited to the needs of a reasoning intelligence. When all was ready ha-adam, the man, made his advent in some region of the world where the physical surroundings were friendly to his being. During many ages he multiplied and spread over the earth. He became diversified into several race-types. Finally, in southern central Asia, the home of the foremost racial type, sprang up an advance which seems to have been 612 SIGNAL LIGHTS. the initial point of the various families of the Adamic race. This, perhaps, was not over six thousand years ago. No scientific evidence opposes such an opinion of the antiquity of the Adamic race. IV. THE HARMONY. If such are the facts of science, and such the meaning of the statements set forth in the biblical account of creation, we need not be long in search of the true correspondence between them. We may picture the inspired writer as seated for the purpose of making a record of the truth about the origin of the world, as the visions of it might present themselves to his mind. The first and uppermost and fundamental thought was the pre-existence*of a creator, and the divine origination of all things. Then he records: "In the beginning, God." Then the concept of divine efficiency "created." The concept of the result "the heavens and the earth" all that human intelligence can conceive to exist. Next, the writer pauses; his mind's eye glances down through the aeons of fire-mist and storm; and it is arrested by the scene presented in the midst of the primeval tempest. He records again: " The earth was without form, and void, and darkness was upon the face of the raging deep." He pauses again, and his mental vision passes over the scene of the quieting ocean; and he sees organic forms about to teem into existence, and he writes again : " And the spirit of God brooded over the face of the waters." This was the begin- ning of the exercise of divine energy in the organic world. The beginning involved the whole. The great features of the creative work were embraced in these disjointed sentences, ./Eons separ- ated the periods to which they related ; but these are the burning index-lines of the story of the world. These lines are the proem of the epic. GEOLOGY AND THE BIBLE. 613 And now the hymn of creation begins. The work of the first yom was the gathering together of the world-stuff whose elemental collisions were to light the fire that should send its gleam through the universe. The work of the second yom was the gathering of the clouds, and .the pouring of the waters of the world into the basins of the oceans separating the empire of waters by the interposition of the rakiang or expanse. The work of the third yom was the wrinkling of the terrestrial crust, and the emergence of crests of sea-bottom to mark the beginnings of the lands ; and the simultaneous intro- duction of the type of vegetation in the humblest forms. The work of the fourth yom was the final exhaustion of the long overhanging clouds, and the revelation of the sun and moon to the now darkened earth, and their entrance upon the offices to which they were now appointed. The work of the fifth yom was the outcome of the product- iveness of the sea the birth of creeping things and swim- ming monsters at the end of which, birds passed over the scene, exactly as the biblical account affirms. The work of the sixth yom was the outcome of the product- iveness of the land; and last of all, as the account also affirms, the origination of Man. Six ydmin have passed, and the seventh yom is passing. This work of creation is ended, and the Creator is resting from all his work which he created and made. As the divine Worker rests on the seventh of the divine days, so the finite worker may, by a strict analogy, be commanded to rest on the seventh of his human days. A clearer conception of this parallel may perhaps be acquired from the tabular presentation which follows: 614 SIGNAL LIGHTS. HARMONY OF GENESIS AND GEOLOGY. e : 2 CM Gen. I, i, 2. THE BIBLICAL PROEM. I. God the Creator of the Substance and the Forms of the Universe. II. Terrestrial Chaos. III. Darkness on the Face of the Deep. IV. The Mass of Raging Waters. V. The Vivification of the Waters. BIBLICAL RECORD. GEOLOGICAL RECORD. YOM. CREATIVE WORKS. EVENTS. AGES. I. Ver. 3 -5- Creation of LIGHT. Firemist condensing. Age of FIRE. ABIOTIC. AZOIC. II. Ver. 6-8. Creation of FIRMAMENT or EXPANSE. Gathering of Clouds. Descent of Rains. Earliest Sediments. Age of RAIN. III. Ver. 9-13. Creation of DRY LAND and of PLANTS. Uplift of Continents. Appearance of M a- rine Vegetation. Age of LAND- and PLANT- MAKING. PROTO- PHYTIC. IV. Ver. 14-19. Appointment of LUMINARIES: Sun, Moon and Stars. Dispersion of Clouds. Appearance of Sun, Moon and Stars. Age of PLANT- GROWTH. V. Ver. 20-23. Creation of AQUATIC ANIMALS. Appearance of Ma- rine Animals (mol- luscs, fishes, &c.). And Aquatic Rep- tiles and Birds. Age of MOL- LUSCS and FISHES PALAEOZOIC. Age of REP- TILES & BIRDS. MESOZOIC. VI. Ver. 24-31. Creation of LAND ANIMALS and MAN. Appearance of Mam- mals and Man. Age of MAMMALS. CjENOZOIC. VII. Gen. II, i, 2, 3. Sabbath of GOD. Reign of Man. Cessation of New Advents. Age of MAN. PHRENOZOIC. GEOLOG Y AND THE BIBLE. 615 The foregoing Table sets forth the harmony which the writer has taught and published since 1855. It was originally the result of very careful study. About the same time, as appears, Professor Guyot, then of Princeton, presented a sim- ilar scheme in a series of lectures delivered in New York, and Professor James D. Dana adopted it and introduced it to the world through the Bibliotheca Sacra. [A work more recently written by Guyot is Creation; or, The Biblical Cos- mogony in the Light of Modern Science; izmo., 134 pp. Scribner's Sons, 1884.] The scheme of Dana, as now enun- ciated, is as follows: i. THE INORGANIC ERA. ist Day. Light cosmical. 2d Day. The earth divided from the fluid around it, or individualized. ( i. Outlining of the land and water. 3d Day. \ ( 2. Creation of vegetation. 2. THE ORGANIC ERA. 4th Day. Light from the sun. $th Day. Creation of the lower orders of animals. , /7 ^ ( i. Creation of Mammals. oth Day. \ . , , ( 2. Creation of Man. This harmony differs from mine chiefly in the events of the second day. In this it appears that Lange has followed Dana. But I have shown why this interpretation is inadmis- sible. [For Dana's view see Manual of Geology, 3d ed., 1880.] This differs somewhat from Guyot. While it is of no consequence whether this harmony was published before or after my own, it is an interesting fact that the two were originated in complete independence. It looks 616 SIGNAL LIGHTS. as if there must be some real truth in the parallelism. They confirm each other. All the earlier attempts at establishing a harmony were failures, because their authors would not recognize the primordial fire-mist condition of the matter of the world, fear- ing to give countenance to the dreaded doctrine of evolution. Of course, the entire history of the world, as sketched in Genesis, could never be parallelized with half the history of the world as revealed in the permanent records of inductive geology. The foolish and puerile expedient has often been resorted to of assuming a " chasm " of time between the first and second verses; admitting that vast aeons were perhaps employed, as geology affirms, in the establishment of the world , but that the work was all rehearsed in six literal days, as seemed to be taught in the verses following the first. All this to preserve the traditional interpretation of the word yom. The attacks of scientific writers, notably Professor Huxley in his New York lectures taking the most generous view of them are prompted by the misleading translation in our Version and the mistaken zeal of theologians in standing to its very letter. With such a harmony as I have explained every one should be satisfied. There is no straining of the text or perversion of science. If, therefore, a writer in the infancy of the world could so wonderfully conform his statements to the develop- ments of modern science, his information must have had more than a human source. GEN. B. F. COWEN. BUSINESS INTEGRITY CONSISTENT WITH BUSINESS SUCCESS. ST GEN. B. F. CO WEN. HE satisfactory solution of this inquiry necessarily in- volves an analysis of the subject, and the examination of its parts, which may be stated as follows: 1. What is understood by integrity as applied to business methods ? and 2. What is the highest business success? The answer to our interrogatory caption will depend largely on the answers to the other questions stated, and it is there- fore proper and consistent with the best methods of discussion to examine the latter first, which we shall endeavor to do. Integrity has been defined as moral soundness; honesty; entire freedom from all corrupting influences or motives; uprightness. The wqrd is used more especially with reference to dealings between men in the fulfilment of contracts, the discharge of agencies, and the performance of trusts, but is 61? 618 SIGNAL LIGHTS. also applicable to all transactions between man and man,, whether of the character referred to or in the ordinary, every- day affairs of life. The definition of the word is broadened by looking at its synonyms, one of which is probity. Probity is defined as tried virtue; approved moral excellence; strict honesty; sincerity. And all these qualities must really exist in and inspire a man's action to entitle him to be classed as a man of integrity. We are not now inquiring as to the reputation but the character; not what a man seems to be, but what he is. Unfortunately there is a wide difference in the present organ- ization of society between character and reputation, and we may see illustrations of fact almost every day. It is not an uncommon thing in our criminal courts to see men on trial for crimes extending through years bring witnesses to prove good reputation, when all the other evidence goes to show that they have been men of bad character for the greater part of their lives. Their crimes were secret ; they had lived double lives and practiced deceit continuously. Then, again, a man may be of good character, innocent of wrong-doing, simply because he has never been tried. His good character is not probity, because it has not been tested and proved to be genuine. His virtue is a negative quality, because it has not been tempted and approved. [Integrity implies an entire surrender of self to honorable methods, and especially to those forms of injustice and wrong-doing which might favor one's self, and for the doing of which men are so fruitful in excuses; and has especial refer- ence to honesty in trade, in the transfers of property, and the discharge of trusts.] Thus it will be seen that a man of integ- rity must frame his life after the most rigid rules of propriety ; the most exacting requirements of the strictest moral, social and commercial rectitude. Nor is it sufficient to establish a character for integrity that BUSINESS INTEGRITY 619 a man strictly observes all legal obligations and requirements. It is little credit to a man that he voluntarily does all those things which the law prescribes and which the appliances of our courts are especially adapted to compel him to do, and to punish him if he neglects or refuses to do, and his integrity must be tested by some higher standard. There are obligations known in legal parlance as imperfect obligations, which the laws do not reach and cannot enforce and which are not legally binding between man- and man, and for the fulfilment of which we are accountable to God alone. Among these are charity and gratitude Of the same general character are natural or moral obligations, which, though not enforcable by legal process, are no less binding in conscience and natural justice, as for example, when an action is barred by the statute of limitations, the natural obligation is as binding as ever although the legal obligation is extinguished. No man can long neglect the imperfect or natural obligations of his position without a loss of character, and a growing disposition to evade or disregard his legal obligations. The man who refuses to pay his promissory note simply because it is sixteen years old, would not hesitate to refuse its payment were it a year or a month younger if he could do so with impunity. That he keeps within the law is not the best, nor is it a safe criterion by which to try a man's character for integrity. Human legislation is not the best standard of integrity. The statute books do not erect a perfect model, by any means. If there were nothing to hold society in order but acts of Congress and of legislative assemblies this would be a sorry world, and yet how many men there be who recognize no other standard. It is a noticeable fact that a majority of men consider even that standard too high, and spend largely of their substance to evade its requirements. 620 SIGNAL LIGHTS. It is safe to say that the man who models his life upon the standard of the statute books alone, and who takes risks of occasional departure from the rules therein laid down in direct proportion to the severity of the penalties prescribed, and his confidence in the skill of his lawyer to avoid those penalties, will bear close watching, and is far from being a man of integrity. These may be broad and comprehensive definitions of integrity, and - may be generally considered as somewhat severe, but it will scarcely be maintained by any right-thinking man seeking all the light attainable for the regulation of his life and conduct, that the standard is unattainable. There are no separate standards of conduct for different men. If the foregoing is a correct standard it must be applied to the active business man as well as to the student, the scholar and the professional man. The statute books recognize no separate standard, neither does the moral law. By what right then can the business man claim exemption from any of those rules. Assuming that the standard above laid down is a correct one, that it is fairly applicable to all men capable of dis- charging the duties of citizenship, let us endeavor to trace the indications of departures from that standard in the transac- tions of the ordinary business of life with which all men are more or less familiar. Turning first to the crowded dockets of our courts, both civil and criminal, we are met with a mass of evidence show- ing how men tax their ingenuity to evade the legal require- ments of their positions. The issues involved almost invari- ably disclose a disregard of those requirements which go to make up a symmetrical integrity of character. Every judicial appliance and all the ingenuity of legal talent are invoked to enforce on the one side and to evade on the other the observ- BUSINESS INTEGRITY. 621 ance of the plainest legal obligation. Men who stand high in the community do not scruple to promote their interests and gain their ends by the merest technicalities and the most mis- erable tricks and subterfuges. From the court room, where the tricks of trade are exposed and punished, we go directly to the great business arena, where those tricks are done and suffered, and there we see a cumulation of the evidence found in the courts. Ever since Jacob realized large profit from the application of his peculiar knowledge of the effect of pre-natal influences at the expense of his unsuspecting father-in-law, men have been so intent on their own aggrandizement that they were unmindful of the injury accruing to others. And when Jacob was caught in his ingenious scheme and the morality of it questioned, as it doubtless was, by the helpless victims, he no doubt eased his conscience by the reflection that all traffic is but a game of wits, to be won by him who has the keenest. Thus, at least, argue all the modern imitators of the patriarch, until it has become the rule in business life, as it was in Verona in the stormy days of the Montagus and Capulets, that " the weakest goes to the wall." The casual observer must have frequently remarked that the shopkeeper seldom says aught but good of his wares. Each article is represented as the very best of its kind to be had in the market. Defects are carefully concealed, and if discovered by the keen eye of the purchaser, are treated as of no moment and no injury to the value. Send your child to make your purchases, or accept whatever is given you for a time until the merchant comes to regard you as an ignorant or indifferent buyer, and see how frequently you will be cheated. Why does one person get better bargains than his neighbors at the same shop, if the shopkeeper conducts his business with integrity? 622 SIGNAL LIGHTS. Remonstrate against such treatment and you will probably be met by the explanation that it is but the natural and neces- sary outgrowth of the fierce and bitter competition which everywhere prevails; that margins are so narrow that the law of self-preservation compels and excuses more or less sharp practice ; that others do the same, and one must imitate them or retire from the struggle. Much of the unfair trading referred to is, no doubt, the fault of the buyer. Men and women spend a large part of their time in a struggle to cheapen wares, even below their cost. Nor will such buyers scruple at falsehood to gain their object. But men who thus buy are themselves business men in other lines, and they must be also classed in the category of those who lack integrity. The plea of custom, however, does not excuse a departure from the right. In the domain of law, custom or usage, so controlling in many directions, has no influence to set aside the principles of justice. That the majority of business men are guilty of certain acts which will not bear the closest scrutiny, does not make those acts proper. Public opinion does not construe the law. Sovereigns no longer make laws as they did in* the days of the Roman emperors. Tiberius was reproved by Marcellus for a grammatical blunder, where- upon Capito, another grammarian, observed that, if what the emperor said was not good Latin, it would soon be so. " Capito is a liar," said Marcellus, " for, Caesar, thou canst give Roman citizenship to men, but not to words." The mass of business men in a community may combine to intro- duce wrong methods in trade, but they are powerless to enact unjust or improper laws. There are fine points of difference between acts that are in violation of statute or common law and those that are a vio- lation of the natural or moral law. For instance, the law BUSINESS INTEGRITY. 623 does not punish the misrepresentation of the value of an article. A man may say that his horse is worth three hun- dred dollars when it is not worth one half of that sum, and he is guiltless of a fraud which the law can punish. But if he says his horse is worth so much because he is sound in all respects, when he is not sound, or if he says his horse is sound when he is not, and sells it under such a misrepresentation, he is guilty of fraud and may be punished therefor. Yet there is no moral difference between the two statements. The law sees this difference, that whereas the first is but the statement of an opinion, of which the buyer is presumed to be his own judge, the latter is a matter of knowledge on the part of the seller, of which the buyer is supposed to be ignorant. Again the broker offers to sell a bond at less than its o market value to the widow who knows nothing of such matters, and tells her that he owns a block of the bonds, thus conveying the impression that he would not recommend an article if he were not willing to buy and hold the same himself. This seems plausible to the innocent purchaser, and her little all is swallowed up when the crash comes which exposes the utter worthlessness of the security. The courts cannot reach such an offense, although the widow and the fatherless have been robbed as effectually as if a burglar had committed the outrage. The thunders of Divine justice are launched against such robbers, but human law does not yet reach so far. The robber cares little for a punishment so remote, chuckles over his ill-gotten gains and again " lieth in wait to catch the poor." A popular scheme and one that is worked quite successfully toward amassing wealth is the organization of what are known as " corners," by which is meant the obtaining control of any article of general use, and then arbitrarily forcing up its price to the detriment of the consumer. Thus a wheat corner in Chicago forces up the price of breadstuffs in every market in 624 SIGNAL LIGHTS. the country and increases the cost of living in every house- hold. Corners may or may not be promoted by misrepresent- ation. False reports of growing crops damaged by frost and flood are widely advertised, and a heavy failure in the product confidently predicted. But whether fraud enter into the working of a " corner " or not, it is a violation of the well established rules of integrity above marked out. It is a singular and a significant fact that our courts have refrained from defining fraud. This they do not only because they do not wish to limit their power of dealing with fraudu- lent transactions, but also " lest the craft of men should find ways of committing fraud which might escape the limits of such a rule or definition." It has been stated as a general rule that " fraud consists in anything which is calculated to deceive, whether it fye a single act or a combination of circum- stances; whether it be suppression of the truth or suggestion of what is false; whether it be by direct falsehood or by inuendo, by speech or by silence, by word of mouth or by a look or gesture. Fraud of this kind may be defined to be any artifice by which a person is deceived to his disadvantage." Tried by this rule and how many men in active business could stand the test? Yet the rule is not severe; it is simply a correct and fair statement of principles that must govern all men who aspire to deserve a reputation for strict integrity. Some men spend half their lives devising schemes, which, fraudulent in themselves only because the result is deception, are yet not in violation of the strict letter of the law. The description of a scheme of this character recently exposed will serve as a fair sample of many of the same kind now before the public. A company obtained possession of 25,000 acres of land in a certain state, remote from railroad, or set- tlement, on which were no improvements of any sort what- ever, at $i per acre. This land was laid off in lots, twelve BUSINESS INTEGRITY. 625 of which, with the necessary streets and alleys, were marked out in each acre, or say 300,000 lots in all. These were offered as gifts, one to each person who should apply, sending one dollar, for which a recorded deed would be returned. The dollar was to pay for the deed and the recording of the same. That was the whole scheme. Tens of thousands of persons sent in each a dollar and obtained a bonafide deed for a lot having a real existence in the place specified therein. There may have been nothing in the offer to lead applicants for lots to expect a fortune, nor even any considerable profit, out of their investment. In fact, there was nothing of the kind. The company performed its share of the contract to the very letter, and the deed conveyed a good title to the lot therein named. The immediate profit to the company accrued from such portion of the dollar as was saved after the expense of preparing and recording the deed was met. The contract was a plain and simple one, and it was fulfilled to the letter by the company. After matters had been in progress for some time, an effort was made to punish the promoters of the scheme for using the United States mails to promote' a scheme to defraud, and the manager was indicted in a federal court. Of course, this was thought to be a death blow to the enterprise, and, appar- ently for the purpose of stemming the torrent which the announcement of the indictment would cause, it was advertised in the public prints that the company would buy back any and all lots so sold at an advance of twenty-five per cent, on their first cost. This offer looks plausible and honorable, and would seem to be effective in allaying any excitement that the impending prosecution might create. This is a fair statement of the case, and there seems to be no place where the law has been violated in any respect. But there has been a departure from the strict rules of business 40 626 SIGNAL LIGHTS. integrity which should govern all traffic between man and man. The statements of the company were true as far as they went. Where they were silent, the applicant for the gift of a lot doubtless read between the lines and found there just what he wanted to find a certain speculation; a chance to get something for nothing; to get money without earning it. The bait covered the hook very artistically, but the gaff struck into his cupidity and held fast. For instance, there was no choice of lots. Each was com- pelled to take the deed for the lot that was sent him, regard- less of situation. It is not necessary to say that no corner lots fronting on the public square were thus disposed of. In fact, the lots so given away were necessarily remote from the center of the immense tract by several miles. The streets and alleys were on paper. At the centre a small village has grown up and is slowly increasing. The climate is all that can be desired, and lots at the center have attained some value and are slowly increasing in value. The offer to buy back at twenty-five per cent, advance, ostensibly made to counteract the effect of the criminal prosecution, is really made because many of the lots have really advanced in value and are worth more than the additional twenty-five per cent, offered ; so that the offer to redeem is also a deception. Here is a manifestation of talent in the prosecution of a scheme which, properly directed and applied, would be suc- cessful beyond question, but which has brought its possessor into the very shadow of a criminal court. He has received one hundred thousand dollars from as many fools, who were perfectly willing to defraud some one else. The law can do much, and does, for the protection of society, but it can do little or nothing to protect fools. They are usually the easy prey of the sharper as they were in this case. BUSINESS INTEGRITY. 627 Again, we have in lotteries an instance of different stand- ards in different states. In one state a lottery is legalised, while it is a felony to promote it in another state. A state institution, recognized as legal and proper in the state of its creation, is prohibited from using the United States' mails to promote its interests. If the lottery business is wrong in all the states where hostile legislation exists, is it right in the states where it is legalized? Are the rules of integrity limited by state lines? Clearly not, and it therefore follows that the legal authority to perform a certain act does not necessarily imply that it is right to do such an act, according to the higher standard above stated. History records the names of men who have gone to the scaffold because their respect for the " higher law " was stronger than their fear of the human legislation which their conscience forbade them to observe. Such men, though the criminals of their day, are the heroes of succeeding genera- tions, which worship their memories as the pioneers of moral progress. Had the statute books been the true and only standard of integrity the world would yet be groping in mediaeval gloom. We must conclude, also, that there is no authorized dis- tinction between integrity in the conduct of business, and in the moral and social relations of life, and that the man who departs from the rules laid down for the regulation of the latter in his business life can not sustain his claim to be classed as a man of integrity. We come next to consider the question: What constitutes success in business? And the answer to this must go far to settle the main question with which this paper began. Prob- ably ninety-nine men out of every hundred to whom the question is put will say at once that the only standard of success in business is wealth, and that men succeed only as 628 SIGNAL LIGHTS. they accumulate fortunes; that the richest are the most suc- cessful. This is doubtless the world's standard, and it is quite common to hear said of a man of wealth that " he has been very successful." And the expression is used of men regard- less of their methods or occupation. The majority of people pass over all inquiry as to whether a man's money was made by manufacturing flour or whiskey, by selling beer or bread, and "society," so called, regards men of either occupation with equal complacency, provided only they have become wealthy. Let us assume, therefore, for present purposes, that business success means wealth accumulated in business. Then it fol- lows that the most successful man is the wealthiest, and that all men who have not accumulated a competence at the end of a life spent in business pursuits have failed. This, of course, is the worldly view of the question, and has no regard to the higher motives and purposes of life. Probably the best way to treat this subject is by citing an example of a man whom the world regards as eminently successful. The career of A, T. Stewart furnishes the illustration of a successful business life in the popular sense of the term. Mr. Stewart began his business life on a very small scale and with limited capital. His business grew to phenom- enal proportions and his annual income amounted to mil- lions of dollars. Where is that fortune to-day, and what of the reputation of the man who created it? The fortune is. scattered and the colossal trade has disappeared. He has been dead but a few years, yet he is almost forgotten in the business circles where he was a little while ago a 1 king; and even the place of his burial is unknown. His life was purposeless as that of a miser, and the dazzling fabric which he reared has toppled into ruins like a house of cards, and only exists in memory .as a monument to the BUSINESS INTEGRITY. 629 utter folly of all aimless and useless acquisition of wealth. It was such men that the Psalmist referred to when he said : " I have seen the wicked in great power, and spread- ing himself like the green bay tree; yet he passed away, and, lo! he was not; yea, I sought him, but he could not be found." Among those who regard worldly wealth as the highest good, and riches as the only standard of success, and who strive to attain that kind of success, the restraints of the moral nature grow weaker until they cease to be felt. There are modern methods in business which have worked great changes in the commercial world, not dreamed of in the hum-drum, stage-coach and road-wagon days of our fathers. The aggregation of capital exerts a controlling influence in every branch of industry. Pools, syndicates and combinations control prices, dictate terms to rivals and crush out all feeble opposition. Combinations of labor are but the natural result of combinations of capital, and each in the vigorous prosecution of its interests resorts to methods that can not bear the test of honesty. Small operators in either line are at the mercy of powerful rivals. Individual workmen who would stand aloof from unions and strikes are driven from the labor market where they would fain sell their strength and skill at the current rate. The war between labor and capital is on, and it will be a long and bitter struggle. Each has good ground of com- plaint, because both have invoked unscrupulous methods to compass their ends. The only sure and speedy cure for these troubles is a return to the rules of strict integrity in the management of affairs. The want of integrity in business has inflated the stocks of our large corporations, and the greed of stockholders demands a dividend upon such inflated stock. This can 630 SIGNAL LIGHTS. only be earned at the expense of the laborer, who in turn finds his only successful method of resistance in combina- tions and strikes with all their attendant ills. Thus the war goes on, the breach is daily widened and the day of settlement postponed indefinitely. Take, as an illustration of questionable methods, the management of some of our most important railroads. There are but few of them whose stock and bonds represent only the real investment of money in their construction. As an induce- ment to purchase a railroad bond men are offered an equal amount in stock. Stock thus issued has no value until the road is completed and the public is bled sufficiently to pay interest on the bonds and a dividend on the stock. If the public refuses to be bled then the employes must be ground down to starvation wages to supplement the income extorted from the public. Great fortunes are built on the monopoly of letters patent, and there is scarcely a modern device in use to-day on which there is not an increased price by reason of such monopoly. Those who enjoy the protection afforded by letters patent grow indifferent to other interests for which the government provides less effective protection. Thus the well known proprietor of a patent iron water wheel is a blatant free trader and proclaims himself a manufacturer who denounces all protective tariffs as unnecessary and unjust. This he does because, without a tariff which protects the labor of the miner and the iron-worker, he could purchase his raw material in foreign marts where labor is starved to death and thus increase his gains. The patent right is his sure protection, and he cares naught for the laborer and proprietor in other fields to whom the tariff is the only safeguard. Absolute integrity in business is the only panacea for the troubles that now threaten our prosperity. But this integrity BUSINESS INTEGRITY. 631 must not be confined to the manager's office, nor to the directors' 1 room. It must extend to the workshop, the factory and the salesroom. The directory must be governed by the same rules they prescribe for the book-keeper and the cashier. Honesty and fair dealing must be the rule from the workman's bench to the office. A board of directors should no more be allowed to water the stock than the book-keeper to tamper with the ledger balances, the workman to turn out imperfect work, or the salesman to misrepresent the quality and value of the manufactured product. But the injury wrought by questionable business methods is not confined to the transactions themselves nor to immediate results. It reaches farther and embraces within its baleful influence every human interest. No man can for long persist in the perpetration of petty frauds in business without injuring his moral perceptions, and sooner or later coming to exercise the same looseness in all his other relations in life. Others observing the success of such a man, his wealth, his social and commercial standing, study his methods that they too may become wealthy and influential. Thus it is that a lax business morality is propagated at the expense of the highest morality and to the lasting injury of man's better nature. The man who will deliberately and for petty gain deceive his neighbor in a business transaction will not scruple, sooner or later, to defraud that neighbor in a weightier matter, to embezzle from his confiding employer, or betray a trust when- ever an opportunity offers. The population of Canada is larger to-day by reason of this fact and a cloud of witnesses hover just beyond our national border whose testimony would be conclusive in the matter. The merchant who requires his clerks and salesmen to deceive his customers, even by silence in selling defective or impure wares, has only himself to blame if the habit of 632 SIGNAL LIGHTS. deception thus acquired shall one day be exercised at his own expense by his too receptive pupils. The default- ing cashier, the absconding book-keeper, the missing treasurer, did not become fugitives from justice by a sudden departure from the path of rectitude. It was the little daily lie in business, spoken or acted, the false weight, the impure drug, the rotten fabric concealed which sapped the moral sense and led up to the stupendous defalcation which startles the com- munity, wrecks the family and carries poverty to many innocent households. ) If men could se.e the end from the beginning there would be fewer such crimes in the world. It seems the merest trifle to sell an impure article of merchandise and thus make a penny more to the pound, but if the miserable soul who stoops to such meanness were sufficiently clairvoyant to see the shipwreck that is impending in the future of a career thus begun, selfishness, if no higher motive, would deter him from entering upon such a career. It is the crying evil of our age, as it has doubtless been to a greater or less extent in all ages, that men are in such haste to become rich that they do not take t ; me to square their methods by the golden rule. They rush pell mell to the latest oil wells and flock in crowds to the most recently discovered gold field, and among the crowds there gathered, human greed may be seen in all its naked deformity. Each man looks on every other man as his legitimate prey, and, unrestrained by the influences which prevail in the regular line of trade and which compel the shop-keeper to cloak his petty frauds and deceptions through fear of losing custom, their highest aim is to make a successful " strike " at the expense of another's ruin, and men look on with envy of the success while they have only jeers and contempt for the victim. BUSINESS INTEGRITY. 633 Let us turn to contemplate a more agreeable and whole- some aspect of the subject. The writer is one of those who do not admit that the only and highest standard of success is wealth, nor that men are happy in proportion to the size of their bank balance or the length of their rent roll. He is perhaps somewhat old-fashioned in his belief, but he is, at least, honest in it. There is a lesson of wisdom in the Oriental story of the king who, though surrounded with every luxury which wealth could buy was dying of ennui, and was advised by his physician to travel until he found a perfectly happy man whose shirt he should procure and wear and he would be cured. The sated monarch traveled in many lands before finding the object of his search, but when the perfectly happy man was found, lo ! it was discovered that he was too poor to own such a garment. The lesson was not lost upon the king who returned to his kingdom contented with his lot and therefore cured. Men fret and worry their lives out in the struggle to build up large possessions, and often wonder at the fruitless results of their best laid schemes. They are slow to realize that though " man proposes, God disposes." We are at best but blind moles, each one digging out his little, petty way in the darkness. Unerring wisdom guides us, and we know it not. There are well established rules to direct our way as the com- pass guides the mariner through the fog and the darkness. We may not know what lies in wait for us by the way, and it is well that we do not; but we may know what and where the haven lies to which we are bound and how to work the ship, though a more cunning hand than ours is at the helm. A better ideal of success is to be able to live a useful, con- tented life, to rear a happy family of honest and industrious men and women, discharging with scrupulous care every obli- gation of life, making the mere accumulation of wealth for 634 SIGNAL LIGHTS, wealth's sake a secondary and incidental matter, making the golden rule the guide of faith and practice, feeling the slightest blot upon their integrity as keenly as a blow, and living daily their belief in honest methods and fair dealing in every trans- action of life. There are such men. They may be found in every com- munity. We are all proud to know them. Their reputations are as a sweet savor in the circle of their influence. They are trusted, admired, envied, even by men who have not the courage to imitate them, but who would willingly purchase the capital of their good name, were it possible, to draw men to them, so true it is that "a good name is rather to be chosen than great riches." Such men do not go about our busy streets in regiments, nor yet by hundreds; but we have them, and we all know them. They are not the millionaires of the land. They have never " wrecked " a railroad, " salted " a gold mine, " watered " the stock of a corporation, nor " ground " their overworked em- ployes to earn a dividend on fictitious values. Their worldly accumulations, even after a long life of frugal industry, can generally be stated in five figures or less, but the aroma of honesty emanates from every dollar of it. Still more fre- quently they are able to leave behind them nothing but the fragrant memory of a well spent life and a shining example more precious than gold. Standing beside such a man when he lays aside life's burden,, how insignificant appears all worldly wealth compared with the priceless and imperishable treasure that he has on deposit awaiting his enjoyment beyond the shores of time! Such lives alone are successful, and all others are failures. That integrity is consistent with such success, goes without saying. Integrity was the inspiration and object of such lives, and worldly success the trifling incident. If worldly success came> BUSINESS INTEGRITY. 635 it was a welcome surprise; but it would never come at the sacrifice of integrity. The conclusion of the whole matter, then, must be that business integrity is consistent with the highest success, but that such success is not limited by our earthly career, nor is it apparent to the gross sense of worldly men. It is better after all to deserve success than to win it. Blind luck may stumble on good fortune. Only real merit can truly deserve it. HOW TO INCREASE THE POWER OF THINKING. BY . F. HA YES, D. D. T is, but what it is we know not. It is that with which all think themselves acquainted, that which every one is. Present in every substance it is ready, when con- ditions are right, to spring into effect; yet only by what it does is it known. We call it power. Every ma- terial thing, whether living creature, clod or atom, keeps each moment of its existence by an exercise of force. Pulled by gravity, pecked at by corroding gases, squeezed by air, a ton's weight on every square foot, it must meet action by equal reaction, or quit. More than thirty years ago, while climbing a mountain, I observed a large mass of rock, bearing evidence of being newly broken from the ledge above. To the question, what 636 B. F. HAVES, D. D. HOW TO INCREASE THE POWER OF THINKING. 637 could have so broken the cliff? one of the pioneers of Amer- ican science replied, "Water and frost." This water from the fall rains had taken up its winter quarters in a crevice of the mountain; bye and bye the frost king found the hid- ing place and shouted to the crowded water drops, " Form yourselves into ranks and columns;" and the mighty particles made for themselves room to obey the order by splitting the rock. Science has found that atoms are loaded bombs, and earth and sky a magazine of force. It has been estimated that a half hour's shower, covering space a mile square with one-tenth of an inch of rain, sets free in the cloud, force equal to a million ten-horse-power steam engines working for the same time. Every moment the earth acts as if drawn toward the sun by a power so great that if the pull were made by steel wires as large as whip-cords, attached to that side of the planet toward the sun, they would " cover it so thickly that a mouse could not crawl between them." That the earth does not therefore approach the sun, is because there is at the same time working an equal counter-force. By these mutually balancing forces the earth, with all that is on it, is sent spinning through space. The cars of the New York and New England Railroad on the night train for Philadelphia run, at New York, into long ferry-boats and become still, the puffing locomotive is left behind. You look out of the car and another car is standing beside yours with the lamps blinking through its windows. All that you see seems still ; but it is only seeming. Boat and cars with all in them, propelled by a power beneath, are gliding swiftly across the harbor. So on this earth we glide a thousand miles while you are reading this page so imperceptibly because the air which makes our sky, and all else we see moves with us, without a jar to remind us of the hidden power at work. But above all forces working only in inorganic matter, ; s 638 SIGNAL LIGHTS. one that does what neither of them, nor all of them together, can do, the power that touching lifeless atoms can lift them across the gulf that separates dead from living things, and sends them quivering with life into all the channels of mystery and beauty in the vegetable world, and through all the ranks and orders of the marvelous forms and functions of the ani- mal kingdom, including the wondrous organism of man. And here in this most elaborate and beautiful, most mar- velously adjusted and endowed organism in the world we reach the home of the power that transcends all others: the power that knows itself and knows what other powers do, that brings them all into its service and augments the effi- ciency of many of them a thousandfold THE POWER OF THINKING. If the old question is raised, What is this regnant power? it is enough for one to reply: those who with best right claim to speak in the name of science seek in vain to learn what matter is, still less can they know the nature of mind. But they are not more certain of anything than that an invincible distinction exists between power that thinks and powers that are qualities of matter. However exquisitely organized, bodies do not think. Neither is it wise to say, we have something in us that thinks; for this makes the body the person and the soul his possession. The truth is, the soul is the person, who may say, I think, and I have a body, with which I am mysteriously united. Seeing is done by means of the eyes; the very small and very distant by the added means of lenses; but neither the eyes nor the lenses see; the soul looks through them. Be- tween the eyes without and the soul within, the brain thrills as we look; when the soul thinks of what we have seen, it thrills again, but the vibrations of the brain are not thoughts. The machinery of our bodies does not perform any rational act, except as acted upon by an agent as distinct from itself HOW TO INCREASE THE POWER OF THINKING. 639 as the rower in a boat is distinct from the boat, or as a man bringing music from an organ is distinct from the instrument. The mind uses the brain and all other parts of the body, but the brain is powerless to produce thought, as an organ cannot yield music with no player at the keys. We know our power of thinking only in and through the bodv. Like the rowers chained between decks of the old */ Roman galleys, who moved with the vessel, whether the cause of the moving were their strength on the oars, or the winds and waves, or the shock of an attacking enemy, so the soul is at present enchained within the body, acts with and upon it, and is acted on by whatever affects it. The question of the increase of thought-power pertains only to man. It is easy to imagine that animals of lower grades possess intelligence of the same kind as that of man. The Indian hunter may have believed that, "Admitted to that equal sky, His faithful dog shall bear him company," but it would take a great stretch of imagination to picture the dog as having the same anticipation, or being capable of acquiring it. In the graves of men of the stone age, who peopled Europe before the beginning of its written history people who knew not how to work the metals, whose utensils and weapons were only of wood and stone, 1 who clothed themselves in the skins of animals, and whose abodes were caves and the rudest of huts, are found evidences that they buried their dead in the expectation of a hereafter. Since then, man's intelligence has made great advance; the dog's, very little. The record in the rocks, of the successive stages in the progress of creation, or world-development more distinct than the poetic pictures of Genesis, and confirmatory of them 640 SIGNAL LIGHTS. shows that physical creation terminated in man. But also with him rational development began. From the time he was created, heir of two worlds, crown and monarch of the material, and pupil in the spiritual, the world's progress was to be through the development of soul-power in man, and the transformation of the face of nature by him as a result. It matters not what kinship man must own with the brutes, he can trace his spiritual relationship not to them, but to a higher a spiritual source. For each man who is conscious that he thinks, attributes the same action to other men. He believes that men have lived and thought, of whose existence he has no other evidence than some memorial of their thought on lettered stone or orderly ruin. He believes, for example, that thought produced the order seen in the ancient mounds of America, and in the pyramids thought that was not in the stones, not merely in the men that handled and cut them, but in the mind that planned the whole. In like manner respect- ing the order found in the works -of nature, we believe, with equal certainty, that thought produced it; thought not in the Kosmos, as the Greeks called the world, because of its order and beauty; not in the matter of which it is made; not in the forces those blind giants that upheaved the mountains and toiled where coal and salt, iron and gold were stored for our use; not in the forces that make beauty gleam in the gem and the crystal, and mantle the earth and the sky; nor in those that, in the darkness, fashioned the eye to receive,. in the light, the beauty that nature offers for the soul's enjoy- ment; but in the eternal Mind that pre-arranged this order, provided the material and the forces, and guides each in its work. Man finds the methods according to which the cre- ative mind has wrought, so much resembling his own that the similarity admits of but one explanation : the eternal Mind is our Father an explanation with which the Greek poets and HOW TO INCREASE THE POWER OF THINKING. 641 philosophers were familiar before Paul on Mars Hill quoted from them, "We are His offspring," or the great Teacher taught us to say, "Our Father." The glory of the finite thought-power is that it is not designed to continue as it finds itself; but, by unfolding, to become ever more like the Mind that is unlimited in power and knowledge. The enquiry, how the finite power may be increased, involves a double question, viz: how may the general average of power in successive generations, or in a community, be raised, and how may an individual expand his own power of thinking. But, before treating these questions separately, we may con- sider certain CONDITIONS FOR THE INCREASE OF THE POWER OF THINKING, for on these, both general and indi- vidual enlargement depend. /. Capacity to Think. It matters not whether man received his expansive intellect by instant creation, or gradu- ally through countless stages of uplifting. It is plain now that his capacity for mental enlargement distinguishes him from every other order of animals. But how does the individual begin what is the baby? Science says, " So far as I know, he is an atom that is alive and has grown into a stomach and a voice." He shows no credential of the monarch of land and sea. No thought guides the hand, or flashes from the eye, or shapes the intona- tions of the voice. The only tricks he knows are such as were not learned, and are practiced without thinking. But these helpless hands may yet become " Hands that the rod of empire might have swayed, Or waked to ecstacy the living lyre." They may learn to give immortality to marble or canvas. That eye may yet read new secrets of the stars, or flash intelligence into the eyes ,of listening thousands, and that 41 642 SIGNAL LIGHTS. voice may yet utter truths that never before were so fittingly spoken. Why are these things possible ? Because within this visible, growing form is a germ of mind. As this germ develops, he can plan for himself a career of progressive improvement, imagine himself knowing what is yet beyond his ken, and seek for the good and the truth that is at present out of sight the truth that is behind the visible heavens with their suns and systems, behind the phenomena of matter and of life. He can form pictures of unseen beauty and goodness, and improve himself and improve nature by them. Only he of all the inhabitants of the earth can form an ideal of the right, of a virtue higher and purer than life around him exhibits, and command himself to grow up toward that ideal. He can take into his thought the future that future that is not the expansion of his physical life into to-morrow, but the prolongation of his soul-life, not as it is, but as it is becoming, by constant growth into the eternities. He can determine the direction of the changes through which he is passing with intent to become what in the endless to-morrow he will most wish to be. //. A Need and a Desire for the Increase of Capacity are Conditions of Growth. The question is sometimes asked, Why, if we are made in God's image, we were not made per- fect at once, with no need of an increase of powers why must we learn before we can know? To answer this question fully may require that our powers of reasoning be much farther increased; but these things we can now see: First, finite beings cannot know everything, but the more they know the more they desire to know. If finite beings were made with ever so much knowledge, they must be aware, as the wisest of men now are, that the sum of their knowledge is to what remains unknown as the pools left by the tide in the HOW TO INCREASE THE POWER OF THINKING. 643 hollows of the shore are to the ocean. Therefore if they were without capacity to increase knowledge and to increase the power of thinking, they must forever feel desire for more knowledge without possibility of satisfaction. Every wise man must say with Lessing: " Should the Almighty, holding in one hand truth and in the other search for truth, give me choice, I would with all humility yet in all sincerity say, Give me search for truth." One of the noblest attributes in man is his desire to advance in knowledge, and the satisfaction of this desire yields one of his purest and most ennobling joys. It is therefore easy to believe that no life could be granted to finite intelligent beings so desirable, no life so graciously adapted to his nature, as the life that is begun in utter igno- rance and weakness with an impulse toward increase, not only of knowledge, but of capacity to know, and of power to achieve. ///. But if it be an instance of our Father's kindness that He has made us beings that become useful and happy only by increasing in power, then it is also a part of that kindness that He lias given to tJwuglit-po'wer opportunity and stimulus for increase. He gives this opportunity by placing us where the forces he has set working in nature around us act by uniform and general laws, even though sometimes these forces crush and destroy. For it is this uniformity of nature that gives us assurance that we may understand nature's methods, and stimulates us to the effort to know. Thus we find this world of uniform effects from uniform causes to be the best possible place for developing power of thought; for it compels us to vigilance and to devising expedients for avoiding the evils it threatens, and for securing the good it proffers. It has been a mistaken notion a dream of a golden age in the past that the primeval world imposed no such necessity, that man's 644 SIGNAL LIGHTS. primitive condition was one of perfection, and that, but for sin, struggle and growth would have been unnecessary. There is nothing in the antiquities or history of the earth and of man that does not correspond with the simple story of the first disobedience and the struggling together of opposite desires in man, in which the bad had temporary advantage, and, in the main has kept it. But everything in that biblical narrative, too, though long misunderstood, corresponds with the teaching of science and history; that primitive man began at the zero point of knowledge and of character. Who, if he were to imagine the ideal condition for mankind, would picture the naked, houseless, experienceless condition of our progenitors when their thought had not yet dis- cerned good from evil? The truth is, the race, like each individual, was made for growth is growing. And each individual, like the first, begins in Eden, that is, in innocence. And though he too goes out with the flash of the flaming sword behind him, yet the chance of a speedy return is better in proportion as those into whose society he is born have pro- fited by the experience of the past, and have learned, by God's help, to subdue nature and themselves. IV. The Strength and Symmetry to 'which the Infant Man may Grow Depends Largely upon His being Well Born. When our German cousins wish to apply to a person a title expressive at once of personal worth and social dignity they address him as " Hoch wohl geboren " (high-well-born). The second word expresses what is far more important than the first. To be well born is a matter of blood, but not, in this country, an index of place or rank. It Is, first, to inherit a body perfect in all its functions. The Bartholdi statue, planned and fashioned in another country to be erected in this, could not fulfill its design without a foundation built for HOW TO INCREASE THE POWER OF THINKING. 645 it here on a scale and of a solidity suited to its purpose and its grand proportions. So the child is a masterpiece of two worlds ; the greater his spiritual possibilities, the more import- ant his physical foundation. Usually before children are born the rate and kind of enlargement of thought-power that are possible for them have been already determined. It is not the depravity inherited from Adam so much as from nearer kin that blights, prenatally, the prospects of human beings. Hereditary tendencies and limitations, resulting from habits of selfishness in its various forms of greed, indolence and ani- malism, dwarf and distort the souls of children. No person who shall ever become a parent sins to himself alone. The five million dollars per annum expended for tobacco stand for far more than the wasted resources, disordered organs, dimin- ished strength and, often, the shortened life of those that use it; it stands for unsteady nerves, deficient vitality, and dwarfed brain-power one or all of these, in posterity. A home where the parents confine their thought and their interest within the lines of mere bodily necessities is not a place in which to be well born. On the other hand, a home of honest poverty and of dense, though unwilling ignorance, may be a far more propitious birth-place than the palace of luxury. For the aspiration all the more because unfulfilled may be transmitted, and become stronger in the child by reason of the barriers that hemmed in the parents. No child is heir to a patrimony of virtue or learning; but the disposi- tion that is favorable to the attainment of these may be inherited. The influence of heredity is most apparent when, through many generations, it continues in the same direction, whether toward enlargement or deterioration. The victims of Amer- ican slavery that were most restive under its constraints were those that mingled most with the dominant race or shared its 646 SIGNAL LIGHTS. blood, and those recently from Africa and of the chieftain rank. When emancipation came, many freeclmen even of advanced years astonished the country by their rapid progress- in learning. But it has been found, so generally as now to be the thing expected, that pupils from the plantations have only memorized words without receiving the thought intended to be conveyed. Their seeming knowledge was only ability to recall an order of sounds, which soon became confused or forgotten, and was useless except as a show while it remained. The explanation is found in the narrow capacity inherited from ancestors wha had been for six generations limited to few and low themes of thought, without hope of improve- ment or stimulus to seek it. On the other hand, an oppor- tunity for progress with inducements to use it during suc- cessive generations has invariably preceded signal increase of the power of thinking among any people. In proportion as any family or generation struggles wisely against unfavorable conditions toward the limit of its present possibility, it is preparing a better possibility for posterity. The remark of Dr. Holmes, that the education of a child should commence " a hundred years before he is born," is no exaggeration. Its truth depends not wholly on the fact that strength and excellence acquired by "plain living and high thinking " in one generation are likely to be inherited capacity in those that come after, but also in the fact that V. A Condition of Large and Symmetrical Growth is an Intelligent Social Environment. The home or the com- munity where for a hundred years knowledge has kept open the doors to power, and the pleasures of learning have given zest to life and quality to the social atmosphere, is full of invigorating and ennobling influences. In such an atmosphere not even " chill penury '" can quench the fires of genius. No HO W TO INCREASE THE POWER OF THINKING. 647 one born a true poet will live in it a " mute inglorious Milton " and die unrecognized. The transmission of qualities of mind and heart by conscious and unconscious influence after birth is no less certain, and is far more potent in forming the character and determining the range of mental power than any inheritance of mental traits. In the case of most men distinguished for mastery of circumstances, or for giving to the world thoughts it will not let die, something of the work might have been prophesied by any one who knew the child, the mother, and the home. And in a still larger number of cases one may learn, from the career of the son or daughter, what the home has been. Curiosity is often called the primary impulse toward the development of mind; but this impulse may waste itself in the pursuit of trifles. It usually withers early in surroundings where only physical wants are regarded and provided for. But where food for the mind is desired and enjoyed as much as that for the body, and is provided no less generously; where conversation and example keep the eyes open to see the beauty, variety and mystery in animate and inanimate nature there, pleasure in observation will nourish thirst for knowledge till it ripens into a resolution to know and to grow. The conditions thus far considered make large mental power possible; they do not compel it. These conditions come to the individual without his responsibility. Beyond these we have to think of him as co-operating with parents, teachers and the State. For that which every one -will become, whether as a person of thought, of effective skill, or of manly heart and character, is the product of three factors: first, natural capacity, which includes strength of nerve and of feelings as well as of intellect ; second, surrounding conditions; and, third, energy of the ivill. Notwithstanding all that is proved about the mastery of will over adverse conditions, and 648 SIGNAL LIGHTS. 4 the determination of each one^s achievements by himself, it is also true that in a stagnant age, among people content with- out progress, no one wills to seek so high a goal as many reach in communities where the desire for improvement is general. It is not wholly because human nature is different in Asiatics and Anglo-Saxons that the former have advanced less in sixty generations than the people of the United States in one. In the order of nature no man like Saul of Tarsus was possible on the shores of Galilee. To rear such a man required the union of Jewish ambition and patriotism, with the freedom of Roman citizenship, and the broadening effect of Greek culture. No Agassiz has been found on the Hima- layahs; Garfields and Lincolns are not looked for among the boatmen of the Nile. The evidences of present incompleteness are everywhere apparent ; but most so, to discerning eyes, where progress is least, or is absent altogether. But if divine wisdom has planned the growth of humanity, such condition of incom- pleteness and stagnation cannot be final; the plan of God cannot fail, even though He has committed the carrying out to human hands, and waits for them to come into an under- standing of it, and into co-operation with Him. The monu- ment that was planned to be a fitting memorial of Washing- ton, and a symbol of the grandeur of his character stood for a generation unfinished. When the question of its completion was considered, it was found that its foundation, or rather the soil in which the foundation was laid, would bear no additional weight. Yet work was commenced, not, however, on the shaft, but on its foundation and on the ground. After nearly two years of labor, the effects of which were invisible, the real structure began to rise, and at length the precious cap- stone was placed on the grandest monumental column of the HOW TO INCREASE THE POWER OF THINKING. 649 world. So has it been with mankind. So is it still with many nations. They have remained stationary through ages, at a stage of mental development, and in a social, political and moral condition far below the true ideal of humanity. But ours is an age of broadening foundations. The popular- ization of education, the spread among all people of thoughts respecting human possibilities and duty and destiny the whole work of Christian civilization is preparing the sub- structure. On this already are rising the various sciences bearing the mind of man to heights inaccessible before in the knowledge of nature, of man and of God. Inventions that lighten toil while they stimulate skilled industry, manifold wants unfelt before, new supplies for want, and new objects of value and of interest appearing in every country as scaffolding and machinery appeared before the monument began to rise are evidences of a grand uplift at hand for all the nations. From considering the conditions on which all enlargement of mind depends, we pass to the first of the questions sug- gested above: How MAY THE LEVEL OF THOUGHT-POWER o BE RAISED IN A WHOLE COMMUNITY, OR IN A SUCCESSION OF GENERATIONS? This question becomes hourly more important in our country, as experience makes more plain that if the nation would be safe, it must somehow secure the intelligence of the whole people. Voters who know not how to think for them- selves, are dynamite beneath the pillars of the Republic, to which selfish demagogism may, at any crisis, apply the match. Every free and progressive nation admits that the State must educate. Indeed, every State by its legislative existence is an educator. According to its character it enlarges and rectifies the power of thinking in its sub- jects, or dwarfs and paralyzes it. The world has had no mightier teaching than that embodied in its laws. Great 650 SIGNAL LIGHTS. thoughts expand the soul most when taken into it under a sense of responsibility to make them rules of action. Where government sets up no ideal of what its citizens ought to be, and supplies no means for promoting intellectual activity, there society is stagnant, and humanity is in chaos and ruin. Its condition has been little better where government has aimed to produce only soldiers for conquest and defense. It has often been said that the ignorance and degradation of humanity under the so-called paternal governments has been because men were governed too much. The real cause was that they were governed not with regard to the welfare of the individual, but the units were melted into the mass to be simply the pedestal or the bulwark for the figure of royalty. European generals writing to head-quarters their requisitions for reinforcements were wont to call not for men, but for so- many thousand man, precisely as they would ask for pounds of powder or boxes of bread, or as a drover might order so- many head of cattle. The recognition by our country of the significance the sovereignty of each individual binds it to provide for the preparation of each individual for intelligent citizenship. The fulfilling of this obligation must secure a general elevation of thought-power much above what has been its average in any country. Therefore the public school, as the chief agency in securing this result, deserves most thoughtful fostering by the government and by every citizen; not only that it may enjoy more ample material support, but especially also that every child may have the training it affords; and that its methods and aims may be carefully adapted to give the most thorough and practical culture to each one. By practical culture is meant, not alone such training of thought as may make skilled producers of material good, shrewd hunters after personal profit; it is training the intelligence to grasp every truth and accept every law that HOW TO INCREASE THE POWER OF THINKING. 651 should guide the good man, the patriotic citizen. For the intellect is not the whole of man, and complete manhood is reached only by a growth that includes the whole of his many- sided nature. Intellectual strength is increased by thinking, as the arm of the blacksmith is made strong by using it. Effective think- ing requires the co-operation of the body. By proper care the body may be kept in health and increased in strength. Greater attention should be given in the schools and greater skill employed to secure the physical and moral health of pupils than has been usual, and greater strength of mind in pupils, as well as a higher degree of well-being and usefulness, will be the ultimate result. It is still necessary to urge, in some States, that school attendance should not be dependent on the caprice of the child nor on the choice of parents. It would be a less crime against the State and against the indi- viduals to allow a few score children annually to starve, than to allow them to neglect the provisions that would prevent their growing up in vagabondism. But though neither intel- lectual nor moral growth can be secured by compulsion from without, the danger of failure on that account, where well constituted homes join their influence with that of the ideal school, is hardly greater than that of voluntary starvation. Not every child, even in the best of homes, will spontane- ously choose intellectual exertion. But judicious direction and encouragement will seldom fail to lead to such a choice; they may awaken in the mind a zeal for such habitual exer- cise as is essential to its best development. For desire of knowledge is natural to an unperverted mind, and successful intellectual activity yields a noble enjoyment, more satisfying because joined with the self-approval that springs from the conviction that such activity is right and praiseworthy. To lead a young person to seek improvement, whether in mental 652 SIGNAL LIGHTS. strength, in manners or morals, he must be convinced that it is vastly important to himself, that it is worth all the pains required to gain it. Such a conviction is more effective than books, prizes, teachers and university, without it. It will secure that voluntary co-operation with parents and teachers without which their effort for his mental growth must fail. How to secure this co-operation, how to combine into a sufficient motive the pleasures, the advantages and the duty, of cultivating the capacity for thinking, is a problem deserv- ing of study by both parents and educators. Mrs. Jackson, (H. H.), in " Bits of Home Talk," gives an illustration of how a judicious parent so managed a three days' struggle with her little son, that it was not her will compelling his, but he struggling with himself, and at length conquering. This one victory, as it proved, made future self- conquests easy, and large mental and moral development the final result. u It is the first step that costs." If this be a false step, it may cost the child the best possibilities of his future. Judicious, winning, richly spiritual personality should belong to those appointed to turn the feet of childhood toward the fields of knowledge. For one failure at this age to make the way of right-doing appear attractive and full of promise, and every wrong and lazy way sown with discomfort, may do more to teach the child that it is a thing of no consequence whether he conquers himself and accepts what he ought, in place of what is easy and self-indulgent, and whether he always speak and act with sincerity, than years of subsequent precepts. Indeed after that, instruction may only deepen the impression that whatever is said about the importance of fidelity or obedience means talk, nothing more. The method here proposed involves no absolute compulsion of the will, but rather that kind of discipline of will that nature and Providence give to those who meet nature and life rightly. HO IV TO INCREASE THE POWER OF THINKING. 653 It sets before the mind alternatives, and requires the will to make choice, accepting all the consequences of the choice. The common phrase, that " a child's will must be broken " broken to authority usually mistaken for the expression of a truth, which it closely resembles, is a mischievous error. There can hardly be anything but ruin before the child that grows to the age when one must think and choose for himself, having learned to respect authority only when and because he must, because it possesses power and dispenses advantages. Instead of this, he should learn to recognize the sacredness of duty, and form the habit of bowing to the right. Merely to break the child's will to arbitrary authority is like breaking the twig that is ultimately to stand alone. As soon as it is removed from the support to which it is tied in the nursery, it falls. The child that learns to prefer the right, because of its Tightness, not because it is safe, that wills to think and to be what he ought, and all that he ought, is the only one sure to make a man able to stand " four-square to every wind that blows." An illustration of a right method of beginning is found in the life of that statesman and philanthropist, ex-president John Quincy Adams, who in his time was accounted the most learned man of his country. When a child he, at one time, begged earnestly that he might not be sent to school. His parents did not settle the question by a simple behest of their will; but explained that every person must serve the world and earn his living by work of mind or muscle. He could not be a scholar unless he chose his school and study. He was allowed till the following morning to decide. If then he preferred work to study, he might go to the farm work, which just then was ditching a swamp. His choice was made; and, with great sense of freedom and relief, he hied on the following morning to the swamp. Without any 654 SIGNAL LIGHTS. expostulation, such as is too often resorted to, when both parents and child understand at least the child does that if he persists he will secure his own way after all, he was allowed to pursue his chosen course. But while ditching he was also thinking. And the result was a new and perhaps humbling resolution, which led him to say one night, " Father, if you are willing I will go back to school." In after life this great man said, " If I have accomplished anything as a scholar, I owe it to those three days' work in that abominable ditch." Discipline of the will is more than discipline in thinking, and more essential to personal and general welfare; but it is also a condition of correct thinking. Intellect may be sharp- ened without it, but will often show its keenness chiefly in deceiving its possessor as well as others. It will make the worse appear the better reason. It will often plunge men over precipices of ruin while believing their course to be right, because their judgment accepts the dictates of selfish inclination rather than the rule of reason 1 . As men mistake unwillingness to perform a particular action for inability to do it, so reluctance to accept truth is equivalent to inability to discern it. Usually the unwillingness must cease, or the mind remains in error. In order to think correctly, to look clearly on all sides of a subject, truth must be the aim. To make the lamp of reason reveal objects as they are, the will must hold it above the fogs of prejudice. To increase the power of thinking is a function of the schools. It is also far more important than their office of imparting knowledge. The two, however, can hardly be separated. Though our public schools are the glory of the Republic, and one of the indispensable pillars of its stability, their value will be greatly enhanced when freed from a seduc- tive, but very injurious, delusion, often tacitly accepted by teachers and school examiners, that schools are an apparatus HOW TO INCREASE THE POWER OF THINKING. 655 for cramming pupils with knowledge. By the pressure almost resistless as it bears on the ambitious and sensitive of marks, honors and promotions, the pupil is constrained to memorize a given portion of the text-book every day. If this is only accurately and glibly reproduced, the demand is met, though his intelligence has received very little of the thought of the lesson, perhaps none at all. Under this process it is often found that some pupils who have been admired for fluency in recitation are lamentably ignorant of the subjects of their study; and not at all quali- fied, by the discipline of the school, to investigate for them- selves. A pupil that takes in the meaning of a page of liter- ature, or of a scientific description, and then expresses it in fitting words, not memorized, but chosen by himself, has by that effort increased his ability to think. The training of thought-power should begin with things rather than with the signs of thought. The sign should be learned only when the thought requiring it is received. For this reason the necessity for the early and continuous assault on the columns and platoons of words in the spelling-book is to be deprecated. Were this necessity avoided by the ex- change of our heterogeneous orthography for a simplicity that is easily attainable, much time might be saved for study of a more intellectual kind. The thing before the sign, requires that, instead of treating a page of literature as a "parsing lesson"- as a group of signs to be classified it should be looked upon as a living thing, an embodiment of thought having a spirit within that we wish to know. The children that cannot do this will get little profit from dissecting the body. Pupils in the schools of Germany, at the age when our children pass from the grammar schools, have learned to give intelligently the substance of several of the favorite works in 656 SIGNAL LIGHTS. their literature, together with an account of the lives of the authors. They can recite a multitude of choice passages; sometimes whole books, and many long poems. They have also learned to write their own language with propriety, though ignorant of such a thing as a spelling book, and never having seen a German grammar. Bacon's aphorism that " Conversation makes a ready man, reading a full man, and writing an exact man," finds its best illustration when the three are practiced together, as they should be from the beginning of every course of education. As soon as the child has a thought and words to tell it, and can use a slate, let the thought be also expressed in visible words. Let this exercise grow into a habit. The power of thinking will grow with it, and " composition," the writing of what one thinks, will never be met as a bug-bear, but will be a natural process for which he will be as ready as for uttering thought with the voice. There is a natural order of studies corresponding to the gradual increase of mental capacity. Subjects, the study of which at one period will bring no strength to the mind, but rather diminish its zest for study and impede its growth, may at a more advanced stage introduce it to a new world of thought, which it will explore with delight and success. The study of arithmetic is usually pressed upon the child too early. This involves a waste of much time; often also a waste of the only opportunity he will ever have to become acquainted with many things in nature about him, and in himself, to know which would be a pleasure, a practical advantage, and a quickener of his thought. Before the mind has become sufficiently mature to master so abstract a science as arith- metic, it may find delight in acquiring the rudiments of several branches of natural history. The enthusiasm awak- ened by successful work in these, will give courage and HOW TO INCREASE THE POWER OF THINKING. 657 strength that would not have come from a drawn battle with arithmetic. So much of mathematical knowledge as is neces- sary in the first stage of mental development, may be easily acquired. Numbers, geometrical forms, and measurements, may be taught to every child along with the observation of visible things. But it is a great mistake to suppose that a child increases his power to think by worrying with problems that he can solve if at all only by mechanically following a rule, the reason of which he cannot yet be made to see. Experiment is proving that the study of the wonderful processes going on in the animal and vegetable kingdoms is as practical as arithmetic, and far more quickening to most minds; that the knowledge of one's -own body, and the laws of its health, is as interesting and useful as geography. It is becoming necessary for every intelligent person to know how to dismiss all superstitions about signs, and the moon's magical influence, and to understand what really are the laws of the forces in earth and sky that determine atmospheric changes, and which, if known, would work with sailor and farmer. To have been quickened in thought by all this acquaintance with nature and with himself, and because of that quickening to have easily grasped knowledge of the three R's, as well as of history and geography, is to have entered on a road to much rational pleasure and to power; a road that will not close up nor be left when the school-days are ended. There are certain natural principles in the mind, by which it is moved to observe and think. These principles are mani- fested usually in the following order: First, curiosity, or desire to know; second, the impulse to imitation; third, the satisfaction of successful exertion, especially the pleasure of giving, as well as receiving, of telling or showing as well as learning; fourth, the impulse to gain good, and avoid loss and evil; fifth, the desire for that which is better for progress; 43 658 SIGNAL LIGHTS. and sixth, admiration for goodness and the impulse to do right. All these are easily called into activity in early life. Their development then, in due proportion, makes certain the acquisition of such measure of mental power as the natural capacity of the soul renders possible. But native endow- ments differ. The schools cannot do the same for all. The best development of mind, the best preparation for life, to many, will come through an industrial education. While it is a mistake to maintain that common schools should arrange their courses of study only with reference to the question of bread and butter, or aim only at fitting the mind for the line of business in which it is to be exercised yet it is doubtless true, that schools will contribute to a higher mental growth in general when pupils, after acquiring the essentials of edu- cation, can choose between continuing through the higher grades as they now exist, and entering a school, equally free, where they may be taught a trade. The capacity of many children will allow of only narrow intellectual attainments. The circumstances of their lives may also forbid scholarly pursuits ; and their studies, beyond the elements of knowledge, will not be sufficiently extensive or thorough to afford valu- able mental discipline, and will have little practical use. They will leave school at the earliest opportunity to become wage- earners. Some of them should become skilled workmen. If now these can gain equal, and even greater mental acuteness while being taught with special reference to some handicraft, they will be started on a line of thinking in which they will continue, and their powers will increase with use. Of course the grand reasons for public schools of industrial education for some children, are the same that demand the school and the prohibition of truancy for every child, viz: that the foun- dation may be laid for intelligent citizenship; that every healthy person may be able to provide for his own wants, and HOW TO INCREASE THE POWER OF THINKING. 659 make a contribution to the public welfare, instead of becom- ing an addition to the dependent, or the dangerous class. In the present highly organized state of society, no person will find a place where he will fit in, except he can answer the question, " What can you do well ? " The enlargement of thought-power that is most necessary to many, and the great- est they can receive, comes by the instruction that will enable them to prosecute some useful industry, as the painter, Opie, mixed his colors, with brains." Every child may be taught to think for himself, and to think under a sense of responsibility. Responsibility for our decisions strengthens and rectifies the judgment, as burdens habitually borne on the head strengthen and straighten the back. When a person is determined to advance in useful knowl- edge, and to improve in manners and taste and morals, he reaches what Arnold of Rugby called moral thoughtfulness. This is exercise of mind on the noblest themes under a sense of responsibility to know the truth and by it to guide the life. If the schools are to increase, with best results, the power of thinking in the next generation, they must aim to produce moral thoughtfulness. They must make the mind familiar with great thoughts. A person who desired to know what exercise of the power of thinking seemed most important to a great mind, once put this question to Daniel Webster: "Mr. Webster, what is the grandest thought that ever entered your mind?" "The greatest thought that ever entered my mind," said he, after a pause, " is the thought of my individual responsibility to God." Were one to look at the extremes of human intelligence among the nations and tribes of men, and ask, what one thought is there, the loss of which would tend most surely and rapidly to sink the highest towards the level of the lowest? 660 SIGNAL LIGHTS. would not the answer be this? viz : The idea of God, whose law is justice, and whose nature is love. Should not the schools teach his law? They may do it in the words of Confucius and Socrates so far as can be. Why not also in the words of Him who spoke as never man spake before? The objection of the Jew and the atheist to this is no more sufficient reason for omitting it than the objection of a few monarchists, should they choose to settle in this country with their children, would be a reason for taking the Declaration of Independence out of the school books and suppressing all republican teach- ings based upon it. Until the objector can suggest means of culture that are better, or point to some nobler civilization that has been reared without these truths as its foundation, it must be right to teach the great thoughts that have so effec- tively contributed to give Christian lands their large prosper- ity and their high intellectual as well as moral supremacy. As a means for the general increase of mental power, the schools are a comparatively modern invention, by no means perfect as yet. They are better in plan and results to-day than ever before. Tens of thousands of earnest men and women are intent on making them more perfectly adapted to their appropriate high aim, and are looking forward to the time when still more perfect schools shall be doing their bene- ficent work in all inhabited parts of the globe. A Primeval and Universal Agency for Increasing the Power of Thinking- is Want. The plan of Providence from the beginning of human history has been to let man grow to a knowledge of his need, and then find or make a supply. " Necessity, the mother of Invention," has been the great expander of thought. And in turn, Invention has been the parent of necessities. For every access of thought-power has given man new ideas of comfort, HOW TO INCREASE THE POWER OF THINKING. 661 dignity and luxury, and new means of production that these ideas may be realized. Take, for example, the wants that lead man to seek a shelter; unlike the homes of the birds ? made at their best in the first instance, the habitations of men, from the cave and the hut to modern architectural convenience and beauty, are an evolution corresponding to his gradual susceptibility to want, and of skill in providing for itj supply. The thought and labor called forth by want produce prop- erty. By mutual co-operation and exchanges of property each may increase the variety of supplies for his wants. Hence agriculture and handicrafts grow into distinct pursuits, because more production is possible in this way, and by exchange each can have a share of every kind of product. Out of this exchange grow trade and commerce. Here thought finds a wide arena for its exercise and a mighty stim- ulus to growth. It accumulates capital, and creates industries. To foster industry, protect property, promote and regulate commerce, thought creates governments and laws, tariffs and treaties, courts, police and armies, and its power grows by producing, improving* and employing these. What a differ- ence is visible between the life of the savage, roaming the woods or hunting the stream for daily food, protecting his own person and hut by his solitary arm, and the complex life of modern society! How varied here are the forms of need and supply ! What manifold relations; interests, problems and opportunities, that with the savage had no existence! And all this difference corresponds to the advance in the power of thinking from what it is in the savage to what it becomes in civilized society. Society was never so highly organized; wants were never so numerous, supply so abundant, and ingenuity so varied as now. New sciences and new forms of industry unite to quicken the thought of man to efforts and .achievements never possible before. 662 SIGNAL LIGHTS. But there are perils peculiar to the present time, which it may not be irrelevant to point out, since practically the power of thought may be increased by avoiding them. Unless over- come or avoided they must diminish the general intelligence. i. The division of labor and the precision made necessary by modern methods and machines are to a certain extent favor- able to quickness and accuracy of thought, for thought must go before action. But what if the man, to make himself cor- respond to the machine with which he works, is content to be only an attachment of the machine? What if to make him- self a keen and pointed tool he grinds away the man ? Should the invention of a new machine dispense with his particular acquirement, he is left as one without skill, until he can acquire it in some new kind of labor. 2. Again, the rapid production that comes from increasing skill, and constant additions to the varieties and perfection of machinery, make it possible for the world's work to be done in fewer hours. This promises more leisure more holidays. It ought to promise longer school time for children. It will proffer to whomever such a chance would be welcome, an opportunity for wider observation and for fitting himself, if desirable, for some higher employment ; and for the cultiva- tion of his manhood, by more attention to those wants that require a higher supply than bread and clothes. It will make it easier for those who will, to have needed physical rest, and still make a religious and thought-quickening use of the Sab- bath day. Thus more leisure from work means opportunity for more acquaintance with high themes of thought, for hap- pier homes, a more intelligent civilization. But here lurks a danger: Without moral thoughtfulness the exact reverse of all this will result. For more leisure means added tempta- tions to that which not only wastes time, but wastes man- hood, temptations to frequent the places, and patronize the HOW TO INCREASE THE POWER OF TH IX KING. 663 business that often makes wise men fools, and rich men poor, and always makes poor men poorer. 3. Serious danger to the general intelligence lurks in the methods and rules adopted by some of the popular organiza- tions, whose laudable aim is to secure " fair wages for a fair clay's work." This remark is not intended to apply to their assuming to forbid those not in the organizations to sell their labor in whatever market they may find a purchaser, and at such price as they may please. This, being plain usurpation and tyranny, cannot survive in this country. The real danger lies in what the members of these organizations impose on themselves. They not only pledge themselves to each other as it is their right to do not to cheapen labor by accepting less than a stipulated price, but they sometimes also promise not to make their work worth more, nor accept more pay than every other man on the same work; and not to do more than one kind of work. All these restrictions ignore the fact that the mind, in proportion to its discretion and skill, enhances the value of all work of muscle. They forbid that he who has these qualities shall put them into his work, and take pay for the added value that work of the brawn gets from that of the brain. They thus take away the motive for the cultiva- tion of skill which is mind-power. They virtually forbid the laborer to seek to rise, denying him the right to do his best. There are no locked gates in this free country across the pathway from labor up to capital. But the man that agrees to work no more hours, do no better work, seek no better pay for his skill than the dullest, laziest or least provident comrade, locks the gate in his own face. He renounces " that just and generous system which," said Mr. Lincoln, " opens the way to all, gives hope to all, and consequent energy and progress, and improvement of condition to all." 664 SIGNAL LIGHTS. 4. A strike that shall break the tyranny of degrading appetites and end the despotism of the saloon! What imagi- nation can measure the increase of general intelligence as well as of national purity and prosperity, and of happiness in homes that this would bring I Participation in the Affairs of the Country Helps to Increase the Poiver of Thought. Though business is a universal educator and civilizer, it is not of itself sufficient. Were people acted upon by this force alone, multitudes would bury their minds in the furrows, making their very existence but a means for fertilizing their crops. They would become mere tilling and harvesting machines, with no thoughts that rise higher than the current market reports. For if one thinks only of himself, especially only of his physical wants, he is confined within limits too narrow for the possibility of growth. Not so with him who, besides care for himself, finds duty and joy in using what is best in him for others; like the poet Burns who, though the sphere of his own wants was too narrow and low, and his provision for them scanty enough, yet was he lifted above them by his wish that he might " For auld Scotland's weal, Sing a sang at least." Love of country tends everywhere to overcome selfishness and elevate the soul of man. But the people of a republic find besides, in those duties of citizenship that are their honor and their pride, a potent influence for the quickening of the mental powers. "A free people must be a thoughtful people." Probably the widest observation would show that a deeper and more active thoughtfulness characterizes the citizens of this country than is general in any country where the gov- erned have no share in the government. And it is not likely HOW TO INCREASE THE POWER OF THINKING. 665 to be questioned that this superiority results in part from the stimulus to thought thought upon important subjects that comes to each citizen with the responsibility of helping to decide what the policy of the nation shall be, and who shall administer the affairs of its government. The echo, in the old world, from earnest thoughts, and new political doctrines struck out in this, has stirred in many nations an activity of thought to which former generations there were strangeYs. But the educating power of these ideas will be much more apparent if we compare the children of immigrants from the old world with those of their former neighbors, who still remain under the old monarchies. It is not uncommon to hear complaint of the absorption of interest and diversion from business that come with our national and state elections. But these are times of national education which are worth much more than they cost. The danger from the influence of demagogues calls for a large use of means for the increase of the power of thinking among the illiterate and unassimilated masses. These dangers are not likely to be avoided by restriction of the suffrage. They are not likely to be avoided by restrictions upon the press, which will still be subsidized by those who publish lies for selfish ends. It cannot be hoped that parental teaching and influence among such people will bring the next generation to discriminate between truth and falsehood, or to prefer the truth at all times. It may be that the life and prosperity of our country through the twentieth century depends upon a provision that, after the beginning of that time, no illiterate person shall, either by birth or immigration, become a citizen. Certainly such a provision would tend greatly to the promotion of mental improvement in a class now most in need of it. QQQ SIGNAL LIGHTS. But influences that may so train the minds of men in gen- eral that they may be able to recognize the truths that should govern their conduct, come from other sources in addition to those already considered. Such influences emanate from those homes where the great realities of duty, pure, spiritual love and righteousness, rule thought and action. They come from the conscientious portion of the press. To some they come from history, art, and society. Most of all they come from the institutions of religious culture, which appeal to the moral reason of men bringing upon it the power of thoughts that stir the great deep of feeling in the soul, as the tides stir the ocean to purify it, thoughts that make the conscience assert its supremacy ; first, over the power of thinking, and then over outward action. All elevation of the common level implies that there are leaders who rise above that level, who pioneer the way, set the example, and improve the conditions for general progress. For them the important question is: HOW MAY THE INDIVIDUAL EXPAND HIS OWN POWER OF THINKING TO THE LIMIT OF HIS NATURE? For the person who desires no training beyond what he must have to enter some particular branch of business, it suffices to study only for that. But to him who would do any- thing with large capacity, a preliminary training broader than his specialty is essential. He derives more advantage from the development of power by study than from the specific things learned. When a man is in training for a wrestler, he does not ask for just the particular set of motions he must expect to go through in the anticipated struggle, but for such motions as will give him all possible strength and agility. So one who is in training as a thinker should ask, not are these the precise thoughts I am hereafter to repeat? but will this course prepare me for any line of thinking I may have need HOW TO CULTIVATE THE POWER OF THIXKIXG. 667 to follow? It is said that about one-fifteenth of the physicians of our country have had a college training, yet that one- fifteenth furnishes almost every one of the eminent leaders and teachers of the profession. It is not meant that in order to have large power one must continue to work along many lines of thought. On the contrary, the , mind should first enlarge its power by exercise in many directions, in order with greater momentum to press on and up when the single course of service has been selected. No person is ever found regretting that the time devoted to a liberal education was not saved for the study of his profession, unless, because of wrong ideas, bad associations, or indolence, he wasted his opportunities. He who has no aspiration to rise above the average, cannot be forced far above it by external advan- tages. Every man who rises to leadership by having largely increased his power of thinking is, in the only correct sense of that term, a self-made man. His pre-eminence is a result of self-conquest and self-discipline, whether in reaching it he has made use of the aid of instructors, libraries, and associa- tion with fellow students, or with more difficulty, has toiled upward along a solitary path. In the latter case his symmetry of development and his success, while greater than that of many others, are probably less than his own would have been had he enjoyed the advantages afforded by institutions and regular courses of study. James A. Garfield, for example, was not less a self-educated man for having acquired some of his discipline in college. Had all the study of his early years been in private, he would have been, with the same natural capacity and aspiration, a leader, but not the eminent educa- tor and statesman he became. The study of languages is to many an important means for increasing the power of thinking. Forcing the study 68 SIGNAL LIGHTS. upon unwilling minds tends to produce a false estimate of its disciplinary value. When the language studied is regarded as mere words, the student being content to receive their meaning through a translation, the study has little or no dis- ciplinary value. But all men think in words. We carry our own processes of thinking farther as we become able to make intelligent use of new words. Every language represents a distinct mode of thinking peculiar to the people with whom it has grown up as an embodiment of their mental processes. Successfully to study a language is to become able to think in that language. It is therefore the acquisition not merely of new thoughts and of new aspects of familiar thoughts, but of an additional mode of thinking. Dr. McCosh quotes a saying of the Emperor Charles V. to the effect that a person duplicates himself with every new language he acquires. The selection of terms in one tongue to express thoughts derived from another is a means of evoking and greatly improving the ability to clothe one's own thought in fitting speech. As growth in the bodies of children usually repre- sents growth of their minds, so enlargement of the ability to express thought in appropriate phrase, represents enlargement of the power of thought. The conveying of ideas from one language to another is also an excellent discipline of the judgment. It affords the same kinds of exercise in inductive thinking that is found in the study of the physical sciences. The value of the physical sciences as a means of mental dis- cipline is liable to be over-rated. Inductive reasoning is a method of thinking that in modern times and in Christian countries has given great increase to almost every depart- ment of knowledge. Armed with this method, mind is exploring new fields of science with such facility as easily to awaken the fancy in the discoverer that he illustrates greatly increased power of thinking. This may not be true; for the HOW TO CULTIVATE THE POWER OF THINKING. 669 exploration of a new field of thought does not necessarily imply an increased mental power. It may be done by those whose powers are inadequate to cope with problems arising in many a familiar field. The keen observer is not unfre- quently found to be but an indifferent reasoner. For many minds a higher disciplinary value still is found in mathematics. Hardly any things are more unlike than the unalterable demonstrations of mathematics and the inferential reasonings of political science and history. Yet the practice of eminent British statesmen and their testimony assure us that they were aided in the acuteness of* mind they were able to apply to these latter subjects by studies in mathe- matics. A distinguished theologian, Ex-President Hill, of Harvard College, has incidentally shown in a valuable work, entitled Geometry and Faith, that familiarity with mathe- matics gives added ability for arriving at truth and certainty in departments of inquiry usually supposed to be most remote from mathematics. It seems that a perception of this use of mathematics led Abraham Lincoln to say to him- self when studying law, "Lincoln, you can never make a lawyer if you do not understand what demonstrate means." In consequence of this conviction, said he, " I left my situation in Springfield, went home to my father's house, and staid there till I could give any proposition in the six books of Euclid at sight." There is another realm of thought to be conquered by the athlete in thinking; a realm having some regions that com- paratively few discover, and fewer still ever enter. Increase of the power of thinking is both the condition and the result of exploring it. It is a world containing nothing that hands can handle, or that eyes have seen the world of one's inner self. The knowledge gained by those who have successfully explored it, is called the science of the mind. The new world 670 SIGNAL LIGHTS. entered by this science is found to be the vestibule to others. The science of the mind, and the science of the laws of its thinking, introduce us to the science of morals, or of right willing, and this to theology, or the science of God and of man's relation to Him. These offer to the mind higher and higher themes of thought and a corresponding increase of its power. More important than studies or the order of them, is the method and energy of the mind's action in respect to them. Some characteristics of a proper method are: i. Become interested in the subject. Every student who is resolved to know the most and be the best that the stuff in him will allow, can make himself interested in whatever study he ought to pursue. Whatever is done with persistent resolution, under a conviction that it is for our advantage, and is our duty, becomes interesting work. 2. Require of the mind the best and the utmost it can successfully do. Do this to-day, violating no law of health, and the effort gives greater strength for the next exertion. 3. Never be content with misty thoughts and half-formed notions. Capacity to think clearly and with exactness goes with ability to express thought definitely and clearly. To refer again to that remarkable man, President Lincoln: he astonished people with the clearness with which he not only himself saw through every subject he presented, but made others see through it. To one inquiring for the secret of that power he said that when a boy he had never been content in thinking of any subject till he could put it into language that every other boy could understand. The habit he thus formed is concerned especially with the power to think again what one had once thought, the power of recollection a power whose degree of strength depends upon the habit of first thinking clearly. Committing to memory, as it is called, is not passing over our HOW TO CULTIVATE THE POWER OF THINKING. 671 thoughts or acquisitions to some other power to be kept for us ; but it is thinking or knowing so distinctly and thoroughly that we shall think the same again with the readiness and pre- cision of habit. As the skill in the use of muscular strength acquired by habit is equivalent to increase of physical power, so right habits of observation and thought appear to increase power of thinking, while negligence and, still more, habits of insincerity diminish it. 4. Determine always to think respect- ing all subjects, not according to wishes, but according to truth. We could not improve the power and accuracy of vision while squinting, so we must direct the eye of the soul squarely at the truth, if we would increase its power and pre- cision. The choice of a wrong end in life may make truth painful to us, as light is painful when dust has inflamed the eyes. Hence to think right, mean right. 5. Have an exalted ideal, and believe its attainment possible. It is hoped these pages will be read by not a few who have determined not to wait for opportunity, but to make it; who have no conceit that being born geniuses they must of course know and accom- plish a great deal. For the notion that one is born a genius, and therefore he can easily know and achieve whatever he may wish, is fatal to true and large success. Probably no one possessed with this belief has climbed the heights that seemed to his fancy so accessible; while he who expects to accomplish every step of the path to his exalted goal only by persistence in hard work, not only ascends, but gains both confidence and strength from each obstacle surmounted. 6. That the will may act with energy, it must feel the pull of might} 7 motives. The existence of a desire for improvement implies that in one's soul there is an image of himself better tkan at present. This image, however vague, is the soul's ideal. A true ideal is something to be not as an end, but as a means. He rises highest whose constantly growing 672 SIGNAL LIGHTS. ideal is a vision of what he should be in order to do the largest and noblest service. If the ideal is a picture only of a satisfied self it is insufficient. With such an ideal one is like a man alone in a slough with no means of lifting himself out but by tugging at himself. But let his ideal include the approval of loving friends, the favor of the public, the needs of his kind and the relief of those needs by his perfected powers; let it include the command apd approval of his divine Lord, and the ideal gains an attractive force which his will obeys as the needle obeys the pole. As the ideal is broadened its power increases. No other constant motive makes the soul rise with energy of aspiration and delight in labor, as the ocean rises toward the sun and moon in conjunction, like the ideal that joins with one's own perfection, the good of man, the will of God, time and eternity, as incentives for seeking the largest endowments. One with such an ideal is not largely depend- ent upon outward aids, and is not debarred from the very best and highest satisfaction of his desire for increase. Indeed, obstacles in his path may be stepping stones for his ascent, as the rocky barriers across our river channels are essential to their usefulness to industry. When De Lesseps, with energy inspired by his faith in the possi- bility of success, undertook the Suez Canal, doubters said the crumbling and drifting sands will not allow a canal with stable banks. But chemistry converted the desert sands into durable rocks for his embankments. So in the case of many young persons to-day, it is found that the very obstacles that seem to others reasons why they cannot obtain large dis- cipline of mind, are helps to make that discipline possible and practical and thorough. / LOAN DEPT. This book is due on the last date stamped below, or on the date to which renewed. Renewed books are subject to immediate recall. - 4Dec'62EF HHB^^H gl IN STACKS K)^ H^0 NOV201962 & I Vi_ ^ ^r i\i o y o o ob/ ^E^i ^^F$x^ ^L^W ol ^fSf LD 21A-50m-3,'62 jjM (070'J7slO)476B General Library University of California Berkeley KPTs r i , | , LD9-20w-4,'62(C7899s4)4185