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 1 
 
 1
 
 Bliss Carman 
 
 Author of "The Kinship of Nature? "Pipes 
 of Pan" "Low Tide on Grand Prf" 
 - "Sappho? etc. 
 
 L. C. PAGE fcf COMPANY 
 
 BOSTON . - AVi PUBLISHERS
 
 n 
 
 Copyright, 
 BY L. C. PAGE & COMPANY 
 
 (INCORPORATED) 
 
 Copyright, 1904 
 By L. C. PAGE & COMPANY 
 
 (INCORPORATED) 
 All rights reserved 
 
 Published August, 1904 
 
 Third Impression, July, 1908 
 
 COLONIAL PRESS 
 
 Klectrotyped and Printed by C. H . Simonds & Co. 
 Boston, Mass., U.S.A.
 
 To "Moonshine" 
 
 THERE is a delightful Oriental superstition, 
 my dear " Moonshine," which declares that 
 on the last day every artist will be called upon 
 to endow each of his creations with a soul. 
 I should be the last one to feel perfect confi- 
 dence in denying the possibility of such a 
 fancy, or in affirming that only living beings 
 can have real personality. I prefer to be- 
 lieve with the Greeks that every stream and 
 tree has its own indwelling divinity, a spirit- 
 ual as well as a material identity, bestowed 
 upon it by the Creator to be the informing 
 principle of its growth and beauty. Why, 
 then, may we not think that the creative work 
 of men's hands is imbued with a similar es- 
 sence, that every abode, like every shrine, 
 is pervaded by its distinct and individual tute- 
 lary presence?
 
 44 
 
 At the very writing of your name in the 
 inditing of this dedication, you seem some- 
 thing more than a mere house of wood in the 
 green forest. I seem to myself to be address- 
 ing a beloved friend, sure of a sympathetic 
 hearing and an appreciative understanding of 
 my fanciful enthusiasm such as are not always 
 accorded us by our fellow mortals. How 
 shall I account for this magical delusion? 
 
 What loving heart first dreamed you, 
 what mastery made the dream come true? 
 No mere fortuitous industry, I am sure, could 
 have created your sightly structure of wood 
 and nails, mortar and bricks and coloured 
 stain. For beauty is never an accident, nor 
 charm and loveliness the results of reckless 
 chance. Every sill and rafter, every board 
 and beam in your roof and walls, had brave 
 life- through long years of sun and rain, of 
 winds and frost upon the mountainside, be- 
 fore it was chosen by destiny for a place in 
 your builded beauty. And now, as you stand 
 in your serene silence, I doubt not, all the 
 
 vi
 
 strength of mounting sap and maturing sun 
 that went into the growth of your fibre and 
 grain persists and prevails to lend you fra- 
 grance and endurance still. 
 
 But whence came to you the supreme gift 
 of personality? What benign power wrought 
 you into such friendliness of shape and hue? 
 What inspiration devised your restful tints 
 and generous mould? By what conjury arose 
 your serviceable spaciousness with its digni- 
 fied repose; and how came you to be blessed 
 with that rare additional quality which few 
 habitations can boast, a quality akin to human 
 temperament, an atmosphere and distinction 
 all your own? Surely at the prompting of 
 happy and unselfish impulses you must have 
 been designed, a place of rest for the friend, 
 and inspiration even for the stranger! And 
 when at last your latch-string was hung out, 
 and the fire of hospitality lighted upon your 
 ample hearth, what alluring spirit of welcome 
 radiated from your open door, impalpably 
 as the moonshine for which you were named. 
 
 vii
 
 In summer you are never closed, but the 
 sweet air of the hills blows balmily through 
 your quiet seclusion all day long, whispering 
 its enchantments of peace; while at dusk, 
 from your deep verandas, dreamful watchers 
 behold the great frail rose-gold moon appear 
 at the end of the Kaaterskill clove and pour 
 its calm splendour along the purple moun- 
 tains. 
 
 In the long months of snow, when your 
 windows are secured against the tempest, and 
 your dwellers have migrated to their winter's 
 work, what reveries must be yours! You must 
 see again in remembrance the faces that have 
 thronged about your board and fire. In your 
 rooftree must lurk reverberations of laughter, 
 reechoes of song, and the lovely strains of 
 imperishable music. The pine of your floor 
 must be tempered and mellowed by the 
 rhythm of many feet that have trodden it in 
 masque and merrymaking, in festivity, and in 
 the daily course of kindly life. Shall you 
 not for ever recall one memorable twilight, 
 
 viii
 
 when an enraptured player at the piano, ren- 
 dering and improvising as only a great artist 
 can, rilled you with golden harmonies, as if 
 your solemn mountain walls and streams had 
 at last found interpretation and voice, while 
 his hearers sat enthralled under the wizard- 
 ries of sound? Shall you not always remem- 
 ber the suppers at the green table, when night 
 was near its meridian, when the company 
 lingered over their glasses, with toasts and 
 tales and mirth and toasts again and more un- 
 extinguishable mirth, until at last lanterns 
 were lit, and in twos and threes the merry- 
 makers took their way through the silent for- 
 est to their lighted cabins among the hemlock 
 shadows? Can you forget a famous cake- 
 walk, when seventy couples assembled, mar- 
 shalled by the very Muse of Comedy herself, 
 garbed like a happy Hottentot, conducting, 
 with unsurpassed spirit and gaiety through 
 the ceremonious Rite of the Cake, a tatter- 
 demalion gang of gaudy disguised revellers, 
 hilariously competing for the coveted prize; 
 
 ix
 
 and the judges, a row of gray-haired dig- 
 nitaries sitting aloft in Rembrandt relief be- 
 hind gallery rail and candlelight, while the 
 motley swirl danced to a finish before them! 
 In contrast to this scene, you surely remem- 
 ber certain afternoon gatherings of a sober 
 sort, when luminous discussions were held of 
 art or philosophy or other high theme, and 
 were gaily prolonged over tea and cigarettes. 
 You must ever fondly treasure the memory of 
 many mornings filled with the sound of im- 
 mortal poetry, the frailties of Fra Lippo 
 Lippi, the stirring Song of the Banjo, the 
 lofty Masque of Taliesen, the terrible Ballad 
 of Reading Gaol, or the moving tragedy of 
 Sohrab and Rustum, read as poetry is rarely 
 heard nowadays. As a crowning joy of rec- 
 ollection, do you not often live over that 
 evening when poetry was illustrated with 
 tableaux vivants, incomparable pictures of 
 Keats's Meg Merrilies, fantastically tall and 
 wise as she leaned upon her stick; of Brown- 
 ing's Contemporary, keen of nose yet kind
 
 44 
 
 jttoongtjiur 
 
 of eye, in peaked hat and wide ruff, with dog 
 at heels; and of Malyn of the Mountains, 
 a radiant young reality more lovely than the 
 poet's fancy! 
 
 In these solitary winter watches, too, I dare 
 say you recherish your various comforts and 
 treasures, and recall the friend associated with 
 each of them, though some of your intimates 
 have journeyed to the other side of the world, 
 and some have gone beyond. There stands 
 the chair of the Princely Friend, who chose 
 it because it invited him to throw his leg 
 over the arm as he smoked; this one is the 
 gift of the most democratic of aristocrats, the 
 Gentlest of Radicals. In that cushioned seat 
 by the fire a dear Grandmother used to doze 
 and dream, or, with unquenchable spirit in 
 her sparkling eye, tell endless stories to the 
 insatiable children in her lap. Here is the 
 chamber reserved for a certain vagabond; 
 that is the corner dedicated to another. On 
 this convenient balcony overhanging the ra- 
 vine the magician of all your luxuries, alert 
 
 xi
 
 for fresh adventure, expects one day to alight 
 from his private air-ship. From yon cosy 
 nook behind the door, the Judge ever cheerily 
 invites his friends to " live long and prosper." 
 While from the playroom overhead a baby 
 voice is heard passing sentence on an offend- 
 ing tin soldier : " You stole three pigs and 
 a hundred cannons, and you'll have to stay 
 in prison all your life! " So your guest-rooms 
 and galleries ever throng with happy pres- 
 ences, once made welcome, never to be dis- 
 possessed. 
 
 O unforgettable " Moonshine," this book 
 is like yourself, made of different elements, 
 divers thoughts and moods and fancies. 
 Many of its essays were written within your 
 shade, and but for the leisure and inspiration 
 you afforded could never have been written 
 at all. I beg you, therefore, not for any merit 
 of its own, to give it room upon the shelves 
 in your poets' corner, that when other guests 
 shall come, other hands open your door, other 
 voices be heard exclaiming over the wonder
 
 of your prospect, it may bear slight but un- 
 equivocal witness of one wayfarer's gratitude 
 for all the solace and refreshment you have 
 been so lavish to bestow. B. C. 
 
 Xlll
 
 Contents 
 
 The Burden of Joy ...,.. i 
 
 The Tides of the Mind 7 
 
 Of Contentment . . . . . . .14 
 
 Of Vigour .24 
 
 The Training of Instinct 30 
 
 Moving-Day 34 
 
 A Sea-Turn 41 
 
 Vanitas Vanitatum ....... 48 
 
 The Contemporary Spirit . . . . . .54 
 
 Horticulture ........ 60 
 
 Speech-Culture and Literature ..... 67 
 
 On Being Coherent . . . . . . .81 
 
 Giving and Taking ....... 89 
 
 The Secret of Art 98 
 
 A Canon of Criticism . . . . . .107 
 
 Realism in Letters . . . . . . . 1 1 c 
 
 The Note of Gladness 122 
 
 Sanity and Art . , . . . . .130 
 
 The Creative Spirit .138 
 
 The Critical Spirit . . . . . . .146 
 
 The Man Behind the Book . 161
 
 Contents 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Migratory Mood 169 
 
 On Tradition . . . . . . . .175 
 
 Personal Rhythm 183 
 
 Ephemeral . . . . . . . .190 
 
 On Being Ineffectual . . . . . 194 
 
 The Outskirters . . . . . .'.199 
 
 The Artist's Joy . . . . . . ",205 
 
 Corpus versus Animus . . . . . .212 
 
 Simplicity . . . . . . . .218 
 
 The Magic of the Woods . . . . . .225 
 
 Of Civilization . 231 
 
 Business and Beauty . . . . . .238 
 
 The Paths of Peace . 247 
 
 A Christmas Reverie . . . . . .253 
 
 Saint Valentine . . . . . ':* 2 7 5 
 
 The March Hare's Madness ..... 290
 
 of 
 
 JOY is the only thing in the world more 
 inevitable, more universal than sorrow. For 
 whether it take the form of love or content- 
 ment or delight in power, our capacity for 
 happiness still outranks our capacity for grief; 
 and however sad life may seem to you and 
 me at times, we Cannot but observe die Ti- 
 tanic gladness of creation. Even in our own 
 small lives the gladness is more than the grief, 
 the delight is more than the despair. Our 
 very willingness to live attests this troth. In 
 spite of failure and pain and sickness and 
 bereavement and the obscure prosecution of 
 an incomprehensible destiny, we are glad 
 enough to stagger on. 
 
 Is it not good, therefore, to recognize this 
 I
 
 of 
 
 very palpable fact about existence? And 
 should we not once for all give over our des- 
 olate creed of disconsolate suffering, and 
 affirm bravely that the soul of man does not 
 realize itself through sorrow and renuncia- 
 tion, but through happiness and achievement? 
 Indeed, happiness is the test of all success, 
 the measure of our growth, the boundary of 
 our accomplishment. To be healthy is to be 
 happy; to love anything is to be happy; to 
 find out the truth is to be happy. These are 
 the three ways in which gladness comes to 
 us; and unless we can attain some measure 
 of such joyousness in body, spirit, and mind, 
 we may be very sure that we are not getting 
 the best out of life. Without his due share of 
 each of these three kinds of gladness, no man 
 can be greatly happy; and without something 
 of at least one of them, no man can be happy 
 at all. 
 
 It is only reasonable to recognize this 
 prime necessity of health, or the normal phys- 
 ical condition, as the basis of happiness at 
 
 2
 
 ttuvttcn of 
 
 least of one-third of happiness. To be com- 
 fortably housed, to be sufficiently and hygi- 
 enically clothed, to be well fed, to be properly 
 exercised, to be, in short, at the top of one's 
 bodily capacity no man should be content/ 
 with less than this. Yet how slovenly we are 
 in such matters! Our houses are often a mere 
 storeroom of treasures, or a clutter of uncom- 
 fortable furniture and hideous bric-a-brac; 
 our clothing, for half of us at least, is an 
 exasperating menace, hampering the graceful^ 
 motions of the body, cultivating disease, and 
 irritating the temper beyond endurance; our 
 food, when it is not too rich, is usually ill 
 assorted and worse cooked; our habits of 
 work, or exercise, and care of the body, are 
 seldom other than dire necessity arranges forv 
 us. Our constant dependence on drugs and 
 physicians is, more than nine-tenths of it, the 
 result of gross ignorance of natural laws; and./ 
 the other tenth is most likely the result of 
 carelessness. Why not make a pleasure of \ 
 physical existence, by bringing to its regula-
 
 of 
 
 tion a little common sense, a little fore- 
 thought, a little care, a little knowledge of 
 the simplest laws of health? That were surely 
 better than to die of lethargy and indiges- 
 tion. And yet how unusual it is to see a 
 human being in perfect health and alive to 
 all the innocent wholesome pleasures of our 
 mere animal existence! How commonly one 
 sees the miserable, stuffy, neglected, and ail- 
 ing body, with no more instinct for physical 
 enjoyment than the unfortunate lap-dog 
 which shares the stupidity of its owner. 
 
 If there were no need for social reform 
 other than this, that there might be less grind- 
 ing toil for some and more wholesome en- 
 forced exertion for others, it would still be 
 supremely necessary for the preservation of 
 the race. We make very lavish boasts of our 
 civilization, our enlightenment, our progress, 
 and yet the multitude of intelligent persons 
 who shudder at the mention of fresh air and 
 cold water is unbelievable; while they still
 
 tjc Uu vtrcu of 
 
 continue to stuff themselves with violent med- 
 icines and unwholesome food. 
 
 This is only the most obvious and primitive 
 sort of happiness, such as savages enjoy. It 
 is something to which we are all justly en- 
 titled, but which we have too foolishly aban- 
 doned. And unless we are wise enough to 
 return to these simple and natural pleasures 
 of physical being, we shall not only regret it 
 as individuals, but as a race and nation. We 
 ought to have too much pride to be sickly and 
 weak. We ought to perceive that beauty is 
 based upon health, indeed, that beauty is 
 only the outward seeming and appearance of 
 normal health. This is not a visionist's the- 
 ory. It is a very sober scrap of the truth. 
 It does not apply to mankind at large; it 
 applies to you, whoever you are, who read 
 these paragraphs. If you are a man and 
 think yourself tolerably well conditioned, the 
 chances are that you would be still happier 
 physically if your collar were not so high, 
 or your shoes not so tight, or if your hours 
 
 5
 
 JFtientrsfjfji 
 
 out-of-doors were longer. While if you are 
 a woman, it is certain that you never take a 
 single full breath during your waking hours; 
 and that if you were asked to walk half a mile 
 on a country road, you would be compelled 
 to hobble over the ground like a ridiculous 
 Oriental. 
 
 All this, of course, is only the beginning 
 of joy, yet it is indispensable. We must carry 
 an elated chest, that there may be room for 
 a happy heart within. A careful regimen for 
 the body will not secure happiness of the 
 spirit, but it will make us ready for the first 
 approach of joy. If we would entertain 
 angels, the least we can do is to be always 
 prepared for them.
 
 ALWAYS through the ocean the ranging 
 tides are sweeping with flux and counterflux, 
 like enormous arteries throbbing under the 
 bright vesture of the sea. There are the di- 
 urnal tides that flow and ebb and pause and 
 flow again continually, hung in space by the 
 mystery of gravitation; with the thrust of 
 the sun and the pull of the great ponderous 
 moon, they swing around the earth. But to 
 us creepers by the shore they seem only 
 streaming currents of blue or red or greenish 
 water. Then there are the greater tides 
 properly speaking, ocean currents which 
 have their bounds and frontiers, their appor- 
 tioned cycles to journey, shores to scour, 
 islands to build, reefs to thread, and the un- 
 
 7
 
 of 
 
 known depths of unplumbed immensity to 
 traverse. 
 
 To speak by a metaphor, there are tides of 
 the mind also. Each man's mind, perhaps, 
 is something like an insignificant rock-pool 
 on our granite coast. It may be sleeping idly 
 in the sun, and you would take it to be a mere 
 chance rain puddle, or at best the oversplash 
 of storm, soon to become stagnant, to evap- 
 orate, to pass away. But you mistake; it has 
 somewhere out of sight a hidden passage of 
 communication with the great deep, eternally 
 breathing down the shore. 
 
 On parts of the coast where the soil per- 
 mits it, as in the Bahamas, for instance, with 
 their coral rock foundation, there are wells of 
 sweet water within a few feet of the sea, that 
 rise and fall regularly with the tide, yet are 
 always fresh and wholesome to drink; so ad- 
 mirable is the filtering alchemy of the earth. 
 There are minds of this sort, the thinkers of 
 the race, able to keep always in close touch 
 with the vast profound of truth, and able at 
 
 8
 
 (Ttjr (TitTCS Of ttjt 
 
 the same time to transmute it in some way into 
 their own limpid expression for the kindly 
 service of man. Such a man, whether he be 
 poet or preacher, artist or agitator, is more 
 than merely " a well of English undefiled; " 
 he is a well of spiritual refreshment. Shake- 
 speare, Marcus Aurelius, Goethe, Darwin, 
 Plato, Whitman, Browning, Job, Virgil, 
 Hugo, Kant, Spinoza, St. Francis pagan, 
 saint, or skeptic, it matters not at all these 
 were wells of the undefiled truth. They 
 might be the fountain springs of that stream 
 Emerson speaks of in his poem " Two Riv- 
 ers." 
 
 " So forth and brighter fares my stream, 
 
 Who drink it shall not thirst again ; 
 No darkness stains its equal gleam, 
 And ages drop in it like rain." 
 
 Yes, and how we prize a good well ! Think 
 how many generations have drunk from that 
 clear fountain which Chaucer gave to Eng- 
 land! A new spring is discovered, and we try 
 its taste, first two or three put it to their 
 
 9
 
 of 
 
 lips, then twenty, then a hundred, then per- 
 haps a hundred thousand, its fame is so ex- 
 cellent. Then, if it is really good water, and 
 unfailing for human need, we and our chil- 
 dren may drink of it for centuries. 
 
 We read books for the same reason that we 
 drink of a well, I fancy. The natural element 
 is necessary for the body; and we bring our- 
 selves daily into contact with the vast primal 
 chemic forces of the universe, else we should 
 perish. So, too, the mind has its necessity 
 of nourishment; it must be brought daily into 
 immediate relation with the outer vast of 
 spiritual truth from which it springs. It may 
 drink from books, or it may find the sea of 
 actual life sufficient for it. But water it must 
 have, sweet or salt. 
 
 Now there is nothing mysterious, or elect, 
 or exclusive in art, or books, or poetry. Our 
 only use of these things, our only joy in them, 
 is this: that they put our small selves into 
 relation with the great tides of truth. How 
 a draught from Carlyle will sluice the dust 
 
 10
 
 of ttjc 
 
 out of one's brain! For the mind of every 
 man would perish in a day if it had no chan- 
 nel leading out to the source of thought! It 
 is not a question of right reason, or even of 
 reason at all; it is a question of life, of com- 
 mon joy and sorrow, and love and pleasure in 
 beauty. 
 
 It has been said that happiness is not gov- 
 erned by circumstance, that it depends on the 
 tides of the mind. Have you not noticed how 
 capricious our own capacity for happiness 
 seems? To-day every condition may make 
 for pleasure, a morning unsurpassed for 
 loveliness, an easy conscience, indulgent 
 friends, a well-earned respite from routine, 
 wealth, plenty, amusement, and yet the 
 magic moment of radiant joy fails to arrive. 
 The tide is setting the wrong way. To-mor- 
 row, on the contrary, everything is adverse; 
 it is a mean, drizzly, unhealthy day in town, 
 business is vexing, men are untrustworthy, one 
 failure follows another, our home-folk berate 
 
 ii
 
 JFrf rnttsljiji of ilrt 
 
 crowded to indecency; it matters not the least 
 in the world. From some undiscovered 
 source, there suffuses us a sense of joyful 
 content, an unfathomable draught of happi- 
 ness which nothing can poison or take away. 
 Probably, unknown to ourselves, we have 
 done some act or met some thought, which 
 put us in communication with absolute truth. 
 One cannot tell. It was a touch of the tides 
 of the mind. 
 
 But this is certain : never, by taking thought 
 for the outward conditions alone, can one 
 secure happiness, nor control these uncharted 
 mental tides. I dare say, however, that we 
 might be helped in governing the ebb and 
 flow of happiness by two rules. The first is 
 this: See that your body is well cared for. 
 The body is the reservoir through which the 
 tides of the mind will flow. You must keep 
 it clean and well ventilated, and thoroughly 
 repaired. To do this needs leisure and work 
 combined. And the second rule is very like 
 the first: See that every other body is well 
 
 12
 
 of UK 
 
 cared for. This will give you a sufficient 
 spiritual exercise to ensure a wholesome thirst 
 for happiness ; and your soul will then refuse 
 to be put off with any of the numerous de- 
 coctions of mere pleasure.
 
 Contentment 
 
 ONE may say of contentment, as of happi- 
 ness, that it is rather an attitude of mind than 
 a state of being, and depends more on the out- 
 look we assume toward life than on the actual 
 return we receive from it. If you look for 
 contentment in those about you, you perceive 
 it is not a matter of fortune nearly so much 
 as of temperament, and those who are discon- 
 tented in the midst of abundance are as many 
 as those who are happy in their poverty. 
 
 The discontent of the poor is explicable 
 enough, and the happiness of the prosperous; 
 but how shall we account for the serenity of 
 the first and peevishness of the second, when 
 we observe it? Hardly otherwise than by at- 
 tributing their happiness and their misery to
 
 <Df Contentment 
 
 causes which arise in the inner self, and by 
 forgetting in every case the worldly condition 
 of the individual. You may see any day in 
 the park sour old age rolling by in a Victoria 
 behind a jovial flunkey, and equally sour 
 youth dashing madly down the bridle-path, 
 luxurious and discontented in the hot pursuit 
 of distraction. In the next instant appear two 
 others of like age, sex, means and circum- 
 stance, yet each is the picture of content, so 
 that every beholder smiles and is made happy 
 at the mere sight of their happiness. So it is 
 in every zone of the community; you can 
 never tell from any story of a man whether 
 he is happy or not. You must wait until you 
 see him. The eye will discover him, for his 
 own eye will betray him. If he be bankrupt 
 in the business of life, you may know it im- 
 mediately, though he were studded with sap- 
 phires and rode in a hansom of gold. But 
 if he have an ample balance in the Bank of 
 Joy, you may know that, too, no matter how 
 sorry a figure he may cut in a tailor's estimate. 
 
 15
 
 of 
 
 It is not being out at heels that makes a man 
 discontented; it is being out at heart. 
 
 To be contented is to be good friends with 
 yourself. He who has no quarrel with him- 
 self will have no quarrel with the world; 
 while he who is at enmity with himself will 
 hardly have a friend on earth. We must be 
 reconciled to ourselves if we would have the 
 enduring affection of others. For as long as 
 we dislike ourselves, we are put in a temper 
 of carping and cynical uneasiness far from 
 lovable; we breed an unamiable disposition, 
 and affect others as we affect ourselves as 
 ill-natured, querulous persons. The moment 
 we are contented the moment we bring the 
 distracted elements of our nature into some- 
 thing like order that moment we begin to 
 taste the happiness of peace. Having no 
 hatred, nor disgust, nor annoyance toward self 
 left, we can have none left toward others. We 
 appear what we are, normal beings, full of the 
 natural blessedness of life; and friends start 
 up for us from every roadside. A man is his 
 
 16
 
 <Df Contentment 
 
 own worst enemy, but not his own best friend ; 
 for when he is at odds with himself, every 
 man's hand is hard against him; but when he 
 has made peace with himself, he has the whole 
 world of friends to choose from. 
 
 " Ah, yes, but the question is," you say, 
 "how shall a man be friends with himself? 
 How shall he keep on good terms with his 
 conscience, and be reconciled to his own sane 
 reason? " 
 
 The question, I believe, gives a hint of the 
 best possible answer. It implies a certain 
 divergence of purpose between the different 
 members of our nature an occasional, in- 
 deed a frequent, difference of opinion between 
 rational judgment and instinctive desire, or 
 between imperious aspiration whose authority 
 is not to be denied and compulsory appetite 
 whose dictates are not to be gainsaid. I shall 
 only be reconciled with myself when these 
 associate powers, inherent in my being and 
 constantly asserting themselves, are brought 
 into order and poise. So long as either one 
 
 17
 
 of 
 
 of the three is allowed to wholly dominate 
 the other two, just so long shall I suffer in- 
 ward strife. 
 
 If I live for senses alone, I shall taste the 
 discontent of soul and mind; I shall know 
 neither repose of spirit nor serenity of reason. 
 I may soak myself in the luxury and beauty 
 of all that wealth can afford, but the magic 
 moment of happiness will still be as far off 
 as ever. 
 
 If I live for reason alone, devoting my life 
 to science or philosophy or theoretical prop- 
 aganda, neglecting all the good things of the 
 world as it is, and denying myself all emo- 
 tional enjoyment all enthusiasm and gen- 
 erous appreciation I shall still fail of hap- 
 piness; I shall still be worrying the bone of 
 discontent, for my nature will be ill-poised 
 and abnormal, at war with itself as of old. 
 
 And, again, if I live for my moral nature 
 alone, a life of self-denial and asceticism and 
 meditation and prayer, however lofty my 
 ideal, I may still fail to find contentment, for 
 
 18
 
 I may have starved my love of beauty and 
 strangled my love of truth. 
 
 No human creature can thrive and come 
 near perfection without giving equal heed to 
 the curiosity for truth, the instinct for beauty, 
 and the impulse for doing right. And it is 
 only as these three great instinctive forces 
 come into something like fair accord that we 
 begin to know contentment. Contentment is 
 the index of poise in a character, while dis- 
 content is an indication nay, is the very 
 essence of distraction. To be distraught, to 
 do one thing when we perceive we ought to 
 do another, to see the truth clearly and not 
 have heroism enough to follow it, to lead an 
 inner life of turmoil this is the beginning 
 of death, the gradual dissolution of character 
 we nearly all undergo. It may be habit or 
 conscience or subservience to conventionality 
 that enslaves us and undoes us at the last; it 
 may be a faltering will and a fickle heart; it 
 may be a dull and sleepy mind. The disaster 
 is the same; we feel the diversity of purposes 
 
 19
 
 of the warring intuitions within us, and the 
 goblin of discontent crouches on our door-step. 
 
 But let me for one instant grow aware of 
 the loveliness of poise in character, the sure 
 serenity and happiness that come with any- 
 thing like harmonious culture, and at once I 
 am transformed. I perceive what content- 
 ment means, and how it has not a thing to do 
 with possessions or conditions or so-called suc- 
 cess, but abides in the individual, only await- 
 ing development. Contentment is the peace 
 of still currents which have joined and min- 
 gled in one superb sweep of force ; discontent 
 is the thresh of opposing tides. Having 
 known whence contentment comes, I know 
 well how best to secure it, and all my days 
 must thenceforth be given to the threefold 
 culture which alone can lead us in the perilous 
 way toward perfection. 
 
 But this word culture, or self-culture, does 
 not imply selfishness. We shall find that in 
 the spiritual life, where the will is manifest 
 and all activities take their rise, one of the 
 
 20
 
 <Df (To imminent 
 
 greatest sources of happiness is in serving 
 others. We shall find no contentment if we 
 do not know that. And to serve others as 
 well as to serve ourselves, practical resources 
 are needed the good common necessities of 
 life and good uncommon luxuries, too. If 
 we would know how much luxury to allow, 
 I dare say we shall find the answer to that 
 question also in our threefold ideal of culture. 
 We shall not limit a man's wealth by what 
 he can earn or make, but by what he can use. 
 Many a man goes on multiplying his wealth 
 just because he has not the capacity to make 
 use of what he already has. What he really 
 hungers for is some vent for his mental or 
 emotional and aesthetic nature which he has 
 been starving all his life in the pursuit of gain. 
 He does not know this; he only knows he is 
 discontented with what he has got, and thinks 
 there is nothing that will satisfy him but to 
 get more; whereas the truth is he has too 
 much already. His character is debauched in 
 its active and practical and executive side. 
 
 21
 
 nf 
 
 Then if he turns to find contentment in pleas- 
 ure, he only finds distraction and dissipation; 
 he is still living wholly in the region of phys- 
 ical activity, whereas he really needs to live 
 in the region of the intelligence and the spirit. 
 He needs to know more, and to love more, 
 and to appreciate more ; not to do more. He 
 has done too much already. 
 
 Just the same criticism applies to the exclu- 
 sive bookworm who is debauched in his men- 
 tal nature and has more knowledge than he 
 can possibly use. He, too, is discontented 
 and thinks nothing will satisfy him but more 
 and more learning; whereas it is not learning 
 but life that he needs the satisfaction of 
 accomplishment. Of the artist, too, you may 
 say the like. His whole nature is probably 
 given over to appreciating the world about 
 him, to receiving impressions and recording 
 them, to developing and cultivating his moral 
 nature, while very often his mind is untrained 
 and ill-informed. His culture has been sadly 
 ill-balanced and an enormous ennui takes hold 
 
 22
 
 Contentment 
 
 of him he does not know why. Perceiving 
 only discontent within himself, he fancies that 
 contentment is to be found farther on in the 
 road he has been following, and he grows more 
 and more emotional, more and more absorbed 
 in the aesthetic appreciation of life, and less 
 and less capable of thought or action and, of 
 course, less and less contented every day. To 
 the artist, the scientist, the man of action, the 
 danger lies in specialization: the man has be- 
 come absorbed in his trade; he is no longer 
 a man, but a tradesman, whether his trade 
 be commerce or art or philosophy. He can 
 never be happy until he tries to be a man first 
 of all, and wears his profession as lightly as 
 he would wear a flower in his buttonhole.
 
 You may say at once that the necessity of 
 vigour is self-evident. But one must dis- 
 tinguish between vigour, the cultivable vir- 
 tue, and vitality, the essence of life. The 
 former we may acquire, the latter is the gift 
 of the gods. We may display vitality with 
 little vigour; and with a spark of that indis- 
 pensable fire we may kindle a conflagration 
 of energy. 
 
 In the realm of art and expression this or 
 that achievement may have essential vitality 
 and still be lacking in vigour. And yet it is 
 vigour that gives art its power and makes it 
 prevail. You may see a painting or a piece 
 of modelling, accurate, poised, beautiful, deli- 
 cate, and quite flawless in execution; so that 
 at first you are inclined to pronounce it a bit 
 
 24
 
 Tigotit 
 
 of perfect art; until after a time it grows 
 tame; you begin to tire of it; the charm of 
 mere loveliness of line or tone has not been 
 enough to hold your admiration. The thing 
 has lacked vigour; it has not that electric 
 power of impressing itself upon one, so need- 
 ful to make perfection more perfect still. 
 For perfection is not merely the cutting away 
 of imperfections, but the energizing and vital- 
 izing of the chosen form. It is not enough in 
 art to secure perfect form, a perfect colour, 
 a perfect tone; it is necessary also (it is even 
 more necessary) to make them live. It is not 
 enough to create shapes of beauty; we must 
 give them vigour as well, so that they may 
 survive and prevail against what is indiffer- 
 ent and unlovely and inimical to joy. Passive 
 beauty is well, but active beauty is best. 
 
 Then, too, lack of vigour will mean lack of 
 growth. The artist who has no exuberance, 
 no superabundance of vigour to impart to his 
 creations, will not have enough to ensure his 
 own development. What he is he will re- 
 
 25
 
 jFrientrsfjii) of 
 
 main. You need look for no wonder-working 
 from him in future years. All his skilled 
 hand was able to do it has done. The limited 
 energy at his command has accomplished his 
 utmost in its faultless, but unliving, creations; 
 and no superfluous vitality remains to be 
 transmuted into new vitality of the art or to 
 expend itself in new enterprises of culture. 
 
 With vigour we may hope for anything, 
 without it there is no future. It was vigour, 
 the profusion of energy, the redundance of 
 vitality, that created and sustains the earth; 
 and nothing short of this will create it anew 
 in forms of beauty under the hand of the 
 artist, or lend to these forms the endurance 
 needed to confront the wear of time. 
 
 How necessary, then, for the artist to have 
 vigour at all costs vigour of the whole per- 
 sonality, body, mind, and spirit! And cer- 
 tainly quite as necessary for all of us laymen 
 as well. And it will not suffice us to have 
 mental vigour alone, or physical vigour alone, 
 or moral vigour alone; we must have a bal- 
 
 26
 
 ance of these. For otherwise we should make 
 no real progress; we should begin to revolve 
 upon ourselves, and be deflected from our true 
 course. But a complete and poised personal 
 vigour, strong, intelligent, and happy who 
 shall say how far it may not go, or set limits 
 to its achievements? 
 
 We recognize this need of a balance of 
 vigour in our academic training, where ath- 
 letics are encouraged, to counteract the bad 
 physical effects of overmentalization. And 
 college sports have come to be almost as im- 
 portant as college studies. There is one im- 
 portant difference, however. College studies 
 are a training of the mind; college sports are 
 not an educational training of the body. They 
 serve to develop muscle to some extent; but 
 they do so in a very primitive and ineffectual 
 way. They are not followed to give vigour to 
 the personality through the body, as they 
 should be followed; but to dissipate its en- 
 ergy. They are not an education, but a diver- 
 sion, an amusement. If colleges made it their 
 
 27
 
 jFrfenlrsijii) of 
 
 object to see which men could read the great- 
 est number of books in a given time, or mem- 
 orize the greatest number of facts, that would 
 be a scheme of mental training parallelled to 
 the physical training we now have. And yet 
 with a very little wise direction of physical 
 culture in .our schools and colleges an enor- 
 mous result could be obtained in added vig- 
 our. We have, of course, a few teachers who 
 perceive this need, but as yet their influence 
 has made too little headway against the tide 
 of popular misapprehension on this point. It 
 is not generally perceived that the usual phys- 
 ical development of the modern athlete is 
 onesided and unlovely; that his muscle is not 
 only cultivated at the expense of his charac- 
 ter (or rather, I should say, to the neglect of 
 his mind and spirit), but that even his phy- 
 sique has not the grace and ease and beauty 
 which should inherently belong to it. The 
 modern college man ought surely to rival the 
 ancient Greek for beauty, for vigour of mind 
 and spirit as well as of body. Instead of that, 
 
 28
 
 Ttgottt 
 
 the average college man who has given much 
 time to athletics is sadly lacking in graceful- 
 ness and poise. Our idea of the college ath- 
 lete is perilously like the figure of a well- 
 groomed young ruffian. 
 
 Now ruffianism is no essential part of a 
 good physical training. It exists in our stand- 
 ard of physical excellence, because our men 
 are badly taught or rather because they are 
 not taught at all. Athletics are cultivated (as 
 it is called), but proper motion, proper use 
 and control of the body, with due regard to a 
 directing mind and an indwelling spirit, are 
 almost nowhere inculcated. The result is 
 strength, rather than vigour ruffianism, 
 rather than refinement. 
 
 Yet physical training may be made one of 
 the most powerful agents for the highest cul- 
 ture of character.
 
 Emitting of instinct 
 
 CERTAINLY we do not give our instinct any- 
 thing like a fair chance in this modern life. 
 We have arranged our moral obligations and 
 our spiritual duties by codes more or less 
 severe; we have hedged about our material 
 life with such complete safety and so many 
 conventions that there remains comparatively 
 little scope for the individual will to exercise 
 its initiative choice. Our path of conduct is 
 so closely prescribed that range of choice is 
 limited, and instinct atrophies. This is wrong, 
 surely. It must be culpable to allow any 
 power, so delicate, so strong, so beneficent 
 and trustworthy as the human instinct, to 
 deteriorate and grow inoperative from any 
 cause whatever. 
 
 30
 
 arralutna of Instinct 
 
 Yet every day we neglect to consult our 
 instinct. How many of us, when we sit down 
 at table, think instinctively what we should 
 prefer to eat? For the most part we consume 
 what is set before us, without question 
 pickles, candies, raw fruits, and fried abom- 
 inations without number regardless of util- 
 ity or consequence. Then, as a reward of our 
 own stupidity, we must send for a doctor just 
 so often to undo the effects of our folly. Even 
 those of us who have sense enough to con- 
 sider their food at all are for the most part 
 content to regulate their diet according to 
 some hygienic formula, more or less admira- 
 ble, no doubt, but certainly not universally 
 applicable. Yet all the while here is instinct 
 only waiting to be consulted to give us pretty 
 sure and sound advice. 
 
 True, most of us could hardly depend on 
 our own choice now to guide our appetite; 
 for instinct has been so hampered and 
 thwarted and choked and disregarded that 
 it has almost ceased to operate altogether.
 
 of 
 
 When we ought to consult it in regard to 
 the conduct of the body, for the maintenance 
 of this physical life, it is really not our in- 
 stinct that we consult at all, but our reason. 
 We have made so much of reason that we 
 cannot get it out of the way and allow instinct 
 to govern for the moment. Yet there are 
 regions of activity where instinct should lead 
 and reason only advise. You and I each have 
 an instinct as to what is best for us in food 
 or rest or sleep or exertion, if we would only 
 cultivate it, only give it play in our lives. 
 And if that instinct were educated, it would 
 guide us quite as infallibly in these matters 
 as our reason does in matters of actual knowl- 
 edge and thought; quite as infallibly as our 
 conscience does in matters of right and wrong. 
 Our instinct is a sort of conscience for the 
 body, and deserves our care and obedience 
 just as much as does that preceptor of morals. 
 But we must not limit the realm of instinct 
 to the governance of the animal body. We 
 must recall that it is a human instinct, and 
 
 32
 
 attaining of Instinct 
 
 has sane wisdom applicable to all the doings 
 of men. If I meet a new acquaintance, my 
 judgment of him must be made up from my 
 instinctive perception of the man, as well as 
 from the deductions of reason and intuition. 
 I shall be told certain facts concerning him, 
 perhaps, and to these facts I apply logic. I 
 shall also have certain more or less definite 
 feelings about him, both sentimental and sym- 
 pathetic (or antipathetic), and these feelings 
 are derived from intuition and instinct. I 
 shall know immediately something of him 
 spiritually. I cannot tell how; and I shall 
 know something of him through my senses, by 
 instinct. 
 
 It is good to reason and to make the reason 
 supreme in this life. But it is fatal to dis- 
 regard either intuition or instinct. And of 
 these two indispensable guides, instinct is the 
 most neglected, the most in need of reinstate- 
 ment in our regard. 
 
 33
 
 MOVING - DAY is not a festival the sentimen- 
 talist loves. For him it is a time of memories, 
 redolent of old sorrows and vanished joys ; he 
 clings to his associations, and changes his 
 home reluctantly. It is his habit to invest 
 things with an aroma of dedication, if I may 
 say so, as ancient churches are saturated with 
 incense. Everything he has ever owned pos- 
 sesses for the sentimentalist attachments 
 hardly known to the literal mind. And the 
 larger, the more universal the possession, the 
 stronger the attachment. So that his home, 
 his town, his native country, take hold of the 
 sentimentalist's heart with ropes of perdura- 
 ble toughness. In this respect you may say 
 that the sentimentalist belongs to the cat fam- 
 
 34
 
 ily. He is very imperfectly domesticated, but 
 his habit of locality is phenomenally devel- 
 oped. He has none of that doggy loyalty 
 which would lead him to desert the ancestral 
 fireside without a pang, if ever friendship 
 should demand the move. Thinking himself 
 all heart, he is sometimes a heartless creature, 
 living on atmosphere and losing the solider 
 joys of loving. 
 
 Your true sentimentalist, too, is a prince of 
 procrastinators. He cannot bring himself to 
 a decision, and action affects him like the 
 rheumatism. Witness " Sentimental Tommy," 
 whose soul abhorred the necessity of choosing, 
 as a hen abhors water. While other men are 
 making fortunes, building houses, marrying 
 beauties, discovering the south pole, establish- 
 ing trusts, ruling savages, or overturning em- 
 pires, your sentimentalist is making up his 
 precious mind. Like the rustic, he waits for 
 the river to run by; and, while he stands emo- 
 tionalizing and moralizing, the stream of 
 events has moved swiftly on, carrying the 
 
 35
 
 jfvf rnlrgQU) of iltrt 
 
 flotsam of fortune beyond his grasp. You 
 may even hear him bemoaning his destiny, 
 when a little timeliness, a little presence of 
 mind, a little zest and courage would have 
 saved the day. 
 
 To move, to break up one place of abode, 
 to carry all his household deities to a new 
 altar (to flit, as the Scotch idiom so pictur- 
 esquely has it) is an abhorrence to the senti- 
 mentalist. I confess I am very much of his 
 turn of mind in this matter. Unless one has 
 been ill or unhappy in a place, with what 
 misgivings one leaves it! The last stick of 
 furniture has been carried out, the last picture 
 unhung, the last grip packed and ready, even 
 the cane and umbrella are strapped together. 
 Then as you take another look through the 
 familiar rooms, so changed by the desolation, 
 have you not a horrible foreboding qualm? 
 If ever the fluctuating sentimentalist in you 
 is to get the upper hand, now is his time. And 
 it may need some stout common bravery of 
 heart to keep him in place. 
 
 36
 
 But the more sane and courageous attitude 
 toward change accepts it as a step in growth, 
 in development. The moral of " The Cham- 
 bered Nautilus " will come home to every 
 one, and we may sweeten the uses of adversity 
 by a severe resignation. The new dwelling 
 must often be narrower and less commodious 
 than the old. But what are the requisites we 
 look for in seeking an abiding-place? Light, 
 air, sun, good soil, neighbours, quiet. And 
 still there is one thing more too often neg- 
 lected the personal atmosphere of the new 
 room or the new dwelling. Every room, if 
 we would but try to perceive it, has its own 
 peculiar atmosphere. It affects us pleasantly 
 or unpleasantly, as the case may be. All its 
 past history, the lives and passions, comedies 
 and woes, aspirations and failures, of its 
 former occupants have all left upon it traces 
 of their influence; and thereafter it is im- 
 possible for a new occupant to dwell there 
 without sharing in the experience of the old 
 one. An inheritance of association passes on 
 
 37
 
 with every house to its new tenant, and this 
 we cannot escape. It is useless to try to 
 ignore it; it were wiser to recognize the 
 subtle quality of each room we go into, to cul- 
 tivate a sensitiveness in that direction, and 
 never to do violence to it if we can help our- 
 selves. This would be a novel consideration 
 in home-making and house-hunting. We 
 should not look at the locks and the paint 
 alone, nor consider the costliness of construc- 
 tion; we should close our eyes and feel the 
 atmosphere of the place ; we should try to tell 
 whether or not we are likely to be happy 
 there, whether or not we are in sympathy with 
 the former owner, whether we are to be aided 
 or annoyed by the endowment of association 
 he has left behind him. 
 
 Of course, there are our own discarded 
 impediments as well. If we are to be so par- 
 ticular about the atmosphere into which we 
 move, we shall have to see to it that the asso- 
 ciations we leave behind us are not inimical
 
 to the happiness of others, at least that they 
 are not evil. 
 
 The spirit, too, has its moving-days and its 
 times of house-cleaning, as well as the body. 
 For months and years we may be dependents 
 on some great spiritual teacher, Carlyle, or 
 Arnold, or Newman, or one of the ancients. 
 We go in and out, and carry on our daily sub- 
 sistence, as tenants of his philosophy, secure 
 in his sheltering thought. But some fine May 
 morning along comes a gust of fancy and per- 
 suades us to move. We find ourselves dissat- 
 isfied with the old lodgings and set out to seek 
 for new; or perhaps in racing down some un- 
 expected street we have come upon a domicile 
 that took our eye. Plato can detain us no 
 longer; we are going to become retainers of 
 Aristotle. So the spirit passes from one 
 master to another, from one abiding-place to 
 the next on the long quest for a perfect dwell- 
 ing. None of them, perhaps, will be found 
 perfect, though none is to be despised. Seren-
 
 of 
 
 ity, cheer, encouragement, valour, are to be 
 found under many a roof where we least ex- 
 pect them. These are the qualities to look for 
 in the new lodging. 
 
 40
 
 Cum 
 
 IT is a New England term, and you may 
 hear the good Bostonian any hot summer day 
 prophesy a sea-turn with falling night. It 
 comes suddenly, too, sometimes nipping the 
 unwary and mauling the frail. You must be 
 no weakling if you are to live by the sea, even 
 in July. She is a rough nurse, and cherishes 
 her strong sons by the easy process of eliminat- 
 ing their tenderer brothers. The seaboard 
 folk are hardy, you notice. Those who took 
 hurt from the rude play of the elements have 
 been disposed of. They sleep well under the 
 gray stones. 
 
 I remember one blazing morning several 
 years ago. It had been an insufferable night, 
 when you were content to lounge about the
 
 jFrientrsijfj) of ilrt 
 
 empty streets of Beacon Hill and rest on the 
 deserted stone door-steps. Indoors there was 
 nothing to breathe. Up over this city of 
 dreadful night rose the brassy, unmitigated 
 sun, till the asphalt sizzled in the steaming air. 
 The whole town went to its office in shirt- 
 sleeves almost. Will you believe it? be- 
 fore noon the newsboys were crying extras of 
 the great change of temperature. The east 
 wind was on us like a frost. The wise ones 
 sought a thicker coat, but the foolish took 
 off their hats, let the cold wind blow under 
 their arms, and many of them never needed 
 a coat again. 
 
 But for the average being (or perhaps one 
 should say for the normal that is somewhat 
 better than average), the sea is a wonderful 
 mother. And the dweller by the coast, wait- 
 ing for the sea-turn to come in on the wings 
 of the east wind, is a mortal favoured beyond 
 his fellows. The cool of the mountains is not 
 the same thing; it is a rare tonic shock, stim- 
 ulant, thin, and keen, with nothing of the 
 
 42
 
 motherly befriending touch of the sea's 
 breath. For the coolness of the hills seems 
 to be what it really is the exhaustion and 
 vanishing of all warmth, as if one were left 
 to perish for lack of the generous sun. In that 
 high, pure atmosphere the arrowy rays come 
 down unobstructed and burn to the bone at 
 times, but the moment our lord of day is be- 
 hind the hill not a trace of his presence re- 
 mains, not a vestige of all his vehement 
 fervour. There may not be a ghost of air 
 stirring, yet the chill is about you on the 
 instant, and woollens are comfortable. It is 
 like being left in a vault, for all you are on 
 the roof of the world. 
 
 The cool of the sea is a positive thing. 
 In the first place it has a very real savour, 
 and perhaps that helps to delude us; though 
 I fancy the feel of it is different, too. Not 
 so dry as hill cold, its touch must be softer, 
 more velvety, with its cushion of humidity. 
 It is more alive, too. How should it not be 
 so, blown off the face of the breathing sea? 
 
 43
 
 of 
 
 And this wonderful life, this aliveness of the 
 sea, it must be which impresses the inlander 
 and the mountaineer. It may be that, as a 
 people, whose fathers have been seafarers and 
 maritime for hundreds of generations, we are 
 under the sway and superstition of the ocean. 
 One cannot be sure. And as you or I come 
 within sound of the shore after a long ab- 
 sence, perhaps it speaks to us as it would not 
 speak to men of an immemorially hill-bound 
 race. Certainly it has more to say to one than 
 the lofty homes of the forest and the eternal 
 peaks that hold up the canopy of blue. And 
 you may repeat with Emerson: 
 
 " I heard, or seemed to hear, the chiding sea 
 Say, Pilgrim, why so late and slow to come ? 
 Am I not always here, thy summer home? 
 Is not my voice thy music, morn and eve? 
 My breath thy healthful climate in the heats, 
 My touch thy antidote, my bay thy bath? " 
 
 But of all sea poetry, perhaps no verses have 
 more of the sea's true rhythm, sombre and 
 noble, than Rossetti's "Sea-Limits:" 
 
 44
 
 " Consider the sea's listless chime ; 
 Time's self it is made audible 
 The murmur of the earth's own shell. 
 Secret continuance sublime 
 Is the sea's end. Our sight may pass 
 No furlong further. Since time was, 
 This sound hath told the lapse of time." 
 
 There is in these lines (is there not?) the 
 slow cadence of the surf, the dirging under- 
 tone of mortal sorrow. The same note and 
 feeling are in Arnold's "Dover Beach:" 
 
 " Only from the long line of spray, 
 Where the ebb meets the moon-blanched sand, 
 Listen! You hear the grating roar 
 Of pebbles, which the waves suck back and fling 
 At their return, high up the strand, 
 Begin and cease and then again begin, 
 With tremulous cadence slow, and bring 
 The eternal note of sadness in." 
 
 There is an impressiveness in store for the 
 citizen who comes out of his city to confront 
 either the world of ocean or the world of 
 hills; but they will affect him in different 
 
 45
 
 jFritntrsfjij) of 
 
 ways. The mountains may be your friend, but 
 the sea is your lover. Those serene heights 
 that have stood unmoved so many countless 
 years, how they pique our thought the eter- 
 nal repose unanswering the restless mind. You 
 may live with them in respectful companion- 
 ship (if you are rightly modest and patient 
 and lowly-minded), and after many days you 
 may come to find that they have impressed 
 upon your unworthy self something of their 
 own austere character, their Spartan forti- 
 tude. But the sad-voiced sea is not so soli- 
 tary nor so taciturn. All her turbulent, dis- 
 traught life is yours in a moment. She is for 
 confidences immediately, and never wearies 
 all day of recounting the ancient story of her 
 perished pride and innumerable tears. In her 
 voice is the wistfulness of ages, and, as you 
 listen, the echo beats and reverberates through 
 your own human heart. You need not be a 
 sentimentalist to know this. And, as I say, 
 one never can know the true truth about na- 
 ture, one can only know the apparent truth; 
 
 46
 
 and that is so largely a matter of heredity, 
 a matter of our unnumbered experiences since 
 the first sunrise. Perhaps if a creature were 
 to come into this earth endowed with senses 
 and perceptions like our own, yet without our 
 heritage of sentiments and our ageless endow- 
 ment of emotions, the sea might seem to him 
 to sing the gladdest songs. But to us who have 
 lived by her side so many thousand gray years, 
 with all their sea tragedies, sea sorrows, sea 
 changes, it cannot be so. We unconsciously 
 find in the face of the earth a likeness of our- 
 selves. And we shall never in this world be 
 other than prejudiced observers. But, then, 
 our business is not to find gladness everywhere 
 in nature, but to bring gladness everywhere 
 with us. 
 
 47
 
 " VANITY of vanities, saith the preacher, 
 vanity of vanities; all is vanity." And what 
 you may find to remark in this well-worn note 
 of tribulation is the fact that it is the saying 
 of a preacher. Then further we may query: 
 In what other profession than that of the 
 preacher will a man come so abruptly upon 
 a sense of the tedium vita? So powerful is 
 the reflex and hypnotic influence of actions, 
 the professional faultfinder soon becomes 
 both victim and example to his own tirades. 
 What is less lovely than a scold, or more pit- 
 iable than a buffoon confirmed in his buffoon- 
 ery? 
 
 Emerson has a pregnant thought in one of 
 his brief poems: 
 
 48
 
 Tanitas Tanitattiw 
 
 ' ' A new commandment,' said the smiling Muse, 
 ' I give my darling son, thou shalt not preach ' 
 Luther, Fox, Behmen, Swedenborg, grew pale, 
 And, on the instant, rosier clouds upbore 
 Hafts and Shakespeare, with their shining choirs." 
 
 It is the same thought that has led us by 
 common consensus of critical opinion to con- 
 demn the didactic in art, and prefer those 
 artists who stick to beauty pure and simple. 
 As good comfortable Fra Lippo Lippi has 
 
 it: 
 
 " If you get simple beauty and naught else, 
 You get about the best thing God invents." 
 
 Here is at once a sanction for the best and 
 the lowliest effort of art, the truth which re- 
 wards and satisfies the eminent master, and 
 also encourages and consoles the humble 
 craftsman. It dignifies not only all art but 
 all work. Our fine arts and handicrafts are 
 perfected and ennobled, when once we treat 
 them with this cheery and loving thought 
 in mind. Whether the work is an epic or 
 
 49
 
 of 
 
 a bookbinding or the setting of a precious 
 stone, it is all one in importance if only we 
 are careful to dignify the task with love and 
 devotion. Beauty calls for our best, and only 
 by giving our best in the service of beauty 
 can we learn to fully appreciate the delight 
 that beauty offers us in return. 
 
 If it is true that every one should take some 
 manly share in doing the necessary work of 
 the world, it is probably just as true that every 
 one should have some active interest in one 
 of the fine arts. To speak more truly, per- 
 haps, there should be no divorce between 
 work and art; and I dare say that not until 
 all work can be done with the workman's 
 whole heart can we have the best results. At 
 present, in a time which we are pleased to 
 call complex, this does not seem quite possible. 
 Most men's occupations call for a stress and 
 hurry that preclude the slow care which art 
 demands. Certainly, however, the artistic 
 method is to be attempted wherever it is pos- 
 sible. Certainly, too, we shall be wise if we 
 
 50
 
 Tanltas Tanltattnu 
 
 make time (however busy we may fancy our- 
 selves) to take up some form of art or handi- 
 craft on which we may expend enthusiasm. 
 For then we shall be getting " simple beauty 
 and naught else." We shall need neither to 
 preach nor be preached to any more. Even 
 the higher journalism will become superflu- 
 ence. We shall be so busy enjoying ourselves 
 in our way, we shall have no time to spend 
 on the questionable task of trying to improve 
 our neighbours. 
 
 I am much mistaken if the first preacher 
 was not the first idler, a brazen skulker from 
 the field where his sedulous companions were 
 toiling in the sun. He probably went home 
 to discourse to his appreciative family on the 
 proper methods of agriculture and the sin of 
 laziness. 
 
 Vanitas vanitatum, et omnia vanitas. And 
 served him right that he found it so! Had 
 he preached less, perhaps, he would not have 
 discovered vanity so quickly. But why is it 
 dangerous to preach? Because it is danger- 
 Si
 
 of 
 
 ous to do anything that is not done with the 
 whole being, and preaching is too mental a 
 performance. The calling of the preacher, 
 in the pulpit or in the press, has too little con- 
 nection with activity, and enlists only the 
 forces of mind and spirit, with too little re- 
 gard for deeds. The artist must not only rea- 
 son out his work, he must love it and execute 
 it himself. That piece of work is ill done, 
 whether it be painting or paving, to which 
 there did not go a modicum of love and 
 thought and energy together. No two will 
 serve alone. If you will seek out a successful 
 mechanic, or sailorman, or musician, or mule- 
 driver, one who puts brains and heart into 
 the work of his hands, I think you will find 
 he hasn't much time left for lamentations. 
 He doesn't know what ttedium vittz means, 
 and he wouldn't know any better if you trans- 
 lated it for him. But it never ought to be 
 translated. And whenever you hear a man 
 going up and down the world reviling the 
 times continually^ he is a preacher. If he 
 
 52
 
 Tanitas Tanitattttn 
 
 isn't a preacher by profession, he is a preacher 
 by nature, which is worse. The habit of 
 preaching has taken hold upon him, and is 
 eating into his vitals. " Happy is he who 
 has been apprenticed to trade and taught to 
 preach beauty with his hands," says the Book 
 of St. Kavin. 
 
 53
 
 Contemporary Spirit 
 
 ONE'S first impulse is to say of the contem- 
 porary spirit: There is the infallible guide, 
 the exemplar of conduct and achievement! 
 It seems to us that one thing needful is to live 
 and work in accord with the spirit of the 
 times. This, indeed, is largely true. To be 
 out of joint with our own time is to be in bad 
 humour with ourselves. Whereas the secret 
 of efficiency is to be well attuned with our- 
 selves and our surroundings. 
 
 One easily remarks the great men who have 
 been hands and voice to the time spirit, and 
 one sees how irresistibly they have gone for- 
 ward in their cause, toiling and resounding 
 through the earth. They have been so evi- 
 dently moved by a power whose whole limits 
 they did not themselves comprehend; pos- 
 
 54
 
 Spirit 
 
 sessed by a glorious idea; inspired by a splen- 
 did thought; carried out of any petty con- 
 ception of life, or any selfish, self-seeking aim, 
 and borne on the great universal current of 
 progress. The mind feeds upon the events 
 and aspirations of its time as a plant feeds 
 upon the soil and air of its own valley. And 
 it is a mark of greatness and robustness of 
 mind to be able to assimilate wholly and read- 
 ily the material brought into contact with it. 
 Not to be nourished by the sunshine of the 
 hour is to begin to wilt and fail. 
 
 And yet, in another way, it is quite as neces- 
 sary to disregard the contemporary spirit, and 
 follow only the teaching of the cosmic spirit 
 the spirit which takes small heed of men 
 and events and passing modes. It has the 
 trend of larger progress in its care, and dis- 
 regards the smaller ebb and flow of local 
 currents. The contemporary, on the other 
 hand, it must be remembered, is ever in dan- 
 ger of being diverted and absorbed in the 
 trivial and the unnecessary, the foolish and 
 
 55
 
 of 
 
 the futile. The contemporary spirit not sel- 
 dom becomes jaded and debauched and in- 
 effectual from a multiplicity of detail and a 
 diversity of interest. The contemporary spirit 
 is very human, very like our lesser selves; it 
 is by no means always up to its better self; 
 it often fails of its ideal; is hasty and short- 
 sighted and frivolous. It is, really, nothing 
 but the force of average humanity at any one 
 time, realizing itself in its own creations. 
 
 The uncontemporary spirit, on the other 
 hand, is the power of humanity's better self 
 accomplishing large purposes, fostering lofty 
 aims, keeping in sight pure ideals, and pon- 
 dering on the past and the future while it 
 still must toil in the present day. It cares 
 little for reward, save that of its own appro- 
 bation; does not hesitate nor falter nor com- 
 promise; but is frank and insistent and of 
 large endurance. 
 
 It is the uncontemporary spirit that is the 
 genius of discovery and art and invention. 
 It is the devoted imaginers who have been the 
 
 56
 
 Spirit 
 
 benefactors of their race. The contemporary 
 spirit is self-seeking, self-satisfied, self-suffi- 
 cient; the great upholder of things as they 
 are, it sits stolid and somnolent in the pew 
 corner. It scoffs at liberty, praises antiquity, 
 and prophesies ruin. 
 
 The contemporary spirit always has an eye 
 to the main chance; it feathers the nest, pro- 
 vides the dower, lays by for a rainy day, lives 
 in the passing hour, and dies eternally, for 
 all we know to the contrary. Of what service, 
 then, are the contemporary and the uncon- 
 temporary spirit to be to the artist? They 
 must serve him, I fancy, very much as he is 
 served by his dual self, with the wisdom of 
 the serpent and the wisdom of the dove. 
 There will always be active within him the 
 conflicting, yet parallel, desires the inclina- 
 tion to adapt vague, unrealizable dreams to 
 the comprehension and utility of his time, and 
 the stubborn disinclination to alter his ideal 
 for any use whatever. 
 
 Yet we must remember that all art, like 
 57
 
 of 
 
 life itself, is a compromise a compromise 
 between what we would and what we can. 
 On the one hand is the artist's mind, to which 
 come fancies, thoughts, pictures, ideas, half- 
 comprehended by himself, never yet articu- 
 lated or declared for others, and unimagined 
 by the great world of his fellows to whom he 
 would address himself; on the other hand is 
 that stubborn world of media, the rough ma- 
 terial of sounds and colours, which is to be 
 made plastic by the artist's hands, which is 
 to be made to convey his meaning. How is 
 he to express to others the new thing, which 
 as yet he can hardly define to himself? Evi- 
 dently he must compromise between perfect 
 faithfulness to the vision and intelligibility to 
 his auditors. He must be content to convey 
 only a part of his own impression in order 
 that his expression of it may pass on to others. 
 And here is always the artist's dilemma, and 
 his need for self-surrender. Not what he 
 would say, but what he can say, must still 
 suffice him. So to lay the colour that it may 
 
 58
 
 <tontcmporax*i> 
 
 enshrine his new dream of beauty, yet retain 
 so much of its old disposition that men be- 
 holding will recognize and comprehend it 
 still ; so to dispose and array these old words 
 as to make them embody a shade of meaning, 
 an influence, an infusion, unguessed before, 
 yet at the same time not to wrench or distort 
 them from their common acceptation to use 
 them with great freedom and novelty, yet not 
 to startle their timorous inheritors. 
 
 To be fresh, to be original, to be conclusive, 
 to be untrite and compelling, yet to be allur- 
 ing and convincing and seductive also; to 
 astonish and overcome and carry wholly 
 away, yet never to antagonize nor offend 
 there is a task for a summer's day. And al- 
 ways while the contemporary wisdom of the 
 serpent is teaching the artist patience and 
 tolerance, and to be contented with little, the 
 uncontemporary wisdom of the dove is bid- 
 ding him contend for the manifestation of 
 his best self, for the uncompromising realiza- 
 tion of the prophecy and the dream. 
 
 59
 
 iiorttculture 
 
 THE lover of rose-gardens doubtless is 
 master of a blameless joy. He is a leisurist 
 first of all, delighting in the quiet life and 
 silently acquiescing in the great law of the 
 unimportance of the individual. He has his 
 pleasure of life behind his garden walls, in 
 sunshine and seclusion, while the pageant of 
 the world goes by with all its drums and 
 pennons. With shouts and cheers and martial 
 strains the concourse is parading down the 
 road; but your rose lover only sees the dust, 
 only feels the confusion, and turns to his 
 flower-beds with a happy heart. Let others 
 do what they will, his soul prefers peace and 
 the quietude of his own small plot of earth. 
 
 60
 
 J^ortfntitttre 
 
 Yet he is no idler. With diligence he tends 
 his beloved companions trims and waters, 
 shelters and weeds, with untiring zest. And 
 all his reward is beauty, the generous respon- 
 sive beauty of the earth the soul of the 
 ground made visible in roses. At nightfall, 
 I doubt not, he has dreams of his own. In 
 the silent silver moonlight, sifting through the 
 tall elms, he broods among his sumptuous 
 beauties slumbering on their stalks. He de- 
 vises new varieties to be evolved in time; he 
 lays out new domains for crimson favourites, 
 and brings wild corners under cultivation for 
 his lovely friends. His mind is not idle, you 
 may be sure, as he paces to and fro in the 
 warm air under the stars. He is an artist and 
 a labourer in one; to the labourer's rewards 
 of careless health and freedom of mind, he 
 adds the artist's joy. 
 
 The elements are kind to the lover of flow- 
 ers; sun and rain and air conspire to second 
 the toil of his hand; and while he sleeps his 
 
 61
 
 of 
 
 designs are being accomplished. Of what 
 other craft can so much be said? 
 
 It was not really the compensations of gar- 
 dening, however, that I had in mind when I 
 began these notes this morning, but the pleas- 
 ures and rewards of a different sort of culture, 
 which gardening only symbolizes. I mean, of 
 course, the culture of ourselves. For every 
 one of us is a garden. I may be full of nettles 
 and pigweed; you may be full of lilies and 
 lavender. You may have a rich, deep soil; 
 mine may be sandy and dry. You may bask 
 toward the south in the sun of circumstance, 
 while I have to front the north of dreary ad- 
 versity. Still, here we are awaiting the gar- 
 dener's care. Let us go in and cultivate our- 
 selves. For, if you think we can lie here in 
 the weather waiting for some fabulous divine 
 gardener to come along and do all the weed- 
 ing, and digging, and sowing, and scuffling 
 for us, while we have only to bloom and ab- 
 sorb moisture, you are sadly in error. There 
 is no gardener but oneself. And you may 
 
 62
 
 construct a fine esoteric poem on the subjectj 
 concluding with the line: 
 
 " Myself the weeder and the weed." 
 
 This is a mystery, but it is sober truth, too. 
 And the garden in which we are placed may 
 be divided, for convenience, into two or three 
 parts. There is the garden of the mind, for 
 instance, which we are sent to college to culti- 
 vate. And there is the garden of the body, 
 which we too often shamefully neglect. In- 
 deed, some misguided folk would have you 
 believe that the one is a rose-garden, while 
 the other is only a despised vegetable patch. 
 But this is not true, as every man who has 
 tried faithfully to cultivate his body knows. 
 If you have never made the attempt, why 
 not take up the care of your body for one 
 year. Find where it needs attention. Lavish 
 upon it all the thoughtful consideration you 
 would give to the culture of your mind. Tend 
 it with patience, enrich it with understand- 
 ing. Work with all the science and enthusi- 
 
 63
 
 asm of a true horticulturist. And watch for 
 the flowers of grace and strength to grow and 
 prosper under your care. 
 
 Very likely your body is sadly neglected. 
 You must overlook the whole ground, first 
 of all, to see where there is the greatest need 
 of attention. You will probably have to have 
 some advice at first, for an instinct for per- 
 fection is apt to be blunted from long disuse. 
 But, once aroused, it will soon revive to its 
 normal function ; you will begin to know 
 intuitively what foods are good, for instance, 
 and what exercises most helpful. 
 
 If your wrist is stiff and your arm unlimber, 
 take some exercises that will correct the fault. 
 Then diligently practise that gymnastic, and 
 watch the results. You will begin to see per- 
 fection of arm movement and wrist motion 
 gradually spring into life like fair, unfolding 
 blossoms. You will be capable of beauties of 
 graceful exertion which you never dreamed 
 you could possess. 
 
 If your voice is weak and unmusical, learn
 
 f&ortfmUttw 
 
 to breathe; then learn to produce tones; then 
 learn the right conformity of the mouth for 
 the production of the legitimate sounds of 
 speech; then learn to add expression. You 
 will find you have acquired a beautiful torso 
 and a fine carriage, better possessions than we 
 often buy. 
 
 And so on through all the muscles and 
 members; let none be neglected, for none are 
 despicable or useless, and all are needed for 
 the final perfection. Your great reward will 
 come, when (long after you have cast off all 
 harmful and absurd restrictions of fashion) 
 your culture begins to show itself in perfect 
 mobility and poise, and when, as a last test of 
 normal being, you begin to be aware of the 
 rhythms of your own body. Most of us pass 
 our lives without ever being once awake to this 
 sense of divine joy, this rapture of musical 
 motion. And yet rhythmic mobility is a 
 source of happiness, a means of health and 
 a magical creator of beauty. 
 
 It cannot surely be very long before we 
 
 65
 
 of 
 
 amend our standards of education, so as to 
 place the body on an equal footing with the 
 mind. We are suffering for our neglect. If 
 we make body culture as important as mental 
 and spiritual culture, we should be much hap- 
 pier, for we should be much better balanced 
 and much more normal. All the attention 
 we have come to give to sports and out-of-door 
 pastimes is itself evidence of our instinctive 
 tendency to better things, to a completer cul- 
 ture; and still we are only beginning to learn 
 the possibilities of bodily culture, and its im- 
 perative necessity as a factor in human per- 
 fection. 
 
 66
 
 Culture anfr 
 
 THE relation between speech-culture and 
 literature may not be apparent at first glance. 
 Not only does it exist, however, but it is fun- 
 damental and therefore of prime importance. 
 
 Consider for a moment the position of lit- 
 erature among the fine arts, and some of the 
 qualities inherent in literature which make 
 it a fine art. 
 
 But what do we mean by the fine arts? In 
 what do they consist? What characteristics 
 have they in common by which we may dis- 
 tinguish them? We may say theoretically 
 that art is nothing more nor less than the 
 result of man's attempt to give expression to 
 
 67
 
 his thoughts, his aspirations, his hopes and 
 fears, in forms of beauty. We may say, 
 briefly, that art is the manifestation of the 
 a>) human spirit. But everything we do is to 
 some extent expressive. Our acts, our looks, 
 
 j^i ,y ' 
 
 our gestures, the tones of our voice, may all 
 be said to be expressive in that they convey 
 to others some impression about ourselves. 
 An advertising sign on the fence is a form 
 of expression, in that it serves to convey in- 
 formation from the proprietor to the public. 
 Indeed, nothing that man does can be wholly 
 without expression. How, therefore, can we 
 distinguish these forms of expression which 
 are worthy to be termed the fine arts? 
 
 If I say to you that a plus b equals c, or that 
 2 plus 2 equals 4, I am giving expression to 
 a^ statement which appeals at once to your 
 /V c< reason. It requires only your mind to appre- 
 
 ciate the information. You don't care any- 
 thing about it. But if I say, " the sailor and 
 the hunter have come home," that piece of 
 information begins to interest you. I begin 
 
 68
 
 /A 
 
 */ 
 
 Hiteratttre 
 
 to touch upon your emotions. You fancy 
 there is to be more of the story; you like the 
 sailor better than the hunter; or perhaps you 
 wish that the hunter had returned alone; at 
 all events, your sympathy is awake, and await- 
 ing the development of the story. It is no 
 longer a pure and simple statement of fact, 
 such as we had at first in 2 plus 2 equals 4. 
 Now, if I go further and quote you Robert 
 Louis Stevenson's line: 
 
 " Home is the sailor, home from sea, 
 And the hunter come from the hill," 
 
 What is the result? We not only have our 
 mind informed as before; we not only have > j^^-^, 
 our emotions enlisted as before; we have our 3./ 
 senses appealed to as well. The statement 
 already had mental and spiritual qualities, 
 and now there has been added to these a phys- 
 ical quality, the quality of beauty. These 
 three qualities of truth, spirituality, and 
 beauty are the essential characteristics of all 
 the fine arts. And among all the achievements 
 
 69
 
 of 
 
 
 and activities of mankind, no form of expres- 
 sion can be classed as a fine art unless each 
 of these qualities is present. And, also, any 
 industry may at any moment rise to the height 
 of a fine art if the workman is given sufficient 
 freedom and has sufficient talent or genius. 
 In that case he will impress upon the work 
 something of his own personality; he will 
 make it expressive of himself; he will put 
 into his work reason and love and beauty. 
 He will make it appeal to our mind, our 
 spirit and our aesthetic sense. 
 
 You see, then, that these three distinguished 
 characteristics of art are representative of the 
 threefold nature of the artist. And these three 
 qualities, inherent in every work of art, im- 
 planted there by its human creator, a reflected 
 image of himself, will in turn appeal to the 
 living trinity within ourselves. All art has 
 charm; it has what Rossetti called funda- 
 mental brain work; it has emotion. To say 
 the same thing in another way, art must make 
 us satisfied and glad and content; it must 
 
 70
 
 attfr 
 
 give us something to think about, something 
 
 Win -i i ' * 
 
 to love, and something to recall with a thrill 
 
 , "' / 
 
 of pleasure. 
 
 It is the province of art, of every art and 
 every piece of art, to influence us in these three 
 ways. And any artist whose work is lacking 
 in any one of those directions is in so far a 
 limited and imperfect creator. 
 
 Art, then, is the result of man's attempt 
 to express himself adequately, with intelli- 
 gence, with power and with charm. But 
 when we say that art is the embodiment of 
 expression, that does not mean that the ex- 
 pression is given necessarily a permanent 
 form. Some of the arts, such as architecture, 
 painting, and sculpture, are dependent on 
 materials for their embodiment. But their 
 greater or less permanence has nothing to do 
 with their essential qualities. It would not 
 detract in the least from the excellence of a 
 painting if it were destroyed the minute it 
 was finished. Other arts, again, like music 
 and dancing and acting, are merely instan-
 
 *je JFvtentrstjqj of 
 /k*^ #*' 
 
 taneous, and have no permanence whatever; 
 they perish more quickly than the impulse 
 which produced them, except in so far as they 
 can be preserved in the memory and repro- 
 duced by imitation. 
 
 t'^ i 
 
 Now, in order to arrest the perishable 
 beauty of these instantaneous arts, certain 
 mechanical inventions have been devised 
 from time to time the invention of writing, 
 of printing, of photography, for example. 
 
 * |^A-A , ,| B^ 
 
 And by their useful means creations of art, 
 
 tJr which must otherwise be lost to the world, 
 
 fr^tj* may be preserved and transmitted and mul- 
 
 [rfi- tiplied for the enjoyment of thousands. And 
 the point I wish to emphasize is, that music 
 
 * \t/r* ^^i^ 
 
 and literature are in precisely the same case 
 r*\**'".~" "~~~. 
 
 in this respect. Literature, like music, is de- 
 pendent on writing only as a means for its 
 preservation. All its essential qualities, like 
 those of music, are perceived only when it 
 
 is reproduced as modified sound. And in 
 *>* ijtt ~ " . 
 
 Stevenson's lines, which we quoted a moment 
 
 a g> Y ou remember that we found he had 
 
 "
 
 -*>a^vfs ^^frrx/4 * *.t*M A <.t.t*if* 
 
 S4)mf)=<ttUiit:r an* lUUvatttvr 
 
 o/ 
 
 taken a simple statement of fact, which con- 
 tained truth and interest, and had raised it to 
 the dignity of poetry, by adding a single qual- 
 ity the quality of beauty. His genius and 
 knowledge of English gave him the power of 
 arranging a few words so that they should 
 not only interest us as they had done before, 
 but should enthral us with a new and added 
 charm. That charm was the charm of sound. 
 Or to take another example, take this sen- 
 tence, " So, among the mountains by the win- 
 ter sea, the sound of battle rolled all day 
 long." There is a statement of fact, a bit of 
 expression, which conveys information and 
 which has interest. But now listen to the 
 same words when Tennyson has added beauty 
 to their thought and emotion: - 
 
 " So all day long the sound of battle rolled 
 Among the mountains by the winter sea." 
 
 This new beauty is purely a beauty of 
 sound. Tennyson's taste as an artist led him 
 to perceive, when these sixteen words were 
 
 73
 
 JFri*nlrsf)i|j of ilrt 
 
 so arranged as to produce their greatest 
 charm, their maximum effect upon us. 
 
 I must conclude, therefore, that poetry, or 
 
 literature, is an oral art. And the aspect of 
 
 it, which appeals to an aesthetic sense, does so, 
 
 _ / and can only do so, through the harmonious 
 
 arrangement of melodious words. 
 
 If I repeat, then, that it is the inherent 
 characteristic of art to be beautiful and to 
 appeal to our sense of beauty, and, further- 
 more, that the only way literature has of ful- 
 filling this condition and becoming a fine art 
 is by the beauty of the spoken word, I think 
 we may very safely conclude that any com- 
 position which fails in this test fails of being 
 literature. 
 
 And further, this relation between litera- 
 ture and speech is not only a fundamental one, 
 but its maintenance must have an important 
 effect. Literature is, as it were, only a glori- 
 fied form of speech, produced with greater 
 care and skill and forethought The litera- 
 ture of a nation is the quintessence of the 
 
 74
 
 au& ZUtcvatuvc 
 
 speech of the nation. Think for a moment 
 what sometimes happens when any commu- 
 nity becomes detached from the current of ^ 
 civilization; when it becomes isolated and 
 narrow and self-centred. It often happens 
 that these impoverished communities deteri- 
 orate rapidly, and that they show mental 
 weakness, moral depravity, physical debase- 
 ment. Had their speech become as corrupt 
 and inefficient as themselves, you would not 
 have expected literature from such a people. 
 On the other hand, think of the case of those 
 nations which have reached a high grade of 
 civilization in the world's history. They have 
 always been nations which have bequeathed 
 to us valuable and significant treasures of 
 literature and the plastic arts. Indeed, we 
 have no means of measuring the greatness of 
 a people except by the fine arts it encourages 
 and produces. For the fine arts, as we said, 
 are only the embodiment of man's aspirations 
 and ideals. The surpassing literature of 
 Greece and Rome is a true exponent of the 
 
 75
 
 of 
 
 degree of civilization at which they had ar- 
 rived. And it is, too, simply a record of their 
 speech. It were surely impossible that Greek 
 poetry and Greek prose should exhibit such 
 qualities of perfection as they do, unless the 
 Greek tongue had first attained those same 
 perfect characteristics, those traits of power 
 and beauty and adequateness of expression. 
 
 If we do not admit this and still profess 
 to think there is no relation between speech 
 and literature, we are driven by the force of 
 logic to admit that Shakespeare's plays might 
 quite well have been written by some wise old 
 Chinese philosopher, who was a deaf mute 
 and spent his whole life in a hermit's cell. 
 
 If I could acquire a knowledge and use of 
 language such as Stevenson possessed, such 
 as two or three people of my acquaintance 
 possess; if I could know the English tongue 
 with all its shades of meaning and subtle as- 
 sociation; if I could use it with readiness, 
 with exactness, with copiousness, with feeling; 
 and if, in addition to this, I could acquire a 
 
 76
 
 Sjieeefi=eultttte atrtr 
 
 beautiful and well-controlled voice, such as 
 one occasionally hears, so that after I knew 
 my words I could make use of them, I should 
 in that case not only be a better educated man, 
 but I should have greater power. I should 
 have given myself the rudiments of a literary 
 education (such as is nowhere provided in our 
 schools or colleges), and I should have fitted 
 myself as a citizen to be one of that intelli- 
 gently critical public without which the fine 
 arts cannot flourish, cannot, indeed, exist. 
 Moreover, I could fit myself to be an intelli- 
 gent and sympathetic, though obscure, appre- 
 ciator of the art of literature in no other way 
 than by these two means. 
 
 I do not know how it may be with you, 
 but I cannot recall more than half a dozen 
 people among those I have ever known who 
 possessed this happy degree and kind of cul- 
 ture. If, however, instead of being so rare, 
 speech culture were made prevalent; if such 
 knowledge and power of expression could be 
 made almost universal, consider what a public 
 
 77
 
 of 
 
 we should have! And think how impossible 
 a great mass of our contemporary litera- 
 ture, with its barbarous offences against good 
 taste, its ruthless disregard of beauty, its atroc- 
 ities against English speech think how im- 
 possible such work would be. Do you think 
 that a wide-spread culture of our own lan- 
 guage, a national instinct for exact, flexible, 
 and pleasing speech, would have no influence 
 upon our literature? I find it difficult to 
 imagine a perfected standard of diction and 
 literary mediocrity existing in the same na- 
 tion at the same time. 
 
 As bearing directly on the question, allow 
 me to quote a fragmentary poem by Richard 
 Hovey, entitled: 
 
 "THE GIFT OF ART 
 
 " I dreamed that a child was born ; and at his birth 
 The Angel of the Word stood by the hearth 
 And spake to her that bore him : ' Look without ! 
 Behold the beauty of the Day, the shout 
 Of colour to glad colour, rocks and trees 
 And sun and sea and wind and sky! All these 
 
 78
 
 &pmf)~&ultttrt anH Hittvatttrr 
 
 Are God's expression, art-work of His hand, 
 
 Which men must love ere they may understand, 
 
 By which alone He speaks till they have grace 
 
 To hear His voice and look upon His face. 
 
 For first and last of all things in the heart 
 
 Of God as man the glory is of art. 
 
 What gift could God bestow or man beseech 
 
 Save spirit unto spirit uttered speech? 
 
 Wisdom were not, for God Himself could find 
 
 No way to reach the unresponsive mind, 
 
 Sweet Love were dead, and all the crowded skies 
 
 A loneliness and not a Paradise. 
 
 Teach the child language, mother. . . .' " 
 
 This, then, is the very brief statement of 
 the bearing of speech culture upon literature, 
 as it appears to me; and our investigation 
 closes here. In conclusion, however, I should 
 like to guard against the implication of an 
 overestimate of the value of the fine arts and 
 their importance in life. If one insists on the 
 vital necessity for education in expression, it 
 is not merely to the end that the fine arts may 
 flourish. For though the fine arts are lovely 
 and desirable in themselves, they indicate the 
 
 79
 
 of 
 
 existence of something even more wonderful 
 and desirable they indicate the presence of 
 an instinct for truth, an instinct for goodness, 
 and an instinct for beauty in the people which 
 produced them. They reveal, as I think we 
 said before, the high degree of civilization 
 which that people had been fortunate enough 
 to reach. 
 
 If we give ourselves to the culture of ex- 
 pression, we shall undoubtedly have greater 
 art as a result of that education. But its best 
 result would be the effect upon ourselves; 
 for in the process of that culture, in the calling 
 forth of the capacities which reveal them- 
 selves in art, we shall be developing those 
 powers which alone enlighten and ennoble a 
 nation. 
 
 80
 
 w Coherent 
 
 THERE is a coherence of bodily action, just 
 as there is a coherence of speech. And the 
 one is no less essential than the other, either 
 for expressing our thoughts or accomplishing 
 our wishes. 
 
 We commonly speak of a man's utterances 
 being incoherent, meaning by that that they 
 are unintelligible or inarticulate. In the rad- 
 ical sense of the word, of course, we mean 
 that the man's speech does not cohere, does 
 not " hang together," as we say. One part 
 of it has no logical relation with another part. 
 
 So in bodily action ; many of us are afflicted 
 with an incoherency of motion, and do not 
 relate the different movements or acts of the 
 body. One man has an excellent chest devel- 
 
 81
 
 opment and strong arms, with a miserable 
 pair of legs. Another has good legs and feet, 
 but a weakly upper body; a third, all arms 
 and no back; a fourth, all back and no arms. 
 And these defects our physical training (un- 
 der the evil influence of college and profes- 
 sional athletics) does little to help. True, the 
 best teachers of physical education are wholly 
 against the sort of training fostered by com- 
 petition, intercollegiate and international, but 
 public sentiment is too strong for them. The 
 men want the prizes and the victory more than 
 they want wholesome, all-round development. 
 So they continue to overexercise their strong 
 muscles and neglect their weak ones. As a 
 consequence, they lack coherence of strength. 
 But there is a worse defect, the result of 
 competitive emulation, and that is incoherence 
 of action. Even when a man is well developed, 
 he is very often without prompt and intelli- 
 gent coherence of action. He has no coordi- 
 nation ; does not act as a single being, with his 
 will and mind and muscles at once. If there 
 
 82
 
 <Dn i>cin0 Colj event 
 
 is a step to be taken, he steps with his leg 
 alone, the rest of his body having nothing to 
 do with it. If anything is to be lifted from a 
 shelf, he allows his hand and arm to do it, 
 while his body is almost inert. You perceive 
 at once that he is not an alert, complete indi- 
 vidual, thoroughly vitalized from top to toe, 
 but rather a bundle of arms and legs and 
 fingers, all equally strong, but all working at 
 haphazard, under separate impulses. There 
 seems to be no central determination, no in- 
 dwelling and directing purpose. The man 
 has no coherence of muscular action. 
 
 If this truth is not obvious in others, it 
 becomes quite clear, I think, when we observe 
 ourselves, and if we note the different ways 
 of doing things. And it is easy, with a little 
 care and training, to note the improvement 
 in ourselves in this matter of physical coor- 
 dination. It is a means of economy of force 
 and increase of power not to be overlooked. 
 To cultivate physical coherence implies, too, 
 the culture of more than bodily powers. It 
 
 83
 
 of 
 
 implies the culture of the powers of spirit and 
 mind as well. For we cannot improve our 
 physique, in strength, in promptness, in skill, 
 without necessarily improving our faculties of 
 
 determination and judgment at the same time. 
 
 i fr IMMMMMMB 
 
 You may be quite sure that a man of slov- 
 enly, shambling appearance has a slovenly, 
 ^ careless character; that a sturdy and trim fig- 
 ure houses a reliable being, and so forth. This, 
 of course, we all commonly recognize. But 
 we fail, I think, to act on the truth. We fail 
 to make the further deduction, which is so 
 obvious, that, since person and personality are 
 so closely related, we can educate the one by 
 means of the other. Yet, as a matter of fact, 
 this is the very thing we can do in physical 
 training. By training the person in better 
 modes of motion and carriage and speech, 
 we educate the personality behind it, and give 
 that personality new endowments of gracious- 
 ness and beauty and charm. 
 
 This better education of the individual, in- 
 deed, should constitute the aim of physical 
 
 84 
 
 Jfo
 
 <T>u jjting (Toljcvmt 
 
 training. The mere culture of muscularity 
 or bodily power alone is not enough. And 
 as long as athletics remain the sole end and 
 aim of gymnastics, just so long will they re- 
 main in the inferior position they now hold. 
 But gymnastics in education are as important 
 as philosophy, or languages, or science, or the 
 fine arts. And under wise provision, they 
 must come to hold a more and more important 
 position in all curricula of training of the 
 young. 
 
 The range of physical culture is not lim- 
 ited, but almost illimitable; and we are only 
 on the threshold of our knowledge in regard 
 to it. Physical culture engenders and devel- 
 ops not only physical coherence, but personal 
 coherence, personal poise and power. It 
 helps forward that perfection of the character 
 for which we are all striving, and helps it as 
 nothing else can. It is the foundation on 
 which all our education must be built. Our 
 bodies in which we live are the media through 
 which we must communicate with others. 
 
 85
 
 JFrintfrsijij) of 
 
 All our thoughts and actions, sorrows, joys, 
 and fears, desires and demands, can only be 
 conveyed to our fellows through these bodies 
 we inhabit. We can accomplish nothing 
 without their assistance. It is just as true, 
 too, that all information comes to us through 
 them. To attempt to educate the mind and 
 
 heart, without educating the body, is more 
 foolish than it would be to give a man all the 
 , ,i ;< ' learning of the ages, and then doom him to 
 
 . 
 
 solitary confinement for the term of his nat- 
 
 . 
 
 ural life. 
 
 I fancy we have not often enough consid- 
 ered the beauty of a coherent personality. 
 Yet think how powerful it may be! Even 
 in the one realm of the physical personality, 
 how full of power and charm coherent action 
 is! You may see it in a juggler or a tight- 
 rope walker, in exhibitions of great skill and 
 sleight-of-hand, and it never fails to delight 
 and entrance. We cannot all be jugglers; 
 we cannot all be even skilful; but certainly 
 we can all be less slovenly and unwieldy than 
 
 86
 
 .* * 
 
 (Du ijciufl Coherent 
 
 we are and add to the pleasure of life 
 thereby. For life is a good deal like walking 
 up the bed of a rocky stream, after all. You 
 must step always with precision and intelli- 
 gence, or you break your shins and wet your 
 skin. A wise foot makes an easy journey. 
 
 Then, too, is it not coherence of character 
 that makes success? Is it not the power of 
 holding ourselves together, and having an 
 aim, and insisting on one thing at a time, that 
 brings us what we want? The flabby, wob- ' 
 bling, uncertain character accomplishes none i " 
 of its objects, however determined it may be. 
 There are some people with as little coherence 
 as a jelly-fish aimless organisms afloat in 
 the tide of circumstance pulpy nonentities 
 stranded by a single wave, torn asunder at 
 a blow. We must do better than that. 
 
 And as our progress in the world is so 
 
 rr*.<L. 
 
 greatly dependent on this power of just co- ^ 
 herence, this pulling of ourselves together, 
 and holding our powers in command, who 
 shall say that the very possibility of a con- 
 
 87
 
 
 of ilrt 
 
 tinued life for the spirit may not depend on 
 something of the same power? If I am con- 
 
 jf*^ 
 
 tent to live and stand and walk and occupy 
 furniture like a mould of blanc-mange on a 
 dish of china, does it seem that I shall be well 
 prepared for immortality? I fancy that when 
 old, familiar, friendly Death came by, he 
 would find in me a mound of glutinous plas- 
 ticity, nothing more. It must be another sort 
 of coherence which is to stand the test of 
 change and growth and joy. 
 
 
 88
 
 EMERSON, in his essay on " Compensation," 
 says that he had long wished to draw atten- 
 tion to that important law of the universe. 
 Giving and Taking, the law of exchange, is 
 merely a part of compensation. 
 
 The capacity for giving and taking is an 
 elemental one. In all nature it seems to be 
 the most primary law of life. The very 
 weathering of rocks means that they receive 
 the sun and frost and rain, absorb them, trans- 
 mute them by chemic change, and then give 
 off the resultant dust and detritus infini- 
 tesimal portions of themselves to be returned 
 to the great clearing-house of nature. 
 
 A grade higher, in the plant world, the ex- 
 change is more apparent. The flowers and 
 
 89
 
 of 
 
 trees and grasses, the whole sensitive covering 
 of the earth, taking from the elements and 
 giving to the elements, seem to have no other 
 function than this process of exchange. The 
 living organism of the flower is, we know, 
 endowed with capacities and needs for receiv- 
 ing light and moisture and warmth from the 
 heaven above and the earth beneath. Sun- 
 shine and dews and showers and the more 
 solid elements of the ground are received by 
 it and made part of its very composition. It 
 has the power to take of these passing phe- 
 nomena just so much as it may need and trans- 
 form it by a secret law into a part and parcel 
 of its own singular beauty. The flower is born 
 after its kind, but hour by hour, day by day, 
 year by year, minute by minute, it is sustain- 
 ing its life, its individual self, from particular 
 qualities which it takes from its surroundings. 
 And also minute by minute and year after 
 year the flower or the tree is giving again to 
 the world about it something of itself seeds, 
 perfume, shade, and falling leaves and petals. 
 
 90
 
 CK tiling antr <?alting 
 
 Evidently it could not go on for ever, or even 
 for an hour, receiving sap and air and giving 
 out nothing in return. One-half of its nature 
 would be paralyzed ; it would begin to die. 
 It would begin to perish just as surely as if 
 it ceased to receive and continued to give. 
 The power of exchange, the power of receiv- 
 ing and giving, is the very vitality of the 
 plant. 
 
 This equal law runs on up through the 
 higher grades of created things. The crea- 
 tures which move over the face of the ground 
 and with conscious desire seek their nourish- <. r 
 ment here and there are really doing only 
 what the flowers do. They feed on this and 
 that, some on herbage, some on other flesh; 
 they inhale, some by air and some by water, 
 the oxygen they need; they are warmed to 
 what degree their nature requires. Always : 
 they are taking from the world about them 
 those elements necessary for their subsistence, 
 and always they are giving back again these 
 elements, after they have transmuted them to
 
 of 
 
 their own use, or rather to their own nature. 
 In growth, in energy, in motion, in deeds, the 
 animal is constantly giving out to the earth 
 about it an equal compensation for all it re- 
 ceives. 
 
 How all these processes are carried on, 
 ministering to life from hour to hour, and 
 transmitting that life from generation to gen- 
 eration, we can largely understand. The pa- 
 tient and devout labours of science are daily 
 making it clearer to us. But why they are 
 carried on does not yet appear. Science shows 
 us wonder after wonder of beautiful law and 
 orderly succession, and gives us the clear rea- 
 son for this or that method of procedure, and 
 yet stands abashed before the final query. 
 Why the beaver should build his house is, 
 clear enough. He wishes to survive the iron 
 winter, and his wisdom has contrived that 
 admirable plan of doing so. Why he should 
 wish to survive, no man can tell. I know why 
 I go to market and to the tailor's and to the 
 bookshop, and why I do a hundred things; 
 
 92
 
 antr graft tn0 
 
 it is because I am glad of life. I know that . 
 I am glad of life; I know how I am glad 
 of it; but why I am glad of it I do not know. 
 If I knew that, I should know everything, 
 for the What, the How, and the Why are all 
 there is of the universe. It sometimes seems 
 as if we might comprehend the what and the 
 how, the physical and mental, of the universe. 
 But the why, the spiritual, is still hidden. 
 
 In man's life certainly, as in the lower 
 manifestations of existence, the law of give 
 and take obtains. And there, as in the sub- 
 human kingdom, that process of transmuta- 
 tion, that change of what we receive into what 
 we bestow, is the essence of life itself. You 
 and I, like our friends the trees and our 
 cousins the creatures, are every moment re- 
 ceiving. We must have air and light and 
 food and water to cast into the crucible of 
 the body and be transformed into blood and 
 bone. Every moment we are parting with 
 some transformed remnant of this matter 
 in exhalations of the lungs, and evapora- 
 
 93
 
 of 
 
 tions from the skin. This is only the grosser 
 and more obvious transformation of matter 
 in which we participate. But there are finer, 
 more delicate changes as well. Our need of 
 rest and activity is the need of chemical 
 change in the tissues of muscle and nerve. 
 And while the changes of circulation and 
 breathing are instant and imperative, the 
 timekeeping rhythms of life, other energiz- 
 ings and recuperations are more leisurely 
 eating and abstinences, sleeping and waking, 
 for example. In all these operations there 
 is the obvious rhythm, a balancing of receipt 
 and output. 
 
 So, too, in a still more intangible way, the 
 
 impressions we receive are transmuted by our 
 
 2~ own thought and emotion, and are then given 
 
 back again to the world in words and looks 
 
 and actions, as expressions of ourselves; so 
 
 that expression is nature plus personality. 
 
 The best thought of the world, the most 
 
 s\ beautiful art treasures that we have, are the 
 
 creation of man, no doubt. Yet whence did 
 
 94
 
 an* <Tatuu0 
 
 they come to him? Did he not first receive 
 them as impressions of the natural world 
 about him? Then having made them his < 
 own, he gave them back again. First the tak- v 
 ing and then the giving. 
 
 Always, through every metamorphic pro- 
 cess, we may notice how imperative it is that 
 the rhythm be kept up. Indeed, it is impossi- 
 ble that existence should continue unless both 
 functions are being performed. In the world 
 of organized being there can be no such thing 
 as giving constantly without receiving, for 
 exhaustion and death would follow quickly. 
 On the other hand, there can be no such thing - 
 as receiving continually without giving forth 
 again, for death, though more tardy, would 
 be no less sure. Starvation will produce 
 death, but so also will a coat of varnish over 
 the body. In the one case, our power of re- 
 ceiving is interfered with; in the other, our 
 power of giving. Life is a stream for ever 
 flowing through these fragile and diaphanous 
 shapes of ours. 
 
 95
 
 of 
 
 /Just so, too, our spiritual or intellectual life 
 is always fleeting, passing, renewing itself. I 
 am myself for a few years or decades; but 
 
 - I am not the same without change for two 
 moments together. And the obvious thought 
 to be derived from this physical life is, that in 
 the higher as well as in the material existence 
 there must always imperatively be a balance 
 of giving and taking, perceiving and express- 
 ing. It is this thought which shows us the 
 folly of greed, the absurd ambition which so 
 easily besets us to possess everything which 
 pleases us. Do you wish to own a whole 
 museum of beautiful objects? Do you not see 
 that, according to the laws of life, you could 
 never keep these things for yourself? You 
 would have to give them away again in one 
 way or another. What you really need, that 
 you may take, and that no one can keep from 
 you. Do you think the one success in life is 
 
 r to receive and have? Under the pinch of 
 hunger and cold, it seems to you that death 
 through poverty is the only horror in the 
 
 96
 
 aim (Tatuuo 
 
 world to be guarded against. It seems to you , 
 that those who have devoted all the splendid 
 energies of man to receiving and acquiring 
 alone are the fortunate ones of the earth. You 
 think that what is called wealth is the one 
 thing needful. But if you look a second time, 
 and consider all the persons of affluence whom 
 you know, and all those whom you see in pub- 
 lic places, you will perceive that many of 
 them are dying as certainly as the destitute, 
 perishing of inertia, a dyspepsia of body and 
 spirit. And because they are so mistaken, 
 those poor, unhappy, fat people, trundled use- 
 lessly by in their carriages are as deserving 
 of your pity as the beggar on the sidewalk. 
 
 Between giving and taking lies the nice 
 poise or calm which is the gladness of life 
 itself, perhaps. 
 
 97
 
 of 
 
 As in Homer's line, " Many are the tongues 
 of mortals, but the speech of the immortals 
 is one," so the secrets of the artist are many, 
 but there is only one secret of art. Lacking 
 that, we may spend lifelong toil in the pur- 
 suit of perfection; we may master a bril- 
 liant technique and compass the profoundest 
 thought; the architecture of our work may 
 be sound and its finish flawless ; none the less 
 without the secret it will be futile. We may 
 heed every tradition, follow every hint of 
 written or unwritten lore; yes, and we may 
 even fling every accepted creed of our craft 
 to the four winds, and build anew with the 
 intuitive instinct we call originality, so that 
 we will endure awhile, filling all eyes with 
 wonder and every mouth with praise, and yet 
 
 98
 
 Semt of 
 
 we will fail ultimately if the secret was not 
 in our heart. 
 
 There is a sort of greatness about a true 
 masterpiece that makes itself felt we hardly 
 know how, that moves us we do not know 
 why; just as there is a sort of greatness about 
 some men, which compels an unreserved en- 
 thusiasm and loyalty toward them. It is the 
 quality which endears people to us. This 
 man may be brave and irreproachable; that 
 one may be clever to bewilderment; yet, if 
 they are not lovable, we meet them and part 
 without regret. They convince us, and charm, 
 and even win; yet a moment later we are left 
 as cold as before. Here may be a play, or a 
 book, or an exhibition of pictures, which is 
 the talk of the town, and which dazzles the 
 sense with its novel beauty; yet somehow, 
 while drawing our utmost commendation and 
 provoking not a single palpable criticism, it 
 never stirs us from the centre of our being. 
 We sit in approving calm, even with generous 
 applause, unwarmed, unfired. 
 
 99
 
 But show me, perhaps, ever so hasty a 
 sketch of gray morning, a half-finished scrap 
 of purple sea-beach, or a couple of stanzas 
 
 like 
 
 J" Under the wide and starry sky, 
 Dig my grave and let me lie," 
 
 or.- 
 
 " The year's at the spring, 
 The day's at the morn," 
 
 and just because it has the echo of the secret 
 in it, I shall never recall it without a quick- 
 ening joy. It has entered in to be a part of 
 me for ever; and whatever I do, whatever I 
 say, will have in it some minute reverberation 
 of the echo of that secret. 
 
 What quality of art can it be, so magical, 
 so vague, so strong? You must ask first what 
 quality it is in men. For art is no more than 
 the universal speech of humanity; and what- 
 ever taint there is in a character will be be- 
 trayed in the voice; though only the wise 
 know this. What quality is it in the personal- 
 ity that makes it most memorable to its fel- 
 
 j 
 
 100
 
 Semt of 
 
 lows? A man to be remembered must have 
 endeared himself to men. He will not be 
 remembered for wealth, nor power, nor wit, 
 unless he have used it beneficently, winning 
 regard as he won command. So you may say 
 love is the secret of art, as it is the secret of 
 
 iil: 
 
 To be inevitable (in our recent phrase), 
 to have the inescapable magic, this is the aim 
 of the artist. If you analyze this strange po- 
 tency, it seems to resolve itself into the essence 
 of endearment. It is, as we say, the heart of 
 the matter; it draws our attachment, our un- 
 reasoned devotion, our love. There are, of 
 course, works of mediocre value, which enlist 
 the crudest affections, and yet are patently 
 false and worthless to the better judgment; 
 but I do not mean these watery sentimental 
 things. I am speaking of the rare achieve- 
 ments of art, such as came from the hands of 
 Blake and Corot and Wordsworth. Think, 
 for instance, of that beautiful lyric: 
 
 101
 
 of 
 
 " I wandered lonely as a cloud, 
 That floats on high o'er vales and hills." 
 
 You would not say that it embodied a very 
 common human sentiment; you would say 
 it is rather a poem for the cultivated. And 
 yet, I think, the quality in it which holds us, 
 the indwelling spirit behind that bewitching 
 mask of words, is the spirit of love. The 
 heart of the man, one is sure, must have been 
 greatly moved before he could speak so. And 
 we, in our turn, are greatly moved under the 
 spell of that wizard cadence. At first it might 
 seem a mere trick of the senses, a skill in 
 accents, the craft of melodious syllables. It 
 is more than that. We say it is intensity or 
 lyric ardour. But no craftsmanship, however 
 cunning, can match that volatile charm, nor 
 arrest the fleeting glamour of such lines. 
 Yet surely, if the wonder worker were only a 
 master of skill and no more, his intricacies 
 could be studied and his secret caught. But 
 no, strive as we may, there is no imitation of 
 consummate art possible. You can no more 
 
 102
 
 Secret of 
 
 make a new poem which shall be Words- 
 worth's, than you can make a new man out of 
 clay. 
 
 The secret of art and the secret of nature 
 are one the slow, patient, absorbing, gen- 
 erous process of love sustaining itself every- 
 where on loveliness and life, and remanifest- 
 ing itself afresh in ever new forms of vitality 
 and loveliness. It is because of this quality, 
 and in proportion to this quality that we 
 value every shred of art, and are at such pains 
 to preserve it. By the simplest natural law, 
 humanity cares for those things which ame- 
 liorate its lot, and lets go in the long run 
 everything that hurts or retards it. If a man 
 is mean or cruel or false or self-absorbed, his 
 force and cleverness may still carry him far; 
 indeed he may come to great eminence in 
 fame and power. The deep, foolish, blind 
 heart of goodness in man is deluded by his 
 display. But by and by, in the advance of 
 thought, he will be forgotten, because his unit 
 of influence was never for the best, was never 
 
 103
 
 JFrfrntrsfjiji of 
 
 needful for sustaining the world. In the en- 
 largement of aspiration in man, whatever 
 hinders that development will be abandoned. 
 We shall not b^ fooled for ever. And he only 
 is on the winning side, who can see in the 
 march of history a laborious trail cut through 
 the underbrush of experience from darkened 
 valley to sunlit crest, who can perceive 
 whither the blind by-paths led the lost adven- 
 turers, and who will hold resolutely to that 
 steep road the prevailing undoubtful trend 
 of truth. 
 
 Of nations you may say the same, and of 
 art you may say the same. There have been 
 unnecessary tribes that have perished in their 
 inutility, because in the large wise scope of 
 progress, in the preservation of the fair and 
 the good, they had no part to play. And in 
 art, which is only the embodiment of the hope 
 of the world, all that was petty or self-centred 
 has perished and is perishing from day to 
 day. It has endured for awhile; it has 
 pleased us by its cleverness, or beguiled us 
 
 104
 
 Secret of 
 
 by its charm, when we have been too near to 
 understand its tendency. With man's avidity 
 for truth and goodness (in spite of a mon- 
 strous inertia), he is ready to follow the wild- 
 est departures which promise more light and 
 a liberation from wrong. But as these prove 
 unavailing, he will leave them for others. 
 The history of art, like the history of man, 
 is a jungle full of blind trails leading no- 
 whither; and you will find they were aban- 
 doned because they did not lead toward good- 
 ness, toward what was good for man ; because 
 they did not make toward the spaciousness 
 and freshness of truth. 
 
 Long ago, of course, art was more simple 
 and unconscious than it has since become; 
 and the devout soul of the artist dwelt in his 
 deft fingers. It was impossible for him to do 
 anything without conviction; he had never 
 heard of technique; and the pride of barren 
 skill had not been born. The man and his 
 work were one. This is not to say that con- 
 summate care for workmanship, and untiring
 
 of 
 
 diligence for perfection, are wrong; it is 
 merely to say that between the soul and the 
 body of art there can be no divorce that 
 each is necessary, and neither can survive 
 alone. 
 
 Is modern art frivolous, vapid, unmanly? 
 Pray who made it so? Any art is just as 
 great as the age that produced it. And for 
 my part I do not believe that art can fail any 
 more than I believe that speech can cease, 
 or nature withhold her changing seasons. Jf 
 we are fallen on paltry times, as some would 
 have us believe, let us change the times. The 
 earth is just as fair and beautiful and generous 
 as it ever was ; and we are coming to under- 
 stand it better than our fathers could. Let 
 us love it as well. Have done with falsehood 
 and greed, and the millennium will begin to- 
 morrow, with paradise in your own dooryard. 
 There is no other spirit in which life can be 
 made worth while, and there is no other 
 secret of a great art. 
 
 1 06
 
 Canon of 
 
 IT has always been a difficult problem with 
 critics how to redeem criticism from the mere 
 vagaries of personal whim and reduce it to 
 the orderly dignity of a science. It is easy 
 for the man of cultivated taste to say, " this 
 pleases me," or, " that seems to me unlovely; " 
 and the great mass of our current criticism 
 has no other logic. In an estimate of art, we 
 are dependent on just such arbitrary judg- 
 ments of critics honest opinions, indeed, 
 but without any philosophic basis. Now how 
 are we to improve upon these obiter dicta? 
 Is there no sound canon of criticism to be 
 substituted for this haphazard method of 
 judging a work of art? 
 
 To answer these questions we had better 
 107
 
 jFrienirstjiji of 
 
 ask ourselves again for the thousandth time, 
 What is the nature and purpose of the fine 
 arts? In the first place, it will recur to us, 
 the fine arts are a natural product of human 
 imagination finding expression in various 
 forms through various media. Such a prod- 
 uct inevitably embodies the characteristics of 
 the creative impulse to which it owes its ori- 
 gin; and if we would inquire what are the 
 invariable and inevitable essentials of art, 
 of all the arts, of music, poetry, painting, and 
 the rest, we must ask what are the invari- 
 able and inevitable characteristics of human 
 nature. For whatever features human nature 
 presents, we shall surely find in any work of 
 human nature. Now one of the most salient 
 features of human nature is this, that it has 
 not one but three distinct ways of appreciat- 
 ing the outer world. It perceives things about 
 it by means of the senses; it apprehends cer- 
 tain stated facts as true and others as false; 
 and it looks on the universe always with a 
 partial spirit has preferences and likes and 
 
 1 08
 
 & (Canon of <rf tfrtom 
 
 desires. To put it in plain terms, we are made 
 up of body, mind, and spirit, indissolubly 
 linked together. 
 
 Now not only will all art, therefore, show 
 traces of this threefold nature of man ; it will, 
 in its turn, appeal to man in each of these three 
 ways. Art must convince our reason, it must 
 enlist our sympathy, it must charm our sen- 
 suous nature. 
 
 To accomplish the first of these objects art 
 must be true true to life, as we say. It 
 
 *_ TMT 
 
 must preserve such a semblance of reality that 
 even when it is incredible we shall be half- 
 inclined to believe it. And this verity, on 
 which so-called realists insist so strongly, 
 while it is not the end of art, is certainly the 
 beginning. More than this, the subject-mat- 
 ter of art must be truth. No art 'can be worth 
 while which makes no attempt to satisfy the 
 curious mind of man. 
 
 To accomplish its second purpose, the 
 arousing of our emotions, art must itself be 
 impassioned. However profoundly true an 
 
 109
 
 of 
 
 artist's convictions may be, however wise his 
 philosophy, however comprehensive his ac- 
 quaintance with science, he will for ever fail 
 to engender the stir of action in his fellow 
 men, if he cannot impart warmth to his pro- 
 ductions and the vital force of love, or hate, 
 or fear, or courage, or wonder, or whatever 
 passion he will. So that looking upon his 
 work, we may admire his skill, and agree with 
 his conclusions about life, but we shall never 
 be really influenced, nor be moved to alter 
 our own conduct a hair's breadth on that 
 account. And his work, though brilliant, will 
 be faulty and futile. 
 
 To accomplish its third purpose and bring 
 us palpable pleasure, jirt must be beautiful; 
 this is the business of technique. And while 
 this requisite is likely to be overemphasized 
 by the artist himself, it is quite as likely to 
 be undervalued by the layman. 
 
 This is particularly the case in our own day 
 in regard to art. A distracted and uncertain 
 age, astonished with the many revelations of 
 
 no
 
 3 Canon of Criticism 
 
 science, must necessarily find itself engrossed 
 more with the matter than with the form of 
 art. We demand of art an answer to our innu- 
 merable problems. This answer it is part of 
 the business of art to give. But in our haste 
 we forget that no answer, however conclu- 
 sive to our reason, which is not at the same 
 time consummate in expression and stirring 
 with ardour, can ever be final. We ask what 
 literature has to say, and care very little how 
 it is said; in fact, we demand from literature 
 what more strictly belongs to science. And 
 since poetry is the one sort of literature in 
 which the form is made of equal importance v^ 
 with the substance, we are inclined to be in- 
 different to poetry altogether. 
 
 But the temper of any period is, perhaps, 
 never wholly perfect; it always shows a bias v 
 in one direction or another. One age may 
 insist on the excellence of the physical, the 
 necessary element of sensuous enjoyment, the 
 paramount need for beauty in the world; the 
 next may insist quite as strenuously on the 
 
 in
 
 of 
 
 eternal dominance of ^spiritual and religious 
 qualities in life; while the third is engrossed 
 with eager thought, with science, with meta- 
 physics. So that at no time do we have man- 
 kind engaged in the effort to establish a bal- 
 ance between these three diverse yet insep- 
 arable phases of our nature. And yet that 
 is the one thing we must attempt if we would 
 help ourselves forward on the interminable 
 pathway of perfection. 
 
 When we shall have established the worthi- 
 ness of such an ideal, when we shall have 
 begun to make it prevail among men, then 
 we shall have at hand not only a canon of 
 criticism, but a canon of conduct and culture 
 as well. Even now we may begin to apply 
 such a standard of criticism to every kind 
 of art, indeed to all our civilization, whenever 
 we have need to bring any work within the 
 range of judgment. We shall no longer be 
 slaves of personal caprice, dependent wholly 
 on our individual point of view, often all the 
 more vehement because it is irrational. 
 
 112
 
 3 Canon of Criticism 
 
 Nothing human, indeed, will be alien to us, 
 
 .^^^ m*Am ""mpf*" - *pp*_ 
 
 but, on the other hand, nothing human will 
 seem excellent which does not make at least 
 some pretence to represent human nature in 
 its entirety, which does not tend to foster and 
 encourage that threefold ideal. Men and 
 manners, art, industry, and religion, every 
 guise in which our activity shows itself on 
 this earth, will be subject to this unique ir- 
 refutable canon. 
 
 If a new and deservedly popular novel 
 comes up for discussion, we shall say of it, 
 perhaps : " Yes, it has great beauty and \ 
 strength; it moves us profoundly; and yet, / 
 after all, it does not give us any sound or 
 comprehensive judgment upon life; it is in- 
 effectual in its philosophy." Here would ' 
 be an instance of a work of art lacking on 
 the mental side. Or again it might have a 
 different fault. It might be profoundly keen 
 and discriminating in its psychology, stirring 
 in its appeal to our sympathy, and yet after 
 all so slovenly and ill done as to be wholly
 
 of 
 
 wanting in beauty. There would be an in- 
 stance of neglect of the physical side of art. 
 
 So, too, of a painting or a statue or a piece 
 of music, our first question must always be, 
 How does it respect the great law of normal 
 human development, how nearly does it come 
 to representing normal poise? Of human 
 character, also, when we come to discuss its 
 merits and defects, we shall be able to say, 
 this one was at fault here, another was at 
 fault there, because of a lack of force, or a 
 lack of emotion and will, or a lack of reason- 
 ing capacity. 
 
 It is the business of art to charm and enter- 
 tain us; it is the business of art to move and 
 inspire and ennoble us; and lastly it is the 
 business of art to enlighten us. To see that 
 art does this is the business of criticism. 
 
 114
 
 Realism m 
 
 THE question of realism in art after all 
 must surely be one of quantity and proportion. 
 Every one must agree that a certain amount 
 of realism is needed ; the difficulty is only to 
 know how much. That art must be an image 
 of nature goes without saying. It is the busi- 
 ness of art to create a mimic world in which 
 we may take delight. The features of that 
 world must in the main resemble those of our 
 own old and well-loved universe, else we 
 should be set to wander through a country so 
 strange that we should soon be lost. 
 
 Perhaps our first pleasure in art is a child- 
 ish delight at its verisimilitude. " How true 
 to life," we exclaim, as the eye recognizes 
 in the human creation a likeness to something
 
 jFtrientrsfjiji of Hvt 
 
 in the outward world. Unmitigated realism 
 would in truth give us nothing else. And the 
 pleasure which a great many people get from 
 current fiction and contemporary art depends 
 on having this very simple and childish sense 
 gratified. They like stories about places that 
 are familiar to them, and concerning types 
 of character entirely within their range of 
 comprehension. Anything exceptional and 
 unusual demands an effort of the imagination 
 before it can be appreciated; and this effort 
 the average mind is unwilling to make, so 
 lethargic and timid are we for the most part 
 in facing the unknown. 
 
 But the best art and literature are always 
 
 - j 
 
 exceptional. There is always a quality of 
 adventure in them. They represent the cou- 
 rageous daring of the artist in creating new 
 forms, in propounding new truths, in estab- 
 lishing newer and nobler standards of con- 
 
 U 
 uct and enjoyment. They reflect the prog- 
 ress of humanity. Not only that; they foretell 
 and direct progress. All the ideals which 
 
 is*
 
 humanity has put in practice with so much 
 pains and toil were first enunciated by the v 
 artist, and by him presented to us in alluring 
 and intelligible shape. It is never enough, 
 and it never has been enough, that the arts 
 should give us only images of things we know, 
 and proclaim accepted truths. They have 
 always had another trend as well; they have 
 always been employed in expressing novel 
 truths, no less important than the old, and in 
 clothing those truths in new forms no less 
 beautiful than the older forms to which we 
 have been accustomed. 
 
 Art and literature, therefore, have never 
 been mere copies of nature; they have always 
 contained the element of novelty, a novelty 
 more radical and profound than the fortui- x 
 tous variations of nature. The forms of na- 1 
 ture are, indeed, beautiful, varied, and satis- 
 fying; and the forms of art must have these 
 qualities, too. At the same time they must 
 have much greater flexibility and power of\ 
 adaptation than the forms of nature. Nature, 
 
 117
 
 of 
 
 so far as we can observe, proceeds by a law 
 so stable as to seem unchanging. The growth 
 of man proceeds in the guidance of a quest- 
 ing and illimitable imagination. So that the 
 settled and infinitely deliberate procedure of 
 nature will not serve his restless purposes at 
 all. Unless he can add thought to nature, 
 
 MOW 
 
 unless he can introduce imagination and fore- 
 thought and invention and hope and aspira- 
 tion into life, how much better is he than 
 the creatures? 
 
 Now whatever comes under the head of 
 art, whether literature or painting, music or 
 sculpture or acting or architecture, being the 
 expression of man, must reflect his inward 
 life, his words and thoughts, his instant 
 desires and his far-off hopes or fears. If art 
 were no more than an imitation of nature in 
 faithful guise, it would surely never have been 
 born. Certainly it could never have attained 
 any exalted place in our esteem such as we 
 have accorded it; nor could it have wielded 
 that incalculable influence which we know it 
 
 118
 
 liraltsm in ZUttcv* 
 
 has always possessed. It is only because art 
 and literature are supernatural that they pull 
 at our hearts for ever. It is only because they 
 partake at times of the superhuman, deriving 
 an inspiration we know not whence, that they 
 offer us an unfailing source of refreshment 
 and power. They embody for us average men 
 and women suggestions for a life more fair 
 and perfect than ever occurred to us. They 
 not only indicate an existence more worthy 
 and beautiful than our own, they actually 
 portray it. That is why we enjoy them ; and 
 that is the only reason that we enjoy them 
 without satiety. Once given the perilous gift 
 of self-consciousness, the large slow content- 
 ment of nature is no longer possible. We 
 must have ideals, however faulty, and beliefs 
 and opinions, however erroneous. These be- 
 liefs and ideals it has always been the destiny 
 of art to embody. That is the one great busi- 
 ness of art. And as our beliefs and ideals 
 grow with our growth, they find new housing 
 for themselves first of all in the arts. 
 
 119
 
 !l"~f 
 
 jFtittttrsfjiji of 
 
 Realism, then, is essential, but it is not 
 everything. The Palace of Art is built to 
 house a more admirable company than any 
 of our present acquaintance. The members 
 of that company may even seem at times al- 
 most more than human. And yet they must 
 remain like ourselves, and the Palace must 
 remain a possible palace, else we lose interest. 
 The soul can only be touched with emulation 
 by what comes within range of its own power. 
 
 j; /> 
 
 Art must be realistic, or it will have no hold 
 on our interest; it must be more than realistic, 
 or it will not be able to make that hold per- 
 manent. It must present the ideal at least 
 as vividly as it does the real, for the one is 
 las important as the other. 
 
 As we go about this lovely world, scenes 
 and incidents attract us and enchant us for a 
 moment or for longer. And these scenes we 
 delight to recall. We travel, and we bring 
 home photographs of the places we have vis- 
 ited, reminders of our happy hours. It would 
 seem that nothing could be more faithful than 
 
 1 20
 
 iUalfsm in 7lrttcvs 
 
 these mechanically accurate reproductions of 
 the face of nature. And yet they are not 
 wholly satisfying; a fleeting glimpse preserved 
 in a sketch in pencil or water-colour may be 
 far more satisfactory. The photograph re-\ 
 produces a hundred details which the eye 
 missed when it first came upon the scene ; and' S' 
 at the same time misses the charm and the 
 atmosphere with which we ourselves may 
 have endowed the place as we gazed upon it. 
 The sketch, on the other hand, omits these 
 details, just as our eye omitted them origin- 
 ally, and yet preserves the atmosphere of our 
 first delighted vision. Can it be said then 
 that the photograph is more true than the 
 painting? More true to the object, yes; but 
 not more true to our experience of the object. 
 And that is the important thing; that is what v 
 art must always aim at. 
 
 121
 
 ito te of lafoness 
 
 THERE is some inherent reason for the 
 Tightness of joy in art. It holds its place there 
 by a title even more inalienable than its title 
 to a place in actual life. There is reason, too, 
 for a belief in joy as the core and essence of 
 
 ^Mtot J J 
 
 good art, as the one ingredient most needful. 
 For joy is, as it were, the last grain to turn 
 the balance; it makes all the difference be- 
 tween success and failure, between life and 
 death. Joy, mere gladness in living, is the 
 tiny increment which keeps life dominant and 
 sane. When that is taken from us, we are 
 left to slow or swift disintegration, disaster, 
 dejection, and death. 
 
 Of all the good gifts which ever came out 
 of the wallet of the Fairy Godmother, _the 
 gift of natural gladness is the greatest and 
 
 * - 
 
 best. It is to the soul what health is to the 
 
 122
 
 STot* of 
 
 body, what sanity is to the mind, the test 
 of normality. The most fortunate of mortals 
 are those whom Nature has endowed with a 
 wholesome power of assimilating life, just as 
 she endows her field-bred children with a 
 good digestion. A quick and ready appetite 
 for life, a capacity for smiling contentment, 
 and a glad willingness, are the great things, 
 these and courage. For after all life needs 
 courage, long-enduring, stubborn, unflinching 
 courage. The bare problem of life is so dif- 
 ficult, the fine art of living so well-nigh im-^ 
 possible, that surely no man yet can ever have 
 looked at it with realization without a sud- 
 den terror at heart. Yet there is laid upon 
 us all the prime duty of joy, the obligation 
 to be glad, the necessity for happiness. 
 
 In spite of pain and failure and weariness 
 and exhaustion, happiness is still our business, 
 the one thing to be attained and maintained 
 at all risks and costs. It is not cheap, cannot 
 be bought in the open market, is not to be 
 confused with the pleasure of the moment, 
 
 123
 
 of 
 
 which is often only distraction. Sometimes 
 the Great Vender says to us: "Would you 
 buy happiness? Very sorry, sirs, but happi- 
 ness is particularly scarce to-day. The crop is 
 not overplenty this season. Here is some 
 pleasure, however, much cheaper and almost 
 as good. We sell a great deal of it. Many 
 of our customers prefer it to the genuine arti- 
 cle. May I put you up a sample?" 
 
 Now, woe be to you, beauteous mortal, if 
 you listen to that strain. Against that falla- 
 cious but alluring speech you are to set your 
 face for ever like a rock. Have happiness or 
 nothing. How are you to know the false from 
 the true, do you ask? Well, we are provided 
 with an instinct in that direction, and you will 
 find it is not easy to deceive yourself for long 
 with any specious counterfeit of joy. T rue 
 happiness differs from pleasure in being more 
 thorough, complete, and indubitable. We 
 are so constituted for it, so dependent on it, 
 and so immemorially nourished by it, that the 
 substitution is palpable at once. Happiness 
 
 124
 
 Ttfot* of 
 
 is really a complete poise of being, and comes 
 upon us only when we have secured a measure 
 of health, a measure of certitude of mind, and 
 a measure of rectitude of conduct. So small 
 a thing can overturn it! A little overtaxing 
 of the physical powers, a little misuse of any 
 faculty, a little deflection from the ways of 
 kindliness, sincerity, frankness, and all our 
 balance and self-poise may be undone, all our 
 modest store of happiness scattered to the air. 
 Now, whatever the strange element of sad- 
 ness or evil may be in the great universe, it 
 seems that all men and women may be divided 
 into two great classes, the majority, which 
 is always for progress and assurance and glad 
 certainty about life, and the minority, which 
 is full of trepidation and fear and gloomy 
 foreboding. We each of us belong to the 
 one party or the other, the successful or the 
 unsuccessful, the brave or the timid, the happy 
 or the sad. It is an innate difference, a pre- 
 natal endowment, possibly; as if from the 
 first we had been destined for the one faction
 
 of 
 
 of humanity or the other, the great ma- 
 jority or the great minority, the joyous or the 
 sorry-hearted. Yet much may be achieved by 
 
 culture, and we must never capitulate to the 
 
 ..-.-. 
 
 odious doctrine of original depravity. 
 
 ^tttt^VMtftt**-4WMMPMMflM WMMMM*~ *... * ,1 . ^,-xr 
 
 There are in art also, which is no more than 
 an image and reflection of life, two main 
 
 A trends, the greater trend toward gladness 
 
 and faith and strength, and the lesser trend 
 
 toward sorrow and doubt and decay. To the 
 j j^ f 
 
 one belong the masters, to the other the minor 
 
 craftsmen. A minor poet or a minor painter, 
 as it seems to me, is not essentially minor be- 
 cause of the slightness of his gift, but because 
 of its timorous and uncertain quality. And 
 
 JL. J 
 
 the big men are big because they have the 
 gift of gladness. Or is that they are glad and 
 well assured because they are big? Sure it 
 is, in any case, that the two phenomena appear 
 together. 
 
 And that, too, is natural, for on the prin- 
 ciple that to him that hath shall be given, the 
 strong acquire strength, the glad acquire new 
 
 126
 
 ^fote of 
 
 gladness, taking these treasures from their 
 weaker fellows. So the great, glad, strong 
 world, the vast majority, cares most for 
 strength, for sanity, for gladness in art and 
 letters, as it does in life; while the utterances 
 of sorrow and the voices of doubt are obscured 
 and lost. We care in the long run only to 
 preserve the work of the masters; while the 
 work of the minor artists, however charming, 
 passes with its age. 
 
 True, there is always a note of wistfulness- 
 in art, as there is in life; and it must be pres- 
 ent even in the strongest, gladdest utterances, 
 else they could have no profound hold upon 
 us. The great works of art and literature are 
 those which represent life in its entirety, with 
 its dominant desires and joys, indeed, but with 
 its heaviness and sorrow and dejection as well. 
 Any piece of art which should be wholly 
 given over to the predominance of animal 
 spirits, or of unmitigated joyousness, with no 
 trace of the tedium of time or the bleak lone- 
 liness of the soul, could have no abiding claim 
 
 127
 
 ' / 
 
 of 
 
 to universal regard. It could not speak to 
 universal man in his common tongue. For 
 joy, after all, is aristocratic; and those im- 
 
 m-l" _. "^^m^mf^ 
 
 mortal teachers on whom the world has loved 
 to lean have also been well versed in the 
 democracy of sadness. They have taught us 
 that it is a prime duty of the heart to rejoice, 
 yet they themselves have ever known how 
 hard that duty is. 
 
 So in art, in letters, those who teach us 
 through means of beauty have always left a 
 trace of sorrow in their work, which else had 
 been hardly human. They have felt, perhaps, 
 the sublime faith which is unperturbed in 
 the face of the enormous riddle; they have 
 been sure of the ultimate triumph of reason, 
 of beauty, of goodness; but they have been 
 aware, also, of the terribleness of actual ugli- 
 ness and evil. And through their admonitions 
 to gladness, their helpful assurances to bra- 
 very and effort, there has always sounded the 
 undernote of human pathos the ground 
 tone of mortality. 
 
 128
 
 Not* of 
 
 These are the great ones, these are the mas- 
 ters, these are they to whom we must turn for 
 consolation and counsel. They have known 
 and suffered life even as ourselves, and yet 
 they have been able to endure and to smile. 
 Their dicta about life, therefore, are infinitely 
 valuable in this difficult task of living. And 
 I think it behooves us, in however small a way 
 we may be called on to serve the world in 
 art, to follow so far as we can their splendid 
 examples of gladness and courage. Let the 
 burden of sadness be what it may, let the final 
 solution seem never so impossible, let our 
 spirits be submerged in all but utter despair, 
 there yet remains the obligation which none 
 may escape, to bear witness to a still more 
 universal truth, to testify to a gladness in life 
 underlying all our sorrows. We may not be 
 able to hold it, or call it ours, or give expres- 
 sion to any of its phases ; our own destiny may 
 preclude that; none the less must we acknowl- 
 edge its overlordship, and admit that doubt 
 and sorrow are merely of the moment. 
 
 129
 
 Smrittj atrtr 
 
 A FRIEND of mine, a man of far more than 
 ordinary culture and depth of thought, said to 
 me recently that he didn't believe the healthy 
 normal man would write poetry; that in 
 health the strong rational human being is so 
 happy that he does not need to find expres- 
 sion in any of the fine arts; to be alive and 
 to do some useful necessary work is enough 
 him. And Stevenson, somewhere, I think 
 
 ^ 
 
 (in one of his letters, throws out the hint that 
 possibly art, after all, may be the result of a 
 diseased condition. 
 
 Naturally every follower of the fine arts 
 will be up in arms at such a suggestion. He 
 will repudiate the idea of anything abnormal 
 or less than manly in the occupation he loves 
 so well. The imputation of insanity attach- 
 ing to genius is one that has gained some cre- 
 
 130
 
 an* 
 
 dence through Lombroso and Nordau, and 
 has ranged the world of thinking people into 
 two camps. Probably the truth lies midway 
 between them. 
 
 For, in the first place, it would seem that 
 both Lombroso and Nordau are extremists, 
 and very often the simplest aspects of a case 
 are contorted in support of their own view. 
 They themselves are not quite balanced; their 
 single idea has run away with them. But let 
 us ask what are the aims of writing and the 
 fine arts, and what are the conditions under 
 which they are produced. 
 
 Roughly speaking, the aim and business 
 of the fine arts is to represent life. Not 
 merely to reproduce the most exact image or 
 picture of life, but to reproduce it with some- 
 thing added. That something is the personal 
 quality of the artist himself, his thoughts and 
 feelings about life. If, then, we consider the 
 whole body of art, all the product of the lit- 
 eratures and fine arts of all peoples, we may 
 say that it is a very fair representation of life, 
 
 131 
 
 (/\> 
 
 f/
 
 of ilrt 
 
 and in every case a fair representation or rev- 
 elation of the different races as well. Not 
 only will each nation record the life of the 
 world as it existed then and there; it will 
 also reveal its own bias of judgment and emo- 
 tion about that life. Also the art of a nation 
 will fail here and there, just as life fails ; but 
 in the long run it will not fail ; it will form 
 a faithful counterpart and picture, so far as 
 it goes, of the life of that nation. 
 
 Now the question arises, How can anything 
 so trustworthy be the product of insanity? 
 Sanity surely implies a capacity for seeing 
 things as they are, and if art is born of insane 
 conditions, it must in the long run represent 
 things as they are not. If the fine arts are the 
 product of insanity, then truly is man follow- 
 ing a vain shadow. 
 
 For the fine arts have always embodied for 
 men, not only reflections about life, but aspira- 
 tions and ideals. Art has held the mirror up 
 to nature; but it has always been a magic 
 mirror, a mirror of the artist's own make, in 
 
 132
 
 Sanity antt 
 
 which we might behold the world truly and 
 accurately, but with a certain glamour or 
 bloom added. It has shown us very truly 
 what life is, but it has also shown us what 
 life might become. There has ever been a 
 prophetic quality in art. It has always been 
 able to foreshadow standards of conduct and 
 culture; and civilizations have always tended 
 to make themselves over, to grow and develop, 
 on the lines of progress laid down by their 
 poets, seers, and artists. How, then, can we 
 possibly admit that art is sprung from insan- 
 ity? Would it not be nearer the truth to say 
 that art is one of the most sane and normal 
 things in the world? 
 
 This being so, if it be so, what excuse have 
 we for saying that genius is touched with in- 
 sanity; that the artist is never quite a normal 
 being; or that art is the product of disease, 
 and the healthy man would, after all, never 
 wish to write or paint or make music? Can 
 there be the least foundation for such a con- 
 clusion? 
 
 133
 
 of 
 
 I believe there is art which is born of un- 
 wholesome conditions; and I believe there 
 is writing which is certainly not the product 
 of perfect sanity; but I do not believe that 
 the best writing and the best art are so pro- 
 duced. Any of the arts requires in those who 
 profess it an amount of technical skill which 
 is very exacting. Naturally, therefore, all art, 
 or at least every fine art, very easily tends to 
 specialization. 
 
 In primitive and simple times the fine arts 
 would not be so far divorced from common 
 life as they are now. Being in the first place 
 merely means of expressing universal sorrow 
 or joy, love or hate, hope or fear, they would 
 be used by every one. But gradually, as one 
 or another individual in a community gained 
 facility and power and unusual excellence as 
 a poet or a musician, he would devote himself 
 exclusively to that fascinating pursuit. And 
 so well was he esteemed, that, like our friend 
 Ung in the ballad, he need do nothing but 
 make songs and music. He need share no 
 
 134
 
 attfr 
 
 longer in the most ordinary and necessary 
 work of the world. Now there is, of course, 
 in such specialization an element of danger. 
 The man highly specialized is a variant, not 
 a normal type. We should logically con- 
 clude, then, that the artist or the writer who 
 is too exclusively engrossed in his art is not 
 the person from whom the best work is to be 
 expected. His art may be so overladen with 
 technique that the great human emotions may 
 be lost The man has been swallowed up in 
 the artist. 
 
 I believe a critical consideration of art and 
 letters, with this point in view, would bear 
 out the conclusion. We should find that the 
 great works of art and literature, the works 
 which the world has cared to preserve with 
 loving gratitude, have been produced by men 
 whose interest in life was greater than their 
 interest in their art. They were men first and 
 artists afterward. Technically speaking, there 
 have been many English poets far superior 
 to Shakespeare. 
 
 135
 
 The truth is, therefore, that art is not the 
 product of a diseased condition in the indi- 
 vidual, but rather the product of great sanity 
 and normal health ; at the same time the over- 
 zealous and ill-regulated devotee of art may 
 very easily run himself into an abnormal state 
 bordering on disease. 
 
 There is in all this, if I am not mistaken, 
 a wholesome case of instruction for the artist, 
 and a very palpable warning against over- 
 exclusive devotion to a single line of develop- 
 ment. It is so easy in an enthusiasm for art to 
 be careless about all else; so easy to neglect 
 a due culture of all our powers; so easy to 
 push our development in a single direction 
 until we lose poise and become warped and 
 distorted through specialization. A great 
 care for our art, yes; but an exclusive and 
 slavish devotion to it, by no means! The man 
 must be greater than the artist; and when this 
 is not so, only a second-rate art can be the 
 result. So that if you are a writer or a painter 
 or make music your mistress, it is of the ut- 
 
 136
 
 anlr 
 
 most importance that you should be something 
 of an athlete and a philosopher as well. For 
 the art of a people must provide the moral 
 aims and esthetic ideals for that people; it 
 must, therefore, be the product of the very 
 best spirits and minds of the race. 
 
 Upon no other class in a community, then, 
 does the obligation of noble living rest with 
 so unremitting a strain as on its artists, its 
 writers and painters, its architects and music- 
 makers. Only great sanity can give birth to 
 great art. Sanity of mind, sweetness of tem- 
 per, strength of physique; an insatiable curi- 
 osity for the truth at all costs ; an unswerving 
 loyalty to manly goodness in the face of all 
 difficulties; and an unashamed love of beauty 
 in every guise; these are some of the prime 
 qualities which go to make an artist. 
 
 It almost seems that to be an artist one must 
 first attain a perfect personality. That is diffi- 
 cult. But then art is a difficult matter; it 
 is nothing less than the embodiment of perfec- 
 tion. 
 
 137
 
 Creative 
 
 IT is not only in letters and the arts that 
 we must look for manifestations of the crea- 
 tive spirit, but in the more usual activities of 
 life as well. Otherwise we are in danger of 
 misconceiving the character of literature, and 
 making the arts seem hardly an essential fea- 
 ture of our civilization. If we would have 
 the arts to flourish, we must insist on recog- 
 nizing their inherent vitality in the common 
 life of the nation. If we would make litera- 
 ture that shall be worthy of the name, we must 
 ourselves be convinced that it is something 
 more than an artificial amusement with no 
 real hold on the heart of a people. 
 
 The creative spirit appears not less in life 
 
 138
 
 than in letters. Indeed it appears a hundred 
 times more actively and easily there; for our 
 national life at the beginning of this twentieth 
 century, be it what it may, is nothing but the 
 result of that spirit working in the channel 
 most natural to it. In our time and generation 
 the channel through which the creative spirit 
 most readily finds vent is the practical one, 
 the industrial and commercial one. It is true 
 the creative spirit has always found these dif- 
 ferent avenues for itself, through which it 
 would attempt to reach perfection and com- 
 pletely realize its ideal. The Time Spirit is 
 the creative spirit, and as it moves through 
 the ages it accomplishes itself in various ways, 
 producing not the beauties of the arts alone, 
 but the multitudinous revelations of common 
 life as well. 
 
 It is through the creative spirit that we 
 know ourselves a part of that which is abid- 
 ing in the universe, which underlies the eter- \f 
 nal fluidity of change, and for ever repeats 
 itself in the guise of myriad forms. In the 
 
 139
 
 .jFrirtrtsiji]) of 
 
 early spring flowers, in the luxuriance of har- 
 vest, in the reddening fruits of autumn, in the 
 leaves of the pine, in the flux of the laborious 
 tide, in the floating mist over the mountain 
 crest, the creative spirit lives 1 and moves and 
 has its being as in the doubting, hoping, 
 eager, unaging heart of man. No small por- 
 tion of our sympathy with nature is no doubt 
 an instinctive recognition of this power in 
 ourselves, this capacity for creation. As the 
 beliefs of an older pantheism peopled groves 
 and trees and rivers, each with its own divin- 
 ity, so our latest convictions endow the uni- 
 verse with a single personality revealed in 
 innumerable modes and aspects. Whether the 
 divine activity finds vent for itself through 
 the right hand of a painter, or in the unfold- 
 ing of a fern, is a difference of circumstance 
 not a difference of power. In each in- 
 stance the creative spirit is seeking fulfilment. 
 Both in art and in nature the conditions un- 
 der which the creative spirit works are the 
 same; the laws through which alone it can 
 
 140
 
 veatfrr 
 
 operate are in their foundations the same. 
 Man, the workman in the world, is a pygmy 
 creator. It matters not at all whether he 
 draws or digs or makes music or builds ships, 
 in the work of his hands is the delight of his 
 heart, and in that joy of his heart lurks his 
 kinship with his own Creator, from whom, 
 through the obedient will and plastic hand 
 of the artist, all art and beauty are derived. 
 
 The condition under which creation takes 
 place is invariably threefold; for the simple i^ 
 reason that the creature represents the creator, 
 and the creator himself is characterized by a 
 threefold nature. 
 
 The universe presents itself to us as poten- 
 tially beautiful, or moral, or true, according 
 to our point of appreciation. Considered 
 merely in the light of reason, things are either 
 true or false; judged by the heart, we think 
 them goodly or evil ; while to our senses they 
 appear either fair or ugly. If we are thus 
 aware of the world about us, much more 
 keenly are we aware of a similar threefold 
 
 141
 
 jFvttntrsfjfii of 
 
 consciousness within ourselves. So the deed 
 partakes of the doer, the work of the worker, 
 
 ^ r.^.^^- ^..JW'* " **'*> ... .- WflMPW 
 
 the thought of the thinker. It is no empty 
 
 if*ef*r . .. ,,,_, i-rii...i I. ^Hf^f 
 
 metaphor to say of a work of art that it lacks 
 soul ; since the thing may indeed be wanting 
 in that direction, just as it may be insuffi- 
 ciently supplied with charm or with reason- 
 ableness; and all three qualities are essentially 
 requisite. Only when they coexist in nearly 
 equal proportion is perfection, or anything 
 approaching perfection, possible in a work of 
 art. 
 
 The good artist comes to his work equipped 
 with an unusual delicacy of the senses, so that 
 he is alive to every shade of beauty in the 
 outward world. He comes to his work with 
 an unusual depth of feeling, too with an 
 intense emotional nature, capable of great 
 sympathy, great loving-kindness, and great 
 force of character. And lastly, he comes to 
 his work with a keen understanding of life 
 and nature, and a breadth of intellectual cul- 
 ture beyond that of most men. With a per- 
 
 142
 
 sonality naturally well balanced in these three 
 ways, and thoroughly cultivated by careful 
 attention to each aspect of his character, he 
 is ready to receive the inspiration of the 
 Spirit which brooded upon the face of the 
 waters, and to hear the Word which was in 
 the beginning. 
 
 Not otherwise, for all our striving, can the 
 greatest work be accomplished ; and even the 
 humblest result of the unknown craftsman, 
 wherever a trace of excellence exists, shows 
 some evidence of this poise of powers, this 
 divine triplicate balance of forces. 
 
 The artist is enamoured of life, absorbed 
 in its colour, its variety, its drenching beauty; 
 and always a love of life, a love of nature, a 
 love of his fellows, gives him elation, happi-V' 
 ness, and courage; while at the same time he 
 is capable of sitting unmoved in meditation 
 before the passing spectacle of existence, and 
 observing it in the white cold light of science. 
 Unflinching logic, unbounded love, unmiti- 
 gated delight, any one of which in excess 
 
 H3
 
 of 
 
 alone would quickly work the ruin of a per- 
 sonality, will, when duly balanced in one for- 
 tunate person, operate together for the hap- 
 piest issue of that life. Only from such an 
 individuality may we expect significant and 
 enduring achievement in art. 
 
 From such considerations a scheme of edu- 
 cation for the artist is easily deducible. And 
 since he is only the normal man seeking an 
 outlet for activity in one direction rather than 
 in another, we gain at the same time a useful 
 criterion for education in general. It is not 
 enough that the artist should be trained in 
 technique; that is the least of his require- 
 ments. We must ensure him the sound mind 
 in the sound body, and, one may add, the 
 loving heart as well. He must be made 
 strong, agile, deft, alert, sensible to impres- 
 sions ; he must be given the open mind which 
 loves lucidity; he must be imbued with the 
 sweetness of temper, gracious as the morning 
 yet perdurable as the hills. 
 
 To such a man the work of his own hands 
 144
 
 < vrattfce Spirit 
 
 is a constant pleasure; his passage through 
 the world an entrancing revelation; and his 
 comradeship with men and women an un- 
 tarnished happiness.
 
 Critical 
 
 WE are apt to think of criticism as some- 
 thing very unimportant, and to offer it the 
 merest tolerance as the pastime of leisurely 
 scholars and visionaries, with no bearing on 
 daily life. But the power of the press is very 
 largely a critical power, wielding a direct 
 influence on all our undertakings in art, in 
 politics, in religion, in affairs. And this con- 
 sideration alone should convince us that criti- 
 cism comes within the range of what we call 
 practical concerns. 
 
 Criticism resembles original creation in 
 that it has both a scientific and an artistic side. 
 It is scientific so far as it has to do with the 
 analysis of phenomena, the collecting and 
 arrangement of data, the discovery and eluci- 
 
 146
 
 dation of principles, and the exposition of the 
 natural laws of art. It is artistic, in that its 
 purpose is to offer its conclusion to the student 
 with as much convincing grace and polish as 
 may be. It is not merely the part of criti- 
 cism to investigate the achievements of art, 
 and to record the result of those investiga- 
 tions in a bare tabulation of fact; it is equally 
 its business, surely, to win men to an alle- 
 giance to the beautiful, to direct them courte- 
 ously. It is not enough that we should be 
 brought face to face with all the best inter- 
 pretations of nature and humanity. It is 
 needful that they be made clear, convincing, 
 luminous, intelligible. 
 
 This is very nearly the service art renders 
 us with respect to life and nature. That fa- 
 mous saying of Arnold's, " Poetry is a criti- 
 cism of life," is a concise statement of the 
 same idea. It was never intended, I take it, 
 for a definition of poetry, yet it expresses very 
 aptly one aspect and function of all art. And 
 this, without in the least implying anything
 
 Jpvicntrstjtp of 3 vt 
 
 like didacticism, or the dreary obligations of 
 a so-called moral purpose. Even the most 
 faithful reproductions of realism are hardly 
 impersonal utterances. They cannot but be- 
 tray the critical standpoint of their author, 
 however dispassionate he may be. If they are 
 revolting and painful in their bleak veracity, 
 they speak, perhaps, for his pious indignation 
 at some hideous wrong, some social injustice, 
 some piteous tragedy of existence; and we 
 may go our ways, the better for his whole- 
 some though disagreeable lesson. If they are 
 engrossed, even to the point of tediousness, 
 with the familiar, the common, or the dull, 
 unrelieved by any spice of romance, unheight- 
 ened by any touch of extraneous beauty, they 
 are still, it may be, so many expressions of a 
 serene and humane personality, perceiving 
 good everywhere and implicitly declaring the 
 worth of life. Let him be as literal, as un- 
 compromising, as he will, his temperament 
 and philosophy are still inevitably revealed 
 on every page. Not a word is traced on 
 
 148
 
 paper, not a colour laid to canvas, but carries 
 some hint of the delineator's hand. The 
 artist's identity is patent in his work, his ac- 
 cent lurks in every line, his features look from 
 every phrase. And at the last, whether he 
 intend it or not, his collected work will form 
 a commentary, or at least a foot-note, to the 
 great book of nature. 
 
 There it lies, this green volume of the earth, 
 the dark sea on one page, the dark forested 
 hills on the other, and the creamy margin of 
 shore between, with a ribbon of surf to mark 
 the place. And there you may read to your 
 heart's content; the story will never be fin- 
 ished, nor the interest flag, till you drop the 
 task some night for very weariness, and your 
 candle goes out with a puff of wind. But 
 while the brief light lasts, and your strength 
 holds out, how enthralling a book it is. What 
 legendry and science, what song and story. 
 The obscure records of the mountains and the 
 tides, the shifting pictures of clouds and ruf- 
 fling forests and changing fields from year 
 
 149
 
 of 
 
 to year; the multitudes of the living trees 
 and grasses, and last, most wonderful of all, 
 the perishable talking tribes of men. And 
 then to think, before this volume how many 
 students have sat and mused, pondering the 
 meaning of its fair text so fair, yet so ob- 
 scure as well. Here Shakespeare read and 
 smiled; here Homer and Horace looked and 
 doubted; here Job and Plato, David and 
 Dante, Angelo and Darwin, Virgil and Vol- 
 taire, Spinoza and Rubens and Cervantes, 
 found lifelong solace mingled with disquiet. 
 Scholars and saints, painters and ploughmen, 
 lovers and skeptics, emperors and peasants, 
 and poets and kings; and what had they all 
 to say about their reading? No comment? 
 Did they find the work amusing, or was it 
 squalid, or only dull? Think of the poetry 
 of Emerson and Wordsworth ; what is it but 
 a critical interpretation of nature? Think of 
 the work of Fielding or Thackeray or Haw- 
 thorne ; what was it but a running commen- 
 tary on humanity? 
 
 150
 
 Spirit 
 
 There is one sense in which all the arts are 
 one in that they are all but differing forms 
 of expression, differing methods in which the 
 spirit of humanity finds a voice and embodies 
 its thought about the universe, and in that 
 sense, surely, all art is an appendix to nature, 
 a criticism on experience. Fiction and paint- 
 ing, for example, seem clearly to have had 
 their origin as simple pastimes, yet how sig- 
 nificant a body of commentary they contain. 
 I suppose the art of painting arose in the 
 idlest hour, from a very superfluity of leisure 
 and fancy, the chance discovery of some 
 dreamy bygone summer afternoon; yet every 
 line or shade tells tales of the vanished paint- 
 er's sentiment as he looked out at the world 
 about him. And modern fiction; there is a 
 fine art which would seem to have had its 
 beginning in nothing more serious than the 
 telling of tales over a winter fire. Yet now, 
 in all its varied complexity, so philosophical, 
 so intentional, how evidently critical it has 
 become.
 
 of 
 
 We must not forget, either, to make ample 
 allowance for that conception of art which 
 claims for it a province quite apart from the 
 actual world. According to this view, it is 
 the business of art to create for our enjoyment 
 a fictitious universe, within our own, yet dis- 
 
 M*9SaMMMMMMaMMMM ' ' 
 
 severed from it an unreal, imaginary pal- 
 ace of pleasure, having no bearing upon 
 actual life. This was the dream of the pre- 
 Raphaelites. For them the fairy-tale was the 
 true model of fiction. They revelled in crea- 
 tions that leave nature toiling far behind. 
 You would certainly never go to them for a 
 criticism of life. And yet what does the pres- 
 ence of such a fanciful creation mean 
 springing up side by side with the actual, and 
 resembling it so little? Is not its mere exist- 
 ence a most significant comment on the world 
 of fact it pretends to ignore? Isjljaoljin 
 avowal of the insufficiency of nature, the im- 
 perfection of our lot? It is easy to scoff at 
 such fantastic wistfulness in art, but for my
 
 Critical 
 
 part I think it more profitable than a com- 
 placent abiding in " things as they are." 
 
 If you consider the attitude of the artist, 
 the painter, the poet, the man of letters, as 
 an attentive observer of things about him, as 
 a portrayer of natural phenomena, a reporter 
 at large in all the splendid, bright avenues 
 of the earth, bringing home to the attention 
 of his fellows many facts from many sources, 
 adding some hint of his own thoughts con- 
 cerning them, elucidating them from his 
 fuller knowledge than ours, suggesting by 
 his chosen preference which seem to him 
 most memorable and noteworthy, you will 
 be reminded of the attitude of the critic, and 
 see how closely they resemble each other. 
 Admitting this similarity of functions, what 
 are those qualifications of the creative artist 
 which are requisite to the right critical tem- 
 per as well? 
 
 First of all, I should place openness of 
 mind. One would think that a very obvious 
 requirement, the least that could be asked of 
 
 153
 
 of 
 
 a personality bringing itself under the spell 
 of new forms and fresh influences of beauty. 
 But how rare it is, that spiritual candour 
 which shows itself in the utterly unpreju- 
 diced disposition of a great, patient humility. 
 It is linked on one side to the religious sense, 
 the capacity for wonder, and on the other to 
 a profound curiosity that is for ever questing, 
 questing, questing the scholar's gift. It in- 
 volves a love of truth, too, undauntable and 
 unswerving, ready on the instant to abandon 
 the most cherished notion for the sake of one 
 more tenable in reason. With an exquisite 
 susceptibility to impressions, and with a depth 
 of feeling rather than conviction, the artist 
 steeps himself in the atmosphere of every 
 scene he would reproduce, the critic surren- 
 ders himself to the subtlest influences of the 
 masterpiece under his hand. In either case, 
 it is a finely sensitized mechanism, as delicate 
 as a piece of litmus pager played upon by 
 the potent element of beauty in the chemistry 
 of the soul, and bearing unimpeachable evi- 
 
 154
 
 <Ti)c Critical Spirit 
 
 dence of the test Such a being is in little 
 danger of coming to destruction through the 
 self-confidence of the prig. He is more likely 
 to be the most unassuming of mortals. There 
 will characterize him a sweet eagerness for 
 knowledge, not incompatible with a gentle 
 regard for beliefs no longer possible and con- 
 ceptions no longer true. He, too, will be quite 
 willing to pass with the slow procession of 
 created things from one illusion to another, 
 without dejection or regret. None will be 
 more passionately and keenly alive to events 
 than he; no one more detached in contem- 
 plating them. A sedulous, kindly nature, 
 earth-born and instinctive, will be his; so 
 that, while he is almost strenuous in following 
 a bent, he will completely realize the futility 
 of insistence and the folly of overstrain. 
 Such a mind will not be affluent nor impres- 
 sive, but it will be infinitely exact in its own 
 way, infinitely careful of distinctions, infi- 
 nitely scrupulous in speech. To the sobriety 
 of science it would add the elation of art; 
 
 155
 
 of 
 
 and to the elation of art it would add the 
 smiling afterthought of indecision. 
 
 That a painter, or a writer, or an artist of 
 any sort must be receptive, seems almost self- 
 evident. It is his business to be sensitive, to 
 keep on the alert for all passing phenomena 
 of beauty, all the suggestive incidents of life. 
 Not a line or a gesture must escape him of the 
 manifold human drama daily enacted before 
 his eyes; not a shade or tone of colour must 
 be lost on him of all the wonderful fleeting 
 loveliness of sky and sea, mountain and cloud, 
 sun and rain. The changing face of the uni- 
 verse is his continual study, and his appre- 
 ciation will never fail to catch the gusts of 
 passion and mood that sweep across the tu- 
 multuous regions of the mind. Whatever else 
 he may be, he can never for one moment be 
 fixed or stable, save in the purpose to be always 
 free, always unprejudiced, always ready for 
 the new impulse, the new impression, the new 
 inspiration. For whether we think of inspira- 
 tion as coming through experience or through 
 
 156
 
 intuition, it demands an equally receptive 
 habit of thought. And one who would be 
 guided by it must have an equally sedulous 
 regard for the inward meaning and the out- 
 ward apparition of things. He must be en- 
 dowed with senses of no ordinary keenness, 
 like that figure in Norse mythology who 
 could hear the grasses growing; and a very 
 wizardry of instinctive comprehension must 
 be his. Culture for him will mean not so 
 much self-perfection as self-absorption in na- 
 ture and life for others, and at the instance 
 of an uncontrollable propensity. He is the 
 unwearied listener at the Sphinx, the eternal 
 wanderer by all trodden and unfrequented 
 paths; he is a nomad in the blood, and an 
 incredulous believer from his birth. And 
 this natural aptitude for indecision and ap- 
 
 MffqMMBBgaMMPIHB* -* - w 
 
 preciation is emphasized by a daily use, is 
 encouraged and developed and grows by 
 practice, until your typical artistic tempera- 
 ment, as the phrase runs, becomes proverbi- 
 ally impressionable and fastidious. 
 
 157
 
 of 
 
 And all this, that he may convey some ex- 
 pression of his new knowledge to the audi- 
 ence of his fellows. He is eyes and ears for 
 multitudes less fortunate than himself. We 
 rely on him for daily fresh reports from every 
 corner of the house of life, with all its won- 
 derful galleries and crannies, crowded with 
 fact and haunted by illusion. But what is 
 our attitude toward him? Many of those 
 traits which are most useful to the artist are 
 most useful to the critic as well. Flexibility 
 or openness of mind is one of them, and the 
 most important. If the artist must exercise 
 absolute freedom in his art, are we ready to 
 grant him that right? Do we look with tol- 
 erance on the new and strange in art? If we 
 were to approach a new book or a new pic- 
 ture with anything of the same receptiveness 
 which the writer or the painter felt in dealing 
 with his subject, we should, first of all, be 
 attentive, curious, impressionable. We cer- 
 tainly should not be carping and antagonistic. 
 Our first effort would be to understand. We 
 
 , _ __ LJ i _^^j^_._ -^tfr^ ^KtJ^^^^~"~~"~~~3i^Br*^ 
 
 158
 
 eritical 
 
 ur si 
 
 ar- JT 
 
 should apply thought to our subject, and not 
 
 prejudice. 
 
 While the creative spirit may be carried 
 away by zeal in a cause, the critical spirit 
 must always remain impartial. They are 
 alike, however, in this, that to reach their 
 best they must always be unhampered and 
 individual. The critical spirit can espouse ^ 
 no party, adhere to no preconceived notion V" 
 of the truth. Its only principle is a love of k - 
 truth, of beauty, and of goodness, wherever 
 they may be revealed, and in whatever guise 
 they may appear. It must stand apart, with- * 
 out creed or predilection. The academic 
 point of view, so valuable for the conservation 
 of learning, is out of court in critical affairs; 
 since the gist of art is revelation, the accom- 
 plishment of something unprecedented. The 
 underlying science of art is as fixed and stable 
 as all other natural law; but the manifesta- 
 tions of art are always surprising, often in v 
 seeming contradiction to all tradition. So 
 that the purely scholastic mode of appreciat- 
 
 159
 
 of 
 
 ing them is inadequate. To set up standards 
 of bygone excellence in art and then bring 
 all new achievements into comparison with 
 them is unjust to both. You pin your faith 
 to Dante and Shakespeare and Milton and 
 Wordsworth, let us say, and then you bring 
 a new book to be tested by their standard. 
 If it does not conform, you say it must be 
 poor. But, if it did conform, art would be 
 a dead thing. Art and poetry are not inven- 
 tions, they are living and vital forces, grow- 
 ing with civilization, and making themselves 
 felt in fresh ways every day. So that it is 
 impossible, as it seems to me, to confront them 
 with any preconceived notion of what they 
 ought to be. It is only possible to criticize 
 them in a spirit of absolute impartiality, with 
 the unbiassed loving patience of the scientist. 
 
 1 60
 
 Mm ifofjitrtr tfte 
 
 CRITICISM after all is little more than dis- 
 covery. It is like science in that. Their main 
 business is to find the truth. To science the 
 multiform world of appearances is a complex, 
 fascinating, and inexplicable creation, with 
 something behind it, purpose, reason, 
 mind, which science seeks to understand. 
 To criticism the world of art and literature 
 is just a mimic creation, the work of cunning 
 hands of many ages, a contrivance of human 
 intelligence, behind which lurks and hides the 
 immortal spirit of man. 
 
 The scientist or philosopher, with an un- 
 flinching and unquenchable curiosity, asks of 
 
 161
 
 of 
 
 the universe, " Who goes there behind the 
 shadowy substance? What Presence inhabits 
 these fleeting forms, which make the lovely 
 earth? Where dwells the Eternal, and what 
 like is the Unchanging, if any Unchanging 
 or Eternal there be?" In his smaller way 
 the critic stands before a work of art, inquir- 
 ing in like spirit, " What manner of man was 
 behind this thing? What soul found vent in 
 this shape of beauty? What comprehending 
 being lent a passing permanence to its own 
 aspirations in this scrap of art? " 
 
 The answer to the critic is never easy. The 
 answer to the scientist will perhaps never be 
 possible. Yet something of the seriousness of 
 philosophic science should always invest the 
 business of criticism. Discovery, exposition, 
 revelation, that is the task of the critic. To 
 find the man behind the book, the man behind 
 the painting, the man behind the music, to 
 understand him with sympathy and intelli- 
 gence and respect; that is the first duty of 
 criticism. And its second duty is to help oth- 
 
 162
 
 i#au Ucljutir tijc iJooU 
 
 ers to understand him. These two aims of 
 criticism imply a patience, an indulgence, and 
 a modest regard for others, not always found 
 in the critic as he is. They would make him 
 think of his artist first of all, of the public 
 next, and last of himself, with his own pet 
 theories and aversions. Unhappily it is com- 
 mon to invert this order of procedure, and 
 the critic is so engrossed with exhibiting his 
 own cleverness that the true subject of his 
 exposition is quite eclipsed. Criticism is a 
 fine art, of course; and as such it very prop- 
 erly embodies the personal bias of the critic. 
 As a science, however, its prime regard must 
 be for its subject. 
 
 The man behind the book is not easy to 
 discover. To meet the author, to dine with 
 him, to receive his autograph, to photograph 
 him carefully posed in his workshop, to note 
 the style of his collar, the set of his coat, this 
 is not to know the man behind the book. 
 These things only give us a glimpse of a 
 human being embarrassed by publicity and 
 
 163
 
 of 
 
 shrinking from unwarranted scrutiny. Any 
 real knowledge of the man behind the book 
 is much more difficult and requires a proce- 
 dure much more subtle, and is apt to come 
 casually at unexpected moments. For it is 
 not merely the man apart from his work we 
 wish to know. Having created anything in 
 art, the creator is no longer the same; some 
 part of him has gone into the making of his 
 work; a large part of his real self is there, 
 his deepest convictions, his sincerest purpose, 
 his finest taste. It is this underlying person- 
 ality which is so interesting and so profitable 
 an object of study. How the world impressed 
 him, with what fortitude or timorousness he 
 fronted life, what mark sorrow left upon him, 
 how grateful he was for joy, where he failed 
 and where he was strong, and whether his 
 ideals, if made practical and put into effect, 
 would help or hinder us in the difficult busi- 
 ness of living. In short, the object of criti- 
 cism is to know the man. just as his object as 
 an artist was to make himself known. Not 
 
 164
 
 tijt ttoot; 
 
 the mere making of himself known to fame, 
 but the making of himself known in his work, 
 in the adequate expression of himself, this 
 is the ambition of the artist. If the passion 
 for creation is in him, it will not concern him 
 much whether men recognize him widely or 
 not; his chief anxiety will be to reveal his 
 finer inner self in his art, whatever that may 
 be; and none will be so conscious as himself 
 of any shortcoming or failure in that delicate, 
 almost impossible, achievement. 
 
 Every great writer is a friend of all the 
 world, one whom we may come to know, who 
 can aid us with solace and counsel and enter- 
 tainment. In his books he has revealed him- 
 self, and in them we make his acquaintance. 
 This is the purpose of serious reading. Not 
 merely to be delighted with beauty of style; 
 not merely to be informed and made wise; 
 not merely to be encouraged and ennobled in 
 spirit; but to receive an impetus in all these 
 directions. Such is the object of culture. To 
 know a good book is to know a good man. 
 
 165
 
 of 
 
 To be influenced by a trivial, or ignoble, or 
 false book, is to associate with an unworthy 
 companion, and to suffer the inevitable detri- 
 ment. For the book, like the man, must be 
 so true that it convinces our reason and sat- 
 isfies our curiosity; it must be so beautiful 
 that it fascinates and delights our taste; it 
 must be so spirited and right-minded that it 
 enlists our best sympathy and stirs our more 
 humane emotions. A good book, like a good 
 comrade, is one that leaves us happier or bet- 
 ter off in any way for having known it. A 
 bad book is one that leaves us the poorer, 
 either by confusing our reason with what is 
 not true, or by debasing our taste with what 
 is ugly, or by offending our spirit with what 
 is evil. For a book must always appeal to us 
 in these three ways, and be judged by these 
 three tests. 
 
 Then, too, it is only the man behind the 
 book that makes the book worth reading. 
 And what worthless things often masquerade 
 under that noble name! Factory-made abom- 
 
 166
 
 fccljiutr ti)t UooU 
 
 inations of cloth and paper, without a shadow 
 of soul or sincerity in them from beginning 
 to end! You perceive at once that the author 
 (Heaven forgive him!) went about to make 
 a contrivance which should fool the guileless 
 public, a book in nothing but appearance, a 
 conscious cheat. The real book has vitality, 
 it convinces and moves and entrances us by 
 its indubitable veracity. Its maker was not 
 concerned to produce an effect, but to free 
 his mind and give vent to his feeling. In- 
 evitably the result of his effort bears the stamp 
 of his own personality. The book is the living 
 image of the man. That is why real books 
 have a power over us. It is the individuality 
 that counts. And wherever there is a false 
 note, something that the writer did not truly 
 believe and intimately feel, be sure the reader 
 will be aware of the discrepancy, and the book 
 will fail to seem natural it will not be 
 " convincing," as we say in the jargon of the 
 studios. On the other hand, let a book be 
 never so crude and ill written, if the writer 
 
 167
 
 of 
 
 was in earnest and put his heart and mind 
 into the work, that book will have merit and 
 some quality at least of an actual creation. 
 It will have had a creator behind it a veri- 
 table maker, not a mere manipulator; and 
 the vitality it received from him it will in 
 turn impart to others. This is the true life 
 of a book, without which the making of vol- 
 umes becomes a contemptible trade, and lit- 
 erature a lost art. 
 
 1 68
 
 PERHAPS our keenest impulses, our joys and 
 hopes and depressions, spring from tides of 
 influence beyond our own control. And we 
 are not altogether to be held responsible for 
 moods. More impalpable than the shadows 
 of flying clouds, our moods sweep over us, 
 changing the complexion of day, moving us 
 to elation or sadness. The folly and utter 
 inconsequence of moods would seem to prove 
 this. 
 
 Whatever the origin of our moods, cer- 
 tainly some of them may clearly be thought 
 to spring from primitive ancestral, almost 
 cosmic, trends of inheritance, and the habits 
 of old generations on the earth. So that many 
 
 169
 
 causes we do not take note of are concerned 
 in making our happiness. 
 
 With the vernal change of the year comes 
 our immemorial migratory mood, noted long 
 ago so beautifully by Chaucer in the opening 
 of the Tales, with its description of April, 
 when the pilgrim spirit is abroad. Long 
 before that delightful cavalcade set out for 
 Canterbury, folk had become wanderers and 
 incipient vagabonds in spring; and the old 
 poet's picture is as fresh and true for this day 
 as it was half a thousand years ago. And 
 perhaps we know the zest of spring even more 
 keenly than our fathers, as we need its refresh- 
 ment the more. To really know the rapture 
 of April, however, one must have lived a 
 winter in the frozen north, where cold shuts 
 down like an iron lid in November and is 
 never once unlocked until mid-April. Then, 
 indeed, the warm spring days return to these 
 austere hyperborean regions with a radiance 
 unknown to other zones, and their May-time 
 is like relief to a beleaguered city. Fancy for 
 
 170
 
 yourself the joy of feeling firm brown earth 
 underfoot after treading the yielding snow 
 for six months together! If you have ever 
 walked half a block through a sandy blizzard 
 and then come suddenly upon the good pave- 
 ment, you will have some notion of the mere 
 bodily relief. 
 
 But if there is so much pleasurable relief 
 in the mere passing of cold, what pure pleas- 
 ure of spirit do we not share in the migratory 
 season. Every unfolding leaf is an infection 
 of joy; every wild bird-note has its answering 
 reverberation in ourselves. Perhaps from our 
 small brothers of the air we have inherited a 
 touch of their genius for wandering, and 
 from our dumb kindred of the forest some- 
 thing of the power of perceptible growth. 
 We, too, unfold in spring, put forth new 
 capacities, and have stirrings for change of 
 scene, for adventures. We feel dimly that we 
 are truly inheritors of the kingdom of free- 
 dom, not mere serfs of convention and town. 
 
 This vague, subhuman, primitive longing 
 171
 
 of 
 
 has its effect, no doubt, in our social customs, 
 our homes and holiday resorts. And if we are 
 growing more strenuous, we are growing 
 more simple and natural as well. " The sea- 
 son " in town grows shorter and shorter, the 
 habit of a country holiday more universal. 
 It is no longer considered smart to flock in 
 huge, hideous hotels; die seclusion of some 
 sleepy farmhouse in a nest of hills is the ap- 
 proved thing, as it is really the better. 
 
 The need we all have of just this migratory 
 movement every year! If you note it, you 
 will perceive the uncomfortable irritability 
 of your friends in spring. They say they are 
 out of sorts. But all they need is a little nat- 
 ural existence, a cessation from artificial con- 
 ditions. I read the other day what seemed 
 to me a very clever bit of realism, a story 
 called " Kate Wetherell." She was one of 
 those slaves of the kitchen said to be common 
 in New England ; she became so discouraged 
 that one night she attempted suicide by 
 drowning. But a providential rope saved her 
 
 172
 
 Jttootr 
 
 life, and the daring midnight venture re- 
 sulted only in a thorough wetting. Kate went 
 home walking on air, to her tiresome, dull 
 husband and her round of pots. From that 
 day she was a changed woman, with an un- 
 quenchable seed of elation within her. 
 
 Poor, driven human soul, how often you 
 fancy that you want to pass from this bitter 
 round of trial and toil, when in reality all 
 you need is a bath and a sleep! Take off those 
 silly, cramping garments, that idiotic silk 
 stock that deforms your neck, those Chinese 
 shoes that deform your feet; get into some 
 sensible flannels, and be away to the hills or 
 the sea! If you would only follow your in- 
 stinct occasionally, instead of making yourself 
 the uncomfortable cipher of fashion and cus- 
 tom! There is only one way in the world to 
 be distinguished: Follow your instinct! Be 
 yourself, and you'll be somebody. Be one 
 more blind follower of the blind, and you will 
 have the oblivion you deserve. Instincts were 
 made to be heeded, not to be thwarted. Per-
 
 of 
 
 sonality was made to be cherished, not to be 
 annihilated. And it is right to want to move 
 from the narrow and constricting to the broad 
 and ennobling. You cannot go to the coun- 
 try too soon this summer, nor stay too long. 
 Let us give ample play to the migratory 
 mood, believing it an inheritance, from vaster 
 times and a hint of unmeasured journeys yet 
 to come. Let us become well accustomed to 
 it, attaching ourselves not too firmly to one 
 place, nor to one tenet, nor to one custom, 
 however good. 
 
 174
 
 Emtrttion 
 
 IT is a wonderful June morning in a New 
 England town. Long before breakfast-time 
 the birds have waked you with their riotous 
 medley of songs and calls. Probably it was 
 the oriole in the orchard, talking away in his 
 mellow syllables, who actually roused you to 
 consciousness at last. Then you were glad 
 to be awake, for you remembered you were 
 not in the city any longer, and you gave a 
 sigh of relief and stretched far down in the 
 cool, clean linen. But the oriole sang on and 
 the sun was high and the world was good to 
 see, and you could lie no longer. Now it is 
 after breakfast, and you stroll out on the lawn 
 and see the flowers and clover and hear more 
 birds and watch the people going to church. 
 
 175
 
 of 
 
 There goes by a little lady in light gown, 
 with her parasol and book, very content and 
 happy, to rehearse her prayers and praises 
 as her grandmother did before her. If you 
 look with the artist's eye, if you can attain 
 for a moment that magical vision which sees 
 things not too near nor yet too far, which 
 notes every detail and yet is detached from 
 the object and views it as in a dream or a mov- 
 ing picture, you will perceive that she is not 
 as familiar as you fancied. In reality her 
 dress and customs are as strange and foreign 
 as if she were a little Jap or a Corean. Why 
 does she trip away so lightly over the grass, 
 why is she so assured in her happiness, why 
 does she wear those needless gloves, that 
 strange hat, those fluttering ribbons? I see 
 her moving through the picture and ask my- 
 self these things. Why? Tradition, I sup- 
 pose. Slowly progressing tradition working 
 for ages has brought about her dress as it is 
 this morning, and made her set out for church
 
 <Du (TxMtritton 
 
 in that calm, delightful way. I don't know 
 whether ladies go to church in Japan, or 
 whether they have any Sunday. But, if they 
 have and if they do, how charming we should 
 think their custom! What a pious and beau- 
 tiful habit! Yet it is only tradition. 
 
 Is tradition, then, so great a beautifier of 
 this world and of our life here? Is it not 
 rather true to say that all our advances and 
 advantages have been won in a hard-fought 
 fight with tradition? Is it not by stubbornly 
 opposing custom and by unflinchingly insist- 
 ing on change, freedom, reform, that we have 
 come to our present development? Am I 
 not right to be a liberal, even a radical, and 
 set my face like a stone against benumbing 
 tradition? Tradition makes men bigots and 
 slaves and tyrants and superstitious yokels. 
 Tradition is the father of persecutions, the 
 uncle of falsehoods, the brother of ignorance, 
 and the grandsire of a thousand hideous sins 
 against sweetness and light. I will have none 
 of tradition. I will abide by the example of 
 
 177
 
 of 
 
 my masters, those brave thinkers who tried 
 to teach me liberality. Be others what they 
 may, I will be myself. 
 
 " Ah, my friend, that is all very fine," said 
 a still, small voice, as I kept on the smooth, 
 soft grass, " but look here, look about you. 
 See those yellow lilies there beyond the tennis- 
 court. All winter they were asleep in their 
 bulbs, dry and brown, with not a soul to tend 
 them. Yet this morning there they are, all 
 radiance and light, the same frail, beautiful 
 creatures their people have been for a thou- 
 sand years. How do you fancy they manage 
 to compass that miracle? Tradition. And 
 you hear your orioles and your warblers and 
 your robins, each keeping fresh and fair his 
 own imperishable measure of gladness. 
 There again is tradition. And just fancy for 
 a moment, please, what would happen if your 
 oriole should turn radical and attempt some 
 new strange note, some violation of the tra- 
 dition of his kind, or if the yellow lily should 
 presume to disregard the traditions of her
 
 folk! No more lovely lilies, no more entranc- 
 ing orioles, as long as the world might last. 
 
 " Why, my fanciful friend, the very frame 
 of the universe is hung upon tradition. Tra- 
 dition is the cement that holds the arches of 
 the earth in place ; the planets themselves are 
 hung on that thread. Let it once break, and 
 cosmos would fall about your ears. If every 
 creature after its kind, and every herb and 
 flower after their kind, yes, and every stone 
 and metal after their kind, did not follow 
 unquestioningly the immutable law of their 
 activity, the tradition of their race, we could 
 not exist a moment as we are. We should 
 all be thrown into primal confusion once 
 more. Tradition is the first letter in the 
 alphabet of life." 
 
 And I suppose this is so. Try as we may, 
 few of us can roam very far from the central 
 peg to which our own peculiar tradition has 
 tied us. We fancy ourselves reformers and 
 independents. Let others follow customs, we 
 are in bond to no law but our instinct. We 
 
 179
 
 of 
 
 shall act for ourselves, as we think best. We 
 shall conform no more, be subservient to none. 
 Let tradition be hanged, for we have a finer 
 sanction for conduct within the heart. And 
 so off we fly into quixotic reforms and a hun- 
 dred mad schemes for rearranging the uni- 
 verse in a day and house-cleaning the cosmos 
 in a week. 
 
 It cannot be done. Tradition is not the 
 bugbear radicals would have us believe. It 
 safeguards our existence against our own too 
 rash folly. It keeps us from the ills of a too 
 precipitate haste. There is a happy mean in 
 conduct between radicalism and conserva- 
 tism. I hear my friend on one side of the 
 room howling at the " hide-bound conserva- 
 tives." I hear my friend on the other side 
 muttering at the " blatant radicals." And I 
 do sympathize with each. If there is one 
 thing I detest as heartily as I do the stuffy, 
 narrow-minded, intolerant, unprogressive, 
 conservative, it is the flannel-mouthed agi- 
 tator. The one is hopeless, the other is almost 
 
 i So
 
 r attrition 
 
 worse; he is destructive. And yet it is to 
 be noted tradition moves. It moves slowly, 
 very slowly, but it does move. And tradition 
 is, after all, no inhuman condition, but a 
 habit in which we are immemorially inured. 
 Tradition changes, too; it is changing every 
 day, and it is we ourselves who change it. 
 When we give our energy to the generous 
 tasks of reform, I think perhaps we should 
 do well to remember this: not to try to go 
 too fast. At least we should let our knowl- 
 edge of tradition reconcile us to the difficulty 
 of progress. We should remember always 
 that the most thorough method of reform is 
 that which reforms tradition. It is not easy 
 to destroy old traditions, but it is possible to 
 infect them with ridicule so that they pres- 
 ently die, tardily but surely. Then we must 
 all the while be fostering new traditions in 
 their place. People are not adapted as yet 
 to a life without tradition. They are not wise 
 enough, and they are too timid. Give them 
 time. Meanwhile, supplant the old tradi- 
 
 181
 
 of 
 
 tions with better ones. Be as thoroughgoing 
 as you please, but do have some finesse. In 
 order to weed your garden, it will not be 
 necessary to root up everything that is green. 
 
 182
 
 THERE is a rhythm of poetry, and there is 
 a rhythm of people. And these two rhythms 
 are similar in their charm and power. 
 
 By a rhythm of people I do not mean any 
 magnetic or magic influence generated in con- 
 gregations of individuals, but rather the 
 rhythm peculiar to each individual. In this 
 sense rhythm is an attribute of personality, 
 and is manifested through the person in mo- 
 tion and speech. Observe your friends and 
 notice the rhythm peculiar to each ; how one 
 is slow and another quick, one deliberate and 
 another hurried, one jerky and another grace- 
 ful. I almost fancy, indeed, that you might 
 find one was iambic and another trochaic in 
 essential rhythm. Can you not think of the 
 
 183
 
 of 
 
 (ponderous character that moves step after 
 (step, word after word, with the emphasis 
 always delayed until the second thought, the 
 second look, the second movement, the sec- 
 r ond words? Dons and dowagers and police- 
 men are always iambic in their rhythm. Re- 
 call the rhythm of blank verse, the most com- 
 mon iambic measure in English, in the lines: 
 
 " So all day long the noise of battle rolled 
 
 ^V~ A , -LI- J> 
 
 Among the mountains by the winter sea, 
 
 and you will perceive at once how settled and 
 prosperous and conservative it is, quite aris- 
 tocratic and assured. On the other hand, to 
 quote again from Tennyson, there is the line 
 of excellent trochees: 
 
 " In the spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to 
 thoughts of love." 
 
 How different from the iambics! How 
 sprightly, tripping, gay, and emotional! The 
 rhythm of a soubrette rather than a savant 
 Then, again, there is the slow, uncertain, me- 
 
 184
 
 IMttMflil 
 
 andering rhythm of some large people who 
 move like a hexameter: 
 
 " This is the forest primeval, the murmuring pines and 
 the hemlocks." 
 
 Undecided people are usually of this dac- 
 tyllic measure; and it is a very dangerous 
 one to handle. 
 
 Again, persons are like poems in this, that 
 it is possible to have a bad rhythm, though 
 every rhythm is good in itself. We may, 
 however, destroy our rhythm or nullify its 
 effect by misuse. If we are naturally iambic, 
 we must be careful how we break into tro- 
 chees; and, if we are trochaic, we must be- 
 ware of lapsing into iambics. The result of 
 a bad use of rhythms is always ludicrous. 
 The strut of a bantam and the skip of an " 
 archbishop are incongruous, and, therefore, 
 to be employed with discrimination. And 
 with this provision any rhythm may be used 
 at will with expressional power. The prime 
 rule in the poetry of man is this : Stick to your 
 
 85
 
 of 
 
 own rhythm. And remember you cannot help 
 using your own natural rhythm so long as you 
 are simple and sincere. The moment you be- 
 gin to pose, you will unconsciously use an- 
 other rhythm, not your own; and every one 
 will know it. Do not imagine for a moment 
 that you can appear to be what you are not. 
 You are betrayed in every gesture. Every 
 syllable " gives you away." Occasionally a 
 great genius may play a part which is not his 
 own by nature; but in that case he passes 
 by imagination into the new character, and 
 actually is the person he plays. This is the 
 genius of the actor, and it is the lack of just 
 this power that is so apparent in the mediocre 
 player. 
 
 To live according to one's rhythm is the 
 law of common sense and common honesty. 
 It is the first requisite of sanity, too. And 
 it is one of the greatest evils of modern life 
 that it tends to throw us out of rhythm. We 
 are nearly all hurried to a point of hysteria. 
 It is not so much that we have more than 
 
 1 86
 
 we can do, as that we allow the haste to get 
 on our nerves. Without being aware of it 
 in the least, we become distraught, inefficient, 
 and flighty, simply through the hurry in 
 which we live. You may deny it as you 
 please, but noise and haste are maddening. 
 Watch the average business man, fluttering 
 about like an agitated hen. He is divorced 
 from his natural, legitimate power, for he 
 has lost his own rhythm. He does everything 
 too quickly, and he does nothing well. If 
 he would only take time to breathe and smile 
 and hold up his chest, he would accomplish 
 much more, and save his soul alive at the 
 same time. To be in a hurry is sometimes 
 necessary. In that case, you must be prepared 
 with the natural celerity of lightning, prompt 
 but poised. It is never necessary to scurry. 
 And in order to maintain this deliberation, 
 of course, we must never let events tread on 
 our heels. We must never dawdle, never 
 allow our rhythm to run more slowly than 
 is natural. That is equally a fault. But, if 
 
 187
 
 jFvtrntrsljij) of 
 
 we always do things that are becoming to our 
 personality in the rhythm that is our true ex- 
 pression, neither breathless nor lagging, we 
 shall accomplish more than we dreamed and 
 we shall always have time to spare. We have 
 all the time there is ; and in that time every- 
 thing can be done that ought to be done. It 
 is merely a matter of balance, of adjustment, 
 of rhythm, of keeping the soul at poise amid 
 the forces of circumstance and will. If we 
 miss that fine poise, we suffer, we feel the 
 deterioration that comes of ineffectual effort, 
 we have wasted our power, we have depleted 
 our fund of inertia and initiative impulse, we 
 have hindered the delicate rhythm of per- 
 sonality. 
 
 Does this seem fantastic and far-fetched? 
 It is not really so. Perhaps it is a matter that 
 will not bear discussion. It will bear experi- 
 ment, however. If you do not believe in a 
 personal rhythm, it is only because you have 
 never thought of it in so many words. If 
 you consider it for a moment in the light of 
 
 1 88
 
 tfersonal 
 
 your own experience, you will be convinced 
 of its truth and power. 
 
 There is in poetry a certain influence or 
 power, quite apart from its logical meaning. 
 There resides in the lines a subtle force not 
 given to prose. This is the genius of the 
 measure making itself felt. In the same way 
 our personality makes itself felt in all we do, 
 through the influence of our peculiar rhythm. 
 And we shall be wise to cultivate our own 
 proper and peculiar measure of speech and 
 movement. For there is surely a power given 
 to each one of us, call it what you will, that is 
 not expended in word or act, but exerts itself 
 in the unconscious time of speech, in the un- 
 conscious time of our deeds. And just as the 
 measure of verse influences the hearer and 
 serves to carry an impression from the poet, 
 so our own rhythm affects all who come into 
 contact with us in life. It is a form of power 
 about which a materialistic age knows little, 
 and therefore one the more to be cultivated 
 and preserved. 
 
 189
 
 THE test by which we are accustomed to 
 measure the value of any artistic creation is 
 its ability to survive. Anything which is truly 
 great in art, we say, will have in it such a 
 power of appeal and charm for men that they 
 will be very unwilling to let it die. It will 
 be carefully preserved through the ages for 
 the sake of its rare beauty. We are so fear- 
 ful that its like may not be easily found again 
 that we build great museums and libraries 
 where it may be received and stored with 
 other treasures of its kind. 
 
 Now while this quality of permanency in 
 art is a convenient measure of universal es- 
 teem, it is in itself of no virtue whatever. We 
 value our Virgil and our Greek sculpture, 
 not for their age, but for their beauty. They 
 
 190
 
 gather a certain interest and pathos in their 
 very antiquity; they appeal to us by the force 
 of lovely association; they are ripe and ven- 
 erable. But these charms may often be in- 
 herent in less admirable work as well. As 
 far as its antiquity appeals to us, a poor little 
 coin from some buried city is almost as full 
 of suggestion as the Venus of Milo herself. 
 Whether a beautiful object is permanent or 
 impermanent is of no account whatever in 
 valuing its excellence as art. 
 
 A statue may be more lovely in one material 
 than in another; that will depend on the 
 colour and texture of the material, not on its 
 enduring quality. A figure in snow that 
 would not outlive the hour might be just as 
 lovely as one in marble. Beauty never per- 
 ishes, indeed; but it endures by virtue of its 
 essence and influence; it is not dependent on 
 the permanence of gross matter for its immor- 
 tality. That would be a precarious immortal- 
 ity at best. Rather is the permanence of 
 beauty typified in the frail perishable hue and 
 
 191
 
 of 
 
 form of the flowers and ephemera, so slight, 
 so easily destroyed, and yet as enduring in 
 their species as the elephant or the yew. In 
 every butterfly that floats down the summer 
 breeze, you see the symbol of that ephemeral 
 loveliness which it is art's ambition to em- 
 body. In this ephemeral quality, acting and 
 dancing are the two arts nearest to nature. 
 They cannot be recorded, but perish as soon 
 as they are born. While for music and poetry 
 we have invented some means of preserva- 
 tion, they are essentially impermanent in 
 their beauty. They are arts which appeal to 
 the ear, fleeting as the wind over the sea. 
 
 We are in the habit of thinking of poetry 
 at least as being a written art, dependent on 
 paper and print for its life. That is largely 
 so, but it ought not to be so at all. For 
 poetry, like music, must be rendered in sound 
 before it can come to its full effect and in- 
 fluence. And this aspect of the art of poetry 
 we should keep much more constantly in mind 
 (at least so it seems to me) if we are to main- 
 
 192
 
 tain our love for it and our power in it to 
 any efficient degree. 
 
 It is seldom, on the contrary, that poetry 
 (to speak of only one art) ever has the oppor- 
 tunity of reaching its fit hearers in its untar- 
 nished glory. Our good readers are so la- 
 mentably few, our taste for reading aloud is 
 almost nil. The spread of elementary knowl- 
 edge and the prevalence of journalism, how- 
 ever admirable they may be in themselves, 
 have tended to deterioration of the excellent 
 art of reading aloud, and so have had an ill 
 effect, too, I daresay, on the art of poetry 
 itself. 
 
 In thinking of poetry, then, let us think 
 of it as something that must be heard to be 
 appreciated at its best. In that way we shall 
 not only come to place poetry in its true re- 
 lation to ourselves; we shall be aiding, ever 
 so little it may be, in readjusting the status 
 of poetry and in emphasizing the beautiful 
 and sympathetic quality its ephemeral nature 
 elicits. 
 
 193
 
 ineffectual 
 
 EVERY day I live I am amazed that so many 
 people should be content to be ineffectual in 
 j^fe. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that 
 half the people in the world are ineffectual 
 because they don't know how to try; and the 
 other half are ineffectual because they don't 
 even want to try. 
 
 I have an idea that evil came on earth when 
 the first man or woman said: " That isn't the 
 best that I can do, but it is well enough." 
 In that sentence the primitive curse was pro- 
 nounced, and until we banish it from the 
 world again we shall be doomed to ineffi- 
 ciency, sickness, and unhappiness. Thorough- 
 ness is an elemental virtue. In nature noth- 
 ing is slighted, but the least and the greatest 
 
 194
 
 of tasks are performed with equal care, and 
 diligence, and patience, and love, and intel- 
 ligence. 
 
 We are ineffectual because we are slovenly 
 and lazy and content to have things half done. 
 We are willing to sit down and give up be- 
 fore the thing is finished. Whereas we should 
 never stop short of an utmost effort toward 
 perfection so long as there is a breath in our 
 body. 
 
 Women, of course, are worse in this respect 
 than men. Their existence does not depend 
 on their efficiency, and therefore they can be 
 almost as useless and inefficient as they please; 
 whereas, men have behind them a very prac- 
 tical incentive to efficiency, which goes by the 
 name of starvation. 
 
 And there are ineffectual men enough, cer- 
 tainly. It is not a matter of large attempts, 
 but of trifles the accumulation of trifles 
 that makes ultimate success. For character, 
 like wealth, may be amassed in small quan- 
 tities, as well as acquired in one day. If you 
 
 195
 
 of 
 
 watch a woman dusting a room, you will 
 know at once whether she will ever be able 
 to do anything more important in the world, 
 or whether she is destined to keep to such 
 simple work all her days, going gradually 
 from inefficiency to inefficiency, until she 
 gives up at last in despair and falls into the 
 ranks of the great procession of the failures 
 in life. Watch a man harness a horse or mend 
 a fence; you can tell whether or not he will 
 ever own a horse and a farm. 
 
 True, it may not matter whether the last 
 nail is doubled over instead of being driven 
 in to the head, but the state of mind which 
 could be content with one nail too few is 
 fatal. Indifference may not wreck the man's 
 life at any one turn, but it will destroy him 
 ' with a kind of dry-rot in the long run. There 
 is a passion for perfection which you will 
 rarely see fully developed ; but you may note 
 this fact, that in successful lives it is never 
 wholly lacking. 
 
 I think one great reason for our common 
 196
 
 <Dn ims Knrffrrttttil 
 
 inefficiency lies in the fact that we neglect 
 to correlate our forces. When we undertake 
 a task, we do not bring all our powers to bear. 
 I do not mean, of course, that we should ex- 
 pend our utmost force on trifles; that is not 
 necessary; we must always maintain a re- 
 serve. I mean that we should call into play 
 in every act something of each of our three 
 natures. If there is a stone to be moved from 
 the middle of the road, there is a right way 
 to move it, and there are a hundred wrong 
 ways. That implies the use of mind. I must 
 bring my wits to the task. Also I may do 
 it gladly, when it will be easy, or grudgingly, 
 when it will be hard and exhausting. In 
 short, for the half-moment, I must devote 
 myself to the stone as thoroughly as if I were 
 rolling it away from the door of heaven. 
 Have you ever noticed a nursemaid getting 
 her baby carriage over the curb? Usually 
 she manages to give it the greatest jolt possi- 
 ble. And I think as soon as women can get 
 off of a street-car properly they should be 
 
 197
 
 of 
 
 allowed to vote. It is never enough to put 
 strength into the work, one must put heart 
 and brains as well. 
 
 This matter of correlating the three vital 
 forces is at once perhaps the most important 
 and the least understood element in personal 
 success. It is, in my judgment, incomparably 
 more important than any subject of study in 
 our colleges or schools, more useful than any 
 practical training we are now giving our 
 young men and women ; and it is so little 
 understood that I doubt whether more than 
 a very few have considered its real value. I 
 am afraid that, when we do think of it, we 
 are willing to take it for granted, without 
 ever actually relying upon it. That is a pity. 
 We may pervert and neglect our forces as 
 we will; we may spend half a lifetime in 
 using them amiss, and yet so small a trial of 
 right adjustment and correlation would con- 
 vince us of the enormous gain of power to 
 be had in that direction. 
 
 198
 
 Eije 
 
 " To be even an outskirter in art leaves a 
 fine stamp on a man's countenance." I had 
 forgotten the quotation, if I ever knew it, 
 until a friend recalled it recently in a letter. 
 But it expresses well the position of so many, 
 does it not? And that single word contains a 
 power of suggestion. 
 
 To be an outskirter. That is itself the very 
 embodiment of the artistic aspiration and 
 temper. For the artist, I dare fancy, is never 
 desirous of being wholly absorbed; he dreads 
 being committed past recall to any creed or 
 course; he dwells at the static centre of op- 
 posing forces, and sails leisurely in the eddies 
 of the storm; his supreme fear is the loss of 
 his independence and his power of detach- 
 
 199
 
 of 
 
 ment. Show me a man who cannot make up 
 his mind, and I will introduce you to a friend 
 of mine who has the first rudiments of the 
 artist about him. Like many sayings, this is 
 not wholly true; for if a man really cannot 
 ever make up his mind after deliberation, if 
 he can make no choice between better and 
 worse in aesthetic matters; if he has no taste 
 to guide him, no instinct for beauty; if he 
 remains for ever undecided, he is no artist 
 at all. Such an unfortunate is only fitted to 
 be a critic, or a professor, or a politician, or 
 something of that sort; he can never hope 
 to be a poet, or a carpenter, or a doer of 
 things. I mean that one must have the habit 
 of detachment, with the power of selection. 
 To keep your mind already made up is to be 
 dull and fossiliferous ; not to be able to make 
 it up at all is to be watery and supine. These 
 are the two types, each worse than the other. 
 From the former came bigotry, bastinado, 
 and all manner of bumptious cruelty and hate 
 that can make this paradisal earth a Gehenna; 
 
 200
 
 <&tttfirttUrt*rs 
 
 from the latter came the sloven, the sentimen- 
 talist, and the tramp, that forceless contingent 
 of humanity with no more backbone than a 
 banana, which shuffles and bewails its way 
 through this delightful valley of tears. 
 
 To avoid both of these faults is necessary 
 and possible. Let us begin by forgetting 
 for ever the vile superstition that " you can- 
 not alter human nature." If you cannot alter 
 human nature, you cannot alter anything on 
 earth. That is all we are here for, to alter 
 human nature, to make it more natural and 
 more human. Let us begin with our own, 
 and, when that is perfect, let us impart the 
 perfection to our friends. Meanwhile, if we 
 can perceive any hint and shadow of perfec- 
 tion before unrecognized, let us call it to the 
 attention of others. That is what art is for, 
 to embody perfection, to manifest the ideals 
 we have not yet attained. 
 
 I should say, then, that artists at their best 
 are very far from being indifferent folk or 
 unenergetic ; they are, however, capable of an 
 
 201
 
 of 
 
 almost complete detachment. They are veri- 
 tably outskirters, and not partakers of the 
 milling turmoil of 'existence. 'Tis part of 
 their business to observe, but seldom, I imag- 
 ine, to fight. Yet, they are not all outskirters. 
 There was Shelley, for instance, and Carlyle. 
 And I remember a lecture of Richard Hov- 
 ey's (unrecorded, and delivered before a hand- 
 ful of his friends, who will recall that master- 
 ful treatment, that gentle humour, that beau- 
 tiful voice which no one will hear again now) , 
 in which he touched on this very theme in 
 dealing with Shelley, and in which he seemed 
 to think the quality of detachment not so im- 
 portant in a poet, after all. Very likely he 
 was right, and we must allow for the zeal of 
 the prophets. At all events, the very theory 
 of detachment would forbid us holding it too 
 rigidly. And the outskirter may sometimes 
 give a lusty buffet in the right cause where 
 he sees an inviting opportunity. As it is 
 written that the Prince of Peace once made 
 a whip of cords and cleared out the greedy 
 
 202
 
 money-changers, so you may wield a rope's 
 end at times and be justified yes, and be an 
 outskirter still. 
 
 Being an outskirter is not in the least like 
 being an outlaw. The outskirter refuses to be 
 absorbed in lesser things, that he may be the 
 more wholly and freely devoted to following 
 the higher law and filling the larger obliga- 
 tion. The artist wishes to be free, not that he 
 may escape any obligation, however humble, 
 but that he may find the source and orbit of 
 his capacity. He foregoes many pleasures 
 that follow on compromise and conformity, 
 for example, in order that at last, after toil- 
 some days, he may justify himself to himself. 
 Surely that is a harmless ambition. 
 
 And then, while the great guild of artists 
 may be considered in a sense outskirters in a 
 world of active men, there are also outskirters 
 in art in a different sense. There are those 
 who achieve no great things in art, who have 
 not the gift or the time or the opportunity, 
 perhaps, for making any solid contribution 
 
 203
 
 of 
 
 to the beauty of the palace, who are still 
 devoted servitors, not ashamed of a modest 
 wage, and proud of the great house they serve. 
 At least they have our place to fill; they 
 help to form the society in which a great 
 national art shall one day flourish for the 
 betterment and the advancement of our kind. 
 If we believe in the efficacy of art at all, we 
 must stick to it, we must make it prevail more 
 and more. 
 
 204
 
 BROWNING, in his poem, " One Word 
 More," has the well-known line: 
 
 " Gain the man's joy, miss the artist's sorrow." 
 
 What is the artist's sorrow? Can you ask? 
 After all, it is a sorrow not so different from 
 other men's. In one word, it is disappoint- 
 ment; and disappointment of a kind we all 
 have felt, the sense of thwarted and baffled 
 expression. Fancy the artist, with his fair 
 and enthralling ideal at first mistily afloat 
 in his brain, then gradually growing clearer 
 and clearer as he broods over it in serene hap- 
 piness, and finally beginning to take created 
 form. Is there any greater or purer pleasure 
 than his? How fresh, how alluring, how un- 
 
 205
 
 of 
 
 tarnished is the beauty of that thought! And 
 with what untold delight he broods upon it, 
 expectant of the unique revelation never yet 
 vouchsafed to man, and which he alone is to 
 communicate to his fellows! No, not a vain 
 or conscious brooding; for I doubt if any 
 artist pauses to think of himself. His joy is 
 too instinctive, too elemental; he cannot him- 
 self quite tell why he is so happy; if you 
 should ask him, he would be at a loss to ex- 
 plain. But happy he is, bearing about in his 
 dark mind the imperishable splendour. His 
 whole being, his character, his personality, 
 nay, his person, are illumined as with the 
 sacred fire. He irradiates the glad glory of 
 the elect. He has been enkindled with a coal 
 from the altar of the very god. He is not 
 consciously better than others; he is con- 
 sciously only a normal man, and saddened 
 only because others can be sad. In this rapt 
 state he walks the earth, his head in the clouds 
 child of eternity and progenitor of unim- 
 agined beauty. 
 
 206
 
 Eft* 
 
 But wait an hour! Wait until the vanish- 
 ing, evanescent ideal is nearer his grasp. Wait 
 until he tries to embody it in palpable form 
 in terms of colour or sound or shape. Ah, 
 then you shall see a shadow of gloom over- 
 spread his face. That magic thought, so new 
 and lovely, which seemed at first so easy to 
 express, refuses to be made manifest. Toil 
 as he may, the artistry is still at fault. The 
 report he can give of his wonderful vision 
 is in no wise a faithful representation. Per- 
 haps by a sudden flash, as of enchantment, he 
 is able to render some phase of his ideal al- 
 most perfectly; but then, alas, the enchant- 
 ment does not hold ! The next instant he fails 
 again, and the harder he tries the more futile 
 do his attempts become. O artist, save thy 
 tears! Vex not thy heart at this bitter sorrow, 
 for it is the common fate of all thy guild 
 never .to be satisfied with the effort. 
 
 Yes, and this is the common sorrow of all 
 of thy fellow mortals, too. Are we not, every 
 one, beset by this very hindrance, the impossi- 
 
 207
 
 bility of expression? And does not this dif- 
 ficulty explain much of our disappointment 
 and discontent with life? What a relief and 
 pleasure it is to feel one's self thoroughly and 
 adequately represented or expressed, even for 
 a moment! When the complete idea in our 
 mind, which may have been lying unex- 
 pressed for a long time, suddenly some day 
 finds its very self embodied in a perfect phrase 
 or line or sentence of literature, how glad 
 we are! How we welcome that artist, and 
 how grateful we are to him for giving voice 
 to our very thought! And when some senti- 
 ment or emotion finds a like embodiment, 
 what a feeling of satisfaction we have! And 
 in these cases, it is only the expression of an- 
 other which we have borrowed. How much 
 more, then, are we delighted when the ex- 
 pression is spontaneous, when we can unaided 
 find the fit and perfect form in which to 
 embody the breath of our own being, the word 
 of the spirit. 
 
 This same satisfaction, less in degree but 
 208
 
 5J 03? 
 
 not the least different in kind, is ours in daily 
 human intercourse, when we move happily 
 and among our fellow men, when we feel 
 ourselves perfectly understood. It seems to 
 me that we should come a shade nearer hap- 
 piness in life if we constantly reminded our- 
 selves of this truth: that life as we live it is 
 an art, is one of the greatest of the fine 
 arts, that, indeed, it is the one art which 
 embraces all others. We should, I think, 
 keep in mind the joy and the sorrow of the 
 artist, and remember that our own happiness 
 and discontent are largely similar to his. We 
 should not forget that in the arts of speech and 
 gesture and dress in the arts of human in- 
 tercourse we are every instant using ex- 
 actly the methods of all the other fine arts, 
 and are making, for good or ill, undeniable 
 revelations of ourselves. It is inevitable that 
 we should be making hourly impressions on 
 our friends. And does it not become an evi- 
 dent duty that those impressions should be 
 true, that they should actually represent us, 
 
 209
 
 of 
 
 that they should at least be brought under our 
 conscious control, and made expressive as well 
 as impressive? If we allow a discrepancy be- 
 tween the impression we make on others and 
 the expression we intended to embody, cer- 
 tainly nothing but unhappiness can result. 
 For the joy of life depends in no small meas- 
 ure on living adequately, in filling our sphere, 
 in leaving no chinks between the veritable self 
 and the great, beautiful, fascinating dominion 
 of the senses. A being placed on this earth 
 is fitted, you may be sure, both by inheritance 
 and training, for living in accord with his 
 surroundings. To bring himself into this 
 close and satisfying relation is the clear duty 
 and first privilege of all. And it can be done 
 only through expression, only by honestly 
 making the inward self real to the outward 
 world. 
 
 If we neglect to secure for ourselves true, 
 sincere, pleasing, and reliable expression, 
 which shall enable us to reach the utmost 
 bounds of our being, it is as if a seed should 
 
 210
 
 Artist's SB 02 
 
 never grow to fill its outer shell. We should 
 then hopelessly rattle about in a vast, rever- 
 berating, empty world. I should, indeed, 
 like to be the master of some fine art. I can 
 fancy no more luxurious gladness in life. At 
 least I should insist on cultivating the lesser 
 arts of expression, the personal arts, the 
 arts of life. 
 
 211
 
 THE case is so old that the very mention 
 of it is almost a breach of etiquette. Wars 
 have been waged, empires overturned, and the 
 colour of the map changed a hundred times 
 by so trifling a litigation. There appears one 
 day among men a hairy prophet, coming 
 down out of the mountains, a hermit, an 
 ascetic, preaching righteousness and the para- 
 mountcy of the spirit. Against the gay, the 
 worldly, the happy, the thoughtless, the free, 
 untrammelled children of the earth, this bleak 
 foreboder of ill launches his rattling exhor- 
 tations. In his cosmos there have never been 
 any cakes and ale, and his strenuous mind is 
 bent on contorting the visible world to his 
 own lofty but narrow pattern. Again and 
 
 212
 
 Corpus urrgu0 
 
 again the chosen people of history were called 
 on to listen to such a man, until it happens 
 they have given us the most considerable and 
 remarkable body of prophecy in the world, 
 and have impressed their idea of goodness 
 permanently on our race. And the story of > 
 all nations is similar to theirs, revelations of 
 righteousness and relapses to license puri- 
 tan and pagan at ceaseless war in the long ^ 
 struggle for ultimate perfection. In Eng- 
 land, f or , only one example, how the court 
 and the commonwealth strove together in a 
 futile deadly clutch for mastery! Not a 
 politcal struggle merely, but a moral one even 
 more. Our friend Corpus, the dashing child 
 of pleasure, horsed and ringleted, cheering 
 after instinct down the delicious flowery roads 
 of earth; and our old friend Animus, severe 
 and noble, imbued terribly with the weight 
 and serious consequence of life. 
 
 You may side as you will; and probably 
 you will side first with one and then with the 
 other many times through a long youth before 
 
 213
 
 jFrfentrstjij) of 
 
 you discover the uselessness of partisan quar- 
 rels. But then at last some day, most likely 
 in your golden thirties, when the false logic 
 of extremes has dawned upon you, there will 
 come the thought that light cannot exist with- 
 out darkness, nor right without wrong, that 
 the only thing that can exist without its op- 
 posite is non-existence itself. And then your 
 heart will not be torn asunder any more 
 within you over the immemorial litigation in 
 the case of Corpus versus Animus. You will 
 perceive with wonder how eminently right 
 they both are; you will cease giving your 
 undivided allegiance to one or the other; you 
 will content yourself with sharing the joys and 
 sorrows of both alike ; and you will heave an 
 enormous sigh of contentment that one more 
 stormy cape of experience is past. 
 
 Tolerance, tolerance, tolerance! Be not 
 vexed at all if the roisterer is noisy in the 
 tavern where you must eat a modest meal; 
 neither vaunt yourself as virtuous because 
 cold water is your only drink. For Corpus 
 
 214
 
 (forjms tirrsug Animus 
 
 has his virtues, too, good, strong, generous, 
 faithful, and inescapable Corpus! And never 
 think for a moment that your high asceticism 
 is better than his inane muscularity. He is 
 but training himself according to his kind, . 
 that he may serve you the better according 
 to your wisdom. And it behooves you to 
 temper and control yourself with all learning, 
 so that you can rightly use that loyal and 
 willing servitor. 
 
 Is it not true that for the most part we have 
 been willing to correct the excesses and igno- 
 rances of the body by a shameful disaffection 
 and neglect? Noble and sincere as was thev 
 ascetic ideal, did it not sinfully maltreat anv 
 innocent, childish creature, when it heaped 
 indignity and emaciation on this fair figure 
 of humanity? Was the result not quite as v 
 bad as the sorry ravages of debauchery and\- 
 animalism? But one may say, surely, that 
 better thought is coming to prevail; that the 
 ancient fancied antagonism between physical 
 and spiritual is seen to be radically absurd; 
 215
 
 of ilrt 
 
 tfeat no advantage can accrue permanently to 
 either except through the good-will of both. 
 All this is indeed commonplace to the last 
 jot, yet it is the sober, wholesome truth by 
 which we need to stand, and to stand cou- 
 rageously, until we realize for every one the 
 Roman criterion the sane mind in the 
 sound body. Let us believe that never yet 
 has that perfect poise of forces been reached. 
 There have been scholars and there have been 
 fighters; but seldom has the normal man 
 walked the earth in utter health of body and 
 spirit. We are too often warped by a wrong 
 thought; the one ideal or the other deludes 
 us; we enroll ourselves under Corpus or 
 Animus, and take sides in that time-worn 
 dispute, to our own lasting injury. Let us 
 have done with it at once and for ever, and 
 recognize an equal culture of the physical and 
 the intellectual as the only training for per- 
 fection. It is so necessary to have a true ideal, 
 to know the better way. And a very small 
 experience should teach us the truth in this 
 
 216
 
 Corpus totrsug Sdifmtts 
 
 case. I could wish that Whitman's prophe- 
 cies were heeded more generally, and his 
 sturdy, beautiful aspirations more gladly ac- 
 cepted. I could wish that men and women 
 would treat themselves more rationally, with 
 greater care for the balance of their forces. 
 It is true, perhaps, that we shall develop a 
 civilization in time where might will not be 
 the only right; but we shall do so to our own 
 destruction, if we do not take greater and 
 greater care of our physical selves. We shall '} 
 never be as happy as angels until we are 
 healthy as animals. 
 
 217
 
 Simplicity 
 
 IT is customary to sound the praises of sim- 
 plicity in our day and to belaud the habit of 
 an earlier time, when, as we declare, life was 
 less complicated than at present. In the midst 
 of a vital and nascent civilization we are per- 
 haps none too prone to emulate the virtues of 
 our fathers or imitate their excellent qualities. 
 Yet we may easily mistake their blessings. 
 
 <Is simplicity, after all, so admirable a trait 
 of character, so fine a quality in art? 
 
 And what is this simplicity of life for which 
 we sigh? We speak of the simplicity of na- 
 ture, the simplicity of a flower, but surely 
 nothing is more wonderfully complex than 
 all the beautiful products of the natural 
 world. A leaf, for instance, one single, 
 
 218
 
 SfUfgUCftfl 
 
 fresh, green maple leaf from the myriads of 
 the forest to-day, seems at first glance sim- 
 plicity itself. Yet its symmetry is not geo- 
 metrical, but only artistic. It conforms but 
 roughly, though inexorably, to its type. It 
 has no perfect fellow in all the whole earth 
 full of green companions. It is not a machine 
 product. It hasn't the simplicity of straight 
 line and circle. It cannot be reproduced; 
 can hardly be imitated. It has individuality, 
 properties, parts, functions, growth, colour, 
 vitality, and a period of its existence. That 
 is no simple matter. 
 
 Lower in the scale of nature there is greater 
 simplicity. Inorganic is simpler than or- 
 ganic. Last of all comes primal cosmos, or 
 chaos, which is simplicity itself. On the other 
 hand, the farther you go ahead in the devel- 
 opment of nature, the more complex does it 
 become. Simplicity, truly, means life re- 
 duced to its lowest terms. But that is not what 
 we actually desire, I fancy. 
 
 You tell me you love the simplicity of na- 
 219 

 
 of 
 
 ture, you are glad to get away from the com- 
 plications of city life. Yes, that is the phrase 
 we commonly use, but I think there is a good 
 deal of error in it. What is it that wearies 
 us in town? Not the work we have to do, 
 so much as the strain of unnatural ugliness and 
 noise in which we allow ourselves to dwell. 
 For work is not a burden, but a pleasurable 
 activity, a natural function of the healthy and 
 happy; but noise and ugliness are against the 
 trend of spirit as it passes from the lower to 
 the finer life. Noise and ugliness are prim- , 
 itive and simple ; music and beauty are com- y 
 plex, and we only reach them in our progress 
 toward ideal perfection. To take a single 
 instance: you will admit that many of the 
 gongs on the street-cars make a hideous din; 
 they contribute not a little to the dissonance 
 of city noises. But suppose that we should 
 go to the trouble and expense of making our 
 gongs musical. Suppose that they were all 
 made of the finest bell metal, carefully at- 
 tuned, how much pleasanter that would be I
 
 And then, further, suppose that each bell were 
 made to strike its own musical note, and that 
 all were harmonized, how much more pleas- 
 ure to the jaded nerves! And in each im- 
 provement, you will observe, we should be 
 making a step away from the simplicity of 
 noise and toward the complexity of music. 
 We should be discarding machinery in favour 
 of art. 
 
 And, again, think of the hideousness of our 
 streets, our rows and rows of brownstone 
 fronts, as you look down the side streets on 
 the way up-town, every house exactly like ' 
 its neighbour, and every street almost exactly 
 like the next. There is monotonous simplic- 
 ity for you, and the result is deadly. Now 
 if every house were given a beautiful and 
 individual character of its own, and that char- 
 acter so modified as to conform to its neigh- 
 bours, how fine a block you might have ! And, 
 further, if each block were made to harmo- 
 nize to some extent with those about it, how 
 fine a city! Again, in each step of improve- 
 
 221
 
 of 
 
 ment we should be advancing from the simple 
 to the complex, from chaos to art. For art 
 is not the antithesis of nature; but nature and 
 
 *^__ - __ - ^ * ^"'i^*^""l^**^^*^^M^**^^*' g *"MiW^"*i** 
 
 art are both the antithesis of chaos. It is 
 when we give up loving care and put our trust 
 in machinery that we begin to move back- 
 ward to monotony, simplicity, ugliness, and 
 death. 
 
 If we would remedy the annoyance of city 
 life, we must be willing to take thought for 
 it. We must be willing to spend time and 
 trouble and money in order to have music 
 instead of noise in our car bells, in order to 
 have beauty instead of simplicity in our archi- 
 tecture. 
 
 Now if you think you can solve the prob- 
 lem of modern life for yourself by withdraw- 
 ing from the fray, you are mistaken. You 
 may set up your studio in the top of a twenty- 
 story building, and moon there over your 
 emasculate daubs, while the twentieth cen- 
 tury is racing beneath your feet; but you 
 will never lay on a brushful of paint that will 
 
 222
 
 stay. There is a lot of dirty work to be done 
 in the world yet, and, if we are not fitted to 
 help in it, we must at least stand by and give 
 it our sympathy. 
 
 Then in the realm of art itself, it is not - 
 simplicity we admire, but harmonious unity, 
 the complex blending of colours and tones. 
 Simplicity would mean the crude juxtaposi- 
 tion of one raw colour by another, the striking 
 of one note without regard to its fellow. And 
 in poetry, when you pass from the regularity 
 of the school of Pope to the apparently freer 
 metrical usage of Wordsworth and Tennyson 
 and Keats, you fancy at first that you are re- 
 turning to simpler methods; and when you 
 come to Emerson and Whitman, you say you 
 have reached simplicity itself. But that is 
 exactly the reverse of the truth. The cadences 
 of " Leaves of Grass " are far more intricate 
 than those of " The Essay on Man." 
 
 The only simplicity that is desirable is sim- 
 plicity of soul, a certain singleness of aim and 
 quiet detachment of vision, a mood of endur- 
 
 223
 
 JFrtentrsfjiji of 
 
 ing repose not at variance with constant en- 
 deavour, a habit of content, contemplation, 
 and peace, that abides undistracted in har- 
 mony with other habits of activity and toil. 
 This is not the simplicity of chaos, but the 
 simplicity of order, the assurance that comes 
 from the perception of law and the triumph 
 of beauty. This is the higher simplicity, the 
 simplicity of nature and mathematics, which 
 comprehends their many complexities in a 
 unity of being. 
 
 224
 
 tc of tije 
 
 SOMETIMES I think we feel it most power- 
 fully when it comes upon us afresh, as we 
 emerge from thronging streets some morning 
 in spring; indeed, even on the street corners 
 themselves it may overtake us suddenly in 
 the April twilight, in a bunch of mayflowers 
 or a pussy-willow spray. Then how quickly 
 the humdrum and soil of habit are forgotten! 
 We are reinstated instantly with the zest of 
 a primitive unjaded life, and are almost will- 
 ing to declare that existence has no other end 
 than this in-rush of joy, this conversion in the 
 blood. It seems to justify the narrow plod- 
 ding to which we have been confined all the 
 gray days of winter, and to heighten our ap- 
 preciation of a freedom of spirit, which, we 
 know now, is ours by right of inheritance. 
 
 225
 
 The coming of spring, say the wise to them- 
 selves, is the mystic book of revelation in the 
 great volume of nature, the superb transcend- 
 ent note, reassuring doubt, dissolving fear, 
 establishing happiness for ever and ever. 
 And there is nothing so rare as a day in June, 
 partly because we reach it through blizzard 
 and fog and east wind, through toil and forti- 
 tude and iron persistence. 
 
 And then, again, it seems, at the end of 
 summer, as if the true magic of the woods 
 were only put forth after long reserve, slowly, 
 timorously, shyly exerting over us its most 
 potent influence. There are hints and signs, 
 now and then, indeed, which make the care- 
 less wonder whether he has seen any touch 
 of the true magic of the woods at all. Per- 
 haps once or twice between August and De- 
 cember the exact moment may occur for the 
 tireless observer when glimpses of the un- 
 worldliness of nature may come to him, and 
 he may hear or think he hears the glad orac- 
 ular whisper of the universal message. He 
 
 226
 
 iHnotc of tfjc 
 
 may then have the rare fortune (in perfect 
 health, in perfect goodness, of a sound mind) 
 to feel himself for an instant in complete har- 
 mony with all being. He is no longer a jar- 
 ring note in a splendid theme; no longer 
 knows himself somehow at variance with his 
 surroundings; no longer perceives the gulf 
 between ideal and fact, wish and perform- 
 ance; but from a profound inexplicable con- 
 tent is only able to say: 
 
 " Beauty through my senses stole; 
 I yielded myself to the perfect whole." 
 
 I do not mean to speak in fables; I only 
 refer to those experiences of the magic of 
 nature which we all have had. It is this magic 
 which draws us out of the city and away from 
 our palaces of art back to the fundamental 
 and sincere. It is at the bottom of our cry 
 for simplicity, our cry for recreation and rest. 
 It is the magic of the woods which makes the 
 essence of our summer holiday and infuses 
 us anew with the inspiring taste of real life. 
 
 227
 
 jFrtentrsfjiiJ of 
 
 And even if the utmost wonder of that magic 
 is hidden from us, there still remains the 
 wholesome touch of an unsophisticated mode 
 of life. 
 
 There we have a palpable secret to take 
 home with us. If the woods will not tell us 
 what their magic really is, they certainly offer 
 us a comment on our own life. In running 
 away from the forms of civilization to the 
 refuge of nature we do well. But why? Be- 
 cause nature is greater and better than man 
 with his art? Not at all; simply because all 
 of nature is good, while much of our own 
 art of living is lamentably bad. And we make 
 a grievous error if we attempt to love nature 
 to the total exclusion of the civilized and 
 civilizing arts. Nature is inexorable, but 
 man's art is tentative and haphazard. It is 
 seldom perfect; it is nearly always a com- 
 promise or a makeshift. Nature's laws are 
 established ; the future of man is still prob- 
 lematical. It follows that nothing in nature 
 can be rejected or despised, while much in 
 
 228
 
 of tl)t 
 
 our civilization is to be improved or dis- 
 carded altogether. And what we are to bring 
 home from nature is the large temper of pa- 
 tience. We are not to return to the artificial 
 mode of life with scorn for its artificiality, 
 but with love for its art. It took nature un- 
 counted aeons to get as far as primitive man; 
 but man in a single year, by comparison, has 
 achieved his splendid art of life. All that is 
 most worth living for is as much the gift of 
 art as of nature. Nature gave us the impulse, 
 the joy, the power; but we have given our- 
 selves the means of making these things pre- 
 vail. If the usual course of life as we know 
 it seems to us futile and vapid and false, that 
 is the fault of a bad art of life. Well, then, 
 let us get a better art; let us adjust ourselves 
 more exactly to the environment; let us mod- 
 ify both desire and condition until they coin- 
 cide. Don't let us waste time in stupidly 
 reviling modern life as artificial; let us make 
 it artistic. This does not mean that we are 
 to import more of the fine arts into our lives, 
 
 229
 
 JFrtentrafjij) of 
 
 but that we are to evolve a fine art of life 
 itself, as a nation and as individuals. If a 
 few people can live in peace, in security, with 
 comfort and love and a reasonable amount of 
 freedom, that means that the art of modern 
 life is good to a certain extent. When 
 every one can live so, it will mean that art 
 has improved is nearing perfection. It 
 seems to me that at the summer's end, when 
 we can say: 
 
 " My heart had a touch of the woodland time," 
 
 the greater portion of that experience must 
 result in a renewal of enthusiasm for the 
 beautiful art of life, an impulse of generosity 
 and hope for others. The only use of an out- 
 ing is to reinforce one's faith for the next 
 inning. A love of nature can surely never 
 make a man either a morose hermit or a pre- 
 cious aesthetic. Rightly loved, nature must 
 make us more resourceful and apt in the prac- 
 tice of the complex art of living, more unex- 
 acting and humane. 
 
 230
 
 THERE is some confusion, is there not, in 
 our minds when we think of our civilization, 
 and balance its benefits against its perplex- 
 ities, as we do? Our often complaints against 
 it may be justly made only against our own 
 misconception. 
 
 In moments of irritation we are in the habit 
 of finding fault with modern civilization, as 
 we call it; and in a pique we turn our backs 
 on town and society and betake ourselves to 
 more or less sequestered resorts where we 
 promise ourselves the enjoyment of nature 
 and a return to simplicity. But in reality what 
 we are fleeing from is not civilization but our 
 own vulgar and rather stupid multiplication 
 
 231
 
 of 
 
 of effects, our overelaborate accumulation of 
 mere machinery. 
 
 Of true civilization one need never tire. 
 Indeed, it is impossible to tire of it, since 
 civilization is a state of growth, is the con- 
 stant actualization of our best ideals, is 
 nothing more than the realization of our best 
 selves. 
 
 Civilization, I suppose, is the best we can 
 attain in our progress toward perfection. 
 That road is long and difficult, and there 
 are many illusions in the way to delay the 
 traveller and turn him aside. Not the least 
 of these illusions are things, gross material 
 possessions, which we deem at times quite 
 necessary to our comfort and which we come 
 to count as an essential factor in civilized life. 
 But material possessions are only means to an 
 .end; and it depends entirely on our use of 
 them whether or not they aid us in the task 
 of civilizing our life. A Bushman is not civ- 
 lized merely by being placed in a palace or 
 in a luxurious New York hotel; though de- 
 
 232
 
 cent and comfortable surroundings are an 
 almost essential help in humanizing the spirit. 
 Nor could a civilized man like Lincoln or 
 Marcus Aurelius or John Wesley be made 
 barbarous by being housed in a cave or a 
 tepee. In fact, in the first case, the palace 
 or the hotel might be eminently glaring and 
 hideous and debasing to the spirit, in spite 
 of all its luxury, while in the second case our 
 civilized tenant of the cave could more read- 
 ily give his own complexion to his surround- 
 ings for the time being. 
 
 The case is simply this: In our task of 
 civilizing ourselves there are certain neces- 
 sities of the animal man that must be met, \ 
 that remain constant, whatever his state. He 
 must be housed and clothed and fed. His 
 children must be reared and trained, and 
 provision must be made against sickness and 
 incapacity. Now, the means which man 
 takes to do these few things are infinitely 
 various. He may do them very simply, as 
 the Indians used to do them, and as the Afri- 
 
 233
 
 of 
 
 can and the Eskimo still does them; or he 
 may do them with enormous elaboration and 
 multiplicity of detail, as the Londoner and 
 the New Yorker does them to-day. But it is 
 to be noted that the manner of doing these 
 things is not in any way an essential part of 
 civilization. A man may have at his com- 
 mand all the luxuries of the twentieth cen- 
 tury, and still lack all the rudiments of civili- 
 zation. Almost any thoughtful person will 
 acknowledge this strange confusion of ideas 
 of ours, and yet it is because we continually 
 confuse material prosperity with spiritual and 
 intellectual progress that we are so retarded 
 in the path to perfection. 
 
 Evidently it is only common sense that we 
 should get our necessary man's work done as 
 quickly and easily as possible. To be fed 
 and clothed and housed is the prime consid- 
 eration. Very well, then, let us have this done 
 with utmost expedition. Let us invent all 
 manner of contrivances of wood and iron and 
 steam and electricity to save ourselves labour 
 
 234
 
 <Df 
 
 in providing these common requirements. 
 Surely we have worked marvels of ingenuity 
 in that direction! But what then? How shall 
 we employ ourselves? What shall we do v 
 when these first human wants are satisfied? 
 Shall we go on elaborating the means of liv- 
 ing, or shall we devote some time to life itself, 
 to civilizing ourselves? 
 
 After a certain point is reached, the in- 
 crease of material possessions is a palpable 
 burden, a mere incumbrance to us in our at- 
 tempt to civilize and humanize existence. 
 To command happiness in my life, I must 
 be master of conditions, so far as I can. I 
 must have within my power the means of sat- 
 isfying my needs. I must have, if you will, 
 the luxuries of the day. But if I simply keep 
 on multiplying my physical needs, so that it 
 absorbs all my energy to satisfy them, I am 
 no longer a master of conditions, but their 
 slave. I do not command my wants; my 
 wants command me. The essential man in 
 me is arrested and absorbed in mere means of ' 
 
 235
 
 of 
 
 living, and has no energy nor intelligence left 
 for living itself. 
 
 But all the while it is folly to turn our back 
 on civilization. For in all this great mass of 
 material prosperity is hidden the leisure 
 which can make a higher civilization possi- 
 ble. And if I find city life a burden because 
 of its endless demands and material engross- 
 ments, I am not, therefore, to become an em- 
 bittered faultfinder with my age. It were 
 more sensible to take moderately from the 
 abundant store which modern ingenuity has 
 provided, and, having simplified my needs, 
 devote myself to beautifying my inner life, 
 and to making life about me more interesting 
 and happy. For so I shall be forwarding 
 civilization by civilizing myself and those 
 with whom I must come in contact, not by 
 overloading myself with endless elaborations. 
 
 Possessions are good and delightful and 
 necessary. But they are only good and de- 
 lightful and necessary in so far as they min- 
 ister to happiness. They cannot of themselves 
 
 236
 
 <Df 
 
 give us happiness ; they can only give the pos- 
 sibility of happiness and immunity from want. 
 It is we ourselves who must distil from this 
 immunity and possibility the honey of joy 
 which we all desire. 
 
 Civilization does not reside in all those 
 things which we give our lives so breathlessly 
 to obtain; it is to be found in the hearts of 
 our friends, in the thought and science and 
 art of the day. And if the civilization of my 
 time seem to me hard and mean and material- 
 istic, the fault is probably in my own mind as 
 much as in my neighbour's millions. 
 
 237
 
 mttr 
 
 WE are told so constantly and so insistently 
 that business is the chief concern of life that 
 it almost comes to seem true. And, indeed, it 
 is not altogether healthy, nor the mark of a 
 strong man, always to be setting one's face 
 against the drift and tendency of one's own 
 time, always to be a faultfinder, a prophet 
 of ill, a censor, a petty cynic. It is better to 
 temper such a critical spirit with something 
 of the spirit of one's own time, if that time 
 have in it anything at all of honesty, of vigour, 
 of helpfulness. 
 
 It is well to think little of the boastful and 
 ruthless industrialism which engulfs our life; 
 it is well to look upon patriotism and find it 
 only a second-rate virtue; it is well to detest 
 
 238
 
 J3rauti> 
 
 strife and war and vulgar commercial ag- 
 grandizement. And yet a man must have a 
 poor spirit never to have loved his own coun- ^ 
 try; never to have set his nerve to acquire 
 some longed-for end, against odds and obsta- 
 cles and disappointments and disastrous fate; 
 and never to have desired for himself and his 
 own a good meal and a soft bed. 
 
 There must surely have been few periods 
 in history which could not have yielded some- 
 thing wholesome and inspiring to those who 
 lived in them, and which cannot teach us even 
 now strange and vigorous lessons in life. And v 
 the prime wisdom of to-day, as of every day \ 
 of the world, is to perceive wherein its dis- . 
 tinction and virtue lie, to mark its best charac- 
 teristic, and to cultivate whatever of good itv 
 presents to us. Always and in all things to >. 
 feel one's self out of accord with one's own 
 time is as grave a fault as it would be for 
 an apple to feel itself out of accord with its 
 orchard, or for a frog to feel himself out of 
 accord with his pool. It is admirable to have 
 
 239
 
 of 
 
 mental detachment, and to be superior to the 
 jolt and jargon of the days. It is folly to miss 
 their sweetness, their strength, their far-see- 
 ing endurance, and the patient repose which 
 underlies their distraction, their dissipation, 
 their blind hurry. 
 
 Our judgment must be critical; our tem- 
 perament must be appreciative. To cultivate 
 the first to the exclusion of the second is to 
 become a confirmed pessimist. To indulge 
 the second to the exclusion of the first is to 
 become a complacent and fatuous optimist. 
 You have your choice between a pedant's hell 
 and a fool's paradise. The wise man is he 
 who sets himself to cultivate both faculties 
 the heart that always loves, the mind that 
 is never deceived. Nor are they in the least 
 inconsistent; for the more we know and 
 understand, the more wonderfully can we 
 love and enjoy; and the more we love and 
 are glad, the better can we comprehend. 
 
 To know, to appreciate, and to do this is 
 perhaps the whole business of life. To know 
 
 240
 
 antr 
 
 the truth, to appreciate the best, to do what 
 is beautiful is a threefold task that may well 
 tax our most persistent and unflagging ener- 
 gies through however long a lifetime; and 
 it would seem as if the whole effort of the 
 universe were to make possible that consum- 
 mation. If ever we approach it, we shall 
 know by the test of happiness that we are near 
 the enchanted ground, the garden of the gods, 
 the fairy-land that actually exists. 
 
 Making all allowances, then, for the folly 
 of the overcritical spirit, it still remains true 
 that in criticism we must first of all be skep- 
 tical of things as they are, and to the last put 
 forth all endeavour to learn where and why 
 and how they are to be improved. It is the 
 duty of the critical spirit not only to see things 
 as they are, but to see them as they ought to 
 be; just as it is the duty of the imaginative 
 and creative spirit, not only to see them as 
 they ought to be, but to bring them into ac- 
 cord with that more perfect arrangement. It 
 is safe enough to say, therefore, that it is bad 
 N 241
 
 of 
 
 for us to be given to self-laudation in criti- 
 cism, and that the more severe arraignment 
 we make of ourselves and our progress the 
 better, so that our sight may be clear and our 
 foresight touched with purpose. 
 
 Perhaps the most sweeping accusation that 
 can be made against us as a people to-day 
 is to say that we care overmuch for business 
 and overlittle for beauty. It is an accusation 
 which is painfully trite, but it is one that needs 
 to be kept alive, none the less. For as we 
 make toward the goal of material supremacy, 
 we may be in danger, in ever-increasing dan- 
 ger, of missing the only goal of all ultimate 
 supremacy, the realization of a supreme 
 manhood. Think of the increasing stress that 
 is being laid upon wealth in the popular mind, 
 calculated to debase its ideals, to confirm it 
 in its errors, to make it content with its gross 
 and brutalizing standards! Think of asking 
 whether it is well for a business man to be 
 college bred! Where does any one suppose 
 the United States would be to-day if our fore- 
 
 242
 
 nutr Ucautr> 
 
 fathers had thought it was just as well for 
 a farmer or a blacksmith not to know how to 
 read? Can any one look carefully at modern 
 industrial enterprise (to say nothing of nobler 
 activities of our day) and declare that it is 
 not due to the democratizing of intelligence 
 and education? If a college education unfits 
 a man for business, then there is either some- 
 thing wrong with business or something 
 wrong with the education. The truth is, v 
 probably, that there is something wrong witrr 
 both. There certainly is something wrong 
 with an education which attempts to culti- 
 vate a man's mind and body, without once 
 perceiving any essential connection and inter- 
 dependence between the two processes, and 
 which omits all spiritual culture entirely. By 
 spiritual culture I do not mean a training 
 in morals; I mean a training and develop- 
 ing of a whole spiritual nature, which is the 
 seat and origin of all creative energy, of all 
 initiation, of imagination, of artistic impulse 
 and activity. The average education is faulty 
 
 243
 
 jFtfentrsfjtji of 
 
 because it contents itself with enlarging the 
 receptive faculties, powers of thought and 
 reason and memory, and does nothing to en- 
 large the faculties of self-expression, of use- 
 fulness, of helpfulness, because it gives us a 
 mass of knowledge and no instruction in the 
 use of that knowledge; because it gives us 
 gigantic muscles, but never tells us what to 
 do with them. Just one-half of man's needs 
 are forgotten, and instead of turning out men, 
 we turn out pedants and football players, the 
 one as useless as the other, and both an encum- 
 brance to the community and to themselves. 
 Certainly one would not wish to have the 
 standard of scholarship lowered, or the num- 
 ber of scholars diminished; but, also, quite 
 as certainly one would wish to have their in- 
 creased powers directed and given self-con- 
 trol, and to have them balanced by a realiza- 
 tion of the possibilities of life. 
 
 And the possibilities of life are certainly 
 not limited to the exigent demands of busi- 
 ness. Any man who is a " business man pure 
 
 244
 
 and simple," as it is called, is just so much 
 less a man. Just as a scholar who is nothing 
 but a scholar, or an athlete who is nothing 
 but an athlete, is just so much less a man. 
 
 If our enormously developing business de- 
 mands more and more men who are merely 
 specialists, and who must be trained from 
 early boyhood to fit them for the severe com- 
 petition, you may say, so much the better for 
 business; but I say, so much the worse for 
 the nation. Man does not live by bread alone 
 now any more than he ever did. Less, indeed 
 
 It is just as needful for a nation as for an 
 individual to remember that the life is more 
 than meat and the body than raiment. And 
 a people that becomes forgetful of the de- 
 lights of beauty is in danger of becoming for-v 
 getful of the delights of life. Captains of 
 industry are useful members of society, for 
 the time being at all events, but they are not 
 more useful than captains of intellect or mas- 
 ters of an art. We must not let ourselves 
 forget that. We must keep always in mind 
 
 245
 
 of 
 
 the ideals of intelligence and culture and lib- 
 erty whereto we were born; we must see to 
 it that they are never tarnished by the breath 
 of a too-evident prosperity. But all the while, 
 of course, we must keep our ideals with a 
 poised and serene mind, and confront their 
 antagonists with refutation, not with dispar- 
 agement. We shall have something to learn, 
 even from a nation of ironmongers. And we 
 should have much to teach them. It should 
 be exemplified in our own conduct of life 
 that beauty is not less important than busi- 
 ness in the making of a people. 
 
 246
 
 $atf)0 of tleace 
 
 IT is the eve of the gladdest festival of the 
 year, the day set apart as a memorial to that 
 serene and beautiful Being whom his fol- 
 lowers delight to call the Prince of Peace. 
 So old and beloved is the holiday that the 
 mere word Christmas itself is more rich in 
 the aroma of kindly and moving associations 
 than any effusion of yours or mine could be. 
 
 As children we innocently believed in the 
 little round-bellied chimney god and the good 
 persecuted Martyr of Calvary with equal rev- 
 erence. He who filled our stockings with 
 candy and toys and gilded baubles was quite 
 as generous, and much more real, than He 
 who guarded and loved our souls. In the 
 early dark hours did we not wake up and 
 stealthily feel each stocking toe-tip? And 
 
 247
 
 were they not actually stuffed with the long- 
 desired treasures? Could any proof be 
 stronger? And then in a few years, as the 
 cold suspicion of truth stole over the child 
 mind like an autumn frost, and good St. Nick 
 was discovered to be a myth, did we not 
 silently try to perpetuate the crumbling 
 dogma? That all his miraculous kindliness 
 should be only the work of our parents, after 
 all, was too sad to be believed. The frail 
 tissue of fable on which we had so confidingly 
 relied was far too lovely to be ruthlessly 
 destroyed by any prosy fact; and there stole 
 over our perception, I think, a sort of sadness 
 at the disillusion, so that we would not will- 
 ingly admit even to ourselves that the delight- 
 ful and impossible children's paradise was at 
 an end. It was, though ; and in time we came 
 to substitute an understanding human love of 
 those who cared for us for the ruined fairy- 
 tale of Santa Claus and his Christmas team. 
 It was good to have something to take the 
 place of that which we had lost. 
 
 248
 
 of 
 
 There are many grown-up children who 
 do not write letters to Santa Claus and post 
 them in the empty fireplace any longer; who 
 have discarded the doctrine of the fireside 
 Christmas Eve divinity with much superior- 
 ity; who would scorn to hang a stocking by 
 their bed to-morrow night; who would scoff 
 at the idea that it might be filled once again, 
 if only they wished hard enough; and who 
 none the less will go to their temples on Christ- 
 mas Day with the unshaken hallucination that 
 the Great Orderer of the universe is to be 
 influenced by many solicitations. It may be 
 so; it may be that this round world is ruled 
 by some great cosmic Santa Claus who doles 
 out blessings while we are unaware, and is 
 swayed by the urgent supplications of his 
 children. I have my doubts. I have a sus- 
 picion that this, too, is no more than a nursery 
 tale, though a decent reverence for all ancient 
 beauty makes us shrink from acknowledging 
 the infatuation even to ourselves. 
 
 When the myth of the good St. Nicholas 
 249
 
 of 
 
 had to be destroyed, in the interests of so- 
 called education and truth, still there re- 
 mained behind the poetic symbol, the solid 
 though less attractive fact of human parental 
 care and loving kindness. But when you take 
 away the greater myth of the St. Nicholas for 
 grown-ups, on what fact am I to rely? Is 
 that, too, merely a symbol of human love and 
 the kindliness of our own hearts? Among 
 the marvels of science is that contrivance 
 which from an elaborate sort of magic lan- 
 tern casts moving and lifelike pictures upon 
 a curtain for our edification. Is the matter 
 of our destiny some such enormous shadow 
 cast upon the curtain of the universe from the 
 tiny luminous point of mortal soul? Still, 
 how wonderful the mechanism must be! And 
 who invented that? 
 
 Well, perhaps it is not important, after all. 
 I am quite sure that our good friend from 
 Nazareth would care very little how you ex- 
 plained him or the Father he talked about, 
 so long as you cherished his teaching. We 
 
 250
 
 IJatljs of j)tarr 
 
 have hardly come to that yet; we cannot 
 practise universal love. But at least we can 
 profess it. I suppose that is something. 
 
 Meanwhile, for this day and year, our fes- 
 tival of peace is rudely disturbed. Dream as 
 we will of the spread of the kingdom of love, 
 the old custom of bloodshed remains. We 
 be Christians in name, but Jehovists and 
 Norse pagans in reality. Who are the ex- 
 ponents of modern Christianity? The Anglo- 
 Saxons. And now, at the dawn of the last 
 year of nineteen Christian centuries, one 
 branch of that dominant race is treading on 
 a feeble Oriental people, while its sister 
 branch is waging desperate war with a stub- 
 born foe in Africa. Is this any better than 
 a Roman or a Macedonian campaign? You 
 say the English and the Americans have right 
 on their side, and justice, and the good of the 
 world? Yes, but how can love fight at all? 
 Christ never resisted; he didn't believe in 
 resistance. Probably he was in error. If not, 
 how, then, can you justify your profession of 
 
 251
 
 of 
 
 his doctrine while you are violating its letter 
 and spirit? 
 
 It is the old dilemma; the battle is to the 
 strong, and the strong are only made through 
 battle; then how shall we preserve our in- 
 tegrity as men, and yet allow wars to cease? 
 The law of life is that it shall live by strife; 
 the life that ceases to strive dies of decay. 
 Then, perhaps, we may eliminate hate with- 
 out eliminating strife. It is said that the 
 hunter does not hate the animal he kills not 
 always. Perhaps we shall some day actually 
 come to love our enemies, as we were advised 
 to do so long ago. 
 
 252
 
 WHEN the first daring missionaries, full 
 of zeal for the new creed, set forth from Rome 
 to carry the glad tidings into old Britain, they 
 found there a race just budding into civiliza- 
 tion. They must have had much the same 
 feeling toward the inhabitants of that far-off 
 province that we find in ourselves toward the 
 dwellers in Darkest Africa or the Islands of 
 the Utmost Sea. Buoyed by an unquestioning 
 faith, they went fearlessly forward to carry 
 the Word, the only truth, to those who sat in 
 impenetrable darkness, as it seemed to them. 
 There could be no question in their mind as 
 to the saving value of the new belief. They 
 preached with conviction and warmth, be- 
 cause they believed with fervour and without 
 
 253
 
 of 
 
 equivocation. And it would hardly occur to 
 them to look for anything of good in the an- 
 cient earthly beliefs they were so eager to 
 supplant. With that singleness of purpose, 
 that persistency of sublime confidence to 
 which nothing is denied, they went about 
 their task with unquenchable ardour and de- 
 cision. A mere handful of devoted souls at 
 first, following the footsteps of the chosen 
 Twelve to whom the Message was originally 
 entrusted, they went cheerfully about the 
 business of persuading the known world to 
 their way of thinking. How well they suc- 
 ceeded, let modern civilization attest. 
 
 Let us never depreciate the power of so 
 supreme a faith, a devotion so consuming 
 and so noble; for that is the very spirit we 
 need at all times, a spirit of hopeful belief 
 in the ultimate triumph of ideals. But we 
 have come at this end of time to look upon the 
 earth and our own history with a more dis- 
 passioned eye, and to regard the events of our 
 racial evolution with a certain mental detach- 
 
 254
 
 ment, which we call the scientific spirit. And 
 that is well, too ; for we must have the abso- 
 lute truth, at all costs, for our peace of mind, 
 just as we need ultimate goodness for our 
 peace of heart, and utmost beauty for our 
 enjoyment of life. We have come to see in 
 the outworn religions of the earth which 
 Christianity has supplanted, not mere heathen- 
 ish superstition, but the first crude efforts of 
 the human soul, endeavouring to formulate 
 its instincts for righteousness, its intuitions 
 of the sublime, its inherent belief in a divine 
 origin and outcome for all things. The beau- 
 tiful gods of pagan Greece, whose cult has 
 given to modern art and literature such an 
 immeasurable stimulus; the pitiful gods of 
 the Polar night; the subtle and still-living 
 gods of the mysterious Orient; the lore of 
 all these human creeds is not to be despised, 
 but to be studied. Very likely they are in- 
 adequate in their conception of the universe, 
 and unwise in many of their moral sanctions; 
 still they stand there in testimony of man's 
 
 255
 
 of 
 
 reach after the infinite. Pan and Vesta and 
 Hanuman and the unrecorded divinities of 
 outlandish tongues are neither hateful nor 
 despicable, but only imperfect. They are, 
 surely one must believe, partial revelations of 
 the truer Truth, the better Goodness, the more 
 imperishable Beauty. 
 
 So, too, we may be sure that the rude wor- 
 ship of our ancient fathers in the wilderness 
 of Britain, little as we know of it, was not 
 without lovely traits and touches of aspira- 
 tion. Those watchers who gathered to see 
 the sun rise over Stonehenge last midsum- 
 mer day must have been impressed by a sol- 
 emn regard for the old druidical faith which 
 planted those monoliths in their significant 
 ring, so that the great light of day at his 
 summer solstice enters exactly through the 
 door of that primitive temple. Not sun- 
 worshippers, perhaps, but nature-worship- 
 pers our fathers must have been, when the 
 new teaching came to them in their island 
 fastnesses. In the names Yule and Easter, 
 
 256
 
 marking certain pagan festivals of nature, 
 vague records of these Northern religions 
 come down to us, and upon the dates of those 
 festivals other festivals of the Christian cult 
 were grafted. So that when we celebrate our 
 winter holiday, we are not merely keeping the 
 memorial of Christ's nativity, but, all uncon- 
 sciously, are following the immemorial rites 
 of an earlier custom, strange and barbarous, 
 yet natural, after all. 
 
 In the story of all peoples there will be 
 things too far off to be remembered save in 
 the most shadowy tradition. The worship 
 of Linus or Adonis among the earliest Greeks 
 is surrounded with impenetrable mystery. It 
 had changed and been lost before the time 
 of records began; but we know it was some- 
 how typical of the changing seasons, the pulse 
 of life and death through the revolving year. 
 We may fancy, in the same way, that the most 
 elemental facts of nature, the waxing and 
 waning of the days from summer to winter, 
 the perishing of the year at autumn and its 
 
 257
 
 of 
 
 revival in spring, would be the first to be 
 celebrated in forms of worship among a peo- 
 ple so dependent on the favour of the sun. 
 They would see in the great luminary, if not 
 a divinity, at least a direct administration of 
 the Divine Mind. And, as it passed in its 
 huge pendular swing from solstice to solstice, 
 from the long days of an English June to 
 the brief and reluctant hours of the shortest 
 day of winter, they would feel their depend- 
 ence on the Unknown, their need of a benefi- 
 cent Providence, their pleasure in abundant 
 warmth, their shrinking at the pinch of cold, 
 and their helplessness before the vagaries of 
 every season's vicissitudes. The winds and 
 rains of spring, with the returning birds in 
 the forest; the heats of summer setting all 
 the land at leisure; the ripening of fruits in 
 autumn; these things would make their hearts 
 unfold. The generous year would enter their 
 blood to mitigate the darker strain of human 
 sorrow and inexplicable death. They would 
 grasp quickly at the poetic analogy between 
 
 258
 
 the life of man and the life of nature through 
 the season's progress. Seeing all nature die 
 down and revive, they would eagerly guess 
 at a future for the soul, an eternal spring- 
 time supervening upon the autumn of mor- 
 tality. 
 
 The feast of Yule, we may guess, was one 
 of merrymaking, because then the year was 
 at its bitterest, hope apparently at the last 
 ebb with the ebbing sun, and men, therefore, 
 driven indoors for intercourse and entertain- 
 ment. For frost, in moderation, is a great 
 civilizer, necessitating the home and the fire- 
 side. It is difficult to play the vagrant in a 
 country where you cannot sleep under the 
 stars, but must have a rooftree above you and 
 a fire to keep you from perishing. It is in 
 cold countries that men's energies are knit up 
 to the point of accomplishment, and their 
 physique tempered and hardened to endur- 
 ance. Cold that congeals the ground and the 
 running streams, consolidates men, too, and 
 favours that concerted action which is the 
 
 259
 
 beginning of civic liberty and free institu- 
 tions. In a land of rigorous climate men are 
 accustomed to struggle. Their life from day 
 to day is an unremitting warfare with the 
 elements, and breeds in them fortitude, en- 
 durance, resourcefulness, and a light-hearted 
 eagerness to cope with difficulty. The north 
 wind, whipping about their ears, stings the 
 blood to the cheek, stirring courage from 
 the bottom of the heart at the same time; and 
 those happiest zones, where nature is neither 
 so bountiful as to encourage idleness, nor so 
 bitter as to discourage and stultify growth, 
 give us our best of humanity. 
 
 In such a country men attain a certain poise 
 of mind, not too sober nor yet too frivolous, 
 and come to look upon the world with dis- 
 cretion, with serenity, with temperate joy. 
 Their intimate life is infused with a tincture 
 of natural piety, unaffected and wholesome. 
 And whatever revealed religion (as it is 
 called) is imported to their shores must be 
 coloured and modified by the original tem- 
 
 260
 
 licfccvfr 
 
 perament of the race. So that old traditions 
 and customs and superstitions and habits of 
 thought are found surviving amid the pure 
 doctrines of newer belief, as blackened stumps 
 survive a forest fire to be found long after- 
 ward, when the young green is tall and lux- 
 uriant all about them. 
 
 In every Christian land there are customs 
 and tales and scraps of folk-lore, held in pop- 
 ular regard, which are not quite believed, 
 perhaps, but which are kept alive in memory / 
 none the less. They are surviving remnants 
 of creeds which once had a religious value 
 and now retain no more than a sentiment of / 
 their former sanction. They may once have 
 been obligatory as a duty, a votive commem- 
 oration, an expiatory offering; but their ear- 
 lier use is forgotten and we cannot tell why 
 we observe them any more, so tenacious 
 are we of forms and ceremonies, so oblivious 
 of spiritual origins. We hang up our childish 
 stockings for the good little saint to fill with 
 gifts and gewgaws, or we stick a spray of 
 
 261
 
 of Sirt 
 
 mistletoe in the chandelier a dare to bash- 
 ful youth and never guess how came these 
 customs nor what they may once have signi- 
 fied. So there linger about all the festivals 
 of the Church Christmas, St. John's Eve 
 in midsummer, of Hallowe'en legends and 
 simple rites, which are lightly held memorials 
 of some older faith, once, perhaps, significant 
 and stupendous. For religion is not only 
 rom above but from below (if we may per- 
 mit ourselves to use that manner of speech), 
 not only the living Word sent down to us 
 from the clear skies, as we are apt to fancy, 
 but the whisper breathed from the ground 
 
 as well. Whether natural or revealed, the 
 
 ' 
 
 source of our religious aspirations is the same. 
 The eternal spirit utters itself obscurely in 
 the dark hearts of heathen kings, or speaks in 
 articulate clear words through the radiant 
 minds of chosen seers and glowing young 
 .prophets, with equal authority. The same 
 spirit of truthfulness, desiring only that beau- 
 tiful goodness should be accomplished on the 
 
 262
 
 3 (njvistmas lUUrnc 
 
 earth, whispered in the ear of Buddha, dwelt 
 with the aged John in Patmos, was a law of 
 righteousness to the King Poet of Israel, spoke 
 in accents threatening as thunder at the shrine 
 of Delphi, and makes itself heard at a hun- 
 dred unknown altars in the far corners of 
 the earth to-day. For there are not a thousand 
 such, but only One, though the inventive mind ; 
 of man has imagined a thousand forms in/ 
 which He has been supposed to reside. His 
 true residence, all the while, has been neither 
 at Paphos nor Cumae nor upon Sinai, but 
 in the human heart, in the house of the 
 
 j ! . . 
 
 soul. 
 
 
 
 A Christmas meditation for many of us 
 must partake of the character of a philosophic 
 or poetic reverie, rather than of religious ex- 
 altation. The touch of the supernatural has 
 disappeared; but that does not mean that the 
 feeling of wonder has vanished ; it only means 
 that the sentiment of worship is more natural 
 
 ^^^^"""^"""" > "ttMMMW ' ' *~^""' H ''""'"'"Tyr**iwopwww**<Mi | WBMWB& 
 
 than ever. If we cannot feel the awe and 
 terror of a personal Supervisor of the uni- 
 
 263
 
 of 
 
 verse, as in our childhood, we can feel much 
 more certainly and definitely the presence of 
 an unmeasured Power within ourselves, more 
 real and beneficent than the Deity of our in- 
 fant fancy. 
 
 It was said that in a certain house there 
 are many mansions; and I cannot help be- 
 lieving that hospitable edifice is designed to 
 shelter the unbeliever as well as the believer. 
 Indeed, I cannot imagine such a creature as 
 an unbeliever, though many there be (and 
 excellent souls, too) who subscribe to none 
 of the tenets of established creeds. I must 
 leave to others the expounding of Christian 
 doctrine as upheld by this church or that with 
 so much vigour and confidence, and content 
 myself with the modest irresponsible task of 
 looking upon the teaching of the Man of 
 Nazareth, his life and work, with the inno- 
 cent eye of a bystander. Had I all the learn- 
 ing of the ancients and moderns, I fear I 
 should never have the temerity to be a 
 preacher, to offer to others as sure and in- 
 
 264 

 
 dubitable fact what is in its essence so chang- 
 ing and volatile and dependent upon personal 
 sentiment. For my part, I would rather have 
 
 the simplest moral reflection from an old 
 
 * --> - " i i t 
 
 woodsman or a young scholar, whose life was 
 clean and whose mind was free, than all the 
 
 "WVW 
 
 gravest homilies of bishops, hedged by tradi- 
 tion and restricted by instituted authority. 
 Is the breath of God less free than the sweet 
 wind of heaven? or is it less likely to form 
 itself into an unmistakable message to you or 
 me than it was to call to the saints of old? 
 The great ones of all time, whose august 
 names inspire us still, whose philosophy forms 
 the basis of our common wisdom about life, 
 were born to no greater possibility of inspira- 
 tion than those children dancing in the street 
 below. Whatever our fund of inspired reve- 
 lation, we are awaiting .other revelations 
 fresher still. The story of the world is not 
 finished. There are other years to come, other 
 
 4MMBMMM MMMMMHBMMMMMMiMMMMMMMMMMr' MMMMr 
 
 centuries, other peoples, and civilizations un- 
 imagined. Will they, think you, lack their 
 
 265
 
 of ilrt 
 
 poets and philosophers and prophets? The 
 last word of inspiration has not been uttered, 
 nor will it be, until the last man's lips are 
 
 still. 
 
 It was the habit of our Puritan progenitors 
 to discountenance the merrymaking of old 
 England, and only to lay stress on the purely 
 spiritual side of life. Old customs savoured 
 to them of ungodliness, and they must have 
 only the soberest truth at all times. Our more 
 liberal tenor of mind allows us to revert to 
 many of the old usages which were discarded 
 by those stern New Englanders, and we in- 
 cline to make merry with as hearty a good- 
 will as our forefathers used before Puritan- 
 ism was heard of. Without at all discrediting 
 the austere creed, we may be glad that its 
 extreme rigour has been mitigated with much 
 of the old spirit of joviality. For joy and 
 light-hearted mirth are not heathenish, but 
 truly of the essence of the religion of love, 
 which we profess. It is only logical, too, 
 that the generous promptings of the heart 
 
 266
 
 lUtirvfr 
 
 should find vent and freedom and play, that 
 kindly thoughts should express themselves in 
 kind deeds. Moreover, the good deed induces 
 better thoughts, and through the custom of 
 charity we are insensibly led to charitable 
 tenderness of heart 
 
 We may be glad, then, of the outward and 
 visible signs of Christmas, and never fear 
 they will impair its inward and spiritual 
 grace. I like to have in mind all the old 
 pagan piety attaching to this Festival of The 
 Shortest Day, as well as the better and braver 
 sentiments which Christianity gave to it. 
 Surely there is no need to cast aside any pleas- 
 ant and innocent scrap of ancient faith as 
 vicious, simply because we need it no more. 
 Superstition is only faith out of date; and is 
 only bad because it is antiquated, and because, 
 if we hold it, it interferes with knowledge. 
 A little harmless superstition (so long as we 
 do not actually believe in it) often lends 
 charm to our faith, as a smile may soften a 
 strong face; and many quaint observances 
 
 267
 
 of 
 
 may be kept alive to add grace to our too 
 monotonous life. When it comes to the veri- 
 table spirit of the Christmas season, what are 
 we to say? We may leave all the theological 
 pronunciamentos, which the churches have 
 repeated so often, to be repeated once again 
 from desk and pulpit, and yet have our own 
 thoughts on Christmas quite beyond the pale 
 of authority. No amount of fine logic nor 
 thunderous oratory can shake my quiet soul 
 from its own convictions. Very likely you 
 and I, my friend, shall have to find ourselves 
 in the position of onlookers in the church on 
 Christmas Day, if indeed we cross the thresh- 
 old. But for all that, we need not count our- 
 selves unbelievers. It behooves us to stand 
 
 ( . iMlrtMl,, ^ i, ~. * 
 
 for our right to be numbered among the faith- 
 ful, though we subscribe to no single tenet 
 of orthodoxy. Truth and goodness are not 
 natural monopolies, but are free as light and 
 air. They form the wholesome atmosphere 
 of an intellectual and moral being. Shall I 
 pay toll for a breath of the sweet wind of 
 
 268
 
 heaven, or enjoy the sunlight only at another 
 man's pleasure? No more will I receive 
 without question any man's idea of the truth 
 or beauty or goodness, though I will hear all 
 gladly. The truth that comes to me over the 
 pulpit rail must be perverted indeed, if it 
 cannot stand this test, if it dare not take its 
 chances with my reason. This is the attitude 
 of our modern world toward religion. The 
 mistake we make is in thinking it a dangerous 
 attitude. Surely the soul of man is the only 
 tabernacle of the veritable God. The sense ^t*C 
 
 of living humanity as to what is true, what 
 
 ****" p^** ****MI^^ 
 
 is good, what is beautiful to see, is the only 
 sanction for beHef. You and I, standing out- 
 side the reach of an obsolete authority, believe 
 and cherish the words of the Sermon on the 
 Mount not because Christ uttered them, but 
 because in our inmost being we cannot help 
 assenting to their lofty truth. It is a mark 
 of truth that it must win our belief in the ^ 
 long run; it is a mark of goodness that it 
 
 must command our love; just as it is a mark 
 
 iff - . . 
 
 269
 
 of art 
 
 of beauty that it must arouse our admiration. 
 So that the sublime teachings of Christianity 
 are quite secure, without all the artificial sanc- 
 tions with which men have invested them. 
 They only need to be separated from super- 
 stition, to appeal to us with all their charm 
 and power. Think what a stir any one of the 
 four Gospels would make if it could be pub- 
 l lished to-morrow for the first time. Would 
 we not at once receive it with eagerness, and 
 set it among our treasured books? " More 
 sublime than Emerson," we would say 
 " More subtle than Maeterlinck." And I 
 believe it is only when we approach the words 
 of Christ with just such an open mind and 
 expectant spirit that we perceive their beauty 
 and truth to the fullest. 
 
 But see, how in all this overcareful con- 
 sidering of the matter we miss the very germ 
 of the gospel, which is the spirit of love. 
 We worry ourselves over forms and patterns 
 of conduct; we strain our logic to find out 
 the truth ; our sensitive and scrupulous mind 
 
 270
 
 will be satisfied with nothing less than exact 
 science; we give our days and nights to lay 
 up knowledge; we shed rivers of blood for 
 this creed or that dogma; and all the while 
 the greater truth, the spiritual kernel of life, 
 lies by the roadside waiting to be picked up. 
 You think love an easy matter, and the Golden 
 Rule the simplest of moral laws? Reflect that 
 men, with all their good intentions, have 
 never been able to make love the lodestar of 
 the world for a single day of its history. It is 
 the distinction of Christ's teaching that he 
 offered us a rule of conduct which still re- 
 mains approachable but unrealized, drawing 
 our fullest assent to its impracticable sublim- 
 ity. And why impractical? Only because of 
 our lack of courage. No man dares square 
 his action according to his most generous im- 
 pulse, for fear his neighbour will get the bet- 
 ter of him. So that our whole system of civil- 
 ization is infected with this sordid poltroon- 
 ery, and we continue in a state of distrust and 
 social strife, divorcing our faith from our life. 
 
 271
 
 of 
 
 Knowing in our hearts the goodliness of love, 
 the efficacy of kindness, we still carry on the 
 concerns of life with a cowardly disregard to 
 ; our ideals and aspirations. 
 
 The more welcome, then, is this greatest 
 of all festivals, when we commemorate the 
 birth of the Master whose life still stands as 
 the most eminent reproof to our timidity and 
 self-seeking. Once a year, at least, we are put 
 
 ^dBBBUMBBBMUBi 
 
 in mind of the Better Way, the way of the 
 glad heart, the open hand, the unsuspicious 
 mind. You say that no business could be 
 successfully conducted on Christian princi- 
 ples, under modern conditions? Then let us 
 do without business. You say that cities could 
 not thrive, nor nations grow, nor individuals 
 prosper in an age of strenuous competition, if 
 they attempted to abide by the law of love? 
 Then let us do without prosperity. 
 
 The fact remains that all our contrivances 
 for outward reformation of institutions are 
 but futile tinkering with the body of society, 
 
 272
 
 lUUcvic 
 
 when it is the soul of man that needs attention. 
 
 q * 
 
 A little more honesty, a little more love, a lit- 
 tle more courage, a little more kindliness and 
 gentleness and helpful generosity in the heart 
 of average men and women, these are more 
 important than the passage of a thousand laws 
 
 ABB-MBMB***".********"** * _,,,&-,- .- . - - 
 
 or the instituting of any new schemes of so- 
 cial betterment. Love is an old, old remedy 
 for the unhappy plight of the world. The 
 curious thing is that, while we all profess to 
 believe in its efficacy, we cannot summon up 
 enough resolution to put it to the test. It has 
 never been thoroughly tried yet; for most of 
 our attempts, though some of them have been 
 brave enough, have been but half-hearted. 
 
 Suppose we try to carry a little of the 
 Christmas elation over into the New Year. 
 Suppose we try to make the new year a 
 little less heathenish, a little less full of cru- 
 elty and noise and terror and greed, a little 
 
 ~,^^MHK v*VM^* MB *W^ l ^MBMM^ ll *V | "MMV^mMMlW ^^ " ~>M ^J"ri mf 
 
 less absurdly at variance with all our profes- 
 sions of religion than most of these nineteen 
 
 273
 
 of 
 
 hundred years have been! The Golden Age 
 is never far away, but is only waiting until 
 we adopt the Golden Law, to return with 
 gladness among men. 
 
 274
 
 Saint Valentine 
 
 IT is cold in the North in February. On 
 the other side of the forty-ninth parallel the 
 snow comes from a gray and silent heaven 
 about the latter part of November, and after 
 that we do not see the earth again until April. 
 There are days of brilliant sun, and nights 
 of marvellous moonlight, of dazzling white 
 and muffled evergreen, but, although the grip 
 of frost may be relaxed for a few days, his 
 hold upon the land is not altogether loosened 
 until the migrating birds come back and the 
 year is past the equinox. In all these five 
 months of snow you will never once set foot 
 on the bare ground. 
 
 And yet these winter days are not all alike. 
 The progress of the gray season has been 
 
 275
 
 of 
 
 gradual; the oncoming season of leaves is 
 gradual, too. It is a period of ebb in the 
 tide of time, but there is a certain point, a 
 certain date, in that period, when the outgoing 
 currents of warmth and light and summer 
 cease to diminish, and begin slowly to return. 
 All through December and January the som- 
 bre world seems to have forgotten the wonder 
 of June and the bravery of October, and to 
 have settled sullenly down to endurance. 
 Then on a certain day the ebbing tide seems 
 to halt and turn. The aspect of earth and sky 
 is different, brighter, larger, bluer. And we 
 say in our hearts, " There is hope once more, 
 and by and by it will be spring!" This 
 day, I have noticed, this birthday of the nat- 
 ural year, falls about the eighth or tenth of 
 February. 
 
 An old custom has pitched upon the feast 
 of St. Valentine as the festival of first love, 
 and made him, willing or unwilling, the pa- 
 tron saint of youthful ardours. Popular sup- 
 position, which knows little of the true ori- 
 
 276
 
 Saint Talentine 
 
 gins of our immemorial habits and traditional 
 observances, says that Valentine's day was 
 chosen because it happened to fall about the 
 time of the mating of birds, and was there- 
 fore an appropriate date for celebrating the 
 first choice of the human lover, the awak- 
 ening of innocence at the touch of desire. 
 The truth is, we know very little of these 
 racial usages which have been passed on to 
 us from remote antiquity; we can only guess 
 that they must have had their beginnings as 
 sacred rites, commemorating this or that es- 
 sential need or joy of the mysterious heart of 
 man. In no other way could they have at- 
 tained so unbreakable a hold upon us, surviv- 
 ing as living traditions even in our own 
 incredulous age. They are often not sanc- 
 tioned by the simpler and more austerely 
 spiritual religion which Christianity incul- 
 cates, and have nothing to do with its gracious 
 ministrations. They are merely survivals 
 from old pagan forms of worship, beautiful 
 and significant, but long since fallen into 
 
 277
 
 of 
 
 desuetude, and ineffectual for our modern 
 wants. They have no actual sway over the 
 mind, and yet we allow them to live on among 
 our children with an easy tolerance, as if the 
 race remembered its own childhood and 
 smiled at the memory. 
 
 Of the good Valentine, whose patronage 
 we make so light of in our pleasantries, not 
 much is known, and nothing at all that would 
 justify his choice as the especial guardian of 
 adolescence and successor of Cupid. The 
 sainted man was a priest and bishop of Rome 
 during the Claudian persecutions in the third 
 century. In those strenuous times they made 
 short work of any who demurred at author- 
 ity or ventured down the alluring alleys of 
 novelty in religion. Valentine, like so many 
 others of a nameless and unnumbered multi- 
 tude, was thrown into prison for the faith that 
 possessed him; and like them he gave up the 
 breath of life most cheerfully in exchange for 
 his stubborn predilections, yielding his body 
 to be martyred with clubs. The only other 
 
 278
 
 Tattntfn* 
 
 tradition of him declares that, while in jail, 
 he cured his keeper's daughter of blindness. 
 In this scanty record of a devoted follower 
 of the new faith there is no hint of worldli- 
 ness or loverlike infatuation. Easily as one 
 might build a romance about the incident of 
 his jailor's daughter, there would be no 
 foundation for the story. To make of her 
 another Heloise, and of him a second (or 
 rather a first) Abelard, rm'ght be a pretty 
 pastime for an idle fancy, but it would be a 
 fabrication without the tissue of truth. We 
 must look elsewhere for a reason for St. 
 Valentine's election to the patronage of love, 
 and we shall find it in the most unexpected 
 place. There is no glamour about it, so far 
 as Valentine is concerned, poor fellow. I 
 almost feel sorry that he must be robbed of 
 any umbrage of romance, and I can imagine 
 that he himself in the realms of innocence 
 may have learned to look with tolerant regard 
 on his own unearned repute, now so many 
 centuries old, as the saint of lovers. 
 
 279
 
 of 
 
 To be the protector of sweethearts must 
 surely add a sweetness to life even in the heav- 
 enly dominions of bliss, and when one has 
 long since been divorced from all enchanting 
 earthly inclinations. Whether there be any 
 traces of our mortal desires, so pure in their 
 origin, so blameless in their passionate aspira- 
 tion, still lingering about our beings in that 
 future state, I do not know. But unless all 
 human companionships are done away, all 
 resemblance to our human happinesss super- 
 seded by some unguessed and unimaginable 
 kind of beatitude, there must surely lurk in 
 the heart of Valentine, bishop and martyr, 
 sentiments of generosity, of pity, of kindliness, 
 for all the hopes and agonies of mortal lovers. 
 All the pretty observances done in his name 
 must come to his blessed cognizance much as 
 premonitions and feelings (as we call them) 
 come to ourselves, here in the meshes of our 
 gross* incarnation, only more potently and 
 vividly than here. If it moves our human 
 hearts to think upon the joys and trials of 
 
 280
 
 Saint TaUntine 
 
 lovers in their first infatuation, how much 
 more must it move the sympathy of one who 
 is now all sympathy, the solicitude of one 
 whose kindly impulses are no longer par- 
 celled and distracted and obscured by the 
 clamourings of a bodily existence! If prayers 
 be efficacious and the departed are permitted 
 to be at all aware of the progress of earthly 
 affairs, then I doubt not the good Valentine 
 has cheerfully accepted the duty laid upon 
 him by our implicit trust. So unflinching a 
 martyr to the ideal could never find it in his 
 heart to disregard our confidence in his 
 power. He would feel, I am sure, almost as 
 truly bound to respond to the caprice of for- 
 tune which has made him the vicar of love, 
 as he did to assent to the destiny which made 
 him vicar of Rome. I would as soon think 
 of distrusting him as I would St. Anthony 
 of Padua, who guards our journeys and re- 
 covers what is lost. But how came Valentine 
 into his unsought spiritual dominion? 
 
 In early times, before the coming of the 
 281
 
 JFrienlr0f)i|> of 
 
 Christians, the Romans were accustomed to 
 hold their midwinter Lupercalia, or celebra- 
 tion, in honour of Pan. Among other cere- 
 monies observed at this festival was a certain 
 rite wherein the names of young women were 
 drawn by lot by the young men. To the 
 overseers of the early Christian Church fell 
 the task of attempting to eradicate the tena- 
 cious doctrines and customs of heathendom. 
 Often they were wise enough to resort to grad- 
 ual methods of reform, and in the case of the 
 Lupercalia they managed to substitute the 
 names of saints for those of women. Each 
 participant in the lottery would thus find him- 
 self under the protection of a certain saint, 
 as his lot happened to be drawn. The older 
 usage, however, was the more interesting, and 
 we cannot believe that the saints held prece- 
 dence over the ladies for very long. Old cus- 
 toms are not easily discredited, and human 
 nature is not to be etherealized offhand by 
 any theology. Many centuries later the old 
 superstition was still alive, surviving from 
 
 282
 
 Saint Tattntfn* 
 
 the ceremonies of the Lupercalia, and St. 
 Francis de Sales tried to inhibit the use of 
 valentines. 
 
 Still the benighted custom would not be 
 downed, and English literature for centuries 
 is full of rhymes and verses for St. Valen- 
 tine's Day. Drayton, the Elizabethan, for 
 example, writes: 
 
 " Muse, bid the morn awake, 
 Sad winter now declines, 
 Each bird doth choose a mate, 
 The day's Saint Valentine's. 
 
 " For that good bishop's sake 
 Get up, and let us see 
 What beauty it shall be 
 That fortune us assigns." 
 
 As if chance had not already too large a 
 share in our precarious destiny, we must in- 
 voke its gratuitous interference! Would you 
 not suppose that men would be too discour- 
 aged at the grand lottery of life to invent any 
 game still more haphazardous or entrust their 
 
 283
 
 of 
 
 destinies to the turn of a ballot? Surely it is 
 perilous enough to make choice in love when 
 caution and judgment are enlisted in the 
 cause! Must we imperil our happiness and 
 stake our future on a chance meeting of a 
 certain frosty morning in February? " Nay," 
 says the wisdom of the ages, " ye are already 
 in the hands of fate. Your most carefully 
 considered choice is already enmeshed by un- 
 seen conditions, and your freedom only runs 
 the length of the leash of destiny." So it is. 
 We grow infatuated with danger and court 
 peril with a cheerful daring, as venturesome 
 boys grow familiar with firecrackers on the 
 Fourth of July, or skim over the thin ice with 
 a breathless speed, flouting courage in the face 
 of catastrophe. 
 
 What the exact rites of the Lupercalia were 
 is a matter of guesswork for the most part, 
 and Pan, they say, is dead. The power of 
 Valentine, too, is passing away with other old 
 customs and credences. The new faith oblit- 
 erated the old feasts from the calendar by 
 
 284
 
 Saint Valentine 
 
 overwriting them with novel names. Our en- 
 lightenment and rationalism are like to erase 
 them altogether. Neither Pan nor Valentine 
 can survive the spread of the scientific spirit; 
 but, having returned all things to reason, may 
 we not find the world a very gray, monot- 
 onous place of few joys and fewer hopes? 
 Life is not wholly reasonable, after all, and 
 it must surely be the greatest folly to fancy 
 we can make it so. It is to be enjoyed as well 
 as to be studied and understood, to be taken 
 with a thankful heart and not always probed 
 for a meaning. Therefore, if there is an un- 
 regenerate strain in you that insists on still 
 believing in old Lupercus of the wild woods, 
 may you have the reward of your belief! 
 And if you are pleased to render observance 
 to times and seasons, and count St. Valen- 
 tine a personage, who shall prove you mis- 
 taken? 
 
 We ourselves are less ceremonious, less 
 given to manners and trivial elegances, even 
 less polite than our sires. The forfeits and 
 
 285
 
 of 
 
 gifts which Valentine's day used to impose 
 are no longer in vogue ; yet we cannot quite 
 escape the sentiment of the feast. As in so 
 many instances, we may impart new interpre- 
 tations to old forms. Is not life itself as we 
 have to live it merely the art of expressing 
 ourselves in fresh ways in the old customs 
 already at hand? All our daily avocations 
 may be as trite as the alphabet itself; it is 
 always possible to rearrange them in new and 
 alluring and articulate combinations. 
 
 The day of St. Valentine may well stand, 
 even for us common, sensible folk, for the 
 festival of friends and lovers. On this morn- 
 ing when first the reviving sun comes back 
 to gray streets and snowy fields, we may well 
 encourage tender thoughts, resolve and 
 hope and aspire. The touch of the warm sun- 
 light on our shoulder may well seem like a 
 hint to bestir ourselves about the greatest 
 business of the universe, the old, engrossing, 
 imperishable, never-ended affair of love. It 
 will remind us of the perennial goodness of 
 
 286
 
 Valentine 
 
 living, the unaging wholesomeness of earth, 
 the fond yet delightful infatuations of the 
 world, and all the entrancing possibilities 
 which lie hidden in the path of adventure. 
 Tainted with the madness of the lover, we 
 may even embrace that supremest of human 
 follies, the delusion that heights of excellence, 
 of unselfishness, of kindness, and devotion 
 have never yet been exemplified as we shall 
 practise them. Is not that a generous aspira- 
 tion worth experiencing, even though we 
 should not realize a tenth of it? Will you not 
 join the light but not frivolous band of St. 
 Valentine's followers, bethink you of your 
 youth to-day with all its radiant expectations, 
 and resolve to make some one more happy 
 by your love? It may be a sweetheart or a 
 child or an old lady; love is good for every- 
 body; and it is good for us to love, for in 
 loving we are only giving free play to the 
 soul in its natural occupation. Make your 
 vows on St. Valentine's morn, gentlemen 
 and friends! I promise you great joy from 
 
 287
 
 of 
 
 their fulfilment. You may not be able to 
 keep them with all the nobility of intention 
 in which they are made, but in the effort there 
 will be exaltation and sober gain. For one 
 day more the youthful poet within you may 
 walk the earth in gay supremacy, to better 
 this life for the beloved with a gift of verses 
 or violets and renewals of gentle friendship. 
 See to it that some fresh joy takes up its lodg- 
 ing in the heart of the little friend, and sor- 
 row and weariness and disappointment be 
 turned from her door. Take care that laugh- 
 ter comes back to her lips and the flush of 
 delight to her cheeks, for perhaps you have 
 been a neglectful Valentine, and your vows 
 sadly need to be renewed. Be not ashamed, 
 therefore, of the fanatical enthusiasms of love, 
 and make your penance for sins of negligence, 
 of thoughtlessness, of unkindness, preparatory 
 to the golden hours of spring. 
 
 For on St. Valentine's morning, if you 
 will take my word for it, our venerable 
 Mother Nature goes to her closet and takes 
 
 288
 
 Saint Talentine 
 
 down her green cloak, which before many 
 weeks she will resume for the festivals of 
 April. Had we not better look over our own 
 wardrobe of the heart, also? The dust of 
 familiarity and the moth of doubt play sad 
 havoc with the soul's garment of love. And 
 when the appointed day arrives, and the feast 
 of Spring-time is instituted once more, 
 when the sap comes back to the hills, and 
 the madness of love to the heart of man, 
 we must not be found unprepared. Every 
 heart must have in readiness its scarlet tunic 
 and its golden coat, for how more appropri- 
 ately can it be clothed than with love and 
 
 joy? 
 
 289
 
 PERHAPS one of the maddest things in a 
 mad world is to inquire the cause of madness, 
 just as it seems to be one of the requisites of 
 happiness that we should not set our heart 
 upon it. The Angel of Life is evasive, reti- 
 cent, not to be cornered, yet abounding in 
 generous revelations of the truth upon occa- 
 sion; and that mortal is likely to learn most 
 about the mysteries of being who does not 
 pry into them too industriously. Curiosity is 
 the fundamental passion of the mind, and to 
 satisfy curiosity with knowledge is one of the 
 three great sources of happiness. At the same 
 time it is forbidden to know everything. At 
 least this is so for the time being, whatever 
 
 290
 
 (Tijc iilavrlj fare's 
 
 may be permitted to human investigation in 
 some future age. 
 
 And so, whether it is hatters or March 
 hares, we know very little about the madness 
 of either. Each has become a byword in pro- 
 verbial speech, and we make a simile of his 
 erratic fortune without a second thought. 
 How sad to be a name and nothing more in 
 the mouth of one's fellows! Yet I have no 
 doubt the hatter is as indifferent to his repute 
 as the hare, even perhaps a little proud of 
 his peculiarity. So frail is moral nature, it 
 is boastful even of its blemishes when they 
 lend it a little distinction and draw the eye 
 of the crowd. One can very well fancy the 
 complacency of the hatter under his visita- 
 tion, how he would turn it to good account 
 and make a profitable investment of his afflic- 
 tion. He would be a sorry tradesman who 
 could not manage to secure some slight advan- 
 tage in dealing with destiny and come out at 
 last on the right side of his reckoning with 
 Providence. Was ever the madness of a hat- 
 
 291
 
 of 
 
 ter so complete his commercial instinct could 
 not prevail against it? Is there not always 
 a residuum of sanity at the bottom of his 
 mania, a trace of shrewd calculation con- 
 cealed under the guise of his feckless inno- 
 cence? The madness of the hatter is the 
 wisdom of the serpent, seemingly guileless 
 yet profoundly subtle and sardonic. 
 
 Now the March hare is in a very different 
 case. His folly is the folly of a child, his 
 madness the madness of ecstasy, of elation, of 
 transport. He is a visionary and partakes of 
 the rapture of lovers and prophets and bards. 
 He is possessed and carried out of himself. 
 He is akin to the oracular priestess of Delphi 
 and the Vestals, whose care it was to cherish 
 the sacred flame of their goddess. He may 
 be the least of all the creatures who suffer 
 this form of madness, but his tenure of the 
 divine possession is none the less authentic. 
 The burden of joy laid upon his spirit is ex- 
 cessive, and an unhinging of his balance has 
 supervened. He is mad because he loves too 
 
 292
 
 ittavrt) fare's 
 
 greatly, whereas the hatter is mad because he 
 knows too much. Saul and Hamlet were mad 
 as hatters, through an excess of knowledge 
 vouchsafed to them. Blake and Shelley and 
 many another mystic were mad as March 
 hares, by reason of the too great stress of in- 
 spiration laid upon them. In the one case 
 the dementia is a malady of the mind, in the 
 other it is an affection of the spirit; though, 
 tried by the standard of sober sense, they are 
 all mad together. 
 
 With something of the March hare's own 
 folly, I spent a day in a library trying to find 
 out the meaning of his madness, its cause and 
 scope, or how it came into our proverbial 
 lore. Of course, the search was futile, and 
 I only found out several things I was not look- 
 ing for. One quotation, however, seemed 
 pleasant enough to remember. Drayton in 
 his " Nymphidia " says that Oberon 
 
 " Grew mad as any hare, 
 When he had sought each place with care, 
 And found the queen was missing." 
 
 293
 
 of 
 
 I daresay that is the gist of the matter, for 
 the best of the cyclopaedists took refuge in the 
 bare statement that hares are particularly wild 
 during the mating season in March. So the 
 madness of our little brother with the long 
 ears is only the erratic behaviour of a lover, 
 after all, and we must sympathize with him 
 in his happy derangement. Who will say 
 there is any joy in the world comparable to 
 that irresponsible state of election, when the 
 kind gods have marked us for their own, and 
 bestowed on us the favour of their rapturous 
 life for one spring day? Is it any wonder 
 the hare should be full of quirks and starts, 
 of aimless chasing to and fro, of dashing here 
 and halting there without rhyme or reason? 
 Could one expect so frail and sensitive a being 
 to support so great a burden of ecstasy and 
 still be undistracted, poised, and sane? Is 
 it not rather a marvel he has a spark of rea- 
 son left? Most men and women have been 
 lovers, too, in their day, and unless memory 
 can be wholly blighted by time, should know 
 
 294
 
 Tinivr's 
 
 how to feel for their little friend in his March 
 wildness : 
 
 " For that is the madness of Ishtar, 
 Which comes upon earth in spring." 
 
 It is easy to identify Easter, the ancient 
 goddess of the spring wind and the southwest 
 rain, with Ishtar or Astarte, the deity of love 
 who was worshipped with dark rites in Asia, 
 passed into the purer religion of Hellas as 
 Aphrodite, and survives as April, the mother 
 of the new-ploughed field and swelling seed. 
 The soft wind from the south is her immortal 
 breath; her garment is the mist of purple 
 rain; the opening windflower and blood-root 
 and hepatica betray where her foot has 
 passed ; she touches the wild cherry with her 
 hand as she journeys, and the woodlands are 
 filled with the fragrance of its breaking 
 bloom. In the bitter North, when the rivers 
 are loosened from their long imprisonment 
 and go sparkling to the sea, when the streams 
 of melting snow babble to the stars in 
 
 " The hopeful, solemn, many-murmured night," 
 295
 
 of 
 
 that, too, is the work of the great spring god- 
 dess, while in the hearts of all mortal crea- 
 tures she works a no less miraculous resur- 
 gence. It is she who brings back the purple 
 swallow at the appointed day, and whispers 
 the time of year to the flame-bright crocus un- 
 der the mold. It is she also who puts mad 
 fancies into the heads of imperial lovers and 
 wild March hares. For before her not 
 only is no distinction of persons, but the 
 " flower in the crannied wall," the hunter on 
 the trail, the small green frog in the marsh, 
 and the proud prince in his palace are equal 
 in her eyes. It is she also who presides over 
 the unmitigated ardours of earth, and delights 
 in the splendid longings, the impassioned de- 
 sires, the impossible romantic aspirations of 
 human hearts. It was her madness which: 
 came upon Leander and sent him to swim the 
 Hellespont to his death, for the sake of a girl's 
 kiss. 
 
 For no weightier reason, how many a man 
 has gone to his doom in the glad, fragrant 
 
 296
 
 part's 
 
 hours of some lengthened twilight of spring, 
 with the green pipes of the frogs sounding in 
 the meadows, and the still, small magic flute 
 of desire answering in his breast! Over the 
 hills or beyond the sea dwelt the remembered 
 shape of beauty, beckoned the vision of allur- 
 ing loveliness, echoed the silver sound of irre- 
 sistible laughter, and he could do nothing but 
 follow the old irremediable path of destiny 
 and joy. Let prudence lay up saws and ex- 
 perience inculcate caution as they will; it is 
 not in the nature of love to count the cost. 
 Youth knows a better wisdom in the infatu- 
 ated gladness of the lover, and those whom the 
 gods love die without ever being disillusioned. 
 Crazy in the sight of the world, they go to 
 their graves with no care upon their brow, 
 unreluctant to the last. Of a metal too fine to 
 be tarnished by the corrosive air of life, they 
 pass in charmed immunity through the scurvy 
 environments of struggle and selfishness and 
 greed, childlike, instinctive, single-hearted, 
 guided for ever by the divine insanity. 
 
 297
 
 jFvicttfgljtj) of &rt 
 
 It is not only in the tender pursuits of 
 youth that the inescapable March madness 
 reveals itself. It is made patent in all the un- 
 dertakings of men. Wherever there is a touch 
 of the visionary and the extreme there are 
 its symptoms appearing. We may be sober, 
 diligent, God-fearing, impeccable, stanch as 
 churchwardens, and dependable as a stone 
 wall, yet make no more than a decent demise 
 after all. For all our sedulous anxiety to keep 
 the Commandments, we may go down to the 
 pit with none to grieve above us. The local 
 paper may give us a stickful of perfunctory 
 eulogy, our possessions will be scattered 
 among our relatives, and the sum total of the 
 matter is not much more than a name and two 
 dates on a headstone under a sighing willow. 
 Of such is the kingdom of the world. It is 
 all very well and very right and very neces- 
 sary, but alone it is not enough. You will 
 find that whenever a man is remembered and 
 beloved beyond the day of his great departure, 
 there has been a touch of the unusual and ex- 
 
 298
 
 i*Ucdj fare's 
 
 travagant about him in some direction. How- 
 ever commonplace he may have seemed for 
 the most part, it will turn out that those who 
 knew him best were acquainted with exag- 
 gerated and unusual traits in his character, 
 vagaries, and predilections out of the ordi- 
 nary, generous promptings of self-forgetful 
 folly, which endeared him to them more than 
 all his unwavering rectitude. For it is not 
 what we expect of people that makes us love 
 them, but their unasked, unrequited, and lav- 
 ish actions. The soul is not happy in exacti- 
 tude, but loves the overbrimming measure. 
 The mean and calculating wisdom of the 
 market-place is abhorrent to it, and the waste- 
 ful, splendid, unstinted dealings of Nature 
 are the only method it knows. Who ever 
 heard of keeping a tally in friendship, or 
 doing a kindness for the sake of gain? Surely 
 that were the very embodiment of blasphemy 
 against the spirit of love! Yet that is the 
 custom of traders and politicians and money- 
 lenders and all the sleek complacency that 
 
 299
 
 of 
 
 rules the world. Alas for them! They de- 
 spise the unsuspecting gentleness of Utopian 
 dreamers, they have cast out all childish and 
 impractical faith from their mind, and have 
 made themselves lords of their fellow men, 
 only to lose the greatest of all treasures at last, 
 a radiant spirit and a contented heart. 
 
 We aver glibly enough that aberration al- 
 ways goes with genius, but we make a mistake 
 when we expect genius to exist without aber- 
 ration. Nature progresses steadily but un- 
 evenly, here a little and there a little, now at 
 one point, now at another. It is the very 
 height of her intention to produce a perfect 
 individual, to embody the beauty of the nor- 
 mal in the single instance. Toward this ideal 
 she is always tending, yet how seldom she 
 seems to attain it, even remotely! The impos- 
 sible hopes and aims of the altruist make him 
 peculiar, make him a variant from the 
 average type of man. Any great capacity in 
 one direction or another, which we call genius 
 and hold to be a kind of inspiration, makes 
 
 300
 
 its possessor conspicuous. It does not make 
 him abnormal, for that is the one direction in 
 which he is permitted to approach the normal 
 a little more closely. If he were allowed to 
 approach it in all directions, if he could 
 have strength of body and power of mind, 
 for instance, commensurate with his noble 
 longings and imaginings, the creature of 
 genius would be human no longer, but divine. 
 And it is not permitted any one mortal to 
 run so far ahead in the great procession. 
 
 It does not need any philosophy, however, 
 to appreciate the March hare's enthusiasm. 
 We all know how the feeling of young spring 
 takes hold of him, when the sappy buds begin 
 to swell and the sleeping rivers begin to mur- 
 mur in their icy dungeons. We, too, have 
 our seizures of restlessness, our longings to 
 wander, our admonitions of splendid discon- 
 tent, when the sun passes the equator and the 
 hours of sunshine lengthen toward the season 
 of flowers. For us also routine becomes irk- 
 some and common sense the only delusion. 
 
 301
 
 of 
 
 It is the time for rejuvenation upon the earth, 
 when age looks on youth with an envious eye, 
 and the soberest beef-eater among us is wont 
 to put by his accustomed habit of prudence 
 for the gayer garb of some more reckless vir- 
 tue. It is not enough to be sound citizens, 
 forsooth, and scrupulous upholders of things 
 as they are; we must revert to the days of 
 our pupilage and taste once more the intox- 
 icating savour of romance. Perhaps we have 
 accumulated an enviable store of worldly 
 wisdom, venerable with the dust of time, and 
 are hoarding it against ravages of age. Of 
 no avail is our fatuous precaution. The first 
 breath of spring wind blows it all away, and 
 we go merrily forth upon the great adven- 
 ture as empty-handed and daring as when we 
 first began. It may be hard to learn instruc- 
 tion from our elders; it is a hundred times 
 harder to forget the counsels of our own 
 youth. The heart's great by-laws of intre- 
 pidity and hope need neither to be written 
 nor taught; they were promulgated long be- 
 
 302
 
 JWarel) flare's 
 
 fore our puny civilizations were dreamed of, 
 and they will guide many generations when 
 our hands have let go of all temporal affairs. 
 The forethought of the ant may be a suffi- 
 cient providence against the perils of winter, 
 but we must have a touch of the March mad- 
 ness of the hare if we would come happily 
 through the round year. It is not enough to 
 avoid disaster and penury and mischance; 
 the stones of the field accomplish that better 
 than we. We needs must have " a bliss to 
 die with, dim descried," if we would save 
 ourselves from the consciousness of ultimate 
 failure. You may very well think to get your- 
 self through the inexorable portals of heaven 
 under the patronage of Socrates and Newton 
 and the Lord of Verulam, of the seven wise 
 men of Greece and the seventy wise men of 
 modern days. But, pray, were they not all 
 mad together? Let me take my modest 
 chance with the timorous March hare. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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 19966 
 
 DATE DUE 
 
 FEB 22V 
 
 377 
 
 FE3 22 
 
 JECD 
 
 PRINTED IN U.S.A.
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
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