| 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 second-rate virtue;
it is well to detest [Page 238] strife
and war and vulgar commercial aggrandizement. And yet
a man must have a poor spirit never to have loved his
own country; never to have set his nerve to acquire
some longed-for end, against odds and obstacles 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 something wholesome and inspiring to
those who lived in them, and which cannot teach us even
now strange and vigorous lessons in life. And the prime
wisdom of to-day, as of every day of the world, is to
perceive wherein its distinction and virtue lie, to
mark its best characteristic, and to cultivate whatever
of good it 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 [Page 239] 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-seeing endurance, and the patient
repose which underlies their distraction, their dissipation,
their blind hurry.
Our
judgment must be critical; our temperament 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 [Page 240]
the truth, to appreciate the best, to do what
is beautiful is a threefold task that may well tax our
most persistent and unflagging energies through however
long a lifetime; and it would seem as if the whole effort
of the universe were to make possible that consummation.
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 skeptical 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 accord with that more perfect arrangement.
It is safe enough to say, therefore, that it is bad
[Page 241] for us to be given to self-laudation
in criticism, 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 danger, 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-fathers [Page
242] 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 something wrong business
or something wrong with the education. The truth is,
probably, that there is something wrong with both. There
certainly is something wrong with an education which
attempts to cultivate a man’s mind and body, without
once perceiving any essential connection and interdependence
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 developing
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 [Page 243] because it contents
itself with enlarging the receptive faculties, powers
of thought and reason and memory, and does nothing to
enlarge the faculties of self-expression, of usefulness,
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 encumbrance to the community
and to themselves. Certainly one would not wish to have
the standard of scholarship lowered, or the number of
scholars diminished; but, also, quite as certainly one
would wish to have their increased powers directed and
given self-control, and to have them balanced by a realization
of the possibilities of life.
And
the possibilities of life are certainly not limited
to the exigent demands of business. Any man who is a
“business man pure [Page 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 demands more and
more men who are merely specialists, and who must be
trained from early boyhood to fit them for the severe
competition, 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 delights of beauty is in danger of becoming forgetful
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 masters of an art. We must not let ourselves forget
that. We must keep always in mind [Page 245]
the ideals of intelligence and culture and
liberty 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 disparagement.
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 business in the
making of a people. [Page 246]
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