III
Aspirations and Ideals.[ToC]
Man is a pilgrim journeying toward the new and beautiful city of the Ideal. Aspiration, not contentment, is the law of his life. To-day's triumph dictates new struggles to-morrow. The youth flushed with success may couch down in the tent of satisfaction for one night only; when the morning comes he must fold his tent and push on toward some new achievement. That man is ready for his burial robes who lets his present laurels satisfy him. God has crowded the world with antidotes to contentment and with stimulants to progress. The world is not built for sluggards. The earth is like a road, a poor place for sleeping in, a good thing to travel over. The world is like a forge, unfit for residence, but good for putting temper in a warrior's sword. Life is built for waking up dull men, making lazy men unhappy, and the low-flying miserable. When other incitements fail, fear and remorse following behind scourge men forward; but ideals in front are the chief stimulants to growth. Each morning, waking, the soul sees the ideal man one ought to be rising in splendor to shame the man one is. Columbus was tempted forward by the floating branches, the drifting weeds, the strange birds, unto the new world rich in tropic-treasure. So by aspirations and ideals God lures men forward unto the soul's undiscovered country. In the long ago the star moving on before guided the wise men of the East to the manger where the young child lay; and still in man's night God hangs aspirations—stars for guiding men away from the slough of content to the hills of paradise. The soul hungers for something vast, and ideals lure to the long voyage, the distant harbor, and are the stars by which the pilgrim shapes his course.
Life's great teachers are friendship, occupation, travel, books, marriage, and chiefly heart-hungers. These yearnings within are the springs of all man's progress without. Sometimes philosophers say that the history of civilization is the history of great men. Confessing this, let us go on and note that the history of all great men is the history of their ideal hours, realized in conduct and character. Waking at midnight in his bleak garret, the vision splendid rose before John Milton. The boy of twelve would fain write a poem that the world would not willingly let die. He knew that whoever would write a heroic poem must first live a heroic life. From that hour the youth followed the ideal that led him on, pursuing knowledge unceasingly for seven years, never closing book before midnight, leaving Cambridge with the approbation of the good, and without stain or spot upon his life. Afterward, making a pilgrimage to Italy for study in that land of song and story, he heard of the civil wars in England, and at once returned, putting away his ambition for culture because he thought it base to be traveling in ease and safety abroad while his fellow-citizens were fighting for liberty at home. When he resisted a brutal soldier's attack who lifted his sword to say, "I have power to kill you," the scholar replied: "And I have power to be killed and to despise my murderer." Growing old and blind, and falling upon evil days and tongues, out of his heroic life he wrote his immortal poem. Dying, he still pursued his ideal, for moving into the valley and shadow, the blind poet whispered: "Still guides the heavenly vision!"
Did men but know it, this is the secret of all heroic greatness. Here is that matchless old Greek, Socrates, sitting in the prison talking with his friends of death and immortality, of the truth and beauty he hopes to find beyond. With one hand he rubs his leg, chafed by the harsh fetters, with the other he holds the cup of poison. When the sun touched the horizon he took the cup of death from the jailer's hand, and with shining face went down into the valley, and midst the thick shadows passed forever from mortal sight, still pursuing his vision splendid. And here is that pure-white martyr girl, painted by Millais, staked down in the sea midst the rising tide, but looking toward the open sky, with a great, sweet light upon her face. Here is Luther surrounded by scowling soldiers and hungry, wolfish priests, looking upward and then flinging out his challenge, "I cannot and I will not recant, God help me." Here is John Brown, with body all pierced with bullets and grievously sore, stooping to kiss the child as he went on to the gallows, with heart as high as on his wedding day. And here is that Christian nurse who followed the line of battle close up to the rifle-pits, and kindled her fire and prepared hot drinks for dying men; who, when asked by the colonel who told her to build those fires, made answer: "God Almighty, sir!" and went right on to fulfill her vision. And here is Livingstone, with his grand craggy head and deep-set eyes, found in the heart of Africa, dead beside his couch, with ink scarcely dry on words that interpreted his vision: "God bless all men who in any way help to heal this open sore of the world!" Chiefly, there is Christ, who, from the hour when the star stayed by His manger in Bethlehem, and the light ne'er seen on land or sea shone on the luminous and transfigured mount, on to the day of His uplifted cross, ever followed the divine vision that brought Him at last to Olivet, to the open sky, the ascending cloud, the welcoming heavens.
But God, who hath appointed visions unto great men, doth set each lesser human life between its dream and its task. Deep heart-hungers are quickened within the people, and then some patriot, reformer, or hero, is raised up to feed the aspiration. Afterward history stores up these noble achievements of yesterday as soul food for to day. The heart, like the body, needs nourishment, and finds it in the highest deeds and best qualities of those who have gone before. Thus the artist pupil is fed by his great master. The young soldier emulates his brave general. The patriot is inspired by his heroic chief. History records the deeds of noble men, not for decorating her pages, but for strengthening the generations that come after. The measure of a nation's civilization is the number of heroes it has had, whose qualities have been harvested for children and youth.
Full oft one hero has transformed a people. The blind bard singing through the villages of Greece met a rude and simple folk. But Homer opened up a gallery in the clouds, and there unveiled Achilles as the ideal Greek. It became the ambition of every Athenian boy to fix the Iliad in his mind and repeat Achilles in his heart and life. Soon the Achilles in the sky looked down upon 20,000 young Achilles walking through the streets beneath. With what admiration do men recall the intellectual achievements of Athens! What temples, and what statues in them! What orators and eloquence! What dramas! What lyric poems! What philosophers! Yet one ideal man who never lived, save in a poet's vision, turned rude tribes into intellectual giants. Thus each nation hungers for heroes. When it has none God sends poets to invent them as soul food for the nation's youth. The best gift to a people is not vineyards nor overflowing granaries, nor thronged harbors, nor rich fleets, but a good man and great, whose example and influence repeat greatness in all the people. As the planet hanging above our earth lifts the sea in tidal waves, so God hangs illustrious men in the sky for raining down their rich treasure upon society.
Moreover, it is the number and kind of his aspirations that determine a man's place in the scale of manhood. Lowest of all is that great under class of pulseless men, content to creep, and without thought of wings for rising. Mere drifters are they, creatures of circumstance, indifferently remaining where birth or events have started them. Having food and raiment, therewith they are content. No inspirations fire them, no ideals rebuke them, no visions of possible excellence or advancement smite their vulgar contentment. Like dead leaves swept forward upon the current, these men drift through life. Not really bad, they are but indifferently good, and therefore are the material out of which vicious men are made. In malarial regions, physicians say, men of overflowing health are safe because the abounding vitality within crowds back the poison in the outer air, while men who live on the border line between good health and ill, furnish the conditions for fevers that consume away the life. Similarly, men who live an indifferent, supine life, with no impulses upward, are exposed to evil and become a constant menace to society.
Higher in the scale of manhood are the men of intermittent aspirations. A traveler may journey forward guided by the light of the perpetual sun, or he may travel by night midst a thunder-storm, when the sole light is an occasional flash of lightning, revealing the path here and the chasm there. But once the lightning has passed the darkness is thicker than before. And to men come luminous hours, rebuking the common life. Then does the soul revolt from any evil thought and thing and long for all that is God-like in character, for honor and purity, for valor and courage, for fidelity to the finer convictions deep hidden in the soul's secret recesses. What heroes are these—in the vision hour! With what fortitude do these soldiers bear up under blows—when the battle is still in the future! But once the conflict comes, their courage goes! On a winter's morning the frost upon the window pane shapes forth trees, houses, thrones, castles, cities, but these are only frost. So before the mind the imagination hangs pictures of the glory and grandeur and God-likeness of the higher life, but one breath of temptation proves their evanescence. Better, however, these intermittent ideals than uninterrupted supineness and contentment. But, best of all, that third type of men who realize in daily life their luminous hours, and transmute their ideals into conduct and character. These are the soul-architects who build their thoughts and deeds into a plan; who travel forward, not aimlessly, but toward a destination; who sail, not anywhither, but toward a port; who steer, not by the clouds, but by the fixed stars. High in the scale of manhood these who ceaselessly aspire toward life's great Exemplar.
Consider the use of the soul's aspirations. Ideals redeem life from drudgery. Four-fifths of the human race are so overbodied and under-brained that the mind is exhausted in securing provision for hunger and raiment. No to-morrow but may bring men to sore want. Poverty narrows life into a treadmill existence. Multitudes of necessity toil in the stithy and deep mine. Multitudes must accustom themselves to odors offensive to the nostril. Men toil from morning till night midst the din of machinery from which the ear revolts. Myriads dig and delve, and scorn their toil. He who spends all his years sliding pins into a paper, finds his growth in manhood threatened. Others are stranded midway in life. Recently the test exhibition of a machine was successful, and those present gave the inventor heartiest congratulations. But one man was present whose face was drawn with pain, and whose eyes were wet with tears. Explaining his emotion to a questioner he said: "One hour ago I entered this room a skilled workman; this machine sends me out that door a common laborer. For years I have been earning five dollars a day as an expert machinist. By economy I hoped to educate my children into a higher sphere, but now my every hope is ruined." Life is crowded with these disappointments. A journey among men is like a journey through a harvest field after a hailstorm has flailed off all the buds and leaves, and pounded the young corn into the ground. Fulfilling such a life, men need to be saved by hopes and aspirations. Then God sends visions in to give men wing-room, and lift them into the realm of restfulness. Some hope rises to break the thrall of life. The soul rises like a songbird in the sky.
Disappointed men find that food itself is not so sweet as dreams. The seamstress toiling in the attic stitches hope in with each thread, and dreams of some knight coming to lift her out of poverty, and her reverie mocks and consumes her woe. The laborer digging in his ditch sweetens his toil and rests his weariness by the dream of the humble home labor and love will some day build. Many in middle life, when it is too late, find themselves in the wrong occupation, but maintain their usefulness and happiness by surrounding themselves with the thoughts of the career they love and beyond may yet fulfill. How does imagination enterprise everywhither! By it what ships are built, what lands are explored, what armies are led, what thrones are erected in thought! When the seed sprang up in the prison cell, the scholar confined there enlarged the little plant until in his mind it became a vast forest, where all flowers bloomed and spiced shrubs grew and birds sang, and where brooks gurgled such music as never fell on mortal ear. Innumerable men endure by seeing things invisible. They retire from the vexations and disappointments without to their hidden-vision life. Their inner thoughts contrast strangely with the outer fact and life. During the Middle Ages, when persecution broke out against the Jews, these merchants were oppressed and robbed, and saved themselves from destruction only by living a squalid life outside and a princely life in hidden quarters. It has been said: "You might follow an old merchant, spotted and stained with all the squalor of beggary upon him, through byways foul to the feet and offensive to every sense, and through some narrow lane enter what looks like the entrance of an ill-kept stable. Thence opens out a squalid hall of noisome odors. But ascending the steps you come to a secret passage, when, opening the door, you are blinded with the brilliancy that bursts upon you. You are in the palace of a prince. The walls are covered with adornments. Rare tapestries hang upon the walls. The dishes that bespread the table are of silver and gold, and the household, who hasten to receive the parent and strip off his outward disguise, are themselves arrayed like king's children." Thus the ideals make a great difference between the man without and the hidden life within. Seeing unseen things, the heart sings while the hand works. The vision above lifts the life out of fatigue into the realm of joy and restfulness.
It is also the office of these divine ideals to rebuke the lower physical life, and smite each sordid, selfish purpose. The vision hour is the natural enemy of the vulgar mood. Men begin life with the high purpose of living nobly, generously, openly. Full of the choicest aspirations, hungering for the highest things, the youth enters triumphantly upon the pathway of life. But journeying forward he meets conflict and strife, envy and jealousy, disappointment and defeat. He finds it hard to live up to the level of his best moods. Self-interest biases his judgment. Greed bribes reason. Pride leads him astray. Selfishness tempts him to violate his finer self. The struggle to maintain his ideals is like a struggle for life itself. Many, alas! after a short, sharp conflict, give up the warfare and break faith and fealty with the deeper convictions. They quench the light that shone afar off to beckon and cheer them on. Persuading themselves that the ideal life is impracticable, they strike an average between their highest moods and their low-flying hours. Then is the luster of life all dimmed, and the soul is like a noble mansion in the morning after some banquet or reception. In the evening, when making ready for the brilliant feast, all the house is illuminated. Each curio is in its niche. The harp is in its place. The air is laden with the perfume of roses. But when the morning comes, how vast is the change! The windows are darkened and the halls deserted; the wax tapers have burned to the socket, or flicker out in smoke; the flowers, scorched by the heated air, have shriveled and fallen, and in the banquet-room only the "broken meats" remain. Gone is all the glory of the feast! Thus, when men lay aside their heroic ideals and bury their visions, the luster of life departs, and its beauty perishes. Then it is that God sends in the heavenly vision to rebuke the poorer, sensuous life and man's material mood. Above the life that is, God hangs the glory, and grandeur, and purity of the life that might be, and the soul looking up scorns the lower things, and hungers and thirsts for truth and purity. Then man comes to himself again, and makes his way back to his Father's side.
Moreover, these vision hours come to men to give them hints and gleams of what they shall be when time and God's resources have wrought their purpose of strength and beauty upon the soul. Man is born a long way from himself and needs to see the end toward which he moves. He has a body and uses a lower life, but man is what he is in his best hours and most exalted moods. The measure of strength in any living thing is its highest faculty. The strength of the deer is swiftness, of a lion strength; but to the power of the foot the eagle adds wings, and therefore is praised for its swift flight. To the wing the bee adds genius for building with geometric skill, and its praise lies in its rare intelligence. Thus man also is to be measured by his highest faculty, in that he has power to see things unseen and work in realms invisible. We are told that Cicero had three summer villas and a winter residence, but he prided himself not upon his wealth, but upon his oratory and eloquence. The grand old statesman of England has skill for lifting the axe upon the tall trees, but he glories in his skill in statecraft. Incidentally man reaps treasures from the fields, finds riches in the forests, and wealth in the mountains; yet his real manhood resides in reason and moral sentiment, and the spirit that saith, "Our Father." For him to live for the body is as if one who should inherit a magnificent palace were to close the galleries and libraries and splendid halls, and opening only the eating-room, there to live and feed.
Happy the man who is a good mechanic or merchant; but, alas! if he is only that. Happy he who prospers toward the granary and the storehouse; but, alas! if he is shrunken and shriveled toward the spiritual realm. To all rich in physical treasure, but bankrupt toward the unseen realm, comes some divine influence arousing discontent. Then lower joys are seen to be uncrowned, and sordid pleasures to have no scepter. The soul becomes restless and disappointed where once it was contented. Looking afar off it sees in its vision hours the goodly estate to which God shall some day bring it. Here we recall the peasant's dream. His humble cottage while he slept lifted up its thatched roof and became a noble mansion. The one room and small became many and vast. The little windows became arched and beautiful, looking out upon vast estates all his. The fireplace became an altar, o'er which hung seraphim. The chimney became a golden ladder like that which Jacob saw, and his children, living and dead, passed like angels bringing treasure up and down. And thus, while the human heart muses and dreams, God builds His sanctuary in the soul. The vision the heart sees is really the pattern by which God works. These fulfill the transformation wrought in the peasant's dream.
Seeking to fulfill their noble ministry, ideals have grievous enemies. Among these let us include vanity and pride. When the wise man said, "Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit, there is more hope of a fool than of him," he indicated that he had known fools cured of their folly, but never a vain man cured of his vanity. Pliny said: "It is as hard to instruct pride as it is to fill an empty bottle with a cork in it." Some men are constitutionally vain. They think all creation converges toward one center, and they are that center. The rash of conceit commonly runs its course very early in life. With most it is like the prancing and gayety of an untrained colt; the cure is the plow and harness. Failure also is a curative agent, and so also is success. But chiefly do the ideals rebuke conceit. The imagination is God in the soul, and lifting up the possible achievement, the glory of what men may become, shames and makes contemptible what men are.
Indolence and contentment also antagonize the ideals. Men bring together a few generosities and integrities. Soul-misers, men gloat over these, as money-misers over their shining treasure, content with the little virtue they have. But no man has a right to fulfill a stagnant career; life is not to be a puddle, but a sweet and running stream. No man has a right to rust; he is bound to keep his tools bright by usage. No man has a right to be paralyzed; he is bound to enlarge and grow. So ideals come in to compel men to go forward. It is easier to lie down in a thorn hedge, or to sleep in a field of stinging nettles, than for a man to abide contentedly as he is while his ideals scourge him upward.
Chiefly do the malign elements oppose the ideal life. There is enmity between vulgarity and visions. If anger comes, mirth goes; when greed is in the ascendency, generosity is expelled. If, during a chorus of bird-voices in the forest, only the shadow of an approaching hawk falls upon the ground, every sweet voice is hushed. Thus, if but one evil, hawk-like note is heard in the heart, all the nobler joys and aspirations depart. The higher life is at enmity with the lower, and this war is one of extermination.
Oh, all ye young hearts! guard well one rock that is fatal to all excellence. If ever you have broken faith with your ideals, lift them up and renew faith. Cherish ideals as the traveler cherishes the north star, and keep the guiding light pure and bright and high above the horizon. The vessel may lose its sails and masts, but if it only keeps its course and compass, the harbor may be reached. Once it loses the star for steering by, the voyage must end in shipwreck. For when the heroic purpose goes, all life's glory departs. Let no man think the burial of a widow's son the saddest sight on earth. Let men not mourn over the laying of the first born under the turf, as though that were man's chiefest sorrow. Earth knows no tragedy like the death of the soul's ideals. Therefore, battle for them as for life itself! The cynic may ridicule them, because, having lost his own purity and truth, he naturally thinks that none are pure or true; but wise men will take counsel of aspirations and ideals. Even low things have power for incitement. No dead tree in the forest so unsightly but that some generous woodbine will wrap a robe of beauty about its nakedness. No cellar so dark but if there is a fissure through which the sunlight falls the plant will reach up its feeble tendrils to be blessed by the warming ray. Yet the soul is from God, is higher than vine or tree, and should aspire toward Him who stirs these mysterious aspirations in the heart.
The soul is like a lost child. It wanders a stranger in a strange land. Full oft it is heartsick, for even the best things content it for but a little while. Daily, mysterious ideals throb and throb within. It struggles with a vagrant restlessness. It goes yearning after what it does not find. A deep, mysterious hunger rises. It would fain come to itself. In its ideal hours it sees afar off the vision that tempts it on and up toward home and heaven. The secret of man is the secret of his vision hours. These tell him whence he came—and whither he goes. Then Christ became the soul's guide; God's heart, the soul's home.