Living the Radiant Life: A Personal Narrative

by George Wharton James

But you ask: How am I to know this moral multiplication table? Easy enough. Don't try to take it all in at once. Begin at the beginning. Learn the "twos" first. Twice one are two, twice two are four, twice three are six, and so on. Start on the Ten Commandments. Master and live them. Then absorb the Golden Rule. Then try the Sermon on the Mount.

There's enough to keep you busy for a few days, anyhow. But I suppose some of you will say you can't do it. Nonsense! You've got to do it, and you won't really live until you do. You can't dodge the multiplication table; nor can you dodge these. There is no escape. Divinity never made any man or any woman who could get away from them. Creeds, church dogmas, men's ideas about religion or what they call religion may be true, or may not be true, but the fundamental principles of the life of the Spirit always have existed, always will exist, and every man, sooner or later, must come into perfect harmony with them. This is what I want to radiate—my desire that I should become Divine-willed and that every one else should be the same—quick, soon, now.

Then, having started right, one may have more confidence and assurance in taking the next step, which is the second thing connected with the will that I would radiate, viz.: I will to be good for something. What is the purpose, the object of life? What are we here for? To eat and drink, sleep and satisfy our appetites and then die like other mere animals who do the same thing? I don't believe it. I never did. As Browning puts it, a spark has disturbed my clod, and now I am discontented to remain a clod—a mere brute beast, living, as does the hog, merely for the satisfaction of my physical senses. I feel higher, nobler, worthier aspirations within me. John Muir, the great California Nature-lover, scientist, and poet, wrote when he was twenty-seven years old a letter in which he said:

A lifetime is so little a time that we die ere we get ready to live. I would like to go to college, but then I have to say to myself "you will die ere you can do anything else." I should like to invent useful machinery, but it comes "you do not wish to spend your lifetime among machines and you will die ere you can do anything else." I should like to study medicine that I might do my part in lessening human misery, but again it comes "you will die ere you are ready, or able to do so." How intensely I desire to be a Humboldt, but again the chilling answer is reiterated. But could we live a million years then how delightful to spend in perfect contentment so many thousand years in quiet study in college, so many amid the grateful din of machines, so many among human pain, so many thousands in the sweet study of Nature among the dingles and dells of Scotland, and all the other less important parts of our world.

Here were four noble and beautiful aspirations. 1. To go to college and learn more. 2. To invent useful machinery. 3. To study medicine that he might lessen human misery. 4. To be a Humboldt and explore the world for the enlightenment of mankind.

What do you want to be?

To go to college to have a good time (!)—save the mark—as some students do? I was once riding on a railway train going to Boston, and at New Haven twenty-seven young students got on board and every one drunk. Do you think Muir had anything of that kind in mind when he said he wanted to go to college? At one of the great universities of the West I was present when the students made a great uproar because the faculty had prohibited beer-wagons from coming upon the campus to deliver their wares at the "frat" houses. I have seen university "men" celebrating some baseball or other victory when the celebration has taken the form of a drunken and sensual orgy. Can you imagine a man like Muir ever having wanted to engage in such a disgraceful and degrading scene?

Muir started out right. He began by seeking to be "Divine-willed," and then by willing to be "good for something."

A friend of mine, who radiates love and helpfulness to every human being no matter how low and degraded, once helped a poor, ugly, besotted son of the gutter, who had sunk about as low as he possibly could sink. One day as he sat on his piazza enjoying the beautiful calm of a glorious spring afternoon he saw his protégé approaching. Giving him a glad welcome the two were soon in conversation and the gutter-waif finally expressed his thanks for the help and encouragement he had received, and, as is natural with every really awakened soul, wanted to do something in return for what he felt my friend had done for him. In vain the helper of men protested there was nothing he wished to have done, but the one who had been helped kept on insisting that he must do something. He said, "I not only want to be good, but I want to be good for something. Now, what can I do?"