A cartoon of Gladstone, appearing soon after he had ostensibly retired from public life, showed him, with eager look and keen eye, writing vigorous essays upon current political questions. It recalled the grandeur of a life filled with great interests, sane purposes, and perpetual action. Biography is the best source of practical ideals; it is philosophy teaching by example; the personal element gives force to abstract truths. Luther’s Titanic power and courage under the inspiration of a faith that could remove mountains has served the purpose of millions of men in great crises.
Were I to seek an epic for its power to influence, I would go to real history and choose the life of William the Silent. For thirty years this Prince of Orange stood for civil and religious liberty in the Netherlands, in an age when men little understood the meaning of liberty. He sacrificed wealth and honors for his country. In spite of reverses, of the cowardice and disloyalty of his followers, of ignorance of the very motives of his action, he persevered. Throughout the long struggle he was hopeful, cheerful, and courageous. When the celebrated ban appeared, barring him from food, water, fire, shelter, and human companionship, setting a price on his head, in reply he painted in vivid colors a terrible picture of the oppressors of his people and held it up to the view of the civilized world. The motives which sustained him were faith in God, a strong sense of duty, and a deep feeling of patriotism. His biographer says: “As long as he lived he was the guiding-star of a whole brave nation, and when he died the little children cried in the streets.”
Heine, the poet and philosopher, was dying in an obscure attic in Paris. He was wasted to a skeleton and was enduring the extremity of human suffering. He could see only dimly, as through a screen. As he himself said, there was nothing left of him except his voice. Under these almost impossible conditions, he was still laboriously writing, that he might leave a competence to his wife. A friend of his earlier days visited him, and through a long conversation his words sparkled with wit, humor, poetry, and philosophy. Surely the active spirit is more than the body! There was a feudal knight who went about saying to all despondent wayfarers, “Courage, friend; the devil is dead!” and he always spoke with such cheerful confidence that his listeners accepted the announcement as good news, and gained fresh hope.
In this Philosophy of Work is there no place for romance? Shall there be no thrilling adventure, nothing but dull duty and drudgery? Shall we have only dead monotony—no color, light, or shadow? Shall Carlyle’s “splendors high as Heaven” and “terrors deep as Hell” no longer give a zest to life? Stevenson’s “Lantern Bearers” has an answer for this natural and ever recurrent question. In a little village in England, along the sands by the sea, some schoolboys were accustomed to spend their autumn holidays. At the end of the season, when the September nights were black, the boys would purchase tin bull’s-eye lanterns. These they wore buckled to their waists and concealed under topcoats. In the cold and darkness of the night, in the wind and under the rain, they would gather in a hollow of the lonely sand drifts, and, disclosing their lanterns, would engage in inconsequential talk. In his words: “The essence of this bliss was to walk by yourself in the black night; the slide shut, the topcoat buttoned; not a ray escaping, whether to conduct your footsteps or to make your glory public: a mere pillar of darkness in the dark; and all the while, deep down in the privacy of your fool’s heart, to know that you had a bull’s-eye at your belt, and to exult and sing over the knowledge.... Justice is not done to the versatility and the unplumbed childishness of man’s imagination. His life from without may seem but a rude mound of mud; there will be some golden chamber at the heart of it, in which he dwells delighted; and for as dark as his pathway seems to the observer, he will have some kind of a bull’s-eye at his belt.... The ground of a man’s joy is often hard to hit. The observer (poor soul, with his documents!) is all abroad. For to look at the man is but to court deception. We shall see the trunk from which he draws his nourishment; but he himself is above and abroad in the green dome of foliage, hummed through by winds and nested in by nightingales. And the true realism were that of the poets, to climb up after him like a squirrel, and catch some glimpse of the heaven for which he lives. And the true realism, always and everywhere, is that of the poets: to find out where joy resides and give it a voice far beyond singing. For to miss the joy is to miss all. In the joy of the actors lies the sense of any action, that is the explanation, that the excuse. To one who has not the secret of the lanterns, the scene upon the links is meaningless. And hence the haunting and truly spectral unreality of realistic books.” This quotation needs no excuse. The mould of human nature from which this copy was taken is forever broken, and can never be reproduced.
To be a lantern-bearer on the lonely heath, to rejoice in work and struggle—this is the romance, real, attainable, and apt for the world as it is and for the work we must do. If irrational pastime, attended with endurance, may be a joy, surely rational effort toward some desired result may have its poetry. Sacrifice and heroism are found in humble homes; commonplace labor has its dangers and its victories; and many a man at his work, in knowledge of the light concealed, the interest he makes of his vocation, his romance, exults and sings.
The world is as we regard it. Many look at the world as Doctor Holmes’ squint-brained member of the tea-table views the plant kingdom. He makes the underground, downward-probing life of the tree the real life. The spreading roots are a great octopus, searching beneath instinctively for food, while the branches and leaves are mere terminal appendages swaying in the air. It is a horrible conception, and we are pained at standing on our heads. The tree roots itself to the earth and draws its nourishment therefrom that it may spring heavenward, and bear rich fruit and be a thing of beauty, a lesson and a promise. Man is rooted to the earth, but his real life springs into the free air and bathes in the glad sunlight.
The purpose of our labor determines its qualities of truth and healthfulness. Satisfaction must be sought by employing our faculties in the useful arts and in the search for truth. Perfection of self is the ultimate good for each individual, but this is attained, not in isolation, but in social life with its mutual obligations. The lesson of civil and religious liberty, taught by the great reformers, has been only partly learned. Individualism, rightly understood, is the true political doctrine, but the selfishness of individual freedom is the first quality to develop. Concerning great public questions often the attitude is as expressed in Balzac’s words: “What is that to me? Each for himself! Let each man mind his own business!” Democracy is the way of social and political progress, but we have not yet reached the height of clear vision. We are struggling up the difficult and dangerous path, looking hopefully upward, thinking we see the summit, only to find at each stage that the ultimate heights are still beyond. When kings are dethroned, the hope of democracy is to enthrone public conscience. Here is a picture of a condition occasionally possible in any state of America to-day. We will say there is some great public interest, not a party problem, involving the financial prosperity and the essential welfare of the state, and affecting its credit, honor, and reputation abroad. And—with some noble exceptions—perhaps not a minister in his pulpit, not an orator on his platform, not a newspaper with its great opportunity for enlightening the people and exerting influence, not an educator, not a college graduate, not a high-school graduate, not a business man, not a politician arises and says: Here is a common good imperilled, and I for one will give of my time, my energy, and, if need be, according to my ability, of my money in its support. So long as such a state of apathy concerning public questions may exist, there is something still to be desired for the ideals of democracy and for our methods of education.
The Platonic philosophy has largely inspired educational work, and must still furnish its best ideals. But emphasizing the worth of the individual to himself has created a false conception of social obligation. Culture for culture’s sake has been the maxim, but I have come to believe that a culture which does not in some way reach out to benefit others is not of much value to the individual himself. Some one has aptly illustrated this view: probably the drone in the bee-hive, when he is about to be destroyed, would say, “I would like to live for life’s sake, and would like to buzz a while longer for buzz’s sake.”