Men laugh at the nonsense of poetry and ideal standards, but thoughtful men pity them. I remember listening some years since to a prominent lecturer in a large town. He began with a prelude, in which with masterly strokes he pictured the admirable location of the city, its relation to the environing regions, the whole country, and the world, its probable growth, its material promise, and its opportunity for social, intellectual, and moral development, and he pointed to the picture as an inspiration for young men. Then he entered upon his main theme, “Proofs of Immortality.” As with dramatic distinctness he made one point after another, he held his vast audience breathless and spellbound. The next morning I took up my paper at the breakfast table and noted the glaring headlines and details of robberies, murders, and domestic scandals, while, in an obscure corner, expressed in a contemptuous manner, were a dozen lines upon the magnificent oratory and supreme themes of the evening before. Is there not room for the scholar with his ideals?
Rudyard Kipling, that Englishman in a strange oriental garb, visited one of the great and prosperous cities of our country. He was met by a committee of citizens and shown the glory of the town. They gave him the height of their blocks, the cost of their palace hotels, and the extent of their stockyards, expecting him to express wonder and admiration. He surprised them by exclaiming, “Gentlemen, are these things so? Then, indeed, I am sorry for you;” and he called them barbarians, savages, because they gloried in their material possessions, and said nothing of the morals of the city, nothing of her great men, nothing of her government, her charities, and her art. He called them barbarians because they valued their adornments, not for the art in them, but for their cost in dollars. A lecturer not long ago said derisively that of all the Athenians who listened with rapt attention to the orations of Demosthenes, probably not one had a pin or a button for his cloak. It would be a curious problem to weigh a few orations of Demosthenes against pins and buttons. It is said of men of olden time that they conspired to build themselves up into heaven by using materials of earth, and began to erect a lofty tower, but the Almighty, seeing the futility of their endeavor, thwarted their attempt at its inception, and thus showed that men could never ascend to the heavens by any material means. It is a wonderful invention, but no flying machine will ever give wings to the spirit. There is a material and a spiritual side to the world, and the spiritual can never be enhanced by the material. The lower animals, through their instincts, perform material feats often surpassing the skill of man. For his purpose the beaver can build a better dam than man; no skill of man can make honey for the bee. That which distinguishes man is his manhood, his thought, his ideals, his spirituality.
There is a glory of the present and a glory of the past. The glory of the past was its literature, its art, its examples of greatness. Let us retain the glory of the ancient civilization and add to it the marvellous scientific and practical spirit of the present. Then shall we have a civilization surpassing any previous one. Let us not only tunnel our mountains for outlets to our great transcontinental railway systems, but let us also find among our mountain ranges, and domes, and cañons, some sacred grottoes. Let us not only explore our peaks for gold and silver, but find some Parnassus, sacred to the Muses, whom we shall learn to invoke not in vain.
Shall we venture to characterize the American student of the near future? He will hardly be a recluse, nor will he wholly neglect the body for the culture of the mind. He will be a man of the world, a man of business; on the one hand, not disregarding the uses of wealth, and, on the other, not finding material possessions and sensuous enjoyment the better part of life. He will be an influence in politics and in the solution of all social problems. His ideals will be viewed somewhat in the light of their practicality. He will know the laws of mental growth in order to use them, and will find the avenues of approach to men’s motives. His religion will add more of work to faith. He will secure a high growth of self by regarding the welfare of others, instead of worshipping exclusively at the shrine of his own development. The scientific knowledge of nature’s materials and forces, and the skill to use them, will invite a large class of minds. In brief, the coming student will take on more of the traits of the ideal man of affairs.
But, while we may not expect a revival of the almost romantic life of the early literary clubs of London, there will be many a group devoted to the enjoyment of thought and beauty in literature. If no Socrates shall walk the streets proclaiming his wisdom on the corners, at imminent risk from cable cars and policemen, there will be a philosophy, disseminated through the press of the coming century, which will still strive to reach beyond the processes of nature to the unknown cause, will reëxamine those conceptions of the Absolute, which are thought to stand the test when applied to explain the problems of human life. If no Diogenes shall be found with his lantern at noontide, seeking, as it were, in a microscopic way, the honest man which the brilliant luminary failed to reveal, many a one, living courageously his principles and convictions, will endeavor by precept and example to make an age of honest men who will find the golden rule in the necessities of human intercourse, as well as in the concepts of ethics and the teaching of religion.
The student owes much to the world. The ideal scholar is too intelligent to be prejudiced, one-sided, or superstitious. He should avoid the path of the political demagogue. He should know the force of ideas and the value of ideals; he should be too wise to fall into the slough of pure materialism.
The literature of the future will not try the bold, metaphorical flights of Shakespeare, but there will be a literature that will show the poetry of the new ideas. Whatever philosophy finally becomes the prevalent one, there are certain transcendental conceptions, from which the human mind cannot escape, that will still inspire poetry. There must always be men who will open their eyes to the wonders of the world and of human existence—who must know that any, the commonest, substance is a mystery, the key to which would unlock the secrets of the universe. The beauty of the starry heavens will ever be transcendent; every natural scene and object remains a surpassing work of art; life is filled with tragedy and comedy, and the possibilities of human existence are as sublime as the eternal heights and depths. Such conceptions beget a poetry which rises to a faith above reason; that instinctively looks upon the fact of creation and of existence as sublime and full of promise, and clings to a belief, however vague, in the ultimate grand outcome for the individual. The right view of the world is essentially poetic, and the truest poetry includes faith and reverence. It is the privilege of the earnest and profound scholar to know that literature refines, that philosophy ennobles, that religion purifies, that ideals inspire, and that the world can be explained in its highest meaning only by the conception of a personal God.