The optimist is your best philosopher. He adapts himself to the world and uses it. He selects the best that life offers, and, when the sky is gloomy, he lives in hope of bright days. He has faith in the ultimate beneficent outcome of the plan of the Creator. As there is light for the eye, sound for the ear, form for the touch, aromas for the smell, food for the taste, so there is an object in the outer world, adapted to every human instinct and impulse. The impulse for life and action, the desire for property, the impulse for friendship, the impulses of wonder, æsthetic admiration, and religious worship—each has its objective counterpart. Man is adjusted to his environment, and his environment includes the whole round world of utility and sentiment. Human life is perpetual activity, a searching for objects that will meet material needs and conduce to spiritual development. The feeling of interest arises when the mind finds the object of its search or feels that it is on the right track.
Interest is the condition of the mind that makes a thing of value to us. It is the cry of Eureka when a fitting discovery is made. It is the magnetic relation between impulse and the end at which it aims, between man and the outer world, between man and himself. It makes life worth living, and is the secret of activity and progress. Inasmuch as interest shows the kind of objects that appeal to the mind, it is a revelation of character.
The objects, which a man may cherish are limitless. He may rejoice in his strength, his personal adornment, his lands and money, his books and works of art. He may find an eager interest in his own image as pictured in the minds of his relatives, friends, or fellow citizens. He may take pride in family or in personal glory and honor. Men pose before the world; they act often with reference to the appreciation they will receive. It is told that the poet Keats could not live without applause. Carlyle says men write history, not with supreme regard for facts, but for the writing. Nero conceived that he was a musician, poet, and actor, surpassing in merit the geniuses of his age.
Man’s attitude toward wisdom and religion, the quality of his thoughts and feelings, his aspirations, constitute his spiritual interest. The sentiments of his soul are his; for them he is responsible, and in them he finds satisfaction or humiliation.
As one forgets self and self-interest, more and more he makes the whole world his possession. Nature, the welfare of others, man in history and literature, the Maker of all, may become objects of regard. A French nobleman who in the vicissitudes of revolution lost his estates and titles, but received a small pension from the government, became a philosopher and had the world at his command. For slight pay, willing service for his daily needs was his; private gardens, public parks, the broad landscape, the sky were his to enjoy, and he was free from care and fear. Some interests are universal, not the heritage and possession of one, but, like sun and air, free. They fall “as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath,” and bless him that receives. Rich in experience is he who can see in the drifted gleaming snows on our mountain peaks more than the summer’s irrigation, in the green plains of May more than the growing crops of wheat and alfalfa, in the orchard bloom more than the promise of fruit, in public education and charity more than political and social prudence, in religious devotion more than conventionality. For him blessings come on the morning breeze, gleam from the midnight sky, appear in the quality of mercy, and spring from communion with the Soul of Nature.
Prometheus is said to have given to men a portion of all the qualities possessed by the other animals—the lion, the monkey, the wolf—hence the many traits that are manifest in his complex nature. There is a slight suggestion of evolution in this—that man is but the highest stage of animal development, and that his refined emotions are but the instincts of the lower orders modified by complex groupings. We grant the process, but not necessarily the inference. An apple is none the less an apple because it is the product of an unbroken development from a germ and simple shoot. The spirit of self-sacrifice need be none the less valid because it is a late phase of some simple instinct. We believe the world was fashioned according to an intelligent plan, a plan gradually realized, and that its meaning is found, not in the lower, but in the higher stages of development. We explain the purpose of creation, not by the first struggle of a protozoan for food, but by the last aspiration of man for heaven.
“From harmony, from heavenly harmony,
This universal frame began: