II. Concerning the second aphorism of von Klinger’s there is this to add: that no self-seeking person ever reaches the end he most desires. It is surprising to see what one may accomplish when he gives his attention and energy wholly to the doing of one thing. Examples of this kind of success meet us at every turn. What these persons at heart desire, however, is not the wealth, or honor, or power, or learning which they reach. They prize these possessions only as the necessary prerequisites for happiness. What is it, then, of which they must first of all be convinced? It is the truth that happiness does not come through these possessions, that, in fact, these possessions are likely to bring unhappiness. When this conviction is attained, then, at last, the self-seeking spirit will perhaps abandon its aim.
Of all self-seekers, the most unfortunate are to be found among the educated. When they stand on the lower rung of the ladder which they wish to climb, they are consumed by envy of those above them; and of all the emotions which degrade a man in his own eyes the most humiliating is envy. When, on the other hand, they have climbed to the top, then they are distressed by the constant fear of those who are climbing toward them and whose thoughts and purposes they well know from their own experience. If they seek safety by surrounding themselves by flatterers, then they are never safe from betrayal; for if they seem likely to fall, no one cares to hold them up. If, finally, they shut their ears to these disturbing voices within their hearts and give themselves to self-indulgence, then they lose the very qualities which are most essential to success.
Besides all this, the chances of success for the self-seeker are slight. Not one in ten attains what he desires, and, even of those whom we call fortunate, few should be so reckoned until they die. It is not necessary to cite examples of such failure. The daily paper reports them to us every morning. Long ago one of the prophets of Israel described this unsatisfying result of life and effort in classic words which we may well repeat: “Ye have sown much, and bring in little; ye eat, but ye have not enough; ye drink, but ye are not filled with drink; ye clothe you, but there is none warm; and he that earneth wages earneth wages to put it into a bag with holes.”
Still further, nothing is so exhausting as this self-seeking effort. The passion which it develops is like an access of fever which burns away one’s vitality. The strength of health, on the other hand, renews itself through self-forgetting work; and thrives on unselfish service done for worthy ends. Only in such service are other people sincerely inclined to help. Thus it happens that some people, though they work hard and never retire to the health-resorts, still live to a robust old age, while other people spend half the year or perhaps the whole of it at the baths and remain without rest. The many nervous diseases of our time are for the most part caused by the self-centred life, and their real cure must be through a renewal in health of mind and will.
III. As to von Klinger’s third suggestion, it is to be said that the inclination to solitude is absolutely necessary not only for happiness, but for the tranquil development of one’s spiritual life. The happiness which can really be attained, and which is independent of all changes, is to be found in a life given to great thoughts and in a work peacefully directed toward great ends. Such a life is, however, necessarily withdrawn from fruitless sociability. As Goethe says, “To such a life, all else is vanity and illusion.” It is by such a course of life that one by degrees escapes from the fickleness and moodiness of life. He learns not to take people too seriously. He comes to regard with tranquillity the shifting changes of opinions and inclinations. So far as his inclination goes and his duties permit, he would rather shun popularity than seek it.
IV. As to the last of von Klinger’s paragraphs, it may be said to contain the philosophy of his life. Looking at people as individuals, their lives appear full of contrasts; but taking them all together, their lives are in fact much alike. One section of humanity, of high and of low estate, lives either consciously or unconsciously a merely animal life. Such persons simply follow the path which their physical nature indicates, fulfilling their little span of life, and knowing no other destiny. Another group is ever seeking some escape from this unsatisfying end of life. Dante, in the first canto of his Divine Comedy, very beautifully describes these seekers for the better life; and this search makes in reality the spiritual experience of all great personalities.
The first step in this way of life is taken when one becomes discontented with life as it is and longs for something better. One’s reason seeks an outlet from the labyrinth of the world and at last from sheer weariness resolves, at any cost, to forsake the world’s ways and to seek peace. When one has come to this resolution, then he is on the way to salvation, and experiences that inner happiness which one gains who has found at last the way he ought to go. And, indeed, this man is essentially saved; for he is now open to the unhindered influences of new spiritual forces, against which in his early life his will had set itself.
Yet, as a matter of fact, he is only ready for his second step. It is the long conflict for supremacy between what the Apostle calls “the old and the new man.” Both of them are in him still and his problem is to realize the “new man” and bring it to fulness of life. Many people who are striving for the better life come to this second step and stay there all their days; and this is the reason why so many lives which are rightly directed still give the impression of imperfection, and why they do not seem to contribute much—though often more than we think—to the ennobling of human relationships.
There remains the third step of spiritual growth, which, once fairly taken, leads to the complete interpretation of life. It is the stage of practical activity, the participating in the creation of a spiritual kingdom. Sometimes it has been likened to the taking part in a great work of architecture, sometimes to the enlistment in an active war. Nothing less than this life of unselfish service can bring to the individual true content. So long as one lives for himself and is considering, even in the highest and noblest way, his own self-culture, there lingers in him some taint of his original selfishness, or, at best, he but half sees his way. As Goethe has expressed it: “While one strives, he errs.” This self-directed effort must, at last, cease. Nothing is more untrue, nothing is more fundamentally disheartening, than the maxim of Lessing which so many have admired, according to which endless effort after truth is to be preferred to the possession of the truth. One might as well say that endless thirst, or endless cold, was more acceptable than the finding of a refreshing fountain or the warmth of the quickening sun.
Here then, in this attitude of life, removed from religious or philosophical restlessness, is the path to continuous inward peace and power. It leads, first of all, to humility and to freedom from self-complacency. It is possible to hold to this path through the midst of all natural ills; it is the best way that life has to offer. What the happiness is which one then finds is hard to communicate to another. It comes of ceasing to think first of all of oneself. It has, as Rothe says, “no private business to transact.” It does its work tranquilly, with absolute certainty that, though the issue of its work may be unrecognized, still it is secure. This way of life brings with it courage, and this courage manifests itself, not in feverish excitement, but in an outward habit of composure which testifies to inward and central stability. Such a life trusts its way and its destiny. Outward experiences and the judgments of other men have no power to move it. It is, perhaps, not essential that in the education of youth these truths should be urgently pressed, for they may easily appear visionary and in such a matter all appearance of obscurity and unreality is to be deplored. God permits only high-minded souls, like von Klinger, fully to attain this way of life.