and there also go, to the making of man and woman, certain books.
These may vary in each case and in generation. Tom Brown and Mr. Knowles' "King Arthur" may not do for you what they did for me; "Sesame and Lilies," "Past and Present," Emerson's "Twenty Essays" may be superseded, though I can hardly believe it; but see to it that you find and read their true successors, carry out Dr. Abbott's advice to his boys—to "read half a dozen de-vulgarizing books before leaving school."
Surely R.L. Stevenson should be on the list, for he speaks so splendidly on Carlyle's great point that man was born for something better than Happiness. He says, over and over again, "Happiness is not the reward that mankind seeks. Happinesses are but his wayside campings; his soul is in the journey; he was born for struggle, and only tastes his life in effort." He sounds the same note as Marcus Aurelius, another of the de-vulgarizing man-making books of the world.
The message of all these men is, "Love not Pleasure; love God. This is the
EVERLASTING YEA, wherein who walks and works it is well with him."
Surely, when we look into things and leave our hungry wishes on one side, it seems clear to the best side of our nature that we are born, not with a right to Pleasure, but with a right to opportunity for development on our own highest lines.
A pig has a right to pigs-wash—he has no higher capacity. You and I have a capacity for courage and helpfulness and friendship with God. Our life will be a success if these things are developed, and a failure if they are not. This is the success we have a right to, but as likely as not it may need Pain, not Pleasure, for its achievement; and in this case you and I are born with a right to Pain, and we should be defrauded if any one saved us from it.
I know you want Happiness and pleasure, and I sympathize with you; but it makes all the difference to your whole life if you go out into the world like a vulture screaming for prey, or if you start out hoping, in the first place, to be brave and helpful, and, only in the second place, ready to take any pleasure as a good gift to be happy and grateful about.
"How needlessly mean our life is; though we, by the depth of our living, can deck it with more than regal splendour!"[8]
Do you feel that this is very tall talk for quiet lives like yours and mine? Yes, it is; but we need great ideals to live even small lives by. Probably no one of us will ever get near living a noble life, but we can make our lives of the same fibre as those of the heroes. We can live on noble lines.
How?