XII
The Science of Living With Men[ToC]
The great writers of all ages have held themselves well away from any formal discussion of the art of right living and the science of a skillful carriage of one's faculties. Government, war and eloquence have indeed received full scientific statement, and those arts called music and sculpture have obtained abundant literary treatment. But, for some reason, no philosopher has ever attempted a formal treatise teaching the youth how to carry his faculties so as to avoid injuring his fellows and secure for them peace, happiness and success. Nevertheless, the art of handling marble is nothing compared to the art of handling men. Skill in evoking melody from the harp is less than nothing compared to skill in allaying discords in the soul and calling out its noblest impulses, its most energetic forces.
Nor is there any science or any productive industry whatsoever that is at all comparable to the science of just, smooth and kindly living. For the business of life is not the use and control of winds and rivers; it is not the acquisition of skill in calling out the secret energies contained in the soil or concealed in the sky. The business of life is the mastery of the art of living smoothly and justly with one's fellows and the acquisition of skill in calling out the best qualities of those about us. Indeed, the home and the market do but furnish practice-ground for developing expertness in carrying one's faculties. Sir Arthur Helps first coined the expression, "the art of right living," and society can never be sufficiently grateful to this distinguished scholar for reminding us that when every other art has been secured, every other science achieved, there still remains for mastery the finest of all the fine arts, the science of a right carriage of one's faculties midst all the duties and relations of home and school, of store and street.
Searching out for some reason why scientists have discussed friendship, reform, or patriotism, but have passed by the science of right living, we shall find the adequate explanation in the fact that this is the largest subject that can possibly be handled. It concerns the right carriage of the whole man, the handling of the body, and the maintenance of perfect health; the control of the temperament, with its special talent or weakness; the use of reason, its development and culture; the control of judgment, with the correction of its aberrations; it involves such a mastery of the emotions as men have over winds and rivers; it concerns conscience and conversation, friendship and commerce, and all the elements affectional and social, civic and moral.
For man stands, as it were, in the center of many concentric circles. About himself, as a center, sweeps the home circle; his immediate neighborhood relations describe a wider circle; his business career describes one larger still; then come his relations to the community in general, while beyond the horizon is a circle of influence that includes the world at large. When the tiny spider standing at the center of its wide-stretching and intricate web, woven for destruction, chances to touch any thread of the web, immediately that thread vibrates to the uttermost extremity. And man stands at the center of a vast web of wide-reaching influence, woven not for blighting, but for blessing, and every one of these out-running lines, whether related to friends near by or to citizens afar off, thrills and vibrates with secret influences; and there is no creature in God's universe so taxed as man, having a thousand dangers to avoid, and fulfilling ten thousand duties. He who would adequately discuss the science of right living must propose a method that will enable man to carry his faculties midst all the conditions of poverty or riches, of sickness or health, of the friendship of men or their enmity.
Discerning the largeness of this theme, many question whether right living can be reduced to a science, and, if so, whether it ever can be acquired as an art. We know that there is a science of government, a science of wealth, a science of war, and mastery in each department seems possible. Moreover, long practice has lent men skill in the arts. Even Paganini was born under the necessity of obtaining excellence in his art through practice. Titian also was a tireless student in color, and Macaulay himself toiled hard over his alphabet. Printers tell us that practice expels stiffness from the fingers and makes type-setting an automatic process. Daniel Webster was counted the greatest orator of his time; but there never lived a man who drilled himself in solitude more scrupulously, and his excellence, he says, was the fruit of long study.