The mainspring of all progress, individual and social, is the desire to fulfill in character all one has planned in thought. Man's life is one long pursuit of the visions of possible excellence which disquiet, rebuke and tempt him upward. "As to other points," said John Milton, "what God may have determined for me I know not, but this I know—that if he ever instilled an intense love of moral beauty into the breast of any man, he has instilled it into mine. Ceres, in the fable, pursued not her daughter with a greater keenness of inquiry than I, day and night, the idea of perfection." Haunted by his dream of excellence, the poet likened himself to one born beside the throne and reared in purple, yet by some mischance left to gypsies, midst poverty and neglect, while thoughts of the glory he has known and that imperial palace whence he came, are never out of mind. In picturing forth these conceptions of sweetness and light, philosophers have found it hard to summarize the qualities that make up ideal manhood.
Conceding that the Christian is the perfect gentleman, who does for his fellows what an easy chair does for a tired man, what a winter's fire is to a lost traveler, we may also affirm that Newman's definition is inadequate and fragmentary. As the ideal portraits of Christ, from Perugino to Hoffman, divide the kingdom of beauty—and must be united in one new conception in order to approach the perfect face—so the poets and the philosophers, with their diverse conceptions of ideal manhood, divide the kingdom of character. "The true man cannot be a fragmentary man," said Plato. Is he not one-sided who masters the conventional refinement and the stock proprieties, yet indulges in drunkenness and gluttony? "Pleasure must not be his sole aim," said the accomplished Chesterfield. "I have enjoyed all the pleasures of the world, and consequently know their futility, and do not regret their loss. Those who have no experience are dazzled with there [Transcriber's note: their?] glare, but I have been behind the scenes and have seen all the coarse pulleys, which exhibit and move all the gaudy machines that excite the admiration of the ignorant audience."
Nor is scholarship enough. From Solomon to Burke, the wisest men have been the saddest of men. The Scottish physician who ordered his secretary to select from his library all the books upon medicine and surgery that were printed prior to 1880 and sell them, tells us how futile is the pursuit of wisdom and how rapidly the systems of to-day become the cast-off garments of to-morrow. Nor must the perfect man represent power and wealth alone, for "the wealth of Croesus cannot bring sleep to the sick man tossing upon his silken couch, and all the Alexanders and Napoleons have shed bitter tears, conquering or conquered." He who is merchant or scholar or ruler, and only that, climbs his pillar like Simeon Stylites.
All such know not that the world itself is a pillar all too small for the soul to stand upon. This life-chase after bubbles, this fighting for trifles, this pursuit of false grails, reminds us of the story of that Grecian boy lured to his death by the enchantress. Going into the palace garden to pluck a rose, the youth beheld the form of a young girl standing in the edge of the glimmering woods. With soft words and sweet, she called him. Forgetting his dear ones in the palace, the youth ran after his enchantress. Along a pathway of flowers she danced before him, sometimes sweeping the strings of her harp, sometimes singing, and shaking her curls at his haste, ever shooting arrows from her eyes, yet ever just eluding his embrace. On and on she led him into the bog, that covered his garments with mud, through the thorns and brambles that tore his white skin, over rocks steep and sharp. Ever and anon the youth stopped to pluck the thorns from his hands and bind up his bleeding feet; then, gathering his torn purple about him, he plunged on, in the hope of drinking at last the sweet cup of her sorcery. When, at the end of the day, the desire of his heart was given him, the illusion fell away, for the youth embraced not a beautiful maiden, but an old hag, who had led him into the desert to a hut whose stones were darkness and whose walls were confusion.
As the term genius includes all those forms of culture termed poetry, music, eloquence, leadership, so love is a term that includes all those shapes of human welfare known as education, refinement, liberty, happiness. Properly defined, love is that exalted state of mind and heart when reason is luminous, when judgment and imagination glow under its influence just as the electric bulb glows under the living current. There are three possible states and moods under which the mind may fulfill its functions. There is a dull and quiescent condition when reason and judgment act, but act without fervor. Power is there, but it is latent, just as heat is in the unkindled wood lying on the grate, but the heat is hidden.
Then there is a higher mood of the mind, when, under the influence of conversation or reading, the mind emits jets and flashes of thought, through witticism or story; but this creative mood is intermittent and spasmodic. Last of all is that exalted mood when the mind glows and throbs, when reason emits thoughts, as stars blaze light; when the nimbus that overarches the brows of saints in ancient pictures literally represents the effulgence of the mind. Work done in the lower moods is called mediocre; work done by the mind in the second stage is associated with talent, but when, through birth or ancestry, the mind works ever in regnant and supernal moods, it is called genius. Affirming that all minds rise into this higher mood at intervals, we may also affirm that all the best work in literature or art or commerce has been wrought during these exalted states when love for the work in hand has rendered the mind luminous and crystalline.
It was love of nature that lent Wordsworth his power to divine nature's secret. When the poet approached Chamouni and the mountains that gird it round he tells us he was conscious of a shivering from head to foot, with mingled awe and fear; his mind glowed with an indescribable pleasure; his body thrilled as if in the presence of a disembodied spirit; his heart approached nature with an intensity of joy comparable only to that joy which Dante felt when approaching Beatrice. But when the cares of this world gained upon him and the love of nature faded gradually away in the manner described by him in his "Intimations of Immortality," then also his power to describe nature faded away. For only when the heart loves can intellect do great work.
His biographer tells us that when Angelo grew old and blind he was accustomed to ask his servant to lead him to the torso of Phidias. Passing his hands slowly over the broken marble, the sculptor entered into the thought of the great Grecian, and with love for his art glowing in his face and thrilling in his voice, he mused aloud upon the genius of Phidias. Love of his art made all his days bright and all his moons honeymoons. When Wyatt Eaton, the artist, was in Millet's home he noticed that when the wife called the artist from his task to his noonday meal, the artist's whole being had so gathered itself into the eye that there was no life left with which to hear. Love lent genius skill. No other sentiment is so universal or so powerful in its influence as love that energizes the mind and heart. Love lent swiftness to the feet of Sir Galahad; lent his heart courage; lent his sword victory. Entering the palace, love, said Cicero, "makes gold shine." Love for the birds lent fame to Audubon; just as love for the bees lent fortune to Huber. Love of knowledge hived all the wisdom in the libraries; love of beauty adorned all the galleries; love of service organized all the philanthropies. To-morrow, at the behest of love, and in the interests of dear ones at home, all the wheels will begin to revolve; all the trains go out and all the ships come in. When a man of real force and worth passes upward into that high state of purity and sweet reasonableness called love, he becomes almost sacred and exhales an ineffable and mysterious atmosphere. Great is the power of trade; wonderful the influence of fortune and force; marvelous the hundred instrumentalities and institutions of society, but above all of them is man, whose love can indeed "make riches splendid," whose wisdom love can make mellow, whose strength love can make gentle, whose defeats love can turn into victories. In that hour one hundred men dwell in one man.
Love also perfects morality and fulfills all ethical laws. What health is to the body, what sweetness is to the lark's song, what perfume is to the rose, that morality is to culture and character. Drunkenness and gluttony have not more power to blear the eye than immorality to degrade the soul. When Homer tells us that Ulysses escaped unharmed from the enchanted palace, but suffered injury from his unfaithfulness to a friend, the poet wishes us to know that it is easier to recover from the poison of Circe's cup than to escape the effect of disobedience to the laws of God.
Fortunately nature is so organized as to keep the consequences of ill-doing ever before man's eyes. Disobeying the law of fire man is burned; disobeying the law of steam man is scalded; disobeying the law of honor friends avert their faces, or the door of the jail closes behind the wrongdoer. So few are these laws and so simple that they could not be plainer were they emblazoned upon the sky as an ever-present scroll. There is the law of reverence. Conscious of vastness and sublimity, in the presence of mountains, man, frail, ignorant, passing swiftly to his grave, is asked to bow his head in the presence of the Eternal One.