THE STEPS OF LIFE

BY CARL HILTY

THE STEPS OF LIFE

Further Essays on Happiness

BY
CARL HILTY
PROFESSOR OF CONSTITUTIONAL LAW
IN THE UNIVERSITY OF BERN

TRANSLATED BY MELVIN BRANDOW
MINISTER OF THE CHURCH OF OUR FATHER
IN LANCASTER, PENNSYLVANIA

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
FRANCIS GREENWOOD PEABODY
PROFESSOR OF CHRISTIAN MORALS IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY

NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN CO.
LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd. 1907

COPYRIGHT, 1907, BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published January, 1907.
Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing & Co.—Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

INTRODUCTION

The welcome offered to the translation of Professor Hilty’s “Happiness” amply justifies the translation of a second series of his essays. The same notes of tranquil reflection and keen observation, which have drawn to the earlier volumes many readers both in Europe and America, are here struck again. Professor Hilty is not a preacher, and his essays are not sermons. He is a professor of Constitutional Law, and the studies of life which these volumes represent are products of his leisure hours, wrought out of his meditation and experience. Sin and sorrow, culture and courage, a just judgment of others, a rational optimism, and a simple Christian faith—these are the “Steps of Life” up which this wise teacher mounts, and which he invites thoughtful readers to climb. Laurence Oliphant is reported to have said that what England in the nineteenth century most needed was “a spiritually minded man of the world”—a man, that is to say, who could live in the world without being subdued to that he worked in, a man who could survey and judge his world with the sanity and insight of the spiritual mind. Professor Hilty in a very exceptional degree meets this test. His vocation is among the institutions of the political world. His last professional treatise dealt with the history of the Referendum in mediæval Switzerland. When in these Essays he approaches the problems of other professions, such as those of theology or Biblical criticism, it is as an amateur, who satisfies himself with conclusions which must appear to many minds untenable. It is, however, precisely this unprofessional character of his reflections which gives them their importance. Here is a learned man, whose business is with other studies, and who has known much both of public honor and of private affliction, who refreshes and consoles himself with the observation and interpretation of life, and surveys the shifting landscape of human experience from the height of a responsive mind and a chastened will. It is the testimony of a spiritually minded man of the world.

There are signs enough at the present time that the spirit of the age is dominated by the creed of commercialism and materialism; and there are writers enough who deplore this movement of events and who prophesy social disasters; but something good may be believed of a generation which is so ready to welcome books like Professor Hilty’s. It may be true, as has been cleverly said, that many people like to read about the “Simple Life” who have not the least idea of practising it; but the inclination to such literature may be more reasonably traced to a more serious cause. It indicates a survival, beneath the boisterous prosperity of the time, of the instincts of idealism, which still create in great numbers of persons a profound dissatisfaction with the commercial tests of happiness and success. Never was a generation less contented than ours with itself,—less satiated or tranquil in spirit. Increase of wealth has brought with it increase of restlessness; outward prosperity has induced nervous prostration; expansion of opportunity has created expansion of desire. The fundamental problems of sin and sorrow have become all the more baffling and mysterious as the superficial problems of subsistence and livelihood have been solved. At such a time it is not surprising that thoughtful minds turn eagerly to any teacher who speaks with confidence of the realities of idealism, who faces experience with a serene hope, and who points out the “Steps of Life” which lead toward the things which are unseen and eternal. To such readers Professor Hilty has already brought courage and faith, and they will gladly accept his further guidance.

FRANCIS G. PEABODY.

Harvard University, December, 1906.

CONTENTS

I. SIN AND SORROW

I. SIN AND SORROW

ALTHOUGH the Way to Happiness is ever plain and open to all, yet not all who have seen it succeed in really finding it. Like poor Pliable in the “Pilgrim’s Progress,” they turn back when once they have fallen into the Slough of Despond; and it is they, and not those who have never tried it, who give the narrow path to genuine happiness the poor repute it has with so-called realists.

Such deserters are often highly gifted and, at first, earnest; and they are by no means always lacking in the courage needed to seek the truth and for its sake to give up the enticing illusions of life. But on the very threshold of that better life which alone brings peace stand two dark figures, like the guardians at the mouth of Hell in the “Paradise Lost”; and before them even the stoutest heart trembles, and they let no man by who has not first had it out with them.

What stands in the way of our happiness is a twofold terrible reality known to every one who has lived beyond the first half-unconscious age of childhood—Sin and Sorrow. To be set free from these is the true motive in all men’s strivings after happiness; no philosophy, no religion, no economics, no politics, that is not essentially directed to this end.

Of these two great antagonists, with which every man has to engage in hard conflict, the first is Sin. It begins early in life, for the most part earlier than sorrow, earlier even than the common expression of “the innocence of childhood” implies. “Ye lead us into life amain, ye let poor man all sinful grow, and then abandon him to pain;” thus Goethe accuses the “heavenly powers,” really meaning, however, an inexorable fate which, in his view, dominates human existence, and against which neither Promethean revolt avails nor the attempt (more common since his day) to deny the existence of sin altogether. In every man there lives a relentlessly real feeling that duty and sin do exist, and that sin not merely follows transgression, but is lodged within it and must pour its consequences with mathematical certainty upon the head of the guilty one, unless averted by some means or other; and that can be by no mere philosophical train of reasoning.

Try (if you would be so bold) by mere negation to declare yourself free from these realities, rooted like granite in all human existence! Notwithstanding your resolution, there is, all the same, in every action of yours, yes, in every thought, a right way, and if you do not pursue it, then it is a sin. Or rather do not try; it is a reef on which millions have already gone to pieces, and on which you will go to pieces, too. “Beyond all Good and Evil” is a place not to be found on earth outside the mad-house, where many men, often highly gifted, are shut up to-day; not merely by chance, for the human spirit sinks into madness whenever, in all earnestness, it seeks to disregard these truths in its own life.

I am quite well aware that this does not “explain” the feeling of duty and sin; besides, it is a matter of indifference to man’s welfare how this feeling is to be explained, whether as a superstition handed down for many generations, or as a belief wholly in accord with reason. Even if it be a superstition, the champion has not yet been found who is able to set humanity free from a nightmare which has burdened it from the beginning of time; the isolated, weak attempts to do so have for the most part fallen out very unhappily for those who undertook them. A man who, with clear, unclouded brow, openly denies duty and sin, and, though boldly believing he may do anything he pleases, has yet gone through his whole life glad-heartedly, with the certainty of his inner conviction unruffled—such a man we should first like to see, before we believe in him. And though such a man were to be found, he would stand alone and would be incomprehensible to all other men, so differently constituted.

Duty and sin become wholly intelligible only when we recognize a personal, extra-mundane God from whose will this inner law proceeds; while the so-called “immanence” of God is but another name for atheism or pantheism. To be sure, it would be idle to desire a reasoned explanation of the transcendental God; everything transcendental by its very nature escapes our comprehension, and for this reason the so-called “proofs” of the existence of God have no power to convince the human understanding. Nor do they seem as yet ever to have convinced any one who did not first want to be. In so far, therefore, atheism has a certain right to declare itself not convinced; but it is itself just as little in a position to prove that its own system is in any way reasonable, or to solve the doubts which that system generates. Therefore so long as humanity abides, the matter will perhaps stand simply at this, that one can not prove there is a God, but just as little, if God indeed exists, can one remove him out of the account of his own life by a mere denial. The decisive question of all questions for every man (but always a question) will be: whether he shall attempt such a denial and be able to attain the inward peace he expects therefrom, or whether he shall acknowledge as binding the categorical demand of the oldest divine revelation, “I am the Lord thy God, and thou shalt have no other gods before me.”

The willing recognition of this demand (which in its second half already comprehends all morality) by a man who has come to full deliberation over himself and his life-purpose,—this it is that first brings him out of a thoroughly ineffectual revolt against a divine order he can not change by his thoughts alone, on into the possibility of a harmony with himself and the surrounding world. And besides, the whole history of humanity is nothing else than the gradual unfolding of such a free will of the nations toward the will of God. Whoever denies this, and lives up to his denial, acts against his own welfare and the end for which he was destined, as well as against the good of mankind; and this state of war against God and man, as well as against one’s own life, is very likely the cause that calls forth the feeling of sin. There is no other and better explanation for it, in my opinion.

Moreover, what Evil really is and exactly what Christ understood by the prayer for deliverance from it will, as long as we live on earth, remain just as obscure to us as what God is. We only know, and from experience alone, that we can yield ourselves into its power, and further, that it possesses no other power over us than we ourselves grant it. This especially comes to pass through our disobedience to what is true and through the preponderance of the sensual, animal life over the spiritual. Every more finely organized man feels this forthwith through a gradually increasing physical discomfort from which nothing else than a turn-about shall free him. And likewise, the spirit of truth in a man or a book, in a whole household or people, one recognizes as something beneficent, while the spirit of falsehood he feels to be something unhealthy and poisonous, like bad air in a room, to which one can, to be sure, accustom oneself, if one desires. A man can, of course, try to dismiss all this matter from his thoughts; he has perfect freedom of will to do so. But whether it will let him alone is quite another and more important question.

We neither can nor will, therefore, dispute with those who assert they have never harbored any feeling of sin; we can not look into their souls. We only reply that they would in that case find themselves in an extreme minority and really at the stage of evolution of the animals; for these also have no feeling of moral obligation and therefore no sin, but everything is permitted them that their natural impulse demands. If, on the other hand, such men possess the feeling of sin only now and then even, still it must be said it is not explicable in any other way than from the standpoint of a moral order of the world which we can not change and contrary to which we may not behave, nor even think.

We turn now to those who acknowledge all this. For them the problem is to find a way of release from a burden which is by far the most unendurable of all earthly burdens.

The first thing to say to them is this: Do not let sin get the least foothold in your life; you must and can not do otherwise. For what afterward becomes a crushing actuality is at first, for the most part, merely a fleeting thought, an arrow from one knows not whence, shot into the unoccupied soul. And if it lingers there, if it is not at once thrust forth while it is still easy, then there soon arises an evil propensity, upon which mostly follows, first the clouding of the moral consciousness, and at last the deed. After the deed comes often enough a despair that hopes for no salvation more; or what has happened is now for the first time justified before oneself with materialistic philosophy: in either case the death of the true spiritual life.

But unfortunately this counsel to “resist the beginnings” is only a very theoretical one, and they who have the bold faith of being able always to do this from a voluntary disposition toward the good, and by their own strength, will, in the course of their own life and in their observation of others, be compelled bit by bit to lessen altogether too far the demands they make of human kind. This is the especial weakness of the noble Kantian philosophy. A grievous passage through some Valley of Humiliation, or an abatement in the clear vision of his moral consciousness inevitably comes upon the man who, at first, believed he was able, with uplifted head and without any help from without, to tread the Path of Virtue without wandering from the way.

Therefore the second counsel is more important for man as he is actually constituted: Free thyself at any cost from every sin thou bearest, if thou wouldst arrive at happiness. This way passes the unerring road; just as, in Purgatory, Dante could enter the portal of salvation only by passing the grave angel guardian sitting upon the diamond threshold with naked sword. There is no other way to set your soul truly free. Goethe, it is true, has tried in the second part of “Faust” to discover a kind of natural salvation from sin; and this, in fact, has remained the path which many, still to-day, are seeking out: namely, the noble enjoyment of nature, which at least now and then can silence the accusing voices within; with art and the charm of the beautiful, wherein many perceive at once the consummation and the expiation of material man; or finally, action, a share in the work of civilization, which is to uplift the depressed heart and to delude itself with the applause of the multitude, at least for the moment. But, alongside all this, nevertheless, sin remains inexorably standing, a melancholy fact; and even the great poet was unable to set it aside in any credible way. A divine love that receives a man to its bosom even though he be not repentant, but, on the contrary, persists to the last moment in defiantly living out his life in his own way—a divine love of this sort is a mere picture of the fancy, an arbitrary poetical invention, against which even Goethe’s Promethean soul was obliged, for its own honor, to protest with the last breath of the body.

Yet even repentance does not alone release from sin, but there must be a trustful turning of the soul to God, whose mighty arm of mercy (as Manfred says in Dante’s great poem) receives all that turn to it; and it will not be prevented from doing so, even by an authoritative decree of a church.

And in this regard the greatness of the sin is no matter. What is great and small in human sin anyway, weighed, not according to human notions and the penal law-books, but in the eye of a judge who knows all and metes a perfect justice?

Whoever finds within himself the courage to appeal to His mercy has already received it in all essentials, for the disfavor of God consists mainly in the “judgment of obduracy,” a judgment which lets the offender remain unbroken and defiant until his end, and prevents him from calling upon this mercy.

Our churches, to be sure, have in a measure widely strayed from this simple way of atonement and affirm a very much more positive manner of salvation from sin, either through outward works, or at least through definite dogmatic conceptions of reconciliation with God.

In the first case, we hold that all outward works of penitence, as well as all “good works,” are valueless unless they spring spontaneously from the inner turning to God. Even then they are never meritorious although helpful and pacifying. The essential thing in “repentance” (a great matter, whose import, however, we have almost lost) is not the sorrow of regret, which rather, often enough, merely “worketh death,” but on the one hand, the complete turning of the will toward a change of life, and on the other hand, the conviction that, for this purpose, we stand in need of another power than our own, a power without which the will itself often enough remains only a “good intention.”

Quite intelligible, therefore, at least for the Christian churches and their sincere adherents, is the appeal to the help of Christ as the Saviour sent into the world by God himself, and who for that very reason may not be ignored. But the oppressed soul does not, therefore, need an extensive “Christology”; indeed, there is really no Christology that is trustworthy, but God alone knows the nature of this Saviour and the mystery of salvation through him. All that men have spoken and written about it for two centuries now has been condemned to unfruitfulness and has given real comfort to no one, although human error in these matters, if held in good faith, has probably of itself never caused any one to be lost. Only by the practical but unfailing road of experience, then, will you learn that a simple “Lord, help me,” coming from the very depths of the heart, shall open a way that, to all your philosophy, to all your submission to church, to all your severest works of penitence, had remained closed as with tenfold iron doors. This barricade is opened for you by the one great, unconditioned word of the gospel: “Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.”

Whether you are to confess to men besides, and what reparation you have to make to them, is to be determined only after you have experienced this salvation, after you have taken the Hand that lifts you out of the unstable floods of uncertainty and anxiety, and sets you upon the firm ground of faith. Before, it is quite to no purpose; rather, this is just the obstacle which keeps far the most men from any confession of repentance—which has perhaps to take place before a third person, on whom one then fears to stand, his life long, in spiritual dependence. But very possibly you will feel yourself called to go to a man for confession; for in addition to its transcendental side Christianity is, after all, a human brotherhood also. And this will be especially the case when pride is in your soul. In that event there enters, perhaps, the psychological necessity of a humbling before men also, not alone before God; and the actual expression of forgiveness, by a man called thereto by God, contains for many men a quieting influence that they can not find in a mere thought-process, real as it may be.

If, then, you know such a man, if you feel this inner summons, if you can resolve to speak to him with entire sincerity as before God himself, and if you are willing to accept his directions without reservations, then simply go quietly to him; in so doing, it is possible you are attaining to a greater advance in the inner life, and in shorter time than otherwise. But if even a single one of these presuppositions is wanting, then such a confession will profit you nothing at all. And if you should make of it a merely human transaction, out of regard to an existing ecclesiastical form, or in order thereby to show honor to another, then you dishonor what is most hallowed, and bring upon yourself, and upon him you honor, the greatest harm.

And make up your mind to escape now, while it is still time and while the summons still comes to you, no matter through whom or in what way; whether through a voice within or a voice from without, whether by chance or of set purpose, whether through sermon, or book, or newspaper, or any other instrumentality. The Book of Job asserts as a fact of experience that the summons comes to every one “twice or thrice”:

“Lo, all these things doth God work,

Twice, yea, thrice with a man,

To bring back his soul from the pit,

That he may be enlightened with the light of the living.”

But as a rule the summons has an outward semblance no more striking than that of any other communication. Much more than upon its form and manner it depends upon this: that it touch in the innermost heart of man a string still sensitive to this tone, struck from another key than one’s ordinary life and thought.

And so, if the summons shall come to you once more, then arouse yourself, but at once, where you are and as you are, in business, on the street, in society, even in the theatre or in any other place; delay for not one minute the resolution to strike every sin out of your life. Then everything will become easier and clearer; that gloomy spirit and those false conceptions, which are simply the direct consequence of sin itself, will leave you, and a day will come at last when you also can say: “Now am I become, in God’s sight, a soul that findeth peace.”

II

If you should ask men which of these two great evils, sin and sorrow, they had rather see banished from their life, the majority, we fear, would choose to see sorrow banished. But wrongly; for not only is sin very often the basal cause of sorrow, but it is also comparatively easy to bear heavy sorrow if no feeling of guilt is bound up with it. On the contrary, even in the midst of grief one often feels a closer nearness to God that beatifies the human heart in its inmost depths; one feels, too, the truth of the saying that the spirit of man can be joyous even in distress. And so, beyond all doubt, the greatest of evils is sin; and in this fact lies, what is very often overlooked, a tremendous equalizing force in human conditions, which in this respect know no distinction between rich and poor.

On the other hand, to be sure, the relation of the two evils to each other is, not rarely, an inverted one: the first impulse to sin comes sometimes from sorrow, the tormenting anxiety how to get through life, the conviction, in troubled moments almost forcing itself upon us, that one will not be able to carry through the hard struggle for existence if one is too painfully scrupulous, if one may not use a little dishonesty, deception, and force, “just as everybody else does, and as seems unfortunately to be inevitable, you know, in human affairs.” Without this conviction many men would be upright who now think they can not be. This is really a superstition which to-day almost seems to be more prevalent than ever, and to destroy it should be one of the chief concerns of the Christianity of our time. Christianity was also much concerned therewith in the days of its beginnings, when it gave not merely the counsel but the command, “not to be anxious,” giving at the same time a very positive direction as to how the command might be carried out: “Seek ye first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.”

But this counsel, of course, presupposes trust in God; without this, it is of no value. An unconquerable anxiety is, therefore, in most cases evidence of a secret atheism. Among the most remarkable of the many remarkable things of this life is this: that so many of the very wisest people voluntarily submit to this punishment, their whole life through, when they could have things so much better. For God is faithful, a rock on which one may rely; this is the one thing we most surely know of him, the one thing we can most easily ourselves experience. But faithfulness is in its nature reciprocal, and our own faithfulness consists far less in any sort of acts or confessions than in the resolute shutting out of all distrust every time it would approach us in the manifold difficulties and injustices of this life.

To be sure, complete confidence in the possibility of a release from sorrows through trust in God comes to be a certainty only through experience; but there is, in the Bible and in countless later writings and in many human lives, such a mass of assurances and experiences of trustworthy men, and on the other hand, there are, before our eyes, so many obvious examples of the impossibility of any other release from sorrow, that we may fittingly ask: Why is there so great an aversion to making this experience? Why, when men are tormented with sorrow, often to the point of despair, why do they not at least make trial of this, instead of seeking death? The reason, perhaps, is mostly this: they do not want to be dependent on God; they had much rather put dependence on pitiless men. Indeed, the assurances of the Bible may be appropriated in their literal, full meaning only by the man who has sought no alien help beside, nor any human help at all before he has first sought God’s. But how many are there to-day who do that? So long as the sun of fortune shines for them, they believe in their “lucky star” with a kind of ludicrous or sacrilegious fatalism, and therewith a secret fear often takes them unawares; for “happiness of this kind needs many supports, while the happiness of those at one with the will of God has need of but one.” But when once they have misfortune and no human aid to ward it off, they go all to pieces and fall into the manifold “nervous affections” of our time, into sleeplessness and ceaseless unrest, and these bring them to the numberless sanitariums, for the most part vainly; for “the sorrow of the world worketh death,” and against that no nerve specialist nor hydropathy avails.

It is certain that there is a way of release from continuous sorrow; it must be just as certain that single and even frequent sorrows belong to the necessary events of our life. There can be no human life without sorrows; but to live with sorrows, yes, with many sorrows, yet free from sorrow’s burden, that is the art of life toward which we are being trained. It is, therefore, an everyday experience that men who have too few sorrows buy themselves some; for riches, which in the view of most men are meant to release one from anxiety, are not fitted to do that; they are “deceitfulness,” as Christ himself calls them, and his warnings against them, which we are wont to take so lightly, are surely not there for merely “decorative effect.”

We must have sorrows, and for three substantial reasons: in the first place, in order not to become arrogant and frivolous; sorrows are the weight in the clock, to regulate its proper movement; misfortune is really in most cases the only means of salvation for those who are not on the right way. In the second place, to enable us to have fellow-feeling with others; people who are too well nourished and free from customary sorrows easily become egotists, who at last not merely have compassion for pale faces no longer, but regard them as a kind of offence, a disturbing element in their ease; they may go so far as to feel downright hatred for them. And finally, because sorrows alone effectively teach us to trust in God and seek his aid; for the granting of prayer and the consequent release from sorrow is the only convincing proof of God, and likewise the test of the truth of Christianity to which Christ himself challenges us. Therefore the evil days are good; without them, most men would never come at all to the soberer thoughts.

Furthermore, the deliverances from sorrow, the triumphal days when a man beholds a mountain-load rolled away, belong to undoubtedly the purest moments of happiness in life, moments that God must grant to his own, if he is truly merciful to them. Spurgeon, therefore, rightly says, in one of his finest sermons, that if we truly trust God, he is, in the beginning, better than our fears, then better than our hopes, and finally better than our wishes. For his people, sorrow always lasts only so long as it still has a task to fulfil on their behalf.

If one wished to put the truth a little paradoxically, then one might, with frank directness, say to many a man who is forever complaining of all sorts of little things, to whom much in the world is not right, neither weather, nor politics, nor social relations, “You have too few cares; make yourself some, care for others who have too many; then you will no longer have any of that sickly, discontented disposition, or at least will no longer give so much heed to what now makes you unhappy.” People in particular who have a spiritual calling should never wish themselves freedom from sorrow, for then they can never effectively speak with others who have sorrows; nay, in most cases they can not really understand them.

And so we repeat: incessant sorrow there must not be; from such there is a way of escape; if you will not use it, then bear your sorrow as a punishment therefor. But of occasional troubles you must accept a generous share with good grace and overcome them through the power of your spirit and will.

And now we come to the various human remedies for sorrow.

The best is Patience and Courage. “Whoever,” says Bishop Sailer, “is able to submit to God in every hour of darkness will soon see the morning light again arise; for his submission is the cock-crow that heralds and greets the coming day.” And indeed it is a fact remarkably true to experience, how often all difficulty vanishes as soon as we have taken a stand in regard to it, as soon as we have actually shouldered it. Our very best possessions we really possess only when we were once in our life compelled to give them up. Besides, it is easy to notice, from our own experience, that even our judgment of things that befall us is often wrong at first. Again and again we discover that what was apparently unpropitious and injurious has later revealed itself as advantageous, and that, on the other hand, so-called lucky events have turned out to be of uncommonly little use, if not actually harmful. And so, one is very sensible if he can suspend his judgment in times of anxiety; and still more help can many a time be gained from the thought that all trouble is always borne merely from moment to moment, and that the next moment will bring a change, or at least new strength. Very often trouble lasts, in its full force, no longer than three days; those one may easily undertake to endure. The real burden of unhappiness consists in the notion that it is going to last an unlimited while; this is merely a delusion of the fancy.

But there are still some minor remedies besides, or at least palliatives, and it is well worth the pains for one to review them quietly and get a clear conception of them; for what is said in the second part of “Faust” is only too true, that if sorrow but breathes upon us, she makes us blind.

The first and most efficacious of these remedies is Work, not merely for its immediate results, but because it busies the mind and keeps it from useless brooding over things that perhaps never come at all; for a great part of sorrow consists of unfounded fear. Work gives courage, and it gives momentary forgetfulness in a legitimate way, as unwarranted and pernicious “distractions” and drink do not. It is the only true, permissible, and beneficent Lethe-draught of the modern world.

The second means, which can, of course, be used only by those to whom God is a living Personality and not merely an idea, is Prayer—indeed, to pray to God first of all before one speaks with men. Spurgeon says, perhaps truly, that herein lies hidden also the secret of success with men—that is, the art of speaking rightly with men, through whom God then sends help in a practical way. But we do not wish to write a treatise here on prayer. Suffice it to say that, in prayer, faith is necessary on the one hand, and on the other, that the man should turn to God with his whole will, with all his spiritual power concentrated upon a single point. The result, in any case, is power; and, besides the experience of more frequent aid, there follows the conclusion, entirely logical, that if God bestows on man the greatest of life’s blessings, he will not refuse him those minor ones also, which serve only for the preservation of life. There would really be no sense in bringing a man so far on his way as to begin to lead an upright life, and then to let him die of hunger. The expression, so often heard, that there are no longer any miracles in these days, is most certainly untrue. No one can bind a living God to “natural laws.”

Without doubt, however, it often happens that one must wait for the prayer’s fulfilment, must at times, indeed, stand knocking for a long while; or the prayer may never be fulfilled at all. But then, in the first case, perhaps even this waiting is the right answer to the prayer (as, to be sure, one mostly discovers only later); and in the other case, you perhaps receive something better than you yourself had chosen.

A third means, chiefly availing in financial anxieties, is Contentment, pleasure in simple things. From this, the men of our day have wandered far; and, for many, an ever-heightening enjoyment passes for the only true purpose of life, and a certain measure of luxury is regarded as a requirement and a symbol of culture. It will be necessary for men to return once more to simplicity in their mode of living and to a voluntary renunciation of the philosophy of pleasure, if they are to banish sorrow, and often still worse from their life. Praying for pleasure nothing avails; it is not for the needs of luxury that God is to be had, but for daily bread.

In close relation to contentment stand two other great remedies against sorrow. The first is a wise Frugality. This goes hand in hand, indeed, only with honest acquisition; what is unjustly acquired is seldom wisely saved, and, according to a true proverb, rarely descends to the third heir. In such cases, therefore, frugality is of no use. Frugality can also, in other cases, be actually harmful. Excessive calculation, and anxiety extending to the smallest minutiæ of expenditure, leads to needless care, and almost as many people come to spiritual ruin through this as through heedless improvidence. And so, the blessing (or curse) that rests on the actions of men has a manifest relation to the observance of the moral commandments. If it were not so, it would be truly enigmatical how so many thousands of honest men get through life without property or sure income. They themselves would be least of all in a position to explain it.

There is one more remedy against financial anxiety, and that, strange to say, is systematic Giving. This the ancient prophets of Israel already knew; in our day it has lately assumed prominence again, especially through George Müller and Spurgeon. Whether the amount to be laid aside for this purpose should be the tenth part of one’s income would seem a matter of complete indifference; but a definite part it must be; and it should never be allowed to remain a matter of mere intentions, which the natural avarice of men will always find ways of evading. In this way a man oftentimes acquires his first inclination toward caring for his poor fellow-men, while otherwise they appear to him only too often as troublesome claimants for something that rightly belongs to himself alone or that he has need of for himself and for his own. But when a man possesses such a fund, no longer belonging to himself, then he looks around more freely to see where he may put the money to good use; then at times he even anticipates the appeal of the tongue when he sees the mute appeal of the eye. This single habit, universally adopted, would help solve the social question more than all the talking and scribbling with which the world now resounds, for the most part vainly.

A stoical remedy we will finally name, because, when all the others have first been tried, in most cases it is no longer necessary. It consists in picturing to ourselves the worst that could happen. And, in fact, this does afford a certain consolation, at least for him who is able to make use of it; others, on the contrary, can be led by this path, and without any need for it, to despair.

Nevertheless, all this does not always bring immediate help. The Spirit of Sorrow often falls upon one like an armed man (especially in sleepless nights), and leaves him no time for instant resistance. In that case, the first step is to discover the cause. If it is sin, it must be at once set right. If there is no definite cause present, or if it is of a physical nature, then withstand it by physical remedies, such as sleep, fresh air, exercise, or by work; never by mere “distractions,” for afterward the trouble returns with doubled power. Often a good quotation will strengthen, such as: “Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, these may forget; yet will I not forget thee. Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands.”

If the cause of sorrow is some trouble actually present, and not one feared in the future, then perhaps the following thought will help: We must bear what God lays upon us; and we must, with all our power of will, hold fast the conviction that nothing can possibly happen without his permission and that all is measured in accord with our strength, whose actual resources we often do not know ourselves. These two thoughts, then, are provisionally our support; whoever gives up this support is like a man who clings to a rope over an abyss and lets go the rope. There is no call to be overstoical; we may give vent to our sorrow, only not at all to ourselves and but sparingly to others; and we should then take some action in accordance with our reason, though not in accordance with that alone,—nor always at once, while it is still troubled with excitement. With these presuppositions, one can endure much.

It is quite possible that at times even this does not seem rightly to avail. In that case, these are the periods of life when the genuine steel of character is to be formed, that otherwise may not be brought to pass. Then at least make the attempt simply to hold out for a short time longer,—for a month, a week, three days, or even only for a single day. Not rarely at the end of such a term you are stronger than at its beginning, and frequently experience shows it to be the case that from the very moment one is preparing himself for the apparently inevitable, and no longer seeks or expects any human aid, at that very moment relief is already coming. The suffering has then just fulfilled its purpose.

In conclusion, only one thing more: we know very well how people, in the hours of their heaviest struggles with sorrow, can lose faith in every ground of consolation and look upon such grounds as unsatisfying, or as the empty talk of people who have themselves suffered nothing like. That may be true, or again it may not. But, in case you think it is, nevertheless try to bear, for the glory of God, what you will and can no longer endure for your own sake or for the sake of those near to you. “When you are driven almost to despair,” says Spurgeon, “and are tempted to lay violent hands upon yourself or to do some other rash and evil deed, do nothing of the kind, but trust yourself to your God; that will bring him more glory than seraphim and cherubim can give. To believe the promise of God, when you are ill, or sad, or near to death—that it is to glorify God.” This “giving God the glory,” or “praising the Lord,” or “hallowing his name,” is one of the many expressions of the Bible which have now quite vanished from our real comprehension and have become an empty phrase. To render glory to God on earth and still to live for him though one would otherwise be glad to dispense with life, that is the highest of all life’s resignations; and he to whom this duty is finally intrusted is not to make complaint, but to be ashamed if it come to one unwilling to accept it. But if it has come to a man who has something of the heroic in his nature, then by its means he will, for the first time, develop the possibilities that lay dormant within him; and the feeling of a larger and surer nearness to God will then, in the bitterest hours of his life, so lift him above himself that these very hours will seem to his after-memory as the most beautiful—as those, indeed, to which he owes all his real happiness in life.

Sin and sorrow cling close together in human life; therefore they are also displayed here before the reader as an associated hindrance on the way to happiness.

The first step, as a rule, must be to banish sin from life; only then may one seriously think of getting rid of sorrow. For the only true freedom from sorrow lies not in a man’s natural disposition, nor is it the product of happy outward surroundings of any sort; true freedom from sorrow is found in that higher happiness, painfully won, to which Job was led, after his earlier happiness, dependent upon fortuitous things, had been done away. To this happiness, henceforth secure, we all without exception should attain and can attain, just as soon as we have fought through the gates at which the guardians Sin and Sorrow stand.

II. “COMFORT YE MY PEOPLE”

II. “COMFORT YE MY PEOPLE”

MANY who are distressed over the manifold evils of our time (but do not themselves have to suffer any too keenly under them) comfort themselves and others in the end with a verse from one of the hymns of Paul Gerhardt:

“The upper hand God holdeth, and maketh all things well.”

I do not know whether the poet put so strong a stress upon the words “all things” as we are wont to do, but thus much I certainly do know, that Christianity shows scant favor to an optimism of this sort; all things will not be well in the end in spite of human folly and baseness; but, until the consummation of all things human, good and evil, justice and injustice, will continue to exist side by side as Jesus, in the parable of the wheat and the tares, has clearly said once for all.

No, the idealism of Christianity is something quite other than a shallow optimism; it is much rather a strong faith that everything genuinely good, however slight compared to the tremendous power and might of the forces arrayed against it, never can be crushed by them, but ever maintains itself victorious against its foes. That is the comfort to be given its followers, a comfort that will take from them the fear of losing poise in the midst of the merciless actualities of daily experience; and that is the real meaning of many a Bible word too often explained in the sense of striving after earthly power and splendor; and that, too, is the meaning of some of the finest and most familiar hymns from the fighting days of the Reformation, such as that hymn of Luther, “A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never-failing.”

On the other hand, the power of what Christianity calls “the world” is very great, and all the elements that make up that power, from the lofty pretension of some distinguished atheistic philosophy all the way down to the basest instinct of the most brutal selfishness, form an extremely close alliance. And the human heart, now overdaring, now overtimid, is so uncertain that even into the life of those who work most effectively for the good, come hours when they despair, not of their task only, but even of their whole manner of thinking, a despair that once and again God must dispel with a “Be not afraid, but speak.”

If we look upon life from God’s standpoint, instead of our own as we had rather do, we see it is not a matter of purely and simply making his people happy. No, first of all they are to be made fearless, for all right living is a life of battling, not of unruffled peace; but of battling without fear, of warring in a good cause and under sure guidance with that heroism which is the highest of all human qualities and the best of all earthly joys.

This is that never-ending conflict between good and evil which every single human being must fight out in his own life, although the final issue is reached only at the end of all things and in a manner to us unknown. “On the advance post of a man’s individual experience the question is the same as in the great battle of the hosts, namely this: whether a faith that is anchored in God is not the highest of moral forces, able to overcome the ever-present power of evil, especially the fundamental sin of self-seeking; for if the victory is gained at the advance post, it may be gained all along the line.” Perhaps this is truer than we know, or ever experience on earth. That there is no higher power in the world than comes from association with God, every single human life must by trial discover. But for that very reason such association must be sought of one’s own free will, and of one’s own free will always cling to; and that makes the problem of life.

In order to gain, in this warfare, a spirit of joy quite different from the moroseness and half-despair of many Christians, the means closest at hand is this: to try to battle, not according to our own ideas, but, as in military service, punctiliously as commanded. Such means, however, is external; there is an inner basis for the right spirit of joy, without which that joy can not be enduring, and that inner basis is the abiding of God in the heart. When all opposition to God disappears, then appears the real joy of living and the great consolation he gives on earth. This peace with God, which in time may even grow, as it were, into an enduring and genuine friendship, the human soul must experience, else it shall not know what inward happiness is. And outward happiness is only the easy sequence of the inward; God gladly does nothing but good to men as soon as he finds it possible.

Here, also, lies the real cause of the philosophical atheism that makes up the religion of many excellent people, who suppose they can not think otherwise, though they would gladly like to. A man’s simple logic will tell him that it is not consistent to say one believes in God, and yet not allow God to dwell in him and rule him absolutely; and it is a noble trait of many doubters that they do not dare to serve God with mere phrases, but they see that if once he should be taken up into the account of life, he would be a “consuming fire” for much that exists in their lives, for much that they would be obliged to give up, but do not want to give up. Faith is a matter, not of the reason, but of the human will; and the difficulty lies in just this resolution to serve God, with all its consequences—a resolution the man himself must make, for no divine mercy can wholly take its place.

The principal things a man must surrender, if God is to be able to dwell in him, are pleasure, riches, glory, and reliance upon men. On the other hand, when this renunciation has once been made, more and more there disappear within him, of themselves, fear, anger, unrest, and the tormenting feeling of weakness, all of them the sure inheritance and distinguishing mark of the godless. This is the road, and they who think they can squeeze around this sharp corner with a few philosophical considerations, or with an occasional cry of “Lord, Lord,” will likely be the most deceived at last.

Fear is perhaps the most distressing, the most unworthy, yet the most unavoidable of all human feelings; for life is a battle, and the fear that naturally arises in the presence of battle no man can banish; he can but subdue it by uplifting his point of view. Whether this can be done through the ancient Stoic or the modern Kantian philosophy, we will leave to one side; I have no intention of making any one dissatisfied with these paths. But I do wish to say that there is a surer and shorter path, requiring less education and strength of character, and open, not merely to an aristocracy of philosophical culture, but to every one. If this had not been so, if Christianity had not lifted the poor and the humble up out of the dust, a “gentry morality” would long ago have come into exclusive mastery in the world, as it was in a fair way of doing at the time Christianity was born.

In our day there are two common conceptions of Christianity, both of them overpassing the mark: one of them makes of it a sentimental lamblike bliss that finds its pleasurable sensations solely “in Christ”; the other considers it a fearful vale of tears, an unending succession of trials and sorrows. But Christianity is not so; its path is really much easier than any other; for it not only demands, it also creates, brave people—brave people who, free from complaining, free from overmuch seeking of even rightful pleasures, free from any cowardly flight from the world, in the very midst of the world hold up unshaken the banner of righteousness and never despair of its victory.

This is the spirit that we most need to-day; and this is the sure mark of a genuine Christian. If we will, we can be wholly without fear, not only before the forces of nature, which all stand in God’s higher power, but also before the cares of daily life, and before men, who may do nothing hostile without God’s permission. Firmly to trust in God in all he does or allows, even if one is ill, or troubled, or almost in despair of any good outcome of a matter, that it is to serve God; and in comparison with this, all your other church “services” possess a distinctly subordinate worth. And so Luther, too, himself endowed with this bravery in high degree, says thus: “The reason knows no means of making the heart contented and trustful, in those times of need when all the good things the world can give shall fail. But when Christ comes, the outward adversities, indeed, he lets remain, but the personality he strengthens; he makes the weak heart unterrified, and the trembling heart he makes bold; and he turns the restless conscience into one that is peaceful and still. And, therefore, such a man is comforted, courageous, and joyous in those very matters in which all the world else stands terrified; that is, in death, in terror for sin, and in all the times of need when the world can no longer help with its good things and its consolations. Then there will be a real and lasting peace, ever enduring and invincible so long as the heart shall hold to Christ.”

Then add to this that God is faithful and lets no one be tried beyond his strength; yes, even before the greatest of physical and moral dangers he often holds his hands over our eyes, so that we see them only when past.

To be sure, all this is inconceivable to those who have not themselves experienced in evil days that even in misfortune’s blackest hour a calm, bright, yes, even blithe spirit can yet abide deep within the heart inclined to God; and men of such experience, therefore, often endure incredible things, and then, at the slightest gleam of the sun, quickly again lift themselves up anew, bodily and spiritually strengthened from within; while other men are submerged in the waters.

It can not be denied, however, that we learn a right courage only by degrees and in days of sorrow; and it is generally only through such days that we attain to the right conception of life and grow into a larger mould. So true is this that perhaps no human being of any real worth has ever yet gone through life without many sorrows, sorrows that the Scriptures often and quite rightly compare to a refining fire that can be made thoroughly hot only when there is much precious metal present; but then it brings all the gold within a man to light. He who is not willing to suffer renounces the greatest gifts of God, and rests satisfied with smaller things, needlessly: for even in the greatest trouble he has no need to fear; so long as he does fear, there is still within him something wrong that must out.

With fear, anger also disappears; and anger in most cases is only fear in disguise. The angry are not courageous, they are afraid; you may nearly always count upon that with entire certainty. For example, the restless zealots and agitators who think their mission is to save Christianity from its death-bed through the might of their zeal and hate—such “wrathful saints” are but a kindred variety with those timid, sweetish people who are forever accommodating themselves to things, particularly to things that are grand and aristocratic; for the demeanor of both these classes springs from the one same source, their fear.

But what most distresses men, often even those who are well advanced on the road of the Christian life, is the feeling of a constantly recurring weakness such as we know from the epistles of the bravest of all the apostles, and such as each one of us indeed knows from his own experience; with this almost universal singularity, that such spells of weakness are often wont to come on when quite unlooked for, and sometimes just after the best days of the inner life; and then they can bow down the soul to a genuine despair.

As to this, the first thing to say, for the comfort of those thus bowed down, is that whatever is strong and powerful in the world always bears within it I know not what of rough and undivine. This we may ourselves observe in the case of men of exuberant force; involuntarily, we never have, concerning them, the feeling that they especially please God. Christianity, we may be sure, is in no way planned upon the model of such giants and demi-gods.

Besides, it is not hard to perceive the educative purpose in this feeling of weakness. Pride and its sister vanity can be torn out, root and branch, only after a long-unbroken succession of hard buffetings has issued in a deep and lasting humility. Through this purgatory, from end to end, the proud and the vain must pass at some time in their lives, if anything is to be made of them. For “though the Lord be high, yet hath he respect unto the lowly; but the proud he knoweth afar off;” to the proud he assuredly never comes nigh. If, then, this sense of weakness is concerned with spiritual growth itself, there is surely no reason that we should be disheartened. Rather, it is a consolation, in such inner doubts over the weakness of our faith, that when the Galatians had slipped back into an unspiritual and petty conception of religion, the Apostle Paul could, nevertheless, assure them, “Ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.” So long as one’s faith has not entirely ceased, this time of weakness is only a transient phase, and often bears more fruit than more resplendent days do. And finally, the weakness may actually become a source of strength; the feeling of one’s own power, flattering as it may be to one’s pride, is rather a hindrance than a furtherance in the path of true inner progress, and the most courageous men are not they who have the greatest confidence in themselves, but they who have sure recourse to a power that far transcends all powers.

When once this inward courage finds place in a well-tried man, then an unassailable peace and joy, as the Scriptures promise, enter into the soul till now often tossed by the waves of anguish and at times indeed entirely bereft of hope. But henceforth it “shall dwell in a peaceable habitation, and in sure dwellings, and in quiet resting places.”

A good life, quite purged of dross, is surely the highest of all things attainable; yet, to those who are “comforted,” it is just this that springs from an existence full, indeed, of ever-changing joys and sorrows, but where no joy estranges one from God and no sorrow any longer breeds impatience, for both joy and sorrow are received from the same hand, as are the sunshine and the rain; and thankfully, for both are inseparable elements in life. And their lives henceforth bear blessing to others.

But, as far as compatible with the true well-being of a man guided by God, his outward happiness also is far higher, and stands upon a surer basis than is possible in any other conception of life. Yes, for such a man all things again and again work together for good, even when he has suffered seeming failure.

Such are the asseverations of the Bible; and are we to think that they were meant only for the human beings of an age long vanished? Or may we also apply them to our own use still to-day? Surely we may, if the God of that day is still the God of this; and that is but a matter of test.

And we may hope it will, more commonly than hitherto, be put to the test again, when all other attempts to regain a calm contentment and a cheerful, healthy spirit of labor have suffered wreck, and when a nervous humanity longs for real tranquillity again, and craves some better bulwark against the increasing weariness of existence than a merely materialistic conception of life affords. Then will religion—and without any external compelling Authority, which can never again in any manner be reëstablished—then will religion regain anew its place in the life of the nations; whereas, now, it has often become nothing but a pleasant play upon the feelings of leisurely or (in a worldly sense) happy people, while to such as really need it to deliver them in distress and sorrow, it is, through prejudice, closed.

Many of these latter, however, and perhaps at no very distant day, will come to these old water-springs, now all but choked with rubbish; though such an idea is far enough from their thoughts as yet. But, wheresoever they may have tried, nowhere else can they still their thirst for a tranquil philosophy of life. For what the old chronicler said of Israel is true to-day: “The days will arise when there shall be no true God, no law, and no priest to show the way; and in those times there shall be no peace to him that goes out, nor to him that comes in; for there will be great vexations upon all the inhabitants of the earth; nation will break nation, and city city, and God will vex them with all adversity.”

But as for you, you who find yourself upon the sure path of salvation and peace, “be comforted, be strong, let not your hands be slack: for your work shall be rewarded.”

III. ON THE KNOWLEDGE OF MEN

III. ON THE KNOWLEDGE OF MEN

PERHAPS no one has ever seriously doubted that the ability to know and to pass an accurate judgment on men closely concerns our practical life; but whether a knowledge of human nature brings much happiness is a question on which opinions have always differed. While some declare that we really love men only so long as we do not know them, others (like the duke in Goethe’s “Tasso”) believe that it is only so long as we do not know men that we stand in fear of them; yet Goethe himself seems partly to retreat from this conception in another expression of his, where he says that while nothing is more interesting, indeed, than to learn to know men, yet one must take care not to know oneself.

For our part, we believe at the outset that all knowledge of human nature, even one’s own, can be but superficial, and that the real depths of the soul, and especially the limits of its possibilities for good and evil, God alone can fully know. But besides this, strange as it may sound at first, the knowledge of men rests upon a basis of pessimism joined with a considerable degree of love for human kind. If any one looks upon humanity as something great and superior (not so much in promise as in actual performance), he will, if he have some measure of wisdom, find himself in the end disillusioned by his life experiences. On the other hand, it is just as much a matter of experience, with those who have known mankind most perfectly, that they (Christ himself at the head) have always been friends to humanity; for though they do not look upon man as quite free and nobly born, yet they believe him destined to freedom and nobility of life. This gives them their power to love him, in spite of his faults; yes, we may go so far as to say, on account of his faults, just for the reason that love, in this world at least, feels within it an impelling necessity to pity, to save, to do good.

To understand men, therefore, we must first make sure that we love them, and we must be, to a very considerable degree, independent of them so far as our necessities go; for there must be as great an absence of self-interest as possible on our part. Whoever desires to get much out of men for his own advantage will always be blinded by his interests, and whoever finds men necessary to himself will always fear them. But the man who wishes to do something for them rather than receive something from them, can alone really learn to know what they are, and can tolerate that knowledge, even in its worst features, without hating men; every one else, who is not a weakling, easily falls into such a hatred of human kind. A thorough judge of men, without love, would in fact be intolerable; the aversion against such persons, who assert they are judges of men but who are at the same time haters of men, is a very natural one, for it is based on a law of self-defence. And so, you are not to use your knowledge of human nature as something on which to construct the edifice of your own happiness; but it is only in order that you may be the better able to further the happiness of others that you are to desire to learn how rightly to judge them. If you have any other purpose, you will never come to any considerable attainments in this art.

The first step in the knowledge of human nature, so far as it is at all attainable, is (quite contrary to Goethe’s view) self-knowledge and self-improvement; the second step is the resolve to learn to know men for their sake and not one’s own. But even so, we are not to expect a perfect knowledge of so complicated a being as man; he does not even succeed in understanding himself, or at the best gets only a partial insight late in life; and then, too, no one individual is quite like another. Rather, we must content ourselves with a certain number of the results of experience; some of these we will try, later on, to set before the reader.

The real secret of knowing human nature lies in possessing a pure heart innocent of self-conceit; such people gradually acquire a keenness of vision that pierces all the outer wrappings. The difficulty of understanding men does not spring from the subtleties of a science of “psychology,” but only from the difficulty of forgetting one’s own self. We do not get to know men from whom we have something to hope or to fear.

Even the prophetic gift is nothing else than a direct, intense insight into human affairs,—their causes and effects. Such power resides in every man who in large measure has set himself free from himself. But self-seeking is like a veil of mist to hinder this power of vision, which would otherwise be present.

An intercourse with men that rests upon a correct judgment of them is therefore learned, not so much by frequent association with the men themselves (as many believe), as through fellowship with God. If we have this, then for the first time we begin to look upon men, both the good and the evil, more with the just eyes of God; while, without trust in Him, we must always rely more or less on men and so suffer the disillusionments that will always follow.

In men, especially of the better sort, there is furthermore a necessity that they shall worship something. Those who are not able to worship anything transcendental throw a halo of fancy about certain men, and in this self-deception not only lose all ability really to understand men, but also work harm to those they reverence—if these are yet living and are themselves poor judges of men. Wherever belief in God is lacking, hero-worship, with all its detriments to the inner and outer freedom of humanity, is unavoidable.

Every one can test this for himself. Whenever he finds himself fully at peace with God, he at once becomes more indifferent toward men in that very particular in which men are ordinarily most valued; for he no longer cares for them for the sake of gaining some advantage. Indeed, if the desire of conferring advantage upon them did not remain, he feels that he could easily do without them altogether. For this reason all ancient and mediæval monachism, as well as all modern pessimism, are always somewhat suspicious in motive; for back of them lurks, for the most part, either chagrin at not receiving, or disinclination to give. Others, too, feel that this is so and are therefore, on the whole, none too well disposed to men who thus hold aloof.

For there is nothing that men have a more instinctive discernment and a greater aversion for than for self-seeking. Even the simplest, even little children, yes, even animals, quickly find the selfish out, in spite of all the pretence with which they surround themselves. Whoever would acquire a strong influence over men must give up thoughts of self-advantage. That is the surest way. For this reason children often like grandparents more than parents, because they feel that in their love is less of self; the parents are too much wrapped up in their own concerns. Even the worst pessimists seek love, and no egotist is earnest at bottom in his praise of egotism. But they despair of men’s ability to be other than selfish, and they may be taught otherwise only by repeated deeds; the mere phrases of love have long been familiar to them, and they estimate them at about their correct value. It does no good, therefore, to speak to them much of love; that will only be misunderstood. At the most, speak of friendliness and public benevolence; it seems to be less, yet is really more.

This spirit, then, is absolutely necessary if you would live in the world without disgust at it; therefore acquire this spirit at any cost.

To understand the nature of any individual it is important to know his derivation. Women in especial follow, almost without exception, the character of their family, sons as a rule that of the mother or the mother’s father, daughters oftener the paternal side. The proverb that “the apple falls not far from its stem” indicates, therefore, a strong presumption. Only, we often do not know the derivation sufficiently well, and besides, with God’s mercy, a man can even break away from a bad ancestry. As a matter of fact, there are no “hereditary encumbrances” that can not be shaken off by God’s mercy and man’s will. The assumption of such an unalterable fate is one of the greatest sacrileges a man can make himself guilty of. On the other hand, in the same limited sense, a certain aristocratic tendency is warranted. Noteworthy individual characteristics, such as courage, proper self-confidence, a natural fearlessness of men, fineness of taste in all the matters of life, do not develop, as a rule, in the first generation after breaking the yoke of slavery and oppression; for these are largely transmitted qualities. For this reason the great pioneers of political and spiritual freedom rarely spring from the lowest stratum of the people, but from a middle stratum already trained in these things, or even, often enough, from aristocracy itself. It is, therefore, a great misfortune, almost a transgression against one’s posterity, when a highly cultured man marries below his plane of culture; for thus he takes a step back again.

In this connection, there is due to oneself and to others a certain right which parents and teachers often forget. No one can easily change his whole natural disposition; one can much more easily bring that disposition to a higher perfection in its own kind. That is to say, the phlegmatic man can attain to the noble calm of wisdom, the sanguine man to a self-sacrificing activity for others, the choleric man to a strong championship for whatever is great. A false estimate of this natural temperament, or attempts to break it, usually lead to deplorable half-results, where something complete might have been attained.

We rightly learn to understand people only in their activities, the men at their work, the women in their house affairs; best in their difficulties and sorrows, least in social intercourse, especially at hotels and summer resorts. The acquaintances made there often turn out disappointing afterward. It is, generally speaking, an unwholesome feature of human intercourse nowadays. People become acquainted with one another, and yet not acquainted, when they live and eat together day after day. One can not keep aloof altogether without appearing supercilious, and one can not be too intimate without the risk of making connections that would otherwise have been avoided.

It is easiest to know people by what they regard as their real aim in life; if this aim is power or pleasure, they are not wholly to be trusted.

In his later years, the outlines of a man’s character ordinarily come out much more clearly than in his earlier. Real piety reveals itself in the patient bearing of the manifold burdens of age, fictitious piety in impatience and in a religion that becomes more and more formal. Avarice, envy, covetousness, anger, the love of honor and praise, and even, at times, the desire of secret, sensual pleasure, come with elementary, unmistakable force to light as the ruling passions of life; and the man pronounces his own judgment in the sight of his fellows. Rarely does any one, like Augustus, carry a rôle through to the end, and even this great actor was not successful. On the other hand, no one can read Cromwell’s last prayer and think him a hypocrite, unless he is one himself.

And finally, sorrows play their part in revealing human nature. In any great sorrow the thoughts of men are disclosed. Envy comes to light to rejoice; generosity, to help; and indifference, to pass by on the other side. Whoever has had no thorough experience of this in person, does not know men. In the first part of life, when experience is still small, the greatest danger in one’s attitude to men is that of considering them of too much importance; in the second, that of becoming too indifferent to them.

There is yet another and quite different source of the knowledge of human nature, but a source not to be desired for any one not already acquainted with it; I mean the power possessed by the nervously disordered. In such cases there is a very clear physical intuition as to the kind of nature there is in other people, of whom the one may have as quieting and refreshing an influence upon the sick man as clear, cool water, while the other only excites and frets. Such is the knowledge of men the Bible ascribes to those “possessed of evil spirits.” But these are diseased conditions which ought not to be, and which should not be needlessly meddled with.

Experience has established some of the following principles in the art of reading men:

As with courtesy, so it is with a man’s probity; if it is genuine, it shows itself in his conduct in the small things. Probity in small matters springs from a moral foundation, while probity on the large scale is often only habit or prudence and gives no clew as to a man’s real character.

Vanity and the lust for honors are always a bad symptom, for both rest at bottom upon a self-condemnation which tries to supply the missing inner contentment by outward show or the approving judgment of others. Thoroughgoing pessimists are always vain. By their pessimism they give us to understand more or less clearly that they themselves would really be an exception to this base human rabble if they could count on understanding their nature.

An overmodest nature, especially if given to self-irony, is never to be trusted; in most cases a strong dose of vanity and the love of praise hides behind. Truly modest men usually speak neither good nor bad of themselves, and do not want people to concern themselves about them. Vain persons, on the other hand, by the apparently modest method of self-depreciation, often seek to draw attention to themselves, or to catch out-and-out compliments.

A kind-hearted readiness to help is the sure sign of a good character, while cruelty to animals and ridicule of men is a sure sign of a bad character.

One of the best tests of real kind-heartedness is the conduct of men in the presence of long-persisting or altogether hopeless misfortune: those who possess but little of that quality grow weary and soon abandon the unfortunate one to his fate, perhaps with the fine sentiment, “one must leave him alone with his God”; others, who with a true sympathy persevere, stand the highest test of the unselfish love of humanity. Such are ordinarily simple, poor people, while the cultured and the rich far more rarely show themselves equal to the test. This natural nobility of character, the most valuable of all the natural endowments of men, is far more generally found in the lower classes, and the “noblest of the nations” are to be sought elsewhere than where we are wont, in the usual manner of speaking, to assume them to be.

The basest human characteristic is innate faithlessness. When this is present, all the other so-called good qualities do not countervail; they but make the man the more dangerous, while faithfulness makes some expiation for the worst failings.

A sure mark of an essentially mean man is ingratitude. It sets him below the nobler animals, all of which are grateful. An especially hateful form of ingratitude is that which, in order to escape the necessity of showing gratitude, treats the acceptance of benefits as a favor shown by the receiver and therefore an honor conferred upon the giver for which he must feel under obligation. Benefits received generally make only the noble-minded thankful. Others as soon as possible seek a pretext to avoid this feeling, to them oppressive. The paying back of borrowed money, particularly, is regarded as a merit on their part for which the creditor owes them lifelong gratitude.

In the correct estimation of men, the most important consideration is the caliber they possess. But caliber can not be given a man even by the best of education and the highest of culture. Caliber is a gift of nature; a baby cat will never become a lion, similar as they may at first appear to be. The caliber present in a man can be but enlarged, not changed, through the great happenings of life, through severe sorrows, or through a very good environment, particularly if one have faithful and very well-disposed friends, or if one make the right marriage. We must, therefore, be careful not to wrong men by rating them too high and so requiring too much of them; it is not in their power to do it, but after their fashion, perhaps, they may be good, faithful men, on whom we may count for something, and who often accomplish more than they would if they imagined themselves to be of more consequence than they are.

We must never seek for an intimate personal knowledge of the people to whom we want to surrender ourselves unconditionally, or to whom we intend to remain unconditionally hostile; for in both instances we shall become easily disconcerted by finding characteristics in them which will contradict our preconceived opinions. For a like reason, one ought to learn to know one’s enemies in person, and on the other hand, not to see one’s friends too often.

A man’s reputation is not absolutely determinative in forming an estimate of him. Men of note, especially, are often different from what we had fancied them to be. On the whole, however, the public judgment passed on a man seldom goes altogether astray and is a very important factor in making up our estimate. In particular, there is no such thing as a complete misappreciation of a good man all his life through. The public judgment as to men who are much exposed to such judgment is generally subject, indeed, to continual fluctuation, like the surface of water, but it, nevertheless, has the tendency (not to be deflected) of ever returning again to its proper level. In the case of all good men, we can count on their having an aristocratic nature. Democracy is correct, as a political conviction, but as an ingrained characteristic it has no worth.

Men who are fundamentally good we learn best to know in their time of trouble, for then the possibilities that lie within them come more clearly to light; but men of mediocre worth we learn best to know in their time of prosperity and by their manner of enjoying pleasures.

All who hate men on principle are themselves egotists. On the other hand, it is certainly a matter of experience that we do have disillusionments even as to the best men, and as to educated people even more than simple folk. As a general thing, one should not put absolute trust in men, and the best and most trustworthy friendships are those which have either sprung from a previous enmity, or have been once (but not twice) broken off. For then alone does one see the shadow side of his friend, and so can henceforth discount it. On the other hand, a frequent vacillation between friendship and hostility is a mark of a weak character.

That we learn to know our real friends only in time of need, and that we should quietly let those go who are then unfaithful, is a truth almost too trifling to be once more expressed.

Why it is that, when misfortune comes, we suddenly possess friends so startlingly few, is to be explained psychologically thus: the less generous natures are afraid they will be obliged to give actual help, while the more generous often think they see the impossibility of rendering any help at all and are ashamed, wrongly, to offer only sympathy. In many cases even very well-wishing men fall into the mistake of Job’s friends and involuntarily assume that every misfortune is more or less one’s own fault, so that pity must be tempered by censure and admonitions. Then the more thoughtless ones speak out their mind, while men of finer feelings rather draw back, so as not to be obliged to do it.

And all this is still oftener true in the case of relatives.

To be envied is a very disagreeable thing to have accompany one through life, and it usually ceases only toward life’s end. But it is, for all persons of real consequence, a very necessary protection against too great a veneration on the part of others. Such veneration would do much more harm if it were unmixed with envy. And it is generally of little value. A dram of real friendship is worth much more than a whole wagon-load of veneration.

One great rule for finding out men is this: give yourself out to be frankly just what you are; above all, frankly hate wrong things on principle, and let no opportunity of showing it pass by. Then men will show their own cards more openly to you. Public personages, in particular, must in their whole life be clear as glass and transparent as crystal, so that men may see everything without reserve.

In general, as to good qualities, men like best to speak of those they do not possess; while, as to evil qualities, the proverb speaks truly: “With what the heart is full, with that the mouth runs over.” People who take pleasure in speaking often of impure things and the dangers of the world in this regard, although they may do so with the most earnest show of disapprobation, always feel a strong secret inclination thereto. Others, whose every third word is “benevolence” and “good works,” have to struggle with a disposition toward avarice or covetousness. The worst are those who are forever talking of “uprightness” and “loyalty.”

Most fanatics for some specialty have become such because they knew very well in the beginning that without such a heightening of their feeling they would not persevere in it. In most cases, therefore, they are not wholly sincere.

It is one of the best signs for a man if humble people feel confidence and good-will toward him—little children, above all, but also simple-hearted poor folks, and even animals. The man whom children and animals can not endure is not to be trusted. Women, too, are good judges—that is, if they themselves are good; otherwise they are just the opposite. To be much with unpretending people contributes greatly to one’s contentment with life. All great pessimists have despised them, yet have found no satisfaction in the people of more importance whose companionship they have sought.

Pessimism and the detestation of one’s fellow-men, when displayed by young people, point (if they are not merely talking for effect) to irregular habits of living. But they who keep their youth clean have a source of unfailing delight in life.

We are not upright because men praise us; we are upright if we receive the praise of God. Any one who has ever experienced this will also know that, however unreliable and cheap the praise of men may be, it always makes us a little proud and leads us away from the truth, but the praise of God never has any such result. Of pious people who are proud the assertion can quite safely be made that God has never praised them; they praise themselves and let others praise them.

Pride is always mixed with a portion of stupidity. Vanity makes us ridiculous to people, but not odious; pride, on the other hand, so works upon others as to call out defiance mingled with contempt. As the proverb says, pride always goes immediately before a fall. When a man becomes proud, he has lost his game, and it may be safely counted on that he is approaching a downfall. As soon as God forsakes us, our own heart is lifted up.

On the other hand, the faults which have become clear to ourselves and which have bred humility within us are often not so very perceptible to others. They no longer put themselves so noticeably in evidence as do the faults we will not or can not yet see. This is the first striking reward of battling against oneself.

Every one stands in need of straight-forward but kindly criticism. This is the reason progress is made by the simple people who, when they make a mistake, are censured and admonished by everybody, without any beating around the bush; while people of higher standing, after their school years are over, seldom have the advantage of being judiciously censured. Even their critics often only wish to show them how important and indispensable they are to them, and attack some minor defeat of little moment one way or the other.

It is an important thing to acquire the art of speaking of one’s own doings in a quiet and matter-of-fact manner, if, indeed, they have to be spoken of at all. It usually happens that some men show themselves too vain of their accomplishments, and thereby arouse open or secret opposition; while others speak of them with a certain off-hand disparagement, as much as to say that they have plenty more in stock. It is the best way to speak of one’s performances as little as possible, and, in any case, never to introduce the subject oneself. Vanity is always recognized, even by the simplest. The only sure means of not passing for a vain man is—not to be vain.

If a young man is forward or even only very confident, if there is not a little of shyness about him, he has a defective character and little real merit; or at least he has ripened very early and will develop no further. The widespread prepossession that, without plenty of assurance, one can not get through the world is incorrect, unless one is thinking of momentary success.

A very suspicious, at any rate imprudent, propensity of many people is that of being the bearers of bad news. The motives, indeed, may be very different; but in most cases there is mingled with it a kind of self-elevation which takes pleasure in seeing others deeply shaken and humbled, an ungenerous feeling that often comes very near to being malice. This is instinctively felt on the other side, and something of the unpleasant remembrance is ever afterward associated with the one who caused it.

Those persons are of no worth who have never been broken by a great sorrow or by a thorough humiliation of their self-esteem. They retain something small, or arrogantly self-righteous, or unkind about them which, in spite of their probity (which they ordinarily think a great deal of), makes them disagreeable to God and man.

One must always be on one’s guard before people who do not have a kindly nature. A natural disposition to maliciousness is very hard to be overcome. It shows itself most easily in a tendency to making sport of others.

It is an uncommonly pleasant thing, on the other hand, to have to do with people who make their fellow-men feel comfortable in their presence, who are always even-tempered, always friendly and ready to help, never nervously unquiet or intrusive, rejoicing in the welfare of others, sympathetic and consolatory in trouble. This does not necessitate a clever mind; on the contrary, the very clever people often lack just this quality, which, for the first time, would make all their other qualities really useful and valuable.

At ordinary times it is very difficult to recognize real bravery. Yet there is one unfailing sign. Brave people never enter a fight with arrogance and are less afraid after a defeat than after a victory, since every victory works some injustice to the opposing side; while cowards show themselves arrogant after every victory. As to this characteristic, a man best learns to know himself in his dreams. There he sees himself as he is, being beyond the control of a better will that does not depend upon merely physical and mental emotions.

A crafty shrewdness always lowers a man in our regard. We think of the possibility of its being used against us. Therefore, as a proverb says, “all foxes come to be skinned at last.” No one likes them, and in the long run they lose their game.

Every man should perfect his own national type. When a man no longer knows to which nation he belongs, he becomes an unedifying phenomenon. Therefore dwellers on the border are often vacillating in their nature, and polyglot speech is, as a rule, a mark neither of genius nor of character. The most questionable people are those who mingle different languages in a single sentence and who lack education besides.

Not very much, on the whole, is to be learned from the external features of a man; the science of physiognomy is a deceptive one, generally speaking. Yet a strong development of the lower part of the face as contrasted with the upper, an insignificant chin, expressionless eyes, an ever uneasy glance of the eye, and a habit of speaking very loud in the case of women, portend nothing favorable. Happily, these latter are never able to imitate the expression of innocence.

The wide diffusion of photography has been very injurious for the knowledge of human nature, since they usually make the photograph a deceptive portrait, and one who sees it is, therefore, favorably prepossessed.

As to human efficiency, it mostly depends upon a certain confidence a man has with his contemporaries. God alone can give this, and, as a rule, it appears late, in the case of men of real note. All the stones must first be rejected by the builders before they can become the head of the corner. This is the only right course for a man’s life to take, and no sort of exertion can supply its place.

With men of original qualities one usually goes through three stages of acquaintanceship. In the first stage, they please one absolutely; in the second, they rather repel, on account of the angularities and singularities of all sorts in their nature; in the third, however, the whole man again pleases. But in the case of more ordinary men, one’s first impression is slight, the second is often better, on account of various good individual qualities, but the final impression, again, is unsatisfying. Take it all in all, one may perhaps say that the first impression one has of a man, provided one is himself quite unprejudiced, is the right one.

Hardest of all it is to read human nature from the point of view of religion. It is easiest to do so along the lines of the first epistle of John, the first six verses of the fourth chapter, and the first five verses of the fifth chapter. But, along with this, we must not exclude a certain human excellence which rests upon philosophical culture, or upon great sagacity and experience of life. All piety must make one more friendly, or it is not genuine.

Who are to be preferred, the nice people who are not religious, or the religious people (and there are really such) who are not (at least not always) nice? I am afraid this is the point where our view does not always coincide with God’s. (Luke v. 32.)

To do things on generous lines often seems, especially to the man still young, easier than to do things along the lines of duty. Well, then, do so at first. But when you can once do the one, then you must learn to do the other also, else your life remains beautiful—but incomplete.

The visitation of sins unto the third and fourth generation may be regarded from this point of view: that for so long a period God is yet laboring with these generations. The worst that can happen to men is not this visitation, but that God may leave them henceforth quite to their own way and will. For the wicked, visitation is, therefore, always a tender of amnesty, but lasting good fortune means rejection.

A temperament always equable, somewhat cool but not selfish, and sympathetic and friendly to every one, is perhaps the happiest if one wishes to be generally liked. Such men pass for especially amiable people and are universally esteemed, without their often contributing anything important and solid to the advance of the world. There are actually people, therefore, who assume this manner from policy. But whether these amiable people have not, after all, buried their talent, is another question.

That intercourse with men which is the art of life is necessarily based, if it is to be brought under rational rules at all, upon a correct knowledge of men. For whoever voluntarily seeks the companionship of men whom he knows to be bad or false is, with all his knowledge of human nature, a fool and a suicide besides. In this point we have departed widely from the conceptions of our grandfathers; human intercourse has to-day become much less sentimental and much more serious than a hundred years ago. In this matter the ever-recurring question whether the men are by nature good or bad is beside the mark. As a matter of fact, men have the disposition to be both, and it is our concern, therefore, as Paul says, not to be overcome of the evil we can not avoid meeting, but to overcome evil with good.

If one does not always keep this before his eyes as a fundamental rule of life, then all intercourse with the bad and weak (which is never to be wholly evaded) will be, for men of the better sort, an evil that may lead at last to a contempt for humanity and a desire for isolation, or else to an indifference toward all true principles. Here, also, there are a number of maxims taught by experience, whose observation will make one’s intercourse with men at least more easy. They are as follows:

One gets into the best relations with men, on the whole, if he feels a simple, natural, sincere friendliness toward every one he meets, in much the same manner as unspoiled children do before they have experienced the meanness of men. This manner, after many painful experiences, can be again acquired,—at least at a certain period in later life which may then be called, in this good sense, a second childhood. When one has this attitude, it may even happen that he treats evil men as if good, as they could be if they would, and as, in their better moments, they would really like to be. And the result is that these men forget their evil nature for a time and feel better and happier. That, and not “the destruction of the wicked,” is a true man’s greatest victory in this world.

At the same time it must not be forgotten that one should not put too great stress upon a man’s behavior at the moment; for every one can tell from his own experience how easily our moods alter, and how changeable and uncertain our judgments of others are, so long as the heart has not yet become constant in kindness.

All lasting human relationships rest upon reciprocity. We must never be willing only to receive, nor must we ever be willing only to give; that always ends in dissatisfaction.

The opportunity of rendering great favors to men is not very frequent. On the other hand, one can quietly do any one some small pleasure, though it be nothing more than a friendly greeting to light up, like a sunbeam, some lonely and joyless existence. We should not begin a day of our life without proposing to ourselves to make use of every opportunity in this way. This friendliness is merely a matter of habit that even men essentially kind-hearted now and then do not have, to their great loss.

Quite ordinary natures, of course, understand only fear, not love. As soon as they no longer fear, they become forward and intractable. For these the proverb holds good: “Be always kind, yet not too kindly; else the wolves will quickly grow bold.” For others, however, the proverb is not true. On the other hand, real kindness is the ripest fruit of a well-lived life.

Many men, by doing things in a large style, wish to compel their fellow-men to recognize it. But they seldom succeed, since the other man marks this purpose; and after all, egotism (though of a somewhat different kind than usual) hides behind. They would attain their goal far better if they paid less heed to outward show and did things more quietly.

Many people who are really good-hearted at bottom have a way of always finding something to blame or demur to even in matters that fall in with their wishes. Thus they bring it about that other persons, hearing only their “No, no,” prefer the company of more easy-going, if also more unprincipled, people of the world. Nor should one always be contradicting men, even where they are in the wrong; silence often accomplishes more and does not embitter. Now and then their assertions are not wholly in earnest, but if they experience opposition, then they become fortified in their notions and say something that they can no longer retract. But if one ought to contradict for the truth’s sake, then a single contradiction is enough; when opinions are once acknowledged and firmly fixed, continued disputation about them is entirely fruitless.

“Whoever wishes to have his opinion find approval should express it coldly and without passion,” says Schopenhauer, if I am not mistaken. The word “coldly” is somewhat too strong; but to parler sans accent, that is, to speak in the positive and not always in the superlative degree, is a good custom.

Of one’s neighbor one should—so St. Maddalena dei Pazzi tells us—“speak as little as possible, for one begins with good things, but usually ends up with bad things. Our neighbor is a glass that easily breaks if we take it into our hands too often.”

It is a great art in human intercourse to be able to show friendly opposition on occasion. We should, among other things, give our reasons—not merely for convenience simply say No, but try to convince the other with good arguments rather than be dictatorial. All men see, in such an appeal to their understanding, a proof of respect which gratifies them and often quite reconciles them to the negative outcome.

A suspension of judgment is often very useful. With a “We will consider it,” or “Let us think it over,” good-will is shown for the time being, while the decision is put off; and with that, often enough, the whole matter is discharged. The other man will in the mean time change his mind; or the matter will seem to him of less importance; while, at the moment, his desire was his very kingdom of heaven.

But all this does not apply in things indubitably wrong. Then we must not give rise to the conception that we might finally be able to come to an agreement in the matter or regard it as at least feasible; but on the contrary, we must “resist the beginnings.”

The most unfortunate method of all is to yield in an unfriendly spirit; by so doing we lose the game twice over. But with weak men this is the usual course; they wish to hide their weakness by a little blustering and scolding.

In matters of indifference (and they are infinitely many), we must always do the will of others; that makes living easy and brings good friends without any attending difficulties.

With dependent people it is best to be short, but always friendly and good-mannered, if they themselves know their place; otherwise “parcere subjectis et debellare superbos.”

It is always difficult to know how to conduct oneself rightly toward very wealthy or very distinguished people; for to be with them means either a kind of dependent relationship, or a constant watchfulness against receiving favors that is inconsistent with real friendship. Real friendship gladly gives and gladly receives, without keeping any account. Besides, wealth and distinction very often make men insensible to life’s true riches, and limit them in their views of men and life.

It is not pleasant to have to do with people who do not think out their own problems, but are always seeking advice and never following it. One should especially avoid lightly advising one to marry or not to marry, nor should one ever express his opinion to authors about their yet unpublished works. It is very hard, too, to fellowship with those who are “persecuted by fate,” and have no conception of their own failings. Christ himself on one occasion curtly dismissed such a man, who wished to make him a “judge and a divider.”

Those who are always reflecting over themselves or others, likewise make companions in whom is no reliance nor peace. They are always vain, besides weak and forever vacillating in their judgment of others, as well as in their estimation of themselves. They love no one, not always themselves even, and are loved by no one. Shun them.

Against naïvely shameless people there are three kinds of self-defence: roughness, which, however, is somewhat lowering; coldness, which is not human and leaves a reproach on the conscience; and humor. The last alone shows true superiority.

Selfish men who have quite lost the sense of shame have a way, when they want something of another man, of insinuating to him that it will be for his own advantage, so that they may be exempt from showing gratitude or from resting under any other obligation in return. This is something one must not, even tacitly, ignore, but first set the matter quietly upon its proper footing, if he intends to respond to the request.

Should one always give to those who beg? I believe, generally speaking, yes; the commands of Christianity in this regard are too positive; in most cases the question is rather “How much?” and this depends upon the good-will of the giver. One should at least turn beggars away in a friendly spirit; a kind word is also a gift and many a time of more real value than a small bit of money. But that is something to be learnt, and is really a very great art.

To give cheerfully is, on the other hand, partly a habit. Children ought to be accustomed to it from childhood, instead of being one-sidedly trained to mere frugality, as more commonly happens. They should be frugal as regards themselves, but not as regards others.

An outward expedient is to carry no purse; it is easier to thrust the hand into the pocket than to open a purse.

Very much that is not the proper thing in human intercourse springs from simple inertness toward the good, or from a desire for personal comfort.

Many men, whom everybody knows by sight and praises, are quiet and tolerably dutiful—egotists,—whose ways one must not follow.

The really noble men, the aristocracy of the spirit as opposed to this mere bourgeoisie, have always, on the other hand, found enemies.

Perhaps the most useful, though by no means the pleasantest, intercourse is with our enemies; not only because they are often future friends, but especially because we receive from them, more than from any other, a candid disclosure as to our own faults and a strong impulse to amend them; because, too, they possess, on the whole, the truest judgment as to the weak points of a man’s nature. Finally, we also learn, simply by living under their sharp eyes, how to know and practise the important virtues of self-control, of a strict love for the right, and of a constant attention to oneself.

That is, therefore, a foolish expression (which is often used with intent to praise) when it is said of a man, perhaps in an obituary notice, that “he had no enemies.” A man of the right sort does not go through life without making enemies; but it is a fine thing, of course, if at the end of his life he no longer has any.

By this I do not mean to imply that this intercourse with enemies is an easy matter; on the contrary, it belongs to the most difficult tasks of a rightly conducted life. It is particularly hard to endure a long series of injustices which seem to have success on their side. Here comes the need of faith in a just God, who can employ even the wicked as his instruments, but can hold them so firmly in hand that they may go no farther than he wills. Otherwise we should not go through these things without harm. Surely no one who has learned to know himself will make the assertion that he is already a past-master in this art.

Trust in God is the first essential; after that, the best means for acquiring this art is seriously to resolve that we will, as much as possible, avoid useless anger, and take care not to judge our opponents unjustly; and in any case never to allow real hatred to settle in the soul. This can easily be done at the very first moment of the affront; it is harder later, when hate is once established in the heart. It is very helpful, besides, to fix clearly in mind, from the beginning, that we absolutely must forgive, even to “seventy times seven.” This thought makes it much easier to determine from the outset to keep collected, and thus we are better disposed to shut out hatred from the start.

Here are some other helpful considerations:

The truth is not always victorious on this earth; that is, not the truth as it is embodied in a man, mixed with all his weaknesses and errors; for which very reason it is impossible for it always to conquer. But God is victorious, and nothing happens against his will; this alone is the true consolation when enemies assault us.

The enemies God sends a man he also takes away, as soon as they have fulfilled their purpose. “When a man’s ways please the Lord, then he sets even his enemies at peace with him.” That is a very sure sign that one stands in God’s grace.

It is much better to forget the evil one receives than to forgive it. It is easy for a remnant of bitterness to cling about forgiveness, or a kind of haughtiness, a kind of holding oneself superior to offenders “beneath one’s notice.”

Bearing a grudge, feeling resentment, taking things ill is always a mark of a rather small nature. Better take revenge; impotent hate is quite worthless and injures only yourself, not your adversary.

In the criticisms made by one’s enemies there is in most cases a grain of truth, though put in a light too sharp and one-sided. Therefore it is always well to listen to an enemy’s criticisms, but not to rate them too high nor to feel them too keenly. Above all, one should never let them impose upon him; that is always a mistake.

That men speak evil of us is hard, but it preserves us, as Thomas à Kempis says, “from the magic mist of vainglory,” and compels us to seek God, who knows our innermost heart, as our witness and judge. Then for the first time he becomes indispensable and fast bound to us.

Such a passage through ignominy is therefore especially needful for men who afterward are to bear great honors without harm.

One may accordingly be induced not to hate his enemies, not merely through motives of religion, but also through motives of prudence; for enemies not only often become friends later, but one is likewise indebted to them for very many correct views; on the other hand, those who at first are very amiable often speak a different language later on. Those who oppose one in important matters are always particularly easy to come to terms with; for they are people who have serious scruples and are open to reason. The indifferent, who interpose no objections, but also do not listen, are far more dangerous opponents.

The right programme for one’s demeanor toward enemies is not, generally speaking, that they must be crushed (as would be quite impossible in most cases), but that they are to be reconciled. Whoever keeps this constantly before his eyes will never hate too violently and will suffer much to pass by in silence that discussion would make only worse.

Wherever possible, then, we must deal with our enemies in our best and calmest frame of mind; for if we are inwardly ruffled, we are also much more inclined to an unfavorable and unjust judgment of others. Nor should we lower ourselves before them in order to gain their good-will; that seldom succeeds. Many men, many nations in fact, will not at all tolerate too much kindness.

Thus it is a great point of prudence not to come frequently, and never unnecessarily, into the company of those who are radically opposed to our conception of life. For we either suffer some loss in character, or there results a widening of the chasm.

But what, then, is there left for us to hate? or are we to explain everything away? I am far from asserting that. There is still enough left in the world worth hating, and with this, war can and must be waged. Above all, there is the spirit of being bad on principle, the spirit that purposely contends against the spirit of God, and that persecutes the good because it is good and endeavors to overthrow it. To this spirit give your vigorous and outspoken hate, wherever and in whatever form it appears; but in most cases it dies out in the men who embody it, in the third or fourth generation at the very latest. Very often it changes, in their descendants, to the opposite spirit of good.

To give help to evil men of this stripe, or to stand “impartially” between them and good men, instead of standing by the latter in every such conflict, is a serious fault that will be avenged on every one who is guilty of it.

A very difficult chapter to write is that on companionship with women, for they are the instruments of both the best and the worst that can be awakened in a man: on the one hand, unbridled self-gratification and alienation from all that is higher and nobler, qualities which they awaken especially in young people and which are the chief cause of the downfall of entire nations; on the other hand, a most efficacious uplift away from a man’s natural tendencies, to a wholly different, freer, and better conception of life. Most critics of women accordingly err in speaking of them as of a uniform mass similar in character, while, on the contrary, in this part of humanity there is a far more marked division into two distinct classes, and a much more constant retention and transmission of good as well as bad characteristics.

In a very peculiar passage of the Old Testament the same distinction is made, even in that very early stage of humanity, between the “sons of God” and the “daughters of men,” who are not lacking in outward charm, indeed, but through their very charms become a curse.

This difference in women is still to be found in our day, and so the first counsel is this: Have no unnecessary association with the “daughters of men” and guard against every closer alliance with them, no matter what may be sung by the poets, for they themselves are often led astray by just this peculiar charm of women.

In other respects, however, the difference between women and men would not be so great if their education and especially their legal position were more alike, and toward this the politics and pedagogy of to-day are striving. Christianity at any rate makes no distinction, and even the Old Testament already knows of women (even married ones) who filled the highest state offices, not of hereditary right as to-day, forsooth, but solely by virtue of their own worth, of the spirit which dwelt within. The “spirit of God” can surely dwell in every human being, and this is the thing that decides, and not the structure of the body.

Women are in general more easy to understand than men. They deceive no man for long, in the sense that he really holds the bad in them for good, but only in the sense that he prefers the bad to the good because of its sensual charm, in the false hope that this charm may be a lasting and happy one. For women, therefore, there is surely but one means of lastingly appearing to be something that they desire; and that is, to be it. Yet it is harder, though by so much the more meritorious, for them to be spiritual, good, and noble, since, instead of reaping recognition for it, they are often obliged to see exactly the opposite qualities valued and sought. A truly noble woman, therefore, stands on a higher level of moral perfection than the best man.

Furthermore, what is generally true of humanity is especially applicable to women, that those who have not experienced trouble, but have only been fed upon the pleasures of life, remain superficial and mediocre. With women the latter experience is found in even special measure, because their whole present training, in the so-called cultured circles, tends to give them the impression that a finer enjoyment of life is the real aim of their existence.

From this conception of life there results a naïve and thoughtless egotism which conceives the whole world to be only a beautiful meadow, where the women have all the flowers to gather to adorn themselves with and to please themselves with. In this egotism they often far surpass men in selfishness; the more amiable outer side of this naïveté may not blind us to this.

The character of women can very well be judged from their treatment of flowers. A girl that on her walk pulls as many flowers as possible for herself and has no desire to leave any behind for others has a tendency to greediness and pleasure-seeking. A lady who, after looking at a beautiful flower or bouquet for a short time, will permit it to lie and wither, instead of putting it in water or of making some poor child happy with it, has no warm heart. But if she pulls flowers quite to pieces, she will some day no less unconcernedly deal with men who have put their trust in her.

It is naturally still worse with the hearts of those tender creatures who with their fingers crush a harmless gnat sunning itself at the window, or purposely tread upon a little worm or beetle crawling over their path. It is well to keep oneself at a good distance from them. Likewise from all those who wear conspicuous dresses; the clothing of a true lady should never attract attention, either by being too striking or too plain.

Women do rightly, on the whole, when they act with warmth and feeling; they are rarely fitted for a merely intellectual companionship, and those who are, are not very lovable, as a rule, and have no inward peace. Even a very clever woman brings unqualified happiness only to a man at least as clever, and she is herself never happy if she has the constant feeling that she far surpasses the man. Ardent feminine natures are a great happiness for him who understands how to enjoy their companionship without blame; otherwise they are like a fire that diffuses light and warmth indeed, but may consume their own house and the houses of others. Very quiet women, on the other hand, easily grow to be somewhat insipid.

What women value most in men is power, whose complete absence they never pardon. Therefore adorers like poor Brackenburg, in Goethe’s “Egmont,” never get their deserts from them; they actually think more of the men who slight them or treat them badly than they do of men who are weak.

Most unhappy are the feelings of a noble woman when, through her own bad choice, or through the folly of her relations, she has fallen to a weakling who seeks compensation for his unmanliness in the outer world by a constant and petty mastery in the house. Dante would have had to invent yet another special punishment for these house-tyrants, against whom it is just the best women that are defenceless, and who may be governed only by a woman of strong egotism.

With this, we have come to the question of marriage. The best relationship with women not already in the family is marriage, and it is one of the chief causes of the deterioration of our age that (and in large measure on account of the pleasure-seeking and the false education of the women themselves) marriage is made difficult to a large proportion of educated men, so that they do not marry at all, or do not marry at the right age. Indeed, among the “civilized” nations, it has actually resulted in the circumstance, unfavorable for the position of women, that they are no longer valued for their own sake, but only for what they “bring along” with them.

Who in fact could wish to torment himself with cares his life long, just to support a vain creature fond of dress and pleasure, while he might, with the same means, procure a far pleasanter mode of life? This is the word pretty generally current now among the younger lords of creation, who have none too much of the spirit of sacrifice.

It is often rather doubtful whether marriage always deserves to be called a “divine” institution under present-day conditions, when the husband very commonly seeks in this way a betterment of his financial situation, or, if he belongs to the less “cultured” classes, seeks a slave to do his work without pay, while the parents of the wife wish to secure, in marriage, a life-insurance policy for their daughter, however wretched a one it may prove to be, and the daughter herself, in the momentary triumph of this social promotion, forgets the sad ensuing loss of her rights. It is one of the saddest yet commonest tragedies to see a fine, highly educated girl in the almost unlimited power of a mediocre young man, solely because many mothers still regard it as a kind of shame to keep their daughters unmarried.

We can understand why most women are glad to marry, because it is only in a good marriage that they have the opportunity of independently unfolding all the powers that lie within them. But that the selfish ones, who know how to put themselves at the right time upon a proper footing of defence, have often a better lot than the good wives, who lavish a vast amount of love, fidelity, self-sacrifice, thought, and vitality upon a questionable man of whom they have made for themselves an incorrect picture in their fancy—this is one of life’s most melancholy experiences, and one that might most make us doubt God’s justice. A woman, therefore, should never marry entirely below her station, never marry a man who is morally not entirely above suspicion, or is pettily egotistic, or is not a man of thoroughly good disposition; nor, as a rule, should she marry out of her country and nationality. But for men who are seriously struggling upward, an alliance with a high-minded woman from the better ranks of life is the method best of all suited to get quickly forward.

It will always be disputed whether it is better, in a good marriage, to seek and to find ardent love, or quiet esteem and friendship. I would decide for the latter, as a general rule; but—he who does not know the former knows not what life is.

The true and unselfish companionship of a man with a worthy woman of his home circle—wife, mother, sister, daughter, and not least, grandmother and granddaughter—undoubtedly belongs to the highest, the tenderest, the purest joys of this life, and brings out qualities in him that otherwise would always lie fallow. A marriage is not by a long way always to be called a stroke of good fortune, but an old bachelor, too, is never the man that could and should be made of him.

On the whole do not seek to know men by relying overmuch on theories. The greater part of that knowledge is attained through one’s own experiences, mostly sad ones. Only, resolve to experience nothing twice over. They who do so are the truly wise; not those, if there are any such, who make no mistakes.

Besides, our knowledge of men must not serve merely to help us separate the goats from the sheep and henceforth concern ourselves only with the latter; but it should serve to keep us from being deceived, and to enable us to work for the improvement of ourselves and of all with whom our lot brings us in touch, with a better understanding of their character. For when a man once abandons the belief that every single human soul has an infinite value and that it is worth any trouble taken to save it, then he finds himself upon an inclined plane on which he gradually slips back again into complete selfishness.

The final word as to the knowledge of men must be—love to all. Love alone enables us to know a man exactly as he is, and yet not to flee him. To know men, without love, has always been a misfortune and the cause of the profound melancholy of many wise men in all ages; it has driven them to renounce the society of their fellows, or to take refuge in the theory of absolute government. For there are only two ways of dealing with men, when one has once learned to know them—through fear, or through love. All intermediate methods are delusions.

But if any one appeals to fear, or if love is to any one only lip-service, let him hear Brother Jacopone da Todi: “That I love my neighbor I really know only when, after he has injured me, I love him no less than before. For if I then loved him less, I should thereby prove that, before, it was not he I loved, but myself.”

IV. WHAT IS CULTURE?

IV. WHAT IS CULTURE?[1]

A PROPHET of Israel of the latter days of the Kings, who himself seems to have been, in a way, self-taught, announces to his nation the oncoming of a new era in about the following words: “Behold, the days come, saith the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, but of the hearing of the truth. In that day shall the fair youths and maidens faint, who now are relying upon the god at Dan and the way of Beer-sheba. For they shall so fall therewith that they shall not be able to rise again.” What Amos meant by the god at Dan and the “way of Beer-sheba” is hardly to be discovered now with exactness, and indeed, for our purposes, we may leave it undetermined. Only thus much is clear from the context, that they were for the time elements of culture whose insufficiency should later come to light—as actually happened at the beginning of the Christian era.

Widely recognized phenomena of our own days fittingly remind us again of these ancient, half-forgotten words.

On the other hand, a struggle that may almost be called violent is passing through the broad masses of the nations. They are striving to win culture for themselves as quickly as possible, so that they may elevate themselves to the power which, in their view, goes hand in hand with this culture, or, as they mostly conceive it, with the acquisition of certain kinds of knowledge.

On the other hand, the upper circles of the classes hitherto known as cultured are being gripped with a kind of despair over the already attained and still attainable results of this search for knowledge for its own sake, as a renowned scientist has already plainly expressed with his well-known saying, “Ignoramus, ignorabimus,” and as is becoming actually manifest in the ever-growing specializing of the sciences. For this specializing means, at bottom, nothing less than that there is no universal knowledge any more, still less a universal culture which comprehends all that men have achieved and thought; it means that there are only isolated departments of knowledge, behind which the abyss of ignorance yawns, for the most learned specialist, no less than for the most commonplace layman.

In the young generation of the civilized nations which is growing up under such auspices, there is prevailing a certain physical and mental weariness, which makes one seriously doubt whether the whole of modern education must not be on the wrong track if, instead of producing mental and physical power and joy in the lifelong acquisition of new and newer knowledge, it only prematurely dulls and destroys all these capacities, and if it is bringing on a too weakly organized and nervous race which would as little prove a match for the onset of some horde of healthy barbarians as did, once upon a time, the Roman or Greek cosmopolitan culture, outwardly brilliant, but likewise undermined by just such over-civilization as ours.

With this, we have arrived at once at the heart of our question. By culture we must understand something greater, something other than knowledge, or learnedness in special subjects, if it is at all to be something beneficial and desirable. Relatively speaking, the most striking result of general culture must be the healthy and vigorous development of every man’s personality into a full and rounded human life, inwardly at peace. Otherwise it will be of no very definite value, either to himself or to his state.

If it does not effect this it does not justify the hopes that have, for so long a time, been set upon it, and there may stand before us a time such as humanity has already more than once experienced, when the most highly civilized peoples have been overpowered by barbarians, simply by virtue of greater physical strength and greater mental freshness and originality, and when too delicately constituted republics have not been in a condition to withstand the momentum of such onslaughts, directed by some single powerful will.

Therefore the question “What is Culture?” is a question of the life of our whole present race, as well as, in a special degree, of our native land and the nature of its government.

I

By this very ambiguous and therefore often misunderstood word “culture” we must understand ourselves to mean an evolving from an originally formless, rough condition into a condition in which the development into the best of which the material is capable is completed, or at least is in the process of unfolding without hindrance.

Every man at the beginning is a rough block that can only be fashioned into a true human form and a true work of art partly by the formative power of life itself with its manifold influences, and partly by the hand and sagacity of men. And as an unskilful sculptor may so misshape and spoil a stone intrusted to him that no real work of art can any longer be made of it, or may carve it so delicately that it loses the massiveness and strength necessary to resist all outer influences, so also, in the art of human culture, we often speak from painful experience of a man’s culture as neglected, or distorted, or too excessive and refined.

In true culture (one that does not injure but benefits men), three things seem to be essential: the conquering of natural sensuality and natural selfishness through higher interests, the wholesome and symmetrical training of the physical and mental faculties, and a correct philosophical and religious conception of life. Where one of these three is lacking, there is a drying up in the man of something that had been capable of a better development.

1. The final goal of all true culture is the liberation of man from the “sensual gravitation” which every one experiences in himself, and from the selfishness which, though it rests in the final analysis upon man’s impulse to self-preservation, stands nevertheless in opposition to the purpose of his life. Essentially as a creature of the senses man begins his course in this world, essentially as a creature of the spirit he should finish it here, and, as we hope, continue it in another world under more favorable conditions. Thus there lies already in his nature a conflict between that which is and therefore would naturally like to persist, and that which is undoubtedly demanded by his deepest and best feelings and which is meant to grow and develop. If he does not stay as he is, then the ground seems at times to give way under his feet; but if he does stay as he is, then his better self is always grievously reproving him, and saying that he is not fulfilling his duty and is not becoming what he could and should become. This is the battle that every man begins with himself as soon as he comes to consciousness about himself, and in this battle he must at any cost carry off the victory.

All inward dissatisfaction springs from sensuality or selfishness; these two never fail to show themselves as the primal causes, when the matter is run to the ground. Any genuine happiness is not conceivable where the spiritual nature has not gained the day over the sensual, and where a disposition toward liberality, humanity, and kindliness has not won the victory over a disposition to narrow selfishness—a victory already decided in one’s innermost tendency, and, as a matter of practical life, to be daily gained anew.

Whoever has not been able thus to subdue himself will never be a match for the world around him, which fights him with the same though thousand fold greater powers of selfishness. All that is left for him is to defend himself in this struggle for existence by continually injuring and destroying others and by uniting himself with others into groups with mutual interests, groups that are likewise of a purely selfish nature.

To try to suppress this struggle for existence which now threatens to destroy all the nobility that is in man and to make us like beasts of prey, is the chiefest task of all the truly cultured men of our time.

They must first show by their own example that this struggle is not necessary, and that there is a way out of the labyrinths of this life other than the sad one of who shall be strongest in his selfishness. After all, the man who proves strongest in this struggle, even in the most favorable case, only makes the existence of many fellow-men the heavier, and his own better self, besides, has suffered harm.

The first step is, that one shall no longer be recognized as a truly cultured man who has any trace of such a conception of life. And it must and will come to that, before long, in our civilized states. On the one hand, selfish solicitude for self and as much as possible of sensual enjoyment during a short life—on the other, human kindness, care for others, mental advancement, and the development of the nobler powers of the soul: these are the two great armies which now stand over against each other, ready for battle, and in one or the other you will be obliged to take your place.

2. The second point is the proper and healthy physical and mental development of all our faculties, in the interest of these higher aims. We are not to live with this better conception of life in cloisters or studies, but as far as possible to bring it into use in our ordinary life and in every calling—but not, of course, in any calling that stands in radical opposition to this better conception of life.

Here is the point where oftentimes a somewhat morbid and exaggerated philosophical, religious, or scientific tendency stands likewise opposed to true culture. There is no profit in a philosophy that does not hold its own in the full current of life, and there is little help in a religion which exists only in the church on Sundays and has no value in the market or in business. And even knowledge, in itself, has no great worth if it does not serve, somehow, to build up a more worthy kind of life for oneself or for others.

In a sickly, overfatigued body, with nerves continually overexcited, no quite healthy soul can live and work unimpeded. It is one of the chief mistakes in the culture of our day that a kind of misunderstanding has arisen between body and mind, whereby the body is harmed directly and, through the body, the mind. Besides, our whole modern education is much more directed toward the mechanical acquisition of things to be remembered than to the attainment of real convictions and of true knowledge.

3. But all these things, the pursuit of ideals, the search for true knowledge, and the maintenance of bodily tone, do not yet help a man toward true culture, unless they rest upon the conviction of the existence of a transcendental world whose forces can effectively come to his help. His sensual tendency and his natural selfishness are far too strong for him to subdue them wholly by his own expedients and without the help of such a Power residing outside himself. And the motives for doing it are too weak. What indeed should impel him to fight a hard and at first apparently almost fruitless battle with himself and the surrounding world his life long, if this life is only a transitory animal existence with no further destination?

The strength of a merely natural nobility, which for a time, perhaps, may lift itself above these things, does not, under all circumstances, hold out in the presence of this conception of life, but easily despairs of itself when trials, continuing and great, draw nigh. There must therefore be the introduction into human existence of a power which is mightier than all a man’s natural forces and which makes it possible for him to master himself and no longer to fear all external evils, in comparison with the evil of high treason to his better self.

That there is such a power, which one can not indeed logically prove, but which he can put to the test and himself experience,—this is the mysterious truth of religion; and it would be much less of a mystery if all men, if but once in their life, would venture the trial whether there is such a power. To be sure, if any one does not want to let quite go of his pleasure-seeking and selfishness, or does not altogether yet desire to attain, at any cost, to something better than the ordinary life, then, in spite of his trial, he will not have a perfect experience of this power, and in that case the mere outward profession of a religion does not help him much. He remains on the whole as he is, even though he go to church every day.

But if he has this will, then he receives this power, then he infallibly becomes another man, to such a degree that one may truthfully call it a new birth. Then only will all his natural gifts and knowledge become really alive in him and productive for the welfare of himself and others.

The highest step is complete self-renunciation, in which a man is only the receptacle of divine thoughts and impulses; but it is very dangerous to work oneself into such a condition by the fantasy, before it comes of itself and is really at hand. The main thing in religion is not its immediate perfect attainment, but that every one who will may enter on the way and pass from a joyless existence to a gradually ascending life.

This is the way to true culture, and every one must try to travel it by himself. It can not be taught; it can only be shown.

The evidence that one has true culture is, first, a gradually increasing mental health and power, then a certain higher sagacity that comes in, and finally a peculiar, larger caliber of spirit which one can bring about in no other way, which one can not imitate, and which really forms the chief element in culture. Yet these thoroughly cultured men are, for all that, entirely natural human beings, but free from all pretence and vanity; free also from all struggling, from all seeking for life’s good things, on which human happiness does not have to depend, and in whose incessant pursuit men only lose their souls; free from all unhealthy pessimism, or monkish seclusion; free from fear or nervousness or impatience; cheerful and quiet in the innermost centre of their being, and continuing in their mental and spiritual soundness up to the highest goal of human life. “As their days, so is their strength,” as the Old Testament says with great beauty and truth.

The highest imaginable degree of this culture is a complete devotion to all that is good and great, a devotion that no sort of trouble any longer clouds, or can cloud; it is that condition of the soul, mentally conceivable but seemingly rarely attained, in which there is no longer any battle with the sensual and the transitory, and the struggle of nature against the law of the spirit is completely at end.

This is that condition of perfection which we ascribe, in its consummate development, to the Divine Being alone, but toward which we also are called to strive; and the gradual winning of all men to this goal is the task in particular of all true education, and looked at in the whole, it is the end to which all history is moving.

II

No false culture nor half-culture is therefore to be compared with this true culture, which is unmistakable in its effects upon the whole nature of men, and upon their manner of intercourse with others. Even in the very simple relations of life it will always reveal itself by a certain greatness of spirit it confers, a spirit that distinguishes its possessor from the ordinary man in the like ranks of life. And along with this there is a quiet sense of peace with oneself and with others such as no other philosophy of life can assure, and which, by its contagious serenity, is apparent to every one who has ever been with such people.

However, it is not wholly unnecessary, particularly at the present time, to set down the chief characteristics of a false or insufficient culture, characteristics which one meets very often and can not help but notice. They are particularly the following:

1. Great extravagance in living. A man of genuine culture will never set a very high value either upon his outward personal appearance, or upon where he lives, or what he eats and drinks, or the like things: and so he will carefully avoid luxury, as improper for himself and unjust toward others. Excessive finery, golden rings on all the fingers, watch chains with which one might, if necessary, tie a calf, houses in which one can not move for the furniture, banquets at which one risks undermining even a robust constitution—these are all quite sure signs of a lack of culture and things that one must guard against. For whoever has intelligence sees through all this; it is only the fools who are blinded by it. The surest mark of culture in all these things is a certain noble, easy simplicity in one’s whole personal appearance and manner of life.

The love of display and pleasure is always a sign of lacking culture, and culture alone can thoroughly guard against it. Even a general raising of the standard of life in a country is desirable only in so far as a rough, half-animal, unworthy mode of living is by its means done away with; otherwise a continual increase in men’s needs is a misfortune for any country, and the cultured classes must earnestly strive against it and set a better example. A noble simplicity of living has also the advantage that it can always remain the same under any circumstances, while people inclined to luxury usually have two modes of living, one before people, and the other for themselves.

2. An external, but also very easily recognizable and characteristic mark of culture is the possession or absence of books; especially with persons who have the most ample means of procuring them. A fine lady who reads a soiled volume from a lending library you may safely set down as but half-cultured at best, and if she slips an embroidered cover over the volume, it does not remedy the matter; it only shows that she is conscious of her fault. An elegant home in which but a dozen books stand unread on an ornamental whatnot you may quietly regard as uncultured, with all its inmates; especially if, as usual, the books are only novels.

Much reading still remains, in our day as always, a necessity of general culture. Of a thoroughly cultured man one can properly require that in the course of a moderately long life he shall have read all of the very best in literature, and shall have gained, besides, a tolerably general and correct idea of all the branches of human knowledge, so that “nothing of human is to him quite alien.”

But if you ask how one can get time for this, outside of one’s business or occupation, the answer is this: Break away from all unnecessary things, from the hotel, from societies, clubs, and social pleasures, from the useless reading of a great portion of the newspapers, from the theatre, where you learn little that is worth knowing in these days, from the too frequent concerts, from skating for whole afternoons, and from much else besides that every one can easily charge against himself as his special manner of squandering time. One can not be very cultured and at the same time enjoy all the possible pleasures going.

But, if necessary, you may even break away somewhat from business. That pays, and you will soon see what a difference there is, even as regards business success, between a cultured merchant and a merely clever manager.

3. A further sign of defective culture is a loud, rude nature: talking very loud, in public localities, in cars, in restaurants, etc.; acting as if one were the only person there; and conducting oneself discourteously in places where many men gather. Our age is less cultured in this respect than some earlier ones have been.

On the same footing stands everything that savors of advertising and boasting, all showy pretence and braggadocio. A merchant, for example, who greatly exaggerates the importance of his business, or puts very boastful advertisements in the papers; or a lady who wears a silk dress without quite immaculate undergarments—those surely you would not take for people of sufficient culture.

4. Work also belongs to culture. It is not only a quite indispensable means of attaining thereto, but idleness, even if one can “afford” it, is always the mark of a disposition with low ideals; and that is directly opposed to culture. Such a man will seek his pleasure in something else, something less fine, or will possess a foolish pride in not being obliged to work, or finally he is a fellow of coarse sensibilities to whom it is a matter of indifference whether others perish by his side whom he could have helped by his exertions.

An idler by profession is therefore surely a man without ideals and without real culture, however elegant may be the external forms of culture he has gathered round him. They are empty forms without real substance, and every man of better culture is bound not to allow himself to be deceived thereby and not to respect such people.

5. But not much less harmful is the inordinate passion for work. When it is voluntary, it nearly always springs from ambition or greed, two of the worst enemies of true culture; they always show that one sets the highest value upon something else than culture. Or this passion for work is only a bad habit and the imitation of a bad example, or finally it may spring from a want of inner peace and control, which are themselves the fruit of culture.

Whoever works on Sundays just the same as on week-days, when he is not compelled to, you may quietly consider as little cultured as the man who does nothing any day.

6. A very necessary element in culture is an absolute trustworthiness and an upright conduct in all money-matters. To the cultured man it is not permitted to display prodigality, or an aristocratic contempt for money; a disposition like that always indicates lack of culture, and is unjust toward one’s needy fellow-men, besides being mostly pretence. Nor is it permitted him, on the other hand, to show undue parsimony, nor dishonesty even in the smallest particulars. On this point, the Scriptures say quite truly: “He that is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much.”

An absolutely rightful employment of money, with the strictest honesty, with complete disregard for money as the goal of life, and yet with a proper valuation of it as the means of attaining higher ends, is perhaps the surest of all signs of a man of genuine culture; as the chase after gains and the worship of money most surely betrays the uncultured man.

7. Another sufficient indication of defective culture is arrogance toward inferiors or toward those who are poorer off, and this is usually combined with subservience toward superiors and toward the wealthy. This is the special characteristic of parvenus who spring from uncultured surroundings. A man of the best culture will always be polite and friendly, but the more so, the more he has to do with those who stand below him, with the dependent or the oppressed; and the less so, even to the bare edge of politeness, the more he has to do with some one who makes pretensions, or wants to treat him as an inferior. To show deep respect for the mere wealth of another is, as said before, the most unmistakable mark of a man completely lacking in any culture of his own.

8. There are still a number of minor signs of lack of culture, which may, however, be in part only bad habits or the result of defective bringing up; they do not always point conclusively to a general lack of culture. Among these minor signs one may rightly reckon: much talking about oneself; gossip and scandal over the personal affairs of others; a great tendency to talkativeness on all occasions; a hasty, uncertain, violent temperament; making many excuses for oneself where it is not necessary or has already been done; to accuse or disparage oneself in the hope that others will then assert the contrary; a too-zealous officiousness; or a too-effusive politeness.

The thoroughly fine aristocratic temperament, such as the English especially prefer, demands a very great self-possession and preciseness; but this can easily degenerate into indifference and coldness, and is then a fault. Enthusiasm and eagerness for whatever is good a cultured man always possesses; where this is lacking, there is also a lack of true culture, in spite of fine pretences.

But this is also certain: when the enthusiasm is genuine and is not merely manufactured or the zeal of a beginner in the noble art of life, then it will never be too forward and loud in expressing itself. A noisy virtue is always a little suspicious, or at least is still in its infancy.

Culture, therefore, is essentially the gradual development of inner power toward what is right and true, with the purpose of elevating and liberating one’s own higher nature from the bonds of the ordinary animal sensuality with which it came into the world, and of training it up to a higher level of life in complete soundness of mind and body. Wherever it does not do this, it is of very subordinate value; and this it must always above all things do in the so-called cultured classes, for whom this is a primal duty.