{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_11939/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_11939","id":"gutenberg_11939","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11939","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Conduct of life"],"text":"Life's Enthusiasms\n\nBy\n\nDavid Starr Jordan\n\nPresident of Leland Stanford Junior University\n\nBoston:\n\nAmerican Unitarian Association\n\nMDCCCCVI\n\n\n\nTo Melville Best Anderson\n\n\n\nThat is poetry in which truth is expressed in the fewest possible words,\nin words which are inevitable, in words which could not be changed\nwithout weakening the meaning or throwing discord into the melody. To\nchoose the right word and to discard all others, this is the chief\nfactor in good writing. To learn good poetry by heart is to acquire help\ntoward doing this, instinctively automatically as other habits are\nacquired. In the affairs of life, then, is no form of good manners, no\nhabit of usage more valuable than the habit of good English.\n\n\n\nLife's Enthusiasms\n\nIt is the layman's privilege to take the text for his sermons\nwherever he finds it. I take mine from a French novel, a cynical story\nof an unpleasant person, Samuel Brohl, by Victor Cherbuliez; And this is\nthe text and the whole sermon:\n\n\"My son, we should lay up a stock of absurd enthusiasms in our youth or\nelse we shall reach the end of our journey with an empty heart, for we\nlose a great many of them by the way.\"\n\nAnd my message in its fashion shall be an appeal to enthusiasm in things\nof life, a call to do things because we love them, to love things\nbecause we do them, to keep the eyes open, the heart warm and the pulses\nswift, as we move across the field of life. \"To take the old world by\nthe hand and frolic with it;\" this is Stevenson's recipe for joyousness.\nOld as the world is, let it be always new to us as we are new to it. Let\nit be every morning made afresh by Him who \"instantly and constantly\nreneweth the work of creation.\" Let \"the bit of green sod under your\nfeet be the sweetest to you in this world, in any world.\" Half the joy\nof life is in little things taken on the run. Let us run if we must\n--even the sands do that--but let us keep our hearts young and our eyes\nopen that nothing worth our while shall escape us. And everything is\nworth our while, if we only grasp it and its significance. As we grow\nolder it becomes harder to do this. A grown man sees nothing he was not\nready to see in his youth. So long as enthusiasm lasts, so long is youth\nstill with us.\n\nTo make all this more direct we may look to the various sources from\nwhich enthusiasm may be derived. What does the school give us in this\ndirection? Intellectual drill, broadening of mental horizon,\nprofessional training, all this we expect from school, college, and\nuniversity and in every phase of this there is room for a thousand\nenthusiasms. Moreover, the school gives us comradeship, the outlook on\nthe hopes and aspirations of our fellows. It opens to us the resources\nof young life, the luminous visions of the boys that are to be men. We\ncome to know \"the wonderful fellow to dream and plan, with the great\nthing always to come, who knows?\" His dream may be our inspiration as it\npasses, as its realization may be the inspiration of future generations.\nIn the school is life in the making, and with the rest we are making our\nown lives with the richest materials ever at our hand. Life is\ncontagious, and in the fact lies the meaning of Comradeship.\n\"Gemeingeist unter freien Geistern,\" comradery among free spirits: this\nis the definition of College Spirit given us by Hutten at Greifeswald,\nfour centuries ago. This definition serves for us today. Life is the\nsame in every age. All days are one for all good things. They are all\nholy-days; to the freshman of today, all joys of comradery, all delights\nof free enthusiasm are just as open, just as fresh as ever they were.\nFrom the teacher like influences should proceed. Plodding and prodding\nis not the teacher's work. It is inspiration, on-leading, the flashing\nof enthusiasms. A teacher in any field should be one who has chosen his\nwork because he loves it, who makes no repine because he takes with it\nthe vow of poverty, who finds his reward in the joy of knowing and in\nthe joy of making known. It requires the master's touch to develop the\ngerms of the naturalist, the philosopher, the artist, or the poet. Our\nteacher is the man who has succeeded along the line in which we hope to\nsucceed, whose success is measured as we hope to measure our own. Each\nleader of science and of intellectual life is in some degree the\ndisciple of one who has planned and led before him. There is a heredity\nof intellect, a heredity of action, as subtle and as real as the\nheredity of the continuous germ-plasm. Ask the teacher who has helped\nmould your life, who in turn was his own master. In a very few\ngenerations you trace back your lineage to one of the great teachers the\nworld knows and loves. Who was your teacher in Natural History in\nAmerica? Was he a pupil of Agassiz, or was he a student of one of\nAgassiz's pupils? Or, again, are there three generations back from you\nto the grand master of enthusiasms?\n\nAnd there are masters in the art of living as well as in other arts and\nsciences. \"A log with Mark Hopkins at one end and myself at the other.\"\nThat was Garfield's conception of a university. It was said of Eliphalet\nNott at Union College, that he \"took the sweepings of other colleges and\nsent them back to society pure gold.\" The older students of Stanford\nwill always show the traces of the master teacher Thoburn. \"In terms of\nlife,\" thus he construed all problems of Science, of Philosophy, of\nReligion. In terms of life, Thoburn's students will interpret all their\nown various problems, for in terms of life all things we do must finally\nbe formulated. Every observation we make, every thought of our minds,\nevery act of our hands has in some degree an ethical basis. It involves\nsomething of right or wrong, and without adhesion to right, all thought,\nall action must end in folly. And there is no road to righteousness so\nsure as that which has right living as a traveling companion.\n\nThe very humanity of men at large is in itself a source of inspiration.\nStudy men on the trains, at the ferry, on the road, in the jungles of\nthe forest or in the jungles of great cities,--\"through the ages, every\nhuman heart is human.\" Look for the best, and the best shall rise up\nalways to reward you. One who has traveled among simple-living people,\nmen and women we call savages, because they live in the woods and not in\ncleared land or cities, will bear witness that a savage may be a perfect\ngentleman. Now as I write their faces rise before me. Joyous, free\nlimbed, white toothed swimmers in Samoan surf, a Hawaiian eel-catcher, a\nMexican peon with his \"sombrero trailing in the dust,\" a deferential\nJapanese farm boy anticipating your every want, a sturdy Chinaman\nwithout grace and without sensitiveness, but with the saving quality of\nloyalty to his own word, herdsmen of the Pennine Alps, Aleuts, Indians\nand Negroes, each race has its noblemen and through these humanity is\nennobled. It is worth while to go far from Boston to find that such\nthings are true.\n\nAnd we may look not alone among primitive folk who have never envied us\nour civilization or ever cared that we possessed it. Badalia Herodsfoot,\nin Kipling's story, lived and died in darkest London. Gentle hearts and\npure souls exist among our own unfortunates, those to whom our society\nhas shown only its destroying side. All misery and failure as well as\nall virtue has its degrees, and our social scheme is still far from the\ndemands of perfect justice.\n\nSome one has said that \"the wise young man will wear out three dress\nsuits in a year.\" This is a playful way of saying that he will not shun\nmen and women, even those bound by the conventions of society. All such\nassociation can be made to pay--not in money--but in getting the point\nof view of other people. This is worth while if not costing too much of\ntime and strength. There is another maxim which can offset the first. It\nis from Lorimer's Chicago pork packer: \"You will meet fools enough\nduring the day without trying to roundup the main herd of them at\nnight.\" But even the main herd of fools may teach its lesson to the\nstudent of human nature. It gives at least a point of departure in the\nstudy of wisdom. To study men or to kill time. What is your motive? The\npoorest use of time is to kill it. This is the weakest and most cowardly\nform of suicide. Moreover it is never quite successful. That \"time which\ncrawleth like a monstrous snake, wounded and slow and very venomous\" is\nsure to take its own revenges.\n\nIt is therefore good to look on the cheerful side of life. A touch of\nhumor is necessary to the salvation of the serious man. It is a gift of\nthe men of America to see droll things and to express them in droll\nfashion. To see the funny side of one's own accomplishments is the\nhighest achievement of the American philosopher and there is hope for\nthe land in which the greatest wits have been the most earnest of moral\nteachers. Who was more earnest than Oliver Wendell Holmes, who more\ngenuine than Mark Twain? Without the saving grace of humor our Puritan\nconscience which we all possess would lead us again into all\nextravagance, witch-burnings, Quaker-stoning, heresy trials, and\nintolerance of politics and religion. From all these we are saved by our\nfeeling for the incongruous. A touch of humor recalls us to our senses.\nIt \"makes the whole world kin.\"\n\nIn the love of nature is another source of saving grace. Science is\npower. In the stores of human experience lies the key to action, and\nmodern civilization is built on Science. The love of nature is akin to\nScience but different. Contact with outdoor things is direct experience.\nIt is not stored, not co-ordinated, not always convertible into power,\nbut real, nevertheless, and our own. The song of birds, the swarming of\nbees, the meadow carpeted with flowers, the first pink harbingers of the\nearly spring, the rush of the waterfall, the piling up of the rocks, the\ntrail through the forest, the sweep of the surf, the darting of the\nfishes, the drifting of the snow, the white crystals of the frost, the\nshrieking of the ice, the boom of the bittern, the barking of the sea\nlions, the honk of the wild geese, the skulking coyote who knows that\neach beast is his enemy and has not even a flea to help him \"forget that\nhe is a dog,\" the leap of the salmon, the ecstasy of the mocking-bird\nand bobolink, the nesting of the field-mice, the chatter of the\nsquirrel, the gray lichen of the oak, the green moss on the log, the\npoppies of the field and the Mariposa lilies of the cliff--all these\nand ten thousand more pictures which could be called up equally at\nrandom and from every foot of land on the globe--all these are objects\nof nature. All these represent a point of human contact and the reaction\nwhich makes for youth, for virtue and for enthusiasm.\n\nTo travel is merely to increase the variety of contact by giving our\ntime to it, and by extending the number of points at which contact is\npossible. It may be that \"he who wanders widest, lifts no more of\nbeauty's jealous veils than he who from his doorway sees the miracle of\nflowers and trees.\" It is true, however, that the experiences of the\ntraveler cover a wider range and fill his mind with a larger and more\nvaried store of remembered delights. The very names of beloved regions\ncall up each one its own picture. The South Seas; to have wandered among\ntheir green isles is to have seen a new world, a new heaven and a new\nearth. The white reef with its whiter rim of plunging surf, the swaying\npalms, the flashing waterfall, the joyous people, straight as Greeks and\ncolored like varnished leather, the bread-fruit tree and the brown\norange, the purple splendor of the vine called Bougainvillia, and above\nall the volcanic mountains, green fringed with huge trees, with tree\nferns and palms, the whole tied together into an impenetrable jungle by\nthe long armed lianas. The Sierra Nevada, sweeping in majestic waves of\nstone, alive with color and steeped in sunshine. Switzerland, Norway,\nAlaska, Tyrol, Japan, Venice, the Windward Islands and the Gray Azores,\nChapultepec with its dream of white-cloaked volcanoes, Enoshima and\nGotemba with their peerless Fujiyama, Nikko with its temples, Loch\nLomond, Lake Tahoe, Windermere, Tintagel by the Cornish Sea, the\nYellowstone and the Canyon of the Colorado, the Crater Lake of Oregon,\nSorrento with its Vesuvius, Honolulu with its Pali, the Yosemite, Banff\nwith its Selkirks, Prince Frederick's Sound with its green fjords, the\nChamounix with its Mont Blanc, Bern with its Oberland, Zermatt with its\nMatterhorn, Simla with \"the, great silent wonder of the snows.\"\n\n\"Even now as I write,\" says Whymper the master mountain climber, \"they\nrise before me an endless series of pictures magnificent in effect, in\nform and color. I see great peaks with clouded tops, seeming to mount\nupward for ever and ever. I hear the music of distant herds, the\npeasant's yodel and the solemn church bells. And after these have passed\naway, another train of thought succeeds, of those who have been brave\nand true, of kind hearts and bold deeds, of courtesies received from\nstrangers' hands, trifles in themselves but expressive of that good-will\nwhich is the essence of charity.\"\n\nThat poetry was a means of grace was known to the first man who wrote a\nverse or who sang a ballad. It was discovered back in the darkness\nbefore men invented words or devised letters. The only poetry you will\never know is that you learned by heart when you were young. Happy is he\nwho has learned much, and much of that which is good. Bad poetry is not\npoetry at all except to the man who makes it. For its creator, even the\nfeeblest verse speaks something of inspiration and of aspiration. It is\nsaid that Frederick the Great went into battle with a vial of poison in\none pocket and a quire of bad verse in the other. Whatever we think of\nthe one, we feel more kindly toward him for the other.\n\nCharles Eliot Norton advises every man to read a bit of poetry every day\nfor spiritual refreshment. It would be well for each of us if we should\nfollow this advice. It is not too late yet and if some few would heed\nhis words and mine, these pages would not be written in vain.\n\nI heard once of a man banished from New England to the Llano Estacado,\nthe great summer-bitten plains of Texas. While riding alone among his\ncows over miles of yucca and sage he kept in touch with the world\nthrough the poetry he recited to himself. His favorite, I remember, was\nWhittier's \"Randolph of Roanoke:\"\n\n\"Here where with living ear and eye\nHe heard Potomac flowing,\nAnd through his tall ancestral trees\nSaw Autumn's sunset glowing;\n\n\"Too honest or too proud to feign\nA love he never cherished,\nBeyond Virginia's border line\nHis patriotism perished.\n\n\"But none beheld with clearer eye\nThe plague spot o'er her spreading,\nNor heard more sure the steps of doom\nAlong her future treading.\"\n\nThis is good verse and it may well serve to relate the gray world of\nNorthern Texas to the many-colored world in which men struggle and die\nfor things worthwhile, winning their lives eternally through losing\nthem.\n\nHere are some other bits of verse which on the sea and on the lands, in\nthe deserts or in the jungles have served the same purpose for other\nmen, perhaps indeed for you.\n\n\"It has been prophesied these many years\nI should not die save in Jerusalem,\nWhich vainly I supposed the Holy Land.\nBut bear me to that chamber, there I'll lie,\nIn this Jerusalem shall Hardy die.\"\n\n--\n\n\"And gentlemen of England now abed\nShall think themselves accursed they were not here,\nAnd hold their manhood cheap while any speaks\nWho fought with us upon St. Crispin's day.\"\n\n--\n\n\"Let me come in where you sit weeping, aye:\nLet me who have not any child to die\nWeep with you for the little one whose love\nI have known nothing of.\nThe little arms that slowly, slowly loosed\nTheir pressure round your neck, the hands you used\nTo kiss. Such arms, such hands I never knew.\nMay I not weep with you\nFain would I be of service, say something\nBetween the tears, that would be comforting.\nBut ah! So sadder than yourselves am I\nWho have no child to die.\"\n\n--\n\n\"Your picture smiles as once it smiled;\nThe ring you gave is still the same;\nYour letter tells, O changing child,\nNo tidings since it came!\nGive me some amulet\nThat marks intelligence with you,\nRed when you love and rosier red,\nAnd when you love not, pale and blue.\nAlas that neither bonds nor vows\nCan certify possession.\nTorments me still the fear that Love\nDied in his last expression.\"\n\n--\n\n\"He walks with God upon the hills\nAnd sees each morn the world arise\nNew bathed in light of Paradise.\nHe hears the laughter of her rills;\nShe to his spirit undefiled\nMakes answer as a little child;\nUnveiled before his eyes she stands\nAnd gives her secrets to his hands.\"\n\n--\n\n\"Above the pines the moon was slowly drifting,\nThe river sang below,\nThe dim Sierras far beyond uplifting\nTheir minarets of snow.\nThe roaring campfire with good humor painted\nThe ruddy tints of health\nOn haggard face and form that drooped and fainted\nIn the fierce race for wealth.\nTill one arose and from his pack's scant treasure\nThe hoarded volume drew,\nAnd cards were dropped from hands of listless leisure\nTo hear the tale anew.\nAnd as around them shadows gathered faster\nAnd as the firelight fell,\nHe read aloud the book wherein the Master\nHad writ of Little Nell.\nPerhaps 'twas boyish fancy, for the reader\nWas youngest of them all,\nYet, as he read, from clustering pine and cedar\nA silence seemed to fall.\nThe fir trees gathering closer in the shadows\nListened in every spray,\nWhile the whole camp with little Nell, on English meadows,\nWandered and lost their way.\nLost is that camp and wasted all its fire,\nAnd he who wro't that spell;\nAh, towering pine and stately Kentish spire,\nYe have one tale to tell.\nLost is that camp, but let its fragrant story\nBlend with the breath that thrills\nWith hop vines' incense all the pensive glory\nThat fills the Kentish hills.\nAnd on that grave where English oak and holly\nAnd laurel wreath entwine,\nDeem it not all a too presumptuous folly,\nThis spray of Western pine.\"\n\n--\n\n\"Dark browed she broods with weary lids\nBeside her Sphynx and Pyramids,\nWith her low, never lifted eyes.\nIf she be dead, respect the dead;\nIf she be weeping, let her weep;\nIf she be sleeping, let her sleep;\nFor lo, this woman named the stars.\nShe suckled at her tawny dugs\nYour Moses, while ye reeked with wars\nAnd prowled the woods, rude, painted thugs.\"\n\n--\n\n\"The tumult and the shouting dies;\nThe captains and the kings depart;\nStill stands thine ancient sacrifice,\nThe humble and the contrite heart.\"\n\n--\n\n\"Careless seems the Great Avenger,\n   History's pages but record\nOne death grapple in the darkness\n   Twixt old systems and the word.\nTruth forever on the scaffold,\n   Wrong forever on the throne;\nBut that scaffold sways the future,\n   And behind the dim Unknown\nStandeth God within the shadow.\n   Keeping watch above his own.\"\n\n--\n\n\"Pledge me round, I bid you declare,\nAll good fellows whose beards are gray,\nDid not the fairest of the fair\nCommon grow and wearisome, ere\nEver a month had passed away?\nThe reddest lips that ever have kissed,\nThe brightest eyes that ever have shone\nMay pray and whisper and we not list\nOr look away and never be missed\nEre yet ever a month is gone.\nGillian's dead. God rest her bier!\nHow I loved her twenty years syne!\nMarian's married and I sit here\nAlone and merry at forty year,\nDipping my nose in the Gascon wine.\"\n\n--\n\n\"Under the wide and starry sky\nDig my grave and let me lie.\nGlad did I live and gladly die\nAnd I lay me down with a will.\nThis be the verse ye grave for me:\n   'Here he lies where he longed to be.\n   Home is the sailor, home from the sea,\n   And the hunter home from the hill.'\"\n\n--\n\n\"By the brand upon my shoulders,\nBy the lash of clinging steel,\nBy the welts the whips have left me,\nBy the wounds that never heal,\nBy the eyes grown dim with staring\nAt the sun-wash on the brine,\nI am paid in full for service,--\nWould that service still were mine.\"\n\nAnd with these the more familiar verses beginning:\n\n\"Break, break, break,\nAt the foot of thy crags, O Sea.\"\n\n\"Bells of the past whose long-forgotten music.\"\n\n\"Just for a handful of silver he left us.\"\n\n\"Beautiful Evelyn Hope is dead.\"\n\n\"O to be in England, now that April's there.\"\n\n\"The mists are on the Oberland,\nThe Fungfrau's snows look faint and far.\"\n\n\"The word of the Lord by night\nTo the watching pilgrims came.\"\n\n\"Fear, a forgotten form;\nDeath, a dream of the eyes;\nWe were atoms in God's great storm\nThat raged through the angry skies!\"\n\nAnd with this you may take many other bits of verse which were hammered\nout on the anvil of the terrible Civil War.\n\nPerhaps these bits of verse chosen almost at random will not appeal to\nyour taste. Then find some other verse that does. The range of\nliterature is as wide as humanity. It touches every feeling, every hope,\nevery craving of the human heart. Select what you can understand--best,\nwhat you can rise on tiptoe to understand. \"It was my duty to have loved\nthe highest.\" It is your duty toward poetry to take the highest you can\nreach. Then learn it by heart. Learn it when you are young. It will give\nyou a fresh well of thoughts. It will form your style as a writer. That\nis poetry in which truth is expressed in the fewest possible words, in\nwords which are inevitable, in words which could not be changed without\nweakening the meaning or throwing discord into the melody. To choose the\nright word and to discard all others, this is the chief factor in good\nwriting. To learn good poetry by heart is to acquire help toward doing\nthis instinctively, automatically, as other habits are acquired. In the\naffairs of life there is no form of good manners, no habit of usage more\nvaluable than the habit of good English. And to this end the masters of\nEnglish, from Chaucer to Tennyson, and in spite of perversities, we may\nadd Emerson, Browning, and Kipling, have written English verse. It is\nnot in verse alone that poetry is written. Sweetness and light and truth\ncan be crystallized into prose, and prose well worthy to be borne in\nmemory.\n\nTake this from Emerson:\n\n\"The poet is the true landlord, sea lord, air lord! Wherever snow falls\nor water flows or birds fly, wherever day and night meet in twilight,\nwherever the blue heaven is hung by clouds or sown with stars, wherever\nare forms with transparent boundaries, wherever are outlets into\ncelestial spaces, wherever is danger and awe and love--there's Beauty,\nplenteous as rain shed for thee and though thou shouldst walk the world\nover thou shalt not be able to find a condition inopportune or ignoble.\"\n\n\"I took a walk the other day,\" so Thoreau tells us, \"on Spaulding's\nfarm. I saw the setting sun lighting up the opposite side of a stately\npine wood. Its golden rays straggled into the aisles of the wood as into\nsome noble hall. I was impressed as if some ancient and altogether\nadmirable family had settled there in that part of Concord, unknown to\nme--to whom the sun was servant. I saw their path, their pleasuring\nground through the woods in Spaulding's cranberry meadow. The pines\nfurnished them with gables as they grew. Their house was not obvious to\nvision, the trees grew through it. They have sons and daughters. They\nare quite well. The farmer's cart path which leads directly through\ntheir hall does not in the least put them out, as the muddy bottom of\nthe pool is sometimes seen through the reflected skies. They never heard\nof Spaulding, and do not know that he is their neighbor, notwithstanding\nI heard him whistle as he drove his team through their house. Nothing\ncan equal the serenity of their lives. Their coat of arms is simply a\nlichen. It is painted on the pines and the oaks. They are of no\npolitics. There was no noise of labor. I did not perceive that they were\nweaving or spinning. Yet I did detect, when the wind lulled and hearing\nwas done away, the finest imaginable sweet musical hum as of a distant\nhive in May, which perchance was the sound of their thinking. They had\nno idle thoughts and no one without could say their work, for their\nindustry was not in knots and excrescences embayed. Yet I find it\ndifficult to remember them. They fade irrevocably even while I speak. It\nis only after a long and serious effort to recollect that I became again\naware of their cohabitance. If it were not for such families as this I\nthink I should move out of Concord.\"\n\nIn the arts of music and painting and sculpture, one may find not only\nprofessional satisfaction, but the strength that comes from higher\nliving and more lofty feeling. In the study of history as biography, the\nacquaintance with the men and women of other times, those who have felt\nand thought and acted and suffered to make a freer world for you and me,\nlike inspiration may be found. History is more than its incidents. It is\nthe movement of man. It is the movement of individual men, and it is in\ngiving illumination to personal and racial characters that the\nsuccession of incidents has its value. The picturesque individual, the\nman who could not be counted with the mass, the David, the Christ, the\nBrutus, the Caesar, the Plato, the Alfred, the Charlemagne, the\nCromwell, the Mirabeau, the Luther, the Darwin, the Helmholtz, the\nGoethe, the Franklin, the Hampden, the Lincoln, all these give\ninspiration to history. It is well that we should know them, should know\nthem all, should know them well--an education is incomplete that is not\nbuilt about a Pantheon, dedicated to the worship of great men.\n\nWith all this comes that feeling of dedication to the highest purposes\nwhich is the essential feature of religion. Religion should be known by\nits tolerance, its broadmindedness, its faith in God and humanity, its\nrecognition of the duty of action.\n\nAnd action should be understood in a large way, the taking of one's part\nin affairs worth doing, not mere activity, nor fussiness, nor movement\nfor movement's sake, like that of \"ants on whom pepper is sprinkled.\" As\nthe lesser enthusiasms fade and fail, one should take a stronger hold on\nthe higher ones. \"Grizzling hair the brain doth clear\" and one sees in\nbetter perspective the things that need doing. It is thus possible to\ngrow old as a \"grand old man,\" a phrase invented for Gladstone, but\nwhich fits just as well our own Mark Twain. Grand old men are those who\nhave been grand young men, and carry still a young heart beneath old\nshoulders. There are plenty of such in our country to-day, though the\naverage man begins to give up the struggle for the higher life at forty.\nPresident White, President Eliot, President Angell,--few men have left\nso deep an impression on the Twentieth Century. Edward Everett Hale, the\nteacher who has shown us what it is to have a country. Senator Hoar,\nProfessor Agassiz, Professor Le Conte, Professor Shaler,--all these,\nwhatever the weight of years, remained young men to the last. When\nAgassiz died, the Harvard students \"laid a wreath of laurel on his bier\nand their manly voices sang a requiem, for he had been a student all his\nlife long, and when he died he was younger than any of them.\" Jefferson\nwas in the seventies when he turned back to his early ambition, the\nfoundation of the University of Virginia. The mother of Stanford\nUniversity was older than Jefferson before she laid down the great work\nof her life as completed. When the heart is full, it shows itself in\naction as well as in speech. When the heart is empty, then life is no\nlonger worth while. The days pass and there is no pleasure in them. Let\nus then fill our souls with noble ideals of knowledge, of art, of\naction. \"Let us lay up a stock of enthusiasms in our youth, lest we\nreach the end of our journey with an empty heart, for we lose many of\nthem by the way.\"\n\nWe hear much in these days of the wickedness of power, of the evil\nbehavior of men in high places, of men in low places, and men whom the\npeople have been perforce obliged to trust. This is no new thing, though\nthe struggle against it, the combination of the forces of reform and\nblackmail, of dreamers and highwaymen, is offering some new phases.\n\nThere is a kind of music popular with uncritical audiences and with\npeople who know no better, which answers to the name of \"ragtime.\" It is\nthe music of those who do not know good music or who have not the moral\nforce to demand it. The spirit of ragtime is not confined to music:\ngraft is the ragtime of business, the spoils system the ragtime of\npolitics, adulteration the ragtime of manufacture. There is ragtime\nscience, ragtime literature, ragtime religion. You will know each of\nthese by its quick returns. The spirit of ragtime determines the six\nbest sellers, the most popular policeman, the favorite congressman, the\nwealthiest corporation, the church which soonest rents its pews.\n\nBut it does not, control the man who thinks for himself. It has no lien\non the movements of history, its decrees avail nothing in the fixing of\ntruth. The movements of the stars pay it no tribute, neither do the\nmovements of humanity. The power of graft is a transient deception.\nEmerson's parable of the illusions gives the clue to our time, to all\ntime, in its contrast of the things which appear with the things that\nabide.\n\n\"There is no chance and no anarchy in the Universe,\" says Emerson, \"all\nis system and gradation. Every god is there sitting in his sphere. The\nyoung mortal enters the hall of the firmament; there he is alone with\nthem alone, they pronouncing on him benedictions and gifts, and\nbeckoning him up to their thrones. On the instant and incessantly fall\nsnow storms of illusions. He fancies himself in a vast crowd which sways\nthis way and that and whose movements and doings he must obey. He\nfancies himself poor, orphaned, insignificant. The mad crowd drives\nhither and thither, now furiously commanding this thing to be done, now\nthat. What is he that he should resist their will and think and act for\nhimself? Every moment new changes and new showers of deceptions to\nbaffle and distract him. And when, by and by, for an instant the air\nclears and the cloud lifts a little, there are the gods still sitting\naround him on their thrones--they alone with him alone.\"\n\n--\n\nThe last paragraphs of this little essay were written within a huge\nhotel of steel and stone in the heart of a bustling city, in the most\ngracious of lands and under the bluest of skies. A great commercial city\nit was, a wondrous city, full of all manner of men--eager, impulsive,\nloving, enthusiastic men; men cunning and grasping, given over to all\n\"high, hard lust and wilful deed;\" carefree, joyous men living in the\npresent and taking their chances for the future; men who have whistled\nall the airs that fluttering birds and frolicking children have learned\nto sing; workmen of all grades, quiet, courageous and self-respecting,\nand weak, disgruntled and incapable; bright-eyed, clear-headed,\nsagacious men, such men as build a state; hopeless, broken, disappointed\nmen, who have made this city of hope their last resort; gamblers,\nparasites, bartenders, agitators, self-seekers, haters of men and haters\nof organization, impossibles, men uncontrolled and uncontrollable, of\nevery nation and with every dialect of the civilized world--and of\nuncivilized worlds also;--the most cosmopolitan of all American towns,\nthe one fullest of the joy of living, the one least fearful of future\ndisaster, \"serene, indifferent to fate,\" thus her own poets have styled\nher, and on no other city since the world began has fate, unmalicious,\nmechanical and elemental, wrought such a terrible havoc. In a day this\ncity has vanished; the shock of a mighty earthquake forgotten in an hour\nin the hopeless horror of fire; homes, hotels, hospitals, hovels,\nlibraries, museums, skyscrapers, factories, shops, banks and gambling\ndens, all blotted out of existence almost in the twinkling of an eye;\nmillionaires, beggars, dancers and workers, men great and small, foolish\nand courageous, with their women and children of like natures with them,\nfleeing together by the thousands and hundreds of thousands to the hills\nand the sand-dunes, where on the grass and the shifting sands they all\nslept together or were awake together in the old primal equality of\nlife. Never since man began to plan and to create has there been such a\ndestruction of the results of human effort. Never has a great calamity\nbeen met with so little repining. Never before has the common man shown\nhimself so hopeful, so courageous, so sure of himself and his future.\nFor it is the man, after all, that survives and it is the will of man\nthat shapes the fates.\n\nIt is the lesson of earthquake and fire that man cannot be shaken and\ncannot be burned. The houses he builds are houses of cards, but he\nstands outside of them and can build again. It is a wonderful thing to\nbuild a great city. Men can do this in a quarter century, working\ntogether each at his own part. More wonderful still is it to be a city,\nfor a city is composed of men, and now, ever and forever the man must\nrise above his own creations. That which is in the man is greater than\nall that he can do.\n\n\"Out of the night that covers me,\nBlack as the pit from pole to pole,\nI thank whatever gods may be\nFor my unconquerable soul.\n\nIn the fell clutch of circumstance\nI have not winced nor cried aloud\nUnder the bludgeonings of chance,\nMy head is bloody but not bowed.\n\nBeyond this place of wrath and tears\nLooms but the Horror of the shade,\nAnd yet the menace of the years\nFinds and shall find me unafraid.\n\nIt matters not how straight the gate,\nHow charged with punishments the scroll,\nI am the master of my fate,\nI am the captain of my soul!\"","title":"Life's Enthusiasms","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":6066}