Tablets Part 6

"When we've enjoyed our ends then lose them, And all our appet.i.tes be but as dreams To laugh at in our ages?"

If this fresh score of years did not deceive us, shall a life of threescore, with its deeper glances into the mystery, lead us to doubt the longevity of a sentiment of whose imperishableness that life itself is the best evidence we need ask? Are we to be left orphans when taken from nature's arms, robbed of all that made life desirable before?

Nature cared for us; Persons failed us, and all unawares we lapsed out of our paradise, its gates barred against us.

"I cannot reach it; and my striving eye Dazzles at it, as at eternity.

Were now that chronicle alive, Those white designs which children drive, And the thoughts of each harmless hour, With their content too in my power, Quickly would I make my path even, And by mere playing go to heaven.

Dear harmless age, the short, swift span Where weeping virtue parts with man; Where love without l.u.s.t dwells, and bends What way we please, without self-ends: An age of mysteries! which he Must live twice that would G.o.d's face see; Where angels guard, and with it play, Angels, which foul men drive away."

'Tis sad to consider how long time is consumed in wiping away the stains which had been insinuated into the breast during these earlier years and up to coming manhood,--to what we call the maturity of our powers. Life is too much for most. So much of age, so little youth; living for the most part in the moment, and dating existence by the memory of its burdens. Men think they once were not, and fear the like fate may overtake them, as if time were older than their minds. 'Tis because we always were that we cannot trace our beginnings to the atheism of no-being and resolve ourselves into nothing. Children save us. Rather are we saved by remaining children, as Christ said.

Have we forgotten how things looked to us when we were young; how the dull world the old people lived in seemed to us? 'Twas not ours, nor their dry theism; and our fresh hearts whispered reverently:

"Is not your paradise an Inferno? Please never name it. While in Heaven I speak not of it: I hum that song to myself. Will you spoil my paradise too? Come with me, come, and I will show you Elysium; I know all about it; I am not deceived. I feel it to be solid, safe. It makes good its pledges always. I have a home of all delights--am admitted when I please, while you seem vagabonds and woebegones, bereft of friends, the Friend of friends. Am I to quit my present satisfactions for your promised joys. Unkind! this taking me from my paradise, unless you conduct me to a happier."

V.

CULTURE.

"O for the coming of that glorious time, When, prizing knowledge as their n.o.blest wealth And best protection, liberal states shall own An obligation on their part to teach Them, who are born to serve her and obey; Binding themselves by statute to secure For all the children whom their soil maintains The rudiments of letters; and to inform The mind with moral and religious truth Both understood and practised--so that none However dest.i.tute, be left to drop By timely culture unsustained, or run Into a wild disorder; or be forced To drudge through life without the aid Of intellectual implements and tools; A savage horde among the civilized, A servile band among the lordly free."

WORDSWORTH.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Decorative banner of thistle blooms and leaves]

CULTURE.

I.--MODERN TEACHING.

Saxon Alfred decreed that every man who had so much as two hides of land, should bring up his children to learning till they were fifteen years of age at least, that they might be religious and live happily; else, he said, they were but beasts and sots, dangerous to themselves and the state. And the state's true glory lies in its calling forth into fullest exercise and giving scope and right direction to the gifts of its children; seeking out especially and fostering the best born as they rise, and training these for educators of the coming generations. The Parent of parents, the guardian of all gifts born into it, society should neglect none, sequester none from places and honors to which they are ent.i.tled by birthright of genius or acquirement. Every child, the gifted by divine right, is sent to cherish and redeem the race; whom to neglect or divert from its aim were base oversight and abuse of the race itself. Far too n.o.ble, too precious be any to be used for ends merely secondary, secular, and thus spoiled for their own and G.o.d's intents.

Yet simple as this duty seems, society with all its aims and appliances, has not as yet attained the refinement of culture needful to the receiving of a child into its bosom, and of educating it to the full demands of its endowments. With the child comes the seed of states; the family being the nursery of the citizen, the measure of a people's civilization. As the homes, so the state; as the parents, so the children. Nor has society fathered its functions till all children, befriended from the first, are fas.h.i.+oned into the image each is capable of attaining. Other goods are but aids to this end; all are necessary for educating the human being, since the child is the summary of all gifts, and the most precious of all trusts committed to the state for trial and training.

Yet still the decease of gifts follows fast on their birth, and parents are oftener called beside the bier of these children of the sun than to their nuptials or coronation. They hold their jubilees in weeds rather; and the untimeliness of genius is the tragedy of life as of letters.

Amidst the sickliness and wane of things, neither poet nor saint survives his laurel for more than a day. Far from treating the human being with anything like the subtlety and skill displayed by the ancient masters, we wait for the first hint of an inst.i.tution for training youth into the fulness of their powers, by the genial touch of sensibility, the magnetism of thought. Left instead to the superficial culture of the sects, the traditions of the elders, the guidance of worldlings, they slide soon into vague conjectures, run adrift on the sea of doubt, the shoals of expediency, bereft of faith in themselves as in things unseen and ideal.

"See gifted youths rush out to feed on whims; Fas.h.i.+on craves their hours, low hopes their aim, To win not n.o.ble women for their brides, But t.i.tled slaves, heirs to some teasing caste, For beauty without culture seems mere show; As if great nature laid not on her tints With more contrivance than the brush of art; Or schools where grammars hide the place of sense, And shallow stammering drowns the native voice."

Not letters but life chiefly educate if we are educatable. But experience follows oftenest too late for most and too distant from the work to help us directly without an interpreter to a.s.sist in making timely use of it. Fortunate will it be, if by instinct and mother wit we take life at first hand, converting it forthwith into thought and habit.

Character comes of temperament far more than of acquirement. And the most that culture performs is the drawing forth, fas.h.i.+oning and polis.h.i.+ng the natural gifts. But we cannot create what is not inborn. A fine brain is a spiritual endowment, as from the head of Jove sprang Minerva. Centuries of culture pa.s.s into pure power; piety and genius are parents of piety and genius. But less discriminating than were the ancient carvers in wood and ivory, who, when they had an order for a head of Hermes, or any ordinary G.o.d even, searched carefully for substances adapted to receive the proper form, states attempt to fas.h.i.+on saints and rulers out of any materials that chance brings to hand.

Omitting mind, or overriding it in our haste to come at immediate and superficial results, we ignore ideas and principles altogether. Aiming at little we attain little. For while our country opens the freest scope for the exercise of the higher gifts of genius and character, we cherish these but feebly in our public or private training. The highest prizes held forth to youth are not only beneath the aims of a n.o.ble ambition, but the stimulus for their attainment is wanting. Even in New England, culture is external, provincial; neglectful of the better parts of body and mind; behind the old countries, that of the ancient states. We cram the memory with the lore of foreign tongues, the understanding with a medley of learning, leaving fancy, imagination, the moral sentiment, mainly to s.h.i.+ft for themselves--the forming of the manners, motives, aims and aspirations. Then what subst.i.tutes have we, for the falconry, archery, the hunting, fis.h.i.+ng, of earlier and what we deem barbarous times? Yet these were sports, heroic and wholesome, giving a national coloring and strength of character: the wrestling too, throwing the quoit, and other manly games, horsemans.h.i.+p, boating, swimming, were a natural gymnastic for body and mind. War also had its advantages. So the plays and games were schools of genius and valor: the people were refined by contact with the refinements of the best citizens, the guardians of public taste and honor providing hereby a polite and manly culture suited to the needs of the state. Education extended into the age of ripe maturity. Nor was the disciple committed to himself till he became the master. And through life he was prompted by incentives of virtue and fame. The state was venerable, enn.o.bled as it was by the genius and services of great men; great men earning honorably their renown by teaching.

'Tis n.o.ble minds who n.o.ble men create, And they who have great manners form mankind.

Happy the man who wins the confidence of the rising youth of his time.

He becomes priest and professor elect without degrees of synods or universities. He shapes the future of the next generation as of the succeeding. A n.o.ble artist he cherishes visions of excellence not easily impersonated or spoken. His life and teachings are studies for high ideals.

II.--SOCRATIC DIALECTIC.

The highest end of instruction is to discipline and liberalize mind and character by familiarizing the thoughts with those of the learned and wise. Character is inspired by admiration of character, intellect by partic.i.p.ating in intellect. The masters form masters. And had I the choice of my cla.s.s, I would put Plato's works at once into its hands.

And, for a beginning,--say the Alcibiades of the earlier Dialogues. I know of no discipline under the care of a thoughtful instructor so fitting for educating the reason, quickening the moral sense, refining the sensibilities, fas.h.i.+oning the manners, enn.o.bling the character, as exercises in the Socratic dialectic: opening the whole armory of gifts, it sharpens and polishes these for the victories of life. The youth who masters Plato wins fairly his degree alike in humanity and divinity. He has the key to the mysteries, ancient and modern.[C]

[Footnote C: "It might be thought serious trifling," says the accomplished Bishop Berkeley, "to tell my readers that the greatest of men had ever a high esteem of Plato, whose writings are the touchstone of a hasty and shallow mind, whose philosophy has been the admiration of ages; which supplied patriots, magistrates and lawgivers to the most flouris.h.i.+ng states, as well as fathers of the church and doctors of the schools. Albeit, in these days, the depths of that old learning are rarely fathomed. And yet it were happy for these lands if our young n.o.bility and gentry, instead of modern maxims would imbibe the notions of the great men of antiquity. But in these loose times many an empty head is shook at Aristotle and Plato, as well as the Holy Scriptures. Certainly, where a people are well educated, the art of piloting a state is best learned from the writings of Plato."]

Take the following as an example of the pure dialectic method as of metaphysic;

"In what way, asks Socrates, may we attain to know the soul itself with the greatest clearness? for when we know this, it seems we shall know ourselves. Now, in the name of the G.o.ds, whether are we not ignorant of the right meanings of that Delphic inscription just now mentioned, 'Know thyself?'"

_Alcibiades._ What meaning? what have you in your thoughts, Socrates, when you ask the question?

_Socrates._ I will tell you what I suspect this inscription means, and what particular thing it advises us to do. For a just resemblance of it is, I think, not to be found wherever one pleases, but in only one thing, the sight.

_Alcibiades._ How do you mean?

_Socrates._ Consider it jointly with me. Were a man to address himself to the outward human eye, as it were some other man; and were he to give it this counsel, "See yourself," what particular thing should we suppose that he advises the eye to do? Should we not suppose that it was to look at such a thing as that the eye by looking at it, might see itself?

_Alcibiades._ Certainly we should.

_Socrates._ What kind of thing then do we think of by looking at which we see things at which we look, and at the same time see ourselves?

_Alcibiades._ 'Tis evident, Socrates, that for this purpose we must look at mirrors and other things of like kind.

_Socrates._ You are right. And has not the eye itself, with which we see, something of the same kind belonging to it?

_Alcibiades._ Most certainly it has.

_Socrates._ You have observed then, that the face of the person who looks in the eye of another person, appears visible to himself in the eye of the person opposite to him, as in a mirror. And we therefore call this the pupil, because it exhibits the image of that person who examines it.

_Alcibiades._ What you say is true.

_Socrates._ The eye beholding an eye and looking in the most excellent part of it in that which it sees, may thus see itself?

_Alcibiades._ Apparently so.

_Socrates._ But if the eye look at any other part of the man, or at anything whatever, except what this part of the eye happens to be like, it will not see itself.

_Alcibiades._ It is true.