Right Living as a Fine Art Part 1

Right Living as a Fine Art.

by Newell Dwight Hillis.

MY SYMPHONY.

To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fas.h.i.+on; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich; to listen to stars and birds, babes and sages with open heart; to study hard; to think quietly, act frankly, talk gently, await occasions, hurry never; in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common--this is my symphony.

WILLIAM HENRY CHANNING.

A STUDY OF CHANNING'S "SYMPHONY" AS AN OUTLINE OF THE IDEAL LIFE AND CHARACTER.

To the revival of learning in the fourteenth century, to the revival of religion in the sixteenth, and the revival of liberty in the eighteenth century must now be added the revival of the beautiful in this new era for art. In former ages man was content if his house was dry, his coat was warm, his tool strong. But now has come an era when man's house must have beautiful walls, when woman's dress must have harmonious hues, when the speaker's truth must be clothed in words of beauty; while in religion if the wors.h.i.+per once was content with a harsh hymn, now man best loves the song that has a beautiful sentiment and a sweet tune. Always the useful had a cash value. Now beauty has become a commodity. To-day, to hold his place, the artisan must become an artist. The era of ugliness, with its clumsy tools and ungainly garments, has gone forever. No longer content with lending strength to coat or chair or car, manufacturers now vie with one another in a struggle to make the garment take on lines of grace, and colors soft and beautiful. Society seems to be standing upon the threshold of the greatest art movement in history. Best of all this, revival of the beautiful promises to be a permanent social possession.

Very brief and fitful that first art epoch when Phidias polished statues, the very fragments of which are the despair of modern sculptors. All too short also that era when Raphael and Botticelli brought the canvas into what seemed the zenith of its perfection. It was as if the vestal virgin of beauty had drawn near to fan the flickering light into a fierce flame only to allow it quickly to die out again. But if other art epochs have been soon followed by eras of ugliness and tyranny, it was because formerly the patrician cla.s.s alone was interested in the beautiful. In that far-off time, Pericles had his palace and Athens her temple, but the common people dwelt in mud huts, wore coats of sheepskin, and slept on beds of straw. The beauty that was manifest in pictures, marbles, rich textures, bronzes, belonged exclusively to the cathedral or the palace.

Now has come an era when art is diffused. Beauty is sprinkled all over the instruments of dining-room, parlor and library. It is organized into textures of cotton, wool and silk. Even in the poor man's cottage blossoms break forth upon floor and walls, while vines festoon the humblest door.

Once, at great expense, a baron in France or Germany would send an artist into Italy to copy some masterpiece of t.i.tian or Tintoretto. Now modern photography makes it possible for the poorest laborer to look upon the semblance of great pictures, statues, cathedrals, landscapes--treasures these once beyond the wealth of princes. Having made tools, books, travel, home, religion to be life-teachers, G.o.d has now ordained the beautiful as an apostle of the higher Christian life.

Recognizing the hand of G.o.d in every upward movement of society, we explain this new enthusiasm for art upon the principle that beauty is the outer sign of an inner perfection. Oft with lying skill men veneer the plaster pillar with slabs of marble, and hide soft wood with strips of mahogany.

But beauty is no outer veneer. When ripeness enters the fruit within a soft bloom steals over the peach without. When every drop of blood in the veins is pure a beauteous flush overcasts the young girl's cheek. When summer hath lent ripeness to the harvests G.o.d casts a golden hue over the sheaf and lends a crimson flush to the autumn leaves. For beauty is ripeness, maturity and strength. Therefore when the seer says, "G.o.d maketh everything beautiful in its time," he indicates that G.o.d's handiwork is perfect work.

When some Wordsworth or Emerson leaves behind men's clumsy creations and enters the fields where G.o.d's workmans.h.i.+p abounds, the poet finds the ground "spotted with fire and gold in tints of flowers"; he finds the trees hung with festooned vines; finds the forests uniting their branches in cathedral arches; finds the winds making music down the long, leafy aisles; finds the birds pouring forth notes in choiring anthems, while the very clouds rise like golden incense toward an unseen throne. Though the traveler journey far, he shall find no bud, no bough, no landscape or mountain or ocean, that is not overcast with bloom and beauty.

We are not surprised therefore when we see that as man's arts and industries go toward perfection they go toward beauty. Carry the coa.r.s.e flax up toward beauty and it becomes strong cloth. Carry the coc.o.o.n of a worm up to beauty and it becomes a soft silken robe. Carry rude Attic speech up to beauty and it becomes the language of Homer or Hesiod. Carry the strange face or form tatooed upon the arm of the savage up to beauty and it becomes a Madonna or a Transfiguration. Carry a stone altar and a smoking sacrifice up to beauty and it becomes a Cologne cathedral or a Westminster Abbey. Indeed, historians might use the beautiful as the touchstone of human progress. The old milestones of growth were metals.

First came the age when arrows were tipped with flint. Then came the iron age, when the spear had a metal point. The bronze age followed, lending flexibility to ore hitherto unyielding. Later came the steel age, when weapons that bruised gave place to the keen edge that cuts. Perhaps the divinity chat represents our era will stand forth plated with oxide of silver.

But his ideas of beauty would measure man's progress quite as accurately.

In that first rude age beauty was external. Man twisted gay feathers into his hair, painted his cheeks red or yellow, wore rings of bright sh.e.l.ls about his neck. But our age is high because beauty has ceased to be mere personal adornment. Man now seeks to make his books beautiful for the intellect, his library and gallery beautiful for taste and imagination, his temple beautiful for wors.h.i.+p, his home beautiful in the interest of the heart, his song and prayer not simply true, but beautiful with praise to the unseen G.o.d. If in rude ages beauty was a.s.sociated with physical elements, the glory of our era is that beauty, unfolding from century to century, is now increasingly a.s.sociated with those moral qualities that lend remembrance to mother and martyr, to hero and patriot and saint.

To-day, fortunately for society, this world-wide interest in art is becoming spiritualized. From beautiful objects men are pa.s.sing to beautiful thoughts and deeds. We begin to hear much of the art of right living and the science of character building. Having lent charm and value to column and canvas, to marble and masterpiece, beauty now moves on to lend loveliness to mind and heart. For it seems an incongruous thing for man to adorn his cottage, lend charm to its walls and windows, make its ceilings to be like the floor of heaven for beauty, while within his heart he cherishes groveling littleness, slimy sin, light-winged evasions, brutal pa.s.sions. He whose body rides in a palace car must not carry a soul that is like unto a savage. Having lingered long before the portrait of Antigone or Cordelia, the young girl finds herself pledged to turn that ideal into life and character. The copy of the Sistine Madonna hanging upon the wall asks the woman who placed it there to realize in herself this glorious type of motherhood.

When the admirers of Shakespeare bought the house in which their hero was born, they planted in the garden the flowers which the poet loved. Pa.s.sing through the little wicket gate the pilgrim finds himself moving along a perfumed path, while to his garments clings the odor of violets and roses, sweet peas and b.u.t.tercups, the columbine and honeysuckle--flowers these, whose roots are in earth indeed, but whose beauty is borrowed from heaven.

From these grounds men have expelled the poison ivy, the deadly nightshade, all burdocks and thistles. And the soul is a garden in which truth, purity, patience, love, long suffering are qualities whiter than any lily and sweeter than any rose, whose perfume never pa.s.ses, whose beauty does not fade. And having succeeded in transforming waste places into centers of radiant beauty, man encourages the hope that he can carry his own reason, judgment and ambition up to full symmetry and perfection.

What a transformation man has wrought in matter! Nature says, here is a lump of mud; man answers, let it become a beautiful vase. Nature says, here is a sweet briar; man answers, let it become a rose double and of many hues. Nature says, here is a string and a block of wood; man answers, let them be a sweet-voiced harp. Nature says, here is a daisy; Burns answers, let it become a poem. Nature says, here is a piece of ochre and some iron rust; Millet answers, let the colors become an Angelus. Nature says, here is reason rude and untaught; man must answer, let the mind become as full of thoughts as the sky of stars and more radiant. Nature says, here is a rude affection; man must answer, let the heart become as full of love and sympathy as the summer is full of ripeness and beauty. Nature says, here is a conscience, train it; man should answer, let the conscience be as true to Christ and G.o.d as a needle to the pole. Marvelous man's skill through the fine arts! Wondrous, too, his handicrafts! But no picture ever painted, no poem ever perfected, no temple ever builded is comparable for strength and beauty to a full-orbed soul, matured through a widely trained reason and a sober judgment--mellow in heart and conscience, pervaded throughout with the spirit of Jesus Christ, the soul's master and model.

CHANNING'S VISION OF THE BEAUTIFUL LIFE.

Among those gifted spirits who have toiled tirelessly to carry the individual life up to unity, symmetry and beauty, let us hasten to mention the name of Channing. The child of genius, he was gifted with a literary style that lent strange fascination to all his speech. But great as he was in intellect, his character shone with such splendor as to eclipse his genius. He was of goodness all compact.

Early the winds of adversity beat against his little bark. Invalidism and misfortune, too, threatened to destroy his career. But bearing up amid all misfortune, he slowly wrought out his ideal of life as a fine art.

Patiently he perfected his dreams. Daily he practiced frugality, honor, justice, faith, love and prayer. He met storm with calm; he met provocation with patience; he met organized iniquity with faith in G.o.d's eternal truth; he met ingrat.i.tude and enmity with forgiveness and love.

At last he completed his symphony of an ideal life, that he hoped would help the youth and maiden to make each day as inspiring as a song, each deed as holy as a prayer, each character as perfect as a picture. For he felt that the life of child and youth, of patriot and parent should have a loveliness beyond that of any flower or landscape, and a majesty not found in any cataract or mountain, being clothed also with a beauty that does not inhere in Canova's marble and a permanency that is not possessed by Von Riles' cathedral, a structure builded of thoughts and hopes and aspirations, of tears and prayers, and purposes, whose foundation is eternal truth.

THE FOUNDATION OF HAPPINESS.

In founding his ideal life upon contentment with small means, Channing pleads for simplicity and the return to "plain living and high thinking."

He would fain double the soul's leisure by halving its wants.

Looking out upon his age, he beheld young men crazed with a mania for money. He saw them refusing to cross the college threshold, closing the book, neglecting conversation, despising friends.h.i.+p, postponing marriage, that they might increase their goods. Yet he remembered that earth's most gifted children have been content with small means, achieving their greatest triumphs midst comparative poverty.

THE LARGEST WEALTH.

The Divine Carpenter and His immortal band dwelt far from luxury. Poor indeed were Socrates, the reformer, and Epictetus, the slave, and Virgil, the poet. Burns, too, and Wordsworth and Coleridge, with Keats and Sh.e.l.ley--all these dwelt midway between poverty and riches. When that young English scholar learned that his relatives had willed him a fortune of 5,000 he wrote the dying man begging him to abandon his design, saying that he already had one servant, and that added care and responsibility meant the cutting off of a few minutes for study in the morning and a few minutes for reflection at night.

A PLEA FOR SIMPLICITY.

Here are our own Hawthorne and Longfellow--"content with small means." Here is Emerson resigning his church in Boston and leaving fame behind him, that upon the little farm at Concord he might escape the thousand and one details that robbed his soul of its simplicity. Here is Th.o.r.eau building his log cabin by Walden pond, living on forty dollars a year because he saw that man was being "destroyed by his unwieldy and overgrown establishment, cluttered with much furniture and tripped with his own traps, ruined by luxury and heedless expense, whose only hope was in rigid economy and Spartan simplicity."

Ours is a world where Cervantes writes Don Quixote living upon three bowls of porridge brought by the jailer of the prison. The German philosopher asked one cl.u.s.ter of grapes, one gla.s.s of milk and a slice of bread twice each day. Having completed his philosophy, the old scholar looked back upon forty happy years, saying that every fine dinner his friends had given him had blunted his brain for one day, while indigestion consumed an amount of vital energy that would have sufficed for one page of good writing.

A wise youth will think twice before embarking upon a career involving large wealth. Some there are possessed of vast property whose duty it is to carry bravely their heavy burden in the interest of society and the increase of life's comforts, conveniences and happiness. Yet wise Agur's prayer still holds: "Give me neither poverty nor riches." Whittier, on his little farm, refusing a princely sum for a lecture, was content with small means. Wendell Phillips, preferring the slave and the contempt of Boston's merchants and her patrician society, chose to "be worthy, not respectable."

Some Ruskin, distributing his bonds and stocks and lands to found workingmen's clubs, art schools and colleges, that he might have more leisure for enriching his imagination and heart, chose to "be wealthy, not rich." Needing many forms of wisdom, our age needs none more than the grace to "live content with small means, seeking elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fas.h.i.+on."

THE WORLD A WHISPERING GALLERY.

When the sage counsels us "to listen to stars and birds, to babes and sages," he opens to us the secrets of the soul's increase in wisdom and happiness. All culture begins with listening. Growth is not through shrewd thinking or eloquent speaking, but through accurate seeing and hearing. Our world is one vast whispering gallery, yet only those who listen hear "the still, small voice" of truth. Putting his ear down to the rocks, the listening geologist hears the story of the rocks. Standing under the stars, the listening astronomer hears the music of the spheres. Leaving behind the din and dirt of the city, Aga.s.siz plunged into the forests of the Amazon, and listening to boughs and buds and birds he found out all their secrets.

One of our wisest teachers has said, "The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world, is to see something, and tell what it saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk, for one who can think. But thousands can think for one who can see; to see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion all in one. Therefore finding the world of literature more or less divided into thinkers and seers, I believe we shall find also, that the seers are wholly the greater race of the two." For greatness is vision. Opening his eyes, Newton sees the planets revolve and finds his fame. Opening his ears, Watt hears the movement of steam and finds his fortune. Millet explained his fame by saying he copied the colors of the sunset at the moment when reapers bow the head in silent prayer. The great bard, too, tells us he went apart and listened to find "sermons in stones, and books in the running brooks."

THE SECRET OF CULTURE.

It is a proverb that pilgrims to foreign lands find only what they take with them. Riding over the New England hills near Boston, Lowell spake not to his companion, for now he was looking out upon the pageantry of a glorious October day, and now he remembered that this was the road forever a.s.sociated with Paul Revere's ride. Reaching the outskirts of Cambridge, he roused from his reverie to discover that his silent companion had been brooding over bales and barrels, not knowing that this had been one of those rare days when October holds an art exhibit, and also oblivious to the fact that he had been pa.s.sing through scenes historic through the valor of the brave boy.

Of the four artists copying the same landscape near Chamouni, all saw a different scene. To an idler a river means a fish pole, to a heated schoolboy a bath; to the man of affairs the stream suggests a turbine wheel; while the same stream leads the philosopher to reflect upon the influence of great rivers upon cities and civilizations. Coleridge thought the bank of his favorite stream was made to lie down upon, but Bunyan, beholding the stream through the iron bars of a prison cell, felt the breezes of the "Delectable Mountains" cool his fevered cheek, and stooping down he wet his parched lips with the river of the waters of life. Nature has no message for heedless, inattentive hearers. It is possible for a youth to go through life deaf to the sweetest sounds that ever fell over Heaven's battlements, and blind to the beauty of landscape and mountain and sea and sky. There is no music in the autumn wind until the listener comes.

There is no order and beauty in the rolling spheres until some Herschel stands beneath the stars. There is no fragrance in the violet until the lover of flowers bends down above the blossoms.