Seeing and being : or, Perception and character

Preface

Lessons from one man's experiences and observations will not be of value to all. But lessons from any man's experiences and observations will be of value to some. No man stands, in his feelings and sympathies, for his entire race. But every man, in his sympathies and feelings, stands for a class.

Hence it is, that whatever truths have made a profound impression on a man in the progress of his life-course are likely to make a correspondent impression on others who are like him, if he can bring those truths with any vividness before them. And when a series of related truths have excited interest in their detached separateness, they will hardly fail to excite fresh interest in their exhibited relation to one another and to a common central truth.

6 PREFACE.

The essays in this volume are an outcome of their writer's observings and experiencings in his varied life-course. They were received with interest as editorial contributions in the pages of The Sunday School Times, while appearing there, one by one, during a term of ten years or more; and their republication has been urged by many who desire them for preservation in a permanent form. They are now presented in a new light, in a logical order for the elucidation and emphasis of a truth which is common to them all.

The gaining of the thoughts of this volume has not been without cost to its writer. His hope is that the considering of them will not be without stimulus and profit to its readers.

H. C. T.

Philadelphia,

The Transforming Power of a Gaze 187

XX. The Cost of a Mountain Outlook 195

I.

SEEING, AND SEEING.

" Blessed are your eyes, for they see," said our Lord to his favored disciples. And in saying this Jesus made a sharp contrast between his keen-eyed followers and those about them in whom was fulfilled the saying of the prophet, " Seeing ye shall see, and shall not perceive." There are eyes, and there are eyes. There are eyes which see, and there are eyes which do not see. Now, as in the days of our Lord, it is a blessed thing to have seeing eyes.

" Our sight," says Addison, " is the most perfect and most delightful of our senses. It fills the mind with the largest variety of ideas, converses with objects at the greatest distance, and continues longest in action without being tired or satiated with its proper enjoyments." But there is seeing, and there

IO SEEING AND BEING.

is seeing ; there is a seeing that sees, and there is a seeing that does not see. A dog can see a fine painting or a piece of faultless sculpture ; but what is a dog's sight of either colored canvas or glowing marble ? A cow can look upon a cathedral, or a bird upon a landscape, but what can cow or bird see of the real or of the ideal in landscape or cathedral ? Many a man gains no more from his seeing a thing of beauty or a scene of grandeur than if he were a dog, a cow, or a bird. There must be soul in the seeing to have enjoyment in the sight.

"You would be surprised,' , said the intelligent proprietor of one of our most attractive mountain resorts, "to know how few persons there are, even among our summer guests, who appreciate fine scenery. Many who come here come for the pure air or the retired location; they have no eye for the scenery." Then he told of a morning scene of rarest beauty, when the fogs from the river valley were rising like waves of molten silver up along the verdant hillsides, while the mountains on every hand towered grandly above the sea of sun-lit vapor. In his enthusiasm over the sight he had called to it the attention of one of his city guests, with the exclamation, "Isn't that beautiful !" The unexpected response of his prosaic and dulleyed companion was, "Why, no. I don't think it is beautiful. I think it is a pretty rough country.' , Sahara would have been a pleasanter region than the Yosemite for that man's eyes to rest on. The trouble in his case was not with the scenery, but with the seer.

Nor is such a man a rare exception among men. " The difference between landscape and landscape is small," says Emerson ; " but there is great difference in the beholders." " The stars at night stoop down over the brownest, homeliest common with all the spiritual magnificence which they shed on the Campagna, or on the marble deserts of Egypt. The uprolled clouds and the colors of morning and evening will transfigure maples and alders " — to the eye which is blessed with the power of seeing the transfigured. As

Dante tells us :

"All Are blessed, even as their sight descends Deeper into the truth, wherein rest is For every mind. Thus happiness hath root In seeing, not in loving — which of sight Is aftergrowth."

One man, looking out from the ocean shore, sees before him only a trackless waste of wild waters. Another sees there a fathomless deep, a restrained immensity, a type of infinitude ; what Byron calls,

" [A] glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form Glasses itself in tempests ; in all time, Calm or convulsed — in breeze, or gale, or storm, Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime Dark-heaving ; — boundless, endless, and sublime — The image of Eternity — the throne Of the Invisible."

One man sees, in the mountain range which stretches athwart his sight, nothing more than a rough barrier to vision and to progress. Another sees in every mountain peak the " meeting place of earth and heaven, the place where the bending skies meet the aspiring planet, the place where the sunshine and the cloud keep closest company with the granite and the grass ; " or, to him the mountains are, as Longfellow suggests, " the great watch-towers " of earth, which "lift their heads far up into the sky, and gaze upward and around to see if the Judge of the world comes not ! "

One sees merely the signs of a foreshadowed harvest in the green fields about him, or the tokens of the next day's weather as he scans the evening sky. Another sees beauty and life on every side, and grandeur and glory in the upward view. He sees the evidences of God's handiwork in leaf and flower and moth and bird, as also in cloud and star and moon. His eye, as Cowper

' ' "Discerns

A ray of heavenly light, gilding all forms : —

The unambiguous footsteps of the God

Who gives its luster to an insect's wing,

And wheels His throne upon the rolling worlds."

One sees in a passing throng only an undistinguishable mass of humanity. Another sees in every man of that throng the possessor of a unique personality, with its own history, its own character, its own hopes and fears, its own eternal destiny; a man still retaining some vestige of the Divine image in which his nature was first created, and still the object of the infinite love of God. The dizzy whirl of human life is seen by one and by another as in Wordsworth's London Fair :

" O blank confusion ! true epitome Of what the mighty City is herself, To thousands upon thousands of her sons, Living amid the same perpetual whirl Of trivial objects melted and reduced To one identity, by differences That have no meaning, and no end, — Oppression under which even highest minds Must labor, whence the strongest are not free. But though the picture weary out the eye, By nature an unmanageable sight, It is not wholly so to him who looks In steadiness, who hath among least things An under sense of greatest ; sees the parts As parts, but with a feeling of the whole."

And so it is in all the range of human sight;

one sees, and another sees. The sight is the same; but how different the seeing!

Thomas Starr King quotes a little German poem which tells in beautiful simplicity how differently different eyes look upon the things of nature. " Two men had gone up from the city to the summit of one of the Alps. They returned, and their kindred pressed about them to know what visions they had enjoyed.

" 'Twas a buzz of questions on every side, 1 And what have you seen ? Do tell ! ' they cried.

" The one with yawning made reply, 'What have we seen? Not much have I ! Trees, mountains, meadows, groves, and streams, Blue sky, and clouds, and sunny gleams.*

" The other, smiling, said the same ; But with face transfigured, and eyes of flame : 'Trees, meadows, mountains, groves, and streams, Blue sky, and clouds, and sunny gleams.' "

The one had eyes which saw; the other, seeing, saw not.

Ruskin says : " 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." And Browning's claim is :

" In the seeing soul, all worth lies, I assert.*'

Blessed are those eyes which see.

II.

SEEING MORE AND MORE.

No one can see at the first glimpse all that is to be seen in anything that is worth seeing. In many an object of sight, hardly an appreciable portion of its distinctively noteworthy points of interest can be perceived at the first looking ; and, in every case, there is more to be seen than shows itself to a casual observer. Only he who sees more and more in his seeing and observing, really sees that which is best worth seeing in this world ; and how to see more and more in one's seeing and observing, is one of the things in this world that is well worth knowing.

If you would train a child to enjoy looking at pictures, you must train him to see more and more in each picture at which he looks. A child's first impulse in looking at a book of colored pictures, is to glance at one pic- 2 17 ture, and then turn over the pages until he finds another ; and so on through the book, over and over again. In this way he would soon know each picture as a whole, or by one of its central features, but not in its minor details. If, however, you ask a child to point to a man in a picture at which he is looking, and then to point out the man's face, and the man's eye, and then to point out a dog, or a tree, or a bird, in the same picture, you give to that child an added interest in his picturelooking, and you enable him to see more and more in that at which he looks. It is much the same in training a child to look at a flower, or a bird, or a tree, or a house, or at a landscape or a sunset. You must help him to see more and more in everything at which he looks, by looking for more and more; and in doing this, you are adding to his powers of observation, and increasing his possibilities of enjoyment by means of his eyes.

Most persons have not been so trained, while children, to look for more and more in

SEEIXG AXD BEIXG. 1 9

their seeing, as to be able to see more and more in their looking; hence most persons go through the world as an untrained child goes through his colored picture-book, glancing at one picture after another as it passes before the eyes, without seeing more of it than stands out on the surface. He who sees more and more in his looking is an exception among his fellows, and he has exceptional power and exceptional enjoyment in consequence.

One man often sees more than another in one line of looking, because his eye has been trained in that particular line ; but rarely does a man continue to see more and more in the line of his most careful seeing, because, in most cases, a man does not expect to see more in that direction, after he has attained to a certain measure of perception. Yet he who sees most in any one line of seeing might see more and more in that very line, if only he realized his possibilities of such seeing ; for in this sphere, as in every other, it is true that " whosoever hath, to him shall be given," and that added progress is a privilege that accompanies added possession.

A dog-fancier can see more than most men see of the special points of a dog ; a lover of horses can see more than most men see of the peculiar characteristics of a horse; a woodman, a farmer, a cotton-dealer, an engineer, a sailor, can see more than others see in the objects of his particular interest as an observer. But all these men are likely to limit their seeing, and their expectation of seeing in their line of observing, to those points and characteristics which are essential to an understanding of the case from their purely professional point of view, leaving out of thought all that which might be seen in realms beyond their present sphere of personal interest. The dog-fancier, for example, can quickly see the points in a dog which indicate his breed and quality and age and relative value, and even his disposition ; but he is not likely to see those distinctive signs of a dog's measure of intelligence which tend to define the line, if line there be, between what we call instinct and what we call intellect; yet just here a wise observer might see more and more, indefinitely.

A cotton-dealer can see the relative fineness and strength of the fiber he " staples," and can perceive its possibilities for the market and for the factory ; but he is not likely to see the wonderful beauties of the cotton fiber as disclosed by the microscope, and as judged by the eye of the naturalist and the artist; although there is more and more to be seen in this direction, continually, to those who are tireless in their search for new disclosures of the vegetable world. And so it is all the way along in this matter of seeing. He who seems to see most, might see more and more if he were ready to see it.

Many a traveler expects to see " all that is worth seeing " in a city that he visits for the first time, in a few hours or a few days, by driving through its principal streets, and by looking in upon its public buildings, including its galleries and its museums. Another traveler, visiting that same city, sees more and more to be observed in the peculiarities of the people, their dress, their manners, their appearance, at every step of his way ; and a single hour in one of its galleries or museums convinces him that he could see more and more to interest and profit him in that one place if he could pass several hours of every day there for months or years to come.

It is much the same in observing beauties of natural scenery. One man expects to see Niagara, or the Yosemite, or the Yellowstone Park, or the Alps, or the Nile, as pointed out to him by the personal-conductor of a tourists' agency, in the schedule time of the conventional tour, without missing anything that other tourists have seen at the same point of observation ; while another is sure, from his first glimpse of what is before him, that he should be seeing more and more that is worth his seeing, for days and weeks to come, if only he could continue looking from that point, and from other points available to him.

And as it is to the tourist, so is it to the expectant and observant seer in his own home, in town or country. He may think that he has seen all that is to be seen to advantage in the streets he passes daily, in the fields upon which his home windows look out, or in the ocean, the mountains, or the skies, visible in the distance from those windows. Or, again, he may realize that there is more and more for him to see just there, or in just that direction, so long as he lives there. And according to his belief, so it will be unto him, in his seeing and seeing.

The soul-power which enables the eyes to see more and more continually is a matter of growth and cultivation, rather than of inborn possession. He who understands that his eyes are given him not only to see with but to search with, has already learned the alphabet of observation by which all the discoveries of taste and knowledge in the realm of nature are disclosed and described to the world. Only he can see more and more with his eyes, who has more and more in his mind that he is looking to find outside.

As John Burroughs says of woodcraftseeing : " You must have the bird in your heart before you can find it in the bush. The eye must have purpose and aim. No one ever yet found the walking fern who did not have the walking fern in his mind. A person whose eye is full of Indian relics picks them up in every field he walks through." Or as old Matthew Henry phrases this truth in its application to another sphere : " He who would observe God's providences, shall have God's providences to observe."

Quite as much as in God's book of nature, is expectant looking of value and importance in God's book of revelation. Says old Thomas Fuller, " Lord, this morning I read a chapter in the Bible, and therein observed a memorable passage whereof I never took notice before. Why now, and no sooner, did I see it ? Formerly my eyes were as open, and the letters as legible. Is there not a thin veil laid over thy word, which is more rarefied by reading, and at last wholly worn away ? " Only he who sees more and more in the

SEEING AND BEING.

Bible, and who expects to see more and more there, can ever see what is in the Bible, or have any comprehension of its truths and its beauties.

As it is in seeing with the natural eye, so is it in the realm of mental and of spiritual vision. One man sees all that he cares to see, because he sees all that he supposes there is to be seen, in the direction of knowledge or of faith, at his first looking in that direction. Another man is sure that, because he has seen something as he looked thither, there must be a great deal more there for him to see, if only he will continue to look expectantly ; for there is always more to be seen, in any and every direction, by him who expects to see more and more. Just here, indeed, is the line of marked distinction between the true scholar and the vain pedant. The one sees; the other supposes he has seen. The one sees more and more; the other saw it all the first time he looked. The one will make progress in knowledge and in faith as long as he lives ; the other reached the limit of his progress when he opened his eyes to the light of day. The one has no conception of any light or sight beyond that which was his at the earliest hour of his life's morning ; the other is always in that pathway of " the light of dawn that shineth more and more unto the perfect day/'

III.

WHAT WE SEE SHOWS WHAT WE ARE.

A keen-eyed New England observer, of a

generation ago, in telling of the drinking

customs which prevailed in his earlier days,

spoke of the frequency, in those times, of

delirium tremens even among persons of the

" better class" in the community. As an

illustration in this line, he mentioned a father

and a son, living next door to him, who were

often thus carried away by their appetites,

and whom he was sometimes called to assist

in controlling, when the members of their

family were unable to manage them. " And

it was veiy singular," he said, " to note the

difference in the two men, when they had the

1 horrors/ The father was a genial, jolly

man; and he always saw monkeys in his

visions. He would laugh till the tears ran down his cheeks, as he pointed out the dancing monkeys with their cornstalk fiddles, which were all about him in his visions. On the other hand, the son was morose and sullen ; and when his brain was excited he always saw Spaniards coming to murder him, and devils ready to torture him. Each of the men showed what was in him by what he saw at such a time." And in that discriminating suggestion the New England observer declared a truth that has its applications in other realms than that of visions and dreams. In all that one sees as he looks about him in the world as it is, there is more or less of an indication of what the observer is, in his character, his characteristics, his tastes, and his aspirations.

Three men were accidental companions in a journey along the Pacific coast, including a visit to the Yosemite Valley. All three had the same scenery before them, but no two of them saw the same things as they looked out on that scenery. One of them seemed to see nothing but sheep pasturage, or its lack.

He was all the time talking of the possibilities of raising sheep on the hill-sides and on the plains traversed by the party. He proved to be a Pennsylvania wool-grower. A second one was mentally measuring the big trees, and was indulging in calculations as to the amount of timber which one of the red- wood forests would supply, and as to the time and cost necessary to bring that timber to a market. He was found to be a lumberman from Michigan. The third man was constantly drawn away from the attractions of the scenery by the observed peculiarities of his traveling companions, and of their guide, and of the persons whom they met in their journeying. Nothing in inanimate nature could command his sustained interest, in comparison with human beings. He was a Christian worker from the East, who cared more for persons than for things.

Yet farther on in their journeyings those three tourists met two other travelers, who again had other sights to see in that which was common to all, yet which was singular to

SO SEEING AND BEING.

each. One of the two new observers saw onlybeauty in the natural scenery, and picturesqueness in any group of living personalities ; the other was on the lookout for signs of former life, and of ancient days, and of natural changes in the country about him. The one was an artist ; the other was a scientist.

And just what was observable in those five observers on the Pacific coast at that time, might have been then noted among other observers elsewhere; as, indeed, it could be noted everywhere at all times, where men who observe are intelligently observed. The desert Arab sees nothing of natural beauty in the natural landscape within sight of him. To him a mountain is only a barrier to be surmounted tediously in his journeying, and a spring of water has attractiveness only because of its value in thirst-quenching. The African hunter in a weird jungle loses sight of everything about him except that which gives him a sign of his game, or of the helps or hindrances to its capture. And the average woman in America, in Europe, in Asia, or in Africa, will see another woman's dress, be it much or little, when that dress merely as a dress would hardly be observed by sheepgrower, lumberman, Christian worker, artist, scientist, desert guide, or jungle hunter. In one sphere, as in all spheres, what one sees shows more or less of what one is; or, in other words, the observer's personality is unconsciously projected into the object which commands his attention and interest as an observer.

It is true that not every person would be limited, as an observer, to a single aspect of the scene before him, as in the case of the persons already cited in illustration of this truth ; for unquestionably there are those who would at one and the same time see beauty as with the eye of an artist, facts as with the eye of a scientist, persons as with the eye of a lover of his fellows, while having, also, an eye to the practical bearings of their surroundings. Yet such persons would, just as surely as if they were men of one idea, show what is in them by what they see outside of themselves. Their many-sided seeing shows their many-sided being. Not every man is so absorbed with a single conception that it possesses his entire personality, nor yet to that extent that it is his prevailing conception in life. But whether a man be swayed by one thought or by many thoughts, by a single purpose or by conflicting purposes, his thought and his purpose, or his thoughts and his purposes, will be shown outside of himself in what he sees beyond himself, and in his estimates of the chief thing or things which are noteworthy in that which he observes.

In the field of character, as in the field of natural scenery, what one sees is an indication of what one is. If a man, in looking upon his fellows, sees only signs of selfishness, or of impurity, or of dishonest courses, he discloses the coloring of his mental and moral vision, through which he looks upon others. If a man says that there is no such thing as absolute unselfishness in friendship or in other loving devotedness, but that everybody is influenced in his affections by his personal interests, it is clear that that man gives proof that his own inner experience supplies him with no reason for supposing that others are actuated by self-forgetful fidelity to any object of their truest and tenderest regard. If a business man insists that strict and unswerving truth and honesty are incompatible with business enterprise in times like these, he practically announces that he is not trying to carry on his business in a way which would be hopelessly impracticable. He who is always suspicious of others gives just ground for suspicion of himself. He who is sure that everybody is worse below the surface than above it, thereby speaks out concerning his surface and subsurface characteristics.

And so it is all through the range of character-seeing. A loving spirit shows itself in loving estimates of others ; or, in other words, he who at heart is lovely shows his loveliness in his recognition of a lovely side in everybody whom he has occasion to observe. He 3 who sees trustworthiness in others, shows that he is a man worthy to be trusted. And just in proportion as a man is hearty and enthusiastic in his rejoicing over the high and admirable qualities which, to his mind's eye, stand out in the character of a friend to whom he looks up as the embodiment of a lofty ideal, does that man give evidence of a correspondence in his own character of high and admirable instincts and aspirings in the direction of those which he sees and rejoices over beyond himself.

This truth has a certain recognition in the popular estimate of writers, as they disclose themselves in their writings. Whether it be the cynic like Rochefoucauld, the humorist like Charles Lamb, the genial satirist like Thackeray, the lover of nature like Wordsworth, or the lover of his fellows like Whittier, the writer shows what he is in his personal character, by what he sees as worthy of a record when he looks out upon the world about him. And if, indeed, it be said that the personality of so great a writer as Shakespeare is not disclosed in his writings, that is only another way of saying that Shakespeare's many-sidedness of character is so unique that no single reader is capable of fully comprehending that character, and hence of perceiving it in its faithful record.

Looking out upon the wider sphere of the universe as a whole, with its exhibit of God's plan and its suggestings of God's character, an observer shows what he is by what he sees. One man sees much to grieve over and much to be regretted ; another man sees much to rejoice over and much to delight in. To one the outlook is chiefly a dark one, with only here and there a fitful gleam of lurid light to make the darkness gloomier. To the other, the light is the chief thing observable; and the very darkness is but as a shadow to bring out the brightness into more admirable relief. The difference between the two views is not in the moral landscape, but in the moral nature of the observer. The cause of hopeless discontent on the one hand, and of restful contentment on the other hand, is in the person who sees, not in the scenery which is seen.