The great slighted fortune

Front matter

MyMMttm !

lelfj

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

Preface

We live in unexampled years. The current period is one of amazing human intensities, and of astonishing triumphs of energy and enterprise. In no by-gone time was there such successful pursuit of science, such crowned inventiveness, such multiplication of advantages on the material side of civilization. And } T et few are they that are becoming more excellent, more contented, more serene, more happy. Men are immersed in the senses. Health is either sacrificed to utilitarian concentration, or immolated on the altar of Fashion. Individuality — that key to freedom from mental mendicancy — is lost in imitation. Frivolity renders thought impotent and sentiment shallow. Assumed refinement has the place of genuine courtesy. People (as saith Tennyson) " whisper, and hint, and chuckle, and grin at a brother's shame." There is an unfortunate "weakening of the power of imagination, as well as of the power of faith — those two great sources of motives to excellence of character and perfectness of life." Politics, philosophy, art, literature, economics, social life, all seem pointed toward " the vale of the Salt Sea," rather than toward " the Olive mountains."

And this is the reason why : The progress and the improvement which mark the period are continually with-

VI PBEFACE.

out men, and only slightly within them. There is need of something to break the spell of Utilitarianism whereby mortals are bound, and to open glimpses of better, sweeter, grander possibilities. Hence this volume, which is a plea for that great fortune of man — his own nature. Bulwer says, " Strive, while improving }^our one talent, to enrich your whole capital as a man." The present work is designed to aid in securing the result thus recommended. It is a contribution toward heightening men's valuation of those natural inheritances, the body and the soul, with all the specific dowers which they include, and toward fitting men to experience not only nobler stirrings and ardors, but also a continual cheerfulness — that which is affirmed by Montaigne to be " the most certain sign of wisdom." It illustrates the truth (taught by Madame de Stael in her Corinne) that the hearth of human happiness can exist nowhere but in the secret sanctuary of the human breast. Perchance it will prove a means of checking the pernicious communistic tendencies of the passing time — tendencies which have their origin in a discontent, as blind to the dignity of human nature as it is dead to the divine fatherhood. The book is not exhaustive, but suggestive. We send it forth, trusting that it will find its way into the hands of many readers, and that every one who reads it will gather from its pages something like that lesson expressed by Horace Bushnell : ' ' The greatest wealth you will ever get, will be in yourself."

J. D. B.

September 1, 1878.

Contents

THE WONDERFUL HOUSE.

Chapter I. The Body

PAGE

I. The Master-Form among Organisms 3

II. Conscientious Abuse of the Body 13

III. Physical Sins 21

IV. Health 24

V. Fast Life, as related to Invalidism 35

THE INESTIMABLE INTERIOR HERITAGE.

Chapter II. The Soul

I. Our Self-Knowing Substance 43

II. The Soul knowable only by Way of its Phenomena . 49

III. The Soul's Inner Phenomena — How Perceived . . 52

IV. The Outer Phenomena of the Soul : Works of Great

Men 54

V. The Soul's Revealings of Itself through the Body . 63

VI. Opinions as to the Soul's Nature 72

VII. Definitions of the Soul 92

VIII. The Innate Dignity of the Soul 96

IX. The Distinctness of the Soul from the Body .... 100

X.. The Soul the Real Human Self 108

XI. The Capabilities of the Soul Ill

vii

Vlll CONTENTS.

XII. The Endless Improvability of the Soul 118

XIII. The Immortality of the Soul . 127

XIV. The Value of the Soul 139

XV. The Needlessness of Stationary Mediocrity .... 151

XVI. Self-Disrespect, and what comes of it 1G0

A PRINCELY POSSESSION.

Chapter III. The Impelling Capability; Or, The Powee Of Push

I. That whence springs all True Perseverance .... 177 II. A Comparison, as to the Impelling Capability, between the English and the Americans 188

III. Great Impelling Capability indispensable to Great

Triumphs 199

IV. Relation of the Impelling Capability to Success in

Common Life 205

V. Relation of the Impelling Capability to Human Joy . 211

VI. Excesses of the Impelling Capability 214

VII. Summation 219

THE EVER-LIVING PRODUCE.

Chapter IV. Influence

I. Its Succession of Generations 223

II. Silent Expression 22G

III. Words 232

IV. Deeds 246

V. Particular Illustrations of Sowing and Reaping in

Life 249

VI The Secret of the Immortalization of Endearment . 2G4

VII Life and Influence Inseparable 2G9

CONTENTS. IX

THE MYSTIC PERSONALTY.

Chapter V. Presence And The Presence-force

I. The Secret of Personal Impressiveness 275

II. Personal Atmospheres : their Dissimilitude 282

III. The Eye, as connected with Presence 296

IV. The Weighty Presence 314

V. Relation of Independent Self-Exertion to Presence . 320

VI. Fitful Concentration of Personal Energy 324

VII. Unimpressive Engagedness 327

VIII. Chaotic Discomposure 332

IX. The Effect on Presence of Fashion and Frivolity . . 335

THE PRIME CONDITION OF AVAIL.

Chapter VI. Knowing How To Be One's Own

I. As related to Inner Luminosity and Noblemanship . 343

II. Individuality 352

III. Masterfulness and Tenderness 373

IV. Desire of Exertion 378

V. Decision, Determination, Resolution 385

VI. Independence of Thought 400

VII. Originality and Creativeness 405

VIII. Socrates 420

IX. Thoreau 425

X. Lincoln 433

XL Dempster 442

XII. The Master-Soul 449

THE WONDERFUL HOUSE.

" This breathing house not built with hands."

Coleridge.

" The body — the house no eye can probe."

Robert Browning.

THE GREAT SLIGHTED FORTUNE.

I. The Master-eorm Among Organisms

" That superior mystery, Our vital frame, so fearfully devised."

Wordsworth.

Significant is the fact, that, in literature, sacred as well as unsacred, there occur numerous references to the corporeal structure of man, which plainly imply a profound respect for that living, throbbing fabric. Take some examples. Both Jesus and St. Paul speak of it as a " temple ; " that is to say, a building highly excellent and solemnly superb. Milton indirectly pays a special tribute to it, in those lines in Paradise Lost, where, breathing a plaint on account of what his blindness denied him, he uses the oft-quoted words, " human face divine." Novalis, not content to call it simply a temple, says: " There is but one temple in the world, and that is the body of man.*' Thomas Dick affirms that " the system of organization connected with the human frame is the most admirable piece of mechanism which the mind can contemplate."

Great, indeed, is the change when one turns from such attributive expressions to allusions in which there is ascribed to the body only a small importance, only a little majesty. Shakespeare makes Hamlet call it " this mortal coil." In Jean Paul's Titan it is spoken of as a " chrysalis shell." The disciples of Pythagoras were wont to term it the soul's " tent," and the disciples of Plato were accustomed to represent it as the soul's " vestment." And St. Paul, in one place, designates it as "this tabernacle," thus conveying the impression that it is, after all, a thing of minor consequence.

What, now, shall be said of the two classes of references? Is there ground for both of them? Is it true that the body is something really fine and noble, like a temple, and at the same time true that it is an inferior thing, like the crude wrappage of a chrysalis, or the fading hut of coarse cloth inside which the traveler tarries ? In response, I affirm that, when viewed in comparison with the soul, the body is obviously inferior, and deserves only a faint praise ; whereas, when viewed in comparison with other vitalized earth-forms, it has a supreme rank, a sovereign nobility. This explanation opens a clear path. Let us, courteous reader, enter it, and go on therein for a little while, seeking to know to what extent entitled to high regard is that visible part of the natural human fortune — the pulse-stirred house in which the soul resides. In beginning this inquiry, it is of course to be supposed that the body is all itself ; or, in other words, that it has neither been deformed by bad habits, nor corroded to thinness by slow-devouring disease. We are to consider it, not as a blighted, broken, half-ruined structure, but as a sound organic frame. When Selim the First, the subduer of Eg}^pt, led his host of warriors through Syria, though he was one of the most cruel of conquerors, he permitted the beautiful gardens about Damascus, in the vicinity of which his army was encamped, to lie untouched by the hands of his soldiers. Those gardens were open to view, and were in a subjugated land ; but the troops, by reason of the effectiveness of the military discipline, remained aloof, not daring to invade and to ravage the attractive grounds, because they had not received from their commander the signal of plunder. In like manner, for at least a period of years, the body lives and flourishes, with its vital strength unimpaired by reckless invasion, and its comely proportions undespoiled by withering ravage. And so, forsooth, it would continue to live and flourish, during perhaps a whole lifetime, did not the careless monarch Self, unlike even that cruel Oriental conqueror who spared the fair gardens about Damascus, so often let all wholesome discipline relax, and give the signal of plunder to a swarm of wayward proclivities.

Now, to know what the body is before it has been overrun and pillaged by any of the ruthless foragers — Thoughtlessness, Intemperance, Foolhardiness, Vanity, Passion, Lust, Superstition, austere Devotion, and the rest — is surely to have made an estimable attainment. Never should it be forgotten by the one who would worthily occupy his entire being, that when the Creator built up in the womb of nature man's form, He did not rear a poor and mean structure, but erected a frame of such superior^ among physical objects, that human artists, in all the great ages of the world, have ardently vied with one another in giving it representation on canvas or in marble. The body of man, though composed of earth-elements which were one in essence with " the dust of the ground," grew up a handsome achievement of organizing power, a " fine contexture of solids and fluids." The completion of it marked the commencement of an extraordinary cycle of terrestrial history. That body stood among myriads of living forms without a peer. It was the preeminent visible ornament of the world. It was the most dignified and most interesting compound of material atoms that had appeared in all the stupendous aeons of earthly change and progressive development.

Respecting the high rank which belongs to the body before its inner courts have been reached and its secret treasury has been rummaged by Vandal invaders, one may obtain a clear and abiding impression by comparing this frame with the other vertebrate frames which are presented to view in the animal scale. Certainly the principal spine-possessing organism is that of man. His vertebral parts are so arranged as unmistakably to fit him for an upright position both in standing and in walking. They make it easy for him to look toward heaven. It was, perhaps, for this reason the Greeks gave him the name ftvOgajnog, which the author of an ancient grammar derives from two words, signifying, when taken together, "to look upward." The poet Ovid declares that God, in providing as He did for the elevated carriage of man's face, designed that he should scan the realm of the stars :

"He set man's face aloft, that, with his eyes Uplifted, he might view the starry skies."

The hands of man are beautifully contrived for performances of executive cunning. The feet of man are skillfully fitted both for supporting with ease his erect organic trunk, and for elastically bearing it along its way.

Now, it will be found that all the other vertebrate animal frames are strikingly inferior in arrangement to that of man. Unlike the latter, they are adapted for a posture habitually un erect. Honest old Montaigne is in error when he good-naturedly ridicules our prerogative of bodily erectness as that which " the poets make such a mighty matter of," and when he intimates that other animals "in their natural posture discover as much of heaven and earth as man." Says a learned scientist, " Man is the only mammiferous animal to which the erect position is natural." And evidently, if it is not natural to any other mammiferous animal, it cannot for a moment be presumed to be so to any animal of the nonmammiferous orders. Every known creature inferior to the human species — whether it be oviparous or viviparous, whether aerial or terrestrial, aquatic or amphibious, whether an ostrich or a camel, a longnecked giraffe or a quick-limbed monkey — has a structural arrangement which fits its head for a downward rather than for an upward bend and bearing.*

* The author of the Fifth Bridgewater Treatise (Dr. P. M. Roget), after remarking that man presents the only instance

The fish has two pairs of coarse organs called fins* instead of two finely formed hands and two cunningly constructed feet. The bird has in its two wings a sort of fingerless hands, and has for feet a pair of rough-fashioned extremities consisting mostly of toes. The beast has no hands, but has four feet, which are either hoofs or paws ; and the serpent has neither hands nor feet, but is " a mean, abortive creature, which the angry motherhood of nature would not go on to finish, but shook from her lap before the legs were done, muttering ominously, 4 Cursed art thou for man's sake above all cattle ; on thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life.' "

I shall conduct my reader but little further in the present path of inquiry. A long discussion does not seem to be necessary to show the rank which the body holds among organized structures, before it has been invaded, plundered, and impaired. Doubtless it will be sufficient to add to what has already been said, a comprehensive statement of the conclusion relative to the subject, which reason finds itself

among the mammalia of a conformation by which the erect posture can be permanently maintained, and that to this intention the form and the arrangement of all the parts of the osseous fabric, as well as the position and the adjustments of the organs of sense, have a clear reference, adds, in a marginal note, the much-meaning statement : "In most quadrupeds, as we have seen, the thorax is deep in the direction from the sternum to the spine, but is compressed laterally, for the evident purpose of bringing the fore limbs nearer to each other, that they might more effectually support the anterior part of the trunk. In man, on the contrary, the thorax is flattened anteriorly, and extends more in width than in depth, thus throwing out the shoulders, and allowing an extensive range of motion to the arms."

brought to deduce, and to set down under the same a summary of the leading arguments which constitute its support.

The body, when uncheapened by the infirmities and the exhaustions of an invalid state, or when breathing and throbbing in nature's own condition of soundness, has a superior excellence and an impressive importance. In other words, it is a finely wrought and nobly qualified frame — the very master-form among mundane organisms. And for these reasons :

It is higher in order than any other living material form with which mortals are acquainted.

In the first instance of its appearance on the globe it was the last-created organism in a distinctly progressive series of organic frames ; and consequently it inherited the rank of a masterpiece.

Its upright attitude, both in standing and in walking, betokens natural dignity and superiority.

It is the only visible living organism that is adapted for articulate speech, and for the achievement of great triumphs in mechanical and in beautiful art.

By reason of the distinguishing peculiarities which it presents to view, according to sex and to age, — now as the stately form of the adult man, provided with strong bones, firm sinews, and well-set joints, and now again as the smooth, rotund, graceful form of the full-grown woman ; at one time as the lithe, robust frame of the gallant stripling, " whose glory is his strength," and at another time as the delicate, tripping, charming frame which has "the sweet cleanness of the high-bred maiden," — it is the one organ-

10 y THE GEE AT SLIGHTED FORTUNE.

ism which, above all others, has, in every period of civilization, made poets eloquent, inspired painters and sculptors, interested philosophers, and raised to a passionate glow the admiring feelings of chaste lovers.

It is, during the soul's stay on earth, its suitable habitation. That it is, as a habitation, well fitted for its occupant, we are to infer from the fact that there is in nature no such instance of incongruity as that of two things made for each other, and yet having no fitness the one for the other. The body is the house of the soul, because nothing but itself would have answered the demands of the case. Accordingly, it is to be presumed that the body has an importance, bearing some clue proportion to the exalted importance of the soul.

It is, withal, the soul's suitable organ and suitable •mirror or revealer. This is an argument for the nobility of the body, which there is no difficulty in being able to comprehend. The soul needs the body as an instrument whereby to develop itself, to improve itself, and to express itself. Had ifc been made to grow up on earth in a form similar even to the most excellent specimen of existing organisms other than the one chosen for it, it would have been at an unspeakable disadvantage. It was suggestively remarked by Helvetius, that " had the hoof of a horse been joined to the human arm, man would yet have been wandering in the woods." See how it is with the lower vertebrates ! No qualification whatever have they for the expression of fine sensations or emotions. Esdaile says, that, though they are abundantly able to show anger or rage in their countenances, they can scarcely reveal in them any feeling but that. The clog can indicate his inclination to fawn by nothing better than the wagging of his tail and the consequent motion of his body. The face of the brute animal, even when it is dying and when it is dead, hardly manifests a single important change of any kind on its part. " A salmon," says the writer above named, " looks as well when dead as when alive." Here, also, are some of his words :

" There is an expression in the human countenance of which we .can scarcely observe a vestige in any of the brute creation. The blush of modesty or of shame — the paleness of terror — the animation of joy dancing in the eye — the depression of grief, producing a monotonous relaxation of features — the pensive softness of love — together with a thousand other varied feelings, are all depicted on the human countenance, and give it an expression which both conveys intelligence and suggests signs by which we are enabled to render such intelligence permanent and useful."

From infanc} r to old age, the soul depends largely on the body in educating its own capabilities. Among the teachings of that sublime exponent of "ideal realism," Professor Schoberlein,* there are not a few weighty outgivings on this point. The body is essential to the soul, as a means of intercourse with other souls. Without it there could be no actualized acceptance or rejection by the soul of particular objects. It is also essential to the soul as a means whereby to attain to adequate self-consciousness. It enables the soul to objectify itself, and thus to distinguish, in a sufficient manner, between itself

* See his work, Die Geheimnisse des Glaubens, Heidelberg, 1872, of one division of which a translation is presented in the Methodist Quarterly for October, 1877.

and other entities. The body is, moreover, an organ indispensable to the soul's progress in the acquisition of knowledge and experience, and in the production of a true character, since by it the soul is kept in the requisite communion with the multitudinous ever-changing relations of the material and the spiritual worlds. Concerning the importance of the body as the soul's medium of self-revelation, the same profound theologian teaches that man plainly expresses his disposition and character in his body on earth, and will do likewise in eternity ; that the human soul is so in need of a body that, in default of one, it would, wherever it might be, lack an element essential to its wellbeing ; that bodilessness implies per se a hinderance to free self-revelation ; that in order to the full enjoyment of selfhood, it is " necessary to bring the ideal fullness of the mind and the heart to full outer expression ; " and that accordingly the soul will need and will have a body in the future state — will, forsooth, take with it, when it departs into that state, a germinally-existing spiritual form, which amid an appropriate environment will at length attain completeness.

II. Conscientious Abuse Of The Body

" What power of prince or penal law, be it never so strict, could enforce men to do that which for conscience's sake they will voluntarily undergo ? " Buktox, Anatomy of Melancholy.

" Farewell, a long farewell to thee, Arran of my heart! Paradise is with thee ; the garden of God within the sound of thy bells. The angels love Arran. Each day an angel comes there to join in its services." St. Columba.*

I AM to set in array some painful points, appertaining to wrongs conscientiously done to the flesh for the supposed good of the spirit. That quotation from Columbkill, or Saint Columba, the hermit of Arran, a bleak, wild island outside Gal way Bay, in the Atlantic, — Saint Columba, who could sing a plaintive farewell on leaving the spot where, " with the wind whistling through the loose stones, and the sea-spray hanging on his hair," he had abused his body for what he thought to be the welfare of his soul, — is certainly not pleasantly suggestive.

The story of religious austerity is a dismal one, for it is the story of " inhuman wisdom." I shall not attempt to relate it, but shall simply place before the mind of the reader some of the things which give a pitiful remarkableness to its contents.

There have been persons, not a few but many, who conceived it to be their duty to withhold all respect and all culture from their organic frames. Cu-

* Words of his when summoned from his dreary hermitage to be bishop of Iona.

14 THE GREAT SLTGHTED FORTUNE.

rious is the inquiry, how the God-created form has been, under imagined divine approval, abused, — how men, hungering and thirsting after what they sincerely believed to be righteousness, have cruelly denied it and oppressed it, macerated and marred it. In prosecuting this inquiry, one quickly meets the general fact, that body-abusing saints, more than ten thousand in number, have miserably lived and thankfully died. Having kindled in themselves a quenchless zeal against their own corporeal substance, they defied their nerves, despitefully used their physical members, quarrelled with their vital breath, and went out at last as candles do that have burned down, in discolored and disfigured candlesticks.

Whole classes of men can be named that were characterized by an unremitting antagonism against the body. The Essenes, a sect of religious people who dwelt in Palestine in the first century of the Christian era, were led by their creed to reduce their fleshly nature to an abject inferiority, and to rule over it as with a rod of iron. Their principal settlements were situated on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea. They were distinguished by a one-sided, fanatical aspiration after ideal purity and communion, — an aspiration which carried them into states of visionariness and into courses of excessive self-denial. They maintained that religion consists in nothing but silence and contemplation ; held the dogma of the malignity of matter ; contemned the body as the source of all evil passions ; and sought, by inflicting on it various mortifying severities, to secure a high degree of sanctity to their souls. They acknowledged the law of Moses, bat regarded the Pentateuch as allegorical and full of hidden meanings. In their devotion to mysticism and solemn reverie, to retirement and silence, to misleading notions and mischosen practices, they withheld themselves from nearly all the harmless pleasures of appetite, and kept their defenseless frames depressed under the yoke of a cheerless thralldom. The great Teacher who arose in their time, and who shone on them

" Like stars upon some gloomy grove,"

practically indicated that he had no sympathy with them in their peculiar opinions and customs. Though, out of regard for their calm virtue, and of that disposition on their part which withheld them from opposing the progress of his religion, he did not openly reprehend them, yet he carefully avoided every species of austerity which they made it their care to practice. By participating in the innocent festivities of life, as in the case of the marriage celebration at Cana, he set an example, which is an ever-abiding reproof for conscientious extremists^ who, like them, think they are adding to their spiritual excellence when they are diminishing their physical vigor.

The Gnostics, a sect that disseminated their heretical notions in the second century, were not less directly nor less habitually than the Essenes, body-abusers. They maintained that matter is an independent, active principle, altogether evil in its nature, and the centre and the source of all that is bad, corrupt, hateful. This, they believed, produced the

16 THE GIIEAT SLIGHTED FORTUNE.

globe. They held that it is inimical to everything good ; that it is a foe to the Supreme Being and to the soul of man, and that the latter would be ever pure, were it not clogged and burdened therewith. The body, in their view, restrains the soul's inherent energ}^, hinders its progress toward heavenly attainments, and imbues it with its own gross and malignant properties. They believed that the mission of Christ was to break the dominion of matter ; and they claimed that his body was not really material, but was destitute of corporeal organs, was incapable of pain and anguish, and was a physical entity only in appearance. They discarded the doctrine of the resurrection. Their conscientious abuse of their vitalized frames was life-long and incessant. They were unwilling to confer on their outer nature favors or helps, and were averse to fortifying it against accident or disease, fearing lest any efforts to protect it, or any outlay on it of fostering care, should result in damage to the soul. The austerer ones among them practiced a withering abstinence. They scorned to indulge even in the most innocent animal enjoyments. They declined to marry, and deemed it hurtful to the soul to associate with women. Withdrawing- from all circles of worldly society, they passed their days in penitential sobriety, in silent dreamful thought, and in prayer. Such were the peculiarities, such the modes of body-abuse, which distinguished all the more rigid representatives of that sect.

The most famous of primitive fighters against the body was, perhaps, Simon Stylites, the Syrian ascetic of Antioch, who lived for thirty-seven years on the

THE WONDEKFUL HOUSE. 17

top of a pillar, which was gradually raised from the height of six cubits to that of forty. When he had attained to the last-named altitude, and had become wonted to its airy perilousness, he thought that his body lacked little of being conquered, and that his soul was pretty nearly sanctified. In the fifth century there were certain monks in Palestine, of whom some dwelt in little dens just large enough to hold their bodies, and some went to the desert, and there, like the beasts, walked " on all four," and ate grass. St. Jerome refers to a noted religious man who by too much kneeling had contracted a hardness in his knees like that in the knees of camels ; and Saurin, speaking of some of the conscientious body-abusers of early times, represents them as having wrought cavities with their knees in the floor of the places where they were accustomed to pray.

There were the Flagellants, an order of wouldbe holy men, who used, from time to time, to give their bodies a sound whipping, that they might make their souls pure. There was Hilarion, who so reduced his corporeal fabric by fasting, that his skin almost ceased to cleave to his bones. He could not sleep without the help of vapors ; and, " for want of sleep, became idle-headed, heard every night infants cry, oxen low, wolves howl, lions roar (as he thought), clattering of chains, strange voices, and the like illusions of devils." And there was Godric, a saint of the twelfth century, who constantly wore an iron shirt next to his skin ; who mingled ashes with the flour whereof his bread was made, and then, lest his body should be nourished too much by that food, kept it for four months before eating it ; who 2 in winter often passed the whole night in prayer, with his body up to the neck in water ; who sometimes rolled his naked form through briers, and immediately afterward poured brine into his wounds.