Fireside papers

Front matter

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Preface

Books are a perpetual friendship. The library wherein they are stored is not only a depository of literary treasures, but also the meeting place of kindred minds. The man who is at home in my library is something more than a transient guest — he is my friend. If my books delight him, we have much in common. My neighbor I respect as a good man. He enters my home, and I enter his. We are interested in each other's welfare, and would do much to further good-will between us. But the companion who makes with me a willing escape from that world of which Wordsworth warns us, and which he tells us " is too much with us," is surely my friend. When I shut the door and go apart by myself, my friend is not wholly excluded. " Getting and spending," which " lay waste our powers," are for the time put aside. I leave behind me the troubles and vexations of life, I thrust from me the little fears that destroy peace of mind, and I pass with glad heart into Machiavelli's " antique courts of ancient men, where, welcomed lovingly by them, I feed upon the food which is my own, and for which I was born." The man of books finds his happiest hours in his library. There he is at home as he is at home nowhere else.

PREFACE

When one is sick at heart, and all that is beautiful has faded from one's life in dull drab ; when radiant hopes have suffered sad eclipse, and the days seem to hold little of worth; when trouble and disappointment gather in dark clouds around one, and the very air seems lonely and charged with death; when all the springs of comfort and strength are dry, — then it is that the lover of books turns to them for the companionship that he is sure he can find nowhere else. Blessed, thrice blessed, is the man who in seasons of trouble and disaster can forget himself and his own little field of misfortune in the larger world of literature. In that bright wonder-world there is medicine for the soul, friendship, pleasure, and new strength for achievement and duty.

These " Fireside Papers " are all the flying years have left me of many happy hours. In them linger the thoughts, hopes, and remembrances of evenings gladdened by the sweet fellowship of friends that age not with the failing strength of those who have loved them and who will always love them. The ancients called all good books a " Treasury of Remedies for the Mind," but they are more than that, for in them gather what is best in every age and land. The philosophers, poets, and teachers of all time are with us still. When they were on earth, as we are at the present moment, they were called living men and women ; and now that we see them no more with the natural eye, we think of them as dead. Nevertheless they are not dead, but live

PREFACE

and breathe and have their being in many books of priceless value. Were Homer materially present in the world, but few could enjoy his society. I could not hope to entertain by my fireside one upon whose companionship the entire literary world would make such great demands. But all that would make the Greek poet so enthusiastically sought were he dwelling now in any of our cities, he has left with us in those marvelous poems that all men may read. The glorious genius that exalted Homer and Shakespeare above other men may find a ready place by my fireside. I know those two immortal poets far better than the people of their own times knew them. My firelight may fall brightly upon the upturned face of the " thousand-souled " poet of old England, as fell the light of long age upon his noble features. Whatever is best in ages and lands is mine, and over them all I write with grateful heart, " Mash Allah "— the Gift of God.

Contents

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I THE LONELINESS OF GENIUS . 1

II PHILOSOPHERS AND PATRIOT- ISM 31

II — Plato

Was Goethe a patriot? If to join the army, toss one's cap in air, shout and sing for liberty, and bellow about national honor, — if to do these things constitutes one a patriot, then the poet and philosopher, the pride and glory of the German people, was no patriot. If, on the other hand, to live for one's fellow men a worthy and useful life, if to use every power of a great mind in the service of one's country, — if thus to help one's native land constitutes one a patriot, then Goethe was of all men an illustrious and noble-minded patriot.

— Archceologia.

IT is commonly charged against philosophers that they have little patriotism. It does not occur to those who prefer the charge that philosophers may have something better about which to concern themselves. Thoreau said in one of his essays, " To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip." There you have the secret of much of the serene indifference with which men of studious and contemplative mind view the political arena. The news of the day that so interests the ordinary man is beyond all doubt nothing more than gossip. The Germans denounced Goethe because he pursued his studies and continued his literary work while his country was at war with implacable and determined enemies. But Germany had hundreds and thousands of able-bodied men to fight her battles, while she had few indeed who were qualified and disposed to do her thinking. She had one Goethe and only one, and he knew his worth to the fatherland and to the great world of many fatherlands. He knew his place and his mission, and he was faithful to both. The news that fired the German heart seemed to him nothing more than a larger kind of gossip. True, it was not the foolish gossip in which elderly matrons indulge over their teacups ; but it was the scarcely less inconsequent chatter of lords and ladies, of soldiers and a sovereign. 31

Goethe had work to do for his country and the world, and it was work that called for a tranquil mind undisturbed by the excitement of the hour. Against the reproaches of his countrymen who charged him with indifference, he defended himself in a memorable paragraph in " Eckermann's Conversations with Goethe." To those who called him to account for not having taken part in the War of Liberation he said: " How could I take up arms without being impelled thereto by hatred? And how could I hate at my age? War is foreign to me, and I am without military ambition." Still further, he pointed out to Eckermann why he could not become enthusiastic over war. He said frankly and without hesitation:

" I have never written love songs except when I loved; how, then, could I have written songs of hatred without hating? Between ourselves, I never hated the French, although I thanked God when we were rid of them. How could I, to whom the question of culture and barbarism alone is all-important, hate a nation which is among the most cultured of the world, and to which I owe so great a part of my own culture? National hatred is indeed a peculiar thing. It is always found more pronounced and violent where civilization is lowest; but there is a stage of culture where it vanishes altogether, where one stands, so to say, above all nations, and feels the happiness and the sorrows of a neighboring people as much as if they were a part of one's own."

Goethe was wrong in thinking hatred essential to a liking for war. Some of the ablest commanders have entertained neither bitterness nor dislike.

No one who knows anything about the glory and worth of patriotism will wish to belittle that love of country which lies at the foundation of civil government, but there are nobler sentiments than that of ordinary love of country. The love a man may cherish for his race is far greater and more blessed than that he may cherish for a comparatively small number of men and women who live in one place and speak the same language. And glorious beyond all other loves is the love of God that may even lead us to refuse aid to the land of our birth when that land has ranged itself against the cause that we believe to be worthy of our support. " My country, right or wrong " is an evil motto, and unconditional loyalty is disloyalty to God because it exalts one's country above its Creator and the Creator of all lands and of the whole world.

Fichte was a philosopher, and one of marked ability. He held himself in trust for the entire world, and for truth above all. He was by no means wanting in patriotism, for he gave his life in defense of his country. But I think few will at this late day justify his sacrifice of himself. His work was worth more to Germany than was his life. By connecting himself with the army he unintentionally robbed his own land. These are his words :

" To this I am called — to bear witness to the Truth: my life, my fortunes are of little moment; the results of my life are of infinite moment. I am a priest of truth: I am in her pay; I have bound myself to do all things, to venture all things, to suffer all things, for her. If I should be hated and persecuted for her sake, if I should even meet death in her service, what wonderful thing is it I shall have done — what but that which I clearly ought to do."

Did he really serve truth when he went into the German army ? No, his country should have known better; it should have refused the disastrous sacrifice. Any ordinary peasant was then and would be now of more value to the army than a dozen philosophers ; but Fichte in his lectureroom, stimulating and instructing the minds of the German youths, was worth more to his country than can be easily determined. No country can afford to endanger the genius, learning, and literary and artistic training over which it has control. Authors, artists, musicians of distinguished ability, and men of science should be not only exempt from military service, but disqualified and prohibited from enlisting. Was it well that Koerner gave his inspired life to a service others could have rendered? How his songs, ringing like a battle-cry through the German land, thrilled the hearts of his countrymen and fired the spirit of the soldiers ! His verses were worth more to Germany than ten thousand menat-arms could by any possibility have been. Yet in the fierce conflict at Leipsic all that increasing wealth of martial enthusiasm was allowed to perish. Was Koerner's example worth so much to his country? Was his sacrifice of himself so helpful to his cause? "The Lyre and Sword" was worth more ; and what greater service might still have been rendered can never be known. Everything should be done to encourage genius and learning. The glory of a nation is not so much in its possessions as in its achievements, and these are for the most part the work of its great men. Civilization itself is the gift of the few to the many. Only while the gifted, trained, and qualified few are in control is the land safe and its prosperity assured. It is not denied that the trained few may prove recreant to their trust, and may become wholly unworthy of confidence, but that in no wise alters the fact that no country is long prosperous when deprived of the wisdom and guidance of its great men.

The philosopher should be something of a poet in his sympathy and tastes. The world is full of beauty, but one must have eyes with which to see it. In these days men make little of poetry, and in some cases they even affect to despise it. But poetry, like music, is an open door to some of the most marvelous beauties in the great world of nature. Dr. Johnson did not like music, and who that is familiar with his life does not see that the dislike was a limitation of his nature? Happily for him that limitation was offset, and in a way corrected, by his fondness for poetry.

Indeed, the love of poetry is that of music as well, and so it came to pass that the " colossus of letters " was, without his knowing it, something of a lover of music after all. True poetry has in it some measure of music. Its words are singing words. A subtle enchantment works in all its lines, and by that enchantment even Dr. Johnson was influenced, though he would have developed a towering rage had any daring person ventured to enlighten him upon the subject. " Music," said Plato, " is a moral law. It gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, a charm to sadness, gayety and life to everything." If we are to trust the Greek philosopher, music is an essential part of the intellectual universe, and he who despises or even neglects it is hardly a philosopher in the better sense of the word. Carlyle knew well the meaning of music when he called all minstrelsy " a kind of inarticulate, unfathomable speech which leads us to the edge of the infinite, and lets us for moments gaze into it."

Goethe and the Greek philosophers who lived and wrote long centuries before he saw the light viewed this matter in very much the same way. It is related of Anaxagoras, who was falsely accused of impiety and condemned to death, though the sentence was commuted, that he was censured by his friends for what they called a want of patriotism. He repelled the charge with more warmth than was his wont. Pointing to the stars, he said, " I have the greatest affection for my country." After a moment of silence, during which he still gazed at the heavens, he resumed his study of astronomy and natural science. He believed that he was serving his country by the use he made of his learning in a way much better than that in which those who criticized him thought it his duty to serve it.

It is to the arts and learning, with the benign influence of our Christian faith, that we are to look for the final abolition of war. Tolstoy and writers who sympathize with him in this matter hate war, and desire above all things to create in the hearts of men a like detestation and abhorrence of everything resembling an appeal to arms. They endeavor to expose its brutality and futility. Seldom does war lead to a permanent settlement of any dispute. The vanquished nation will not rest until the decison arrived at by its defeat is reversed in some later and more fortunate conflict. Each new year brings with it a still more deadly explosive of one kind or another. The men who kill their fellow men and who must themselves die in battle are always from the same social level. They have nothing to gain and much to lose. In most cases the}' do not know the nature of the quarrel they are called to arbitrate with their blood. The so-called upper classes, the gentlefolk, are seldom seen in the ranks that are so soon to be ploughed with shot and shell. The men of birth and breeding are either superior officers or stay-at-homes who not infrequently accumulate fortunes hard to acquire in times of peace. It is always the ignorant, befooled, and, it may be, the coerced workingmen who pay for the fracas with their lives.

In Russia war is a business, and the government is never far from a semi-belligerent attitude. The men who fight have no bitterness of spirit. Why should they have? The quarrel is in no sense of the word theirs. The only thing they hate, when they hate anything, is war itself. They are none the worse fighters for that. The old belief that hate increases the efficiency of armies is a thing of the past. Mr. Jane, the distinguished English naval critic, thinks the Japanese defeated the Russians because they hated them, and were only anxious to kill them, while the Russian soldiers felt no bitterness and simply acted as machines against their " antlike foes." In my humble opinion Mr. Jane is in error. In the first place, the English were the real antagonists with whom Russia had to contend. They financed the war for Japan, and they gave that land every possible encouragement. In the second place, the Japanese were moved by a profoundly patriotic spirit, — an unthinking, unreasoning spirit, it is true, but still a patriotic one. Mr. Jane's theory is that of the Great Britain of a century or more ago — a theory inherited from half-civilized ancestors.

The best fighters are the men of cool head and determined purpose. They are not the men who are anxious to kill, but those who are resolved to conquer. It has been said, " The best lovers are the greatest haters," but a truer saying is the line from a song by Bayard Taylor, " The loving are the daring." It is neither hate nor recklessness that tells with greatest effect on the field of battle. Kipling still holds Mr. Jane's worn-out theory, but it is a theory that does little honor to human nature and that contributes nothing toward bringing in that bright day so eagerly desired when " they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks." Koerner did not hate his enemies whose aim it was to subjugate Prussia. Goethe was too much of a philosopher to interest himself greatly in war from any point of view. Fichte was less of a philosopher for the enthusiasm which drove him from a chair of learning in a German university and led him to play a less worthy part as a soldier. Men of ideal purpose, of poetic genius, artistic feeling and achievement, and scientific accomplishments, should have nothing to do with those vulgar, inartistic, unscientific, and inhuman cataclysmic upheavals that turn the world upside-down for no good reason whatever. Think how these upheavals endanger the world's priceless treasures of art and learning. Think for one moment what it means to bombard a city holding within its walls the Venus de Milo, that miracle of beauty in marble :

" Venus triumphant ! so serene and tender In thy calm after-bloom of life and love,

More fair than when of old thy sea-born splendor Surprised the senses of Olympian Jove."

Think of shelling a city to the keeping of which is entrusted the Madonna di San Sisto, the most wonderful of all Raphael's creations. Think of endangering a city over which falls the shadow of the Parthenon. Once that " finest edifice on the finest site in the world " was damaged by a Venetian shell; and again, in 1827, it was slightly injured by an invading host. Think of offering violence to a city that treasures for all the world Westminster Abbey. These gifts of genius to our human race are worth more than many victories. Of what sacrilege were the German troops guilty when they destroyed the beautiful city of Louvain, and when, with ruthless hand and savage instincts, they made of the Cathedral of Notre Dame at Rheims a target for their shells. Men who commit such outrages are the enemies of civilization. The cathedral, dating from the thirteenth century, was, because both of its age and of its architectural excellence, the joy and pride of an entire world.

The more one sees of war the more one realizes its iniquity. It is a crime against mankind. We do not for a moment question the right of every nation to defend its own territory against the invader; but when that necessity arises, war is still a calamity, and the aggressor is to be accounted an enemy of all good men. As such he is to be dealt with by every civilized nation.

w Blessed are the peacemakers." Another has well said:

" Blessed are the peace-dreamers; for they shall be

called the poets of mankind.

" Blessed are the peace-shouters ; for they shall be

called the orators of the common weal. " Blessed are the peace-schemers ; for they shall be

called the diplomatists of the modern world. " Blessed are the peace-makers ; for they shall be

called the Sons of God."

War will become a thing of the past when the common men of all lands refuse to leave farm and shop, and say to governments of every kind, " We will not fight." All must refuse if the movement is to succeed. If a few hold back and refuse to defend their country, they must be accounted guilty of treason. The movement must cease to be treasonable by becoming general. No single nation can disarm. If the German Empire can spend forty years in preparing to subjugate Europe, then Europe must spend those same forty years in preparing to prevent that subjugation. The common people in all lands must act together. When they do so act, there will be no more war. The common men are the men that are killed in battle. Most of those who enlist and nearly all who are drafted are from the humbler walks of life. That is because most of the men and women in all lands are born and live in the lowly homes and occupations of the world. The few are educated, and still fewer may be trusted with the care of property and the great enterprises of this world, all of which render them far too valuable to be wasted in a bloody battle. Their education enables them to avoid in many ways the common conscription. Knowing more than the average men and women of the world, they know the various ways of escaping duties and dangers that others must face with what courage they may. There is a way of escaping almost everything if you only know the way. Educated men know many ways and many things of which the uneducated are ignorant.

It is said that most of the taxes are paid by the poor. There is much truth in the saying. There are various ways of avoiding taxation. Some of those ways are dishonest, and some of them involve no breaking of law. Education helps a man here as elsewhere. The professional classes, as a general thing, do not go to the war. They are of less use in the army than are men of affairs. When men of cultivated mind do go, they are usually commissioned officers, chaplains, surgeons, or engineers, and as such are not wanted on the firing line. They also may resign if they wish. The dangers, burdens, and hardships of war fall to common men, whilst the emoluments and advantages go to the privileged few. It would be a blessed thing if the common men of all nations could combine and refuse to fight. We have already learned not to waste men of genius and of exceptional ability upon war ; how long will it be before we learn that common men have a value, and are not to be wasted on shot and shell!

The rights of common men will not be respected so long as the military idea prevails. German Imperialism is opposed to both modern civilization and the rights of ordinary men. Civilization rests upon the people, while Imperialism looks to the army. The German Emperor said, " The army is the foundation of the social structure of the Empire. . . . The soldier and the army, not parliamentary majorities and decisions, have welded together the German Empire. My confidence is in the army ; — as my grandfather said at Coblenz, ' These are the gentlemen on whom I can rely.' "

What the Emperor thinks of the people may be learned from one of his addresses as reported by a German professor, the distinguished Dr. Ludwig Gurlitt. This is what the Emperor said : " The masses are children not yet of age. The government alone is competent to prescribe the course of their social and cultural development." The Emperor is Germany. It is his prerogative to govern alone, with no responsibility of any kind. His word is law. Of course that means despotism pure and simple. The common man can have no rights under such a system.

In order to carry out the German program it is necessary to shut off criticism. The light must be extinguished. It is a rule with the English royal family that no member of it, from the King himself down to the least important person connected with him, is ever to bring an action for libel, no matter how vile the slander may be. The German Emperor takes a more drastic method of procedure. All criticism of the sovereign is Use majeste, no matter how just and wholesome it may be. If you say anything about the Emperor of which he does not approve, he may send you to prison. The man who is placed above criticism is also placed above responsibility. You cannot call him to account for anything. Under such a system neither the common man nor any other kind of a man can have any guaranty that his rights will be protected. He has no rights to protect.

All absolutists hate free institutions. Thus Bismarck did not like the United States. He was born under an absolute monarchy and he was a believer in militarism, and it grieved him to see German boys emigrate to our American Republic. Why should they wish to leave the Fatherland and live all their days under a constitutional government? He could not see, or rather he would not see, that only under free governments like those of England and America the common man possesses rights that must be respected by all.

Ill

Be mine a philosopher's life in the quiet woodland

ways, Where if I cannot be gay let a passionless peace be

my lot.

— Tennyson.

Years that bring the philosophic mind.

— Wordsworth.

How charming is divine philosophy !

Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose,

But musical as is Apollo's lute.

— Milton.

IT is the shame of the age in which we live that it has in large measure lost the ancient delight in nature that filled with overflowing gladness the Greek mind and heart, and that has always been associated with true culture. Our fathers read poetry. They did not count the literature of imagination worthless. With neglect of the ideal elements in life comes a dense vulgarity that degrades whatever it touches. Beautiful pictures are viewed only as ornaments. Art loses its ethical significance and becomes merely decorative. Faith languishes and dies deserted, where once she spoke with authority, and had for all the world a vision of angels.

In Charles Darwin, the greatest interpreter of the physical side of nature our world has ever known, we have an illustration of the benumbing influence of natural science when wholly separated from moral and spiritual forces and ideals. In his early life Darwin was fond of music and poetry. He once thought of entering the Christian ministry. Later he gave himself up to the study of natural history, and became so absorbed in that branch of learning that he put aside all refining influences. The taste for beauty died within him. Physical truth, the facts of science, the laws of the material universe, — these took entire possession of his mind. Toward the end of 47 life he remembered with sadness his lost treasures. He wrote:

" If I had to live my life again, I would make it a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week; for perhaps the parts of my brain now atrophied would be kept active through use. The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature."

In the same way religious feeling faded from the mind of the great naturalist. He wrote in his journal:

" I well remember my conviction that there is more in man than the mere breath of his body, and I so expressed myself, standing in the midst of the grandeur of a Brazilian forest. But now the grandest scenes would not cause any such convictions and feelings to rise in my mind. It may be truly said that I am like a man who has become color-blind. . . . Disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate; but was at last complete. The rate was so slow that I felt no distress."

No man can afford to do what Darwin did, much less can he afford to range himself with Buchner, Vogt, and Haeckel. We must keep all the windows of the soul open to the beautiful, — the beautiful in both art and ethics.

" A pagan, kissing, for a step of Pan,

The wild-goat's hoof-print on the loamy down,

Exceeds our modern thinker who turns back The strata-granite, limestone, coal, and clay, Concluding coldly with, ' Here's law ! Where's God?'"

It may do us good to remember that for the poorest nature, unless the mind be actually deranged, our world is crowded with opportunities which no man can afford to despise, and any one of which might lead on to fortune. In other words, the philosophic temper implies hope. It is astonishing how easily we relax our hold upon hope. Every year hundreds of men and women resort to suicide who have or should have many reasons for wishing to live. Among those who committed suicide in the United States in 1907, there were one hundred and ten persons of distinction and education, such as clergymen, physicians, teachers, bankers, artists, capitalists, merchants, officials, and manufacturers. Some of these may have been insane, but the large majority we must account to have been of sound mind, unless we hold suicide to be always in itself conclusive evidence of mental derangement. The most distressing thing connected with the statistics of suicide is the increasing number of children who take their own lives. Dr. Samuel Mc- Comb, in his book, " Religion and Medicine," attributes the self-murder of little children to disillusion, — that is to say, to the loss of the ideal. The fairy world dissolves, and the naked matterof-fact life of commonplace experience crowds out from the delicate child-mind the early romance and tender faith which, once lost, never return.