Philosophical meditations : talks to college girls

Front matter

MEDITATIONS

HAYWOOD J. P

Glass

Contents

I. Being Versus Seeming

II. Doing Versus Dreaming .

III. The Aristocracy of Service

Chapter I

Being Versus Seeming "To find satisfaction in being rather than in seeming."

However much physiologists and psychologists and theologians may differ from each other and however much each may differ among themselves in reference to the reality of man 's being, there is no doubt that for general purposes of study and discussion this reality can be most conveniently considered in its threefold aspect, viz., body, mind and spirit.

The subject of "Being versus Seeming" therefore, in its relation to man naturally divides itself into three parts.

First, in relation to the body, our ideal demands that we find satisfaction in its being rather than its seeming.

What is the supreme end in relation to the body? That it shall be sound, that it shall be useful, or perhaps I had better say usable ; that it shall be beautiful.

Our ideal then is to have a body which is sound and not merely seems sound ; is usable and not merely seems usable; is beautiful and not merely seems beautiful.

Health is surely one of the greatest blessings in this life. No one will gainsay this self evident proposition, and it would doubtless be very tedious to listen to arguments in support of it. But alas how utterly careless are many of us in the observance of the simplest rules of health. We are very careful in the selection of a color which will be becoming to our complexion, and too careless in the selection of foods which are suited to our digestive organism.

A sound body is, after all, the fundamental and determining factor in the development of a usable and a beautiful body. In our schools and in our homes we need to devote a good deal more time to the problem of hygiene and sanitation, and there will be less need of spending so much time in trying to teach the children to be useful and to be beautiful.

Health is dependent upon the regular normal functioning of all of the organs of the body — in particular the respiratory, the circulatory and the digestive organs. If we lived in an ideal world and if we could claim a perfect line of ancestry we would need to give the question of health very little, if any, consideration. But unfortunately we do not live in a perfect world ; the air that we breathe is filled with microscopic germs which attack the highly sensitive lining of the mouth and nasal passages and sometimes invade the lungs, or it maybe invade the circulatory system, and tuberculosis or some fatal fever may be the result. Again the food which we must eat is infected with similar germs and the digestive tract, the liver, or other vital glands, become congested and the entire system becomes poisoned, and disease, suffering, incapacity and even death may ensue.

It is also true that few, if any of us, can boast of a perfect ancestry. The conflict between man and the foes, microscopic and otherwise, in his environment has been going on since the time of Adam and Eve. Sometimes man has triumphed for a time, and again the forces of nature have claimed the victory, and always at the last, forces of decay, disease and death have claimed the victory over him. Such is our inheritance, and in some of us these tendencies to be overcome by disease are more marked than in others.

Human life, therefore, is a more or less constant warfare against the forces of disease which are concealed in the air that we breathe and in the food that we eat, and against the tendencies within us which we inherit from those who have fought the fight before us.

But, fortunately, all of our inheritance is not weakness, nor all of the forces in our environment evil. The fact that we exist at all is proof of the fact that in at least a majority of our ancestors the life giving tendencies predominated. When the reverse is true a race ceases to exist. The fact that I am alive, therefore, affords a basis for the belief that so far as inheritance is concerned there are more forces within me working for my health than there are against it.

It is also true that not all of the forces in my environment are inimical to my life. The same air which carries the microscopic germ which threatens my life, also carries the purifying oxygen and the healing ozone ; the same food which conceals the pestilential microorganism that threatens to poison my blood, also contains the nourishing protein, the stimulating carbohydrates and medicinal elements innumerable.

The problem therefore which we have to solve, is so far as possible to determine the weaknesses to which we are subject by inheritance, and to guard against them; and to learn to distinguish and to control the forces in our environment which tend to destroy, and, equally important, learn to distinguish and to utilize the forces in our environment which are favorable to our best and highest physical development. We who live in this enlightened age have the advantage of the discoveries along these lines made by our ancestors who have suffered and sometimes died in the attempt to make life more certain and more tolerable.

In respect to the body, I think there will be no disagreement with the proposition that it is better to be sound than merely to seem sound. I doubt if any one who was really suffering ever derived any satisfaction from being told that he was looking strong and healthy. In respect to health there is very little opportunity for shamming and very little satisfaction.

But how vastly different is it, if the subject relates to the use or the beauty of the body.

Some athletes, who are not really strong or skilled, resort to tricks in order to appear strong or skilled ; some artisans are abundantly satisfied if they can deceive the employer and get the credit of skilled workmanship, when a careful investigation would show that the work was shoddy; even some so called artists are satisfied if they can execute a showy piece of music, or paint a showy picture and thereby convince admiring friends of their technical skill, when, as a matter of fact, they have not been willing to expend the energy nor suffer the infinite pains required of him who would acquire real technique in any field of artistic endeavor.

Our ideal demands that the athlete, the artisan, the artist, shall not find satisfaction in merely seeming, but shall be continually dissatisfied until by strenuous effort and by patient endeavor they shall attain unto real skill.

But what shall we say of beauty ? Is it not just as satisfactory to seem beautiful as to be beautiful? You will probably answer no to that question, but would you go further and say: It is better to be homely than to seem beautiful?

When we reach the realm of aesthetics our problem becomes more difficult. Here, in the first place it is not so easy to distinguish the sham from the genuine ; and in the second place, ambition and striving can accomplish relatively little.

I would like to view this problem for the moment at least, not as an individual problem of mine and yours; but as a problem of society, and more particularly of the feminine portion of society.

I suggest limiting the problem to the feminine portion of society, because the problem does not really exist any longer for the masculine portion. A man is usually satisfied to be taken at his face value so far as looks are concerned; and if, as is likely to be the case, this face value is rather low, he tries to make up for the deficiency by other considerations.

Is woman wrong in placing so much value on her looks? If so, I suspect you will be ready to say that man is largely responsible for it, and being a man I cannot deny that men admire beautiful women.

My own answer to this problem is twofold and consists, first, in a suggestion of the necessity of modifying our aesthetic ideals in relation to woman. The doll-like face with its paint and powder is but a poor imitation of the bloom of youth and health. The ruddy glow upon the cheek of a healthy girl far transcends in genuine beauty the painted counterfeit of the modern society girl, and I sometimes fear that our toleration of the latter is a sign of decadence in taste which is characteristic of an effete civilization.

But having agreed, as I believe our best standards of taste will agree, that natural beauty is unrivaled by artificial, the second answer to the problem is a demand that women lead more natural lives, take the exercise which nature demands, breathe deeply the purifying oxygen, study the principles of dietetics and live by them, study the principles of psychology, especially in relation to the emotional life, and live by them — in short that her life shall be so ordered from the cradle until the bloom of full womanhood as that natural beauty divinely inwrought into the form and features of the genuine woman shall have a chance to develop into its own perfect being. Then, indeed, will she find more satisfaction in being than any painted counterpart could find in seeming.

As I have already pointed out we are to consider man as a triune being — body, mind and spirit.

What shall we say of this second aspect of his being — of mind. Is our ideal convincing in its application to intellectual attainments? Is it better to be wise than to seem wise ?

Socrates in his Apology has set forth the fact convincingly that there is much sham wisdom in the world.

Indeed he reaches the rather pessimistic conclusion that his own wisdom consisted in his recognition of the fact that he knew nothing.

This is of course an extreme view and approaches dangerously near to mock humility. The recognition of the limitations of human knowledge is a virtue.

But within these human limitations there is large opportunity for the proper exercise of the human mind. In spite of the limitations to which it is subject, the human mind is the most wonderful fact in the universe of material things.

The forces of nature are wonderful — the law of gravity which controls the formation of the planets and holds each in its place in the great cosmic scheme; the principle of life which organizes the inert dust of the universe into moving, feeling beings, whether worm or fish or reptile or mammal; the affinities of chemistry which combine the simple and for the most part useless and uninteresting elements into forms of infinite variety, beauty and use ; the laws of physics by which our engines are driven, our mountains are tunnelled, our rivers are bridged, our cities are lighted, our messages are carried — these and innumerable other forces and phenomena are indeed wonderful, but they are only wonderful because the mind of man has been able to foresee them, to grasp them, to direct and to utilize them.

The ability to foresee an end, to discover an analogy, to make an inference, to draw a conclusion — these are the peculiar functions of the human mind, and the ability to do these well will determine in a large measure the success, and conversely the failure of any human individual.

To revert again to our problem, the question is, is it better to be able to do these things well, or will it answer the purpose just to seem to be able ?

The student who neglects the preparation of her lesson or examination and depends upon the help of a friend or upon some other fraud upon the teacher, is apparently satisfied merely to seem to know. The student who is more concerned about the grade which is given her than she is about the mental attainment she has made has failed to grasp the ideal, which I am trying to hold before you.

Good grades are eminently worth while, as an evidence of real merit; but the girl who finds satisfaction in a grade which her merit has not earned, is either akin to the thief who gloats upon the gold filched from his neighbors ' purse, or akin to the child whose imagination transmutes the pebbles which it has gathered along its path into precious stones.

My little girl invited me the other day to take a seat at a little table on the back porch, whereon she had spread dainties of every kind — all made out of sand. To humor her childish fancy, I partook in a mimic way of these choice viands, and she took great delight in serving her daddy as she has seen her elders do.

The man or woman is just as simple who offers the public college grades and honors and degrees, which have been wrought out of any substance save the subtle substance which we know as mentality, and which yields only to serious, strenuous and conscientious labor.

The most amusing and sometimes, alas, the most pitiful figure that you meet in the various haunts of mankind is the man or woman who is striving to seem intellectual.

The man who counterfeits the coin of the republic, if he succeeds in passing it, gains something of value, which he can take with him into other regions remote from his victim, and there enjoy it, in a measure as honest men do, but alas, the man who counterfeits learning gets no credit except from those upon whom he imposes, and each day he is put to new pains to maintain the fraud and suffers constant dread and runs increasing risk of discovery.

We have considered the realities of man's being in a progressive series. The most evident, the body, offers little opportunity for sham, and affords little satisfaction in merely seeming; the mind, more subtle in its nature, little understood as to its elements and only imperfectly understood as to its form, affords many opportunities for sham, but little, if any real permanent advantages to him who seeks to appear what he is not.

And now, finally, what shall we say of the realities, and the corresponding shams of the spiritual aspects of man's being.

Here we have a still further refinement or sublimation of our subject. If the mind is an abstraction, more or less vague and indeterminate, the spirit is much more so; if we have difficulty in exactly defining the mind and in setting forth its exact function, we shall find it far more difficult accurately to define the spirit and exactly to describe its qualities.

We shall also find that this increase in difficulty of delimitation and definition correspond to an increased subjection to the arts of the counterfeiter and difficulty in distinguishing the genuine from the sham.

In spiritual matters it is preeminently true that the ideal woman is she who finds satisfaction in being rather than in seeming; but it is also true that in this sphere of being it is far more difficult to be and contrastingly easy to seem. The path of the human race from the dawn of creation down to the present age is strewn with the cast off spiritual paraphernalia, which has been used by spiritual mountebanks to delude and rob, harass and sometimes torture the weak and timid and erring sons of men.

There are today, in this era of enlightenment, numbers of individuals who make capital out of their spiritual pretensions, and draw their dividends thru the credulity of mankind.

But the frequency and the success of the counterfeiter bear eloquent testimony to the worth of the real being.

What is this real being — this spirituality which men in all ages have sought so industriously to counterfeit?

Do we find it adequately expressed in any of the creeds of our churches? No. These creeds are many and frequently conflicting, but some of the greatest and best spirits of all the ages have been adherents of all the creeds, even the most conflicting, and some even, I daresay, have been adherents of none; while on the other hand, there is not a creed, not even our own Christian creed, which has not in the history of its development, furnished the pretext for what every good man would regard now as a monstrous crime.

Shall we find in Philosophy an adequate description or definition of spirit? The appeal to Philosophy were perhaps more futile than the appeal to theological creed. Philosophy has exhausted the possibilities of speculation, from the crude idealism of Plato to the cruder materialism of modern times.

We shall look in vain to any of the sages of any of the systems of religion or Philosophy for an adequate definition of spirit. In our own Bible we now and then find vague hints and analogies — "The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth; so is every one that is born of the spirit — " but nowhere do we find a serious effort made to tell us what the spirit of man is.

But in spite of this lack of definition and vagueness of concept, you will hardly find any other one subject in all the realm of knowledge upon which mankind are so well agreed — that man is a spirit and what the real fruits of the spirit are.

Any one of us would probably find it as difficult as I have found it to say what spirituality is, but each and every one instantly forms an estimate of the spiritual nature of every, even chance, acquaintance. The spirit is something none of us can define, but something which all of us recognize.

Is it better then in respect to this spiritual nature to be than to seem — to be good, shall I say, than to seem good? I know of no better term to use in this connection than good. Whatever other qualities may or may not appertain to the spiritual life, it seems fairly well agreed that the moral factor is the most pertinent.

The spiritual nature is essentially good or bad, noble or ignoble, pure or base. The good man is distinguished from the bad man, not by his physical perfection or imperfection, not by his brilliant or dull mind, but by these subtle qualities which relate to the ultimate being which we call spirit.

In respect to these shall we say it is better to be than to seem? Surely the world is agreed that there is no character so utterly contemptible as the hypocrite — as the character who sets himself up to be good when in the depths of his soul he is evil.

Is everyone contemptible then who does not lay bare before the world the weakness of his spirit? Is a man a hypocrite who goes to church on Sunday and perchance hated his enemy on Saturday? Is the girl a hypocrite who takes part in the Y. W. C. A. meetings today and possibly cheated in her examinations yesterday? Possibly so; possibly not.

If going to church or taking part in the Y. W. C. A. meeting are for the purpose of creating the impression that one is something that he is not, such attendance is an evidence of hypocrisy and such a person is satisfied with mere seeming. If on the other hand the erring church goer and the dishonest student recognize the spiritual value of the church and the Y. W. C. A., and if in spite of their weakness and errors and wickedness, they are yearning for a higher life and seeking to be spiritual and not merely seem so, there is no taint of hypocrisy in the religious attitude, but on the contrary, there is evidence of a spiritual life and promise of better things.

If only perfect beings and hypocrites could attend church, our churches would either be empty or full of hypocrites. But fortunately perfection is not prescribed as a condition either of church attendance or of church membership ; nor is it prescribed as a condition of spiritual goodness.

Again spiritual goodness is not determined by external standards of conduct. We are prone to apply these standards and it is for this reason that sham is so easy. A certain social group sets up this or that standard, enumerates its "thou shalts" and multiplies its "thou shalt nots"; and along comes any number of hypocrites, who exclaim "behold we fast so many days in the week, we give tithes, we do not oppress our neighbor, we are of the elect." No one has exposed this type of hypocrisy more mercilessly and successfully than did Jesus of Nazareth. Said he, in that fearful arraignment, "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you pay tithe of mint, and anise and cummin and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy and faith."

The merely casual reader of the Bible and of secular history may readily see that almost every possible external standard of conduct, has been accepted as right at some times and under some circumstances. These external standards are not in any event to be regarded as trivial considerations. Some of the most practical issues of life depend upon them, but in its last analysis the spiritual nature of our being does not depend upon them.

Measured merely by external standards some of the most contemptible spirits I have known would be ranked as saints of the highest order; and measured by the same standard some of the choicest spirits of all the ages would take rank with the meanest criminals.

I have had some opportunity for personal contact with some of the unfortunate beings who, because of nonconformity to external standards, have been outlawed by society and are known as our criminal classes. For the majority of these, little needs to be said. Their criminal conduct has been an expression of a depraved spirit, and they richly deserve all they get and more. But frequently you will find in our prisons and penitentiaries spirits that are beautiful and good.

I have a farm in Georgia on which are living fifty or more negroes. The best negro on that place, in my opinion, now occupies a murderer's cell in the Muscogee County jail. If he were free and on the farm and I were in trouble of any sort there, I would turn to him for help with greater confidence than to any other negro on the place.

Was he then justified in slaying his fellow man ? I do not think so. He is as untutored as a savage, as simple as a child. He has never been on a train but once in his life and then to ride only a few miles; he has never been more than twenty-five miles from the place where he was born. He has barely learned to write his name, but he has never read a book in his life, and knows nothing more of what has happened in the ages that are passed and is happening today than he has picked up from the chance conversations of his associates and the sermons of the preachers, who for the most part are as ignorant as he is.

His crime? He got into a dispute with another negro about some whiskey, became incensed at some vituperative remark and shot him dead in his tracks. Wrong conduct? Yes. Bad negro? No. I would sooner risk my purse or my life or even my honor in his hands than in the hands of any other negro I know.

How do I account for this confidence in a known criminal? By reason of the fact that I believe I know the man's spirit. We all have a subtle sense which enables us to distinguish between the good and bad people we meet. A child can do it, and to determine the real spirit of a man I had rather trust the intuition of an unsophisticated child than all the codes of law and ethics in the universe.

I had rather have a soul within me which inspires the confidence and esteem of my fellow men — I had rather be good than merely seem to be good when measured by any conventional standards whatsoever.

What then is the characteristic goodness of this spiritual being? It is its attitude towards the universal spirit of the creation, of which it is a part, and as the individual conceives or knows it. If a human spirit is in harmony with the Universal Spirit as he understands it, he is good. Such a spirit has been born again.

In conclusion I suspect that I need to guard against two misapprehensions which may have arisen from my argument.

First, is sham so despicable and is reality so desirable as to require that I confess and expose to the world all my physical deformities and mental ignorance and spiritual infirmities?

On the contrary, it is a mark of virtue to hide your deformities, to conceal your ignorance and to throw the mantle of charity over your own sins, as well as those of your neighbor, if you can.

The man who obtrudes his physical deformities upon the public is a boor ; the man who parades his ignorance is a fool; and the man who glories in his spiritual infirmities is sometimes a fanatic and more often a hypocrite.

The ideal which I am trying to hold before you is not the negative one of avoiding sham, however corrmendable that may be if properly understood, but it is the positive one of seeking after the real.

The second misapprehension, which I fear, is concerning my attitude toward external standards of conduct. I have said, with as much emphasis as I could command, that spiritual goodness is not determined by external standards of conduct.

I would not have you, however, infer that external standards of conduct are negligible principles. This would be just as fallacious as to infer that I advocate Sansculotism, because I contend that spiritual goodness does not depend upon the clothes which we wear.

As a matter of fact external standards of conduct are just as necessary to a well ordered social system as clothes are to a decent social gathering, and woe be to that individual who fails to measure up to these standards in his attitude toward society; or who fails to conform to the conventional styles of the social gathering in which he mingles.

May I finally sum up the whole matter in a few words ?

To find satisfaction in being a sound, efficient and beautiful physical organism; in being an alert, sensitive, perceiving, intellectual creature, in being a good, noble spiritual unity, this is the ideal I have tried to hold before you.

CHAPTER II "To find joy in doing rather than in dreaming. "

Movement is the supreme law of the universe. Scripture records the beginning of all things with the statement that the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And science attempts to describe the operation of the mysterious forces of nature, whereby the chaotic mass of atoms unite to form stars and planets and systems, driven hither and thither through the limitless reaches of space, undergoing vast cosmic processes of growth and decay, tending toward we know not what ultimate expression of their being.

Within the circular limits of our own little world, animal life, beginning with the simple unicellular organism of the amoeba and extending through all its forms, invertebrate and vertebrate, even to its present highest expression in the being of man, is characterized and controlled by the law of movement. Movement means life ; incapacity for movement means death.

Degree and facility of movement determine the position of any animal in the scale of being. Simple expansion for the ingestion of food and contraction for the elimination of waste constitute the capacity for movement of the lowest orders of life, and every degree in the evolution of life is characterized by some new capacity for movement by which the creature adapts itself to the conditions of its environment and makes use of these for its own growth and well being.

Just as marked differences in the degree and facility of movement characterize the development of man from his primitive state as an inhabitant of the caves and forests of earth to his present condition as a citizen of states and empires and a dweller in mansions of his own building.

It may be well doubted if primitive man could have chiseled a Venus de Milo, or threaded a needle, or ridden a bicycle, or played a piano, even if the example and the means had been furnished him. The delicate movements which are requisite for these and a thousand other similar activities of modern man were not made possible in a day. They are the resultants of thousands of efforts which were less accurate and less successful, not only in one individual, but in generations and races of men.

The progressive development of man in this matter of movement, in the finer and more delicate adjustment of his powers of movement, in the modification of and in the adjustment to his environment are shown by a consideration of the modern so called "Wonders of the World" as compared with the ancient "Wonders of the World."

The ancient "Wonders of the World," as you may recall, were:

1. The Walls of Babylon

2. The Statue of Venus by Phydias at Olympia

4. The Colossus at Rhodes

5. The Pyramids of Egypt