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It must be admitted that the exercise of the higher powers carries with it a certain feeling of discontent, but it is a feeling that conditions true progress and is not doomed to ultimate disappointment. The true test of what is preferable is the testimony of those who have knowledge of both modes of existence. Who that knows both does not value the pleasures of thinking above those of eating? Who would exchange the joy of doing right for anything attainable by the man who, for the sake of success, banishes ethics from his business or his politics? “Few human creatures,” says Mill, “would consent to be changed into any of the lower animals for a promise of the fullest allowance of a beast’s pleasures; no intelligent human being would consent to be a fool, no instructed person would be an ignoramus, no person of feeling and conscience would be selfish and base, even though he should be persuaded that the fool, or the dunce, or the rascal is better satisfied with his lot than they with theirs.” “It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied, better to be a Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool or the pig is of a different opinion, it is only because they know only their own side of the question. The other party to the comparison knows both sides.” Who would not rather be an intelligent workingman seeking to better his condition, than an ignoramus contented with little because he knows nothing of the joys of the higher life?
Life is full of contradictions and incongruities and disappointments. Over against these, the school, in its relation to the higher life, has a duty to perform. For the discontent which springs from life’s contradictions and incongruities a safety-valve has been given to man in his ability to laugh. The person who never laughs is as one-sided and abnormal as the person who never prays. The comic is now recognized as one form of the beautiful, and the beautiful is closely allied to the true and the good. Without going into the philosophy of this matter, attention may be drawn to the fact that beauty has a home in the domain of art, as well as of nature; that the queen of the fine arts is poetry; that the greatest poet of all the ages was Shakespeare; that Shakespeare’s literary genius reached its highest flights in tragedies and comedies; that whilst tragedy and comedy are two forms of the beautiful in art, comedy is the highest form of the comic, whilst tragedy is the highest form of the sublime. In teaching us to appreciate the plays of Shakespeare, the school not merely teaches us when to laugh and when to weep, thereby furnishing the safety-valve to let off our discontent and to reconcile us anew to our lot, but puts us in possession of that which money cannot buy,—namely, the ability to appreciate the beautiful in its subtlest and sublimest forms. Who owns the moonlit skies, the millionaire or the poet? Who owns the hills and the valleys, the streams and the mountains; he in whose name the deeds and mortgages are recorded, or he whose soul can appreciate beauty and sublimity? Beauty has a home in nature and in art. It is the province of the school to put us in possession of the beautiful, the sublime, and the comic, for these quite as much as the true and the good belong to the things of the higher life.
How about life’s disappointments? Higher than the life of thought is the life of faith and hope and love,—higher, because these are rooted and grounded in the life of thought, ripen above it as its highest fruitage and efflorescence. The nineteenth century has been an age of faith. Every scientific mind has profound faith in nature’s laws, in the universal efficacy of truth; and, like Agassiz and Gray and Drummond, multitudes of the best minds have made the step from faith in natural laws to faith in the laws which govern the spiritual world.
The common people evince a faith almost bordering on credulity in the readiness with which they accept the results of scientific research and investigation. Faith lies at the basis of great achievements. Bismarck declared that if he did not believe in the divine government of the world, he would not serve his country another day. “Take away my faith,” he exclaimed, “and you take away my country, too.” Whilst no religious test can he applied to those who teach in our public schools, our best people prefer teachers who have faith in the unseen to teachers who lack faith in the truths of revelation. In ways that escape observation, the spirit of faith passes from teacher to pupil, and gives the latter a sense of something to live for and something to be achieved.
Faith begets hope. The hope of glory, of rewards in civil and military life, of immortality on the pages of history, has stimulated to deeds of heroism and self-sacrifice, and will continue to do so to the end of time. The higher life knows of higher objects of hope than these. Immortality on the pages of history is only an immortality in printer’s ink. The true teacher wishes his pupils to cherish the hope of an immortality far more real than an immortality in printer’s ink; he seeks to implant in their hearts the hope of an immortal life in a world where the soul shall be robed in a body like unto Christ’s risen body, which Stephen saw in a vision of glory and Paul beheld in a manifestation of overwhelming splendor.
That which makes life worth living is the life of love. In the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians, which is a poem, though lacking metre and rhyme, Paul speaks of faith, hope, and charity, and says that, of these three, the greatest is charity, or love, as the Revised Version translates it. Faith shall be changed to sight, and hope to glad fruition, but love shall abide forever. Throughout the ceaseless ages of eternity, love of the truth, as it is, in Jesus,—yea, man’s love for his Maker and his Saviour, and for the whole glorious company of the redeemed,—will continue to glow and to grow, lifting the soul to ever loftier heights of ecstasy and bliss. A foretaste of this ecstatic bliss is possible in this life. Love of home and country, of kindred and friends, of truth and righteousness, of beauty in all its forms, of goodness of every kind, up to the highest forms of the good, gives life on earth a heavenly charm. Even in this world, the love that binds human hearts, that makes homes and brotherhoods, that issues in deeds of kindness, friendship, and charity, is bringing more happiness to the race than all other agencies combined.
The school makes possible the higher life when it teaches the pupil to think. Right thinking puts intelligence into the labor of his hands, increases his earning-power, lays the foundation for his physical well-being, and lifts him above an existence that is a mere struggle for bread. It promotes the higher life by teaching him to think God’s thoughts, as enshrined in all His works, and the best thoughts of the best men, as embodied in literature and the humanities. It fits the pupil for complete living by developing in him the power to appreciate the beautiful in nature and art, power to think the true and to will the good, power to live the life of thought, and faith, and hope, and love.
THE END.
[1] For brevity’s sake the phrase, thinking in things, is preferred to the more accurate but less convenient expression, thinking in the images of things.
[2] Psychopannychism denotes the doctrine that the soul falls asleep at death, not to awaken until the resurrection.
[3] For this incident the writer is indebted to Superintendent L. H. Jones, of Cleveland, Ohio.
[4] “Lessons in Psychology,” pages 260-267.
[5] See “How London Lives,” Thomas Nelson & Sons, London.
[6] “Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) was at one time in Prague assistant to the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe. Unlike Tycho, Kepler had no talent for observation and experimentation. But he was a great thinker, and excelled as a mathematician. He absorbed Copernican ideas, and early grappled with the problem of determining the real paths of the planets. In his first attempts he worked on the dreams of the Pythagoreans concerning figure and number. Intercourse with Tycho led him to reject such mysticism and to study on the planets recorded by his master. He took the planet Mars, and found that no combinations of circles would give a path which could be reconciled with the observations. In one case the difference between the observed and his computed values was eight minutes, and he knew that so accurate an observer as Tycho could not make an error so great. He tried an oval orbit for Mars, and rejected it; he tried an ellipse, and it fitted. Thus, after more than four years of assiduous computation, and after trying nineteen imaginary paths, and rejecting each because it was inconsistent with observation, Kepler in 1618 discovered the truth. An ellipse! Why did he not think of it before? What a simple matter—after the puzzle is once solved! He worked out what are known as Kepler’s laws, which accorded with observation, but conflicted with the Ptolemaic hypothesis. Thus the old system was logically overthrown. But not until after a bitter struggle between science and theology did the new system find general acceptation.”—Cajori’s “History of Physics,” pages 29, 30.
[7] Young’s “The Sun,” pages 43, 44, second edition.
[8] Young’s “Astronomy,” page 174.
[9] Now the well-known Lord Kelvin.
[10] “Actinism,” by Professor Charles F. Himes, pages 18, 19.
[11] Dr. Morrell’s “Elements of Psychology,” quoted by Galloway in “Education, Scientific and Technical,” page 165.
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