Part 5 (1/2)
The men whose duty it was to follow the line of battle and bury our dead soldiers tell us that in the dying hour the soldier's hand unclasped his weapon and reached for the inner pocket to touch some faded letter; some little keepsake, some likeness of wife or mother.
This pathetic fact tells us that soldiers have won their battles not by holding before the mind some abstract thought about the rights of man.
The philosopher did, indeed, teach the theory, and the general marked out the line of attack or defense, but it was love of home and G.o.d and native land that entered into the soldier and made his arm invincible.
Back of the emanc.i.p.ation proclamation stands a great heart named Lincoln. Back of Africa's new life stands a great heart named Livingstone. Back of the Sermon on the Mount stands earth's greatest heart--man's Savior. Christ's truth is enlightening man's ignorance, but his tears, falling upon our earth, are was.h.i.+ng away man's sin and woe.
Impotent the intellect without the support of the heart. How thickly are the sh.o.r.es of time strewn with those forms of wreckage called great thoughts. In those far-off days when the overseers of the Egyptian King scourged 80,000 slaves forth to their task of building a pyramid, a great mind discovered the use of steam. Intellect achieved an instrument for lifting blocks of granite into proper place. In that hour thought made possible the freedom of innumerable slaves. But the heart of the tyrant held no love for his bondsmen. The poor seemed of less worth than cattle. Because the King's heart felt no woes to be cured, his hand pushed away the engine. A great thought was there, but not the kindly impulse to use it. Then, full 2,000 years pa.s.sed over our earth. At last came an era when man's heart journeyed forward with his mind. Then the woes of miners and the world's burden-bearers filled the ears of James Watt with torment, and his sympathetic heart would not let him stay until he had fas.h.i.+oned his redemptive tool.
For generations, also, the thoughts of liberty waited for the heart to re-enforce them and make them practical in inst.i.tutions. Two thousand years before the era of Cromwell and Hampden, Grecian philosophers wrought out a full statement for the republic and individual liberty.
The right of life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness were truths clearly perceived by Plato and Pericles. But the heart loved luxury and soft, silken refinements, and Grecian philosophers in their palaces refused to let their slaves go.
Wide, indeed, the gulf separating our age of kindness from Cicero's age of cruelty! The difference is almost wholly a difference of heart.
This age has oratory and wisdom, and so had Cicero's; this age has poetry and art, and so had that; but our age has heart and sympathy, and Cicero's had not. Caesar's mind was the mind of a scholar, but his hands were red with the blood of a half-million men slain in unjust wars. Augustus loved refinement, literature and music. He a.s.sembled at his table the scholars of a nation, yet his culture did not forbid the slaying of ten thousand gladiators at his various garden parties.
We admire Pliny's literary style. One evening Pliny returned home from the funeral of the wife of a friend and sat down to write that friend a note of grat.i.tude for having so arranged the gladiatorial spectacle as to make the funeral service pa.s.s off quite pleasantly. For that age of intellect was also an age of blood; the era of art and luxury was also an era of cruelty and crime. The intellect lent a s.h.i.+ning l.u.s.ter to the era of Augustus, but because it was intellect only it was gilt and not gold. Had the heart re-enforced the intellect with sympathy and justice the age of Augustus might have been an era golden, indeed, and also perpetual.
Great men capitalize the impotency of unsupported intellect.
Ten-talent men have often known more than they would do. The children of genius have not always lived up to their moral light. Burns' mind ran swiftly forward, but his will followed afar off. If the poet's forehead was in the clouds, his feet were in the mire. How n.o.ble, also, Byron's thoughts, but how mean his life! Goethe uttered the wisdom of a sage, as did Rousseau, yet their deeds were often those we would expect from a slave with a low brow. Even of Shakespeare, it is said in the morning he polished his sonnets, while at midnight he poached game from a neighboring estate. Our era bestows unstinted admiration upon the essays of Lord Bacon. How n.o.ble his aphorisms!
How petty his envy and avarice! What scholars.h.i.+p was his, and what cunning also! With what splendor of argument does he plead for the advancement of learning and liberty! With what meanness does he take bribes from the rich against the poor! His mind seems like a palace of marble with splendid galleries and library and banqueting hall, yet in this palace the spider spins its web and vermin make the foundations to be a noisome place.
In all ages also the intellect of the common people has discerned truth and light that the will has refused to fulfill. Generations ago society discovered the doctrine of industry and integrity, and yet thousands of individuals still prefer to steal or beg or starve rather than work. For centuries the work of moralists and public instructors has not been so much the making known new truth as the inspiring men to do a truth already known. As of old, so now, the word is nigh man, even in his mouth, for enabling society to lift every social burden, right every social wrong, turn each rookery into a house, make each place wealth, make every home happiness, make every child a scholar, a patriot and a Christian. In Solomon's day wisdom stood in the corner of the streets but man would not regard, and the city perished. Should the heart now join the intellect, man's feet would swiftly find these paths that lead to prosperity and perfect peace.
Fascinating, indeed, the question how feeling and sentiment control conduct and character. Modern machinery has thrown light upon the problems of the soul. The engineer finds that his locomotive will not run itself, but waits for the steam to pound upon the piston. The great s.h.i.+ps also are becalmed until the trade winds come to beat upon the sails. Informed by these physical facts, we now see a n.o.ble thought or ambition or social ideal is a mechanism that will not work itself, but asks the enthusiastic heart to lend power divine. Some of earth's greatest orators, like Patrick Henry, have been unlearned men, but no orator has ever fallen short of being an enthusiastic man. A generation ago there appeared in Paris one whose voice was counted the most perfect voice in Europe. Musical critics gave unstinted praise to the purity of tone and accuracy of execution. Yet in a few weeks the audiences had dwindled to a handful, and in a few years the singer's name was forgotten. Obscurity overtook the singer because there was no heart behind the voice and so the tones became metallic. Contrariwise, the history of Jenny Lind contains a letter to a friend in Sweden, in which the singer writes: ”Oh, that I may live two years longer and be permitted to save enough money to complete my orphans' home!” As the sun's warm beams lend a soft blush to the rose and pulsate the crimson tides through to the uttermost edge of each petal, so a great, loving sympathy, sang and sighed, thrilled and throbbed through the tones of the Swedish singer, and ravished the hearts of the people and made her name immortal.
History portrays many men of giant minds whose intellect could not redeem them from aimlessness and obscurity. Not until some divine enthusiasm descended upon the mind and baptized it with heroic action did these men find themselves. To that young patrician, Saul, journeying to Damascus, came the heavenly vision, and the new impulse of the heart made his cold mind warm, lent wings to his slow feet, made all his days powerful, made his soul the center of an immense activity.
This glowing heart of Paul explains for us the fact that he achieved freedom of thought and speech, endured the stones with which he was bruised, the stocks in which he was bound, the mobbings with which he was mutilated; explains also his eloquence, known and unrecorded; explains his faith and fort.i.tude, his heroism in death. And not only has the zeal of the heart made strong men stronger, turned weak men into giants, lent the soldier his conquering courage and lent the scholar a stainless life--to men whose will has been made weak by indulgence, the new love has come to redeem intellect and will from the bondage of habit.
No one who ever heard John B. Gough can forget his marvelous eloquence, his wit and his pathos, his scintillating humor, his inimitable dramatisms. He did not have the polished brilliancy of Everett or the elegant scholars.h.i.+p of Phillips, and yet when these numbered thousands of admirers, Gough numbered his tens of thousands. In his autobiography this man tells us to what sad straits pa.s.sion had brought him; how he reflected upon the injury he was doing himself and others, only to find that his reflections and resolutions snapped like cobwebs before the onslaught of temptation. One night the young bookbinder drifted into a little meeting and, b.u.t.toning his seedy overcoat to conceal his rags, in some way he found himself upon his feet and began to speak. The address that proved a pleasure to others was a revelation to himself. For the first time Gough tasted the joys of moving men and mastering them for good. Within a week that love of public speech and useful service had kindled his mental faculties into a creative glow. The new and higher love of the heart consumed the lower love of the body, just as the sun melts manacles of ice from a man's wrist.
History is full of these transformations wrought by the heart. It was a new enthusiasm that changed Augustine the epicurean into Augustine the church father. It was a new enthusiasm that turned Howard the pleasure-lover into Howard the prison-reformer. It was a glowing heart that lent power to Mazzini and Garibaldi and gave Italy her new hope and liberty. Indeed, the history of each life is the history of its new loves. The enthusiasms are beacon lights that glow in the highway along which the soul journeys forward. When the hero's s.h.i.+ps were becalmed Virgil tells us that Aeolus struck the hollow mountain with his staff and straightway, released from their caves, the winds went forth to stir the waves and smite upon the sails and sweep the becalmed s.h.i.+p on toward its harbor. Oh, beautiful story, telling us how Christ touches the heart with his regenerating hand to release the soul's deeper convictions, to sweep man forward to the heavenly haven!
If sentiment working in sound can make music; if working in colors, etc., it can fill galleries with statues and pictures; if sentiment working in literature can produce poems, it should not seem strange that the heart, with its affections, furnishes the key of knowledge and wisdom. The time was when authors were supposed to think out their truths; now we know that the greatest truths are felt out. Matthew Arnold said that mere knowledge is cold as an icicle, but once experienced and touched with n.o.ble feelings truth becomes sweetness and light. This author thought that the first requisite for a good writer was a sensitive and sympathetic heart.
Even in Shakespeare the springs of genius were not in the mind. The heart of our greatest poet was so sensitive that he could not see an apple blossom without hoping that no untimely frost would nip it; could not see the cl.u.s.ters turn purple under the autumn sun without hoping that hailstones would not pound off the rich cl.u.s.ters; could not see a youth leave his home to seek his fortune without praying that he would return to his mother laden with rich treasures; could not see a bride go down the aisle of the church without sending up a pet.i.tion that many years might intervene before death's hand should touch her white brow.
Sympathy in the heart so fed the springs of thought in the mind that it was easy for the poet to put himself in another's place. And so, while his pen wrote, his heart felt itself to be the king and also his servant, to be the merchant and also his clerk, to be the general and also his soldier. He saw the a.s.sa.s.sin drawing near the throne with a dagger beneath his cloak; he went forth with King Lear to s.h.i.+ver beneath the wintry blasts; he rejoiced with Rosalind and wept with Hamlet, and there was no joy or grief or woe or wrong that ever touched a human heart that he did not perfectly feel and, therefore, perfectly describe. For depth of mind begins with depth of heart. The greatest writers are primarily seers and only incidentally thinkers. As of old, so now, for a thousand thinkers there is only one great seer.
Having affirmed the influence of the heart upon the intellect and scholars.h.i.+p, let us hasten to confess that the heart determines the religious belief and creed. It is often said that belief is a matter of pure reason determined wholly by evidence. And doubtless it is true that in approaching mathematical proofs man is to discharge his mind of all color. That two and two are four is true for the poet and the miser, for the peaceable man not less than the litigious. But of the other truths of life it is a fact that with the heart man believes. We approach wheat with scales, we measure silk with a yardstick; we test the painting with taste and imagination, and the symphony with the sense of melody; motives and actions are tested by conscience; we approach the stars with a telescope, while purity of heart is the gla.s.s by which we see G.o.d. The scales that are useful in the laboratory are utterly valueless in the art gallery. The scientific faculty that fits Spencer for studying nature unfits him for studying art. In his old age Huxley, the scientist, wrote an essay forty pages long to prove that man was more beautiful than woman. Imagine some Tyndall approaching the transfiguration of Raphael to sc.r.a.pe off the colors and test them with acid and alkali for finding out the proportion of blue and crimson and gold. These are the methods that would give the village paint-grinder precedency above genius itself.
In 1837 two boys entered Faneuil hall and heard Wendell Phillips'
defense of Lovejoy. One youth was an English visitor who saw the portraits of Otis and Hanc.o.c.k, yet saw them not; heard the words of Phillips, yet heard them not, and because his heart was in London believed not unto patriotism. But the blood of Adams was in the veins of the other youth. He thought of Samuel Adams, who heard the firing at Lexington and exclaimed; ”What a glorious morning this is!” He thought of John Adams and his love of liberty. He thought of the old man eloquent, John Quincy Adams, in the Halls of Congress, and as he listened to the burning words of the speaker, tears filled his eyes and pride filled his soul. It was his native land. With his heart he believed unto patriotism.
What the man is determines largely what his intellect thinks about G.o.d.
When the heart is narrow, harsh, and rigorous its theology is despotic and cruel. When the heart grows kindly, sympathetic and of autumnal richness, it emphasizes the sympathy and love of G.o.d. Each man paints his own picture of G.o.d. The heart lends the pigments. Souls full of sweetness and light fill the divine portrait with the lineaments of love. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness.