n controls us not only
in politics, but in religion, in art, and in literature. To turn away
from material good in order to gain spiritual and intellectual benefit
is held to be evidence of a feeble or perverted understanding. If a man
is eloquent, let him become a lawyer, a politician, or a preacher; if he
have a talent for science, let him become a physician, a practical
chemist, or a civil engineer; if he have skill in writing, let him
become a journalist or a contributor to magazines. No one asks himself,
What shall I do to gain wisdom, strength, virtue, completeness of life;
but the universal question is, How shall I make a living, get money,
position, notoriety? In our hearts we should rather have the riches of a
Rothschild than the mind of Plato, the imagination of Shakespeare, or
the soul of Saint Theresa. We believe the best is outside of us, that
the aids to the most desirable kind of life are to be found in material
and mechanical things. We talk with pride of our numbers, our
institutions, our machines; we love the display and noise of life, are
eager to mingle in crowds, to live in great cities, and to listen to
exaggerated and declamatory speech. The soberness of wisdom, the
humility of religion, the plainness of worth, are unattractive and
unrecognized. We rush after material things, like hunters after game;
and in the excitement of the chase our pulse grows quick, and our vision
confused. We have lost the art of patient work and expectation. We are
no more capable of living in our work, of making it the means of our
growth and happiness. What we do, must be quickly done, must have
immediate results. Our success in solving the political and social
problems has spoiled us. When we hear of a man who has been prosperous
for years, whom no misfortune has sobered and softened, we expect him to
be narrow and supercilious; and in the same way, a prosperous people are
exposed to the danger of becoming self-complacent and superficial. We
exaggerate the importance of our own achievements and think that which
we have accomplished is the best; whereas the wise hold what they have
done in slight esteem, and think only of becoming themselves nobler and
wiser. Instead of boasting of our civilization, because we have
industrial and commercial prosperity, wealth and liberty, churches,
schools, and newspapers, we ought to ask ourselves whether civilization
does not imply something more and higher than this,--what kind of sou