Humanly Speaking | Page 2

estate which was in the hands of the enemy. He considered it a good investment. "I subscribed the deed and sealed it, and called witnesses and weighed him the money in the balances." Then he put the deeds in an earthen vessel, "that they may continue many days." For in spite of the panic that his own words had caused, he believed that the market would come up again. "Houses and vineyards shall yet be bought in this land." If I were an arch?ologist with a free hand, I should like to dig in that field in Anathoth in the hope of finding the earthen jar with the deed which Hanameel gave to his cousin Jeremiah, for a plot of ground that nobody else would buy.
It is the moralists and the reformers who have after all the most cheerful message for us. They are all the time threatening us, yet for our own good. They see us plunging heedlessly to destruction. They cry, "Look out!" They often do not themselves see the way out, but they have a well-founded hope that we will discover a way when our attention is called to an imminent danger. The fact that the race has survived thus far is an evidence that its instinct for self-preservation is a strong one. It has a wonderful gift for recovering after the doctors have given it up.
The saving clause is a great help to those idealists who are inclined to look unwelcome facts in the face. It enables them to retain faith in their ideals, and at the same time to hold on to their intellectual self-respect.
There are idealists of another sort who know nothing of their struggles and self-contradictions. Having formed their ideal of what ought to be, they identify it with what is. For them belief in the existence of good is equivalent to the obliteration of evil. Their world is equally good in all its parts, and is to be viewed in all its aspects with serene complacency.
Now this is very pleasant for a time, especially if one is tired and needs a complete rest. But after a while it becomes irksome, and one longs for a change, even if it should be for the worse. We are floating on a sea of beneficence, in which it is impossible for us to sink. But though one could not easily drown in the Dead Sea, one might starve. And when goodness is of too great specific gravity it is impossible to get on in it or out of it. This is disconcerting to one of an active disposition. It is comforting to be told that everything is completely good, till you reflect that that is only another way of saying that nothing can be made any better, and that there is no use for you to try.
Now the idealist of the sterner sort insists on criticizing the existing world. He refuses to call good evil or evil good. The two things are, in his judgment, quite different. He recognizes the existence of good, but he also recognizes the fact that there is not enough of it. This he looks upon as a great evil which ought to be remedied. And he is glad that he is alive at this particular juncture, in a world in which there is yet room for improvement.

Besides the ordinary Christian virtues I would recommend to any one, who would fit himself to live happily as well as efficiently, the cultivation of that auxiliary virtue or grace which Horace Walpole called "Serendipity." Walpole defined it in a letter to Sir Horace Mann: "It is a very expressive word, which, as I have nothing better to tell you, I shall endeavor to explain to you; you will understand it better by the derivation than by the definition. I once read a silly fairy tale called 'The Three Princes of Serendip.' As their Highnesses traveled, they were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of.... Now do you understand Serendipity?" In case the reader does not understand, Walpole goes on to define "Serendipity" as "accidental sagacity (for you must know that no discovery you are looking for comes under this description)."
I am inclined to think that in such a world as this, where our hold on all good is precarious, a man should be on the lookout for dangers. Eternal vigilance is the price we pay for all that is worth having. But when, prepared for the worst, he goes forward, his journey will be more pleasant if he has also a "serendipitaceous" mind. He will then, by a sort of accidental sagacity, discover that what he encounters is much less formidable than what he feared. Half of his enemies turn out to be friends