Lifes Enthusiasms | Page 2

the joy of making known. It requires the master's touch to develop the germs of the naturalist, the philosopher, the artist, or the poet. Our teacher is the man who has succeeded along the line in which we hope to succeed, whose success is measured as we hope to measure our own. Each leader of science and of intellectual life is in some degree the disciple of one who has planned and led before him. There is a heredity of intellect, a heredity of action, as subtle and as real as the heredity of the continuous germ-plasm. Ask the teacher who has helped mould your life, who in turn was his own master. In a very few generations you trace back your lineage to one of the great teachers the world knows and loves. Who was your teacher in Natural History in America? Was he a pupil of Agassiz, or was he a student of one of Agassiz's pupils? Or, again, are there three generations back from you to the grand master of enthusiasms?
And there are masters in the art of living as well as in other arts and sciences. "A log with Mark Hopkins at one end and myself at the other." That was Garfield's conception of a university. It was said of Eliphalet Nott at Union College, that he "took the sweepings of other colleges and sent them back to society pure gold." The older students of Stanford will always show the traces of the master teacher Thoburn. "In terms of life," thus he construed all problems of Science, of Philosophy, of Religion. In terms of life, Thoburn's students will interpret all their own various problems, for in terms of life all things we do must finally be formulated. Every observation we make, every thought of our minds, every act of our hands has in some degree an ethical basis. It involves something of right or wrong, and without adhesion to right, all thought, all action must end in folly. And there is no road to righteousness so sure as that which has right living as a traveling companion.
The very humanity of men at large is in itself a source of inspiration. Study men on the trains, at the ferry, on the road, in the jungles of the forest or in the jungles of great cities,--"through the ages, every human heart is human." Look for the best, and the best shall rise up always to reward you. One who has traveled among simple-living people, men and women we call savages, because they live in the woods and not in cleared land or cities, will bear witness that a savage may be a perfect gentleman. Now as I write their faces rise before me. Joyous, free limbed, white toothed swimmers in Samoan surf, a Hawaiian eel-catcher, a Mexican peon with his "sombrero trailing in the dust," a deferential Japanese farm boy anticipating your every want, a sturdy Chinaman without grace and without sensitiveness, but with the saving quality of loyalty to his own word, herdsmen of the Pennine Alps, Aleuts, Indians and Negroes, each race has its noblemen and through these humanity is ennobled. It is worth while to go far from Boston to find that such things are true.
And we may look not alone among primitive folk who have never envied us our civilization or ever cared that we possessed it. Badalia Herodsfoot, in Kipling's story, lived and died in darkest London. Gentle hearts and pure souls exist among our own unfortunates, those to whom our society has shown only its destroying side. All misery and failure as well as all virtue has its degrees, and our social scheme is still far from the demands of perfect justice.
Some one has said that "the wise young man will wear out three dress suits in a year." This is a playful way of saying that he will not shun men and women, even those bound by the conventions of society. All such association can be made to pay--not in money--but in getting the point of view of other people. This is worth while if not costing too much of time and strength. There is another maxim which can offset the first. It is from Lorimer's Chicago pork packer: "You will meet fools enough during the day without trying to roundup the main herd of them at night." But even the main herd of fools may teach its lesson to the student of human nature. It gives at least a point of departure in the study of wisdom. To study men or to kill time. What is your motive? The poorest use of time is to kill it. This is the weakest and most cowardly form of suicide. Moreover it is never quite successful. That "time which crawleth like a monstrous