On Being Human | Page 6

little reflection,
when we have been inveighing against the corruption and decadence of
our own days, if only we have provided ourselves with a little
knowledge of the past wherewith to balance our thought! As bad times
as these, or any we shall see, have been reformed, but not by protests.

They have been made glorious instead of shameful by the men who
kept their heads and struck with sure self-possession in the fight. The
world is very human, not a bit given to adopting virtues for the sakes of
those who merely bemoan its vices, and we are most effective when we
are most calmly in possession of our senses.
So far is serenity from being a thing of slackness or inaction that it
seems bred, rather, by an equable energy, a satisfying activity. It may
be found in the midst of that alert interest in affairs which is, it may be,
the distinguishing trait of developed manhood. You distinguish man
from the brute by his intelligent curiosity, his play of mind beyond the
narrow field of instinct, his perception of cause and effect in matters to
him indifferent, his appreciation of motive and calculation of results.
He is interested in the world about him, and even in the great universe
of which it forms a part, not merely as a thing he would use, satisfy his
wants and grow great by, but as a field to stretch his mind in, for love
of journeyings and excursions in the large realm of thought. Your
full-bred human being loves a run afield with his understanding. With
what images does he not surround himself and store his mind! With
what fondness does he con travelers' tales and credit poets' fancies!
With what patience does he follow science and pore upon old records,
and with what eagerness does he ask the news of the day! No great part
of what he learns immediately touches his won life or the course of his
own affairs: he is not pursuing a business, but satisfying as he can an
insatiable mind. No doubt the highest form of this noble curiosity is
that which leads us, without self-interest, to look abroad upon all the
field of man's life at home and in society, seeking more excellent forms
of government, more righteous ways of labor, more elevating forms of
art, and which makes the greater among us statesmen, reformers,
philanthropists, artists, critics, men of letters. It is certainly human to
mind your neighbor's business as well as your won. Gossips are only
sociologists upon a mean and petty scale. The art of being human lifts
to be a better level than that of gossip; it leaves mere chatter behind, as
too reminiscent of a lower stage of existence, and is compassed by
those whose outlook is wide enough to serve for guidance and a
choosing of ways.
V
Luckily we are not the first human beings. We have come into a great

heritage of interesting things, collected and piled all about us by the
curiousity of past generations. And so our interest is selective. Our
education consists in learning intelligent choice. Our energies do not
clash or compete: each is free to take his own path to knowledge. Each
has that choice, which is man's alone, of the life he shall live, and finds
out first or last that the art in living is not only to be genuine and one's
own master, but also to learn mastery in perception and preference.
Your true woodsman needs not to follow the dusty highway through
the forest nor search for any path, but goes straight from glade to glade
as if upon an open way, having some privy understanding with the
taller trees, some compass in his senses. So there is the subtle craft in
finding ways for the mind, too. Keep but your eyes alert and your ears
quick, as you move among men and among books, and you shall find
yourself possessed at last of a new sense, the sense of the pathfinder.
Have you never marked the eyes of a man who has seen the world he
has lived in: the eyes of the sea-captain, who has watched his life
through the changes of the heavens; the eyes of the huntsman, nature's
gossip and familiar; the eyes of the man of affairs, accustomed to
command in moments of exigency? You are at once aware that they are
eyes which can see. There is something in them that you do not find in
other eyes, and you have read the life of the man when you have
divined what it is. Let the thing serve as a figure. So ought alert interest
in the world of men and thought to serve each one of us that we shall
have