Where children pure and happy Pray to the blessèd Child, Son of the Mother mild; And Faith holds wide the door, O holy Child of Bethlehem, Descend to us, we pray! Cast out our sin and enter in; O come to us, abide with us, Copyrighted by E. P. Dutton and Company, New York. A$ PERSONAL CHARACTER From Essays and Addresses > S ONE looks around the world, and as one looks around our own land to-day, he sees that the one thing we need in high places-the thing whose absence, among those who hold the reins of highest power, is making us all anxious with regard to the progress of the country-is personal character. The trouble is not what we hold to be mistaken ideas with regard to policies of government, but it is the absence of lofty and unselfish character. It is the absence of the complete consecration of a man's self to the public good; it is the willingness of men to bring their personal and private spites into spheres whose elevation ought to shame such things into absolute death; the tendencies of men, even of men whom the nation has put in very high places indeed, to count those high places their privileges, and to try to draw from them, not help for humanity and the community over which they rule, but their own mean personal private advantage. If there is any power that can elevate human character: if there is any power which, without inspiring men with a supernatural knowledge with regard to policies of government; without making men solve all at once, intuitively, the intricacies of 2422 problems of legislation with which they are called upon to deal; without making men see instantly to the very heart of every matter; if there is any power which could permeate to the very bottom of our community, which would make men unselfish and true - why, the errors of men, the mistakes men might make in their judgment, would not be an obstacle in the way of the progress of this great nation in the work which God has given her to do. They would make jolts, but nothing more. Or in the course which God has appointed her to run she would go to her true results. There is no power that man has ever seen that can abide; there is no power of which man has ever dreamed that can regenerate human character except religion; and till the Christian religion, which is the religion of this land- till the Christian religion shall have so far regenerated human character in this land that multitudes of men shall act under its high impulses and principles, so that the men who are not inspired with them shall be shamed at least into an outward conformity with them, there is no security for the great final continuance of the nation. Copyrighted by E. P. Dutton and Company, New York. WR THE COURAGE OF OPINIONS From Essays and Addresses > E HAVE spoken of physical courage, or the courage of nerves; of moral courage, or the courage of principles. Besides these there is intellectual courage, or the courage of opinions. Let me say a few words upon that, for surely there is nothing which we more need to understand. The ways in which people form their opinions are most remarkable. Every man, when he begins his reasonable life, finds certain general opinions current in the world. He is shaped by these opinions in one way or another, either directly or by reaction. If he is soft and plastic, like the majority of people, he takes the opinions that are about him for his own. If he is self-asserting and defiant, he takes the opposite of these opinions and gives to them his vehement adherence. We know the two kinds well, and as we ordinarily see them, the fault which is at the root of both is intellectual cowardice. One man clings servilely to the old ready-made opinions which he finds, because he is afraid of being called rash and radical; another rejects the traditions of his people from fear of being thought fearful, and timid, and a slave. The results are very different: one is the tame conservative and the other is the fiery iconoclast; but I beg you to see that the cause in both cases is the same. Both are cowards. Both are equally removed from that brave seeking of the truth which is not set upon either winning or avoiding any name, which will take no opinion for the sake of conformity and reject no opinion for the sake of originality; which is free, therefore-free to gather its own convictions, a slave neither to any compulsion nor to any antagonism. Tell me, have you never seen two teachers, one of them slavishly adopting old methods because he feared to be called "imitator," the other crudely devising new plans because he was afraid of seeming conservative, both of them really cowards, neither of them really thinking out his work? The great vice of our people in their relation to the politics of the land is cowardice. It is not lack of intelligence: our people know the meaning of political conditions with wonderful sagacity. It is not low morality: the great mass of our people apply high standards to the acts of public men. But it is cowardice. It is the disposition of one part of our people to fall in with current ways of working, to run with the mass; and of another part to rush headlong into this or that new scheme or policy of opposition, merely to escape the stigma of conservatism. Copyrighted by E. P. Dutton and Company, New York. L LITERATURE AND LIFE From Essays and Addresses > IFE comes before literature, as the material always comes before the work. The hills are full of marble before the world blooms with statues. The forests are full of trees before the sea is thick with ships. So the world abounds in life before men begin to reason and describe and analyze and sing, and literature is born. The fact and the action must come first. This is true in every kind of literature. The mind and its workings are before the metaphysician. Beauty and romance antedate the poet. The nations rise and fall before the historian tells their story. Nature's profusion exists before the first scientific 2424 book is written. Even the facts of mathematics must be true before the first diagram is drawn for their demonstration. To own and recognize this priority of life is the first need of literature. Literature which does not utter a life already existent, more fundamental than itself, is shallow and unreal. I had a schoolmate who at the age of twenty published a volume of poems called Life-Memories.' The book died before it was born. There were no real memories, because there had been no life. So every science which does not utter investigated fact, every history which does not tell of experience, every poetry which is not based upon the truth of things, has no real life. It does not perish; it is never born. Therefore men and nations must live before they can make literature. Boys and girls do not write books. Oregon and Van Diemen's Land produce no literature: they are too busy living. The first attempts at literature of any country, as of our own, are apt to be unreal and imitative and transitory, because life has not yet accumulated and presented itself in forms which recommend themselves to literature. The wars must come, the clamorous problems must arise, the new types of character must be evolved, the picturesque social complication must develop, a life must come, and then will be the true time for a literature. . . Literature grows feeble and conceited unless it ever recognizes the priority and superiority of life, and stands in genuine awe before the greatness of the men and of the ages which have simply lived. Copyrighted by E. P. Dutton and Company, New York. CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN (1771-1810) OT only was Brockden Brown the first American man-of-letters proper,-one writing for a living before we had any real literature of our own,- but his work possessed a genuine power and originality which gives it some claim to remembrance for its own sake. And it is fair always to remember that a given product from a pioneer indicates a far greater endowment than the same from one of a group in a more developed age. The forerunner lacks not one thing only, but many things, which help his successors. He lacks the mental friction from, the emulation of, the competition with, other writers; he lacks the stimulus and comfort of sympathetic companionship; he lacks an audience to spur him on, and a market to work for; lacks labor-saving conventions, training, and an environment that heartens him instead of merely tolerating him. Like Robinson Crusoe, he must make his tools CHARLES B. BROWN before he can use them. A meagre result may therefore be a proof of great abilities. The United States in 1800 was mentally and morally a colony of Great Britain still. A few hundred thousand white families scattered over about as many square miles of territory, much of it refractory wilderness with more refractory inhabitants; with no cities of any size, and no communication save by wretched roads or by sailing vessels; no rich old universities for centres of culture, and no rich leisured society to enjoy it; the energies of the people perforce absorbed in subduing material obstacles, or solidifying a political experiment disbelieved in by the very men who organized it;neither time nor materials existed then for an independent literary life, which is the growth of security and comfort and leisure if it embraces a whole society, or of endowed college foundations and an aristocracy if it is only of the few. Hence American society took its literary meals at the common table of the English-speaking race, with little or no effort at a separate establishment. There was much writing, but mostly polemic or journalistic. When real literature was attempted, it consisted in general of imitations of British |